The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain (17 page)

‘Let’s just see what’s running at the moment.’

For a second they all thought she had blundered, because what was on the screen was an octopus.
But it was different from the usual twisting, swirling octopuses.
This one was very still with all its tentacles stretched out straight, crossing the screen diagonally and pointing at a tiny blob in the top right-hand corner.
Behind the octopus, covering the screen like a sort of backcloth and moving all the time, as if it were unrolling, was a street map of London.

‘What on earth—?’
said Robert.

Lloyd and Dinah looked just as baffled, but Ingrid gave a loud squawk.

‘Harvey—look!
Oh, Lloyd, you’ll never guess what—’

But before she could finish her sentence, Lloyd smelt what he had been afraid of all the time.
Scorching.
Turning his head, he saw a small wisp of smoke curling under the lift doors.

‘Be quiet, Ingrid!’
he snapped.
‘There’s no time for chattering.
Hurry up, Dinah.’

‘But if you’d only
listen
—’ protested Ingrid.

‘Ssh!’
hissed Lloyd.
Really, she was hopeless.
She had no idea of how desperate things were.

‘But, Lloyd,’ Harvey joined in, ‘if you’d only let us
tell
you—’

Lloyd nearly shouted at him.
‘Don’t you understand?
The lift is on fire.
If Robert and Dinah aren’t very quick, we’ll all burn to death.
So don’t distract them.’

Harvey looked unhappy and Ingrid sniffed and turned away, but they both stopped talking.
Lloyd looked back at the screen and as he did so, Robert said, ‘Found it!
Well done, Dinah.
Now you can get going.’

Across the screen spread a single sentence.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Dinah tapped at the keys, typing in a reply, and for a moment Lloyd thought she had gone mad as the lines of print—question and answer—began to fill the screen.

KNOCK KNOCK

WHO’S THERE

OLGA

OLGA WHO?

Robert caught sight of his face and grinned.
‘Password,’ he murmured.
‘Look, she’s putting in the last line now.’

OLGA MAD IF I DON’T GET OFF THIS LOOP

Sure enough, as Dinah typed it in the joke vanished and a long catalogue appeared on the screen heading:

PRIME MINISTER

PERSONAL INFORMATION

‘That’s what it was all about,’ Robert said softly.
‘The Junior Computer Brain Competition and
Octopus Dare
and everyone being invited here.
All so that your Headmaster could get at
that.
’

‘Well, now
I’m
going to get at it,’ Dinah said.
She pressed the right key to select the list of:

PEOPLE TO BE ADMITTED TO PRIME MINISTER TOP PRIORITY.

It was a fairly long list and she searched through it at feverish speed.
Lloyd knew why she was hurrying so hard.
A mist of smoke had drifted up in front of the lift doors and was slowly working its way down the room.

‘There!’
Dinah said at last.
‘I’ve taken the Headmaster’s name out.
And I’ve replaced it with a warning—so that they know security has been breached when they look for him.
That
should
fix him.’

‘You mean you’ve done it?’
Lloyd felt like cheering.
‘We’ve defeated his plans?’

Dinah nodded.
‘We’ve done everything we can.’
But she did not look very happy.
Lloyd peered at her, trying to ignore the crackling sounds that were coming from the lift.

‘What’s the matter, Di?’

‘We-ell.’
Dinah pulled a face.
‘We’ve done all we can, but—suppose it’s not enough?
Suppose they don’t bother to check the security list?
The Headmaster’s gone off to Number Ten Downing Street with today’s password in his head and there’s no way we can wipe
that
out.
They might just let him in when he gives the right password.
And then …’ She let her voice die away and shrugged.
‘Oh well, we’ll just have to hope for the best.
Like I said, there’s nothing else we can do.’

She had stood up and was turning towards the rubbish chute when Ingrid suddenly exploded in a great yell.

‘YES THERE IS, YOU STUPID IDIOTS!’
she shouted.
‘THERE
IS
SOMETHING ELSE WE CAN DO!!’

Ingrid had gone completely red in the face with fury and her fists were clenched tight.
‘You’re all supposed to be older and cleverer and more sensible than me,’ she panted, ‘but you won’t listen and now I expect it’s too late and—’

‘Ingrid!’
Dinah caught her by the shoulders.
‘If there’s anything you can tell us—
anything
—then tell us.
But please do it now, because there’s almost no time left.’

They could all smell the scorching now, very strongly, and the doors of the lift were beginning to darken in the centre, as though the flames were eating a hole in them.

‘It’s—it’s—’ But Ingrid’s rage had made her so breathless that she could not speak.
She faced Dinah and struggled to gulp in enough air to say what she wanted to, but no sound came out.

‘I’ll
tell you what she wants to say,’ Harvey interrupted.
‘We’ve been trying to tell people ever since we got into this tower.
We saw that helicopter in the car park and it had an octopus picture on its control panel.
Just like that octopus picture we saw on the screen just now, with the map of London behind it and—’

But Robert had already worked it out, in a flash.
‘And we know that the S-700 controls the helicopter, so perhaps
that
octopus picture is a diagram of how it does it.
And perhaps
we
could get control of the helicopter and turn it back.’

Dinah looked at him very steadily for a second, her face white.
Then she glanced across at the lift doors.
As she did so, a small hole appeared in the centre of it.
Flames licked through the hole, shockingly bright, reaching out towards the rest of the room.

‘The rest of you had better go,’ Dinah said quietly.
‘I’m going to have a go at stopping the helicopter, but there’s no point in everyone staying here.’

‘Go on.’
Lloyd jerked his head at the other three.
‘I’m staying with Dinah.’

For a moment it looked as though Robert would argue, but instead he shepherded Ingrid and Harvey towards the rubbish chute as Dinah sat down in front of the computer again.

Lloyd looked nervously over his shoulder.
He had no intention of letting Dinah stay on her own, but he hoped she would
hurry.
The far end of the room was completely filled with smoke now and the doorway of the lift was a bright square of flame.

‘There we are,’ Dinah said softly.
‘There’s the picture again.’

She made herself sit very still for a second, just studying it, gripping her two hands together to stop them trembling.
It was no use being afraid.
She had to concentrate on what she was doing.

As soon as she looked at the picture properly, she could see that Ingrid and Harvey were right.
It was a diagram of how the S-700 controlled the helicopter.
The octopus’s body represented the S-700 and the tentacles were the lines of force going out to the helicopter—like radio waves going out to a remote-controlled model plane.
The map in the background showed where the helicopter was, above the ground.
And it was—Dinah peered at the map and then gulped—it was almost above Downing Street.
She had only about a minute left.
Perhaps no more than thirty seconds.

Her fingers closed round the mouse and she began to move it, cautiously at first and then faster and faster.
Immediately she began, the octopus’s tentacles started to move, answering the movements of the mouse.
And as the tentacles moved, so did the blob which represented the helicopter.
Instead of travelling in a steady straight line across the map, it began to whirl and dance.

‘It’s like a sort of
Reverse Octopus Dare
,’ murmured Lloyd.
‘This time you’re the octopus instead of the blob.
And
you’ve
got the helicopter at
your
mercy.’

‘Not properly at my mercy,’ Dinah said, sounding flustered.
She was struggling to make the tentacles turn the helicopter round and bring it back, but somehow she could not quite get a grip on it.
And all the time she was aware of smoke billowing closer, starting to sting her eyes.
‘I can flick the blob—the helicopter—about, but I can’t get hold of it properly.’

‘Well, flick it
Down
,’ Lloyd said fiercely.
He could feel the warmth of the fire against his back.
‘Make him crash.
We haven’t got time to hang about.’

‘All right,’ said Dinah.
She reached out to do what he had suggested.
And then it hit her.
Make him crash.
Him.
It was not a game like
Octopus Dare
that she was playing.
And the blob she had been playing with was not a blob.
It was a helicopter.
With a person inside.
Feeling sick, she took her hand off the mouse and pushed her chair backwards.

‘
What’s the matter
?’
Lloyd almost screamed it at her.
‘Di, we’ve got to
go.
You must finish it now.’

‘I can’t do it,’ Dinah said stiffly.
‘I’m sorry, but even if it is the Headmaster—
I can’t kill him
.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’
Lloyd shouted.
‘If you dither any longer, he’ll get to the Prime Minister and we’ll burn to death.’

He reached over her shoulder, meaning to do it himself.
It was as easy as playing a computer game.
But as soon as he got within touching distance of the mouse, he faltered and stopped.

‘You see?’
Dinah said miserably.
‘
You
can’t, either.
And anyway, think how dangerous it would be, crashing a helicopter in the middle of London.’

Lloyd coughed as the smoke caught the back of his throat.
‘If only we could just get him
away
.’

‘We can!’
In a flash, Dinah saw it, with a great burst of relief.
‘I won’t flick him down—I’ll flick him
up,
as far as I can.
Right away.
Then we must race down the rope, before it’s too late.
Ready?’

With her eyes watering so that she could hardly see and her ears full of the roaring of the flames, she reached for the mouse.

Outside Number Ten Downing Street, a crowd of people had gathered to watch the strange sight up in the evening sky.

A small helicopter was tumbling head over heels, twirling round in a most extraordinary way.
Was the pilot drunk?
Had he gone mad?

The helicopter swooped down towards the earth.
For a moment, the watchers had a glimpse of a cold, furious face.
A face with huge, strange, sea-green eyes.
It glared down at the crowd, the amazing eyes burning with unforgettable rage.

Then, just as suddenly as it had swooped, the helicopter soared upwards, as though someone had flicked it up and thrown it.
Up and up, further and further into the brilliance of the sunset, with the light glinting from its spotless glass dome.

Then it whirled away to the west and disappeared in the far distance.

Five minutes later, Lloyd jumped down from the dustbin and raced out of the underground car park, dragging Dinah after him.
Smoke filled the air outside and they did not stop to see what was happening.
They plunged straight across to the subway that led off North Island and raced down the steps.

So it was not until they came out beside the station that they looked back.
They came up the steps and found all the Brains gathered in a huge crowd, gazing back across the motorway intersection.
Ingrid and Harvey and Mandy were in the very front of the crowd and they pointed silently, until Lloyd and Dinah turned to see.

The Sentinel Tower was a huge pillar of flame, three hundred feet high.
Even from where they were standing, they could feel the heat of the flames and hear the noise of splintering glass and falling metal.
The outer framework, which held the giant mirror panes, was glowing red hot as the mirrors shattered and showered to the ground.

For a moment Dinah could only think what a stunning sight it was.
Then something occurred to her and a slow, relieved smile spread over her face.

‘It really
is
the end of the Headmaster’s plan,’ she said softly.
‘His whole scheme for running the country was stored on the S-700.
In that building.
Now it’s gone.’

She heard a tiny snuffle at her elbow.
Looking round, she saw Ingrid wipe her eyes.

‘Whatever’s the matter, Ing?
You can’t be sorry.’

‘I’m
not
crying!’
Ingrid said fiercely.

‘No, of course you’re not.
But—’

‘It’s that lovely computer,’ Ingrid burst out.
‘That S-700.
All burnt up.’

‘But,
Ingrid
!’
Lloyd and Harvey and Ian and Mandy all said it together, turning to stare at her.
‘You
hate
computers!’

‘Not that one,’ Ingrid said pathetically.
‘How can you hate a computer when you’ve seen it cooking the dinner and treating Harvey like a packet of spaghetti?
It was a lovely computer.
Funny.
And it could talk.
I bet I could have got it to say
Down With The Headmaster!
’

Mandy put an arm round her.
‘Never mind.
Don’t you remember all those SPLAT things we were going to do this holidays?
The picnic and the camp and the visit to the Science Museum?
We could still fit in a couple of them before the beginning of term.’

‘Oh yes.
Of course,’ said Ingrid.
But she did not look any more cheerful.

‘And you can forget all about computers!’
added Harvey.

‘But computers are
fun
!’
wailed Ingrid.
She looked ready to burst into tears properly.

Lloyd and Dinah looked at each other.

‘Do you think we could tell her now?’
Lloyd murmured.

‘I
think
so.’
Dinah grinned.
‘I think it would be safe.’

‘What?’
Ingrid looked up sharply.
‘What are you two talking about?’

Lloyd chuckled.
‘Mr Meredith says we’re getting loads of new computers at school next term.’

Ingrid glanced at Dinah, as though she could hardly believe it, and Dinah nodded.
‘That’s right.
And I’ll show you how to do things with them.
We might not manage cooking, but it’ll be simple to get them to say
Down with the Headmaster!
’

‘WHOOPEE!
’ Ingrid’s high, delighted shout screeched up into the night sky, making all the Brains laugh.

There was so much noise that only Lloyd and Dinah heard what Ian murmured as he glanced back at the blazing Sentinel Tower.

‘I wonder where he
did
come down …’