Jane Blonde: Spies Trouble

by Jill Marshall

  ‘Stop that, Paulette,’ barked the man, the Sun King. He loomed over his daughter. ‘Concentrate on the job in hand.’

  The starlit surface of the pool was so milky with light that Janey found it hard to make things out. What she could see, however, brought a lump to her throat.

  Abe Rownigan. Solomon Brown. Boz ‘Brilliance’ Brown. Her dad was stretched like a starfish across the surface of the pool, with ropes attached to his wrists and ankles. Only his face was visible above the waterline.

  ‘Well, Abe Rownigan,’ said the Sun King, leaning over the pool, ‘we will continue the reversal process that the imbecile Jane Blonde told us. Perhaps you have been double-bluffing. Never bluff a bluffer, I say. You have been stalling us, but have you run out of time? Perhaps we need to . . . let’s say . . . persuade Jane Blonde to tell us more.’

  ‘No! I’ll tell you,’ shouted Abe, ‘if you let Solomon’s family and friends go.’

  Paulette put a finger on her chin, as if she was considering it carefully. ‘Er, non. We sink you are ze one making sings up. You do not know anysing at all. And Papa is getting impatient, aren’t you, Papa? Even if it means killing ’is own lovely son, we will find out from Jane Blonde. So I sink it is time we say bye-bye Monsieur Rownigan.’

  Two things hit Janey at once. The first was her dad’s fake name. Of course! ‘You can say that again,’ his first email had said. Abe Rownigan. Abe Rownigan. Aberownigan. Abrownigan. A Brown again! The clues had been there right from the outset.

  The second was far more sinister. The Sun King had moved away from Paulette and was making his way slowly over to the crane. Janey looked up at the concrete disk dangling from it, her heart sinking. The disk was extremely thick, impenetrable and looked to be the exact diameter of the pool. When it descended it would be like putting a very tight plug in a plughole. And trapped underneath it would be her father.

  She had to move. Perhaps she could overpower the Sun King. Tiptoeing as close as she dared, Janey looked around for something to fight with, just as the Sun King clambered into the driver’s seat and started pushing levers.

  And Janey could not stop herself from running out of the bushes and shouting out, ‘No!’

  spies and spiders

  The concrete plug swung towards Janey. She backed away from the zigzagging crane but it tracked her every move.

  ‘Finally ze small brain works!’ said Paulette, watching with delight from the other side of the pool.

  ‘How can you be related to Alfie? You’re evil!’ shouted Janey furiously, skidding out of the way.

  ‘Ah yes, well, zat is sad. I did not expect him to be so . . . good! But ’e ’as not ’ad our father’s influence.’

  ‘Janey, just run,’ shouted Abe Rownigan from the pool. ‘They won’t catch you!’

  ‘I’m not going without you!’ cried Janey.

  ‘How right you are,’ said the Sun King, surging forward with the crane. ‘We can just take your brain right now.’

  He swung the rock pendant at her, and as Janey stepped backwards to avoid it she plummeted straight into the pool. Through her Ultra-gogs, she saw a golden shape embossed on the bottom of the pool, its points reaching up the sides. It was a sun. If only Alfie had noticed it when he first came round for a swim. She surfaced quickly and swam to Abe, where she pulled desperately at a rope attached to his wrist. ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out’

  ‘Get yourself out, Janey,’ he said. ‘There isn’t time to untie me.’

  ‘No!’ Janey’s fingers scrabbled at the ties, but the wet rope slithered through her grip. Finally she managed to untie the first wrist, but it was too late. The concrete plug was being lowered towards them. It skimmed the edge of the pool with a harsh grating sound as the Sun King guided it over the hole, and then the light disappeared as the disk sank into position.

  Janey was forced under the water. Abe Rownigan, too, was pushed below the surface, still tied to the pool edge by ropes that were now trapped beneath several tons of impenetrable concrete. Janey felt for her SPIder, wishing desperately that she had thought to bring a spare. Abe’s eyes were closing, even as he turned his head to try to see what Janey was doing.

  Her long-lost father, so recently found again, was drifting away before her very eyes. The SPIder filled her lungs with oxygen and Janey swam to her father’s ankles, pointing her Girl-gauntlet at the rope. But the laser finger seemed useless underwater. Her father’s head had lolled right back in the water and his mouth was open, water glugging straight into his lungs.

  She swam round to lift up his head. If only there was some way to share the SPIder . . .

  Before it was too late, Janey sucked in a big gulp of oxygen, pulled the rubbery gum from her mouth and slid it between her father’s lips. A split second later, her father’s eyes opened. Janey pulled off her Girl-gauntlet and bit the end of the little finger. Her teeth ripped through the material and she flinched at the acrid taste. Stun-gas. She squeezed the glove, forcing all the gas into the water, where it dispersed harmlessly. Then, with a quick prayer, Janey put the glove over her father’s mouth like an oxygen mask, slid the little finger into her own mouth and breathed.

  At first only water slipped between her lips. It wasn’t working. She tried again, and this time felt a bubble of air pop into her mouth. Janey drew in a deep breath and felt a rush of exhilaration and relief as oxygen flooded into her lungs at the same time as her father looked at her with wide eyes, alert and surprised.

  Janey gave him a thumbs-up, and he returned it with his free hand. The water had made the ropes that tied him heavy, so Janey pulled out the pen nib from the index finger of her ruined Girl-gauntlet. The tiny blade glinted in her hand as she began to saw through the fibres. After a few minutes Abe was free, and the two of them bobbed about with their hair brushing against the underside of the concrete plug, still sharing the SPIder.

  Janey’s mind raced. How were they going to get out? Her mother and her dearest friends needed her to rescue them, but the concrete plug had them completely trapped. Janey looked helplessly at her dad. She could see now that when he smiled his eyes, though brown instead of blue, crinkled in exactly the same way as she remembered.

  But how come his eyes were above the water?

  Janey glanced down. The water was now below her nose. Cautiously, she spat the gauntlet finger from her mouth as her father removed the glove from his face.

  He passed the SPIder to Janey. ‘Thank you. You saved my life – again.’

  ‘I put you in danger, you mean. I’m sorry, D-Dad.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ he said gently.

  ‘I did! I held back a bit of LipSPICK, I’m so sorry. I played it every night on my ceiling because I missed you so much. The Sun King must have seen it. He must have been spying on me . . .’

  ‘So that’s how he knew I was still alive! It’s a good job I had changed my appearance so radically. I’d heard that someone calling himself the Sun King was a threat, so after I’d dealt with the Sinerlesse I went to track him down, but he was being protected by five of his top agents. When some intelligence told me that the Sun King’s spies had discovered the secret to a cat’s nine lives, I knew they were just too dangerous. I couldn’t allow that secret to escape. The Sun King insisted that he be the first to undergo the procedure. He had become obsessed with the idea of immortality. But the procedure went wrong and his face and throat were horribly damaged. That’s why he wears that sun mask and uses a voice changer. And he needs water around him always, as he needs regular bathing to stop the burning. Anyway, his spies managed to refine the process by the time I could break into their lab, so I had no choice. I Crystal-Clarified them into rats, then left you that message on the window at school.’

  ‘Scat cat, rat pack. I knew it meant that Trouble was in . . . well, Trouble. But aren’t you angry with me about the LipSPICK?’

  Abe smiled. ‘Do you know the other reason I changed my appearance and kept it a secret? I hoped it would be a way for us to be tog
ether again, as a family,’ he said, hugging Janey to him. ‘Of course I understand. You weren’t thinking, you were feeling. Like me trying to bring us all back together again. I didn’t think it through very well.’

  ‘No, it would have been brilliant. It still can be! But I knew you were still alive somewhere. I couldn’t let Mum be with someone else.’

  Her father’s eyes crumpled at the corners. ‘I underestimated your loyalty to me, Janey.’

  The water level was now halfway down the pool wall, and Janey could see the great golden sun just a metre or so beneath their feet. They were treading water easily.

  ‘The pool’s draining out. We’ll be able to stand on the bottom soon,’ said Abe, reaching out a long leg. ‘Then we can work out a way to get out of here.’

  But Janey knew that something wasn’t right. Beneath their feet, the prongs of the golden sun were twisting, and the floor of the pool was opening. The rays of the golden sun separated, rising up through the water with edges that were rapier sharp. Janey and Abe were forced back into the middle of the pool with water squelching and swirling away through the spikes under their feet. As the water started to spin like a whirlpool Janey reached out for her dad’s hand. The sun opened up like a chrysanthemum, and they hovered for one brief, dark moment over a black, bottomless chute . . .

  The water plummeted, slapping against the sides of the enormous drainpipe. Janey screamed, grappling to hang on to her father’s hand as they were sucked down the chute, twisting and tumbling through the dank, fetid air. As they fell Janey heard a loud crack in the distance. The water beneath them had made contact with the bottom of the drain. To Janey’s horror, the noise was followed by a gurgle as the water drained away. They were now free-falling on to bare stone.

  Janey felt faint with dread. No sooner had she found her father again than they were both about to be dashed against the drain floor like ice cubes in the bottom of a glass. This wasn’t like the Spylab entry cylinder, where a steadying cushion of air softened the landing. It was hopeless. Or . . . was it?

  With not a moment to spare, Janey ripped the SPIder from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth. She chomped furiously.

  The gum was loose and flexible in her mouth. Janey forced a tiny bit through her lips as they somersaulted down the tunnel like a pair of trapeze artists. Janey could blow ordinary gum into a bubble the size of her head, and she knew this was no ordinary gum. This was SPI-gum. She chewed and blew harder. She could see the ground fast approaching – they had only seconds. But the bubble was massive now and shimmered below them like an airbed. Just as the floor rose up to greet them, Janey twisted the bubble and spat it out of her mouth. It drifted to the ground, and she and her father fell on to it with an almighty smack.

  It broke their fall like a safety mattress. They catapulted off it against the slimy sides of the tunnel and bounced up and down until they finally came to a stop.

  ‘Amazing!’ said Janey. A protective bubble like this could save your life, again – and again – and again.

  ‘Good work, Blonde,’ said Abe. ‘However did you think of that?’

  Janey grinned. ‘I’m just really good at blowing bubbles.’ But something was nagging away at her. She just couldn’t put her finger on what.

  Abe jumped off the SPIder mattress as it deflated rapidly. ‘Well, these poor devils obviously didn’t have such good luck.’ He extracted a broken bone that had punctured the bubble and pointed with it to a pair of skeletons entangled on the rock floor.

  Janey shuddered. ‘Come on! We’ve got to stop the Sun King.’

  sinking the sun king

  After climbing out of a manhole a little further along Quarry Road, Janey Fleet-footed to the reservoir with her father in her slipstream, sliding along on the ASPIC. They got into the Daimler. ‘Everyone’s trapped in the garden shed,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s where the Sun King is headed. He’ll kill them.’ They had just seen how ruthless he could be.

  Abe flung the car into gear and screeched out of the reservoir car park. ‘Janey, do you know why the Sun King thinks he’s so important?’

  ‘Because he’s mad?’

  Abe laughed. ‘Well, yes, but also because the sun is the centre around which the other planets rotate.’

  ‘So he thinks he’s the centre of the universe.’

  ‘Exactly. But who was the first person to discover that the other planets moved around the sun, and not around the Earth?’

  Janey shook her head. How could this be important at a time like this?

  ‘The name of that astronomer, Janey,’ said Abe with a sigh, ‘was Copernicus.’

  ‘Copernicus?’ Janey spluttered. ‘So are you saying that you think the Sun King is actually Copernicus himself?’

  Abe nodded grimly.

  ‘So if the Sun King is actually Copernicus, that means . . . Oh blimey. Alfie’s dad is Copernicus! He is not going to like that.’

  At that moment they pulled up outside Janey’s house, dashed out of the car and raced through the garden. Janey flung open the door to the shed with a warrior-cry. ‘Oh,’ she squeaked. ‘There’s nobody here.’

  The shed was completely undisturbed. Not even the cobwebs had been moved. ‘But G-Mamma said they were all in the shed, with poor Trouble. Or maybe she said like poor Trouble.’ She racked her brains. ‘I’ve got the wrong shed! She meant the shed that Trouble got caught in – your car-wash building!’

  They sprinted back to the car. ‘You can’t fool animals, Janey,’ said Abe. ‘Trouble has known all along who I am. He was trying to reach me that night.’

  ‘That’s why he ran to the car wash! And climbed up your leg . . .’

  ‘So you’re sure that’s where they’ll be now?’

  Janey nodded swiftly. ‘Hurry, Dad!’

  Her father slammed his foot on the accelerator and they sped to Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines. Minutes later, they screeched to a halt outside the car wash.

  ‘You’d put the signs up already.’ Janey looked sadly at the banners declaring that A & J’s would be open that day. A couple of cars were already lined up on the road outside, badly in need of a clean.

  Her father shrugged. ‘I really wanted to make a go of it, Janey. It could have been the making of us.’

  ‘Instead of the death of us. Come on.’

  Janey got out of the car and strode towards the car wash, with her father close behind her. She peered through the clear plastic doors. Jean Brown was standing with her arms folded, looking annoyed and anxious at the same time, while the Halos and G-Mamma stood warily, back to back, with Trouble in the little space between their legs. Surrounding the group were five snarling water rats, guarding the entrance and exit to the car wash and snapping at anyone who dared move.

  ‘Listen here,’ said Janey’s mother, ‘give me my daughter back, and you can have the business. That’s what your little message meant, isn’t it? The picture of Janey attached to the photograph of this place. Is that why we’re all here? Just give me back my daughter!’

  Abe winced. ‘We’d better get in there. Ready?’

  ‘Not in my lifetime,’ said a demonic, robotic voice behind them. ‘Not in any of my lifetimes!’

  Janey and Abe span around. The Sun King, Copernicus himself, was poised over the controls of an enormous ambulance, his expression hidden as ever by the glinting golden mask. Paulette sat beside him, cooly inspecting her fingernails.

  ‘Be my guest,’ said Abe, waving an arm at the car wash. ‘If you flatten the place, you’ll kill the water rats, and that will make my life so much easier.’

  Copernicus laughed evilly. ‘No, that is not so. If we flatten the place, the water rats will survive. It is only the sad humans who would be squashed.’

  ‘You don’t want to do that,’ yelled Janey. ‘You want their brains! That’s why you’ve brought an ambulance with you!’

  ‘How true. Your brain must be bigger than I thought. And you escaped the Death Drop in my pool too! Fine. We’ll take your
brain first.’

  The great white vehicle advanced towards them. They were trapped between its advancing wheels and the closed door to the car wash. In one way or another, Janey owed her life to every one of the people trapped within the car-wash shed and the man standing beside her now, ready and willing to fight, but all out of options. Through the ambulance’s windscreen Janey saw Copernicus lean forward as he stepped on the accelerator.

  Janey thought back to her first visit to the car wash. It seemed like a century ago that she had stood and watched a grimy car appear so stunningly transformed before them. It was a very special car wash . . .

  Out of the side of her mouth, Janey hissed to Abe Rownigan, ‘Is there a reason that cars come out of here looking so good?’

  Abe’s eyes fixed on the monster rolling relentlessly towards them. ‘You’ve read my mind, Blonde! The button’s down to your left.’

  They couldn’t afford to wait a second longer. Janey reached out a hand to the sparkling silver button on her left and yelled at the top of her voice:

  ‘Prepare to be Wowed, everybody! One, two, THREE!’

  She slammed her fist on the button and the car wash, the biggest Wower known to SPI-dom, burst into action. As jets of water glistened around the people and creatures in the shed, Janey ran straight forward and wedged her ASPIC under the front wheel of the ambulance. Even bearing such a huge weight, the hoverboard lifted off the ground so that the wheels spun aimlessly. The engine whined like a drill as Copernicus threw the gearstick around, trying but failing to get any traction.

  ‘That won’t stop me, you foolish little girl,’ he crowed. ‘I am the centre of the universe!’

  Abe Rownigan had moved around to the power hose on the far side of the shed. Janey took a step backwards, gathered herself together and then ran like a demon. Straight up the bonnet of the ambulance she went, over Copernicus and Paulette, then over the roof in a neat Fleet-feet flip. She pounded across to a second power hose as both evil spies opened their doors. Janey had no need to signal to her father what he should do. He was already opening the hose, pointing it directly into the driver’s cabin.