Читать книгу: «The Blockbuster Baddiel Collection: The Parent Agency; The Person Controller; AniMalcolm», страница 5
CHAPTER TWO
“Sorry, but we don’t know who you’re talking about,” said Taj. “I am PC 890 and this is PC 891.”
“PC?” Barry realised then that they were wearing uniforms. Not exactly like police uniforms – they were more, in fact, like dark blue… onesies – but similar enough for Barry to say: “Like Police Constable?”
Taj looked at him as if he was talking gibberish. “No! Parent Controller, of course!”
“Huh?” said Barry. “What’s that?”
“Watch and learn,” said Lukas. Which made Barry think that he definitely was Lukas as that was exactly the sort of thing he would have said.
Lukas and Taj turned round. Lukas raised the loudhailer to his mouth again and Taj took out of his pocket a large silver whistle. Lukas looked at the crowd, who were still all standing there, waiting. “OK, everyone! Go back to your homes!” he said.
“But I’m on my way to work!” came a voice.
“Well…” said Lukas, “all right. Go back… or onwards… to your place of work! Whatever! You all know the procedure!”
“You said that before!”
“Yes, all right! Anyway. We will be taking this boy to the Agency. You are, of course, all welcome to send your applications there, those who aren’t already on file. And now…”
He nodded to Taj, who blew on his whistle as loudly as he could. The blast was deafening and went on for quite a long time. Barry put his fingers in his ears. The crowd began to move silently away. Well, Barry thought it was silently; as he had his fingers in his ears, it was hard to tell. So he took his fingers out. In fact, the grown-ups were all murmuring.
“I’ll get our updated file sent in straight away…”
“He’d be perfect for us…”
“Stupid PCs, always turning up from nowhere…”
When they had finally all gone, Barry turned to Taj and Lukas. “Do you really not know that your names are Taj and Lukas?” he said.
“PC 890,” said Taj.
“PC 891,” said Lukas. “And now, if you don’t mind…?” He paused, doing a questioning face. Barry knew what the question was, although it made no sense that Lukas – his best friend, or his best friend sometimes – was asking it.
“Barry,” said Barry.
“Really? It’s really Barry?”
“Yes, of course it is! You know that!”
“And you’re really about to be ten? In five days?”
“Yes,” said Barry, “you know that too!”
Lukas turned to Taj and shook his head as if they couldn’t understand what Barry was talking about. Taj frowned and looked concerned. About what, Barry had no idea.
“OK, Barry,” said Taj. “Would you please… follow us?”
They took the tube from a station called Green Bogey Park. Barry sat in between PC 890 and PC 891. Every so often he would notice a grown-up in the seat opposite look over at him meaningfully. One mouthed at him something that looked like, “Pocket money: we’re talking three figures.” Another, as she was getting off, tried to slip him a card, but PC 890 – Taj – flicked her away.
They got off at another station called Ha Ha Ha This Station Is Called Watery Loo (the name took up the entire wall along the platform). When they came out, standing in front of them was a large, important-looking building, like the ones Barry had seen on a school trip to Downing Street once. (They hadn’t gone into Downing Street, just looked at it through the gates, while Mr Podmore, their form teacher, had read something out from the internet about it.) Around the building were a lot more grown-ups, some of them just standing there, others sitting by tents or lying in sleeping bags. They looked up expectantly when they saw Barry.
Lukas got his loudhailer back out.
“Move away, please!”
The grown-ups looked disappointed, shuffling backwards to let them through. The three boys walked up to the door, which was large and black and on which were written, in big brass capitals:
Barry stepped back and looked again at the building. It looked exactly like the drawing at the centre of the map of Youngdon he had found on the subway steps. Except, of course, much bigger.
Lukas knocked on the door. It was opened by a girl in an orange onesie, with dog ears.
“Hello, 890 and 891. Stray, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Through you go…”
Inside was not a grand hallway, as Barry had imagined, but a very, very busy office, with lots of people working there. By people, I mean children: all the workers seemed to be about Barry’s age. He and Lukas and Taj walked through them. They were all wearing orange onesies – although some had cat ears, and some bunny ones, as well as the standard dog version that the girl who answered the door had been wearing. Some of them were carrying files; some were talking; some were at desks on computers. Others seemed to be having meetings.
Barry, Lukas and Taj carried on walking.
“Where are we going?” said Barry.
“To the Head,” said Lukas. “That’s the proper procedure when we find a stray.”
“A stray?” said Barry, remembering that the girl at the entrance had used the same word.
“Yes,” said Lukas. “A stray kid.”
By now, they had reached a big oak door. A plaque on it read: TPA HEAD. Lukas knocked.
“Come in,” said a posh, stern-sounding voice.
CHAPTER THREE
Lukas opened the door into another office. It was plush, with wood panels and a thick rug. At the other end of the room was a big wooden desk.
Behind this desk sat Jake. He was wearing a black onesie, with a built-in shirt and tie pattern, and no ears.
“Ah, 890 and 891. This would be the stray, I believe?” His voice sounded nothing like it normally did. He normally said “innit” a lot. Now he sounded posher than someone out of Downton Abbey.
“Yes, sir.”
“Splendid.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Taj and Lukas started to back out of the door.
“Hang on, where are you going?” said Barry.
“Done our job. And, besides, we have to be home for tea,” said Taj.
“Home for tea with who?” said Barry.
Taj looked at him like he was mad. “Our parents, of course.” He shut the door.
Barry looked over at Jake.
“Do sit down,” said Jake, gesturing to a chair on the other side of the desk. On the desk was an antique wooden box and some kind of machine with buttons and a microphone. “Your name again is…?”
“Barry. It’s Barry. You know it’s Barry!” He sat down, feeling, by now, quite frustrated and cross.
“Yes, I should know. But when they told me I didn’t quite believe it. We’ve never had one called that before, you see.”
“Right. And I suppose your name isn’t Jake?”
Jake raised one eyebrow, just like Jake always did, which only made it more infuriating when he said: “I’m just known as the Head, I’m afraid.”
“The Head of what?”
Jake gave a big sweep of his arm. “This. The Parent Agency.” He opened the antique wooden box. “Sour Haribo?”
Barry looked down. Jake – or the Head as Barry was indeed starting to think of him – had taken out of the box a pink and green sweet, the type that are circular but also have a point.
“Thanks,” Barry said, taking it and popping it into his mouth. He very much wanted to know what the Parent Agency was, but halted for a moment to savour the sourness, before it dissolved to just being an ordinary sweet.
“Do you really not know how it works here?” said the Head.
Barry shook his head.
“Oh, I see. Sometimes that happens with strays. Memory loss, etc.”
“No, I haven’t lost my memory. I come from another place – a place that you’re in.”
“I am?”
“Yes. Where you’re just my friend at school. You don’t work in an office or anything. And grown-ups have children, and they live with them. They don’t… do whatever it is they were doing when…” Barry struggled to remember their numbers. “…PCs 890 and 891 found me.”
“Well, never mind,” said the Head, in a way that suggested that Barry was, of course, deluded, but there was no point in trying to tell him that. It reminded Barry of how his dad was sometimes with his grandpa, who had an old person’s disease which meant he couldn’t remember anything. “The way things are in this place, which is the real place everybody lives in, is that grown-ups don’t…” – and here he did an inverted commas mime – “…‘have’ children, whatever that means. Here, children choose their parents.”
“Choose…?”
“Yes, of course. A childhood is far too important to just randomly let grown-ups…” – he did the mime again – “…‘have’ children. No. What we do here is work with children who have yet to choose their parents, like yourself – you’re nine, yes?”
Barry bristled at this. “Nearly ten. In five days.”
The Head’s eyebrow went up. It actually went up even further than it usually did, the top disappearing somewhere under his hairline. “Oh my God!” he said, instantly hitting a button on the machine in front of him, and bending his face down to the microphone. “Secretaries! We have a Code Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue and Red!!”
Barry sat up in his chair. He’d begun, while listening to the Head, to like the sound of this world. But he didn’t like the sound of that. And he liked even less the sight, coming through the door of the office, of The Sisterly Entity.
