‘Oh. ’Ave I upsetted ’er?’ she heard Paulette ask with not the slightest bit of concern in her voice.
Janey rushed out of the library and down the corridor, shoulders heaving with the effort of keeping her tears locked inside. She was fed up with Paulette treating Alfie as if he was some kind of god.
There was nobody around. And although Mrs Halliday had said she’d check out the caretaker’s cupboard herself, Janey thought she might as well have another snoop. She made her way to the cupboard and swiftly entered it.
It only took a few moments to waggle the right broom handle and slip through the gap in the wall where Trouble had disappeared. At the last minute Janey grabbed a bucket and wedged it in the doorway, just in case the door decided to close and there was no way to operate it on the other side. She crept into the secret room, holding her breath. To her surprise, the room was completely empty apart from a pile of pizza containers in the corner – no wonder Trouble had sniffed it out. The only odd thing about it was that the walls were completely covered in egg boxes. She’d been expecting something unusual – maybe even a Spylab – but it was nothing of the kind.
She reached under her jumper for her SPIV. ‘G-Mamma, are you there?’
The amber pendant crackled into life. ‘Here, Blonde.’ G-Mamma’s voice sounded oddly serious.
Janey sighed. ‘I’m checking out the secret room behind the caretaker’s cupboard, and apart from some funny egg boxes on the walls it’s completely normal.’
‘Well, I’ve been doing a bit of checking myself,’ said G-Mamma. ‘Went down to old Jim the Swimster’s to close down the black Spylab and found a video playing on a loop. I’m there right now. It’s a message. For you.’
‘From the Sun King?’
‘See for yourself.’
G-Mamma angled her SPIV so that Janey could see the vast bank of television sets that had screened G-Mamma and Trouble from the rest of the lab the last time they’d been there. Each one was lit up by a golden disk in the centre. Janey peered more closely. It wasn’t a disk. It was a sun, a vast metallic sun, with slits for eyes and a strange round grille for a mouth – the mask of the Sun King, multiplied dozens of time on the TV wall.
And every one of them was speaking.
‘Ding dong bell. Pussy’s in the well. Who put him down? Little Janey Brown. You have a cat secret, Janey Brown. And so do I. I’d like to swap secrets with you. You tell me what I need to know, and I will let you in on what I know. But understand this, Blonde. We can do this the easy way – or the hard way. I don’t mind. But. I. Will. Find. Out’
The horrible robotic voice faded as G-Mamma swung her SPIV around and stared at Janey. ‘Did you get that?’
Janey gulped. ‘He’s mad. Completely insane. Get out of there, G-Mamma. I’ll see you at home.’
Confused, Janey returned to class, too caught up in what the Sun King had been saying to worry about Paulette any more. She fidgeted until the bell rang, then zipped upstairs to G-Mamma’s as soon as she got home.
‘This enemy dude has to develop some taste!’ yelped G-Mamma as they watched the footage that she’d brought back from the Sun King’s Spylab. ‘What’s wrong with a bit of sparkle, some bling-bling, some pace in your face? Look, how about . . .’ G-Mamma leaped to her feet and started clapping like a member of a gospel choir. ‘Here goes!
‘Ding dong belly, poor pussy’s in the welly,
But who put him do-ow-nn? Little Janey Bro-ow-nn.’
Janey slumped over the bench. G-Mamma was not going to be much help today, she could see. ‘He’s trying to say it’s my fault Trouble’s in, er, trouble, but I don’t see how. Any messages from my dad?’
G-Mamma shook her head. ‘Sorry, girly-girl. But good rap . . .
‘My girl can’t find her daddy
And it makes her kind of saddy
But he is not aroun-n-n-nd
He just needs to be fouun-n-n-nd . . .
‘Anyway,’ she said abruptly as Janey scowled at her, ‘I’m sure Solomon will somehow pop out of the woodwork any minute, but right now we need to give the Sun King what he wants.’
‘We wouldn’t actually swap secrets, would we? You might have forgotten, but we don’t actually know how to change rats back into humans, G-Mamma.’
‘What do you take me for, honey-child!? Even if we did know we wouldn’t really tell them.’ G-Mamma plopped down on to her stool with rosy cheeks. ‘No indeedy! Trust is everything in Solomon’s Polificational Investigations! We’d just pretend to exchange secrets, that’s all.’
Janey was still wondering about this later as she peeled the lid off a frozen lasagne and pushed it into the microwave. It seemed like a dangerous game to play. On the other hand, it would bring the enemy – Abe Rownigan perhaps – out into the open. She might even be able to impress her dad by learning something about the nine-lives secret. As Janey tipped frozen cauliflower into a pan of hot water, she suddenly came up with an idea.
It had to wait, though, as her mother sallied in through the front door with Abe right behind her. He was clutching a large bottle of champagne and grinning almost as widely as Jean Brown.
‘Hello, darling!’ said her mother. ‘Abe’s just sorted all the paperwork out. The first of the Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines chain opens in a couple of days! We’ve got bubbly!’
Janey forced a smile as Trouble ran in from the back garden and squirmed around Abe’s legs like a small furry snake. Abe was trying to ignore the cat. ‘Do you have champagne flutes, Janey? We’ll need three.’
‘Abe! I’ll get them.’ Jean Brown almost skipped out of the room.
‘We don’t have any special champagne glasses. Just tumblers,’ said Janey moodily. ‘And I can’t have any, I’m just a kid.’
‘So you are,’ said Abe, beaming. ‘You’re just so sensible I find it hard to remember. Well, anyway, maybe you’d prefer this.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few items at random: the little banner of handkerchiefs he’d made; a twenty-pound note; a little black enamel jeweller’s box. ‘Nope, none of those. Ah! Here we go.’ And he handed Janey a tiny brooch shaped like a kite. ‘Reminded me of our great day out!’
It was very sweet – a red and gold kite with a little row of diamonds for a tail. Janey looked up from the glazed, multicoloured surface of the brooch to find Abe gazing at her anxiously.
‘Is it OK? It’s only a little badge, but it’s real gold!’ He turned the kite over to point out the hallmark on the back. ‘The diamonds are just crystals though.’
Janey went pink. It was the prettiest thing she’d ever owned, but hadn’t his last present turned out to be something quite sinister? ‘It’s lovely,’ she mumbled. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. Now, how about this champagne? Jean! There you go. To a wonderful venture.’
Abe Rownigan and Jean Brown clinked glasses, smiling at each other. Janey felt as though she shouldn’t even be there, with all the grinning and clinking that was going on.
As the microwave pinged, Janey’s mum turned to Abe. ‘Aha! Dinner! Would you like to stay?’
But Abe seemed in a hurry to be off. He glanced at his watch. ‘Thanks, Jean, but we’ve got an early start tomorrow. Think I’ll hit the road. Bye, Janey. See you in the morning, Clean Jean!’
Jean Brown managed to blush, smile and look slightly disappointed, all at the same time. ‘Of course. Early start. See you then.’
Janey watched her mum’s face as Abe Rownigan disappeared down the hallway and out of the door. She had to expose him now – before her mum’s heart was broken – or worse.
brain strain
There was no point trying to be secretive. For once Janey wanted the enemy to know she was there. G-Mamma dropped her some distance from the gates of Sunny Jim’s Swims. ‘I’ll hide the car and have a snoop around. See if we can get any more clues about this Sun King loon. Holler if you need back-up, Blonde,’ she said, revving the engine gently.
‘I will,’ sa
id Janey. She gave G-Mamma a thumbs-up with her Girl-gauntlet, Fleet-footed to the gate, then, making as much noise as possible, clambered through the hole she had made with Alfie’s Boy-battler. Within moments she had activated the Spy entry cylinder in the toddler’s pool and rolled into the middle of the glossy black Spylab. The darkness – and the silence – seemed solid.
‘OK,’ Janey said in a low voice, pulling her Girl-gauntlet more firmly over the items in her hand. ‘I’m here. Let’s trade.’
For a moment nothing happened, and then suddenly five lithe and loathsome creatures slunk into the room from behind the tank that had held G-Mamma and Trouble. This time Janey was not afraid of them. She had something they wanted (or so they thought).
The great jagged mask covering the Sun King’s face suddenly filled all the television monitors, the voice robotic and harsh. ‘You are sensible to trade.’
‘Why don’t you come out?’ said Janey bravely.
There was a hollow laugh. ‘You want me to reveal myself? Well, I’m afraid I will not be giving you any satisfaction on that score. But don’t think you can escape me. My rats will stop you leaving. Until, of course, you give me what I want.’
‘The secret.’ Janey tried taking control. ‘You have to tell me your secret first. And then I’ll tell you mine.’
‘No, no, no. First yours. Then we will decide if you are to live or die. Only then will you know our secret.’
For a moment Janey didn’t know what to do. If they didn’t believe her, she could be in serious trouble. But Jane Blonde knew how to take a calculated risk.
‘Fine. I’ll go first then.’ She pointed at the group of water rats. ‘You want to know how to turn these rats back into people.’
Janey tried not to think about the huge chance she was taking. She had to assume that the rats had no real recollection of what had actually been done to them during their transformation.
She took a deep breath. Here goes, she thought. ‘So. You start off as one creature, and are frozen, very slowly, until you are solid ice. Then you are turned into some other creature, some other life form.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Sun King said impatiently. ‘But how is it reversed?’
Janey wriggled two little objects out of the cuff of her Girl-gauntlet and caught them in her other hand. As she had hoped, the Gauntlet had kept them chilled and hard. She dropped them on to the palm of the glove and extended her arm.
‘Can you see?’ she said to the Sun King. The water rats sniffed the air suspiciously.
‘Of course. What are they? How are they part of the process?’
‘It’s what happens next, after the freezing.’ Janey forced herself to slow down. If she gabbled too much she might give the game away. ‘The top of the frozen head is sliced off. The old brain is removed. And then a frozen brain from the new animal – like this – is inserted into the cavity. It’s a brain transplant. As the body begins to melt, the new brain sends out all the necessary patterns and signals along the ner . . . the neurons.’ She hoped she’d said that correctly. ‘You know how powerful the brain is. It transforms the whole body when it’s used as part of this very, very complicated process.’
There was a long silence, as though the Sun King was holding his breath. Finally he spoke. ‘Ingenious. Of course. I see how it works. And those things in your hand are . . .’
‘Frozen frog brains,’ said Janey, holding them higher. ‘If you like, we can try them on your water rats.’ And she waved the two bits of frozen cauliflower at the creatures.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ snapped the Sun King, as the rats squirmed uncomfortably. A couple of them yowled and snapped at Janey. ‘Of course we weren’t interested in frogs in general. We just needed to know how to change your cat back into his original life form – a frog – thus all the experiments I conducted. Now we know we merely need to conduct a brain change. Thank you, Blonde. Now all I need are some suitable brains . . .’
Suddenly the danger in the lie Janey had just told hit her. She had to keep talking, fast.
‘I see. So you want to change these rats back into people. Well, it’s a much more dangerous and difficult process to turn animals back into people. I don’t think it will work. They’d probably die! Reversal has never been tried before.’ There was a long silence. Janey took the moment to recover. ‘So, I told you my secret. It’s time for the trade. You tell me yours. How do you give other creatures nine lives, like cats have?’
She squared her shoulders and tried to look as though she fully expected the secret to be delivered to her right there and then. But the masked face on the screen suddenly tipped back, and a low, vibrating laugh echoed around the lab, getting louder and louder as the Sun King spiralled into hysteria.
‘So you worked that out. Well done. But you’ll never know the full details of the process, because only my little rat friends have that information. They discovered it, and used it on themselves! But someone changed them into vermin before they could divulge the full details. Which is why I need them to be human again – so they can share with me the secret of immortality! And now I know the way to create new life too. I am a god!’
Janey felt the panic rising in her throat. She was just a pawn in a far greater game. There was no trade. She had been double-bluffed.
‘Silly girl. Why would I trade? You see, now we know that a human brain will transform my rat-spy friends back into their wonderful evil selves. How lucky that we have such a brain, right here.’
‘Where?’ Janey glanced around but could see nothing that looked like a bigger version of the frozen cauliflower.
‘In your head, Blonde,’ the Sun King said with venom.
Janey’s breath started to come in short little gasps. ‘You can’t use my brain. It . . . it won’t work. It has to be frozen . . . Let me talk to Solomon, or G-Mamma . . .’
As soon as she spoke there was a rattling sound from the top of the entry cylinder. Janey could have kicked herself. She’d only been stalling for time, but of course G-Mamma was nearby with her SPIV activated, waiting for the first mention of her name.
‘Stay there! Don’t come in!’ yelled Janey.
But it was too late; a moment later the SPI:KE rolled into the Spylab in a multicoloured crocheted cardigan and a large peaked cap. She stood up quickly to find five water rats and a very scared Spylet staring at her.
‘Good!’ rasped the Sun King. ‘Two human brains. Time to make some SPIce cubes.’
The mad laugh went through Janey and G-Mamma like an arctic wind.
all fired up
‘What are they doing, Blonde?’ hissed G-Mamma as the rats formed a ring around them.
Janey, back to back with her SPI:KE, turned inside the circle of rats. ‘They’re herding us into the freezer. They think they need frozen human brains to turn the rats back into people, and they’re going to start with ours!’
G-Mamma started to shake so much it was as if she was doing a dance. ‘Outrageous offal! They can’t do that! I’m very attached to my brain!’
‘Oh, and they won’t tell me the nine-lives secret.’
‘Evil cheats!’ spat G-Mamma as one of the rats lunged for her, forcing them ever closer to the freezer door. She reached out to the end of one of the nearby black benches and grabbed a fire extinguisher. ‘Euggh! Don’t mess with me, rat-face. I’ll . . . I’ll foam you to death. ’
‘They’re invincible, remember? But we aren’t. We can’t let them get us into the freezer,’ whispered Janey.
G-Mamma dropped down into a karate pose, which did nothing to frighten the approaching rats. They were now so close that they were snagging her voluminous cardigan with their teeth. ‘I hope you’ve got an idea then, Blondette. Otherwise our heads are going to be split open like coconuts while they extract our beany brainies, and then what will happen to us?’
‘I don’t think we’ll care much by then,’ hissed Janey. ‘At least they won’t bother with Trouble any more though.’
‘Blonde, much as
I love that cat,’ said G-Mamma, ‘I would rather it was his furry little bod on the line instead of mine. We need to be quick. The only way out is the entry cylinder. How about I take them on and you make a run for it?’
Janey looked over at the plastic cylinder leading up to Sunny Jim’s Swims’ toddler pool. ‘I couldn’t leave you . . .’
The rats were springing at them, all slavering jaws and vicious claws, and Janey and G-Mamma were being forced perilously close to the freezer door. Thread from the SPI:KE’s woollen cardigan was unravelling across the floor in a red streak that looked horribly like blood. And just then, Janey had an idea.
‘Get ready, G-Mamma,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We’re going out of the entry cylinder.’
‘What’s the plan?’ G-Mamma swatted a nearby rat away, then looked down in amazement as Janey grabbed the flapping strand of wool from her crocheted top and tied it around the ASPIC on her thigh.
‘Well, we’re not going to the cylinder,’ said Janey. ‘It’s coming to us.’
And with that she ripped the ASPIC from her leg and flung it beyond the plastic entry cylinder. The rats’ heads whipped round in surprise; Janey braced herself against G-Mamma’s back, their arms linked, and lifted her legs so that her magnetized Fleet-feet were aiming directly at the ASPIC.
The moment it felt the pull from the Fleet-feet, the ASPIC switched course and sped back towards them. The wool, unravelling from G-Mamma’s cardigan at a mighty speed, lassoed the entry cylinder in a great loop. ‘Hang on to me!’ shouted Janey, as the ASPIC strained to reach her feet. The cylinder, slowly but surely, swung around to meet them.
‘Now!’ yelled Janey, the moment she could see the base of the cylinder facing them. The bowed cylinder creaked as the ASPIC finally attached itself to Janey’s feet. Instantly, she crouched down on the board and hovered above the heads of the rats. ‘Come on!’ she screamed to G-Mamma.
As the rats hissed and yowled, G-Mamma seized the back of the ASPIC and Janey pushed down with her heel. They sailed over the snapping animals and into the entry cylinder, with Janey curled up as small as she could make herself, and G-Mamma streaming behind like the tail of a comet. Seconds later they popped up through the toddler pool. Janey made for the hole in the gate and the ASPIC shot through in a neat glide, then stopped dead with a whip-lashing jerk. Without her magnetized feet, Janey would have fallen straight off. She jumped down and turned around to see what had happened. Her SPI:KE’s shoulders were wedged in the opening, and her round blue eyes were popping out of their sockets.
Jane Blonde: Spies Trouble Page 8