He filled a syringe with a bright orange substance, and Janey tried not to look at the size of the needle. ‘I promise you this is the only part of the Crystal Clarification Process that hurts,’ said Abe as he injected the tracer into Janey’s arm. She winced and held the side of the chair – it was definitely the worst injection she had ever, ever had, but if that was as bad as it was going to get, then there wasn’t too much to be scared of. Apart from getting stuck in Alfie’s body, or killed by Alfie’s father . . .
Janey felt a tingle spread throughout her body as the tracing solution entered every one of her cells. Then, on Abe’s instruction, she lay down on the ice bench in the middle of the room. Her father retreated behind a partition. ‘You won’t be very aware of anything when you’re completely frozen. The best thing is to try to sleep. It takes quite a long time. And then when you come to, hopefully you’ll be Alfie.’
‘Dad, I . . .’ I love you, she wanted to say, but that sounded as though she believed this was goodbye, that the process wouldn’t work. ‘I trust you,’ she said instead.
He nodded briefly, his brown eyes welling up a little, and then he stepped into a cubicle and turned down the temperature in the surgical laboratory. The coldness seeped inside Janey’s SPIsuit immediately, and she tried to stay still as a deep, jerky shivering overtook her body. Above her she could see a three-dimensional laser image of Alfie, sometimes as he looked in his SPIsuit, and sometimes just his skeleton, revolving like a chicken on a spit. Millions of red lasers spanned the ceiling in a cat’s-cradle version of Alfie, blinking and altering and shifting so that Janey’s eyes grew tired watching them. By now she had passed beyond shivering to occasional whole-body spasms, where her feet and head would remain on the table but the whole of her body in between would convulse as though she had just had thousands of volts fed through her.
‘It doesn’t hurt though,’ thought Janey dreamily. ‘Not too bad really. What am I doing here again?’
She had been warned that the brain-freeze would cause her to get confused, but it had taken such a grip that Janey couldn’t remember what she was supposed to be confused about. ‘Never mind – sleep, sleep,’ she told herself. Her breathing slowed, her body became still . . . and Janey dreamed: of happy families playing on bikes, of strange creatures swimming around her in the depths of the ocean, of Titian Ambition staring green-eyed with envy through the window – or were they just her normal eyes – and finally nothing.
Janey came to with a start. ‘What’s the time?’ she said, for no particular reason, other than that she had a pressing awareness somewhere inside her that there wasn’t much time left, that she had to get on with something. What was it exactly?
And then, slowly, she remembered. She opened her eyes. The spinning laser image above her head was still there, but it was no longer Alfie she was looking at. Instead she stared right into her own face, which tipped away so she could see her Blonde ponytail and then suddenly, horribly, the outline of her own skull. She closed her eyes again quickly. Did that mean it had worked?
‘Sit up slowly,’ said her father’s voice. ‘You’ll get dizzy if you try to move too quickly.’ Abe took her arm gently and helped her into a sitting position, his expression full of admiration. She smiled at him, feeling her lip curl into an unfamiliar shape – Alfie’s one-sided sarcastic grin – and she stared at her dad in wonder.
He nodded. ‘Yes, it worked perfectly, Janey. Or should I say – Al Halo.’
Helping her to her feet, he guided Janey to a heavily polished sheet of ice in one corner. It was staggering. Janey would not have believed what she was seeing if it hadn’t been for the feeling of her father’s arm around her shoulders; in the the reflection her father was standing protectively next to Alfie Halliday. Yes, definitely Alfie in every way, from his trainers-and-denim-silk SPIsuit with zips, through his new improved, acid-spraying Boy-battler, to his silver-rimmed Gogs covering chocolate-brown eyes and his thick chestnut hair. Janey’s hands flew to her cheeks in shock, but she thumped herself in the temple with the Boy-battler and staggered sideways against her father.
‘Steady,’ he said, holding her up. ‘You’ll get used to it. Quickly, I hope. I think it’s time we sent you on your way.’
Janey took a few deep breaths. ‘I’ll be ready soon – oh!’ It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it sounded so odd to hear Alfie’s voice come out of her mouth. ‘Just give me a moment.’
Her father stood back while she walked around the room, getting used to Alfie’s feet and his casual saunter. After about a minute she turned to face him. ‘I’m ready.’
They stepped out into the main Spylab. Trouble ran over to her immediately – clearly he wasn’t fooled by her unusual appearance. Rook and Tish were keying information into the computer and glanced up. This would be the real test. ‘Halo, we need your retinal scan,’ said Rook.
Janey looked at her father. Would the details be correct right down to the eyeballs? He nodded imperceptibly and Janey crossed over to the counter. Tish ignored her completely as she said to Abe, ‘The penguins are really jumpy at the moment, and most of the seals have left. There’s something upsetting them, that’s for sure.’
‘I have an idea what it is. I’ll go and have a look,’ said Abe. ‘All done there, Alfie?’
Having pressed her – or rather Alfie’s – eye against a tall upright camera, Halo’s retinal scan was completed, so Janey nodded and followed Abe through the labyrinth to the exterior compound. Tish was right: the penguins were skidding anxiously from one place to another, hardly able to stay upright, jumping into the water and then flinging themselves back out on to the ice. Meanwhile only two seals remained, and they were snapping at each other and any penguins who happened to get too close.
‘No time to lose,’ shouted Abe over the wind. ‘Are you ready?’
Janey gave him an awkward thumbs up, hampered by Alfie’s Boy-battler, and then laughed as she saw one of the penguins staggering towards them. ‘SPUD Nik!’
‘Take him with you,’ said her father. ‘He’s been programmed and he’ll keep us informed of what’s going on.’
Suddenly aware of what she was taking on, fear hit Janey in the stomach. She held on to her father for as long as she dared, and then stepped to the edge of the ice.
‘You first, SPUD Nik,’ she said in a sardonic, Alfie way. The SPUD tipped into the water; Abe lowered Janey in after him, and she stood on the penguin’s back like a surfer as Nik pulled away across the freezing water. This was it. She was on her way.
It took about eight minutes of SPUD-surfing to get across to the suspiciously seal-covered iceberg. For a moment Janey thought she should hide behind the penguin as she had done earlier, but she quickly realized there would be no need. Alfie was Copernicus’s son – there would be strict orders from on high that he should not be harmed. In Alfie’s body, even Jane Blonde was well protected.
She trotted quickly around the gaping tunnel to the Earth’s centre, following the slimy, half-melted tracks of the ice-worm. ‘Just as I hoped,’ she said, when she was led straight back to the labyrinth. But it was not going to be straightforward. The bearded spy and the assassination group leader were on guard duty at the exterior door. Janey took a deep breath and walked right up to them.
‘Business?’ barked the bearded man, holding a gun up to Janey’s face.
‘Duh, the big C’s son?’ she replied, staring back at him cheekily as she was sure Alfie would do.
‘Blimey, it is,’ muttered the assassination group leader. ‘Sorry, Mr . . . Al . . . um . . .’
Janey grinned. This was actually quite fun. ‘You can call me C-Junior,’ she said. ‘Are you going to let me in?’
‘Oh, sure, sure. And the . . . penguin?’
‘It’s my SPUD,’ said Janey. She had no idea whether anyone but SPI had SPUDs, but the two guards were too in awe of Alfie to stop her anyway. ‘It comes too.’
The door slid open and Janey stepped through. Once again the oppressive da
rkness made her falter and she paused for a moment to get her bearings, then remembered she had all the direction she needed right by her side. All she had to do was follow Nik, who had been programmed to get her to Alfie’s room. Within a few moments she had been led to the correct door and, remembering what Copernicus had done with Alfie’s hand, Janey removed her left glove and held her fingertip to the tiny panel to the left of the door. It ground into action immediately, but instead of feeling pleased, Janey felt incredibly anxious. So far it had been quite easy, but what was coming next would be one of the most difficult things she would ever have to do.
The door opened fully. Alfie was lying on the bed, staring with dull eyes at the ceiling. He sat up, glancing at the door, and then got to his feet as his eyes adjusted in the dim light. For the first time he saw who had just come in the door. Himself.
‘What are . . . ?’
‘I’m really, really sorry, Alfie,’ said Janey. ‘But you’ll blow everything if you walk in unexpectedly.’
And – wham! – she planted the Boy-battler firmly between his eyebrows, knocking her best friend out cold.
alfie and ralfie
Janey dragged Alfie’s inert body back to the bed, levered him under the blankets and covered him up, leaving just enough of a space at the top to stop her friend from suffocating. The room was so dark, like everything else in the light-deprived labyrinth, that if someone did manage to open the door they would assume the room was empty.
With Alfie out of the way, she was safe – or at any rate, safer – to enter the Spylab and confront Copernicus. And not just confront, but destroy him. How she was going to do that she wasn’t quite sure. Acid-spray him with Alfie’s Boy-battler? It occurred to Janey that she didn’t really know exactly how the Battler worked. She could just as easily end up squirting acid all over herself or trying to kill him with a hairnet. Was that what Alfie had said? Some kind of net anyway . . .
The best thing to do was not to think about it, she decided. Trying to look more relaxed than she felt, and with SPUD Nik swaying from side to side on his flippers, she held her finger up to the Spylab code pad and waited for the door to recognize Alfie. When nothing happened, she did it again. The door refused to budge. It was her first hurdle, and Janey wasn’t sure what to do next. If she started melting doors with Zinc or Zwim cream, like she had in the white Spylab, Copernicus would immediately be suspicious that an intruder was in his facility.
As she paced in front of the door, however, she spotted something that Alfie’s door hadn’t had – a code keypad. Of course! she thought. Only Alfie can get in his room, but anyone with the right fingerprint and code can come in here.
Pushing up her sleeves, she stared more intently at the little image on the LCD screen. ‘Look, Nik, it’s you,’ she said, pointing out the picture of the king penguin that was blinking on and off on the display. The blinking was getting more rapid, she noticed. The keypad would probably be on a timer – any delay and she’d be locked out permanently, alarms would go off and she might as well be marauding up and down the corridors screaming, ‘Jane Blonde is here!’
‘Concentrate, Blonde,’ she told herself. The penguin was flashing so rapidly now that it was giving her a bit of a headache – maybe Alfie was prone to migraines – but she did have time to notice that to the left of the bird figure there were three dashes. ‘A three-letter word that means penguin? Short for penguin? Or . . . Or . . . I know!’
Just as the penguin was starting to flicker off and on continuously, Janey keyed in the word ‘SUN’. ‘Please be right,’ she whispered. It was. The door swept open, giving Janey a view of the whole Spylab. It was a good job she knew how vain Copernicus was, and what his other name had been. A king penguin with a three-letter word before it meant it had to be ‘sun’ for Sun King, the alter ego that Copernicus had once created.
She walked tentatively into the lab, SPUD Nik tottering along beside her. ‘Hello?’ she called in as Alfie-like a manner as possible. There was no reply. Janey pushed the button to make the door close and issued a new instruction to Alfie’s Ultra-gogs. ‘Floodlight.’
To her delight, both rims extended up her forehead, joined together into one big circle, and lit up, pouring a halogen-white light all over the lab from what now looked like a miner’s lamp on her head. ‘That’s better.’
It was very much easier to see. The Spylab, though black, was actually very similar to her father’s and G-Mamma’s, but she still took the time to walk around it methodically, trying to memorize where everything was in case the lights went out again. She approached the door behind the plasma screen with the cheery family photos on it: in her father’s lab, this was where Crystal Clarification took place. She assumed this would be the same, as Copernicus had certainly used the process before, but to her surprise when she looked into the room she could see a 3-D laser cast, like the one of Alfie that had been rotating above her when she had Crystal-Clarified. It was Copernicus, projected straight through the wall from the photograph on the other side of it. Janey paused, confused. Had Copernicus Crystal-Clarified himself into . . . himself? It didn’t make sense. There was no sign of any needles or Clarification tables – just a small round platform under the laser cast. ‘Weird,’ she said.
She remembered something else that was weird, and headed over to the immense glass tank filling up the whole of one side of the room. With her floodlight angled against the glass, Janey could see a little way through the water. The tank appeared to be completely empty.
Janey shrugged, turning away from the tank. Then as she put out her foot, Alfie’s trainer connected with something oily on the floor and she found herself skidding across the lab. Dusting herself off, she went back for a closer look. It was water from the tank, as she’d suspected, but mingled in with it was something else – something dark. Nearby was another black stripe of some shiny liquid substance. ‘Just like the bird SPIs’ suits again!’
Janey was sure of it now. A double agent was operating in their midst. It had to be Rook. He must have been up at Sol’s Lols, informing the big C’s spies. He’d gone to her house to try to persuade her that her father was in danger, not Alfie. And pretty recently he’d been in Copernicus’s black Spylab, consorting with the enemy, getting his orders. ‘So that’s how Copernicus got hold of Alfie,’ she thought. Rook had betrayed him. And by betraying Alfie, he had betrayed them all.
‘SPUD Nik, come here,’ she said to the penguin. Thankfully Alfie’s eyeball had already been registered for SPUD programming, so she wrenched open Nik’s beak, stared at the back of his mouth and waited for his head to flip open. She wasted no time keying in the S1 coordinates and speaking directly into the screen. ‘Rook was in here – the black stuff from his suit is all over the floor. Don’t trust him. I think he betrayed Alfie.’ Then she slammed home the top of Nik’s head, spun him around and sent him waddling back to her father’s Spylab.
She wasn’t a moment too soon. As she watched the yellow-eyed bird lumber out of sight, a figure appeared in the open doorway. For a moment Janey’s heart dropped to the bottom of her boots – Copernicus had caught her, red-handed, snooping around in his Spylab! But then she looked at her boots and noticed they were, in fact, trainers. Alfie’s trainers. He wouldn’t suspect anything at all.
‘Better for a little sleep?’ As Copernicus walked over to her, Janey had to prevent herself from recoiling at the sight of his evil face and his nasty gimlet eyes.
How would Alfie answer? ‘I s’pose,’ she ventured.
‘Good,’ said her arch-enemy, turning his back on her to study something on the computer screen. ‘Hopefully you’ll be less sluggish at the computer. Come and help me out here. Find out how aeronauticals are doing.’
Janey drew in beside him at the computer, the closeness to him nearly making her shudder. What did he want from her? Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She couldn’t destroy him just yet – she wasn’t prepared. But maybe the computer would tell them something significant. ‘I . . .
I don’t know . . .’
‘Suns and solar systems, boy, I’m going to have to get that brain-wiper checked out! It’s not meant to make you stop functioning altogether. Remember what I told you the other day,’ said Copernicus with a weary sigh. ‘Password first, then into Departments, Aeronauticals, Update.’
Janey tapped in the words as instructed with her free left hand, hoping desperately that the password was ‘SUN’ again. It was. A drop-down menu led her into Departments and then Aeronauticals, and then she clung on to the edge of the countertop for a moment as the Update command brought up an image she could hardly believe.
Copernicus was building a rocket. Or rather, he had built a rocket. As high as a four-storey building, it had swarms of technicians tinkering with it from a series of platforms encircling it. That was why he needed aeronautical engineers . . .
‘Focus on the door,’ snapped Copernicus.
Janey jumped. She’d been so engrossed in the pictures before her that she’d almost forgotten where she was. ‘Door,’ she said, nodding, pulling down menus as fast as she could.
‘No, use the mouse!’ Copernicus was getting ever more irritated. Why doesn’t he just do it himself? thought Janey.
‘Would it be quicker if you did it?’ she said, relieved to hear Alfie’s voice coming out from between her lips.
It was clearly the wrong thing to say. ‘Don’t get smart with me, boy,’ snarled Copernicus. ‘Just pan over to the door.’
He bent past her, pointing to the space at the bottom of the rocket that was meant to be the door, so that Janey had to crane her neck to see past him. His thick steely ponytail looked like a judge’s wig from the back, and Janey was just about to allow herself a small smile when she remembered something. She stole another glance at the back of Copernicus’s neck. There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all.
Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice Page 13