up her spirits. If she were here now she would say,
‘Don’t tell me you’re troubled by a little darkness Ruby? Good gracious! You don’t want to be bothered being scared of the dark when there are so many other bigger things to be frightened of – like for example getting to my age and losing your marbles or being run down by one of those city buses with their maniac drivers. These are fears – the dark’s the least of your worries, kid.’
Just thinking about Mrs Digby made Ruby breathe more easily. ‘Mind over matter,’ that’s what Mrs Digby always said and she was right. Ruby had made it RULE 12: ADJUST YOUR THINKING AND YOUR CHANCES IMPROVE.
Actually, it was probably the best rule there was.
Never panic!
RULE 19: PANIC WILL FREEZE YOUR BRAIN. Panic will get you nowhere. Panic can get you killed.
She began to edge forward through the nothingness, and as she moved her senses got sharper. She felt the tunnel getting steadily bigger, and realised that the surfaces were smooth – not gritty as she might expect them to be. It didn’t smell dank; in fact it didn’t really smell of anything. She could feel twists and turns and before long was standing not crawling – yet still there was no light. All sense of time had melted away and she could not accurately say how long she had been down there.
She was hot and tired when she stumbled into what amounted to a brick wall. She felt around her, stretching up and reaching across in all directions but there was no way forward, only back. It seemed the tunnel led nowhere – it had all been for nothing.
Ruby sank to the ground, put her head in her hands and wondered how she was ever going to summon the energy to get herself out of there. How long she sat there she did not know.
A sudden deep shuddering sound as if the earth were on the move.
A blinding light – light as white as the dark was black.
Ruby was jolted to her feet, eyes squinting, heart racing.
And then the voice.
‘So you made it, Ruby Redfort.’
The voice
RUBY KNEW THAT VOICE. It was the voice of the telephone, the voice of the codes and the riddles, but she could not see where it came from.
Slowly her eyes began to adjust and she found that the wall was no longer a wall, and she stumbled forward into an entirely white room.
It was a big room, huge, at its centre an enormous desk. Behind the desk sat a woman; the owner of the gravelly voice. The woman was older than her mother but not “old”. Dressed completely in white, she was elegant and strikingly beautiful, immaculately groomed – although in no way “dolled-up”, as Mrs Digby would put it.
Under the white desk Ruby could see the woman’s feet – she wore no shoes and her toenails were painted cherry red, the only visible colour in the room. She was studying some papers which were spread out across the tabletop, engrossed in these, too busy to be bothered looking up.
A fly buzzed aimlessly around the room.
Ruby wasn’t bad at physics, in fact she was pretty good, but even she couldn’t work out how a space this big could fit into a space this small – it was like she had crawled through a drain and found herself in a ballroom.
‘Wow,’ said Ruby. ‘Your decorators really know how to make a place feel roomy.’
The woman reached for her glasses, then, showing only the merest hint of curiosity, she peered across the desk. She paused before asking in a far from joking tone, ‘Do you know why you are here?’
‘Because you called me up and got me crawling down a tunnel?’ said Ruby.
The woman paused again. ‘Do you know who I am?’
Ruby looked at the desk, then above it at the all-white painting, and then at the carpet on the floor. After some close looking she began to see a pattern in the white mat and gloss paint, and another in the pile of the carpet. The patterns were all made up of the same letters, two letters.
‘LB?’ she said.
The woman nodded, almost smiling. ‘LB is correct. I am in charge here.’
‘And where exactly is here?’ asked Ruby
‘The hub of it all, the hub of intelligence.’
‘Come again?’ said Ruby
‘Well if you must have a label – Spectrum.’
‘Nope,’ said Ruby. ‘Still means nothing to me.’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
