The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain

by Gillian Cross

  Nursing her wrist, which ached from holding a pen for so long, Dinah flipped back through her own notes. Pages and pages! How could she ever learn them? She was already exhausted. She had worked harder in the last two hours than she had ever worked in her life, and it looked as though that was only a start. Help!

  The white-coated men were walking down between the desks now, sending the Brains into the lift, two rows at a time. The Brains went solemnly and silently, their eyes on their notebooks and their faces concentrating hard.

  When it was Dinah’s turn, she went with Camilla and Bess and Robert. The men packed the lift so tightly that none of them could move and then pressed a couple of switches.

  Immediately, the door closed and for a second there was total darkness. Bess caught her breath, but before she could say anything a green light came on. The octopus patterns began to writhe their way across the computer screen on the wall of the lift.

  For an instant, Dinah felt the uneasy, worrying niggle that had been at the back of her mind ever since she entered the Sentinel Tower. Octopus patterns again?

  Then, as the beautiful familiar curves filled the screen, she slid into a daze, watching them loop and arch and intertwine and …

  Octopus -s-s-s-s!

  The next thing she was aware of was the lift doors opening. The Brains blinked as the octopus patterns disappeared and light filled the lift. Then they started to push their way out, looking like any other crowd of hungry children.

  They were in a vast, windowless canteen, with long tables set out in line from end to end. Very neat, regular lines. Perfectly straight and evenly spaced. Strip lights glared down from above, filling the room with a harsh brightness, and everything was so clean and hard and shining that it was almost painful to look at.

  As Dinah stepped out of the lift, she heard the mechanical voice of the S-700.

  ‘Collect Your Cutlery From The Clean Cutlery Dispenser And Then Sit At A Table.’

  The message was repeated every ten seconds or so as they all lined up in a neat queue in front of a slot in the wall labelled Clean Cutlery Dispenser. As soon as someone stood in front of it, a bundle appeared in the slot. A knife, a fork, and a spoon, wrapped in a paper napkin. The waiting person took the bundle, but the next bundle did not appear until the next person stepped forward.

  Very hygienic, thought Dinah. No chance for the things to get dirty. But the efficiency of it made her even more miserable. It was just the sort of thing the Headmaster would think of.

  She took her cutlery and sat down at a table with Robert, Camilla, and Bess. As she settled herself, she looked sideways at Bess. The little girl was pale and quiet and she had brought her teddy bear with her.

  ‘OK?’ Dinah said.

  ‘I think so.’ Bess gave her a small, shy smile. ‘It was marvellous hearing all about the S-700. I just hope I can learn everything in time.’

  ‘You hope you can learn it. Goodness, what about me,’ said Camilla, ‘I’m the world’s worst learner it takes me ages doesn’t it Robert and—’

  ‘Hrmph!’ said Robert.

  Dinah looked curiously at him. The two girls were nervous and excited, but they seemed quite pleased with their morning. Robert was different. His face was sharp and solemn and Dinah wondered what he was thinking. But before she could ask him anything the voice of the S-700 sounded again.

  ‘Please Remain Seated. Your Food Will Be Served To You.’

  All the Brains were sitting down now, most of them busy trying to learn their notes. At the sound of the voice, they looked up, wondering who was coming to serve them. Would it be the men in white coats or would it be other people? More friendly people?

  But no people appeared at all. Instead, the lift doors swished open and a line of little trucks ran out of the lift and along the floor beside the tables.

  ‘Oh look!’ Bess beamed all over her face. ‘Aren’t they sweet!’

  It was a comic sight. The trucks were running alongside the tables, stopping at each occupied place. When they stopped, doors opened in their sides. Mechanical arms unfolded, lifted out plates and served hot food from inside the trucks. It was like being served by a procession of fat, square gnomes.

  But, after a moment or two, some of the other Brains began to wail from the other end of the room.

  ‘But I don’t like carrots!’

  ‘I can’t eat milk pudding. It brings me out in a rash!’

  ‘I’m a vegetarian!’

  The trucks, of course, took no notice. They simply went on serving out the same portions to everyone. Carrots, potatoes, and stew for the first course. Milk pudding and prunes for the second course. Each meal looked exactly the same and each meal was exactly the same size.

  ‘I’ll never eat all that,’ muttered Bess, as she was served. ‘It’s enough to last me for a week.’

  ‘I’ll have what you don’t want please,’ Camilla said hastily. ‘I’d be glad to because otherwise I’ll starve to death and it’s not that I’m greedy only—’

  All over the canteen, similar swaps were going on as people tried to make sure they got meals they could eat. Robert looked grimmer and more solemn.

  ‘You see what’s happened?’ he murmured.

  Dinah nodded. ‘The computer’s been programmed so that the robots feed us all the same meal. All average portions. And we’re not all average.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Robert pulled a face. ‘Worse than school dinners. At least the dinner ladies listen when you tell them you can’t eat something.’

  ‘But it’s quite fun watching all the things work, isn’t it?’ Bess said timidly. ‘Now we know how they all fit into the main computer system. Fancy the Director having programmed in everything we’re going to do while we’re here!’

  ‘No!’ Robert said violently. ‘I don’t fancy it!’

  Bess looked hurt, as though he had kicked her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t we get any choice about what we do?’ Robert murmured. ‘Or are we just another set of things for the computer to control? Like the rest of the robots?’ He waved an arm at the figures all round the room. The Brains had sorted out the food and now they were silent except for the sound of rustling paper as they turned the pages of their notebooks. ‘Look how we’re being forced to work with our meal!’ Robert sounded disgusted. ‘It’s bad for us. We’re not machines. We’re people. We need time to rest.’

  ‘But Robert don’t forget this is special,’ protested Camilla, ‘and if we don’t work as hard as we can we’ll be wasting it so you’ll be sorry if you’re lazy and you don’t do what the Director said—’

  ‘I’m not lazy,’ Robert said quietly. ‘I’m worried. It’s all too—too efficient. Clean and precise and mechanical. And controlled. We’re so controlled that we don’t even know how we got to this canteen.’

  ‘Oh Robert don’t be stupid of course we know we came up in the lift and—’

  Camilla’s voice died away suddenly as she realized what Robert meant, and Bess finished the sentence for her.

  ‘—or down in the lift. But we don’t know which, do we? Because we were all too busy watching the octopuses wriggling.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Robert nodded. ‘Don’t you think there’s something peculiar about the way the Director uses the octopuses to distract our attention? It’s as though he can switch off our minds with them whenever he wants to. And that’s creepy.’

  At the back of Dinah’s head, an uncomfortable memory stirred. A miserable, strange memory of herself screaming at Mum and Dad to buy her an S-7 so that she could see more octopus patterns. ‘It’s like an addiction, isn’t it?’ she said slowly. ‘Like when people get stuck on drink or drugs. We’re all stuck on the octopuses. That’s terrible.’

  ‘It might not be the most terrible thing said Robert. He was looking even gloomier. ‘The important question is—if we are addicted to the octopuses, why is the Director using them to control us? Why does he need to control us? What does he want us to do?’

&nbs
p; 9

  Harvey Walks into Trouble

  ‘Shut your mouths! Close your eyes! Hold on tight!’ yelled Lloyd.

  He just had time to screw up his own face before the great scoop full of rubbish tipped right over. A mountain of wet carrot-scrapings showered down on to his hair. Slimy potato peelings slithered over his neck and something that smelt like sour milk dripped down his nose and his chin. On and on went the stream of rubbish. He spat out tea-leaves, brushed flour away from his eyelashes, and peeled burnt rice pudding skin off his cheek. And all the time he was frantically pressing his back and his feet against the sides of the chute so that he did not get knocked down on top of the others.

  Their shouts didn’t help, either.

  ‘Eugh!’

  ‘Yuck, yuck, YUCK!’

  ‘Lloyd, what are you doing? Have you forgotten we’re down here?’

  ‘Stop it, Lloyd!’

  As if he was responsible for all the rubbish, instead of catching the worst of it himself. But he couldn’t answer or explain, because if he opened his mouth it would fill with muddy water and bits of fat and gristle and eggshells and buttery paper and …

  As soon as the flood of rubbish stopped, Lloyd gripped the edge of the opening behind him and flung himself backwards through it.

  ‘Come on quickly!’ he called down the shaft. ‘Before it happens again.’

  One by one, the others appeared through the flap. They were soggy and bedraggled and very, very angry. But as they crawled out of the chute and into the kitchen, their faces changed. Their eyes opened wide and they gaped.

  ‘Exploding eggshells!’ said Harvey. ‘What sort of place is this?’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ breathed Mandy. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  Even Ian, who was always so cool, gave a low whistle when he saw the robot arms swinging and bending around as they cleaned up the kitchen. Only Ingrid was not impressed.

  ‘More horrible, loopy arms!’ She pulled a sick face. ‘Just like the beastly octopuses. I knew how it would be, from the moment we looked inside the helicopter and saw—’

  ‘Ingrid, will you shut up about the helicopter!’ Lloyd said fiercely. ‘We don’t want to listen to you moaning on and on. We’ve got to get out of this place.’ He glanced across the room, ‘There’s a lift over there. I saw a whole lot of trucks of food going into it a little while ago. Perhaps we could—’

  ‘Not yet!’ wailed Mandy. ‘We can’t go anywhere looking like this. We’re—we’re disgusting!’

  Lloyd looked. At any other time it would have been funny. Harvey had bits of potato peel in his hair and the front of Ian’s white T-shirt was spattered with tea-leaves. Ingrid’s face was streaked with flour and gravy. Even Mandy, who was always so neat, had carrot-scrapings nestling among her red curls.

  ‘You do look a bit—strange,’ Lloyd said.

  ‘We look strange!’ Harvey nearly exploded. ‘You should just see yourself. You look like a compost heap.’

  ‘Like the inside of a dustbin lorry,’ said Ingrid.

  Lloyd ignored them and let Mandy brush him down and comb his hair for him until most of the rubbish was out of it. But he was impatient to get on with finding Dinah. As soon as Mandy let him go and started on Harvey, he ran across the room, dodging the robot arms. He wanted to examine the lift.

  It did not take long to examine. There was nothing to see, except two smooth, strong doors, tightly shut. Lloyd hunted all round, peering up at the ceiling and crouching down to look along the floor, but he could not find any buttons to press. No handles, no knobs, no levers. The lift might come, but as far as he could see there was no way of calling it.

  And it was impossible to open the doors of the lift shaft. Even when Ian and Harvey came to help him, they did not succeed in moving them so much as a crack apart.

  ‘Charming!’ said Harvey. He kicked crossly at the doors. ‘I suppose we’ll have to use the stairs. That’ll take for ever. Don’t you remember how tall this building is?’

  ‘I don’t want to bring tears to your dear little eyes,’ murmured Ian, ‘but it’s worse than that.’ He had been staring round him in every direction. Now he turned back to face Lloyd and Harvey. ‘You haven’t realized, have you? There aren’t any stairs. Look for yourselves. The lift is the only way up.’

  Harvey suddenly looked very pale. ‘You mean—we’re trapped in here?’

  For a moment, Lloyd made the same mistake. I was the one who brought us all here, he thought. And now we may never get out.

  Then Ingrid spoke scornfully. ‘Don’t be a dumbo, Harvey. Of course we can get out. The same way we got in. And the sooner the better, if you ask me.’

  Wriggling away from Mandy, who was trying to comb her hair, she darted back towards the rubbish chute.

  Of course! Lloyd thought. What an idiot I am! He raced back across the room, chasing Ingrid.

  ‘Stop a minute, Ing! You’ve got it wrong!’

  Ingrid looked round. She had already opened the flap of the rubbish chute and hooked one leg over the edge. ‘What d’you mean I’ve got it wrong? I’m the only person with any sense round here. I was the one who remembered the chute.’

  ‘Of course you did,’ Lloyd said soothingly. ‘And you’re right. We are going to use it again. But we’re not going down—we’re going on up.’

  ‘UP?’ Ingrid looked ready to bite him. ‘You mean you haven’t had enough of this place? You want more?’

  ‘We’ve got to find Dinah,’ said Mandy. ‘We promised.’ She turned to face the rubbish chute. ‘It’s not very nice in there, but if it’s the only way we’ll have to use it.’

  ‘It is the only way,’ Lloyd said firmly. Pushing Ingrid aside, he lifted the flap and clambered through the hole. ‘I’ll go first. And I’ll come out through the next flap. Wherever that is. Right?’

  It was harder to start off this time, with nothing solid under his feet, but at last he got himself safely wedged and began to wriggle, walking his legs and levering his body and walking his legs …

  He had climbed about five feet when it suddenly struck him that he had a long way to drop if he fell now. It was probably twenty feet or more down into the bin in the car park. One slither, one second’s loss of concentration and he would be falling, falling, falling …

  But it was stupid to think like that. It was no use thinking about what was below. He should be worrying about what was coming. Tilting his head back, he tried to see an opening somewhere in the darkness above him. But there did not seem to be even a crack of light. Nothing but a great pillar of shadowy black, stretching up as far as he could see or imagine.

  The opening, when it came, took him completely by surprise, like the first one. Suddenly, as he levered his back up the wall, there was nothing behind him. The flap gave way and he was tumbling backwards and out of the darkness, pushing at the edges of the hole to make sure that he got through and praying that there was no one waiting for him on the other side.

  But no angry voices shouted at him. No one squealed with shock at his sudden appearance. Instead, he hit hard floor and uncoiled himself with his back to the room.

  When he turned round, for a second he could not make any sense of what he saw. He seemed to be looking down a long, narrow corridor, lined from floor to ceiling with baked bean tins. It was immensely tall—about twice as tall as a normal room—but so narrow that he could have stood in the middle with his arms outstretched and touched the tins on both sides. And why would anyone want to decorate a corridor with baked bean tins?

  Then, as he picked himself up off the floor and stepped sideways to hold the flap open for the others, the mystery was explained. Because as he moved a few feet to the left he found himself looking down another corridor, identical to the first one except that it was lined with packets of sugar and tea.

  Of course! They weren’t corridors but the alleys between stacks of shelves. He had come out into a long, high storeroom with rows of tall shelves running from one end to the other. He m
oved a bit more and saw shelves filled with bags of flour, sacks of rice, tins of tomatoes.

  The whole place was cool and airy and spotlessly clean. The floors were polished so perfectly that they reflected the packets and tins above them. And every packet and tin and sack and box was set neatly in its place, next to the others of the same kind, with no waste of space and no squashing together.

  ‘What’s up here, then?’ Harvey asked, as he came tumbling out of the chute. He picked himself up and peered round. ‘What a fantastic place!’ Then his expression changed. ‘What’s that?’ he said sharply.

  Something large and fast ran across their field of vision, travelling along an alley that ran crosswise, cutting the long, straight rows at right angles. Lloyd stiffened. People? Friends or enemies? He leaned even further sideways, trying to catch another glimpse of whatever it was.

  When it reached the alley full of sugar packets, it turned towards Lloyd and Harvey and began to move in their direction. For a second they were both terrified. The thing was a tall, open truck, with sides made of wire netting. It was about six feet high and crammed with tins and packets, and it was hurtling straight towards them.

  ‘Lloyd!’ whispered Harvey in horror. ‘How does it know we’re here? It’s automatic. There’s no one in there to drive it.’

  ‘Perhaps it picked up the noise you made,’ snapped Lloyd. He was just about to call down the chute, to warn the others, when the truck stopped. Robot arms unfolded from the side and began to lift out more packets of sugar. As they picked up each one, they held it for a second and then stacked it neatly in the empty space next to the other sugar packets.

  Lloyd let out his breath. ‘Phew! It’s not after us at all. It’s just putting the packets on the shelves.’

  Harvey frowned. ‘But how does it know where to put the packets? There’s all sorts of other things in it, besides sugar. How did it know it had to put the sugar packets in that place?’

  As he spoke, the robot arms picked out a packet of tea. They held it for a moment, turning it round and round, and then the whole truck swivelled and moved a little further along the alley, to reach the space on the tea shelves.