Canyon Chaos (2 page)

“What?” said Jimmy, as Horace yelled. “What is it?”

Jimmy looked around. Everyone else was staring – but not at
him
. They were staring
past
him. Jimmy turned to look – and his mouth fell open too.

Above them, a vast black shadow was sweeping across the sky. It spread over the school field and across the playground – and it was coming straight for them! The sun disappeared and darkness fell as if the whole town had been swallowed up by a huge black cloud.

“Aliens!” whimpered Horace, stuffing his fingers in his mouth and sobbing.

Jimmy and Max looked nervously at each other.

Shaking and fumbling, Horace tried to start his roboscooter. “Start, Steve, start!” he stuttered. But Steve didn’t seem to be listening.

All the other boys ran.

“Come on!” yelled Max, as he raced towards the school building.

But Jimmy was looking up at the sky – and smiling.

Through the darkness he could just see the outline of a giant machine. But it wasn’t an alien craft. It had a huge gold letter L in a golden ring on the side of it, which could mean only one thing. It was Lord Ludwick Leadpipe’s airship.

Jimmy had seen it on the telly hundreds of times, hovering above the Robot Races.

“They’re dropping something!” squeaked Horace, jumping off Steve and running round in a small circle. “They’re dropping bombs on us!” he shrieked.

Jimmy looked up. A swarm of black dots was falling like rain from the airship and hurtling down towards them. “It’s not aliens,” said Jimmy, starting to laugh. “It’s Lord Lead—”

“They’re going to fall on
me
!” screamed Horace. He threw his hands over his head, ran behind Jimmy and cowered.

“Look!” Jimmy gasped. “They’re slowing down!”

He watched in amazement as the black dots seemed to fall in slow motion. One of them floated down in front of him and landed gently on the ground. It was like a shiny black snooker ball. The little orb started shaking – and then with a
pop!
it rose up on a pair of robotic legs.

His face frozen in terror, Horace peered over Jimmy’s shoulder, watching as the ball started walking towards them.

“Mmffgllggfff!” said Horace.

“What?” said Jimmy, wishing Horace would shut up and get off.

“Grsffla inflayunnn!”

“Eh?” said Jimmy, staring in amazement as a pair of robot arms popped out of the sides of the little marching black ball.

“I said,” shrieked Horace, “it’s an invasion! We’re under attack! Run!”

He kicked his roboscooter out of the way and ran, ducking and darting between the falling robots. But everywhere he ran, the black balls were cracking open and turning into little marching robots: legs first, then arms, then a head, and finally a voice.

“Gather round, gather round,” said the little robot in front of Jimmy. “News from Lord Leadpipe.”

Horace stopped running and turned around. “L-L-L-Leadpipe?” he stammered.

“Lord Ludwick Leadpipe is proud to announce a new season of Robot Races,” the machine continued.

“Wow!” said Jimmy.

“And for the first time ever,” it went on, “the Races will be just for children. If you’re under the age of sixteen, then
you
can enter the Robot Races Championship.”

With that, the little robot split in half, fired a shower of paper into the air, shrank back into a ball and rolled away to repeat the message somewhere else.

The great airship thundered into the distance as pieces of paper fluttered to the ground around Jimmy and Horace.

Jimmy reached out and grabbed one. “Look!” said Jimmy. “It’s a leaflet about the new Robot Races!” He read it out, his voice shaking with excitement. “
I, Lord Leadpipe, am proud and delighted and honoured to announce this special season of Robot Races! A round of qualifying races will be held in every corner of the world, starting just two weeks from today. Only the six very fastest qualifiers will get through to compete in the Championship! So if you’ve got what it takes to win the most exciting race on Earth, and you’re aged under sixteen and have your own robot...
”

Jimmy’s voice came to a croaky halt. Grandpa didn’t have enough money for a
toy
robot racer, let alone a real one. The bubbles of excitement in his stomach all suddenly popped and he was left with the feeling that he’d eaten a bucketful of cold custard.

“Gimme that!” said Horace, snatching the leaflet out of Jimmy’s hand. He read it quickly before pulling his phone out of his pocket and hitting a couple of buttons. Then he jammed the sleek device to his ear. “Dad? I need a robot. Lord Leadpipe has
...
Oh, you’ve heard already. You’ve done what? Good. Bye.”

Horace grinned at Jimmy.

“My dad knows about the Races already. He works for Lord Leadpipe, you see. And he’s already been on the phone to NASA—”

“NASA?” asked Jimmy.

“Yes, NASA.” Horace sniggered. “The people who build the robo-spaceships. My dad said Leadpipe robots aren’t allowed in the competition, so he’s ordered NASA to build my robot. I mean, how do you expect me to win the Robot Races Championship if I don’t have the very best robo-technology that money can buy?” Horace’s grin stretched even further. “What a shame you have absolutely no chance of entering the races. If your grandpa can’t afford to buy you a decent pair of trainers, I don’t think he’ll be ordering a new robot from NASA!” Horace threw the leaflet in Jimmy’s face. “Never mind, Jimmy,” he added. “You’ll still be able to enjoy watching me on TV, winning the Races. You have got a TV, haven’t you?”

Jimmy didn’t reply. He was watching Lord Leadpipe’s airship sail away into the distance. He picked up the leaflet and looked at it one last time before crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it miserably into his pocket.

It was starting to get dark as Jimmy headed for home. He could feel the crumpled leaflet at the bottom of his pocket, along with the jam sandwich Grandpa had made him for lunch. It only had one bite missing – and he hadn’t even been able to swallow that.

Even the sight of Grandpa’s black cab parked outside their cosy little house didn’t cheer Jimmy up like it usually did. All he saw was the rust on the taxi and the broken garden gate and the front door held together with sticky tape.

Why is Grandpa home from work so early
, Jimmy thought as he stepped into the hallway.
I hope he’s not confused one of his passengers for a celebrity again and invited them home for a cup of tea.

Only the other week, Jimmy had arrived home to find a scared-looking young gentleman nervously sipping a cup of Grandpa’s home-made nettle tea. It had taken Jimmy half an hour to convince Grandpa that the accountant, who happened to be called Terry, was not in fact Leonardo Del Sanchez, the internationally famous actor and star of the movie
Space Encounters
.

“Oh dear,” Grandpa had said. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you anyway, my friend.”

And with that, the poor accountant had seen himself out the front door, picking bits of nettle painfully from his teeth as he went.

“Grandpa! I’m home!” Jimmy called as he walked in. He pulled the leaflet out of his pocket and headed for the kitchen bin. “Hello!” he called again. Still there was no answer.

Jimmy found Grandpa sitting in the kitchen with his head in his hands, his wild white hair standing on end as though he had been trying to pull it out.

“Grandpa?” said Jimmy quietly.

Grandpa threw his hands down on the kitchen table, looked up and tried to smile his usual smile. Instead his moustache slowly sagged until its two straggly ends met below his chin.

“What’s up?” asked Jimmy. “What’s happened?”

“I’ve had a letter,” said Grandpa.

“A letter?” said Jimmy, starting to feel anxious.

“From my boss,” said Grandpa. “The head of Total Taxis.” Grandpa sighed and began to read it aloud. “
Dear Mr Roberts
...
blah blah blah,
” he went on, “
thank you very much for all your hard work, blah blah blah
...
with great sadness we confirm that your employment with us will end, blah blah blah
...
and we wish you a happy retirement.
”

Grandpa stared at the letter for a moment, and then his head fell forward and landed on the kitchen table with a thump.

“Retirement?” said Jimmy. “They can’t
make
you retire – can they?”

“They can,” said Grandpa, his voice muffled against the tablecloth, “and they have. I gave that company the best years of my life!” He sighed again, even more heavily this time, and slowly lifted his head off the table. “When I think of some of the people I’ve had in the back of that taxi ... did I ever tell you about the time when I took Sidney Sharp from Marble Arch to Catford? He was the world’s biggest film star back then – it was just after
Robomutants 3
came out. Did I ever tell you what he said to me?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” smiled Jimmy. “A few times.”

Grandpa’s head fell forward again and his eyes sank shut.

Jimmy couldn’t really understand how Grandpa ended up being a taxi driver – or why he loved it so much. As far as Jimmy could see, Grandpa was a genius. He could do maths faster than a calculator. He could do two crosswords at the same time – one with each hand – and finish them both in less than sixty seconds. Last year, the telly had burst into flames just three minutes before the Robot Races final was due to start. Grandpa had put the fire out and got it working again with nothing more than the spring out of an old ballpoint pen and a paper clip. Jimmy hadn’t even missed any of the race.

Grandpa slowly got up and gave Jimmy a comforting pat on the shoulder. “Anyway, how was school? What’s that you’ve got?” he asked, pointing at the screwed-up bit of paper in Jimmy’s hand.

“Nothing,” said Jimmy. “It’s rubbish. I was just going to put it in the bin.”

“Is it your school report?” Grandpa smiled. “Show me,” he insisted, holding out his hand.

Jimmy handed it over. He knew what Grandpa would say.

Grandpa took one look at the leaflet and began to shake. “Robot Races?” he cried. “For children?” His face turned red and his moustache twitched. “Leadpipe!” he shouted, thumping a fist on the kitchen table. “That man is making millions and billions every year but it’s still not enough for him!” Grandpa crumpled the leaflet and throttled it with both fists. “If I could get my hands on that man, I’d—”

But suddenly Grandpa stopped. He stared at Jimmy for a long moment, and then a grin spread slowly across his face.

Jimmy knew what that meant. Grandpa was having an idea.

After a long pause Grandpa whispered, “Would you like to go in for this Robot Race, Jimmy?”

“No,” Jimmy lied, shaking his head. “No way! Why would I want to do that?”

“Possibly because Robot Races is your favourite thing in the world ever.” Grandpa looked at Jimmy searchingly.

“No,” said Jimmy. “I like watching them, but that’s different. Driving in one of them would be much too—”

“
Expensive,
” finished Grandpa. “You think you’d never be able to race because you’d need your own racer. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No,” said Jimmy firmly. “Well, what I mean is...” he added quietly, “yes.” And suddenly words started pouring out of his mouth. “Horace Pelly’s dad is getting NASA to build him a racer but he has everything he ever wants and his dad works for Lord Leadpipe and he gets paid thousands and thousands of pounds and we couldn’t afford to buy a racer even when you had a job and now—”

“Buy a racer?” cried Grandpa, standing up. “Buy a racer? Why would we want to
buy
a racer?” He started bouncing up and down, the ends of his moustache jumping in the air.

Jimmy watched as Grandpa’s shaking hands smoothed the Robot Races leaflet flat. Grandpa folded it carefully and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he grabbed the letter from his boss and crumpled it into a tiny ball. He threw it over his shoulder and it sailed into the bin.

“Follow me,” said Grandpa, skipping to the back door, his fluffy white hair streaming behind him. “I’ve got a surprise,” he called over his shoulder. “No!” he said, correcting himself. “I’ve got a
plan
!”

Grandpa danced down the garden, skipping between the clumps of weeds and stinging nettles. Jimmy followed, anxiously wondering whether Grandpa had gone mad.

“Where are we going?” asked Jimmy.

“We’ve arrived,” Grandpa announced as they reached the end of the tiny garden. Jimmy looked at the huge bush in front of them.

“At the hedge?” Jimmy asked.

“At the
shed
.” Grandpa laughed. He reached into the bushes and started pulling them apart. “It’s in here somewhere.”

Jimmy watched for a second, then began helping his grandpa clear away the overgrowth. Sure enough, behind the forest was a shed. But not much of a shed. Its wood was rickety and rotting, and it looked like it could be knocked over by a stiff breeze. The only thing about it that looked sturdy was the enormous metal padlock on the splintered wooden door. “I didn’t even know we had a shed!” Jimmy exclaimed.

Grandpa stood on tiptoes and peered through the grimy glass of the shed window. “Look!” he cried.

Jimmy tried to look through the window. “I can’t see a thing,” he said.

“Good,” said Grandpa. “Ready?”

Jimmy watched in silence as Grandpa took off one of his shoes and shook a little grey key into his hand. Trembling excitedly, Grandpa turned the key in the huge padlock.

“Do you always keep that key in your shoe?” Jimmy asked.

Grandpa didn’t answer. He was looking left, and right, and behind him, and even up into the sky. Jimmy looked up too, even though he didn’t know what he was looking for.

“All clear,” said Grandpa, pushing the door open, shoving Jimmy into the darkness of the shed and shuffling in after him. Grandpa stuck his head back out of the door, gave the garden one last inspection, then pulled the door quietly shut.

Jimmy stood in the darkness. “What’s going on, Grandpa?” he asked anxiously, wondering if this was the kind of thing people did when they were having a nervous breakdown.

“Ssssh,” said Grandpa. “I just need to find the
...
Aha!”

There was a click and a blinding light filled the room. Jimmy shielded his eyes, squinting painfully into the brightness.

He opened his mouth to speak. But no sound came out.

Inside the shabby, run-down little garden shed, a wide ramp led down into a large white room that looked like some kind of underground laboratory.

“What
...
what...?” stammered Jimmy as he shuffled down the ramp. “Where am I?”

“You’re in my workshop,” said Grandpa. “I haven’t been here in years.”

Around the walls, white worktops were littered with lumps of metal and plastic, with piles of wires tangled up like spaghetti. Above them, rows and rows of tools hung from hooks and, beside them, huge pieces of paper were pinned to the wall: hundreds of drawings of electrical circuits and strange shapes with blades and teeth and wires and labels and all kinds of calculations.

Right in front of Jimmy, there was a desk piled high with rolls of paper, books, folders, a row of neatly sharpened pencils and a shiny metal hand that looked like the glove from a suit of armour. With a quick wink, Grandpa clipped two wires to the base of the shiny metal hand on the desk and flicked a switch on a control panel. The hand clenched into a fist.

“Wow!” said Jimmy.

Grandpa wiggled the joystick on the control panel. The fist unclenched and the fingers of the metal hand wiggled, too, as though they were scratching an invisible itch.

“That’s amazing!” said Jimmy. “What—? I mean, whose—? And how come there’s a whole building under the garden that I didn’t know about?”

“When I was younger,” explained Grandpa, “I was what they used to call ‘a bit of a whizz-kid’.”

“What do you mean?” asked Jimmy. “What did you do?”

“I invented things,” said Grandpa, smiling modestly. “Well, one thing in particular.”

“What?” Jimmy stared at Grandpa.

“There it is!” said Grandpa, pointing at the roof.

Jimmy looked up. Grandpa was pointing at something moving across the ceiling. It looked like a biscuit tin on tank tracks. When it got to the edge of the ceiling it trundled slowly down the wall and onto the floor, whirring and humming to itself.

“It’s still working!” cried Grandpa happily. “No wonder it’s so tidy in here!”

“But what
is it?” asked Jimmy.

“Just a little old-fashioned robot,” said Grandpa. A little door opened in the top of the biscuit tin and a mechanical arm reached out. It seemed to be waving at Jimmy.

“A robot?” gasped Jimmy, his mouth hanging open in amazement. “A real one?”

“Yes, but it’s pretty basic. Well,” laughed Grandpa, “it
was
the first one ever invented.”

“You...” began Jimmy. “You invented the world’s first robot?”

“Well, yes,” said Grandpa. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

“How come?” said Jimmy, fizzing bubbles of excitement rising in his throat. “Why didn’t you tell me!”

“I’m telling you now,” Grandpa said. “Many years ago,” he began, settling on a wooden stool at the desk, “before I became a taxi driver, me and a friend of mine worked together, imagining and inventing all kinds of things which we thought the world might want or need.”

“What kinds of things?” asked Jimmy.

“We were working on a highly advanced Lie Detector,” explained Grandpa. “It could even tell if you were
going
to lie before you’d opened your mouth.”

“Incredible!” said Jimmy.

“Ah, but there was a problem,” said Grandpa. “My friend and I couldn’t agree about the wiring of the biorhythmical transmodulation simulator. I thought I was right. He thought he was right.”

“Who was right?” asked Jimmy.

“Who knows?” replied Grandpa. “We stopped working together. He went off in a huff and took our laboratory assistant with him.”

“You had an assistant?” asked Jimmy.

“Yes,” said Grandpa. “Name of Hector. Anyway,” said Grandpa after a moment, “I carried on working on the Lie Detector and one day a man came to see me. He said he was from a secret department in the secret wing of the Secret Services.”

“The Secret Services? You mean, like a spy?” said Jimmy.

“Sort of,” said Grandpa. “He was in the technology and gadgets department. He had heard I was good with electronics and computers and he wanted me to work on a top-secret project.”

“The Lie Detector?” asked Jimmy.

“No,” said Grandpa. “A robot.”

Jimmy looked down at his feet. The biscuit-tin robot was rushing round his trainers, whirring away and cleaning them with a brush on a stick.

“Yes, just like this little chap here,” Grandpa continued, grinning down at the robot.

“The Secret Services wanted you to build a cleaning robot? Why?” exclaimed Jimmy in amazement.

“D’you know how much the Secret Services spend on cleaners?” asked Grandpa. “My robot would have saved them a fortune! And there were hundreds of other things they wanted robots for too. Things that they said were ‘CLASSIFIED’. So they built me this laboratory in the shed and gave me everything I could possibly need.”

“The Secret Services built this shed?” said Jimmy, grinning excitedly. “Unbelievable!”

“I designed this prototype and took it to show the people at the secret department in the secret wing of the Secret Services. We had a few teething troubles to begin with – like the time it ripped their carpet to shreds and ate all the chair legs. But with a few minor adjustments, my plans were finished and I was ready to build a new, improved version of this little chap,” Granda said, patting the biscuit-tin robot affectionately on the lid.

“Did you build it?” asked Jimmy.

Grandpa shook his head sadly. “One night,” he said, “I was lying in bed when I heard a noise outside. I looked out of the bedroom window, but I couldn’t see or hear anything. And in the morning, I came down to the shed and all my plans were gone. Stolen.”

“Stolen?” gasped Jimmy.

“A week later,” sighed Grandpa, “the man who I had once thought was my friend – the man who I had trusted with some of my greatest ideas – started his own company selling the world’s first robot. He had stolen my plans and made his own robot. Within a month, he was a millionaire.”

“Who was he, this friend of yours?” asked Jimmy.

“His name,” said Grandpa, “was Ludwick Leadpipe.”

Jimmy stared at Grandpa. “You mean – your friend,” he said at last, “the friend you worked with and invented stuff with – was Lord Leadpipe? So that’s why you hate him!”

“Me?” cried Grandpa. “I don’t
hate
Ludwick Leadpipe. I
despise
him.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Jimmy. “I can’t believe Lord Leadpipe would do something like that.”

“Neither could I.” Grandpa sighed. “And that’s why I haven’t been in this shed for thirty years. I told the Secret Services I was changing my career, and two weeks after the first Leadpipe robot went on sale I got a job with Total Taxis.”

“But why give up all this to be a taxi driver?” asked Jimmy.

“You know where you are with a taxi.” Grandpa nodded solemnly. “You can rely on a taxi. They always come when you call. And they don’t sneak into your shed at night and steal your finest invention.” He stared at the ground and sniffed. When he looked up again, there was a steely glint in his dark eyes. “So,” said Grandpa, “the time has come to put things right. We are entering you for the Robot Races.”

“But ... but ... but you hate Robot Races, Grandpa,” said Jimmy.

“Not any more!” cried Grandpa, picking up the robot and spinning it around. “This is our big chance! D’you think I
want
to spend my retirement drinking tea and weeding the garden? D’you think I’m going to let you miss the opportunity to compete in Robot Races?”

Jimmy stared at Grandpa in open-mouthed amazement. Had the old man gone crazy? “But I haven’t even got a racer,” he mumbled when he eventually got his mouth working.

“Don’t you see?” said Grandpa. “I’m going to
build
you a racer! When are the qualifying races?”

“In two weeks,” replied Jimmy. His insides were jumping up and down with excitement, but the rest of him couldn’t move.

“Better get cracking then,” said Grandpa, sharpening a pencil and spreading out a roll of blank paper. “You put the kettle on, and I’ll design you the greatest robot racer the world has ever seen!”