Tish stared at her for a moment, her frank green eyes taking in Janey’s snowsuit and advanced Girl-gauntlet. After a few seconds, she obviously decided that Janey was up to the job, because she grinned and said, ‘OK, Blonde. I’ll show you how we programme the SPUDs. We keep them all in a room out in the labyrinth, out of the way of the real ones, who try to tear them apart. Of course it doesn’t hurt them, but it makes a mess.’
Janey went over to where Tish was standing with the SPUD she’d thought was attacking her earlier. It blinked at her twice, and looked so innocent and sweet that Janey wanted to tuck it up in bed instead of sending it off into the icy Antarctic waters. Suddenly Tish got hold of the SPUD’s beak and wrenched the two sections apart. Janey flinched as Tish talked her through the programming procedure.
‘First, retinal scan to the back of the mouth – we have to be sure that it’s one of us who’s programming Nik.’ Ramming one eye against the SPUD’s open beak, Tish stared hard for a count of three and was rewarded with something that looked very strange – the whole of the top of Nik’s head flipping backwards to reveal a small screen, a tiny keypad and a miniature joystick like Janey had seen on Alfie’s computer games.
‘Next,’ said Tish, seizing the joystick between her thumb and index finger, ‘select location. Look.’
Janey peered over her shoulder at the tiny screen. Shadowy images of icebergs, seals and the odd large, dark shape that she couldn’t identify moved around the screen as Tish manipulated the joystick, until suddenly she found what she was looking for.
‘Aha! There they are. Twenty-one . . . no, twenty-two seals that seem to have just moved home for no good reason. So this is our location. Now for the third step,’ and she clicked on the coordinates that had appeared in a grid over the chosen site. ‘And one last thing: don’t forget to close his head. You get icy water in the mechanisms and they never work again.’
With that she flopped the top of Nik’s head back into position, made sure it clicked into place and then stood well back. The SPUD swayed from side to side a couple of times and then waddled towards the door. ‘They’re preprogrammed so the doors open automatically,’ said Tish and, sure enough, the ice door slid to one side as the SPUD approached. ‘See you later, SPUD Nik!’ yelled Tish.
Janey turned to her, puzzled. ‘Don’t you go with him? I mean, it?’
‘Not if I can help it.’ Tish rolled her green eyes. ‘Do you know how cold that water is?’
‘But we already know that new iceberg of seals may be suspicious – turning up out of the blue like that, just when I’ve seen a load of them in action in Scotland,’ said Janey. ‘If we wait for SPUD Nik to get back with information, it might be too late.’
‘Blonde,’ said Tish with a sigh, ‘there are procedures, which you’d know about if you’d actually been chosen to come. If you don’t like it, you could just go home. And take your freaky cat with you.’ She turned on her heel and, with a flick of her auburn curls, strode out of the room.
Trouble jumped down from his high perch up on the refrigeration shelves, looking highly offended. His tail-scarf had unravelled itself and then frozen solid, so it stood out like a flag in the breeze, and icicles had formed along his whiskers. ‘She’s right, Twubs, you do look a bit weird. And you’re freezing. I think you have to keep moving while you’re here.’
She tucked her quivering cat under her arm and thought about what she had just said. Keep moving. Yes. It was a bit of a dilemma. Either she followed procedures, and just waited for SPUD Nik to relay information back about the new seals, or she followed her instincts, which were telling her loud and clear that she already knew what those seals signified. If they were Navy Seals, then Copernicus’s spies might be swarming all over the iceberg. It could even be how the killers were getting to and from her father’s Spylab. She ought to BE there. But following her instincts could well get her into trouble or, even worse, sent home.
Janey dithered for about thirty seconds, then set Trouble down on the workbench. ‘I’m going after Nik,’ she told him. ‘You stay here, keep warm and come after me if I’m not back in two hours.’
Trouble’s emerald eyes stared right into hers, seemingly understanding every word. Blonde pulled her hood tight around her face, adjusted her fur-lined Ultra-gogs and headed for the door. It stayed firmly shut. ‘Argh! It doesn’t recognize me yet.’
She stared at the ice before her for a couple of seconds and then smiled. ‘There’s more than one way through a door.’ She pointed the Zinc or Zwim cream at the spot that Tish had just touched, and squirted. As soon as the ointment touched the ice it started to smoke, and before a minute had passed there was a hole the size of Janey’s fist. She put her Girl-gauntlet into the gap, gripped the edge of the ice and pushed with all her might. To her great relief, the door slid open. She didn’t have much time to catch up with SPUD Nik, so she grabbed her SPIFFInG and earmuffs – the only SPI-buys lying around on the counter nearby – and sprinted after him. With her Fleet-feet pounding against the floor, she raced along the labyrinthine corridors and skidded through the exterior door a couple of steps behind the SPUD.
‘Hey, Nik, wait for me!’ she yelled, but the wind captured her words instantly and sent them spinning away into air that was so cold it burned. The penguin robot was waddling determinedly into the darkness, so Janey ploughed on, forcing her way through the wind. She bumped into Nik’s back just as he entered a crowd of real live king penguins.
They were quite terrifying close up, particularly as many of them came up to Janey’s shoulder, and they shoved and tussled and pecked at each other in a slightly disturbing way. Hadn’t her dad said that the penguins were acting peculiarly? She skulked along behind Nik, keeping close even when a couple glared at the SPUD suspiciously, until they had passed beyond all the live penguins and were travelling, just the two of them, across the ice cap.
It was only when they reached an edge that Janey suddenly took in the full enormity of what she was doing. This was the Antarctic. She’d come out here on her own, against orders. And all that stood between her and the icy black water was a robot penguin who was programmed to leap straight into it and seek out a random group of seals that could be innocent or could contain enemy spies. She looked back quickly, but could see nothing but whiteness. In the distance she thought she could hear a faint sound, almost like dogs barking, but it could just as well have been the wind playing tricks on her. Well, she’d gone this far, so she had better stick with Nik, who was now tottering towards the icy precipice. Trying to run into the wind, Janey leaped just as Nik’s flippers hit fresh air and his whole body tipped forward into the chill waters. ‘Wait for me!’
As Nik hit the surface, Janey straddled his back with just her feet trailing in the water. Even through her thick boots, the cold penetrated to her bones in seconds. She could hardly bear to think how cold she was going to be when Nik dived to gather his information . . .
uneasily around the tunnel’s circumference. Janey gasped as a wave of hideous nausea swept over her. For the seals were guiding something to the edge of the hole. It was simply – and Janey knew there was no other way to describe it – a monster.
prawn cocktail
At first Janey thought the creature was a snake – an immense snake with the girth of a train, nosing its way forward slowly, coaxed on by the rough barks of the seals – but when she could bring herself to look again she could see that it was more like a gargantuan brown maggot. It moved by raising its middle up in a hump and then pushing its head forward, although whether it was its head or its tail was impossible to tell as it had no eyes, no face. The seals were having to lead it because it was blind.
‘It’s like a worm,’ said Janey, horrified. ‘One of those ice-worms Dad was talking about. But much, much bigger. Nik, take pictures!’ She didn’t actually know whether the SPUD could follow spoken instructions or do anything it hadn’t been programmed to do, but it was worth a try.
The worm wriggled to the edge of
the tunnel. Water pooled all around it and, as the creature nosed its way into the tube, Janey realized why. There was a deep watery rut where the worm had just slithered across the ice. And suddenly it became very clear what the purpose of the worm was. Janey edged as close as she dared to the edge of the tunnel, making sure she stayed hidden by Nik, whom the seals didn’t suspect. She leaned over and peered into the darkness. This wasn’t just a hole. It had no bottom. It was a tunnel – a vast, vertical tunnel. And the ice-worm was making it, burrowing into the ice and creating a bore-hole the size of its vast body with the ice-melting substance secreted from its skin.
Janey retched as the worm slithered into the hole. It was one of the most revolting things she’d ever seen, and she really wanted to turn Nik around, jump on his back, and find her way straight back to the Spylab. But something made her stop, something she noticed just as the tail end of the worm had disappeared from sight down the tunnel. All around the edge of it were familiar black shiny marks . . .
‘Blonde!’ said a voice in her ear, startling her so much that Janey fell forward and knocked SPUD Nik over.
‘Don’t let them see us. I hate seals, and they hate me!’ hissed the red-haired spylet, and together they manoeuvred the SPUD back on to his penguin feet.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Janey. She had already worked out by their jerky movements – so like the bear at SPIcamp – that the seals were robotic, but she didn’t really feel like telling Tish. Let her carry on being scared.
‘Working in pairs, like we’re supposed to!’ Tish shook her head impatiently. ‘Anything could have happened. That worm thing might have eaten you! Luckily I knew you were a bit renegade so I followed you. And man, that water is cold.’
They glared at each other for a moment, then turned back to look at the tunnel. Steam was rising eerily from its depths. ‘I don’t think it could eat me – it hasn’t got a mouth. But look, it’s blazing a tunnel through the ice.’
‘What for?’ whispered Tish.
Janey shrugged. That part was still a mystery, like the black marks around the rim. ‘We have to go down there,’ she said.
‘No way!’ squeaked Tish. ‘Me and mineshafts do not go together. Besides, it’s a vertical drop. And it isn’t part of our brief!’
‘We have to.’
‘Do not.’
‘We do.’
‘Not.’
Janey sighed. Nothing was going to stop her getting inside that tunnel, but all this chit-chat was holding her up. Suddenly she thought of something. ‘When my dad rescued you from the mineshaft when you were little,’ she whispered, ‘how did he do it?’
Crouched down behind SPUD Nik, Tish scratched a rough sketch in the ice. ‘The mine went straight down like that tunnel, with Sinerlesse goons stationed all around the top,’ she explained. She dug a little hole to the left of the mine. ‘Your dad started here and tunnelled down to me at an angle to the main tunnel. Popped out right over my head, grabbed me and scooted back to the surface before they even realized.’
‘Brilliant!’ said Janey. ‘Then that’s what we’re going to do.’
‘Huh? What’s this “we”, Blonde?’ Tish folded her arms crossly.
‘Happy to do it on my own.’ Janey glared back at her, equally stubborn.
Suddenly Tish grinned. ‘Sometimes, Blonde, I like your style. OK then, if you’re going to be all pigheaded about it, I’ll watch out for you. I don’t mind standing at the top of your tunnel, if you ever manage to make one . . . And I can send a SuSPInder line down for you if you get stuck.’
Janey was utterly surprised. She couldn’t work this girl out at all. Sometimes she seemed incredibly difficult, and other times she said and did the nicest things. Could she trust her not to seal up the hole behind her? Her father did, that was evident. And she’d got out of worse scrapes before. ‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘Let’s do it.’
They backed away, close to the edge of the iceberg and out of sight of the seals, and Janey unravelled her SPIFFInG so it enveloped her from head to toe. Tish had never seen one before, but Janey interrupted her questions.
‘It’s easier to show you than tell you, and we don’t have much time,’ she said.
Tish nodded and pointed at the ice at their feet. ‘OK, you need to start here. This is about as far away as your dad’s tunnel was from the mineshaft.’
Janey pushed Nik ahead of her and stationed him to one side as protection from the seals if they should happen to follow them. Then, ‘Watch this,’ she said, and opened out the laces on her SPILL-Drills. For the first time she was going to have to tunnel in at an angle, not straight down, so she dug her right foot further into the snow, leaning on Nik so that she was at forty-five degrees to the surface. ‘Press the little snowflake on my boot,’ she told Tish, who did as instructed.
Janey saw Tish’s eyes widen as she spun around in front of her once, twice, three and four times before she sped up so much that the other Spylet became just a blur of red. At rapid speed, Janey slid down into the ice, the SPIFFInG protecting her from the brain-numbing cold she knew surrounded her as she spun. Before too long the ice spinning around her gave way to water, and then earth strata, until they became interleaved with layers of lava and Janey knew from experience she would soon be hitting the Earth’s metallic core.
She was spared the heart-stopping feeling of coming to a halt at the Earth’s centre, however, as she suddenly found her feet were not making contact with anything. Fortunately this was a sign to the SPILL-Drills to end the journey, so Janey revolved ever more slowly until she finally came to a stop. Unlike the previous journeys, Janey didn’t instantly clamber backwards, up and out of the hole. There was something different about this. It felt as though her feet were waving around in a vacuum. She normally popped out upside down on to flat ground, but this time, if Tish was right, she might just launch herself feet first into the tunnel and drop like a stone to the bottom of it.
It was with a great deal of difficulty that Janey managed to turn around inside the narrow tube she and her SPILL-Drills had just created, but eventually she was able to pop her head out like a mole from a hole, still wearing the SPIFFInG as though she was wrapped in cling-film.
‘Eugh.’ She drew her head back just in time to stop it being run over by a fat pink body. Was it another ice-worm? It looked different but she’d only had a split-second glance so couldn’t really tell.
This time she eased her head out more cautiously and looked up and down. Her mouth opened in amazement, but no sound came out. This was just unimaginable.
Tish had been spot on. The tunnel was as straight as a mineshaft – Titian Ambition would have had every reason to feel nervous about it – and it was absolutely vertical. Janey was far, far below the surface, but with her Ultra-gogs tuned in she could just see a white shape lowering itself into the tube. The ice-worm.
Janey was almost at the bottom and she could see that a solid tube structure connected the iceberg to the earth below. Somewhere in the excavation, other tunnelling creatures had taken over from the worm. These were every bit as repulsive, and Janey recoiled as a hard-shelled, maggot-like body the size of a large dog scrabbled across her face. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of them, burrowing and scraping and waving their hideous antennae around, stumbling into each other as they bored through the earth, ignoring the searing lava and glowing coals of the strata just below Janey to reach ever onward, right down to the solid metallic centre of the Earth.
The ones who weren’t scratching a path through the Earth were blundering into each other on platforms anchored to the walls of the tunnel, feeding the waste material into a row of holes. They must lead to other tunnels, Janey realized, like the one she had just made herself. The weird creatures, who wouldn’t have looked out of place in a giant’s prawn cocktail, were clearing the tunnel and moving their scrap out of the way. Suddenly there was a commotion on one of the platforms opposite and Janey watched, horrified, as two of the prawn-like animals tumbl
ed sightlessly into the abyss, losing their footing as something – someone – stepped out of one of the side tunnels on to a platform. Their horrific screeches seemed to last for minutes, until finally they bubbled and stopped. The remaining creatures were now jostling around the figure that had stepped among them. Janey looked across to see who had disturbed them. And suddenly she wished she was far, far away. In fact, anywhere but here.
‘Any more nonsense and you’ll all join your friends,’ the figure screeched. ‘You’re too slow! Move, and quickly!’
Janey would have recognized the voice anywhere. It was Copernicus. Her father’s arch-enemy. Alfie’s father. For the first time since she had known him, he was not disguised by the jagged and cruel Sun King mask, nor had he made any attempt to Crystal-Clarify himself into someone else. He wasn’t even in the monstrous form that Janey had left him in when they last met, when she’d SPInamited him in G-Mamma’s Wower. No, this was Copernicus as Janey had never seen him. He was tall and rail thin, with thick steel-grey hair tied back in a knot at the nape of his neck. What horrified Janey was the livid scar that cut across his mouth and the end of his nose, splitting his upper lip into uneven halves and exposing his raw gums. Janey shuddered. No wonder he had always hidden his face away.
She stared, unable to move, as a sightless creature stumbled right across her path, then lunged for her. Suddenly Janey found her head smothered in revolting pink flesh. The SPIFFInG was being pulled off her head and she grappled for it desperately – if they punctured it, she would die in the suffocating heat.
‘Aaaargh!’ Raising her arms above her head, she pushed the creature off her with all the strength she could muster. The creature tipped, falling over her, scraping its feet along the tunnel to get a grip, and suddenly she found herself hurtling after it, out of her hiding place, and tumbling down the mysterious main tunnel. Her feet flailed helplessly as she clung on to the prawn-creature and it scrabbled to get a grip with its claws. The long laces of her SPILL-Drills melted the second they protruded from the SPIFFInG, Janey’s body wriggled in space like a fish on a line, with a boiling soup of magma below her, and the fat creature whose leg she was holding screeched and struggled to keep hold of the wall of the tunnel.
Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice Page 11