The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

10.

      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.’

      ‘And nor should it,’ said the woman. ‘Spectrum is a secret agency – a very secret agency.’

      ‘Well, nice going,’ said Ruby, ‘cause I never heard of you. So who do you work for, the government?’

      ‘To put it simply – we work outside the government but not against the government if you know what I mean.’

      ‘So what you’re saying is, you’re the good guys.’

      ‘We like to think we are the good, good guys, but good guys will do.’

      ‘Everyone always thinks they’re the good guys,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Yes they do,’ said LB. ‘But happily for us, we are.’

      ‘Well you might know that but how do I?’

      LB took a deep breath. ‘As I understand it, part of your “intelligence” lies in your almost impeccable instincts. Ask yourself one thing: something led you here, but was it your good instincts or just simple curiosity? Would you take the risk of crawling through a suffocating black tunnel if you thought we were the bad guys?’

      It was a good point.

      ‘So what does LB stand for?’ asked Ruby ‘None of your beeswax, as someone your age might say,’ replied LB.

      ‘No one my age would say that – not unless they were pretending to be someone your age.’

      LB didn’t seem bothered by this remark, but instead opened a drawer and selected a red Perspex file. ‘Are you curious to know why we had you crawl through a tunnel?’

      ‘Pretty eager,’ Ruby drawled – as if she couldn’t care less.

      LB opened the file. ‘We first became aware of you five years ago. We took a look at that code you created for the Junior Code-Creator Competition, and we heard about the Harvard offer – I imagine you remember?’

      ‘Yeah, I remember,’ Ruby mumbled – it was an experience she had tried hard to live down. She had not relished the attention.

      ‘We were interested, but when we discovered exactly how old you were, that you were just some little kid, we thought again.’

      ‘So, what? You don’t think I’m just “some kid” now?’

      ‘Well, since you’re asking, yes, but now we’re desperate,’ replied LB.

      ‘Wow, you sure know how to pump up a person’s ego.’

      LB gave her a hard stare. ‘We’ve been watching you for a number of years. Since you appeared on our radar we have had access to your grades and school assignments. You’re not normal.’

      ‘That’s you paying a compliment, right?’

      ‘I wouldn’t take it that way.’

      Ruby shrugged. ‘So why’d ya call?’

      ‘I need to know if you are willing to work for us – just the one job you understand.’

      ‘Doing what?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘We’ll get to the details in due course but I need to know, are you in or are you out?’

      ‘You must have a lot of confidence in me.’

      ‘That, or I’m crazy,’ said LB shuffling her papers.

      ‘But can I be trusted?’ said Ruby.

      LB stopped shuffling and looked up. ‘We think so – one thing you seem good at is keeping your mouth shut.’

      ‘And if you’re wrong?’ said Ruby

      ‘And if we’re wrong,’ sighed LB, leaning forward. ‘And if you do turn out to be a blabber mouth, then who’s going to believe you?’

      It was true, a schoolgirl was going to have a hard time convincing anyone but Clancy Crew that there was a secret agency situated beneath the street if you only took the trouble to lift the drain cover just underneath the sign for Lucky Eight gas.

      ‘So, are you willing to take the assignment?’

      ‘I have no idea what it is.’

      ‘You’ll be briefed once you have taken and passed the required Spectrum test and been cleared by security.’ LB paused. ‘I should make clear that this will be a desk job: there will be no car chases, no jumping out of aeroplanes in black turtle-neck sweaters, and it will not make you one of us, you will not become an agent, you will simply be carrying out this one task and when it’s over you will go back to your boring hum-drum schoolgirl life.’

      ‘Gee lady,’ Ruby exhaled. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue to say yes.’

      ‘Oh, I forgot,’ said LB. ‘There is a small fee.’

      ‘Do I pay you or do you pay me?’

      LB ignored this last comment. ‘Your decision?’

      ‘But you haven’t told me what I have to do.’

      ‘This is a once in a lifetime offer – yes or no?’

      ‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Ruby chewing on her finger nail. ‘There is this biology assignment I’m working on – you see I have to imagine my life as a