. . . and straight into Janey’s arms. ‘Hang on, everyone!’ she yelled.
Then she grabbed the little glass bell that the Spycat always wore around his neck. The bell that was actually a SPIroscope, an amazing SPI-buy that activated a powerful and dangerous vortex, protecting only those at its centre.
The SPIroscope sprang into action with dramatic effect: the spy team was instantly lifted above the ocean in a bubble of air, while all around them chaos reigned in the awesome power of the SPIroscope. The whales were thrashing about, unable to stop themselves from being tossed around. Janey whooped with joy as whale after whale was flipped helplessly out of the water, sailing through the air and landing far, far away.
Then she saw the mutated, disfigured form of Copernicus, screeching with rage and flying through the sky, tossed up out of the ocean by Trouble’s SPI-buy, tentacles twisting and thrashing helplessly. ‘How . . . what . . . ?’ Jean Brown stared at Janey and then back at the pandemonium outside the vortex.
Janey thought quickly. ‘IMAX!’ she said. ‘We’re in the . . . er . . . land of theme parks, remember. It’s all a, um, 3D experience. Nothing to worry about at all.’
Her mother frowned and then sighed. ‘Well, honestly. That was much too lifelike for my liking. And what’s that – the parting of the Red Sea?’
They all followed her gaze, and Janey smothered a grin. Her SPI-buy had done its work particularly well: the SPIroscope had created a tunnel between two walls of water, reaching almost as far as the beach.
‘Wow. What an effect!’ Janey smiled at her mum, and moments later they were all running for the safety of the shore.
As soon as they were in the shallows Janey let go of the SPIroscope. They waded knee-deep through the water to the beach, while behind them the twin cliffs of seawater wobbled and wavered, then collapsed in on themselves, millions of gallons crashing together in a maelstrom of sand and ocean and some rather large sea creatures.
Safely out of the waves, they collapsed in a line along the sand.
‘They really should warn you when they’re going to pull that kind of stunt,’ said Janey’s mum, staring out at the ocean.
Mrs Halliday sat up and looked around. ‘There’s your proof that it’s just another display, Jean,’ she said, pointing down the beach. ‘Nobody even bothered to wake up for it.’
Janey looked at the sunbathers. It was true. Nobody had even stirred from their sleep.
‘Weird,’ said Alfie.
But one person was awake, and he was watching them now with solemn, dark eyes. It was the little boy, all alone, still clutching his knees to his chest and scratching his head occasionally.
Janey leaned across to G-Mamma. ‘He might need brain-wiping.’
‘OK, Blondelicious. I’ll check him out.’ She hauled herself to her feet and trotted over to the boy. ‘Hello! We’re going to get an ice cream. Want one?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Candy? Doughnuts?’
Again the boy shook his head.
‘Well,’ said G-Mamma, perplexed – she’d offered him all her favourite things and he’d refused – ‘is there anything you would like?’
And at that, the boy picked up a stick and drew in the sand. Janey now approached and looked closely at the drawing. It was a little circle on top of a big circle, with two tiny circles on either side of the bigger circle. ‘Potatoes?’ she asked helplessly.
The boy shook his head again sadly.
‘What’s your name?’ said Janey.
He picked up the stick again and wrote the number twelve.
‘No,’ said Janey. ‘Your name. Like my name is Janey.’
The little boy shrugged, picked up his stick again and pointed at the number twelve.
‘Well, if you get hungry, just come and ask,’ said G-Mamma, grabbing Janey’s arm and walking away. ‘No need to brain-wipe,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not going to tell anyone.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I don’t think he can speak,’ said G-Mamma.
Janey felt so sorry for the little boy that she wanted to turn straight back to him. So that was why he had simply shaken his head and drawn pictures, blinking sadly with his dark, bitter-chocolate eyes. But the rest of their party was at the umbrella, gathering their things together, and now that the sun had sunk a little and the temperature had dropped, the other sunbathers were beginning to stir. When she looked again to see whether the boy needed her help, he had disappeared. He must have left with his family, she thought. She hoped they’d look after him.
They clambered into the huge car again to make their way back to the villas, a much more subdued party than the one that had been splashing in the sea just hours before. Janey turned to Alfie. ‘How many whales did you say there were?’
Leaf spoke for him. ‘Eleven! Eleven killer whales!’ He sounded incredibly angry – and with good reason, thought Janey. Copernicus had just tried to wipe them all out in one go.
Janey turned and stared out of the window. Her Blonde instincts were turning over and over in her stomach, warning her that she had missed something important. Something obvious . . . It wasn’t simply that Copernicus had tried to kill them all. There was something else.
She couldn’t work it out now. But Jane Blonde was determined to get to the bottom of it. Soon.
r–evolution
When Jean went to bed Janey and the team gave Abe a full debrief. He peered anxiously into the camera and his face loomed up on the Spylab’s plasma screen. ‘Did Jean buy the “3D experience” story?’ he asked.
G-Mamma sniffed. ‘That woman believes anything these days. Apart from the truth. Can’t we just tell—’
‘No,’ said Abe defiantly. ‘It’s not the right time. She can know all about us when she needs to. You have to remember what a shock it will be to her. Especially finding out her daughter is Jane Blonde.’
Janey could only begin to imagine what state that particular bit of information would get Jean Brown into.
She listened respectfully as the others shared their concerns with Abe. ‘Nothing goes to plan,’ said Leaf with a sigh.
Abe shook his head. ‘So it seems. I’m sorry you all had to go through that.’
‘Eleven killer whales!’ said Leaf, angrily.
‘Ah, there’s a song in that!’ G-Mamma beamed. ‘Eleven killer wha-ales, ten hungry hippos, nine naughty nippers, eight angry gators, something something something . . . five . . . gold . . . rings . . .’
But Janey didn’t hear much after ‘ten hungry hippos’. There hadn’t been ten hippos. There had been eleven. Eleven whales, and eleven hippos. And there was something else . . .
She spoke out loud. ‘They weren’t regular killer whales. They weren’t black and white – they were grey and white. And they were far smaller than regular killer whales. Just like Helios was at Seaworld . . .’
‘What are you getting at, Blonde?’ asked Alfie.
‘Yes, tell us, Janey. What’s on your mind?’ Her father’s eyes seemed to glitter with anticipation. Janey took a deep breath.
‘The whales . . . I think they were hippos. Something’s been done to them. They’ve been sort of altered.’
As she spoke, Abe seemed to stagger backwards and slump into a chair, his mouth open and his face grey. ‘He knows,’ was all he said.
Then he shook his head and wiped a hand across his forehead, bewilderment furrowing his brow. ‘He knows about Revolution. He’s got ahead of me.’ He fumbled around with something and then said, ‘Wait for me there.’
Janey’s heart jumped. Her father was coming! On the one hand that filled her with joy, but on the other it made her very nervous – if her father was coming out of hiding, he was seriously worried.
Moments later Abe materialized next to the open French windows, various cells and body parts joining up like a complex 3D jigsaw before their very eyes. As soon as he had re-formed, he locked the French windows behind him and strode across to his team. He touched Jan
ey’s arm briefly before he turned to the others.
‘I have to tell you this in person. It’s the most awe-inspiring, and potentially the most monstrous, discovery I’ve ever made.’
Janey thought about the people looking after him at Solfari Lands – Ivan Erikssen, Magenta and the Bird family. Blackbird had already betrayed him once. Abe was right to mistrust her, to get out of the way and deliver the information to them direct.
Abe stared at his feet for a moment, then sighed. ‘Revolution. I sometimes wish these things never occurred to me. They seem to get the world into trouble.’
‘Revolution is like . . . war, isn’t it, sir?’ said Alfie. He, his mother and G-Mamma moved instinctively together, closing ranks, preparing for battle.
‘Yes. No. Not like you think.’ Abe paced distractedly. ‘This particular revolution is a little different.’
With that he took a laser pen from his pocket, projected it on to the ceiling and wrote ‘R-Evolution’ in large red letters. After a few moments the image faded, and the spies looked back at their leader, puzzled.
‘Not really Revolution. It’s R-Evolution. That’s what this process is. Rapid Evolution. Using this method – which is a long way from perfected, I should add – we can take a creature in one form and speed up the way it evolves.’
‘You make it grow up fast?’ said Tish, saying out loud what everyone else was thinking.
Abe shrugged. ‘In a manner of speaking. You make it change very quickly. In less than an hour, we can make a creature go through millions of years of evolution.’
There was silence while everyone worked out what this meant, then Alfie said, ‘So you mean that if you had a sabretooth tiger, you could turn it into a regular tiger?’
Abe nodded gravely.
G-Mamma yelped. ‘Or a mammoth into an elephant?’
‘Yes.’
Now Janey spoke. ‘And a hippo?’
Her father sighed. ‘Many people don’t realize this, but the hippo’s closest relative is the whale. That’s what their forebears might have evolved into.’
‘So Copernicus has found out about R-Evolution, stolen some hippos and changed them into killer whales?’ Janey gulped. This was bad news, on so many levels. Not only did it mean that a double agent was passing information on to Copernicus; it also meant that Copernicus had yet another means of creating armies of killer creatures . . .
Abe strode around the room, thinking aloud. ‘So. We have to track down Copernicus and stop him. I’m sure stealing a few hippos is just the beginning.’
Alfie spoke. ‘Sir, could the process be reversed? Like could you make . . . dinosaurs?’
Again Abe could only nod, the tiniest movement of his head, but his eyes were filled with horror. After a moment’s silence he managed to recover himself. He spoke quickly. ‘Alfie, you and your mum, and Leaf, track down Copernicus for me.’ He resumed his circuit of the lab. ‘Tish, G-Mamma, you can come back with me. I’m going to close down the Solfari Lands Spylab. In fact, I’m stopping all R-Evolution research. It’s too dangerous. I want you for extra security if anything turns nasty.’
‘What about me?’ asked Janey, sure that she’d have a key part to play in the next phase of the mission. But the bleak expression on her father’s face worried her.
‘Get your mother home,’ he said. ‘Make sure you’re both safe, and then wait for instructions from G-Mamma. Please, Janey.’
He said this even before Janey had started to argue, and though she longed to plead with him to let her stay in Florida and help track down Copernicus, she couldn’t find the words. The most important thing to Abe was knowing that his family was safe. So Janey squeezed his hand, then nodded.
It was time to part. Her father set the coordinates and zoomed off by Satispy, closely followed by G-Mamma and Titian Ambition. Leaf and Alfie were already involved in a hot debate about where they should start looking for Copernicus.
‘He must have a Spylab in the Everglades,’ Alfie was saying.
‘We should go to the ocean.’ Leaf crossed his arms belligerently. ‘That is where we saw him last.’
‘Right,’ said Alfie. ‘So we go to the ocean, in the middle of the night, in the pitch black, with at least eleven killer whales . . . what am I not liking about this?’
‘You are scared, I think.’
‘No, not scared,’ said Alfie slowly, as if he was talking to an idiot. ‘Wise. Sensible. Not keen to be whale food.’
‘Boys!’ snapped Mrs Halliday in her best headteacher voice. ‘Let’s argue about this later. First of all we need to get Janey and Jean back home, safe and sound, and that means you and I, Alfie, will have to go too to avoid suspicion. We’ll zap back as quickly as possible. Go and wake your mum up, Janey. It will be dawn soon.’
Janey nodded. Dawn. A new day. She wondered how she would explain to her mum that they had to leave suddenly, but that miraculously a plane would be laid on just for them, and all their transport home would be completely organized.
‘Why can’t I just tell her the truth?’ she grumbled as she vaulted through the French windows into her own bedroom. Her dad had made it sound like one day it would be possible. But when?
The sun was just peeking through the blinds as Janey pushed open her mum’s door. ‘Are you awake?’ she said softly.
She pushed the door fully open, and then her knees gave way.
Her mum wasn’t there. The bedside table was overturned and the bedclothes were tangled across the floor as though someone had dragged her mother from her bed, but that wasn’t the worst thing.
Janey looked in horror at the black tar-like writing plastered like graffiti across the far wall, over the glass door, on her mum’s dressing gown hanging on its hook – everywhere. The message said:
sky’s the limit
Once Janey had calmed down enough to tell Mrs Halliday, Alfie and Leaf what had happened, there was more arguing over where they should head first.
‘He must have taken her to the ocean,’ said Leaf. ‘It is the most obvious place.’
Alfie curled his lip. ‘He won’t have a Spylab under the ocean, duh. Way too difficult to build.’
Leaf looked at Alfie smugly. ‘He might have her in a submarine, or on a boat.’
‘Please, Leaf, Alfie,’ Janey said desperately. ‘I can’t sit here arguing.’ Janey was so tired of keeping secrets from her mum that right now she had sworn to herself she would tell her everything if – no, when – she found her.
‘Blonde is right,’ said Mrs Halliday, jumping to her feet. ‘Alfie, since you’re so sure he must be in the Everglades, you go there. Janey, you go with him. Leaf, you and I will go and check out the ocean site we were at earlier.’
The boys knew better than to argue with such authority, and within minutes they had Satispied to their respective destinations. Janey’s heart bumped around in the bottom of her chest. It didn’t matter whether her mum was trapped in the Everglades or under the ocean: in either place she would be frightened and lonely, and worried for Janey. She had to be found.
Once they had rematerialized by the river, Alfie’s eyes lit up. ‘Allow me,’ he said, leaping on to the swamp buggy and revving the engine loudly.
‘Just make it quick,’ was all Janey said as she braced herself for the ride.
And quick it was. Janey was nearly flung off into alligator-infested waters as Alfie careered across the Everglades, tracking his progress in his Ultra-gogs and shouting out landmarks to assure Janey he knew where he was going. ‘Duck under these branches. That’s right. Yep, tree shaped like an ice-cream cone – nearly there. Last bend, hold on.’
Suddenly they were at the spot at which Janey had found the hippos. She leaped on to the slippery bank, little caring whether any alligators had spotted her. Then she signalled to Alfie, shoved a SPIder in her mouth and plunged into the water.
The Ultra-gogs adjusted immediately, giving her relatively clear vision through the gloom of the water. There were a couple of alligators nearby
, but they didn’t seem at all interested in her. Janey flicked out the titanium blade from the finger of her Girl-gauntlet, just in case, and went deeper. There was no sign of a Spylab, and Janey’s spy instincts told her that her mum wasn’t anywhere near.
She touched a foot to the riverbed to turn around and head back to Alfie, and just then noticed something twinkling in the mud as a shaft of sunlight penetrated the water. Something that looked out of place on the sludgy riverbed. Janey dug it out with her blade and swam up to the surface.
Wiping it clean with her Gauntlet, Janey inspected her find. It was a mirror: a tiny round mirror on the end of a stick, rather like a lollipop. She waded quickly over to the swamp buggy and clambered aboard.
‘Alfie, I found . . . Alfie!’
Her Spylet friend was fast asleep, slumped across the rudder like a puppet whose strings had been cut. So much for looking out for her. When Janey shook him he lifted his head and peered at her with one eye. ‘’S ’ot.’
‘What?’
‘It’s hot,’ he said more clearly, stretching his arms. ‘Find anything?’
Janey showed him the little mirror. ‘Only this. Could be a clue though.’
‘It looks like one of those things a dentist would use.’ Alfie turned the mirror this way and that, looking for marks of some kind. ‘Argh!’ he cried.
A shaft of sunlight had bounced off the mirror straight into Alfie’s eyes. He twitched it out of the way, and Janey watched, fascinated, as the beam of light headed straight back up the river behind them. If anyone had been at the picnic site, they would have seen the light instantly.
‘It’s to signal with,’ said Janey excitedly. Angling the mirror carefully, she managed to direct the sunlight up against a tree, then straight into the eye of an over-curious alligator who very quickly sank out of sight.
Whipping off her PERSPIRE, she tapped in ‘signal mirror’ and waited for the information to pop up inside the cap. ‘Here we are. Safety mirrors for outdoor pursuits. Well, this is certainly outdoors. That must be it.’
Golden Spy Page 7