The Demon Headmaster and The Prime Minister’s Brain (2 page)

Dinah felt like a snail dragged right out of its shell.
All the children were staring at her and telling her what to do.
And it was no good saying she didn’t want to.
They would never leave her alone until she had a go at their stupid game, Slowly she walked through the crowd towards the computer.

‘Traitor!’
hissed Ingrid.

‘Oh,
Di
!’
Harvey looked at her sadly and turned away.

‘Shut up, you two,’ said Lloyd.
‘Just because
you
don’t like the game, it doesn’t mean that no one else can play.’
He pulled Dinah closer to the front.
‘You’d better watch first, so you know how to do it.
Mandy can show you.
She’s the best one so far.’

Mandy shook her red hair out of her eyes and smiled across at Dinah.
‘I’m not really good.
I mean—I can’t
do
it or anything.
You’ll be loads better than I am.’

‘Oh, get on.’
Lloyd pushed her down into the chair in front of the computer.
‘Come on.
Start.’

Obediently, Mandy pressed the first key and the name of the game flashed on to the screen.

Octopus Dare.

‘It’s a treasure hunt,’ muttered Ian helpfully.
‘You have to steer your way through invisible shoals and then dive down and try and get past the—’

‘Ssh!’
hissed everyone else.

They had already turned back to the screen, staring with glazed dull eyes.
Ian shrugged.

‘Sorry I spoke.
I just thought Dinah might like to know—’

‘Shut up
!’
snapped Lloyd.
‘Mandy’s concentrating.’

She was.
She was frowning and biting her lip as she moved a tiny ship around the screen.
Shoals and sandbanks kept appearing and disappearing and her ship looped and zig-zagged frantically trying to avoid them.
As each one appeared, the watching children held their breath.
And when Mandy managed to steer the ship through them, a sigh of relief went round the Hall.

Dinah managed not to look impatient.
She was used to having to wait while people struggled with things that were simple and obvious to her.
But—couldn’t Mandy
see
?
There was a definite pattern to the shoals.
Once you’d worked that out, you could go straight through and not round the long way.
The thing was a 3-D puzzle that had to be worked out, not a test of quick reflexes.
But Mandy obviously
couldn’t
see.
She went on frowning and steering at desperate speed.

Dinah passed the time by looking round at the faces of the others.
They were all staring at the screen with the same eager attention, even though the game seemed quite ordinary.
Was it the shoals that they found fascinating?
Dinah did not think so.
They seemed to be waiting for something else.
Something that came later.
But why on earth were they so excited about it?

Suddenly the shoals all vanished and a door opened in the side of the ship.
Out slid a little yellow submarine.

Mandy sat back and mopped her forehead.
‘Phew!
I thought I wasn’t going to manage it this time.
Just let me get my breath.’

‘Hurry up,’ said Lloyd.
‘We want the octopus!’

‘Yes!
Yes!’
everyone else shouted.
‘The
octopus
!’

Dinah looked round at them, puzzled by their eager faces.
So that was what they’d all been waiting for.
That was what the ship had to get past in the next bit of the game.
That was what had made them sit so still and watch the screen so anxiously.
But—why?

Mandy leaned forward again and clicked on the submarine.
At once, the screen was filled with a pattern of long, waving tentacles.
They moved and twisted, twining in a complicated pattern of curves and loops, constantly altering and yet always keeping a balance, swelling and shrinking and dancing …

Dinah could not look away.
As the curves shifted and changed, her eyes followed them.
Backwards and forwards.
Up and down.
Crossing and uncrossing.
It was a strange sensation.
Watching them made her feel dreamy and excited, both at once.

Octopus -s-s-s-s!
murmured her mind.

It was a second or two before she realized that the submarine was still there, up in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Mandy was trying to steer it past the octopus to reach the sunken treasure.
But there was not much time to watch it.
In less than a minute, Mandy faltered and the tentacles reached out and engulfed the submarine.

BLUUURP!

Mandy turned round, laughing.
‘You see?
I’m hopeless.
You have a go, Di.’

‘Dinah doesn’t want a go at your stupid octopus game,’ Ingrid said from the back of the crowd.

‘She thinks it’s boring,’ called Harvey.

Dinah stared at the screen.
Trying to remember
exactly
what the octopus had been like.
Trying to work out how to get past the tentacles.
Because she was
sure
it could be done logically, like avoiding the shoals.
Only she could not see how, and the problem nagged and teased at her.

‘Dinah!’
shouted Ingrid.
‘Tell them you don’t want to do it.’

But her words seemed to come from the other side of a wall of glass.
On this side, there was nothing except the octopus.
All Dinah could think of was that she knew she could work out the puzzle.
If only she could see the octopus again …

Almost in a daze, she sat down in front of the computer.

‘Lloyd!’
whispered Harvey.

‘Ssh!’
Lloyd hissed, flapping a hand to make him go away.
‘You’ll disturb Dinah.’

Harvey prodded him.
‘Ingrid and I are
bored.
Can’t we go off to the swimming pool?’

‘What?
No!’
Lloyd pulled a face and glanced quickly sideways.
‘Be quiet.
Wait until Dinah stops if you want to talk.’

‘But she’s been playing that wretched game for FOUR WHOLE DAYS!’
Harvey said crossly.
‘She never stops.
And the rest of you just sit and stare at the screen.
What’s so great about a rotten octopus?’

Lloyd sighed impatiently and forced himself to turn round.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s an important competition.
Dinah kept the octopus on the screen for ten minutes last time, and she nearly got past it.
She could
win
.’

Ingrid came up behind Harvey and her stubborn face peered over his shoulder.
‘That’s not why you’re watching.
You’re just hooked on the octopus.
You
can’t
look away.’

Lloyd exploded.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘Ssh!’
said all the others.

He lowered his voice.
‘Why don’t you two push off?
Go and play
Alien Swarm
or something on one of the other computers.
I’m sick of your moaning.’

‘You haven’t had a chance to be sick of it,’ Harvey said bitterly.
‘You’ve hardly spoken to us for four days.’

He and Ingrid wandered off and Lloyd turned back to look at the screen, just as Dinah brought her ship safely through the shoals.
The children leaned forward eagerly, watching as she clicked on the submarine.
The click that would bring the octopus to the screen.

Lloyd found himself leaning forward like the others, with his eyes fixed and his mouth open.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Harvey nudge Ingrid and point to him.
Well, let him.
They were both wrong.
He could look away from the screen whenever he chose.
And he would.
In a minute.
In a minute …

Octopus - s - s - s - s!

Quickly and deftly, Dinah began to move the submarine, her thin plaits hanging down on either side of her face, her eyes narrowed.
The little yellow shape whirled backwards and forwards and sideways in a complicated dance, just out of reach of the weaving tentacles.

Lloyd felt his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands.
He had forgotten all about looking away.
All about Harvey and Ingrid.
He could not think of anything except the octopus.

The tentacles were flying faster now and it seemed impossible for the submarine to escape.
But each time, just before the octopus snatched it, it darted away in complicated loops.
More and more complicated each time.

With a shock, Lloyd realized that he did not want Dinah to win.
And he did not want her to lose.
He just wanted her to keep on and on playing, whirling her submarine free so that the octopus stayed on the screen, waving and wheeling and winding …

But Dinah was too good.
In a final, nerve-racking rush, she doubled the speed of her movements and her four days of practice triumphed at last.
The submarine soared up in a great arc, over the top of the curling tentacles and down the side to reach the sunken treasure.
It was there!

At once, the computer seemed to go mad.
It began to play a loud marching tune and the screen filled with hundreds of tiny, bright fish.
They swam together to form one huge word.

WINNER!

For a moment there was a total, awed silence.
Then Lloyd yelled, ‘She’s done it!
Di’s done it!
Someone go and fetch Mr Meredith!’

Ian raced off and everyone else crowded round, slapping Dinah on the back, cheering her and telling her how clever she was.

And Dinah burst into tears.

Lloyd was astounded.
Dinah was crying?
Dinah
, who kept all her feelings locked away like the Crown Jewels?
He couldn’t understand it at all.
It was Mandy who took control of the situation.
Waving everyone back, she put her arm round Dinah’s shoulders.

‘It’s all right, Di, don’t worry.
It’s just a reaction, because you’ve been concentrating so hard.’

Dinah sniffed.
‘No, it’s not that.’
She shook her head from side to side and wiped her eyes fiercely.
‘It’s just—well, I know it sounds silly, but this has been the most
fantastic
problem to solve.
I haven’t thought about anything else since I started.
And now it’s finished.
What am I going to do without the
octopus
?’

‘You see?’
said Ingrid, loudly and rudely from somewhere near the back.
But no one took any notice of her, because, at that moment, Mr Meredith, the headmaster, came bustling across the Hall, chattering to Ian.

He was a short, fat man, so enthusiastic that the sight of him set everyone grinning.
The children had found it very hard to get used to him, after the Demon Headmaster.
Mr Meredith was popular, but it was hard to believe that he was really in charge of the school.

Now he was chuckling with delight as he pushed his way through the crowd and bent to examine the computer, which was still playing its triumphant march while the little fish swam all over the screen, forming and re-forming the same word.

WINNER!

‘Well, well, well,’ he said, rubbing his hands together.
‘My goodness me.
Fancy you being so clever.
Well done, Dinah.’

Dinah was her usual controlled self again.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said calmly.

‘Well, well, well,’ Mr Meredith shook his head from side to side as though he could hardly believe what he saw.
‘I suppose you’ll be wanting me to find the forms now, eh?
To send off to the Computer Director to say that you’ve qualified for the final of the competition?
Mmm?’

Dinah hesitated.

Lloyd knew what she was thinking.
She hated people to make a fuss about how clever she was.
He couldn’t understand it.
If he were as clever as that—well, of course he
was
in his own way, but if he were clever in
her
way—he’d be standing on top of the town Clock Tower, shouting about it.
It really annoyed him when she kept quiet and pretended to be ordinary.

‘Yes, she does want to go into the final,’ he said loudly.
‘Find her a form, sir.’

Mr Meredith looked at him and then at Dinah, with unexpected shrewdness, but all he said was, ‘Well, well, a modest girl.
Nice to see.’

Then he began to rummage in his pockets, taking out pens and rubber bands and handkerchiefs, while children scrabbled round on the floor, picking up things he dropped.
Finally, with a flourish, he produced a sheaf of papers from an inside pocket.
Half of them slipped through his fingers and fluttered to the ground, but he only laughed when people bent down to pick them up.

‘Doesn’t matter.
Unless lots of you were thinking of going on to the final.’

‘Us?
Win
Octopus Dare
?’
Ian pulled a comic, horrified face.
‘If it took Dinah four days, none of us will ever do it.’

Mr Meredith grinned and started to fill in one of the forms with Dinah’s name, age, and address.
He signed it with his big, untidy signature.
Then he patted Dinah on the head.
‘Better get it posted then.
Before I lose it.
Eh?
Eh?’

He shambled off, followed by most of the children, and Ian gave his slow grin.

‘Time to celebrate, I should think.
What d’you want, Di?
Champagne?
Fish and chips and a Coke?’

‘Sackcloth and ashes and a plate of cold porridge!’
said a hollow voice from the back of the Hall.
Ingrid came stalking towards them.
Harvey followed her.

‘That’s a bit mean, Ing,’ he said reproachfully.
‘After all, it was clever of Dinah to win the game.
We ought to congratulate her on that, even if we
are
sick of the octopus.’

‘
Congratulate
her?
On having her name sent off to that Computer Director?’
Ingrid gave a slow, dramatic shudder.

As usual, it was Mandy who moved to soothe everyone.
She put one hand on Grid’s shoulder and the other on Harvey’s.

‘Cheer up, you two.
Just think—it’s
over.
We can talk about the rest of the holidays now.
We’ve finished with the Computer Club.
And the octopus.’

‘That’s what
you
think,’ Ingrid murmured darkly.