Jane Blonde: Spy in the Sky

by Jill Marshall

  The blue eyes studied her, puzzled, then sharpened for a moment. With a furry finger he drew in the dust on the back of a nearby shelf. B. O. Z.

  ‘Prove it,’ said Janey.

  Again that puzzled slant of the head, then a brief blast of brilliant blue as he held up his hand, now almost completely covered with hair, but with half a thumb missing, where the original Clarification had damaged him. Janey felt a sob catch in the back of her throat. It was him, even if there was very little left of the old Boz, her lovely father and wonderful SPI leader.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re alive. So you . . . you must have Satispied out of Sunny Jim’s to Solfari Lands,’ said Janey softly.

  Boz scratched his face for a few moments, then held out his palm and clumsily pressed the middle of it with a thick finger. The Satispy remote control. And then he’d hitched himself a ride on an elephant, too weak to go under his own steam or dare to Satispy again, but knowing there was one last place he had to get to.

  ‘So all this – all the Spylabs being blown up – that was you. Your orders. Because you didn’t like what you’d created.’ She didn’t need to wait for the nod that followed the long pause to know that she’d hit on the truth. ‘You . . . That night you told me I’d had a dream, you got caught out! Jamie . . . Jamie was trying to use your devolution machine . . . and you stopped him, and you fell. You devolved by accident!’

  Nodding slowly, Boz tightened his grip on Jamie and the boy cried out, whether in fear or in pain Janey wasn’t sure. ‘Dad,’ she said gently, waiting anxiously for the blue eyes to clear again, to reveal some element of the human still inside him. Then more loudly, ‘DAD!’ The eyes focused, although the Neanderthal head was still rolling on the thick neck.

  ‘You have to let him go,’ she said, holding her arms out for Jamie. ‘Let go . . . please.’

  But just as it looked as though Boz was about to release his grip on James, there was a scuffling sound from under the entry tubes, and G-Mamma’s voice echoed down the room. ‘Blonde, are you in here?’

  ‘Here!’ shouted Janey.

  ‘You have to get out. I can hear the bomb. It’s rigged to blow, but I can’t see the timer.’

  Suddenly a hairy hand tapped Janey’s arm and her father held up ten fingers.

  ‘Ten o’clock,’ she shouted to G-Mamma. ‘It will go off at ten. What time is it now?’

  ‘Nine twenty-eight,’ yelled G-Mamma, scooting towards them on Rollerblades, bow and SParrow at the ready. ‘Are there more of those beasties down there?’

  ‘No, it’s . . .’

  But her father had hold of her hand again, and he released his grip on James enough for the boy to slip through his ape knees and collide into Janey. She tumbled backwards, her father’s sharp fingernails raking her skin. ‘What?’

  Boz got to his feet, gibbering feverishly and holding up his hands again. Something – fear? – had sharpened his senses again, and he was trying to tell her something.

  ‘The bomb? I know! It will go off at ten.’

  ‘Ngggg,’ bellowed her father, brandishing his hands in her face. ‘Ngggggg!’

  ‘No?’ said Janey.

  ‘What the hairy horrors is that?’ bleated G-Mamma, drawing back her bow.

  ‘Don’t shoot – it’s Dad.’ Janey whisked around, catching hold of James’s hand as he tried to scuttle past her. As G-Mamma stared aghast at the hunched figure before them Janey’s stomach cramped. ‘He was saying no. No. Not ten.’ She held up her own hands and then bent one finger over. ‘He hasn’t got ten fingers. Nine and a half. Is that right?’

  And the caveman creature that had once been her father looked from his daughter to his son, nodding as if desperate to communicate something. James pulled himself free and ran towards the line of equipment down the middle of the room, and the caveman stumbled after him.

  Janey struggled up from the floor. ‘Nine thirty! It’s going to blow at nine thirty.’

  ‘But that’s in fifteen . . . ohhh,’ said G-Mamma.

  ‘Jamie, now!’ screamed Janey, and the boy pelted with all possible speed towards a strange white doughnut the size of a playground roundabout. The R-Evolver! It started to spin as soon as his hand touched it.

  James jumped on to the springy disk, positioning himself to sit on the edge. Hollering, Boz stretched out to pull him off the device, flinging James aside as the R-Evolver spun more quickly anticlockwise, mysterious dark and light pulsing in the centre like stage smoke. Boz missed his footing; instead of jumping clear as he meant to, the thick-set caveman body of Janey’s father slipped, lunging, tipping forward. ‘Dad,’ screamed Janey, ‘stop!’ But he overturned completely, and the cylinder of horrible nothingness in the middle of the spinning machine split as if slashed with a knife, swallowing him whole, encasing him in the darkness.

  ‘He’s disappeared . . .’ screamed Janey, just as G-Mamma shot to her side.

  ‘Four seconds, Blonde,’ cried the SPI:KE, as she enveloped both Spylets in her vast green embrace and the shimmering force field of her USSR – her Undetectable Spy-Shield Raiser spy ring – boomed around them.

  There was a searing flash of light, whiter than the purest white that Janey had ever seen. Crying out and covering their eyes, the spies huddled together. The Spylab flew apart into a billion microscopic particles, and with it went the immediate memories of Jane Blonde, G-Mamma and Spylet Jimmy Sable.

  They emerged, unharmed apart from their short-term memory loss, into a scene of devastation. Slain vampire-like birds and velociraptors were littered across counters and clothes racks, and the other SPIs were wiping themselves down with towels pilfered from the Housewares department.

  Gina Bellarina was the first across the floor as they reached the top stair. ‘Jane Blonde, will you stop getting yourself blown up? What is wrong with this family?’

  ‘Yeah, you have all the fun,’ said Alfie morosely, although he was nursing his slashed right arm rather proudly. ‘And where did that come from?’ He pointed greedily at the jet.

  ‘You were down there a long time,’ said Mrs Halliday. ‘Anything interesting?’

  Janey, James and G-Mamma all gaped at each other. ‘There was . . . There was something,’ said Janey. ‘Someone else there . . . or . . . No, that must just have been when you turned up, G-Mamma.’

  ‘Funny you should say that, little spy people,’ said G-Mamma, dusting down her enormous knuckleduster of a spy ring. ‘I can’t help feeling there was something down there. I had my SParrow ready to fend off . . . something – nearly shot myself in the foot when we crouched under the force field.’

  Jamie, of course, could say nothing, but he kept patting down his body and scratching at his arm, then sighing as if he was hugely disappointed. Janey wrapped an arm around him, picking a sweet wrapper from his shoulder – a tiny square of film. Of . . . spy film. Hadn’t she once had some on her head, just like that? Anyway. James. Something was bothering him – maybe he would tell her later. When they were alone. When everything was back to normal.

  But nothing felt right for the whole of the rest of the week. There were things that were significantly wrong, for sure. Her father was still missing. Gina refused to believe he might be dead, so at the SPI-wide debrief they all vowed to carry on as if he could walk in the room at any time. They would uphold all SPI principles at all times and, for now, Gina Bellarina would stand in as head of SPI. ‘Who’d have thought it?’ said Gina with a giggle. ‘Mops and buckets one minute, spies the next.’

  G-Mamma straightened her shoulders. ‘If it’s too much, Gina B., I’d be happy to . . .’

  The Hallidays exchanged glances with Janey, but laughed along with everyone else when Bert said, ‘Come on, G-Mamma. You’ve never done any cleaning in your life.’

  ‘I didn’t mean the Clean Jean duties, Agent Dubbo Seven,’ said G-Mamma frostily. ‘I meant SPI.’

  With new-found diplomacy Gina said, ‘G-Mamma, I’ll be glad of your help wherever you can provide it. I’m sure we’ll manag
e if . . . if we all pull together.’

  Meanwhile the start of the new school year drew ever closer, and they still hadn’t got all their uniform. Unable to face a visit to Seacrest and Argents, Janey persuaded her mum to take them to the next town, and they wandered listlessly around the shops, picking up bits and pieces. Janey missed her dad. She missed her mum too, when it came to it, now that she was so busy. But poor James seemed even more distraught than ever.

  ‘Drop us off at Solfari Lands, Mum,’ suggested Janey. ‘We’ll go and see Bert and the PTerror, and check in on Belle. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Jamie?’

  A tear rolled down his cheek as he nodded, gripping her hand fiercely.

  ‘Oh, that’s a good idea, Janey,’ said her mother. ‘I’ve got meetings with two heads of state this evening. That’ll give me some time to get ready.’

  Heads of state, pondered Janey later as she watched James and Belle communicating excitedly through sign language. It was much too hard for her to understand. But then, so were things like ‘meetings with heads of state’. She didn’t even know what that meant. And, just for a moment, she longed for the time when her mum’s main job had been just that – being Janey’s mum. Eventually, tearing James away from Belle, Janey SPIVed Alfie.

  ‘Last day before school,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me about it. Those sleeves haven’t got any shorter,’ said her friend. ‘I’m going to look like an idiot.’

  Janey laughed, then said, ‘Hey, Jamie’s really sad. Will you come and play footy with him?’

  ‘Let me think.’ In the little screen on her SPIV, Alfie put a finger on his chin. ‘Hmm, help Mum label my school underpants? Or play footy? Pants. Footy. Footy. Pants . . . I dunno. It’s a tough one.’

  ‘See you in a bit,’ said Janey with a grin.

  At least Alfie was the same as ever. She was so glad her best friend was going to the same school as her. It would be awful to have to start all over again. She looked at James, trailing behind her at a snail’s pace as he walked backwards, staring at the zoo. He’d had to start all over, poor thing. Completely all over. A new species. That was why she’d taken him to the Spylab.

  Janey stopped short. That was it. She remembered now. That was why she’d dragged James off to the Spylab – to find the devolution machine. But now the last Spylab was gone. The last of her father’s creations. All gone. There was nothing she could do.

  Janey sighed as she vaulted the back fence into the garden. The football was lying next to the garage. Even that was just an ordinary garage now. G-Mamma was living back in her old room, rebuilding the Spylab piece by piece with her vast array of rather peculiar home-made equipment, which included a Wowed-and-Welded ceiling fan that flew around slicing the heads off things, and a Trouble-sized Segway made from a broken music stand, on which he zipped around with glee, his tail stump swishing furiously.

  In fact, the only sign of what had happened was the artfully shrouded Pet Jet in the allotment. Even the turkeys had gone – the owner had accused G-Mamma of letting them escape or possibly eating them, and the remaining few had been relocated. Janey hopped over the allotment fence and peeped under the camouflage netting. That had been quite an adventure, flying a fighter jet. But now it was back to school, and there was no Boz, and the adventures would probably stop. In any case, thought Janey with a grin, the Pet Jet hardly looked like a sinister fighting machine, with one paddling-pool wheel and the other a great white tyre from the old Spylab. Janey dusted it off. There was glass on it. Tiny chips of glass and a splinter of wood. Wood from a . . . a window frame?

  Janey stared, then touched the white ring as she peered back at the window to the Spylab. Sure enough, there was a tyre track straight down the middle of it. Her dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. Something had bounced off across the room and out of the window; had ended up in G-Mamma’s garage; had fascinated Jamie – and not because of the birds that sat inside it . . . until they turned into prehistoric birds.

  And as she turned back to the wheel of the Pet Jet a host of random images popped up in Janey’s mind. A white doughnut, spinning. A . . . a caveman, stepping and slipping and falling into a hole. Her dad’s eyes. Jamie. A cylinder of light that was black.

  ‘R-Evolver!’ gasped Janey. The old tyre was a R-Evolution machine – the very R-Evolver that had spun her father’s genes backwards until he became a caveman. The strange whirl from her dream! That was the ‘revolver’ he’d shouted about. And if it could R-Evolutionize, it could also . . .

  ‘Jamie,’ she squeaked as her little brother approached, scanning the garden for his football, ‘do you really, really, really hate being a human?’

  James stopped dead, his eyes on the tyre. ‘You know, don’t you? You know what it is?’

  James nodded slowly, and Janey understood what a world of information was in that nod. He wanted to turn back. With his finger, the boy made circles in the air. Clockwise for evolution. Anticlockwise for devolution. James gazed at her, his eyes flooded with tears.

  And at that moment Janey made up her mind. It wasn’t what her dad had wanted, it seemed, and she could see why. Her heart might break a little. Even a lot. But Jamie’s completely shattered life could be mended.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said a voice from the alleyway. Alfie skidded to a halt on his SPI-cycle and twitched the camouflage net to one side. ‘Awesome. You’re not going to fly that thing, are you?’

  Janey shook her head. ‘No. You are.’

  Alfie’s mouth fell open in delight. ‘AWESOME!’

  ‘Can you do it? You need to get it just above the ground and then hover.’

  ‘Can I do it? I’ve done it millions of times . . . on the computer,’ he added under his breath as he threw back the net and clambered up to the cockpit. ‘I want to fly it properly though. Why hover?’

  And Janey and James exchanged glances, doing the same little circular movement with their fingers. ‘Because we need the wheel to spin. Don’t land again until I tell you.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Alfie, too beside himself with joy at the prospect of handling a fighter jet to care even remotely. ‘Cover your ears!’

  Janey and her brother stood back with their fingers in their ears as the Pet Jet sparked into life. The Wow and Weld had quietened the engines considerably, but it still sounded like four massive motorcycles starting up at once. There was a bit of a lunge to one side, then Alfie’s hand moved behind the perspex, and the Pet Jet lifted jerkily into the air, the R-Evolver tyre hanging two metres above their heads.

  Janey dropped to her knees beside James and gave him the biggest squeeze imaginable. ‘I will miss you,’ she told him, ‘forever.’

  Jamie signed, ‘Me too.’

  Dragging out the moments for as long as she could, Janey stepped slowly up to the plane’s wheel. ‘Up,’ she said, and Jamie vaulted on to her shoulders without hesitation. Suddenly the weight disappeared from her shoulders; she put her head back to see James hanging on to the R-Evolver . . .

  Alfie’s SPI-cycle was propped against the fence – now Janey climbed up it, until she was balancing one foot on the saddle and another on the fence itself. If she stretched with her whole body, she could just reach the tyre. She went to turn it, but James shook his head. ‘Oh right – that way’s Rapid Evolution. We want Devolution. Bye . . . Jamie.’ Reaching with the tips of her fingers, Janey whizzed the wheel the way James needed her to.

  She didn’t know how she could bear to watch Jamie leave, clinging on to the R-Evolver as it spun ever faster. His features rapidly became a blur. Through parted fingers Janey could just see a melding of colour and shapes, and then the lines spun so fast before her eyes that she felt sick and turned away, jumping down from the fence, her heart pounding more loudly than the Pet Jet’s thundering . . .

  Not until she felt a tug at her leg did she look up.

  A medium-sized chimpanzee swayed at her side in the buffeting jet stream. Janey looked down into the chocolate button eyes of her brother. Not her
brother any more, she corrected herself. Belle’s brother. The way it should be.

  ‘Oh, Jamie,’ she whispered. But he linked his finger and thumb together to give her the ‘OK’ sign. And somehow she knew that it would be.

  Behind her a window was flung open. ‘Who the heck’s flying my Pet Jet?’

  ‘Oops!’ Janey hastily signalled for Alfie to land. He took no notice, but grinned and waved as he soared up to 1,000 feet and then – BOOM! – he took off across the skies.

  ‘It’s Alfie, sorry. Oh, G-Mamma,’ said Janey, smiling as she took hold of James’s hand, ‘Jamie seems to have turned himself back into a chimp. Do you think Bert could take him to Solfari Lands? I think he’d like to see Belle.’

  G-Mamma rolled her eyes. ‘Now, however did that happen, Janey Brainy?’ But she looked as if she had a pretty good idea.

  ‘Maths four times in one week,’ moaned Alfie, stuffing his timetable into his pocket. ‘That is just sick.’

  The timetable at Everdene was different, it was true. Moving around the school to different teachers was a bit of a shock to the system too, but Janey was sure that they could cope, after everything that the last year had thrown at them.

  ‘You’re good at maths,’ she said as they walked to the school bus. ‘And I can always help you out.’

  They pushed down to the back of the bus, sitting where nobody could hear them. ‘All right, Logic Brain. Work this one out then, as you’re so clever,’ said Alfie, thrusting a picture into her hand.

  It was a pterodactyl. ‘Is it PTerror?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Alfie. ‘It’s out of my textbook. We’re doing prehistory at the moment. Talk about starting at the beginning. We’ve got about thirty million years to get to before we even get to anything interesting like war and killing and stuff.’

  Janey looked again at the picture. ‘So what do we have to work out? It’s a pterodactyl, a prehistoric bird like the others.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Like the sparrow that became the iberomesornis, or the turkey that became the velociraptor.’ She found it hard to believe that he could have forgotten so quickly. After all, he wasn’t the one whose brain had been blasted by the Spy Film bomb.