Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet

by Jill Marshall

  ‘G-Mamma!’ shouted Janey suddenly. ‘There are flies all over your face!’

  At the sound of her voice, all four suddenly sprang to attention. ‘Dratted flies!’ yelled G-Mamma, swatting at her face with both hands with such ferocity that her cheeks were scarlet in seconds. ‘Shoo, fly, don’t bother me!’

  ‘Good morning, Janey! Do join us,’ said Mrs Halliday brightly, clapping her hands in a commanding fashion. ‘Sit!’

  ‘OK,’ said Janey slowly as Alfie and Chloe shuffled apart and pulled out a chair for her sit on. ‘Are you all right? You were all in a trance or something.’

  ‘Thinking,’ said Alfie, nodding seriously. ‘It’s hard when you’re as thick as G-Mamma and as pathetic as Chloe.’

  ‘Sorry, Janey,’ said Chloe, starting to cry gently at what Alfie had just said. ‘You didn’t have much breakfast. Shall I make you some more?’

  Janey shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thanks. Alfie, please don’t be mean to Chloe. Is . . . is everyone all right? G-Mamma, you were sort of weak last night. Are you OK now?’

  ‘Fine and dandy, Mandy. I mean, Jandy. Janey. Zany Janey. The main Jane with a pain . . .’ G-Mamma stopped short at a warning glance from Mrs Halliday.

  They were all looking at Janey expectantly so she pressed on. ‘Do you think Dad’s OK?’

  ‘Fine!’ they chorused.

  Janey twitched uncomfortably. It was like they were all hiding something from her. ‘You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you? Mrs H, you weren’t very happy about the sheep thing.’

  ‘The sheep thing is really rather breathtakingly brilliant, now I come to think about it,’ said Mrs Halliday decisively. It was rather an abrupt turnaround from the previous night, but Janey supposed that, in a way, she had to agree. The super-SPI pointed at Janey’s plate. ‘Eat your breakfast, Janey, if you don’t want detention.’

  ‘Detention?’ What was wrong with Mrs Halliday? She was never this strict outside of school. In fact, come to think of it, she wasn’t this strict inside school. Janey had to get her – in fact, all of them – to focus. ‘What about that message? The one you got from Dad saying I was in trouble. Do you think I am in trouble?’

  Alfie shook his head with a scathing expression. ‘What kind of trouble could you be in? We’re all here, you’re with your dad, you’ve got a new sister. So a couple of your hairs have been used in an experiment. Big hairy deal. That message was probably just a joke. Or maybe, Miss Brilliant Blonde, you didn’t interpret it properly.’

  ‘But . . . we all saw it. G-Mamma worked it out, and your mum, and we all thought it meant the same thing. Didn’t we?’

  G-Mamma stared at the ceiling, scratching her chin. ‘Hm, we-ell. What was it again? A bird, some legs, inside the puddy tummy. It probably just meant, “Don’t forget to feed the cat.’’’

  ‘With human legs?’ Janey looked around anxiously. She was always the best at interpreting her father’s clues, so she was sure she couldn’t be too far off the mark, but now the team were all staring at her, heads cocked to one side as though she were an interesting specimen in a cage and not for one moment someone who ought to be believed. ‘What would the legs mean?’

  ‘Easy,’ said G-Mamma with a click of her fingers. ‘Walk. They mean, “walk”. Get off your bony be-hind and feed the cat.’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s it,’ she said, shifting uneasily on her chair. Alfie and Chloe suddenly seemed incredibly close to her, and she was finding it all a bit sweaty.

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Mrs Halliday. ‘Oh well.’

  Oh well? What did that mean? Janey knew the tone – it was the teacher or parent tone that said: ‘What do you know? You’re just a kid!’ Mrs Halliday never treated her like that. No. There was something very odd happening: something very peculiar in the way Alfie and Chloe were closing in on her, each now pressing against an arm; something really strange about how G-Mamma was sticking out her tummy to shove the kitchen table across the floor, over the tiles towards Janey so that the table edge was digging into her own stomach, trapping her in a little chair cage between her sister, her best friend and the furniture; something very sinister in the way Mrs Halliday was shoving back her chair, shaking her head with a look of disappointment as she towered over Janey’s head, her sharp teeth looming over Janey’s forehead like a shark that was about to decapitate her. ‘Do join us, Janey. Sit!’ said the headmistress for the third time in a very short space of time . . .

  And suddenly everything fell in to place. The hair missing from her bedroom. Alfie’s stolen handkerchief. G-Mamma seeming to be in two places at once and having needles stuck in her. Even Mrs Halliday’s radical about-face in her opinions since last night. All joined together with her father’s explanation of the sheep-clones: ‘I can make a reasonable copy with a very limited amount of DNA.’

  Janey closed her eyes in horror, and as she did so she pictured yet another image – the little patch of Chloe sick on the bottom of the SPIral staircase. ‘Oh no. No, no, no. You’re not spies at all, are you? You’re not my friends. You’re not . . . oh yuck . . . Chloe, you’re not really my sister! You’re – you’re me! That’s why you disappeared that night in the Spylab. You . . . dissolved trying to get to the SPIral, like the sheep do in the field. Yuck! Double yuck! You’re all clones. My dad’s made clones of you all!’

  ‘Well, duh,’ said the Alfie copy. ‘Took you long enough, Blonde.’

  ‘Get away from me!’ Janey ducked to avoid his outstretched arms. ‘Where’s the real Alfie? What have you done with everybody? Why did my dad DO this?’

  It was Janey’s last thought as the chair legs snapped beneath her, and four clammy pairs of hands, so familiar and yet completely unknown, reached out to grab her.

  family and friends

  ‘Leave her alone!’ cried a voice from the doorway.

  Janey dodged the damp, sticky hands that were about to close on each limb and swivelled around, hoping desperately that it was Bert in the doorway. The tall figure, a black silhouette against the glaring sunshine, stepped into the room.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Abe. ‘We still need Janey to have all her spy memories, for now.’

  ‘Are you even my . . . my dad?’ Janey lay on the floor staring fearfully at the man she had thought was her father, but who seemed suddenly to be something quite different.

  He held out his hands, twinkling with Abe’s trademark smile. ‘What do you think?’

  The Alfie-clone went to help Janey sit up, but she shrugged off the hand in disgust and got to her feet. ‘You can’t be. My dad would never trick me like that, or make copies of his friends.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s strictly true, young Janey,’ said Abe, helping himself to an apple from the kitchen table. ‘Didn’t your father pretend for most of your life that he was dead? That’s a pretty big trick, if you ask me. And a mean one too. As for making copies of his friends, don’t you remember the reason Maisie Halliday has those terrible teeth? He turned her into a snow-woman! She was never quite the same again. Your father is no saint, believe me.’

  Janey seethed, her heart thumping wildly beneath her T-shirt. What he said was true, and that was partly what made her angry. The real cause of her rage, though, was that this person who looked just like her father, and acted more-or-less like her dad, was evidently an imposter. She’d been tricked. Again. ‘He had his reasons,’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘And you’ve just proved to me that you’re not my father by being so cold and uncaring. I should have known that too. You’ve been really weird since the moment I arrived.’

  ‘Well, yes, that was a bit of a surprise,’ admitted the fake Abe. ‘Arriving on your own like that. I’d planned on sending another Chloe to persuade you to come back with her, after dropping off my little clues about working on twins and being here at Dubbo Seven, but you took matters into your own hands. Initiative, Blonde. One of your better qualities.’

  ‘But we dusted the box for fingerprints, and they were defin
itely Abe’s, so you’re . . . another clone?’

  ‘Correct,’ said the Abe replica. ‘A copy. A facsimile.’

  ‘But that means . . .’ Janey thought as rapidly as she could as five flat, lifeless sets of eyes focused on her. ‘That means someone made you in the first place!’

  ‘Right again,’ he said, a slow smile spreading across his face as he witnessed Janey’s expression of horror and loathing. ‘And who do you think would have the power and the genius to do that?’

  ‘No,’ said Janey, swallowing hard. ‘Only my dad could do that, and he wouldn’t be that horrible.’

  At this the Abe copy spun around, slamming his fist against the table. ‘Your father is not the only one who could do that! He can’t do what we’ve done here. For once we’re a step ahead of him – several steps, in fact! So don’t go on about your precious father as if he’s the only genius around. Think, Blonde. Who else?’

  And as she saw the mocking victory in the clones’ expressions, Janey’s heart sank. ‘Not . . . not Copernicus. He’s been kept out of harm’s way!’

  ‘Yes,’ hissed the Abe copy. ‘In a deep freeze far away – isn’t that right, Blonde? Wrong! As soon as he became involved in the power struggle with your father, Copernicus injected himself with tracer cells. His aides were able to track him down and thaw him out. And unfortunately for you, your father hadn’t been too careful about the freezing process. He left his own DNA tracks all over Copernicus. And so –’ He turned in the doorway, hands aloft, looking so like Abraham Rownigan, Janey’s father, that she felt a familiar buzz across the bridge of her nose. Tears were on the way – ‘here I am.’

  Five sets of eyes were still fixed on Janey. She knew that she needed to think quickly, make a plan and find her friends, but somehow her brain felt foggy and soup-like. It was all too much to take in, and she knew that she wasn’t at the very bottom of it even now. ‘You,’ she said hoarsely, pointing at Chloe. ‘You’re not even real. I don’t have a twin at all, do I?’

  Her own grey eyes returned her gaze sorrowfully. ‘Sorry, Janey. No, you don’t. I was made from that hair you stuck on your SPI-buys box.’

  Janey felt sick. She’d believed it all and dreamed of the happy life they would all share here at Dubbo Seven. Even that had been a sign – the logo that branded the sheep farm from above the gates: Dubbo in a spiky golden crown over the number seven, exactly as the Sun King, Copernicus, had marked his presence at Sunny Jim’s Swims. She should have seen it, should have trusted the instincts that were telling her something was not right; that her father, the setup here, his strange sheep and the way he treated everybody – it just wasn’t right.

  And suddenly another emotion started to bubble under the fear that swirled through her chest. Relief. The whole story about her father giving up Solomon’s Polificational Investigations had been simply a ploy – a way to get her over to Australia and the Spylab. Her father had no intention of giving up SPI, and Janey – Jane Blonde – was not giving up either.

  ‘Time you stopped playing, Blonde,’ drawled the Alfie copy.

  ‘You shut up!’ Janey could stand the real Alfie being a bit snarky – it was just his manner, and his way of being funny – but the Alfie-clone was a nastier version. G-Mamma was a crazier, more cartoonish version of herself, and Mrs Halliday much stricter and more headmistress-like. The SPI-clone had taken each of their characteristics and made them into a caricature of themselves, through the DNA from Alfie’s handkerchief, the cell-sucking syringe that had been sunk into G-Mamma’s behind and whatever method of DNA-extraction they’d used on Mrs Halliday.

  ‘Where are they?’ Janey drew herself up to her full height to make herself look as powerful as possible. It wasn’t easy in cut-offs and a top with a puppy on it. If only she was in her SPIsuit. ‘Where are the real Alfie and his mum, and G-Mamma? If you’ve hurt them, I’ll . . .’

  ‘You’ll do nothing,’ spat the Abe-clone, grabbing her arm roughly. ‘You’re helpless against us, Brown. These may be weak clones, made from the DNA we were able to steal, but now I’ve got the original bodies I can make as many copies as I like. We just need to add a couple more to the collection so as not to cause any suspicion anywhere, and then the SPI-clone will be put to far better use than sending out sheep. If we so choose, there will be whole armies of spies, cloned to the Sun King’s specifications, ready to fight your father if he ever dares to come out of the shadows and confront us.’

  ‘He will!’ screamed Janey. ‘You know he will!’

  The Abe-clone drew in a deep breath. ‘I doubt it,’ he said at length, ‘because he’ll never know. Who’s going to tell him? You? I don’t think so. You won’t be able to remember a thing. You’ll barely be functioning, in fact. Just a steady supply of DNA from a super-SPI gene pool.’

  Janey racked her brains trying to think, her eyes darting this way and that as she looked frantically for a way out. She had to stay alive – and keep her spy mentality – to be able to fight them off. She would have to stall for time.

  ‘So the . . . the long-haired sheep, and the farm and all that. You don’t need any of it? You just used Bert!’ Groping behind her on the table, she managed to pick up a jammy butter-knife and stick it in her back pocket.

  The clone team grouped themselves around the Abe-clone; it was a formidable if slightly grey and greasy group of spies that faced her. Fake-Abe shook his head. ‘On the contrary. The plans that Copernicus has are – shall we say – expensive. And his government funding seems to have run out!’ The gaggle of clones laughed moronically. ‘These scientific breakthroughs will provide money. Lots of it, and quickly. This is just the beginning. Imagine what riches Copernicus will have when he dominates the world’s clothing industry with his super-sheep, the milk industry with his super-cows . . .’

  ‘He’s mad.’ Janey got a careful grip on the knife in her pocket.

  ‘The world’s his oyster, you mean,’ said the Abe-clone. ‘And it doesn’t stop there!’

  Janey wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she was sufficiently sure that the Abe-clone needed whatever information he thought she had to enable her to keep playing for time. Whatever insane plans for world domination Copernicus might be harbouring, he would not triumph. She could stop this, somehow. Dropping down low, she whipped the knife around in front of her. ‘Stay back!’ she cried, pointing the strawberry-jammy knife tip at each of the clones in turn.

  Abe smiled slowly. ‘Kill them, Janey. I dare you. Kill them all, if you can, with that blunt piece of metal.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Alfie-clone with a nasty smile. ‘A sticky, buttery knife. What are you going to do, kill us scone dead?’

  The clones threw their heads back and howled with laughter, except Abe who simply looked pityingly at Janey. ‘Do your worst, Blonde. There will always be more.’ At that, he let out a slow whistle, and to Janey’s horror another set of clones instantly appeared at the back door. ‘Now, there’s just one little piece of information I need out of you. Do sit down.’

  Janey looked around. There was no way out – the two G-Mamma clones had moved around to block the kitchen door, and there were cloned spies all around her, looking so horribly like her friends, even like herself, but filled with poison in a way that her team would never be. She still wasn’t about to give in, however. ‘You won’t get anything out of me,’ she said, steadying her voice as much as she could. ‘I’m a true Spylet. I won’t tell.’

  The Abe-clone sighed. ‘All right, Janey. If you insist on doing this the hard way, so be it. Chloe One,’ he said to the Janey-clone behind him. ‘Get her, now.’

  Janey jumped, ready to tackle her mirror image, but to her surprise the clone, Chloe One, turned and walked out of the house. What was she going to do to her? Perhaps she was getting some instrument of torture to make her talk. Janey paced nervously, circling the kitchen table and making hopeless jabs at the clones with her silly knife.

  Abe checked his watch. ‘You others had better hide.’


  The clones nodded robotically and melted away through the doorways, out on to the veranda, into the large walk-in pantry or along the hall to the bedrooms. Before too long there were just the Abe-clone and Janey left in the room, and he looked up at her with a strange expression, almost of amusement. ‘You will talk, my dear,’ he said eventually. ‘If you want to stop us from getting the full set of your family’s super-SPI genes.’ And he started to laugh, just as Janey heard Chloe’s thin voice outside.

  ‘Close your eyes and count to ten and then go inside. I’m going the other way.’

  ‘This had better be worth it, Janey,’ said a familiar voice, and Janey’s heart sank.

  The full set. All the genes Copernicus needed to make a spy super-race, cloning as many as he could possibly need to run his empire. She now knew what he’d meant, and who Chloe had to ‘get’. It wasn’t Janey. It was the one person in the whole wide world she cared about as much as her father, and that was why she would talk.

  ‘Ten!’ she heard the voice say outside, and tears filled her eyes as Jean Brown, tired and confused, stepped off the veranda and in through the back door.

  a dressing down

  Janey’s mum swivelled on her thick, sensible heels, looking from Janey to the Abe-clone and back again.

  ‘Abe!’ she said, trying to sound casual but hardly able to disguise the pleased note in her voice. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since they had established Abe ’n’ Jean’s Clean Machines and shared a few spag bols and a bit of kite-flying, and even though she professed to be fine about it, Janey knew that her mother thought about him often. What Jean didn’t know was that she was actually thinking about her own husband, Janey’s father.