A Box of Nothing by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

places. The light grew brighter. The Burra twitched and muttered.
    â€œAre you all right?” said James.
    â€œA very unpleasant experience,” said the Burra.
    â€œEverything seemed to go mad,” said James. “My bed joined in …”
    â€œMad? Deranged, certainly.”
    â€œBut you’re better now.”
    â€œYes, thank you. The problem, you see, is this. Most of our new members have something wrong with them when they join. That is why people threw them away in the first place. We can help them to mend themselves, but only if they cooperate. We do not see how we can begin to cooperate with a member who insists on taking complete control of the rest of us.”
    James stared at the computer. The paint was an especially nasty colour, he thought, and an especially nasty shape too.
    â€œI think I’d go a bit mad if I had something yucky like that dribbling around in my brain,” he said.
    The Burra cocked its head to one side and stared at the computer.
    â€œYou may be right,” it said. “Perhaps it is worth another try. Stand by with that box of yours.”
    James held the box close above the “off” key while the Burra reached out with one green finger and gently touched the paint. Nothing happened.
    â€œBest we can do,” said the Burra. “You cannot expect quick responses from spilled paint. Very low degree of organization there.”
    The Burra was still wary of touching the computer, so James carried it back up the cavern and put it in its chest. Before he went to bed he had a look and saw that the paint seemed to have become soft and was gathering into a blob. Some of it was dribbling down the side of the casing.
    Next morning, first thing, he went to look again. The Burra didn’t seem to be around, but the chest opened itself as James approached. The computer had switched itself on and was humming quietly. All the paint had flowed off the top and down the side, where it had set into a fat, pink, heart-shaped bulge, just like the heart on the greeting card James had bought for Gran’s last birthday.

Chapter 8: Going Exploring
    Things started happening while James was still having his breakfast. Piles of copper pipes and nylon curtain rods and lengths of old electric cable unstacked themselves and began a sort of dance on a clear bit of floor, weaving in and out of each other incredibly fast. It reminded James of something. He couldn’t think what for a moment, then he realized it was a bit like Mum knitting. If you could imagine a giant doing a bit of knitting, only the giant and the knitting needles were invisible, and the knitting process was happening in several places at once. Soon James could see a shape beginning to grow, a long, narrow, canoe-shaped giant sort of basket.
    Just beyond that something different was happening. He took his Rice Krispies up there so that he could watch. Half a dozen old lawn mowers had trundled together into a group and were taking themselves to bits, groaning and creaking a bit, like old gentlemen complaining about their hips. A couple of oil cans hopped among them, easing the rusty nuts, like metal hummingbirds. The pieces began to build themselves into a new engine.
    Next door to that a jumble of electrical oddments was sorting itself into what seemed to be three separate gadgets, which James didn’t understand at all. A soldering iron strutted among the web of wires. As soon as they were joined up they coiled themselves away into three blue milk crates. Close by, two large saucepan lids were gently easing themselves into dish shapes.
    The funny thing was that all this was going on while the walking-and-talking part of the Burra wasn’t there. Usually when that happened the cavern went almost to sleep, but now it was busier than James had ever seen it. Suddenly he had a thought. Perhaps the computer had taken over. It had got rid of James’s friend in the night, taken it to bits, thrown