The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain (10 page)

‘
What
?’
said Harvey.

‘Those funny patterns of thick and thin black lines that you see on packets and tins and things.
Computers scan them and read them.’

‘So?’
Harvey said.

‘So this truck’s
computerized,
thicko.’
Lloyd felt very pleased with himself for working it out.
‘It can scan the bar codes and read what it’s picked up.
And then it’s programmed to take the things to the right part of the storeroom.’

Slowly, light dawned on Harvey’s face.
‘Brilliant!’
he said softly.
‘Oh,
brilliant.
I must watch it doing it.’
He moved away, towards the truck.

‘Not yet,’ called Lloyd.
‘We’ve got to wait for the others.’

But just at that moment his attention was distracted by Mandy, who appeared through the flap.
When he had helped her to scramble clear, she looked round.

‘Where’s Harvey?’

Lloyd looked over his shoulder, but there was no sign of Harvey or of the truck.
Somewhere out of sight beyond the next lines of shelves feet were pattering up and down.
‘You all right?’
he called.

‘Course I’m all right,’ Harvey’s voice came back.
‘It’s sensational.’

Lloyd shrugged and raised his eyebrows as he turned towards Mandy again.
‘He just couldn’t wait until the rest of you got here.
We’ll have to go after him, but shall we wait until the others have arrived?’

Mandy nodded and put out a hand to help him keep the flap open.
While Ian was climbing the last few feet, they could hear Harvey, still moving to and fro.

It was when the three of them were hauling Ingrid through the flap that the shout came.

‘Help!’
Harvey’s voice.
Shrill and terrified.

‘Where are you?’
Lloyd shouted.
‘What’s the matter?’

‘Help!
Help!
It’s got me!’

‘Come on!’
Lloyd yelled to the others.

They dashed along the baked bean alley, following the sound of Harvey’s shouting, turned left and then right and then left again.
Then they skidded to a stop, between shelves of dried peas and shelves of spaghetti.

‘HELP!’
wailed Harvey.

He had been caught by the truck’s robot arms.
One grab was round his body and one round his left leg.
As the others watched, the arms began to lift him high in the air, towards the top of the truck.

‘Help!
Get me down!’

‘You Will Now Return To The Computer Room.’

As the voice of the S-700 grated across the canteen, the men in white coats marched out of the lift and down the room,

‘Goodness I haven’t finished Bess’s dinner yet,’ moaned Camilla, ‘and I’m sure I don’t know those notes well enough to—’

‘Silence!’
One of the men stopped beside their table.
‘You will not talk any more until you are told to.’

‘But can’t I just ask—?’
Camilla fluttered her beautiful eyelashes at him.

‘No, you may not.
Stand up and prepare to enter the lift,’ the man said coldly.

‘How
horrible
,’ Bess whispered to Dinah, as soon as he had gone past.
‘He didn’t even look at her.’

‘Silence!’
snapped the man again.
He glared over his shoulder, trying to see who had whispered, but Bess was looking very small and angelic, clutching her teddy bear, and he did not suspect her.
‘Go to the lift!’
he said at last.

All over the canteen, the same thing was happening.
Men were giving orders and children were standing up, forming silent queues, and moving towards the lift.
They walked slowly, with their heads bent and their eyes fixed on their notebooks.

‘See?’
murmured Robert in disgust.
‘We’re all turning into robots.’

Suddenly, over on the far side of the room, there was a disturbance.

‘No, I
won’t
!’
shouted a boy’s voice.
‘I’m sick of being pushed around.
I don’t like the food and I don’t like being shut in.
I’m going home.’

Immediately, two men in white coats appeared, one on either side of him.
Smoothly they took hold of his arms.

‘It is not possible to go home,’ said the first man.

‘You are to stay here until September the second,’ said the other.

Both of them spoke in level voices, with no expression.
Exactly the same voices they had used all the time.
Dinah found herself shuddering.
That was how the prefects at her school used to talk.
When the Headmaster was in charge.
Coldly.
Almost like machines.
It was never any use appealing to them or trying to get them to have pity or see sense, because they were not free to soften.
They were hypnotized by the Demon Headmaster and under his control.
And now these men were the same.
She was sure of it.
However much the Brains argued with them, they would just go on carrying out their orders.

But the boy who was shouting did not know any of that, of course.
He shrieked at the men.

‘
I
want to go home
!’

The Brains who were near him clustered round, worried and excited.
Some of them tried to soothe him and others tried to persuade the men to let him go.
There were dozens of voices talking at once and above them all rose the yells of the boy, who was almost hysterical by now.

‘I WANT TO GO HOME!’

For about a minute, there was total chaos in that corner of the canteen.

But only for a minute.
Then, quite calmly, more of the men walked over.
Four of them picked the boy up, ignoring his struggles and screams, and carried him towards the lift.
A fifth man marched ahead, going into the lift first.

All at once, the whole canteen was quiet.
The Brains stopped talking.
They stopped moving.
They almost stopped breathing as they waited tensely to see what would happen.
Bess slid a shaking hand into Dinah’s and held on tightly.

The screen inside the lift flashed suddenly bright with flickering, shifting green lines as the octopus patterns were switched on.
The kicking, screaming boy was carried in and his feet were lowered so that he was held in a standing position, facing the screen.

Within five seconds, he had stopped struggling.
His eyes swivelled towards the screen and stayed fixed there and he stood perfectly straight and still, with a man on either side of him.

‘
Oh!
’ said Bess softly.

Robert nodded, and his face was dark and frowning.
‘Total control,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth.
‘That’s what they want.
And they’re using the octopus pictures—and our addiction to them—to make sure of it.’

The doors slid shut and they heard the hiss as the lift carried the boy off.
But even after he had gone, the Brains were quiet, looking pale and solemn, as though they had received a shock.

‘What do you think they’ll do to him?’
whispered Camilla and even she was subdued.
‘Do you think they’ve just taken him back to the Computer Room ahead of us—?’

‘No I don’t,’ Robert whispered back.
‘I think something peculiar’s going on.
And
I’m
going to find out what.’

Dinah felt the back of her neck prickle, sensing danger.
‘
How
are you going to find out?’

‘I’m going to speak to the Computer Director, of course,’ said Robert firmly.
‘I can’t believe he knows how these men are treating us.
I’m going to tell him he’s got to alter it—or give us a satisfactory explanation.’

‘But that won’t be any use!’
Suddenly Dinah realized how stupid she had been not to tell them all about the Headmaster in the beginning.
‘He won’t listen to you.
I
know
what he’s like.
He used to be our headmaster, you see, and—’

But before she could begin on her explanation, a man in a white coat was at her side.

‘Silence!’
he said, in his blank, hypnotized voice.
Putting a hand on her elbow, he hustled her off towards the lift.

I
must explain to Robert and Camilla and Bess,
Dinah thought frantically.
I
must tell them about the Headmaster.

She was so busy clinging on to that thought that she forgot about everything else.
As the man pushed her into the lift, squashing the others in behind her, the words thudded in her head.
I
must tell them.
I must tell them.
I must.

The doors slid shut.
As the lift was engulfed in darkness, Dinah looked up at the others, ready to start her explanation again.
But she had forgotten the lighted screen.
At the very second she looked up, it flashed on, catching her eye, with its fascinating, flickering patterns.
I
must tell
—For an instant longer she managed to cling on to what she was thinking.
Then everything slipped out of her head as the patterns started to swirl and swoop and sweep and …

Octopus -s-s-s-s!

When the lift doors opened again, it was too late.
She was swept out as the Brains hurried to their desks.
And, even before she sat down, she had seen the tall figure standing at the far end of the room, dominating everything.

The Computer Director was already there, standing very still and straight, with the bright lights flashing off his glasses, so that it was impossible to tell which way he was looking.

Quickly Dinah scuttled into her seat, keeping her head bent and hoping that he would not notice her.
If only he did not discover that she was there, she would at least be free to try and work out what was going on and why he had bothered to gather the Brains together like this, from all over the country.

‘Good afternoon.’
He spoke suddenly, breaking into her thoughts.
‘You all had an easy time this morning.
Now you must be prepared to work hard.’

‘Easy time this morning,’ whispered Camilla, ‘goodness, he must be joking—’

Mercifully, the Headmaster did not hear her.
‘This afternoon,’ he continued in his precise voice, ‘you will be beginning on the task for which you were summoned here.
I will start by explaining—’

‘Not for a minute, please!’
Robert’s interruption astonished everyone.
He jumped to his feet and spoke politely but loudly.
‘Before we start on anything, I think there are some things we would like to get clear—’

‘Sit down,’ said the Headmaster coldly.

‘But I want to ask a question.’

The Headmaster frowned.
‘Questions are an unnecessary waste of time.
I shall tell you everything that you
need
to know.
I am not here to settle your idle curiosity about other matters.
Now sit down.
If you speak again, you will be dealt with in a suitable manner.’

Please, Robert,
thought Dinah, still keeping her head bent.
Terrified that the Headmaster would look down from Robert’s face and see her, sitting immediately in front.
There’s no point in arguing with him.
He’s not like that.
But she did not dare to say the words aloud, and Robert had obviously decided that he was not going to give in.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, still polite, but stubborn, ‘but I don’t think this
is
just idle curiosity.
I want to know—’

The Headmaster’s lips went very thin, pressed tightly together, but he did not speak.
Instead, he made a small, sharp movement with his hand.

‘Look out, Robert!’
shrieked Camilla.
‘Oh why did you have to be so stupid you should have guessed what would happen—’

But her warning was no use.
From the back of the room, the men in white coats advanced on Robert, picked him up bodily and carried him towards the lift.
All the way, he went on shouting loudly, making a speech to the Brains.

‘You see?
He won’t tell us what’s going on!
And now he thinks he’s going to shut me up by showing me those octopus pictures!
He thinks we’re all so hooked on them that he can use them to control us!
Don’t let him!
Fight back!
Shut your eyes!
’

Even when the octopus pictures began to flicker greenly in the lift, his shouts went on.
He stood there with his eyes screwed shut, yelling warnings to everyone.
But it made no difference.
The lift doors still snapped shut and the lift still carried him off.

Its hiss sounded very loud in the sick, shocked quietness of the Computer Room.
No one spoke until, after a second or two, the Headmaster broke the silence.

‘Perhaps now you all understand.
You are not here to amuse yourselves.
You are here to do something difficult and complicated.
Something that requires discipline, obedience, and silence.
Anyone who disturbs other people will be treated in the way that you have just seen.’

No one spoke.
Not even Camilla.
They were all too stunned.
It’s worse than being hypnotized,
thought Dinah,
because we know what’s happening to us.
When the octopuses fail, he’s using fear to keep us under control.

‘Is there anyone else who wants to make trouble?’
said the Headmaster, in a voice of ice.
‘Are there any more—
protesters
?’
He made the word sound like the name of some loathsome disease.
‘If so, let them speak up at once, so that they can be dealt with.’

No one made a sound.
Dinah could almost feel the trembling that had come over them all.
They might be Brains, but they were only children and they were afraid and confused by what was happening.

‘No one?’
The Headmaster gave a satisfied nod.
‘Then perhaps we can go on without any more stupid interruptions.’

Dinah saw Camilla stir unhappily in her seat and knew that she was worrying about Robert.
But there did not seem any point in saying anything.
They both picked up their pens, ready to write down what the Headmaster was saying.

‘You have all got through the first round of this competition,’ he began, ‘because you have quick reflexes, you understand computers, and you are good at doing puzzles.
Now we are going to go a step further.
This puzzle will test your powers of lateral thinking.’