The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain
Read The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain Online
Authors: Gillian Cross
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
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© Gillian Cross 1985
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First published as
The Prime Minister’s Brain
1985
First published in this eBook edition 2012
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ISBN: 978-0-19-273297-2
Cover illustration by Tuesday Mourning
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The Octopus Game
‘Dinah!’
Dinah didn’t hear.
She was settled in the crook of the big, old pear tree, thinking about the website she was designing.
‘
Dinah!
’
She was concentrating so hard that she did not hear the voices calling her from the other end of the garden.
But Lloyd was not the sort of person to put up with being ignored.
He came stamping through the garden, with all the others following him, and stood beside the tree.
‘DINAH!’
She looked down and blinked at him.
‘Oh.
Sorry.
I was thinking.’
‘Huh!’
snorted Lloyd.
Harvey, Dinah’s other adopted brother, raced up and interrupted, just as Lloyd was about to say something really rude.
‘Di, aren’t you ready?
Look, everyone else is here.
We want to get going.’
Dinah peered between the branches.
Sure enough, there were the other three members of SPLAT.
Two tall figures—Ian and Mandy—hauling along a smaller, chubbier one that struggled crossly.
‘Ingrid doesn’t look very happy,’ Dinah said.
‘Ingrid
isn’t
very happy!’
shouted Ingrid, scowling fiercely.
‘Grid’s sick to death of the horrible Computer Club.
We went
yesterday.
Why do we have to go again today?’
‘We voted to spend this week at the Computer Club.’
Lloyd gave her a stern look that was meant to shut her up.
‘What’s the point of having a secret society if we don’t all stick together?’
But it was not so easy to shut Ingrid up.
‘What’s the point of having a secret society at all, if we don’t do anything special?
We were going to have a great time this summer.
A SPLAT picnic and a SPLAT camp in the woods and a SPLAT visit to the Science Museum and—oh, lots of things.
But we’ve landed up trotting back to school, like everyone else.
To the
Computer Club
.’
She pulled a fierce, ugly face.
‘It’s only for another four days, Ing,’ Mandy said gently.
‘And if you’d only try to enjoy it, you’d see it’s fun.’
‘It’s
boring
,’ Ingrid said firmly.
‘And anyway, who wants to go back to school in the holidays?’
‘We voted,’ Lloyd said again.
He folded his arms and glared at Ingrid.
‘Now stop moaning and behave properly.’
Up in her tree, Dinah started to get irritated.
She didn’t want to listen to their squabbling.
She wanted to get on with her website.
‘Look, Ing.’
She waved the paper she was writing on.
‘
I
haven’t forgotten about the rest of the holiday.
I’m going to put it all on the SPLAT website I’m making.
Why don’t you go ahead with the others and make sure we’ve got a computer?
Then when I get there I can show you what I’m doing.’
Ingrid scowled.
‘It’s still just computer stuff, isn’t it?’
But she did not manage to sound quite as angry as before, and a moment later, she was letting Mandy lead her out of the side gate and away towards the school.
At the foot of the tree, Ian bowed low, in his usual teasing way.
‘Well done, O Genius,’ he drawled.
‘How brilliant you are at handling people.’
‘What do you mean
she’s
good at handling people?’
Lloyd looked furious.
‘
I
was the one who told Ingrid to behave.’
Ian grinned at him.
‘Of course, of course, Great Leader.
How stupid of me to forget.
I grovel in the dust.’
‘Be more sensible if we started going to the Computer Club,’ chipped in Harvey.
‘If we’re not there soon, I’ll have to wait
ages
for a game of Diamond Dragon.’
He pushed them both and the three boys began to walk up the garden.
Dinah watched them for a moment.
Bossy Lloyd and tall, comical Ian.
Having one of their friendly quarrels, while Harvey ran along behind trying to stop them.
All quite normal and ordinary.
She settled herself on her branch again and gave a private grin.
Things were so pleasant and peaceful.
Oh, it was going to be a good summer, with no excitements and lots of time to work.
Now, where had she got to?
An hour later, she walked up the road towards the school gates, with the design for the website tucked in her pocket.
Her pale, thin face was as stiff as usual and she looked almost bored, because her feelings never showed on the outside, but inside her head she was singing.
Lovely, fantastic Computer Club!
It meant that she could spend all day working out programs and trying new things, without the others nagging her for being dull and not joining in.
And there were four more days of it left!
She was so busy planning what she would do on the other days, that she did not look where she was going.
She ran up the school steps and nearly fell over two small, gloomy figures sitting at the top.
‘Careful!’
snapped Ingrid.
‘Thought we were big enough to
see
,’ muttered Harvey.
Dinah looked down at them in amazement.
‘Whatever is the matter with you two?
What are you doing out here?’
‘Sulking!’
Ingrid said.
‘Because of the horrible Computer Club.’
Oh dear,
thought Dinah.
She sat down on the steps beside them, wishing she was Mandy, who was good at this sort of thing.
‘You did promise to come, you know.
And
you
liked it, anyway, Harvey.
What’s changed since yesterday?’
Harvey looked round woefully at her, and she remembered how cheerful he had been as he followed the others away an hour ago.
What could have changed him?
‘
That
,’
said Harvey.
Twisting round, he stabbed a finger towards the glass door of the school.
Stuck up there was a huge poster.
Across the top, it said in large letters:
JUNIOR COMPUTER BRAIN
OF THE YEAR
Underneath was a picture of a man in a white lab coat.
He was very tall and very thin, with thick, pebbly glasses.
Somehow, the blurred photograph made him look not quite human.
More like an insect.
Or a robot.
Dinah actually found herself shivering and she gave a stiff little laugh to hide it.
‘He
can’t be the Junior Computer Brain of the Year.
He’s much too old.’
‘He’s repulsive!’
Ingrid pulled an extra-horrible cross-eyed face and stuck out her tongue at the poster.
‘He’s the Computer Director.
The one who’s running the competition to find the Junior Computer Brain.
Mr Meredith brought the forms in this morning.
And the game.’
‘And that was it.
Whang!
Everything
ruined
,’ said Harvey miserably.
‘Yesterday was great.
Like you said.
We played all sorts of games and learnt some things as well.
But today—well, no one will think about anything except the competition game.’
‘They think they’re going to win, do they?’
Dinah said.
‘No.
’
Ingrid looked impatient.
‘It’s not that.
You don’t understand.
It’s not the competition that’s taken them over.
It’s the actual game.’
‘But that’s silly,’ Dinah said.
‘A game’s just something for fun.’
‘That’s what we told them,’ Harvey said.
He sounded really unhappy.
‘We told them it was only a game.’
‘And what did they say?’
He looked even unhappier.
‘They said, “Ssh!”’
‘It’s made them really
peculiar.
’
Ingrid tapped her head and rolled her eyes.
‘Remember what they were like when the Demon Headmaster was here?’
Dinah smiled her small smile and tossed her skinny plaits back over her shoulder.
‘Oh, come
on.
They can’t be that bad.’
Neither Ingrid nor Harvey answered her.
They just stood up and hauled at her hands, one on each side, until she followed them into the school and along the corridor towards the Hall.
Dinah let them lead her, but she was still not taking them seriously.
Because she could remember what the school had been like when the Demon Headmaster was there.
The blank, bare walls.
The quiet, hypnotized children moving round like robots.
The cruel, bossy prefects.
And the feeling of terror everywhere.
That had all changed since Mr Meredith became headmaster.
Now it was an untidy, cheerful, noisy school, just like all the others Dinah had been to.
How could it have changed back in a single morning?
And yet—it
was
rather quiet today.
As they came to the Hall door, Dinah started to feel uneasy.
And what she saw when she stepped inside was quite unexpected.
There were no crowds of children charging round everywhere or gathering in little huddles by the computers.
There was no laughter or talking.
Instead, all the children—about a hundred of them—were sitting crosslegged on the ground, in neat rows in front of one of the computers.
They were watching the screen with a steady, blank stare.
No one fidgeted.
No one whispered.
They almost seemed to be holding their breaths.
‘You see?’
Harvey hissed.
‘They’ve all gone goo-goo eyed over this stupid octopus game.
Even the SPLAT people.
Look at them!’
Dinah could see that he was right.
Lloyd and Mandy were sitting on the floor with the other children and Ian was actually at the computer keyboard.
He was the one playing the game.
‘They’ve been like that for ages,’ muttered Ingrid, getting crosser and crosser.
‘One person playing and the rest just staring.
It’s
stupid
.’
Suddenly she lost her temper altogether.
She pulled a face at the rows of motionless backs and yelled, ‘
You’re all SILLY IDIOTS!
’
Ian jumped and looked round.
Immediately, there was a loud BLUUURP!
from the computer.
And a wail from the watching children.
‘Ing, you’re mean,’ Mandy said.
‘You distracted him.’
‘Oh, sor
ry
,’ Ingrid jeered.
‘What’s the matter?
Was he going to be Junior Computer Brain of the Year?’
‘Me?’
murmured Ian.
‘Of course not.
I’m just an ordinary moron having fun.
I can tell you, it needs a
genius
to win this game.
No one stands a chance except—’ Then he caught sight of Dinah.
‘Oh, there you are!’
‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ Lloyd said.
He jumped up and began to organize things as usual, catching at Dinah’s arm and trying to pull her forwards.
‘You’ve got to have a go at this game.
It’s brilliant.’
All the others had turned round now.
They were staring at Dinah, nudging each other and whispering.
Dinah wriggled uncomfortably.
She hated people to fuss over her and she wasn’t interested in computer games.
She wanted to go and work on her own program.
‘Come on!’
called Mandy.
‘I bet you can do it.’
Dinah looked pink and stubborn.
‘I don’t think I’ll bother, thank you.’
‘Oh come
on,
Di.’
Everyone was shouting it now.
‘You’ve
got
to have a go.
You could win the whole competition.’