Twisted Metal (50 page)

‘Control!’ he called, ‘I see it. An . . . aircraft!’

And what an aircraft. Clad in a silver skin, it was much, much larger than Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah’s craft. Several hundred yards long at least, and painted with such odd symbols
.

‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah, report! What can you see?’

‘I don’t know! It looks like a . . . ship! A ship of the ocean, but flying through the sky! It’s so high up, but it’s descending. Where has it come from?’

There came no reply. The silver ship was rapidly receding into the distance. Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah gazed at it with enhanced eyes. Was it decelerating? he wondered
.

‘It seems to be changing course. Control, I ask again: where has it come from?’

The carrier wave of the radio clicked on. Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah could just hear the controller engaged in muffled conversation with someone else. Then the voice came to the fore
.

‘We . . . we don’t know for sure. We think, we don’t know, but we think, we think it has come from above the atmosphere. From out in space!’

Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah opened the throttle of his own craft and he heard the rising note of the turboprop as he sought to chase the rapidly diminishing silver speck. It was flying in the direction of Shull, he thought. Was it one of their own craft? No, it couldn’t be! Shull was a backward continent. They had little knowledge of flying craft; they could not build something like this. Was it true then that it had come from space?

The distant speck was changing direction. It seemed to be curving around, back towards Yukawa
.

Control came back on the radio. ‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah, the craft is changing direction.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah,’ the controller’s voice was low and hollow with emotion, ‘the craft has spoken to us, using the radio. It is coming to Yukawa. It is coming to us, Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah!’

‘Controller, control yourself!’

‘They say they have come from the stars! You are to escort them to Huru base!’

The silver speck was growing.

‘Controller, they are so big! They could knock me from the sky!’

‘They say that they can see you, small though you are. They say they can see all of our aircraft with their ship’s senses!’

‘Controller, what are they?’

‘I don’t know!’

The ship was getting large enough for Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah to make out its shape, to see its smooth lines. It seemed to be built entirely of metal. He looked for its propulsion system, but saw nothing. There were no propellers, nothing to indicate how it moved
.

Closer and closer the ship came, and then suddenly it swung around in a wide loop
.

‘Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah, did we not ask you to set a course for Huru base?’

The words shook him from his reverie. ‘Affirmative,’ he replied, banking his craft once more. The silver ship moved smoothly alongside him, and Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah picked out more details on it. White flashes marked with strange red symbols. Tiny little pits in the metal skin. And there, at the front, a transparent section: the cockpit
.

Who was flying this ship?

Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah opened the throttle to its fullest extent, his craft slid slowly forward along the great silver length, his enhanced eyes peering across at the cockpit
.

He saw a figure in there, looking back at him. The figure appeared to be waving to him. He turned his eyes up to their fullest extent, and felt his gyros lurch
.

The figure in the ship. It wasn’t a robot
.

It was organic
.

It was an animal.

Praise for
Twisted Metal

‘Written in a deceptively simple style,
Twisted Metal
is not only highly readable, but surprisingly thoughtful. Ballantyne’s creation of a world of robots allows him to focus on the beliefs that we humans have about ourselves from an entertainingly different perspective’

The Times

‘Ballantyne’s fourth novel is an original work with a distinctive voice. It works not only as a thrilling action adventure, but as a thought experiment exploring free will, independence and totalitarianism’

Guardian

‘An oddly fashioned yet brilliantly written fable that’s also a genuinely harrowing read . . . A weird and truly unsettling allegory of genetic inheritance, nationalism, religion and sheer barbaric cruelty of war . . . An affecting, powerful and deeply relevant work of science fiction’

SFX

‘Full blooded fantasy . . . An engaging adventure’

DeathRay

‘Edgy, kinetic, and creative’

SciFiNow

‘In SF there are plenty of books that contain AI and the singularity, but I’ve not come across any that read like
Twisted Metal
– a book that focuses on robots as a culture, exploring their story. Tony Ballantyne has very successfully created a complete society of robot kind that can very easily be compared to a human society. It’s a very effective take on the idea that works exceptionally well’

‘Walker of Worlds’ blog

‘
Twisted Metal
is every bit as twisted as its predecessors, and is in fact very much a part of Ballantyne’s master plan to upend our understanding of so-called “cyberpunk”. Like
Recursion
,
Twisted Metal
takes simple building blocks and puts them together in a very unexpected manner. Ballantyne’s a super-smart writer, providing reading satisfaction at a visceral, blow-em-up level and at an intellectual, sense-of-wonder level’

Rick Kleffel’s ‘The Agony Column’ blog

‘Ballantyne’s slow and steady doling out of facts and scenery builds up a world and ideologies that are worth the read and give you plenty to think about. When you add a hefty dose of action to the mix (which Ballantyne certainly does!) then you have a story that rockets along to a heady finish. Ballantyne has a great time sending opposing robots up against each other and he does this with great panache, leaving no diode un-wrenched in scenes of full on robot warfare’

‘Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review’ blog

TWISTED METAL

Tony Ballantyne lives in Oldham with his wife and two children. He is the author of the Recursion trilogy, as well as many acclaimed short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies around the world. With this, his fourth novel, he begins an exciting new series.

You can find out more about the author at his website:
www.tonyballantyne.com

Also by Tony Ballantyne

RECURSION TRILOGY

Recursion

Capacity

Divergence

For
Laura, Sophie, Laura
Ben and James

From
The Song of Hiawatha

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,

Who have faith in God and Nature,

Who believe, that in all ages

Every human heart is human,

That in even savage bosoms

There are longings, yearnings, strivings

For the good they comprehend not,

That the feeble hands and helpless

Groping blindly in the darkness

Touch God’s right hand in that darkness,

And are lifted up and strengthened,

Listen to this simple story
. . .

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

First published 2009 by Tor

This edition published 2010 by Tor

This electronic edition published 2010 by Tor
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-330-52826-9 PDF
ISBN 978-0-330-52825-2 EPUB

Copyright © Tony Ballantyne

The right of Tony Ballantyne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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