Jane Blonde: Spylet on Ice

by Jill Marshall

  As for her best friend, schoolmate and fellow Spylet, Alfie Halliday, it seemed as if he considered himself too important these days even to call her when she’d asked him to, when she needed a friend, particularly one who was another Spylet. Maybe he was just having too much fun with a new friend who just happened to be a boy.

  Janey made her way back to her bedroom, fighting the horrid, barely-remembered tingling across the bridge of her nose. For the first time since the wonderful day G-Mamma had told her she was a Spylet, Janey wondered what would happen if she just welded the fireplace door shut after she’d passed through it into the blank ordinariness of her own bedroom. Maybe nobody would care. They might not even notice.

  Perhaps, thought Janey, it was time to turn in her SPIsuit. There wasn’t a single SPI who seemed to consider her a good enough Spylet to work with on a consistent basis, and meanwhile the spying was getting in the way of her protecting the one person who DID still appreciate her: her mum. Her ordinary, ex-SPI-with-no-idea mum. Without SPI training and missions she could concentrate more on her schoolwork, and even go on those weekends away to Rome and Barcelona that her mum wanted so much. Apart from the fact that she’d love to go to these places, Janey had a funny feeling that if she didn’t accompany her mother, someone else might go along instead.

  It pained her to even think it, but the more Janey considered it, as she did many times through that restless night, the more she reached the same conclusion: it was time to forget Jane Blonde. Maybe now it would be better to be just plain old Janey Brown. It seemed almost unreal even to think it, but it also, somehow, felt right.

  woe for worms

  Janey woke up feeling strangely peaceful, even though she’d slept so badly that she’d tangled the sheets into a fat ball around her legs. It was the hot, uncomfortable feeling of being trapped in her bedding that awoke her. Why had she tossed and turned so much?

  Then she remembered the horrible truth.

  She wasn’t cutting it as a SPI any more. She didn’t even seem to be making the grade as a daughter or a friend. So . . . it was time that Jane Blonde was no more. She needed normal friends and at least one normal parent – particularly if she was off to Everdene, leaving Alfie behind. She was retiring, and Janey would go back to being just Janey from now on.

  ‘No more Blonde,’ she said firmly.

  The words almost stuck in her throat, but as she said them again, almost like a chant, staring at herself in the mirror that G-Mamma had used to write messages on, she found herself liking the sound of them, convincing herself that losing her Spylet self would be a good thing, that being Brown was much to be preferred. ‘No more Blonde! No more Blonde!’ she yelled at her reflection, smacking her hand down on the desk.

  Her mother’s head appeared around the door. ‘No more what? Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh! No more . . . um . . . pond,’ gabbled Janey as her mother stared at her, perplexed. ‘They want to put a, er, pond in the school grounds.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that be a nice thing?’ said Jean.

  Of course it would. ‘No,’ said Janey a little too loudly. ‘Because . . . they’d have to dig up all the insects that live in the grass, and a lot of . . . of worms would lose their homes.’

  ‘Worms?’

  Janey nodded. wondering how she got herself into these situations. Losing her Blonde alter ego would certainly mean a lot less lying. ‘Yes, worms. They have rights too. Some of us are doing a demonstration at school. “No more pond!”’ She smiled weakly.

  To her surprise, her mum came over and hugged her. ‘Well, I’m very glad you and Alfie are prepared to stand up for what you believe in.’

  With tears prickling behind her eyes, Janey said, ‘It’s not Alfie. It’s some other friends.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Jean. ‘Well, let me know if I can help you do some placards or whatever.’

  A shrill voice shook her out of her reverie. ‘Janey, one moment please!’

  It was Mrs Halliday. ‘You’re back,’ said Janey, surprised. ‘Is Alfie home too?’ she asked hopefully.

  Mrs Halliday ducked her head to one side and Janey followed her behind a tree. ‘Your father’s kept all the Spylets down in Antarctica. But Alfie’s feeling quite sick, I think. The conditions are very difficult. I thought I should let you know so you can start to prepare.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I suspect Alfie will be pulled out of the operation soon.’ Mrs Halliday smiled at Janey, her pointed teeth digging into her lips, which were disturbingly red with little strands of skin hanging off them. The conditions really must be hard in Antarctica. ‘Your father will need a replacement.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Janey, looking at her shoes, ‘I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t choose me. And anyway, I wouldn’t go even if he did.’

  ‘What? If you’re needed on a mission, you go. You’re a Spylet, Janey.’

  Janey shook her head slowly. ‘Not any more.’ And she walked away, leaving Mrs Halliday in stunned silence.

  The silence didn’t last long, however. By the time her mother pulled up in the Clean Jean van, Janey was having an argument with her chest. Out of habit she had draped her SPIV around her neck and hidden it under her jumper; now G-Mamma, whom Mrs Halliday had immediately alerted to the fact that Janey was quitting, was putting up a fight.

  ‘But, Blonde, you breathe Spylet, you sleep Spylet, you ARE a Spylet!’ G-Mamma wailed, her mood not improved by being awoken at three in the morning Dubbo Seven time. ‘What the sleepy sheepies are you on about?’

  ‘I just think it would be better if I stopped,’ Janey hissed into her sweater, trying to avoid the stares of passers-by.

  ‘Well, think again, Blondette. You don’t decide when you stop. You’ve got a job. A career. No, a lifetime’s vocation! You can’t just switch it off.’

  ‘But,’ said Janey, swallowing down a hard lump in her throat, ‘I’m no good at it any more – I’m not even getting chosen – and I feel like nobody cares whether I do it or not anyway. You’re away. Dad . . . doesn’t need me. Mum’s going out dating.’

  G-Mamma blinked like a lizard. ‘I’m coming home. Meet me in the Spylab. Over.’

  Janey nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again. It was all so confusing. She’d become so used to having two lives that she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. What would happen if she just didn’t turn up at the Spylab? She couldn’t be sacked – she’d given up spying anyway. Maybe she should ask to be brain-wiped. Then all the memories of her incredible Spylet moments would vanish into the ether and she really would be plain Janey Brown once more. The thought sent a horrible, cold shiver down her spine.

  As Janey and her mum walked in through the front door, Janey felt resolved. ‘I will go and see G-Mamma, but only when I’m ready,’ she told herself. First of all she was going to taste some normality by having a glass of milk and a biscuit with her mum. Jean was closing the door behind her with a secretive smile on her face.

  ‘Are you going out again?’ said Janey.

  ‘Not tonight,’ her mother replied, that same mischievous grin playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘I thought we might work on these instead. I did them this morning.’ From the tall cupboard under the stairs she pulled out a number of large square cards, with the words ‘Save our worms!’ and ‘Worms need homes!’ daubed on in fluorescent colours. ‘We could stick them on to some of those old fence posts in the back garden. Then you’ll really have something to demonstrate with.’

  ‘Mum, you’re . . . mad. And brilliant,’ said Janey, flipping through the dozen or so posters. What she was going to do with them she had no idea, but her mother was all fired up.

  ‘I’ll go and get those posts,’ Jean said. ‘You get the hammer.’

  Janey laughed as she read through the rest of the placards. As well as the first two, there were ‘No to the pond!’ in vivid green and ‘Earthworms need earth!!’ in thick orange writing.

  ‘Earth for worms!’ she shouted, waving the pl
acard over her head.

  ‘Never mind worms,’ hissed a voice above her head. ‘Sol needs Spylets!’

  G-Mamma was leaning over the banister, gesturing frantically to Janey, who was clearly meant to drop everything and run through to the Spylab.

  Janey stood her ground. ‘Well, he doesn’t need me. And the worms do.’ She conveniently didn’t mention that she’d made the whole pond debacle up.

  ‘Up here, now!’ G-Mamma’s face was purple with rage and a slight touch of bewilderment.

  ‘No,’ said Janey, standing up. ‘I’m going to help Mum in the garden. You’d better get back . . .’

  ‘Blonde, if you . . .’

  But Janey had already walked away. She felt strangely powerful. It was the right thing to do, surely? She could enjoy some special time with her mum, distract her from dating, avoid certain death. It all made sense. So she hung around in the garden, pulling out old fencing posts and thwacking the sticking-out nails back into the wood. It was quite relaxing really. Fun, even.

  ‘That’ll be enough,’ said her mum. ‘Go and get the bits of card.’

  Janey ambled through to the hall, half-expecting to see G-Mamma bobbing up near the ceiling like a blimp, engorged with rage. The SPI:KE wasn’t there, and her bedroom door was firmly closed. Janey flicked idly though the cards again. ‘Worms, earth, pond,’ she muttered. What was she going to do with all these? She could see herself having to hold a lone demonstration at the school gates, looking like an absolute nutter.

  But when she came to the bottom card, Janey gasped aloud.

  ‘“Save our Sol!”?’ Why had her mother written that? She looked more closely. Her mother hadn’t written it, after all. She might have written ‘Save our worms’ originally, but someone else had written over the last word, etching a great fat capital S over the letter W, and a broad, sweeping L to cover the last three letters of the word. The new writing was sticky, black and shiny, and attached to the top of the L was something glistening. Janey picked it off carefully between her thumb and index finger. It was a tiny black feather.

  Rook. Or Blackbird – Janey wasn’t sure which. But those three short words – ‘Save our Sol!’ – told her a hundred things at once. Her father was in trouble. The Spylet twins could be in difficulties too, needing her help. Most importantly of all, as Janey knew by the emotions roaring in her chest, there was no way she could stop being a Spylet now.

  Jane Blonde was needed.

  ‘Mum, I’m just going to get changed before we start nailing,’ she yelled quickly.

  ‘Good idea,’ a faint voice from the garden returned. So Janey turned on her heel with the poster in her hand and sped up the stairs.

  ‘G-Mamma, I’m sorry,’ she said breathlessly as she zoomed from her bedroom into the Spylab.

  Her SPI:KE was standing in front of the open refrigerator, fanning her flushed face. ‘SPIralling after being in one-hundred-degree heat is really not a good idea,’ she said faintly. ‘And neither is telling me you’re giving up Spyleting!’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Janey, holding the placard up in front of her.

  ‘Save our Soul? Who sent you that?’

  ‘Not “Soul”,’ said Janey. ‘Sol. Save my dad. Someone’s been into my house today and changed the message, and I’m guessing from the colour that it must have been Blackbird or Rook. Though Rook’s with Alfie in Antarctica.’

  G-Mamma’s eyes narrowed. ‘Black and shiny – well, there’s our sample. Now I see. Well, if you’re sure you’re not going to go all sulky on us again, it would seem you have a job to do.’

  ‘I wasn’t sulk . . .’ Janey ground to a halt. Maybe she had been sulking just a little. Perhaps Titian Ambition was right – Janey didn’t like it when she wasn’t being ‘sensational’. ‘So where should I go first – Sol’s Lols HQ, to check out all those black marks? Maybe the twins had been there to protect him.’

  But G-Mamma was rustling in a cupboard, distracted. ‘I’m sure I got them out . . . Not that they’d be right for where you’re going, but . . .’

  She shook her head and flung open another cupboard. ‘Oh well,’ she said as a pile of discarded SPI-buys grew on the floor beside her. ‘Your eSPIdrills would be too flimsy anyway.’

  ‘You can’t find my eSPIdrills?’ Janey thought fondly of the extraordinary shoes with which she’d bored through the centre of the Earth to Australia not too long ago. ‘Am I going to Dubbo Seven?’

  But G-Mamma shook her blonde curls vigorously. ‘Not this time, Dudette. Tonight, Jane the Insane, I am sending you south. To Antarctica.’

  And Janey couldn’t help herself as an enormous shiver ran down her neck and then engulfed her completely. Finally she was on her way.

  poles and penguins

  Later that night, after Janey had spent some time planning the worm demo with her mum, she stepped into the new de luxe Wower in G-Mamma’s Spylab. Despite the many, many times that Janey Brown had Wowed into Jane Blonde, she still felt the same thrill of power pulsing through her whenever the Wower worked its magic. Eight jets of transformational droplets surged at her from all directions and strong metal arms cradled her as she was massaged into an invigorated state, like a boxer at the edge of the ring.

  Today the transformation was to be particularly spectacular. The conditions that close to the South Pole would be extreme, so Janey needed an extreme SPIsuit . . .

  As the sparkling droplets shimmered around her and her hair was tweaked into her trademark high platinum ponytail, Janey found herself cocooned in soft thermal layers and an extra-thick vibrant-pink neoprene bodysuit with fur-trimmed earmuffs and hood, sleeves, boots and Girl-gauntlet (and this time she had a thick angora glove on her left hand too). Her ISPIC was clamped to her thigh and her Ultra-gogs were broader than usual and attached firmly to her upper face like a fur-edged swimming mask; with her hood pulled in tightly, only the very tip of her nose would be sticking out, a victim to the cold.

  As she opened the Wower door, G-Mamma attacked her face with a tube of Zinc cream. ‘Don’t want your nostrils nibbled with frostbite,’ she said, rubbing the end of Janey’s nose. Janey’s face warmed up instantly. ‘Keep the tube with you. You might find it useful. It is a SPI-buy, after all.’

  Janey smiled, and her grin became even wider when she saw herself in G-Mamma’s mirror. ‘I look like a yeti.’

  ‘A very sleek yeti.’ G-Mamma eyed her appraisingly. ‘If I was in that get-up, I’d look like a snowball.’

  ‘Will I still need those eSPIdrills?’ It seemed likely if she was going to tunnel her way there, but the thought of arriving head down in metres-deep ice and snow wearing summery sandals was rather worrying.

  G-Mamma dropped to her knees, revealing some fetching silk pantaloons under her flowery ruffled skirt. ‘Hope not. Let me have a little lookee. Yes, as I thought, the Wower’s done a great job on these boots.’ Janey’s regular white Fleet-feet boots had aquired fluff, several layers of leather and some sturdy laces. ‘Remember I said the prototype eSPIdrills were like Doc Martens? Well, you are now wearing the latest model – furry SPILL-Drills. That’s SPI Long-Legged Drills to you.’

  It all became clear a few minutes later when Janey was standing out in G-Mamma’s garden among the strawberry plants with G-Mamma fussing around her feet. ‘These boots lace up right to the top, but if you do this –’ and she untied the laces and spread them around Janey’s feet – ‘then you can drill away without getting cold tootsies.’

  ‘I’m off then,’ said Janey. She couldn’t wait to get going. It was hard to believe that just an hour ago she had been planning to hang up her SPIsuit forever. Right now, she never wanted to be out of it again.

  ‘You’re not going without this.’ G-Mamma rammed a large plastic helmet over Janey’s head. It was edged with soft material that fell down around her feet - her SPIFFInG (SPI Furnace/Fire/Incinerator Gear), designed to stop her melting in the heat of the Earth’s core. ‘And, of course, this.’

  ‘Twubs!’ Ja
ney laughed as Trouble nosed his way under the edge of the SPIFFInG. He had also been Wowed for arctic conditions: a double layer of fur made him look more like a striped furry football than a cat, his golden tail was wrapped in a chunky scarf which appeared to have a picture of Windsor Castle on it, and his feet were encased in four tiny fur boots exactly like Janey’s SPILL-Drills. ‘You are one cute kitty!’

  Trouble purred loudly, then jumped into her arms and snuggled in for the journey. ‘All right, my little SPIcicles,’ said G-Mamma. ‘Let the spin begin!’

  The SPI:KE entered the coordinates and pressed the tiny snowflake on the SPILL-Drills, and, just as Janey had done when wearing the eSPIdrills, she began to rotate. They spun slowly around the flower bed, driving her soles into the earth and spraying unpicked strawberries in a jammy mess all over G-Mamma’s skirt. ‘Sorry, G-Mamma,’ said Janey, although it was hard not to laugh when her SPI:KE came back into view, scooping the strawberry pulp off herself and eagerly eating it.

  Janey and Trouble speeded up. Soon G-Mamma was just a blur, and then only her pantaloons and feet were visible, and soon all Janey could see around her was earth, worms and the roots of plants. As their spinning increased to a mighty whirr, the Spylet and Spycat plunged further into the ground.

  Soon they were drilling through water, then magma, then they slowed as they reached the solid metallic core of the Earth. Whatever it was made of was so resilient – almost impenetrable – that the first time Janey had travelled this way she had stopped short and thought she would probably die in an unthinkably hot, bone-crushingly pressured, unbelievably deeply buried coffin. This time they slowed again. Trouble pushed his nose nervously into the crook of Janey’s arm as they ground to a halt. With a little prayer to her SPILL-Drills Janey jumped. Success! There was a small explosion which sparked the drills into life again, and they were off, on through the steely Earth’s core, out into lava and molten rock, further on until they were spinning through dense black rock and a layer of ice many times the height of Janey. Suddenly Janey felt her feet waggling around in the open air and she let out a muffled shout of joy; she might be upside down, but at least she’d made it! She pushed herself feet first out of the hole, and at last she and Trouble scrambled out into the chill and dark of Antarctica. She was in the land of the South Pole. Near her dad and the other Spylets.