‘I should just twist your stupid Blonde head off your skinny shoulders,’ rasped a hideous voice from deep within the vile creature. Janey hardly dared to look, remembering only too well what had happened to Alfie and her when they’d Satispied together. ‘You’ve caused me so much aggravation, Spylet. Just like your father.’
She turned her head slowly, and very nearly threw up. The Satispy had ravaged Copernicus’s body, but then he must have tried to strengthen himself by using the Wower. It had magnified all his most monstrous elements and now he hung, half-person, half-squid, from the mirrored wall of the Wower. The Abe-Clarification had been pared away on the Satispy journey, exposing raw sinew and gore under a grossly enlarged skull, the jaw held on only by the ropes of tendon that moved, snake-like, as Copernicus snarled demonically. Trouble’s deep scratch on top of appallingly singed skin had opened a disgusting deep maw in the back of his neck, almost as if he had ripped open a second mouth. And instead of the damaged, weakened legs of Copernicus or the long, lean arms of Abe Rownigan, there was now a writhing mass of four, five, six or more slithering, reaching, murderous limbs, neither arm nor leg, human nor creature. One of these had a tight grip around Janey’s neck, and she closed her eyes against the stink and sight of the slime that oozed venomously over his entire body.
‘You can’t stop me, little Spylet,’ seethed Copernicus, the words grating bubbling and sucking through mucus. ‘You and your father are not going to get in my way again.’
‘I think I just did!’ Janey squeaked, hoping she sounded braver than she was feeling. Come back now, she begged silently. Come back now . . . She strained to hear the arrival of the SPIral staircase, and help, but the only sounds were the rumbling, slimy escape of bubbles from the atrocity that was Copernicus’s mouth and her own short, jerky breathing.
‘An interruption only.’ The grip around her neck tightened, and suddenly Janey found that she was pinioned at the ankles as well.
‘Well, go on then, kill me.’ Waiting for death was harder than inviting it, she decided. At least if it came quickly, she wouldn’t have to witness the demise of any of her friends or her family.
The hideous baggy squid head rocked from side to side before her. ‘Unfortunately I still need you. Otherwise nothing would give me greater pleasure.’
‘Need me for what?’ Nothing, no matter what he envisaged, would tempt her to do anything Copernicus said, but any information about his plans might help her to thwart them. ‘You know how to do the cloning. You’ve mastered life creation, immortality and replication. What else can you want on top of that?’
At this, Copernicus threw back his monstrous head and emitted a horrible laugh, and Janey flinched at the sight of the inside of his throat pulsating and twitching. ‘I’m ready to claim my rightful place as the Sun King, ruler of the planets.’
‘What . . . how? You can’t rule the Earth!’
‘No? Well, perhaps you are right. Wait and see . . .’ And again the vile giant squid with the half-human body squelched with bilious laughter. ‘Unfortunately I can do nothing without a human body. So I will take yours.’
‘No!’ screamed Janey, squirming to try to evade the ever tightening grasp. ‘You can’t have my body! I’ll never obey you.’
‘You have no choice,’ he rasped, twisting his tentacles cruelly.
Just at that moment, to her joy and relief, the Wower door opened, and the faces of the Hallidays appeared, one above the other. ‘What are you hollering . . . oh my word,’ said Alfie. The two of them stared in revulsion at the monster clutching Janey by the throat. ‘That’s not . . . ?’
‘Son,’ said Copernicus, his voice even more nauseating as a note of affection crept in.
‘No way.’ Alfie shook his head vigorously, stepping back on to his mother’s foot. ‘I didn’t like you when you were actually semi-human. Now you’re just . . . just . . .’ His skin turned pale and his eyes hardened. ‘Put Janey down.’
Copernicus paused. ‘That is for you to decide, son,’ he hissed at length. ‘I can put her down, or I can kill her. It’s your choice.’
‘Really? That’s a hard one. Put her down.’ Alfie made no attempt to keep his disgust and hatred from dripping through his words.
There was a long silence, and then the half-mouth of Copernicus twisted in an evil version of a smile. ‘Then you come with me in her place.’
‘No!’ Alfie, Mrs Halliday and Janey all yelled out at the same time. ‘Forget it,’ said Janey. ‘Get out of here.’
Alfie was shaking, looking from Janey to the monster that was his father and back at his mother. ‘I . . . What do you mean, I come with you?’
‘You can be my right-hand man. I need that, you see, now I have . . . no . . . HANDS!’ Copernicus laughed bitterly. ‘I can still become great. Very great. Come with me, Al Halo. We can be great together.’
‘And,’ said Alfie slowly, ‘if I do, you’ll let Janey go?’
‘Believe me, it repulses me even to touch her.’ Copernicus shuddered so that Janey too was shaken from head to toe. ‘She has cost me so much. But that ends now.’
Janey winced as his tentacle-like limb squeezed around her neck so hard that a ringing started in her ears. Within seconds, however, she realized that the noise wasn’t in her head. It was an actual sound – the SPIral staircase shooting up through the Earth, this time bringing her parents to the Spylab. Her SPI:KE wouldn’t be back for a while. What would she want her to do in this situation? She thought back to her training session in the small hours of Good Friday. Was it really just a few days ago? Achilles heel, she remembered. It was almost laughable. This pustulous monster didn’t even have heels. But there was more to it than that. It wasn’t his actual heel that she needed to consider. It was his Achilles heel. His weakness. And all at once she knew exactly what that was. There might just be a way out of this.
‘You promised, Alfie,’ she said suddenly, struggling to speak with a tentacle coiled around her throat.
‘What?’
‘You promised to save us. You spat on your hand and everything. You have to do it.’ The memory flitted across Alfie’s face. He remembered that it was true, but he never could have imagined that this was the way he would have to keep his word. ‘You go with your . . . father, and I get to go free. You promised.’
Alfie was dumbstruck, looked as though he might even cry, but his mother caught the wild look in Janey’s eye and slowly nodded too. ‘I heard you promise, Halo,’ she said softly. ‘You have to. It will break my heart, but you have to.’
‘Always were sickeningly honourable, weren’t you, Maisie,’ scoffed Copernicus.
And Alfie stiffened. It was his weakness too, Janey realized: just how much he hated his father. He would do anything to stop him belittling his mother. He stepped up to the Wower door. ‘Honour is a family trait,’ Alfie said firmly. ‘Our side of the family, not yours, sicko,’ he added venomously. Then he turned to his mother and clasped an arm around her shoulders to say goodbye.
Janey noticed the grip on her neck was loosening. She reached an arm out to the wall to steady herself, then waited for Copernicus to drop her to the floor. It seemed to take forever, but finally he loosened the agonizing fleshy circlets around her neck and legs.
The second he did, she directed the laser finger of her Girl-gauntlet at the small sticky blob she had just attached to the inside of the Wower. The huge, weighty head of Copernicus couldn’t turn quickly enough to see what she was doing; in seconds, she had crouched on the floor, body-rolled out into the Spylab and slammed the Wower door shut with her feet. ‘Get back!’ she yelled, bracing her Fleet-feet against the Wower . . .
The explosion rocked the whole of the Spylab and, Janey expected, most of her house next door as well. The entire Wower cubicle rose several feet off the floor and the sides imploded with the blast. Janey was thrown back against the computer bench, her head ringing once again with the sound of SPInamite going off inside the Wower.
The Halos stared, bl
inking, at the warped Wower cubicle, then clambered to their feet.
‘Quick thinking,’ said Alfie, offering her a hand. ‘I honestly thought you meant it for a moment.’
‘As if,’ said Janey. ‘Now, are you sure you want to see this?’ Janey crossed to the misshapen lump of metal that used to be the Wower. ‘It is your dad, after all.’
‘That was some evil creature from the deep,’ said Alfie. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
Janey opened the door just as her parents stepped into the Spylab. Her father crossed to her side, and together she, Abe and Alfie peered into the Wower. There was very little left to see. Only a few coagulated lumps of flesh remained; Janey turned on the shower
spy-days and holidays
The new, top-of-the-range Wower was installed at G-Mamma’s within a day, all organized by Janey’s dad. This one had the ability to spin on its axis so that it became a horizontal room with a massage table in the middle, the Wower jets providing a powerful pounding to soothe the most rigid muscles. ‘Just install a pizza oven and it’ll be perfect,’ suggested G-Mamma.
‘That should last until the next modification. Sometimes it’s very handy being the head of a spy organization,’ he said to Janey as Jean Brown, still complaining of a nasty headache, left the dinner table for water and a couple of aspirin. Days of being spied and de-spied, Wowed and de-Wowed, and hurtled through the very centre of the globe had done very little for her migraines, although she was completely unaware of their adventures and simply thought she’d been having some odd, feverish dreams.
Janey helped herself to some more apple crumble. ‘So promise me you never intended to leave the spying world and close down Solomon’s Polificational Investigations.’
‘One day I will, I hope,’ said Abe. ‘But while there are still people like Copernicus around, I daren’t risk it.’
‘But he’s not around any more!’
‘Hopefully not,’ said Abe. ‘But don’t forget he managed to get back from the deep freeze, and nobody thought that would be possible.’
Janey nodded solemnly. ‘He’d injected himself with tracer cells.’
‘And the guards at the South Pole didn’t realize that. Stupid of me not to think of it. See, I’ll always have to keep one step ahead of him, instead of the other way round. He achieved cloning before I did, even though I was already working on it.’
Janey blushed. ‘I thought I had a twin. I believed everything they said.’
‘And why wouldn’t you?’ said her father. ‘It’s part of what makes you uniquely “you”. You’re very nice, and you can’t imagine how horrible some people can be. I wouldn’t swap you for the world.’ And he flashed his real-life movie-star grin at her.
To their relief, Jean retired to bed early in the hope that a good night’s sleep would get rid of her bad head once and for all. Abe and Janey slipped through to the Spylab for the grand unveiling of the Wower. Alfie and Mrs Halliday were bickering amiably over the crudités, and Janey was delighted to see Bert there, formally dressed in a white shirt, bow tie, jeans and a leather hat.
‘Brought you something,’ said Bert, nodding to Janey. He held out one of his enormous shovels of a hand, and there, curled up along his arm, was Trouble.
‘Twubs!’ she cried delightedly, rubbing her Spycat’s quiffed head. ‘You’re back! Thanks. Er, what about Maddy?’ she asked Bert.
‘She always was my favourite,’ said Bert. ‘I’d like to keep her at the farm, if that’s all right with you. No cloning or anything, but I might let her have the odd Wower.’ He grinned at Janey and then over her head at G-Mamma.
‘Right,’ said Janey’s SPI:KE, fumbling in a drawer, ‘and if any of your customers need silky-haired sheep, we’ll do it the old-fashioned way.’ And she brandished a set of straightening irons, last used to smooth Trouble’s fur.
‘But . . .’ Janey glanced at her father, who sported an amused expression, ‘Bert, you’re not a spy.’
At this, Abe strode over to Bert and reached for his hand. ‘I don’t know about that, Janey. I think Bert would be a very fine spy. I’ve never known anyone keep so cheerful and so quiet during such very strange times. I know you already feel you did some deals with me, but that was my doppelganger, Bert,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’m really not the same person. I’d be very honoured if you’d consider joining Solomon’s Polificational Investigations and becoming a SPI yourself. You could be my Australian agent.’
Bert beamed as he pumped Abe’s hand up and down. ‘Delighted, mate,’ he said eventually. ‘As long as it means all me sheep can baa their own note.’
‘Deal,’ agreed Abe. ‘Now, we’ll have to give you a spy name.’
‘Well, I’ll stick with Dubbo Seven, if it’s all right with you,’ said Bert, staring nonchalantly at the ceiling. ‘Save me changing the gates and everything.’
Janey laughed, along with everyone else. It was cool, she decided, having this funny family of disappearing spies, friends with different identities and a father who was the head of his own spy group. She waved off the Hallidays, said goodbye to G-Mamma and Bert as they headed off to the SPIral staircase to sort out the next sheep contract in Dubbo and then walked with her father to G-Mamma’s back door. Somehow she knew what was coming. And, somehow, she was OK with it. For now.
‘I’d better get back to headquarters and check everything’s OK, now that I’m feeling better,’ said Abe, dropping a kiss on Janey’s forehead. ‘Somehow I doubt that it is! Look after your mum for me, Blonde.’
‘I will.’ Janey threw her arms around Abe. ‘Dad,’ she added, with a little smile.
Janey leaned on the doorpost and watched him disappear off in the taxi. ‘I think that after everything that’s just happened, I might just take the train,’ he’d said with a smile. Janey agreed with him and, anyway, G-Mamma was right: it was pretty disgusting watching your family disintegrate before your eyes. But her family was made of stern stuff, and she knew her father would survive all this. They were spying stock, after all.
And meanwhile, she thought as she slid through the fireplace tunnel on her ASPIC, there was still over a week of the Easter holidays to go. She was pretty sure her mum would enjoy what she and Abe had planned: a little getaway, just for the two of them. In a cottage in Wales.
Jane Blonde: Twice the Spylet Page 16