The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain

by Gillian Cross

  ‘Hey!’ Mandy grinned. ‘That sounds very grand. Do you think there’s a butler or something?’

  ‘More likely to be a bouncer,’ drawled Ian gloomily. ‘A huge, hairy thug hired to keep out unwanted visitors like us.’

  Ingrid tossed her head. ‘We’re not unwanted visitors, are we, Harvey? We’re unwanting visitors.’

  ‘Shut up, all of you.’ Lloyd rubbed his eyes, which were starting to smart. He had never known SPLAT be so difficult to keep in order. ‘Now listen. We don’t know what’s going to happen, so we’ll just have to take our chance. We’ll all go with Di when she requests admittance and if there’s any opportunity for the rest of us to get in, be ready to seize it. If not, we’ll have to use our wits.’

  ‘But you will get in?’ Dinah asked anxiously. ‘I don’t want to be stuck in there by myself.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ promised Mandy. ‘Now where do you think we go? It just says the door in your instructions, doesn’t it? Do you think it could possibly mean that one?’

  She pointed. The door facing them was a very strange shape. It was about ten feet high, but only about two feet wide, and it was made of metal. Engraved across the middle were the words The Sentinel Tower. And that was all. No opening. No handle. No nothing. Only, beside the door, was a small metal panel set into the mirror wall, and, above that, a knob like a bellpush.

  For a moment everyone hesitated. Then Lloyd marched over and pressed the bellpush.

  ‘Let’s just see what happens,’ he said stoutly. ‘They can’t eat us, after all.’

  But what did happen took him by surprise. From somewhere above his head came a voice. A queer, mechanical voice.

  ‘If You Desire Admittance, Please Punch Out Your Name.’

  At the same moment, the metal panel in the wall slid aside, revealing a row of buttons lettered with the letters of the alphabet. Lloyd stared for a moment and then began to press them.

  L-L-O-Y-D-H-U-N-T-E-R.

  As he finished, there was a short pause. Then the mechanical voice sounded again.

  ‘I Am Not Programmed To Admit You. Please Go Away.’

  Lloyd stepped back. ‘You try, Di. But the rest of us will be ready. When the door opens, we may all be able to rush in.’

  Dinah gulped and then pressed the bellpush.

  ‘If You Desire Admittance Please Punch Out Your Name.’

  Again, the metal panel slid aside. With a quick glance over her shoulder at the others, Dinah began to punch.

  D-I-N-A-H-H-U-N-T-E-R

  A pause. Then—

  ‘Please Step Into The Half Circle In Front Of The Door.’

  For the first time, they noticed that the concrete ground in front of the door was marked by a metal groove. It ran in a perfect half circle, exactly the width of the door and a foot from front to back.

  Carefully, Dinah stepped over the groove, standing with her feet neatly together and her arms in front of her, clutching the handles of her suitcase and the S-7 computer. The others crowded close, but there was not room for anyone except Dinah in the circle. Still, they were all prepared, holding their breath, ready to charge forward as soon as the door started to swing open.

  But it did not swing open. Instead, with bewildering speed, it turned, like a revolving stage, taking the half circle of ground with it.

  Without moving a step on her own, Dinah was spun away from them, into the building. There was a brief glimpse of a narrow corridor and then the turn was complete. Dinah had vanished and they were staring at the opposite side of the metal door, which looked exactly the same as the first side. Ten feet tall and two feet wide, with The Sentinel Tower engraved across the middle. And there was nothing else to be seen except their own startled faces, reflected in the mirror walls.

  ‘Well,’ said Ian, after a moment of stunned silence, ‘what now, O Leader?’

  ‘We—we—’ Lloyd racked his brains frantically. If you want to be in charge of people, there are moments when you must produce a plan. It doesn’t matter what, but there must be a plan. And Lloyd knew that this was one of those moments. ‘We’ll try to get in just like Dinah did,’ he said.

  He stepped forward again and pressed the bellpush once more. But this time, when the mechanical voice asked him to punch out his name, he winked at the others over his shoulder and punched out.

  D-I-N-A-H-H-U-N-T-E-R.

  A pause. Then—

  ‘This Person Has Already Been Admitted. Please Leave Otherwise The Police Will Be Summoned.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mandy said softly, ‘it’s going to be ever so hard to get in. What can we do?’

  ‘I think we should just go back to the station and get a train to Lloyd’s Auntie Alice’s,’ said Ingrid.

  Harvey nodded. ‘We can say we’ve been miraculously cured.’

  ‘But we couldn’t do that.’ Mandy was shocked. ‘We promised we’d get into the building and make sure Dinah was all right. SPLAT-swear. We can’t let her down now.’

  ‘Well, I’ll really enjoy seeing you get inside,’ said Ingrid. ‘Go on. Show me how you’re going to do it without getting us all arrested.’

  And she and Harvey sat down cross-legged on the pavement and folded their arms, looking up at the others with irritating smugness.

  Lloyd tried to ignore them. There had to be a way of getting into the building. There just had to be…

  6

  The Brains

  When the ground began to turn under her feet, Dinah was too surprised to do anything. She did not have time to shout to the others or jump backwards to safety. All she could do was concentrate on not toppling over. Clutching the handle of her suitcase with one hand and gripping the S-7’s case with the other, she was whirled round, away from the sunshine, away from the open air, away from the other members of SPLAT into—total darkness.

  It snapped round her as though the lid of a box had slammed shut. She was standing in a completely strange place and she could not even see her clenched hands in front of her or her feet on the floor below.

  Automatically, she put her suitcase down and felt behind her, trying to push at the door she had come through. But the wall on this side was lined with metal and the door fitted so perfectly that she could not even find the cracks at its edges.

  Keep calm, she kept muttering to herself. Don’t panic. She couldn’t have been brought all this way just to be shut up in the dark. There must be a reason for it. Something must be going to happen. Mustn’t it?

  But she knew that she could not stay in control of herself for ever. She could not have been there for more than a minute, but already the darkness was straining her eyes and she was beginning to breathe faster. Something must happen soon. It must, it must …

  And then it did. Suddenly, in front of her, a tiny green light appeared, floating in the blackness. She could not tell whether it was near to her or far away. It was out of the reach of her hand when she stretched towards it, but beyond that she had no way of telling, nothing to measure it against in the blackness. It just hovered, staying in the same place but vibrating constantly as though it changed shape all the time. But it was either too small or too far away for Dinah to make out the shapes properly.

  Then she heard the mechanical voice that had spoken to her when she was outside.

  ‘You May Advance Towards The Light.’

  She shuddered. The sensible part of her mind knew very well that the voice was made by a machine. In fact she knew she could do the same thing with her S-7 if she loaded the right instructions. But—it was hard not to think of that jerky, inhuman voice as the voice of the Computer Director himself. She imagined his mouth opening and shutting like the mouth of a robot, while his pebbly glasses gleamed above.

  ‘Please Advance Towards The Light,’ the voice said.

  It was hard not to be terrified at the thought of stepping forward into—nothing. But there were no other choices. Dinah bent down to pick up her suitcase and then began to shuffle forward, very slowly, step by step, feeling the gro
und in front of her with her feet before each move.

  Both her hands were full, so that she could not reach out to feel whether there were walls on either side. The floor was covered with something soft, like carpet, so that her footsteps made no noise. Cautiously, she coughed once or twice to see if she could tell by the sound what sort of place she was in. She had an impression of walls close to her on both sides, as though she were in a long, straight corridor, but she could not be certain. The only thing she could be certain of was the green light hanging in the air in front of her. With her eyes fixed on it, she shuffled closer, inch by inch.

  And slowly, very slowly, it grew larger as she got closer, until she could see that it was made up of tiny, shifting, snaking green lines of light. Like the lines on a computer screen. Something about those lines made her move faster, trying to get near enough to see them plainly. Her quick walk changed to a trot and then a stumbling, awkward run as the lines came clearer and clearer and larger and larger and she recognized them.

  She really was looking through the darkness at a computer screen. And there, dancing across it, winding and shifting and writhing, were the familiar patterns of not one octopus, but two. Two beautiful, complicated octopuses of green light, hovering in the darkness of the Sentinel Tower. Dinah was panting by the time she got close to the screen.

  ‘Stop Now,’ the mechanical voice said suddenly.

  Dinah put down the box and the suitcase, reached out with one hand to touch the glass of the screen in front of her and then ran her fingers down it to see if there was a keyboard below.

  That was the last thing she remembered properly. After that, the beautiful, shifting lines of light held her fast, so that she was not aware of anything else around her. She could only see their twirling and twisting and turning and …

  Octopus -s-s-s-s!

  It could have been a minute later that she came back to herself or it could have been five hours. She had no way of telling. But suddenly the octopus patterns vanished and she realized that she could see.

  She was standing in a lift, in a glare of light, with a blank, dead screen in front of her where the octopuses had been. At her feet were her suitcase and the S-7. Behind her, the lift doors were open and from the room beyond came a faint hum of voices.

  I’m here, Dinah thought. Wherever here was. The air was cool and damp and when she glanced over her shoulder she had a quick picture of a hard, bright room. The windowless walls were covered in white plastic and lined with shiny metal cabinets all the way round. And the whole large room was full of people. Full of strangers. Dinah picked up her belongings, swallowed hard and turned round to face them.

  They were sitting with their backs to her, in rows of separate desks, and for a moment she had an impression of inhuman neatness and order. All the desks were identical—white-topped, with shiny metal legs. They were ranged in perfectly straight lines, with the gaps between them as regular as though they had been measured in millimetres. On each desk stood an S-7 computer and in front of each desk was a gleaming white-and-metal chair. Sitting in the chairs were dozens and dozens of children dressed in identical spotless white lab coats, their backs hunched as they leaned over the desks. The Brains.

  For a second Dinah stood nervously in the lift, remembering Ian’s jokey description of them. Perhaps, if she moved or spoke, they would turn and look at her with identical faces, white teeth and metal glasses gleaming under high, curved foreheads. She stared at their backs, gathering her courage, and then stepped out of the lift. The soles of her shoes clacked on the hard, bright floor outside and at once every head in the room moved as the Brains turned to look at her.

  The bright, mechanical tidiness was completely shattered. Every face was different—and they were all looking hard at her, some smiling and some just inquisitive. There were boys and girls from sixteen or seventeen right down to eight or nine. Some of them had dark hair, some of them had fair hair, some were ginger and some were mousy. There were plaits and curls and spikes and crew-cuts and fringes. And the clothes which showed at the necks of the lab coats were just as varied—a hotch-potch of colours and shapes. They ranged from plain school uniform to the height of fashion. Everyone was different—and Dinah found herself grinning round at them all.

  Before she could move any further or say anything, one of the girls stood up and launched towards her with her hands held out.

  ‘Oh how lovely to see you I’m Camilla Jefferies and I wondered who was going to come and sit in this desk next to me because it’s the only empty one and I thought perhaps there was no one else—’

  She was the most beautiful girl Dinah had ever seen. One of the oldest there, tall and willowy with smooth pink and white skin. A great cascade of curling chestnut hair fell down over her shoulders, almost to her waist, and a flood of words tumbled from her lips as though she never needed to breathe.

  ‘—look here’s your desk next to mine and this is my brother Robert behind you and Bess on the other side of you—’

  Meekly Dinah let herself be ushered across to the empty desk and helped into the white lab coat that was hanging over the back of the chair. Then she sat down and nodded at Robert and Bess.

  Bess seemed to be the youngest person there. She was shy and nervous, and she was clutching a teddy bear on her lap. ‘Hello,’ she whispered, smiling up at Dinah.

  ‘Hello,’ Robert said quietly from behind. He looked very much like Camilla only younger. About the same age as Dinah. But he was as silent as his sister was talkative and he did not say anything else, just looked shrewdly at Dinah before he bent over his desk again.

  ‘—have you brought your S-7 oh good well you plug it in here let me show you—’

  With a stream of instructions, Camilla got Dinah settled into her desk and then leaned back with a happy sigh.

  ‘Oh isn’t this nice we’re really here and settled and everyone’s friendly and it’s going to be really fun isn’t it—’

  ‘Hrmph!’ came from Robert.

  Bess gave a pale, polite smile and clutched harder at her teddy bear. ‘It seems all right so far,’ she murmured.

  Dinah knew what they meant. Nothing bad had happened yet, but still, at the back of her mind, was the niggle that had been troubling her for weeks. The feeling that there was something wrong about the final—about the whole competition. But she could not think of any way to start explaining it. So she just smiled back at Bess and waited to see what would happen now.

  She did not have to wait long. Almost as soon as she was settled the mechanical voice rang out over the room.

  ‘The Computer Director Is Approaching. Please Stand And Be Silent.’

  Even Camilla stopped talking, and everyone stood very quietly, facing the front. There was a faint hissing sound from behind them. Dinah decided that was the lift coming back. Then, sharply, making them all jump, the sound of feet in hard shoes stepping out of the lift and walking across the floor.

  A double line of men in white coats marched briskly up the room keeping perfectly in step with each other, not looking to the right or to the left. When they reached the front of the room, they spread out in an exact straight line, facing the desks, four of them on one side and four on the other.

  In the centre, dominating the whole room, they left a space.

  I won’t look behind, Dinah thought sternly. I won’t. Glancing from one side to the other, out of the corners of her eyes, she saw that Camilla and Bess were staring ahead in the same stubborn way. They were too well-behaved to gawp over their shoulders, but they were full of curiosity. They were waiting, the men at the front were waiting, the whole room was waiting for the Computer Director to appear.

  Then, from the entrance of the lift, a voice spoke. Very sharp and precise.

  ‘Good morning.’

  Dinah stiffened. That voice! She could not believe that she had heard right, but now she did not dare look round.

  ‘Now that you have all arrived,’ the voice said crisply, ‘we shall start
work without wasting any further time.’

  Footsteps sounded as the owner of the voice began to walk up between the desks. Dinah hung her head so that her plaits fell on either side of her face, hiding it from anyone walking by.

  No, she was thinking frantically, no, no, no, it can’t be true. She was nervous and anxious and excited and because of that she must have made a mistake about the Computer Director’s voice. She must have made a mistake.

  But, all the same, she could have sworn that the voice she had just heard was the same as a voice she knew only too well. One that she had good reason to fear.

  The voice of the Demon Headmaster.

  7

  Another Way In

  ‘Are we going to stand here for ever?’ moaned Ingrid. ‘All you’ve done, ever since Dinah went in, is talk, talk, talk. And now you’ve even stopped talking. I’m bored.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ muttered Lloyd. ‘I’m trying to think.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ Harvey said. ‘You’re just hoping an answer will float into your head. We can’t wait for that. We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘Well, you tell me what, then!’ snapped Lloyd, losing his temper. ‘If you’re so clever.’ Why did people never understand how hard it was to have ideas?

  ‘Boys, boys,’ murmured Ian soothingly, ‘I know you’re enjoying your little quarrel, but why don’t you stop it and help the rest of us decide what to do? Are we going to try and get into the Sentinel Tower?’

  ‘We must’ said Lloyd. ‘We promised we would. And Dinah’s not an idiot. If she thinks there’s something peculiar about all this, I bet she’s right.’

  ‘OK then.’ Ian glanced round at the other four. ‘So—what are we going to do? We’ve tried everything we can think of to get through this door and it’s hopeless.’

  ‘Why not look for another way in?’ That was Ingrid. She was sitting sulkily on the ground, with her back against the metal door. ‘I know you’re all older than me and cleverer than me, but you’re being really thick. It’s no good trying to fool our way in through this door, but there might be another one. Why don’t we go and look?’