Jane Blonde: Spies Trouble

by Jill Marshall

  Janey had only one option. Hoping fervently that the Coach-Stop Cafe coach hadn’t been completely gutted during its transformation into a diner, Janey leaped into the driver’s seat.

  Janey saw Alfie’s eyes bulge behind his steamed-up Ultra-gogs as he registered what she was doing. It only took him a few moments to realize how he could help her out. He turned around so his back was to Janey, pretended to sit down and began an elaborate mime.

  Janey copied his every move. ‘OK, keys, turn. Come on, come on . . . yes!’ After a tiny bit of coughing the old engine rumbled into life. ‘Now, press foot down on left, shove the gearstick this way, foot down on right, come on!’

  With a banshee’s shriek the wheels of the old coach spun on the tarmac, as Janey pressed down on the accelerator and waggled the steering wheel. ‘Argh! Why aren’t we moving?’

  She shrugged desperately at Alfie, who slapped his hand to his head and lunged into a mime again. ‘Oh, this thing,’ thought Janey, as she released the handbrake and pushed it down towards the floor.

  Suddenly they were off, careering across the car park with motorists veering out of her way and families throwing themselves clear of the approaching coach. One family of diners was tipped off their booth on to the floor, rapidly followed by their burgers, cokes and a large order of coleslaw. Janey corrected the steering and the coach lurched over on to two wheels, every screw and bolt groaning. She watched in the mirror with delight as the Sun King grabbed the juke box, bringing it down on top of him. He was trapped.

  Alfie was now occupied with fighting Paulette. They both turned as Janey blasted the horn, signalling to Alfie to get out of the way. Just in time, he flung himself over the grass verge towards the lockers, but not before Paulette had managed to free herself from his grasp and run out of sight. Janey wrenched the wheel around ninety degrees and headed straight for the shower cubicles.

  Her aim had to be precise, but as she got closer and closer she began to worry that she’d made a huge mistake. How could one old coach smash down a whole shower block?

  Janey braced herself as the coach hit the corner of the showers with an ear-grinding crunch. Janey was thrown back against the driver’s seat and would have ricocheted forward into the steering wheel if she hadn’t reached over her head and gripped the back of the seat with her Girl-gauntlet.

  As the coach slammed into it, the shower block tipped like a felled tree. The metal sides buckled and swayed, and with every inch the coach moved forward the walls dipped further towards the ground. Soap dispensers and drying equipment were wrenched from the walls and sent spinning across Sunny Jim’s Swims as the shower block creaked an anguished, final death rattle and fell, shattered, to the ground.

  Janey almost fell out of the driver’s door in her eagerness to find Mrs Halliday. Alfie ran to meet her at the centre of the destroyed shower room, a large square that covered the main drain.

  ‘She’s under there!’ Janey fished her SPIder out of her SPIsuit and thrust it through the grating. ‘Try and grab that, Mrs H! Breathe, while we get you out!’

  Alfie leaped on to the grille, curled his Boy-battler and pummelled the rivets holding it in place as if he was wielding a mallet. In just a few moments several of the screws had come loose, but even between them the two Spylets did not have enough power to lift the grille more than a couple of centimetres.

  ‘It’s hopeless!’ screamed Alfie.

  ‘No! Loosen the other corner.’ Janey waited while Alfie set to work again. ‘Good. Now, slide your ASPIC through the gap – it’ll work, Al, honestly. OK, stand on the grille directly over your ASPIC. I’ll do it too.’ Janey felt the magnetic force clamping the ASPIC to her Fleet-feet. ‘When I say jump, jump. One, two, three . . . JUMP!’

  With every bit of strength they had, the Spylets both hoisted one foot up through the air, away from the magnetic pull of the ASPIC. Sweat streamed down their faces and Janey felt as though her neck would burst open with the effort. She waved a hand at Alfie and they allowed their Fleet-feet to bash back down against the grille. Their feet exploded in unison. The grille was ripped upwards like the lid of a tin can, then thrown back to the ground a metre or so away, with Janey and Alfie still attached to it.

  Rubbing their ankles, they released themselves and ran back over to the drain. Mrs Halliday had water and soap suds flipping in little waves over her head, but she was chewing furiously. The SPIder had saved her. She bobbed up to the surface and smiled gratefully. ‘Thank you, Spylets.’

  Alfie held out his hand to help his mother clamber out. ‘Some things you’d like to tell me?’ he said brusquely.

  Maisie Halliday nodded slowly, ruffling her son’s hair. ‘I think so, Al.’

  Janey stepped back. This was a private moment. She knew only too well what it felt like to have your father’s unexpected past brought home to you. She only wished she knew where her own dad was right now. She gave her kite badge a little stroke. ‘I live too . . . Dad. Find me soon.’ She pictured the familiar face that she saw every night when she secretly conjured his image from the LipSPICK – the way he leaned over Trouble, stroking his head and saying . . . ‘what I’ve created . . . what I’ve created . . .’

  And right then Jane Blonde realized something huge. Her heart sank so far it felt as though it was thrashing around in her stomach. She had let the cat out of the bag, just as the Sun King said. That was why he was so convinced that Trouble used to be a frog. He’d seen it. He’d seen Trouble. He’d seen Solomon. He’d watched the LipSPICK recording.

  Janey’s throat went dry. She had betrayed her father. No. It was even worse than that. By watching the LipSPICK, even though she knew it was forbidden, Janey had betrayed them all.

  spi let-down

  G-Mamma couldn’t even look at her pupil and goddaughter. Mascara had run down her face and across her blushered cheeks in thick black streaks, and she trembled from head to foot. Whether it was with despair, or rage – or both – Janey didn’t know.

  She tried again. ‘G-Mamma, you have to understand what it was like. I’d never met him. I didn’t even know my father was alive. I wasn’t going to keep the bit of LipSPICK, I mean, I didn’t set out to steal it. It was just there, on my finger, and it was just like a photo really. I didn’t think it would cause any harm . . .’

  ‘But it wasn’t just a photo, was it? It was evidence.’ G-Mamma sighed. ‘And the harm you’ve done is . . . well, I can’t even bear to think about it.’

  Neither could Janey. She’d unleashed chaos. She’d even let someone – the Sun King – see the identity of the head of Solomon’s Polificational Investigations after that information had been hidden for at least a decade. The enemy knew that Boz was still alive. Janey had a hand in destroying him – and maybe all the other spies in Solomon’s Polificational Investigations. And she might have allowed power-crazed villains the world over to do whatever they wanted, because there would be nobody – no SPI organization, no Boz Brown – to stop them. Tears rolled down Janey’s face.

  ‘You’d better de-Wow, Janey,’ said G-Mamma quietly, ‘and hand over your badge.’

  ‘But . . .’ Janey grasped the little kite that Abe Rownigan had given her. ‘What do you mean, hand it over?’

  G-Mamma thought for a few moments, pursing her rosy lips. ‘All right. You can keep the badge – I suppose that was a gift as much as anything else. You can hang on to that, and to your other SPI-buys. They won’t mean anything more to you once you’ve been brain-wiped. Don’t worry,’ she added in a quavering whisper, ‘there’ll be no painful memories. No memories . . . at all.’

  ‘But . . . you can’t do that to me!’ Janey could hardly breathe. ‘G-Mamma, please. I understand that what I did was terribly, terribly bad and silly and selfish and a million other things, but you can’t take away all my memories of . . . all this. My dad . . . you . . .’

  Her godmother was sobbing openly now with great heaving breaths. ‘Janey, Janey, Janey. Haven’t I always told you that trust is everything? Yo
u deceived me, us, all of us. You betrayed your father. There’s no going back from that.’

  ‘No!’ screamed Janey. ‘You can’t do that! You mustn’t! I’m the daughter of Boz Brilliance Brown.

  He told me in front of you that I’m his spy now. I’m the one he trusts!’

  G-Mamma got to her feet. ‘How can he trust you now? You acted as a daughter, and not as a spy. That will never do.’

  Janey sank on to the stool. ‘Oh, what have I done?’

  G-Mamma simply shrugged. Even Trouble, sitting behind the mirror on the SPI:KE’s make-up counter, was managing to look Janey up and down in a way that suggested he was hugely disappointed in her.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘Janey,’ said G-Mamma seriously, ‘for once in my life I don’t know what else to say. I may never rap again. Let’s just . . . get this over with.’

  Janey stood up as slowly as possible. She could understand what it would have been like for the aristocrats in the French revolution, on the way to the guillotine. She was walking to her death: the death of one half of her, of Jane Blonde, Sensational Spylet.

  G-Mamma hovered behind her as she edged towards the Wower. Once she was in there, her Lycra SPIsuit would be replaced by ordinary civilian clothes; her Ultra-gogs would disappear; her hair would return to pale, insignificant brown. Like Janey herself. Pale, insignificant Brown. No friends, no life, no father.

  But just as G-Mamma reached across to pull open the Wower door, Janey realized something. Her SPI:KE was wrong. She had said that to be a Spylet, Janey could never act as a daughter, only as a spy. But hadn’t her father acted as a dad as well as a spy? Hadn’t he insisted that she be trained up as a Spylet because the bonds that held them together were greater than those of even the most loyal and treasured SPI employee? Come to think of it, wasn’t she a Spylet precisely because she was the daughter of Boz Brilliance Brown and the one-time superSPI Gina Bellarina?

  Janey’s breath quickened. G-Mamma was snivelling loudly and dabbing at her panda eyes with the edge of her chiffon wrap. Janey knew she had to do something, right now. Zippety split, as G-Mamma would say.

  She steeled herself as her SPI:KE stood to one side of the Wower to let her in. ‘G-Mamma,’ Janey began, ‘I’ll never see you again. And even if I do, I won’t remember who you are. Could you let me keep your lovely scarf? It’s so . . . you.’ Nodding blearily, G-Mamma handed over the chiffon wrap. Janey hesitated. ‘And . . . and one last hug?’

  G-Mamma howled balefully and reached out her arms to clap Janey to her quivering chest. It was now or never. Janey felt a surge of power course through her as she grabbed G-Mamma’s hands and kissed them. Then, with a sorrowful, ‘I’m sure you’ll understand!’ she shoved her godmother backwards into the Wower.

  Janey slammed the door home with her foot, then speedily looped the chiffon scarf through the handles and tied a tight knot. G-Mamma hollered from inside the Wower cubicle but then turned her attention to fighting off the robotic hands that were reaching for her from all angles of the Wower. ‘Get your nasty little metal fingers . . . ow! What are you doing! That’s designer! Leave me alone, I don’t want Wowing!’

  Janey turned to Trouble, who was watching her warily from the counter. ‘Don’t think badly of me, Trubs. I know what I have to do. I have to find my dad.’ Grabbing all the messages that Sol had sent to her over the last few days, Janey held the ASPIC above her head and ran for the window. ‘Let her out in ten minutes – your sabre-claw thing will go through the chiffon in no time. I’ll be back when my mission is completed. Goodbye!’

  And with that, Jane Blonde launched herself out through the window and down the wall, across G-Mamma’s front lawn and over the top of the approaching Clean Jean van, then over the road and into the fields.

  brown again

  Janey reached the reservoir and clambered into Abe Rownigan’s Daimler. While there was a chance he was still alive Janey had to try to find him – he might be able to lead her to her dad, and anyway she wanted to say sorry. But how? The message she had received from her father about the ‘new guy’ had said, ‘You can say that again.’ What did it mean?

  ‘New guy, new guy, new guy,’ said Janey over and over, until the words ran together and she hardly knew whether ‘guy’ came before ‘new’ or the other way round. ‘New guy, new guy. Oh, it doesn’t make sense. What if I say his actual name? Rownigan, Rownigan, Rownigan . . .’

  It was getting her nowhere, so Janey looked again at the email her dad had sent.

  . . . that type of thing is BIG . . . Afraid can’t help. Busy right now. End of special project. In touch soon. Stay well, UNCLE SOLOMON

  Maybe it wasn’t a straightforward rejection after all. But what was the code? With a tiny firework explosion in Janey’s head, she knew the answer and the actual message leaped off the page at her.

  ‘You idiot, Blonde! He’s asking for me to look for the BIG type – at the capital letters. A for afraid, B for busy, E . . . I . . . S . . . ABE IS. Abe is! But Abe is what? No, it can’t be! UNCLE SOLOMON is in capitals too. So . . .’ Her eyes widened as she read the message aloud. ‘Abe is Uncle Solomon.’

  Janey hooted with joy. She’d found her dad. It was Abe! Suddenly everything made sense. ‘No wonder he loves Mum! I was so horrid to him!’ Her mood sobered. ‘He was trying to rescue me. That night at the dam, he came because I said I needed help. And he . . . he went right over the edge.’

  Janey already felt as if her insides were trying to escape. ‘I might have killed my own father.’

  But Abe Rownigan looked so different to her dad. Much taller, different hair, brown eyes. So unless he’s had a very extreme makeover, there had to be another explanation. Janey’s jaw dropped. Could the Crystal Clarification Process have been used on a human? Had her father used it on himself?’

  It was almost too much to take in at once, but Janey knew one thing for sure. Her father was still her father, whatever he looked like. And she had to find him. Now.

  Janey was so filled with panic that she hardly noticed the hissing sound in the car getting louder. It had now increased to a hum, and with a start Janey noticed that it wasn’t coming from the car at all. She jumped out. It was coming from underneath the car – from the SPI-Pod that G-Mamma had planted! More voices were filtering through the humming background noise. ‘It would be much easier if you just showed us ’ow you do ze brain swap.’

  ‘Yes, come along, Mr Rownigan,’ rasped the Sun King. ‘Then we can let you go and we’ll do it ourselves.’

  ‘Only I can perform the procedure,’ said Abe firmly.

  Janey’s heart stopped at the sound of her father’s voice.

  He continued, ‘Solomon Brown trusted me, and me alone, to carry out the surgery. The brain replacement is a highly complex operation.’

  He was stalling for time by pretending he knew all about the brain swap that Janey had completely invented.

  ‘Start the refreezing process on the water rats,’ Abe said, ‘and tell me where your store of human brains is so I can prepare them properly.’

  Suddenly the dull robotic drone cut in. ‘The rats and their new brains are being united at this very moment. Five human brains. Pity they are all. So. Small!’

  Janey’s blood ran cold as these words sank in, and she got urgently to her feet by the Daimler. ‘G-Mamma!’ she said urgently into her SPIV. ‘Are you still trapped in the Wower?’

  The SPIV crackled as G-Mamma’s pale, stretched face loomed into view. The SPI:KE was bobbing her head to and fro, humming nervously. ‘Ummm, noooo. Little rap for you though . . . Nothing can be said, cos we’re all in the shed, like the poor little cat, we’re surrounded by rats. Ow! Get off!’ Janey heard some scrabbling around in the background and then deadly silence as G-Mamma dropped her SPIV and lost contact.

  Five human brains. Janey knew without a doubt who the five would be: G-Mamma, Maisie Halliday, Alfie, her mother . . . and Janey herself when she went to rescue them. The Sun King believed i
n Janey’s made-up brain-swap procedure so fully that the brains of her own nearest and dearest were about to be transplanted into the five water rats. What should she do?

  ‘. . . release them,’ Abe Rownigan was saying slowly. ‘Jane Blonde was lying. There is no brain-swap procedure. I’ll tell you the proper way to turn the rats back into humans if you let those people go.’

  ‘No!’ screamed Janey. Surely her dad wasn’t really going to give up his precious secret . . .

  She had to get to him first. He was still the Sun King’s most valuable hostage. If they had him, they had the secret. Without him, they were nothing. But where was he?

  She leaned in closer to the SPI-Pod. ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Give me a clue.’ Paulette was now trying to persuade Abe Rownigan and Solomon Brown to come back on the team with Copernicus, the former government official who had turned bad and already tried once to destroy SPI. So Copernicus had masterminded this mission as well . . .

  ‘Solomon Brown will never trust Copernicus again, Paulette,’ said Abe. ‘That’s just not an option.’

  ‘But you can make up your own mind, yes? No, Claude, not now please!’

  Claude, mouthed Janey. Who on earth was Claude? Ha! Alfie had got it wrong. It wasn’t Clod the Cook. It was Claude, the French chef. Abe was at Paulette’s house!

  It was just along the Quarry Road, so Janey took to her Fleet-feet and sprinted up the chalk-and-gravel driveway until it widened into a tarmac road. The black surface flew beneath her feet as she sped towards the high hedge in front of Paulette’s house.

  Instinctively Janey knew where Abe was being held, and she crept through the bushes to the swimming pool. Just left of the pool was a crane holding a concrete disk a couple of metres above the ground. The bowed black outline of a man blocked Janey’s view of the water, but she could make out Paulette on the other side, dangling her petite feet in the water as if she was enjoying a day out. Every so often she would kick out with a dainty toe and watch the water arcing up into the air.