Ribblestrop (15 page)

“Okay,” said Sanchez. He was gritting his teeth. His hands were fists. He spoke quietly. “We'll go down, Millie. We will go down and see.”

“When?”

“Soon!”

“You promise?”

Sanchez closed his eyes. “Anything, Millie. I just want you to stop talking for a bit and running our school down. And by the way, I'm not being personal, but you've got a nasty sore on your lip and it's bleeding.”

“When I was at school,” said Dr. Norcross-Webb, hours later, “you had to keep your hands off.” He was sitting by the fountain, stirring coffee. The star-studded night had given way to the first pink strand of dawn. The children sat beside him. “I vowed that if ever I was in charge, the children would put their hands
on
. You can only learn by doing.”

“I've certainly learned how to move boxes,” muttered Millie.

“How much do you know about electricity, Sam? Ever wondered what it really is? Ever seen the lightning land between your feet or felt a blast of volts right across your heart?”

“No.”

“That woman . . . Look at her.”

They peered upward and saw a thin frame leaning out of a window over some winching gear.

“She waits for a thunderstorm,” continued the headmaster. He wiped a crumb from his chin. “She waits for the thunder, then she goes outside and flies a kite on a metal cord. Why? Why would she do that, Millie?”

“Because she's insane?”

“Yes!”

The headmaster fixed Millie with a devilish smile. “Exactly right: she has the insanity and the madness of genius. She wants to harness the elements. Under her command, I have seen dead things stand up on their hind legs and dance. And I'm not talking
about putting a charge through a frog, Sanchez. I'm not talking about experiments that were done two hundred years ago: I'm talking about new science—science that hasn't even reached the journals yet. We're in the frontline here, boys, Millie. Planting the flag, leaping onto sands that haven't seen a footprint.”

“Why is she teaching us if she's so high-powered?”

“Ah, what a good question. She is to be our scientist in residence. This lady has her research facility here and will teach in the mornings.”

“And what exactly is she researching?” said Millie.

“New energy,” said the headmaster. “Lightning.”

“Hello-oo!” A high voice was yodeling from the tower top. The headmaster leaped to his feet.

“Everything all right?” he called.

“Giles, it's fantastic—come on up. We're ready for takeoff!”

“How much can we cram into one day, Sam? Sanchez? Are you needing your beds?”

“No, sir,” said Sanchez.

“Discovery doesn't wait for the sleepyheaded. I tell you something: when I was your age I got two hours a night.”

*

The first thing Sam noticed as he pushed open the laboratory door was a large pair of hairy knees sticking out from under a bench. He noticed them because in his exhausted state he tripped over them and, as he was carrying a box full of test tubes, the result was noisy.

“Sam!” said the owner of the knees. It was Captain Routon.

“Hello,” said Sam. “What are you doing?”

“Finishing off, lad. Finishing off. Been at this for weeks; it's nice to see you up so early. Meet the team!”

Sam looked around and noticed the room was full of orphans. The light had a blue tinge, because their hands were nursing blue jets of flame. The lab was completely round and high-ceilinged: the children were dangling from rafters, cables, and shelves. The air was that of a firework factory: if there was any oxygen, it was
fighting among clouds of acrid smoke. Sam peered into it as one of the smallest orphans curled upside down on a spike just under the tall cone of the roof. His tie dangled in his face and he used his shirttail as a rag, polishing a thin coil of wire to a dazzling shine. His blowtorch muttered in the back pocket of his shorts, the flame soft and green. As Sam watched, the boy reached behind him, coaxed the flame into a powerful, shrieking jet, and hoisted it round to his knees. He played it expertly over the coil. Suddenly a new fountain of sparks was foaming onto the backs of his friends. They didn't notice it. An even smaller boy was ripping open a sheet of solid metal, dragging some kind of power tool down its center: another shower of sparks and that same, dreadful sound of express train. Sam closed his eyes.

“Is that the last?” called Professor Worthington. She was wearing large gauntlets now and a filthy white lab coat. Her makeup was running in little sweaty channels down her nose and in front of her ears. She gave the impression of someone melting: she had big front teeth and she trembled like a nervous horse. She was smiling and shaking. “Are we ready?”

“Okay, okay!” shouted Asilah. “Henry, get back.”

The orphans lifted their thumbs and Henry was eased gingerly away from the winch.

Professor Worthington pressed a fat red switch on the wall and the room exploded in light. Fluorescent tubes popped and flashed and the tower room was suddenly luminous. But what was the hissing? Sam's eyes hunted for snakes: there were enough glass tanks to house something terrifying. Then Sam saw the gas taps, set into the stone wall: they were open and pumping gas. Anjoli was grinning, moving from nozzle to nozzle with a flaming taper, and everyone gasped at the jets of flame. Ruskin's eyebrows were burned from his face and he cowered backward. Millie leaped into the center of the room, holding singed hair. The orphans were capering joyfully: not one had a tie that wasn't singed or a shirt that wasn't stained with soot.

“This is mad!” cried Millie—but her voice was lost. Above her
the ceiling was opening, folded back by invisible wires, powered by hydraulics that whispered as calmly as the gas jets. Sam rubbed his eyes, but a whole section of roof really was opening in petals, and the dark blue of the starlit dawn seemed close enough to touch.

“Hey, careful,” said Sanjay. “You're on the gantry.”

Millie allowed little hands to draw her back to safety. The floor on which she'd stood was now opening too, and a long piece of Meccano, like the struts of a crane, was pushing upward. Telescopically it extended and extended, cogs whirring and tiny cables straining: up to the ceiling that wasn't there, beyond the tip of the roof-cone and still extending. Then the orphan with the blowtorch—his name was Israel—stepped confidently from his beam, out onto it. Still it unfolded, so the child rose with it out into the breezy night. He scampered higher, his gray shirt billowing off his shoulders, a sailor in the rigging of a tall ship. Millie just about heard his voice singing something. The notes fell about her.

“Acha, yes,” said Asilah. “Everything's okay. My brother says is okay.”

Yet again
, thought Millie, for the hundredth time,
I'm in a dream, I'm in some kind of lunatic asylum. And the maddest thing is I haven't yet left.
She was caught by a snatch of freezing air.
I should be dead
 . . .

“We'll find out how the world works!” shouted Professor Worthington. “We'll ask a few questions!”

This isn't right
, thought Millie.
This isn't a school
 . . .

Explosions ripped across the sky.

*

Lady Vyner was jolted into a sitting position and her breath came in quick gasps. She heard Caspar scream and then she heard him wail. Utterly disoriented, she fumbled for her glasses. More explosions, quick as gunfire. Lights blazing. It was the north tower, opposite: they were blowing up her home, with her inside it
and
her grandson, heir to the Vyner dynasty.

She blundered to the window, slipping dangerously on rat-
eaten rugs. An empty bottle skittered across the floor and an ashtray clattered. She pushed the curtain up and stared out. Someone was letting off fireworks.

*

“What a lovely idea,” said the headmaster, gazing upward.

Israel had a pocketful of rockets. He climbed to the very top of the needle and stuck the fireworks one by one into the metalwork. The rockets soared up and burst, and great handfuls of red stars blew gently off in the breeze.

“Why fireworks?” said Millie.

Asilah was sitting close by. “Just a blessing,” he said softly.

“To thank God,” said Sanjay.

Someone started to sing—it was Israel, who was descending now. All at once the tower was full of the most beautiful music. More fireworks were crackling, the gunshots battering back and forth over the park.

Millie left the laboratory quietly.

A hundred and thirty-something steps: she wasn't sure if she could get down them. She wasn't sure she could remember where she'd rolled her sleeping bag or where the landing off the boys' dormitory might be. She would sleep anywhere. All she wanted was a corner and to have no more strange experiences. She touched her throbbing lip and stumbled.

“Millie,” said a voice. She leaned against the wall, feeling a little faint. The headmaster was above her. He spoke softly: “You're not well, are you?”

“What?”

“Do you know where you're going?”

“No.”

“My dear, we're working you too hard, I could see how tired you were. And you haven't seen the girls' boarding house. All this excitement, the most basic things sometimes get forgotten, I am so sorry. Where did we put you last night?”

“It's fine. I was fine.”

“You're in a whirl, aren't you? And you have been neglected. I'll
show you the way and you can sleep for as long as you like. We retrieved your trunk, by the way, so it's all unpacked. You've pretty much got your own facilities, until more girls come, of course.”

Millie blinked through her fatigue: “Are there going to be more girls?”

“You won't be alone for long, that's for sure.” The headmaster looked at his watch. “I've got people signing up all the time, and the deputy head is very keen to develop the girls' side of things. Oh, drat: we're going to cancel morning assembly, aren't we? I think we all need a bit of rest and relaxation. Nearly there, keep going.”

“How many girls will there be?”

“Hard to say. The dormitory can't cope with too many, but that being said, expanding it is top of the agenda. Careful, there: mind the step.”

The headmaster took Millie gently by the arm and led her out of the tower. They walked slowly, following the outer wall of the mansion. “Millie, you know that policeman chap, Inspector Cuthbertson? He's our local man. He asked me one or two questions about you and I was a bit thrown.”

Millie prepared herself.

“Can I ask you—were you on a train at any point, coming down to school?”

“No.”

“You weren't? And yet your luggage, and Ruskin's and Sam's—it all ended up in Penzance. Unclaimed, at the station.”

“Yes, we put it on the train in London. Then we met Sanchez and his father offered to fly us in the helicopter.”

“Right.”

The headmaster was trying to frame his next question delicately. Millie was thinking hard and fast. “You didn't go shopping in Reading, did you? About lunchtime?”

“I haven't any money. No.”

“Actually a credit card was used. That's all part of the mystery, you see. Our new deputy headmistress, Miss Hazlitt . . . Funny
story in a way. She was on the train, the same one as your luggage. And she had her purse stolen. She was actually injured quite badly, not when she lost her purse, but later, when the . . . when the train did an emergency stop because there were three children on the tracks. Or something like that, I have to confess I got quite confused. Anyway, a number of witnesses say that the children were wearing black-and-gold blazers, rather like . . . ours.”

Millie went to speak, but the headmaster carried on quickly. “Now I know that many schools have a similar uniform to ours. So no conclusions will be jumped to.”

“Is she all right?” said Millie.

“Still in London. Health comes first, doesn't it, and she's not the most robust . . . No: the train was delayed and her wrist was sprained. So she, er . . . checked into a rather expensive hotel. But she hopes to be down tomorrow.”

Millie said nothing. “Bit of an all-rounder, this Miss Hazlitt. She's been asked to take us in hand, trying to sort out some of our problems.”

“Where am I sleeping?” said Millie.

“Nearly there. So. Ha. You don't have a credit card?”

“I'm thirteen.”

“Yes indeed.”

“I'm really tired.”

The headmaster tried again. “Millie,” he said, as gently as he could. “What exactly did you see in the cellars? Will you tell me?”

“Nothing.”

“We should have sealed them last term. I was looking at the map last night and they are an absolute maze: the sooner we have that stairway bricked up the better. I was told they'd all been closed, after the suicide, but there was a boy last term who found a way down.”

“What suicide? Who?”

“Lord Vyner. Cyril Vyner, the late husband of our landlady. You met her, didn't you?”

“Yes, she threw crockery at us.”

“Her husband killed himself down there, years ago. She refuses to believe it, thinks he was murdered. Caspar's grandfather. He did a lot of work for the government in the Second World War, some kind of experimental science. They do say there's a tunnel that takes you all the way to London, though again, it should have been bricked up by now.”

“Why did he commit suicide?”

The headmaster paused. “Nobody knows. Life just got too much, maybe? They say the experiments were getting more and more bizarre—top secret, he and his partner virtually lived down there. He cooked for himself, hardly saw a soul.” The headmaster had stopped and was looking hard into her eyes. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”