The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain (8 page)

Lloyd ground his teeth.
‘Of course,’ he hissed, ‘from up here I could spit straight on your head.
Be
quiet.
I’m concentrating.’

Pressing hard against the sides of the chute, he lifted his second leg and planted that foot beside the first.
And there he was, wedged across the opening.

Carefully he walked his feet up the wall until they were almost level with his body.
Pressing his hands backwards on either side of his bottom, he levered his body up another six inches.
Then his feet started to walk again.

It was not exactly difficult, but it was very tiring and he had to concentrate hard.
As he got higher, he could hear the others below him, clambering up on the dustbins and then working out how to follow him up the chute.
But he could not let himself listen to them.
He had to think about levering his body and walking his legs, levering his body and walking his legs, levering his body …

He had fallen into a rhythm when suddenly he levered his body up, leaned his head back and found the wall giving way behind him.
He was so startled that he nearly fell down on top of the others, but just in time he realized what had happened.
He had reached one of the openings in the side of the chute.
It was covered by a flap, hinged at the top, and it could be pushed open from either side.

Finding the edges of the opening with his hands, Lloyd gripped them and hauled himself up until he was sitting in the gap, with his legs dangling down.
By leaning slightly backwards, he managed to push the flap open a little way with his body, so that he could peer through the opening, over his shoulder, and see what was on the other side of the flap.

It was the most amazing room he had ever seen.

For a moment he could not do anything except stare.
Then he remembered the others, on their way up.
‘You can come,’ he called softly.
‘It’s quite safe.’
Then he pushed the flap open wider, so that he could study the room properly.

It was obviously a kitchen.
The walls and the floor were very clean and white and shining.
From one side to the other stretched row after row of worktops, covered with food in various stages of preparation.
There were pots of potatoes, casseroles full of stew, huge dishes of milk pudding.

But there were no cooks.
Instead, long thick rods ran from side to side of the room, just above head height.
Attached to the rods were all kinds of mechanical arms.
Some of them were stirring, some of them were slicing and some of them were scooping rubbish together.
But nowhere was there any sign of a person controlling them.

Robot arms,
thought Lloyd.
Like those machines they have in car factories.
They must all be run by some sort of computer.

It was so fascinating that he just gazed and gazed while the others clambered up the chute below him.
Enormous saucepans and casseroles were being lifted out of microwave ovens and lined up on the worktops.
Then mechanical arms were loading them on to little heated trolleys which ran along rails set in the floor.
When the trucks were full, the doors in their sides shut automatically and they ran silently along their rails into a lift on the far side of the room.

Lloyd was just about to crawl right out of the chute into the kitchen, so that he could investigate the lift more closely, when his eye caught something large moving quickly towards him from halfway across the room.

A thick, strong metal arm, much longer than the others, was rearing up over the tables.
On the end of it was a giant scoop.
While Lloyd watched, the scoop skimmed the worktops, collecting all the little heaps of wet, smelly rubbish.
Closer and closer it moved—and suddenly Lloyd realized what it was doing.

‘Watch out, you lot!’
he shouted downwards.
‘Rubbish!’

‘You’re
rubbish!’
shrieked Ingrid.

‘Get out of the way!’
shouted Harvey.

‘Please,’ Mandy added.

And, from the very bottom of the rubbish chute, Ian bellowed, ‘Hurry
up!
I can’t bear sitting on this pongy dustbin much longer.’

There they all were, with their faces turned up and their mouths open as they shouted.

And when Lloyd looked back at the kitchen, there was the huge scoop, full of tins and packets and peelings and scrapings, poised over the rubbish chute.
Slowly tilting …

Dinah sat very, very still at her desk, hardly daring to breathe.
Up at the front of the room, in the middle of the men in white coats, stood the Computer Director.
Only now she did not think of him as the Computer Director.
Ever since he had reached the front of the room and she had been able to see him, she had known who he really was.

He was dressed in a spotless white lab coat, without a single crease, and his eyes were covered by thick, pebbly glasses.
He looked exactly like his photograph on the posters that Mr Meredith had stuck up at school.
But his voice and the way he walked and the way he held his head were all unmistakable.
And Dinah knew that if he took off the thick glasses she would find herself gazing into a pair of strange sea-green eyes.
Huge eyes, that had the power to hypnotize her, so that she felt she was drowning in their depths.
So that she forgot what happened and did everything he told her.
The eyes of the Demon Headmaster.

That was what she had expected, as soon as she guessed who he was.
She thought he would start by hypnotizing all the Brains.
But she was wrong.
Instead, without any introduction or any polite speech of welcome, he had begun to dictate notes in a fast, clipped voice.

Dinah was so paralysed with fear that she had to make a great effort to pick up her pen and start writing.
She was terrified that any noise from her, or any tiny movement, might attract his attention.
Then he would recognize her, and—and—she did not know what would happen after that, but she knew it would be horrible.
Keeping her head lowered, she scribbled down the notes, trying to concentrate on what the Headmaster was saying.

‘You will all have noticed the rows of cabinets round the walls,’ said the cold voice.
‘These are parts of the S-700, the world’s most advanced computer.
There are other parts, throughout this building, but this room is the centre.
The main control room.
It was the S-700’s voice that you heard when you first entered the Sentinel Tower.
Among other things, it runs the building.’

The Brains gasped, awed by the enormous size and power of the S-700.
Several of them turned round to gaze at the rows of cabinets, but Dinah stayed hunched in the same position, desperate not to attract attention.
And the Headmaster’s voice went on.

‘You have, I presume, all brought your S-7s with you, according to instructions.
And I imagine that you are not too stupid to work out how to connect them up where you are sitting.
As well as being microprocessors on their own, these S-7s are now acting as terminals to the S-700.
Each one of you is in contact with the most powerful computer in the world.’

The most powerful computer in the world.
It ought to have been incredibly exciting, Dinah thought miserably.
She should have been sitting on the edge of her chair, longing for a chance to use her terminal.
But the only thought in her head was
SPLAT.
I do want SPLAT.
Where could they all have got to?

It was no use thinking like that!
She gave herself a mental prod.
She had to keep track of what the Headmaster was saying.
He had started to give details of how to operate the S-700.
If she didn’t learn
those,
he would be sure to notice her.
Bending over her notebook, she began to scribble at top speed, like all the other Brains.

And scribble and scribble and scribble.
The Headmaster kept pouring out information without waiting for them to understand or ask questions.
It took all Dinah’s energy to keep pace with him.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Camilla and Bess were just as breathless, scrambling to make a note of everything.
And it seemed that the voice would never stop.
On and on it went, with every sentence giving another important fact.
On and on and on …

Until at last, suddenly, the stream of words stopped dead and the Headmaster nodded.

‘Right.
That covers everything you need to know.
In a moment, you will be sent to have your lunch.
While you are eating, you should learn these notes.
After the meal, you will be starting work on the final stage of the competition and I shall expect you to
know
everything I have told you.
Otherwise, you will be sent home.’

Giving another brisk nod, he walked quickly down the room towards the lift.
Dinah shuddered as he passed her, but he did not look at any of the Brains.
He just strode into the lift and slid away.

‘Christmas
pudding
!’
said Camilla breathlessly.
‘You don’t mean he really expects us to learn everything he’s told us do you realize he’s been speaking for
two hours
and—’

‘Silence!’
barked one of the men at the front of the room.
‘No talking until you are sent down to the canteen!’
His voice was dead and expressionless and at the sound of it Dinah shuddered again.

Then she glanced sideways at Bess, to make sure she was all right.
But Bess already had her head bent over her notebook, her lips moving slightly as she began to memorize what she had written.

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.’