Miss Cribbins was waiting expectantly in the classroom, clicking her spiky heels on the floor. Her hair was now black. Molly wasn’t sure whether she was wearing a wig or whether her hair actually changed its color. The dark hair made the woman’s powdered face look even paler.
“You’re late. Five minutes late,” she said, pointing to a strip of numbers on the wall that looked more like a section of a measuring tape than a clock. The door bleeped shut. Molly and Petula cast their eyes about the room. It was bare except for a table in the center of it that was piled with books. Old-fashioned books, as far as this time was concerned. Molly eyed their spines. There was The Oxford Companion to Philosophy and another called War and Peace. There was an instruction manual entitled Nuclear Fusion Power Explained and a thick tome called The Dictionary of Theology. Molly felt tired just reading the titles. She dreaded to think how the insides of the books would make her feel. Beside the table was a metal, shoebox-sized machine with a screen displaying a graphlike picture. And on the table lay two brown rubbery things the size of hazelnuts.
“Sit!” Miss Cribbins instructed, pointing to the chair by the table. Her cat-spider suddenly appeared and crept up the front of her suit to settle on her shoulder. “These are what you’ll be working on. Open the first book.”
Molly didn’t like being ordered around in this way, but she did as she was told. She opened Nuclear Fusion Power Explained and scanned the first page.
“Umm, Miss Cribbins,” Molly said, “I’m not really interested in learning about nuclear stuff. And to tell you the truth”—Molly threw a cursory glance at the other books— “I don’t really fancy reading those books either. Haven’t you got anything that I might find more interesting?” Molly felt she was being more than reasonable. Half of her was yelling, Molly, you don’t have to do any lessons at all! This isn’t school, you know!
Miss Cribbins stroked the bridge of her perfectly straight nose. “Later you will have the pleasure of absorbing some eighteenth-century poetry. But at this moment these subjects are your task.”
“But these books are for adults,” Molly objected. “I wouldn’t understand the stuff that’s in them, let alone learn it.”
“You can just learn it off by heart. Then it doesn’t matter whether you understand it or not.”
Molly gawped. “You must be joking! Anyway, what’s the point? If you’re going to put me on that mind machine again in a few years to extract my hypnotizing talent, and suck all my thoughts out, then why should I bother learning anything at all?” Molly closed the book. “This book isn’t of any use to me!”
Miss Cribbins’s beauty spot twitched on the side of her cheek. “Who said it had to be of use to you?” she said, pulling a thick, silver traylike contraption out from the wall behind her and locking it onto the table. All at once Molly understood why she was having lessons. The information in these books was intended for Princess Fang and her machine. Molly would learn about philosophy or whatever it was Fang wanted stored on her machine, and then eventually they would put that electric cap on her and suck out all the information from it. They wanted to use Molly’s brain to learn and remember, and then they would rob it.
“I’m not a hard drive for a computer,” Molly said angrily.
“Put your hands in this,” Miss Cribbins directed, ignoring Molly’s comment.
Molly now looked at what was on the table. The silver block in front of her was indented with the shape of two hands. Molly’s hands were now starting to feel a little sweaty in apprehension. She lay them down so that they were cradled in the silver molds.
“Other way. Palms up!” Miss Cribbins tutted impatiently.
Molly followed her instructions and then regretted it. At once her hands were stuck. Molly wished she’d refused. Miss Cribbins now attached the two rubbery things to Molly’s temples. Then she switched on the screen. A red dot pulsed there on its graph, sinister and threatening. Briskly Miss Cribbins took the book about nuclear fusion and held it in front of Molly’s eyes.
“Is this the correct level for you to read?”
“Yes …” said Molly uncertainly.
Miss Cribbins pressed a button on the desk, and a blue ray of light shot upward until it surrounded the book. When she released it, the book now floated magically in the air.
“To turn the page you will say, ‘Now,’” said Miss Cribbins. “You will work for three hours, then a servant will come and lead you to your sleeping quarters.”
Molly scowled. “I’m not going to do this,” she said. “You can keep your books.” She tried to pull her hands out of the silver hand molds.
“Up to you,” said Miss Cribbins. She extracted an old-fashioned wooden ruler from a drawer. This she placed above Molly’s hands and pressed another button so that it was suspended by green lights. “This device”—she pointed to the screen—“will judge whether you are absorbing enough information. If it considers that you are not working hard enough, it sends a message to this machine.” She pointed to the box under the monitor. “The ruler will then punish you. An old-fashioned method. Charming—don’t you think?” Miss Cribbins smiled, flashing a perfect row of pearly teeth. Her cat-spider hissed as if laughing in agreement, and without another word the nasty woman left the room.
Molly was left with her hands stuck fast and the ruler hovering above them. The book floated in front of her face and the expectant monitor, attached to her head via its rubber-ended cables, blipped. She wondered how much the ruler hitting her hands would hurt. And so she didn’t even look at the book. A flat red line began to be traced on the screen.
“Are you all right down there?” Molly asked Petula, nudging her gently with her foot. Then she noticed the monitor was making a quicker bleeping noise. The flat red line was now quite long. And the bleeping was becoming more insistent. And then it happened. The ruler came down on her right hand with smart THWACK.
“Owww!” Molly winced from the stinging pain, only to see the ruler slicing through the air to hit her other hand too. “Owww!” Petula put her front paws upon Molly’s knee to check if she was all right. The monitor was now starting on a new red line. Molly eyed it nervously. Already it was half a centimeter long. Three minutes later the ruler came down twice more.
Molly had received this punishment before at school when she was younger, from a vicious teacher called Miss Toadley. But she’d never had more then five pairs of thwacks.
Five smacks from the ruler had hurt a lot when she’d been seven. Perhaps she’d bear the pain better now that she was eleven. The ruler came down for the third time. The palms of Molly’s hands were now branded with pink ruler-shaped marks, and they were feeling sore. After the fourth lash the marks had turned a raspberry pink and her hands were going blotchy. Only twelve minutes had passed. This was torture—torture that Molly could definitely not endure for three hours. Her hands would be raw in half an hour.
Molly couldn’t bear it. There was nothing for it but to do what Miss Cribbins wanted and learn about nuclear fusion. Molly began to read.
Nuclear fusion power stations must not be confused with
nuclear fission power stations. Nuclear fission power
stations split particles of uranium to produce energy. There
are dangerous waste products. Nuclear fusion power stations
make clean, safe energy.
“I’ll get you for this, Miss Cribbins,” Molly said under her breath.
To start with she was so angry that she couldn’t concentrate. But after a few more whacks from the ruler Molly focused on the book. She soon worked out how much concentrating she had to do to stop the red line on the screen growing. Whenever she read something and made her brain remember the information, a nice green line grew on the screen, reaching up like an electronic beanstalk. Three nuggets of learned information kept the ruler at bay. So Molly read on.
In nuclear fusion power stations, hydrogen is compressed
with hydrogen, and miraculously helium is made. While this is happening, vast amounts of energy are also produced. This
energy can be turned into electricity.
It was tricky stuff to remember and very tiring. The minute hand on the flat clock on the wall seemed to crawl slower than a slug. After an hour Molly’s eyes were heavy. After two, she kept nearly falling asleep. Each time her eyelids dropped the ruler gave her a sharp shock to wake her up. Eventually three hours were up and the torture stopped. The monitor gave a little whistle and, with huge relief, Molly pulled her hands free. Her arms and back were stiff from being in the same position for so long. She had pins and needles in her bottom. She lay her head on the desk.
“That was horrible, Petula. Horrible! I can’t do that again.”
Then a servant came and escorted Molly to her sleeping quarters. Molly lay down exhausted in her cell-like room. Petula jumped up and snuggled next to her. Molly switched off the light. Pajamas lay on the chair in the semidarkness, but before Molly had even pulled off her shoes she was asleep. The night drifted by. Molly slept deeply. Then she had nightmares about being trapped down in a dark pit, with a ruler chasing her. The ruler had Princess Fang’s face and the catspider’s legs.
Just before dawn, when the sky was pale indigo, Molly woke to find someone in her room. She sat up quickly, expecting to be knocked on the head or handcuffed at any second. But instead a familiar, soft voice whispered, “Come with me now. There’s no time to waste. Chop-chop! And be ever, ever so quiet!”