The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain

by Gillian Cross

  He turned round to the shelf behind him and took a packet of spaghetti off the nearest one.

  ‘Here!’ he called up at Harvey. ‘Catch this. If the machine wants a bar code, then give it a bar code.’

  Taking aim carefully, he threw the long packet of spaghetti high into the air. Reaching out a hand, Harvey grabbed at it, just as the arms began to turn him the right way up again. Quickly, understanding what Ian meant, he found the white square with the pattern of thick and thin black lines which was the spaghetti’s bar code. Then he held it out towards the end of the moving arm.

  Very delicately, the tip of the arm moved backwards and forwards over the bar code, scanning it. Then, having found what it was looking for, at long last, it stopped its restless searching. The two arms held Harvey still and steady, six feet above ground.

  ‘Phew!’ breathed Lloyd. ‘That was a narrow squeak. I reckon it was just about to sound the alarm.’

  ‘Thanks, Ian.’ Harvey rubbed a hand across his eyes. ‘I’m glad one of you had some sense. I’ll be glad to be down on the ground again.’

  ‘On the ground?’ Ian raised an eyebrow, looking amused. ‘I’m not sure you’ve quite understood, Harvey. You see—’

  But before he could explain, the robot arms began to move again. Instead of putting Harvey down, they began to lift him up. Up and up, higher and higher, until he was fifteen feet up in the air, nearly at the ceiling.

  ‘What?’ he shrieked. ‘Hey! What’s going on?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Ian said mildly, ‘that you’ve just told the machine that you’re a packet of spaghetti. And it believes you. So it’s going to put you with all the other packets of spaghetti.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ murmured Mandy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘That figures.’

  Even Ingrid nodded wisely, as though she understood. But Harvey was not comforted. ‘What do you mean?’ His voice floated down to them. ‘What’s going to happen to me? I want to come down!’

  ‘All in good time, my little packet of pasta,’ crooned Ian soothingly. ‘Let’s get you safely up before we worry about getting you down again.’

  The arms stretched out, carefully moving towards the topmost shelf. All the shelves below were crammed full, but on the top shelf there was a space about three feet wide, next to all the other packets of spaghetti.

  ‘Don’t wriggle, Harvey,’ Mandy said anxiously, ‘or you’ll make all the packets tumble down.’

  ‘Never mind the packets,’ moaned Harvey. ‘What about me? I feel seasick up here. I feel like a tightrope walker. I feel—’

  ‘Keep still!’ Lloyd called up. Really, Harvey was making a stupid fuss about nothing.

  Carefully, the robot arms pushed and tweaked, until Harvey was placed neatly in the gap on the shelf. When he was settled there, they finally unclamped themselves and reached down for the next thing in the truck. It was a large packet of paper. As soon as its bar code was scanned, the truck set off, trundling at top speed towards the far side of the storeroom.

  Mandy let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Phew! You were a real genius to think of that, Ian.’

  Ian bowed solemnly. ‘Don’t mention it. Thank you, fans. Just because I look like a brainless hatstand, it doesn’t mean I don’t have any ideas.’

  ‘Well, how about another one?’ came a small, miserable voice from high above his head. Ian turned, with Lloyd and Mandy and Ingrid, and peered up towards the ceiling. Harvey’s pale, frightened face looked out from between the packets of spaghetti. ‘How am I going to get down from here?’

  ‘Can’t you climb down the shelves?’ Ian said. ‘As if they were rungs of a ladder?’

  Harvey looked even more frightened. ‘They’re terribly far apart. Suppose I fell?’

  ‘You’ll have to try,’ Lloyd said firmly. He was just about to order Harvey to start when he had a better idea. ‘Hang on a minute, though. While you’re up there, you might as well be useful. Have a look round. What can you see?’

  ‘Much too much!’ wailed Harvey. ‘I want to come Down!’

  ‘Come on. It could be useful. Tell us what you can see.’

  Harvey took a deep breath. ‘Right.’ He sounded annoyed now. ‘I can see baked beans and peas and spaghetti and tins of rice pudding and rolls of paper and stacks of string and light bulbs and floor polish and—’

  ‘Don’t be thick!’ shouted Lloyd, wishing he could reach Harvey and shake him. ‘I don’t want a shopping list.’

  ‘But that’s what it’s like,’ said Harvey, in an injured, innocent voice. ‘All the way across to the other side. It’s a huge storeroom. Not just for food, but for all sorts of things. And there are three or four computerized trucks—like the one that caught me—all busy unloading more stuff.’

  Lloyd wished he were up there himself. It was so frustrating having to explain. ‘Can’t you see anything else?’

  Harvey grinned cheekily. ‘I can see shelves and the ceiling and the floor and the doors of the lift and—’ Then he stopped dead. And suddenly crouched down among the packets of spaghetti. In quite a different voice, he whispered, ‘Hide!’

  ‘What?’ Lloyd said irritably. ‘What are you playing at?’

  ‘I’m not playing.’ Harvey’s voice was so faint that they could hardly hear it. ‘The lift doors are opening. Hide!’

  Before any of them had a chance to move, they heard a boy’s voice, shrill and desperate, coming from the far side of the room.

  ‘Help! Help! Is there anyone there?’

  12

  Only Joking?

  This is ridiculous, thought Dinah. Don’t they understand? Don’t any of them understand?

  She looked round at all the Brains, searching for one of them, just one of them who looked worried. Who might be wondering why the Headmaster had given them this peculiar, impossible task. She was certain that what they were trying to do was wrong. The Headmaster did not do things like this for fun.

  But no one else seemed troubled at all. All the Brains were crouched over their keyboards, wrestling with the problem. Some of them were juggling with long strings of numbers, working out ingenious codes. Others were inventing complicated patterns of letters, trying to trick the strange computer into giving away some crumb of information about its password. They were all completely absorbed in what they were doing.

  They don’t think it’s real. Suddenly, Dinah understood. They were all so used to playing games with computers, and solving puzzles set for fun, that they did not for one moment think they were trying to break into a real computer. They just thought it was another game, that the Headmaster had set up as the final round of the competition. All they were thinking about was winning.

  But no one seemed anywhere near doing that. Even from where she sat, Dinah could see the same word flashing up on screen after screen as the strange computer answered all the attempts to communicate with it.

  ERROR

  ERROR

  ERROR

  Camilla looked worse than anyone else, more frustrated and more desperate to solve the puzzle. She was bent forward over her S-7, thinking so hard that a deep frown ran up between her lovely eyebrows. As she worked, she was twisting the ends of her hair and chewing her fingernails.

  Poor Camilla, thought Dinah. She’s not thinking about winning the competition. She’s thinking about getting Robert set free. But she was not having any more success than the other Brains. The computer answered all her efforts with the same one-word snub.

  ERROR

  Dinah sighed. She had been looking at the problem herself. Testing out one useless idea after another. But she could not concentrate on it in the same way as everyone else. Because, all the time, the same uncomfortable thoughts niggled away at the back of her mind.

  What computer was she trying to get into?

  Why did the Headmaster want to get into it?

  What was he up to?

  As she shifted unhappily in her chair, she glanced up at the Headmaster. He was just turning towards he
r part of the room. Help! It was dangerous to sit here doing nothing. At any moment his eyes would reach her. If she was not working, he would notice her and—and—Dinah switched her S-7 on again and began to tap the keys. Letters flashed up as the strange computer answered her attempt to get in contact.

  WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  In the last hour, she had used up a lot of energy staring at that question, thinking up clever, complicated answers. Useless answers. Every one of them had got the same reply. Now she did not even try. She just typed in the first thing that came into her head, so that she would look as if she were working.

  PLEASE LET ME IN.

  No surprises there. She got exactly the response that she expected.

  ERROR

  But, out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the Headmaster was still looking in her direction. Head bent, she typed again, industriously.

  DON’T BE A MEAN OLD COMPUTER.

  That was one good thing about machines. They never got insulted or annoyed. The reply was just as calm as before.

  ERROR

  Oh well, Dinah thought. I can keep this up all day. The Headmaster would never notice, and she would be able to stop worrying about his plans, because she was not going to be helping them. She would just amuse herself.

  The idea of tricking him, even a little bit, made her feel a lot more cheerful. She went on looking as solemn as before, her pale face just as earnest as everyone else’s, but to match her mood she typed in something silly, as a joke.

  KNOCK KNOCK

  Then she froze. For a second she could not do anything except stare at the S-7’s screen. At the words which had lettered themselves across it. It was almost impossible to believe, but there it was. This time, the computer had given a different reply.

  The right reply.

  WHO’S THERE?

  The next line of the joke.

  Dinah felt as though an invisible hand had dropped an ice-cream down her neck. There was a slow, cold slither, the length of her spine. Putting out a trembling finger, she typed another word.

  DINAH

  Instantly, the answer was there.

  DINAH WHO?

  Was it possible? Was she really going to do it? Half of her mind was screaming, Stop now, before it’s too late! But the other half would not let her stop. She had to know if she had really solved it.

  DYNAMITE—BOOM!

  she typed in.

  HA HA—THAT WAS FUNNY. TELL US ANOTHER.

  The words flashed across the screen as soon as she had finished.

  What had happened? For a moment she hesitated, not quite sure whether she had managed to break into the computer or not. Then she decided that all she could do was carry on, as she had been told to. Obediently, she started another joke.

  KNOCK KNOCK

  WHO’S THERE?

  OWEN

  OWEN WHO?

  OWEN ARE YOU GOING TO LET ME IN?

  HA HA THAT WAS FUNNY. TELL US ANOTHER.

  Oh well. Dinah shrugged and began again.

  KNOCK KNOCK…

  After the third joke, she realized what had happened. She had got herself on to a loop. The computer would go on and on, tirelessly giving the same answers however many jokes she told. Unless she managed to hit on the right joke. The one that would get her off the loop.

  In spite of where she was, and the fact that she was mixed up in one of the Headmaster’s plans, Dinah began to feel excited. She was sure that she was well on the way to solving the problem. The password was a ‘knock knock’ joke. The only question was—which one? There must be hundreds and hundreds, and she could not think of any way of choosing. She tried

  HARRY UP AND LET ME IN

  and

  POLICE MAY I COME IN

  and

  MARY CHRISTMAS I’M A CAROLSINGER

  and dozens more, but it was no use. The computer replied to each one, very politely, in the same way.

  HA HA THAT WAS FUNNY. TELL US ANOTHER.

  This is silly, thought Dinah. I could spend weeks doing it like this. What she ought to be doing was thinking, trying to work out how she had hit on the right idea in the first place, and seeing if that would help her. Twiddling the end of one skinny plait absent-mindedly, she sat and brooded, forgetting all about the people round her and the nagging voice at the back of her head that had kept telling her not to go on. All her attention was fixed on one question.

  What joke would have been chosen by the person who invented the password? The first stage was deceptively simple, after all. If you wanted to get in, you said ‘Knock knock’. It even made a crazy sort of sense. So what else made the same sort of sense? What did you say when you felt as though you would go mad if you didn’t get off the loop?

  Then it came to her. Like magic.

  She was absolutely sure that she was right. It had the right feel, somehow. But she could not resist trying it out, just to make certain.

  KNOCK KNOCK

  WHO’S THERE?

  answered the computer.

  OLGA

  OLGA WHO?

  Right. Dinah breathed hard and then typed the answer in, very slowly and carefully.

  OLGA MAD IF I DON’T GET OFF THIS LOOP

  The effect was so sudden and so startling that she gasped aloud, unable to stop herself. As soon as she had finished, the screen wiped clean and her joke was replaced by a heading and a catalogue of sections. The sight of them filled her with total, paralysing horror.

  PRIME MINISTER

  PERSONAL INFORMATION

  ACCESS TO PM

  SECURITY AND PASSWORDS.

  She had broken into the Prime Minister’s computer. If she wanted to, she could look at all the security arrangements and learn the passwords which would get her in to see the Prime Minister face to face.

  And that meant that the Headmaster would be able to get in and see the Prime Minister face to face. If he got his hands on the information. The Headmaster would be able to stare directly at the Prime Minister, with his huge, mesmerizing sea-green eyes. And then … He must not find out that she had solved the puzzle!

  But before Dinah could do anything, Camilla, who had heard her gasp, leaned over towards her.

  ‘Goodness Dinah you did sound funny are you sure you’re all right you seem very pale and—’

  Then she caught sight of the screen of Dinah’s S-7 and, before Dinah could stop her or say anything to warn her, she let out a great shriek of delight.

  ‘Oh you’re so clever you’ve done it you’ve done it and now we can get Robert back and—’

  At the front of the room, the Headmaster turned when he heard her voice. Slowly, he began to walk between the rows, towards Dinah’s desk.

  13

  The Prisoner

  Lloyd crouched uncomfortably, with his chin jammed against his knees, trying to look like a tin of tomato soup. He had dived for that space, next to all the other tins of tomato soup, because it was the nearest one he could see.

  When the strange boy had shouted ‘Help!’ Lloyd had hesitated for a second, like Ian and Mandy and Ingrid, not quite sure what to do. But before they could dash to the rescue, the shout was choked off with a queer kind of gasp, as though a hand had been jammed against the shouter’s mouth. From the top shelf, Harvey had pulled a wide-eyed frightened face, frantically flapping a hand to tell them all to get out of sight. So now Lloyd was squashed in with the tins of soup. It was not a very good hiding place, because someone walking past would have seen him instantly, but it was the best there was. At least the alleys between the shelves would look clear if anyone glanced down them.

  Across the way, facing Lloyd, was Ian, among a lot of packets of dried peas. Mandy was further down, surrounded by staples and paper clips and rubber bands. And Ingrid had vanished round the corner, to squeeze herself between huge boxes of apples.

  They were all breathlessly silent, listening to the voices coming from the far side of the storeroom.

  ‘I can hold the boy while you requ
est a rope,’ said one man’s voice.

  It was a curious, dull, lifeless voice. Lloyd frowned, trying to remember where he had heard something like it before, but he could not track the memory down. It was the tone he recognized, not the actual voice.

  When the second man spoke, it was in exactly the same tone. ‘Is it correct to use the rope? Our information said that the children could be restrained by use of the octopuses.’

  ‘Where the octopuses do not work,’ said the first man, ‘it is correct to use rope. We are also ordered to leave everything secure when we go off duty this evening. To leave this boy secure, we must tie him up.’

  ‘Very well then,’ the second man replied. ‘I will order a rope.’

  In among his tins of tomato soup, Lloyd shuddered. There was something frighteningly cold and unfeeling about the men’s voices. And yet—the boy had sounded scared all right. What was going on? And how were the men going to order a rope?

  He should have known the answer to that last question, because he had seen the computerized trolley at work, but he did not remember until a mechanical voice sounded over the storeroom.

  ‘Please Remain Beside The Computer Terminal And What You Have Ordered Will Be Brought To You.’

  Of course! That must be the computer’s voice, the same voice they had all heard outside the tower. And the trolleys were used to fetch things out of store as well as to stack them away.

  Anxiously, Lloyd looked round to see if the rope was anywhere near them. He did not like the idea of seeing another trolley bearing down on him. But he could not see any rope and, after a moment or two, there was a faint hiss of wheels on the far side of the room.

  ‘I have the rope,’ said the second man. (What was it about their voices?)

  ‘Very good,’ the first man answered. ‘Help me get the boy back into the lift and then we will take him upstairs to the Restraint Room.’

  Whatever the Restraint Room was, it was obvious that the boy did not like the sound of it. Lloyd heard scuffling noises, and the boy must have got free for a second, because there was a clatter of running feet and shouts echoed down the aisles of shelves.