Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet

by Jill Marshall

  And my . . . my cat?

  spy-plane

  ‘Get the . . . What the devil is that?’ cried the Abe-clone.

  The other clones looked up. The thing above their head was too big a distraction to ignore. And anyway, it was shooting at them.

  Cries of alarm and pain crackled around the Spylab as clone after clone was shot in the eye, the shoulder, the foot by the marauding gunner flying above their heads, and pretty soon the whole assembled army was cowering under fire, crouching low to avoid the vicious pellets.

  ‘He’s got a point,’ said Bert amiably. ‘What is that?’

  As the clones clutched at each other and tried to hide from the aerial onslaught, Janey realized that none of the bullets was coming in their direction. Whoever was flying the little white plane was clearly on their side and was avoiding firing at them. She dared to look up again and her jaw dropped as it dawned on her what was swooping around above their heads. When she realized too what the bullets were, she closed her mouth very quickly.

  ‘Maddy,’ she said breathlessly, starting to laugh. ‘It’s Maddy! She’s been through the Wower! Look, that’s Trouble on her back, steering. He must have shown her what to do. Ha!’ she screamed to the heavens, watching her favourite sheep loop the loop before targeting the Abe-clone in the centre of the army and moving in for a singular and prolonged attack. ‘Not so ugly now, is she?’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ cried Bert, while G-Mamma whooped and clapped, yelling a quickly improvised rap. ‘Listen to this one, you sloppy copies!

  ‘That Maddy’s not too baddy

  She is really not too shabby

  Our favourite ugly sheep!

  The one we want to keep . . .

  Now that’s a rap!’

  ‘That’s a sheep?’ Alfie shoved at the nearest Alfie-clone, who was teetering around with his hands over his eyes, and was rewarded with a domino-fall of Alfies that tumbled against the ranks of Mrs Hallidays, who collapsed into the G-Mammas and Jeans until the whole room was toppling over in neat, serried ranks. ‘It’s more like a Spitfire.’

  ‘Hard to believe,’ said Janey with a grin.

  Maddy was magnificent. Her bald patch was a gleaming shellac pilot seat on which Trouble now perched, pulling Maddy’s elongated ears this way and that to steer her in the right direction. Her cotton-wool puff of a tail was pert and upright, sleek as a rudder, but most miraculous of all was what had happened to the matted flaps of wool that had previously hung sadly from around her bald patch. The Wower had woven them into silken, flowing wings that streamed out on either side of her, exactly like the angel Janey had taken Maddy for when she first saw her flitting gracefully across the open circle of light above the SPI-clone cone. She was indeed a winged beauty, as glossy and glowing as any cloned sheep and a million times more useful, especially with a ready supply of hard little sheep-poo pellets to fire at anyone who crossed her path.

  Maddy was making mincemeat of the Abe-clone. The number of times he had called her names, used her for his experiments and stripped her of her natural good looks clearly rankled so much that she now hated him fervently. Trouble too was no fan of the clone, and the pair of them were taking great delight in circling the tall figure, shooting at him from very close quarters and swiping at him with Maddy’s cloven hooves. Suddenly they were close enough for Trouble to attack, and with a flick he leaned forward and embedded his sabre-claw in the Abe-clone’s neck. The scream of pain was horrifying; Janey thought for a moment that Trouble must have caught a major vein, the jugular perhaps. Maybe the Abe-clone was dying!

  But the scarlet gash was at the back of the neck, not on the side. The Abe-clone wheeled around, arms flaying as he tried to unseat the flying cat and knock Maddy to the ground. ‘On your feet,’ he bellowed, raging with fury and pain. ‘My neck – again! Aargh – my neck! On your feet!’ He scurried hither and thither, pulling clones up to a standing position and smacking them viciously into line, his eyes alight with an insane fury. ‘Kill them! Kill them all – except the boy. Kill those SPIs!’

  ‘What did I ever see in that man?’ said Jean with a curl of her lip. She looked round at Abe’s prone body in the trailer beside her. ‘Or is it that man? Anyway, time to wake up now, Jean. Wake up. Wake up before the dream man kills you.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Janey started to breathe faster, looking around as the clones stumbled to their feet and recommenced their terrible advance, reaching again for their spy weapons or curling their fists, intent on killing every single one of them except, for some reason, Alfie. Her ponytail whipped from side to side as she took in the Boy-battlers about to pound into Alfie’s body to quieten but not kill him, the fearsome teeth poised to tear Mrs Halliday to shreds, the whistling SuSPInders looping towards G-Mamma’s throat, catching at her fair bubbly curls and whisking through them like a razor so that the air around her was misty with chopped hair. Janey was filled with horror, not because the clones were now licensed to kill, but because a terrible truth had just been revealed to her . . .

  ‘Alfie . . .’ she said under her breath. ‘Alfie, you have to help. Save us . . .’

  ‘Wh-what?’ Alfie turned to her, too confused to move. ‘How can I save you?’

  Janey could barely say the words. ‘The Abe-clone – moaning about his neck “again”. Wanting to save you, and you only. It isn’t a clone at all. It’s a real person, Crystal-Clarified.’

  ‘Like your dad did?’ Alfie swiped at a Mrs Halliday clone that was attacking his mother.

  ‘Like your dad did too,’ said Janey grimly. ‘Fake-Abe – he’s Copernicus.’

  a satispying result

  ‘No way.’ Alfie’s face took on the slightly green tinge that overcame him whenever his father was mentioned.

  It was not good news. The very thought of it made Janey shudder. Copernicus disguising himself as her father and creating cloned armies of minions. What on earth would he be able to do next? She assumed that this also meant that he had been able to find out her father’s every move – whatever discoveries her dad had made, it was probable that Copernicus now knew about them: the Crystal Clarification Process, through which one creature could be transformed into another; the cat’s-nine-lives secret – whoever knew about that was more or less immortal; and now replication – rooms full of creatures, farms full of them, even whole countries full of them. If nobody stopped him, he could take over the . . . the world. The only thing he hadn’t known about was how Janey had travelled to Dubbo Seven, and now he knew that too.

  ‘He’ll save you and not us – it makes sense. And now I think about it,’ gasped Janey, high-kicking a Blonde-clone and spinning round to take on another, ‘he’s been sounding very cold, very . . . you know . . . Copernicus.’

  G-Mamma leaped over to Janey’s side, punching a rapping G-Mamma-clone in the mouth and corralling another six together with her SuSPInder. ‘You reckon that’s old Copper Knickers himself? Explains a lot – particularly why your dad must have realized you were in mortal danger and whizzed himself over here.’

  Janey glanced over at her father. Colour was seeping back into his face, but he still looked kitten-weak, and not at all able to help them. The clones were all around them. For each one she felled with her karate moves or her SPI-buys, there would be another to take its place, another with the sole mission of snuffing out her life. The others were too taken up fighting off their own clones, and her parents and Bert were not able to retaliate. So far the clones hadn’t reached them, crouched in their trailer behind the front line defence of Blonde, G-Mamma and the two Halos, but it was only a matter of time before Janey and team were overwhelmed.

  ‘Alfie!’ Janey gripped his arm to get his attention

  ‘Busy here, Blonde,’ he said abruptly, elbowing a clone of himself in the sternum to avoid the swinging Boy-battler that was directed at his ear.

  ‘I know, but you’re just going to have to promise – you know we can’t win this. They’ll overpower us, there’re so many of them. And Mum and
Bert and Dad can’t even fight back. Promise you’ll stop your father doing . . . whatever it is he plans to do.’

  Alfie stopped short and looked hard at the floor for a few moments. Then he spat on his free hand and reached over to shake on it. ‘If it kills me too,’ he said seriously. ‘That’s a spy promise.’

  Janey could feel death edging nearer on an evil tide. Outnumbered, out-spied. Her only thought as the blank, terrifying faces of the clones gathered in a mighty crowd in front of them, with Copernicus screaming from the back, ‘Move on! NOW! Save the boy!’ was to say goodbye to her parents. She booted a G-Mamma-clone out of the way and turned to the trailer.

  Picking up her dad’s hand, she felt with a horrible sense of irony that his pulse was stronger now. She kissed his palm and held it to her cheek for an instant. ‘Bye, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘And I’m . . .’ She’d been about to say she was sorry, but the image of Chloe and her constant apologies filled her mind so she changed tack quickly. ‘I’m really proud to have been your daughter.’

  She ran around to hug her mother, feeling once again that some strange hard object was behind her mum’s back. ‘You’re the best mum in the world,’ said Janey, fighting back tears.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jean. ‘And I’ll make you a great breakfast just as soon as I wake up. I don’t understand it – I keep opening my eyes and it’s broad daylight.’

  Janey squeezed her mother tighter, looking up at the sun pouring through the hole in the roof. It was directly overhead, she noticed. Noon. High noon. And Jean still thought she could just wake up from this nightmare and it would all be OK. Janey’s hand brushed against the object behind her mother again, and suddenly her mouth went dry.

  She gulped. Maybe it could be OK. She had nanoseconds in which to execute a dramatic plan to save them all, but she was, after all, Jane Blonde. ‘Good at spying, chewing gum and . . . and boomerang throwing,’ she said aloud, pulling the hard shape out from between her mother and Bert.

  ‘Eh, don’t go losing that,’ he said, then looked around at the killer crowd around him. ‘Ah, what the heck. Do your worst.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Janey firmly, her heart racing with hope. ‘G-Mamma, SPInamite!’

  Her SPI:KE held off a clone with a roller-skated foot and threw the chewed sweet to Janey. ‘No blowing us up!’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s not for that.’ It was moist and stretchy. ‘Perfect,’ she said as she stuck it firmly on to the boomerang. Then, with all the volume she could muster, she yelled, ‘SPIs, keep well back!’ as she slid her USSR off her finger and on to the wad of SPInamite, so that it was anchored to the wood as if set in concrete. She pushed the diamond once, drew back her arm and flung the boomerang out across the Spylab.

  It seemed to go in slow motion, and all heads turned as it arced up and to the left, narrowly missing the noses of G-Mamma and Alfie as they watched it whump-whump-whump its way in a vast circle, over to the platform and the door leading out to the SPIral, round behind the SPI-clone and past the Spylab doorway. It could only have been moments, but it felt as if they all stood, frozen in time, for hours, until the boomerang whirled past Trouble and Maddy, who were floating near Janey, swooped down in front of the trailer and landed neatly back in Janey’s hand. The air vibrated all around them.

  ‘So hang on. You’ve whizzed the USSR right around them, and now they’re all . . . inside a force field?’ G-Mamma shrugged at Janey. ‘It’s supposed to protect us, not them.’

  ‘It has! Please have worked,’ Janey said under her breath, reaching into the trailer for her father’s fingers again. She lifted his hand up above the wooden side of the trailer, pointed it at the huge USSR force field she had created and pressed firmly on the central button of the Satispy remote control.

  ‘You’re not sending us up on that death trap of a satellite thing?’ Alfie had long distrusted the Satispy, a piece of SPI technology that allowed humans to be transported in a stream of cells up to a satellite dish in space and then be zapped down to their chosen destination in another part of the world.

  ‘Not us,’ said Janey. ‘Them.’

  There was a moment in which nothing happened, in which Janey’s stomach felt as though it was going to burst out of her insides, and the shocked faces of the clones and Copernicus within the force field turned to triumph. Several of the G-Mamma-clones gurned madly and joined hands, intending to flip a clone right at G-Mamma, and fifty sets of lips slid back to expose some vile pointed teeth.

  But the next instant the Spylab turned blue. The clones’ vacant expressions disintegrated into cellular soup as they shot off, mingling and disintegrating, towards the Satispy satellite. They had a journey through space of several thousand miles ahead of them. A deafening hum erupted from the force field, knocking the SPIs off their feet; Janey found herself sitting in the trailer on top of her father’s feet, and Maddy and Trouble tumbled from the air down on top of her. Then suddenly Alfie was cheering, laughing, and pulling at her shoulders. ‘It worked! For once the stupid thing worked!’ Not surprisingly, he hadn’t forgotten the time he and Janey had Satispied together and swapped hands and voices mid-flight.

  Suddenly Janey’s father stirred. ‘That earthquake . . . was it an earthquake? It woke me up.’

  G-Mamma whooped deliriously. ‘Earthquake? It was a Blonde-quake! Your girl just sent a kazillion bony clonies all by Satispy. Yee hah!’

  ‘Ah,’ said her father thoughtfully, blinking the sleep from his eyes. ‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea. They might all be mixed up and not very well, but you’ll just have lots of mutated clones roaming around your Spylab, G-Mamma. That’s where I travelled from when you didn’t get to me at the South Pole and I realized my messages had you racing off here, right into danger.’

  ‘No, it’ll be fine! There won’t be any clones left.’ Janey grinned confidently. ‘It’s one puzzle that nobody could work out, not even me. But I’ve just used it to our advantage. Come on, let’s get to the SPIral staircase.’

  They made their way across to the high door to the platform. As they reached the top of the stairs, Janey thought of something. ‘The South Pole? That’s where you were?’

  Her father nodded. ‘I sent you directions. Thought you’d get it: a circle around the southernmost tip on the compass. But I had to do it in a bit of a hurry as Copernicus’s goons were after me. Sorry if it wasn’t –’ he paused for breath – ‘wasn’t very clear.’

  ‘I should have known,’ said Janey, shaking her head. ‘You wouldn’t send me half a clue.’

  ‘I’ve sent you half a dad,’ her father replied wryly. ‘And a whole lot of trouble.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ said Janey with a grin. ‘Into the SPIral. We’ll go in relays. Bert, you might want to stay here . . .’

  ‘No chance,’ said the farmer with an even broader grin. ‘This is even more fun than the sheep-shearing regional finals.’

  ‘Squeeze in with me. Hallidays first, then the Browns, and then, you know, us.’ G-Mamma was eyeing Bert as if he was a piece of cake, and with a quick glance to check she wouldn’t bite or rap like her clones, Bert nodded.

  ‘I could just go and get some Lamingtons for the journey,’ he said.

  G-Mamma’s eyes bulged ‘Lamingtons? They’re not little sheep, are they? They’re food? Excellent.’

  ‘See you there,’ said Janey, and she took her eSPIdrills and the SPIFFInG from the Spylab bench. She’d make this journey on her own, back through the centre of the Earth.

  wower power

  Janey corkscrewed through the Earth at lightning speed, hardly able to take in her blurred surroundings but now recognizing the pull as she reached through the Earth’s core. She grinned as she stamped her Fleet feet to spur her on through the amazing purple steely glow at the epicentre of the planet. Definitely metal, she thought. When she arrived in G-Mamma’s garden, the SPIFFInG’s helmet was completely obscured by a grey mist made up of a fine metal fuzz, like the iron filings in her magnetic experiments
kit.

  Heaving herself out of the hole at G-Mamma’s, she wiped a clear space on the SPIFFInG helmet and smiled up at the moon. It was the dead of night here, cool and still – exactly as Janey had planned, once she’d realized that the midday sun was directly overhead in Australia. Everything seemed very quiet. She pulled the SPIFFInG off and stepped through G-Mamma’s door, being careful to keep to the edges of the SPIral steps in case the lift capsule suddenly appeared.

  A dripping sound caught her ear. ‘Ye-url,’ said Janey, pulling a face. Above her head was the hole in which the capsule would stand; right at this moment it looked like the inside of a monster’s mouth. Viscous goo stretched in great snotty stalactites from its rim, pooling in a disgusting sticky puddle around Janey’s feet and oozing out towards the garden. Janey wiped the worst of it off her soles against the skirting board, then activated her Fleet-feet jump and bounced straight into G-Mamma’s Spylab . . . where she found herself knee deep in slime. ‘Gaa, disgusting,’ she moaned, then waded over to the Wower. At least that had its door closed, so it wouldn’t have been invaded by the melted clones.

  Janey smiled to herself as she trudged past G-Mamma’s fridge, hoping that no clones had been Satispied in among the doughnuts. It had been a bit of a gamble, but it had paid off. She had used the Cinderella effect to her advantage. Knowing that cloned sheep didn’t survive beyond sundown, she had brought sunset on a little earlier than usual for the spy-clones, and they had all melted into sicky little sticky pools.

  For the first time Janey felt almost smug. She had really been rather brilliant. Not only had she demonstrated her superb boomerang skills to an admiring audience, but she had actually saved that same audience from certain death. ‘Go, Blondey! Go Blondey!’ she chanted happily as she threw open the Wower door. ‘Go . . . aargh!’

  A reptilian arm, more tentacle than human limb, suddenly gripped her by the ankle and dragged her, screaming pointlessly and unheard, into the cubicle. She had been absolutely right about all the clones, but she had forgotten one very important detail – one of them was not a clone at all. It was a Crystal-Clarified person, who would not be affected by the Cinderella effect. Copernicus.