Spylets are Forever

  for my jane blonde birth partners –

  glenys, emma and especially rachel.

  thank you just isn’t enough.

  are me not drawn onward, we few,

  drawn onward to new era?

  contents

  1 midnight mates

  2 marble marvels

  3 sub on no bus

  4 spyclops

  5 helter-skelter

  6 cellar fella

  7 a passion for fashion

  8 rosie and the g

  9 invisibubbled

  10 drawn onward

  11 less cleverer

  12 bowood bother

  13 so and bo

  14 geneva

  15 ugalee solly b

  16 rats live on no evil star

  17 battler battles

  18 the mighty eve

  19 b4 ev

  20 the birthday

  21 emoc

  midnight mates

  Janey Brown had been having a dream – a very nice one in which she was playing tennis with her dad. Boring, perhaps, to anyone else, but to Janey it had been the best dream ever. Her dad had been just that – a dad. Not a spy. Not an ever-changing personality who invented a pretend brother and then many different machines so he could live his extraordinary life. And definitely not someone who had turned himself into a hairy caveman and then lost himself in time. She sighed. Why did she have to wake up now?

  Struggling out of bed, she peeped out of the window, wondering if it was the moans and howls of the ferocious gusts of wind outside that had woken her. A storm was brewing, although the day had been close and hot. An Indian summer – that was what her mum called the unusual autumn weather.

  From the darkness appeared a face. ‘Aha!’ whispered Janey. So it wasn’t just the gale that had woken her. It must have been her spy instincts kicking in. Janey drew back behind the curtains, then moved alongside the window.

  She’d been trained well. Surprise, surprise, surprise – the first rule of spying. G-Mamma had taught her that right back at the beginning. So instead of doing the obvious thing and looking through the crack in the middle of the curtains – risking being spotted – Janey hopped up on to the edge of her bed and peeked down through the narrow gap above the curtain rail. The face appeared disembodied, bobbing around in the alley behind the house like the moon on a stick. But that was only an illusion. The spy – for that was obviously what it was – was simply dressed in black so his body wasn’t visible in the darkness.

  Furthermore, the spy was friend, not foe. Janey relaxed and twitched the curtain to one side.

  What was Alfie up to? It was after midnight. And even though it wasn’t that unusual for Spylets like herself and Alfie to be galloping about the globe in the middle of the night, that was only when they were on a mission.

  She watched as Alfie jumped over the back fence, catching his trousers on a jagged splinter. He dropped down, head swivelling left and right as he took in the details of the garden.

  Janey opened the window. ‘Halo! What are you doing?’

  Alfie stared back at her, his upturned face glowing in the moonlight. For a moment he looked terrified, then he grinned, holding up a scrap of paper that was nearly snatched from his hand by the wind.

  ‘What’s that? And what are you wearing?’ hissed Janey.

  Janey only ever saw her best friend and Spylet buddy in one of three outfits: his school uniform, his denim-blue SPIsuit, or jeans and a sweatshirt. Oh, and occasionally his football gear. Right now he was sporting wide black trousers that billowed around his legs – no wonder they’d snagged on the fence – and a short V-necked black jumper that made him look taller and more gangly than usual.

  Alfie glanced down at his clothes, then shrugged. Style was never that important to him. The little tornado behind him made his whole body quiver, and Janey tutted as she realized what he’d been up to. He’d been flying the Pet Jet. And he’d left the engine running, so much so that some sort of force was dragging him back towards it.

  ‘Hang on,’ whispered Janey. ‘I’m coming down.’

  Moments later she eased open the back door and flitted silently into the garden. ‘Alfie, why didn’t you just . . . ?’

  . . . SPIV me, she had been about to say. He could easily have contacted her on the SPI Visualator she always wore around her neck or kept on the bedside table at night.

  But he wasn’t there. Janey pushed back the mousy hair that whipped around her face as the gathering storm grew more violent. Head down, she battled through the wind towards the back of the garden where Alfie had been standing.

  Gone.

  ‘Alfie!’ said Janey crossly. She could have just stayed in bed. What was he mucking about at? The wheel of the Pet Jet was still spinning.

  Maybe he was hiding. A glint of moonlight caught her eye as she looked for him behind the garage. When she had finally made up her mind that he wasn’t there, Janey braved the gusts of wind and foraged in the grass for whatever had gleamed.

  It was a little glass ball, clear for the most part, with a curved sliver of coloured glass nestled at the centre. For a moment Janey wondered if it was one of G-Mamma’s sweets. She’d been living in the garage for a while, after all, and the ball could be a re-invented Malteser that had been through the Wower. But then she spotted a strand of black fibre attached to it.

  ‘Alfie’s.’ It had probably fallen out of his pocket when he’d caught his new black trousers on the rotting fence.

  "Well, I might just keep it, she thought. Serve him right for getting me out of bed on a hideous windy night. And Jane Blonde stomped her way across the garden and headed back to the warmth of her duvet. The wind swooped and roared throughout the night, but with a pillow wrapped around her head Janey hardly heard a thing.

  marble marvels

  ‘Don’t forget your English homework,’ called Jean Brown as she hurried around the kitchen, packing lunch boxes with one hand as she emptied compacted dirt out of the vacuum cleaner with the other. Janey wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find dust bunnies in her sandwiches instead of cheese and pickle.

  ‘I’ve put it in my bag,’ said Janey, whisking her lunch box out of her mother’s grasp. ‘And you should slow down.’

  Her mum sighed. ‘I would love to. Honestly, with SPI and Clean Jean to manage, I’m finding it all a bit much.’ She slammed shut the little trap door on the vacuum cleaner. ‘But Uncle James is hovering more and more, asking me why I’m not putting one hundred per cent into the business – keeping his eye on the books and all that. I can’t really tell him it’s because I’m also looking after my missing husband’s spying organization, can I?’

  ‘Suppose not,’ said Janey.

  She felt rather like sighing herself. Not long after getting her father back at the end of their last adventure, he’d turned into a caveman and disappeared down the centre of one of his own gadgets, the Rapid Evolution machine called the R-Evolver. G-Mamma was half managing Solomon’s Polificational Investigations for Boz Brilliance Brown, Janey’s super-SPI dad, and helping out with the Clean Jean business, while Janey’s mum was trying to be big-boss Clean Jean, Gina Bellarina (super-SPI) and just plain Jean, mum of Janey, all at the same time. Everyone else had either vanished or was so busy that they might as well have gone too.

  It seemed very unfair on her poor, overworked mum. ‘I don’t think Uncle James should be nagging you.’

  Janey’s mum gave her a tight smile. ‘It is his job. Organizing money – it’s all he cares about. But I probably need someone to keep me in check. Hold it all together. Just until . . .’

  ‘I know, Mum.’ Janey gave her mum a hug, trying not to cry. ‘We’ll find him. We’ll get him back. I promise.’

  Jean
just nodded, her face a bit wobbly, as Janey heaved on her heavy backpack and set off for school.

  At least Alfie was his usual self. Possibly not even busy enough, judging by his midnight meanderings in her back garden. He got on the school bus two stops after her, and waved, but the aisle was too packed with giggling, gabbling schoolkids for him to join her. Janey nodded, then angled her hand towards her chest, index and middle finger in an inverted V. To any non-SPIs catching the signal, it would look as if Janey was attempting a sort of rapper greeting, but Alfie knew what it meant. She was pointing to the SPI-buy under her jumper. SPIV U later.

  They needed their spy gadgets these days. It wasn’t anywhere near as easy for them to communicate at Everdene School as it had been at Winton. They weren’t in the same form, and only came together once a week for music in the school hall. Janey always enjoyed those classes – for one, she was able to stand next to Alfie, and sometimes she could even help him with the dreadful wailing he called singing.

  Besides that, she really liked the school hall. At one end stood a large stage from which the headmaster boomed out his pronouncements in assembly, and at the other hung long wooden boards detailing all the former students who’d been Head Girl or Boy, or gone on to get a university degree. Janey hadn’t been at all surprised to see the name Maisie Halliday, Alfie’s mum, picked out in gold lettering as a former Head Girl, with the exotic sounding ‘Jakobi Delacroix’ as Head Boy in the column beside her. Janey loved it all, as she loved the old grandfather clock in the foyer and the mysterious, creepy stairs leading up the headmaster’s office. The whole place had a sense of history, a feeling of being where past and present met, and Janey felt as though she fitted in.

  Tuesdays were easy – maths, science, music and PE. Even sports was better at Everdene, although Janey suspected that might have something to do with the fact that she sneaked her Fleet-feet on under her socks. She had to wear extra big trainers to accommodate them, and the Fleet-feet didn’t work as well as when they made direct contact with the ground, but they allowed her to keep up with the rest of the class in cross-country and spring high enough to look naturally good at gymnastics. She’d even been put forward for the school athletics team for long jump, which had made quite a few people look at her differently.

  Now, still glowing from playing hockey on the sports field, Janey jostled her way in next to Alfie as music class began and pressed the little glass ball she’d found into his hand.

  ‘Yours, I think,’ said Janey.

  Shielding it from prying eyes, Alfie peeked down at the ball. ‘Oh,’ he said, surprised. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a marble,’ said Alfie, pocketing it. ‘It was this game they played a million years ago when Mum was young, knocking out other kids’ smaller marbles and so on. She says she collected them. I reckon she just confiscated them off the other kids and kept them for herself.’

  Janey grinned. ‘Well, I very nearly kept that one. You should be more careful.’

  ‘What did . . . ?’ started Alfie, but a frantic rattling of the music stand by the teacher stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘Halliday!’ snapped Mr Young. ‘There’s no Mummy Halliday for you to run to here, you know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Alfie, turning scarlet as people whipped round to look at him.

  ‘Detention after school.’

  Janey almost winced for Alfie, but she managed to keep her face neutral. She knew only too well what it felt like to be singled out at school, and everyone staring only made matters worse. As soon as the teacher had turned away to rifle through his book, she made the SPIV U sign again and faced the front sharply. Alfie’s question – and hers – would have to wait. Meanwhile, she blocked off her hearing as Alfie proceeded to drone his way through ‘We Plough the Fields and Scatter’ and the school day ground to a close.

  Her mum was still out when Janey got home, so she wandered up to G-Mamma’s Spylab, newly refurbished in shades of lilac, pink and white.

  ‘Ho there, Spygirl,’ called G-Mamma, knitting furiously, as Janey stepped off the SPIral staircase into the room.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Janey. ‘I would never have thought knitting would be your thing.’

  G-Mamma sniffed. ‘Don’t look down your nose at arts and crafts, Janey baby,’ she said, frowning as she picked up a dropped stitch. ‘You’d be amazed what you can do when you’re good at dressmaking and a bit of the old crochet. Watch this!’

  She cast off her knitting with a flourish, and Janey studied the straggly scrap of yellow wool hanging from her SPI:KE’s hand. ‘It’s for Trouble,’ announced G-Mamma, scooping up the Spycat.

  ‘Oh. Is it a . . . scarf?’

  ‘Scarf? Laugh Out Loud!’ hollered G-Mamma. ‘It’s his new tail.’

  Janey gasped as G-Mamma sashayed across the Spylab to the Wower and prepared to chuck Trouble and the scrappy knitting inside. It was quite possible that Trouble would emerge like a soft toy, knitted from head to toe, with bits of stuffing hanging out. On the other hand, thought Janey, he did need a new tail since he’d lost his proudly cultivated golden one in a tussle with a pterodactyl.

  ‘Wow and Weld,’ called G-Mamma, tying the knitting to Trouble’s back end and shoving him into the spy shower with a firm spangle-shod foot. ‘Sort that tail out!’

  The door clanged shut. Almost immediately there came the unmistakable hiss of spy-transforming steam, accompanied by a rather startled yowl. G-Mamma held on to the Wower door as it rattled on its hinges, and then glanced at her watch. ‘That’s it. Time’s up. You’re cooked, puss.’

  She threw back the door, and from the Wower vapour emerged a magnificent sight: Trouble marched out with his quiff held high, his emerald eyes pulsating and glowing, go-faster stripes resplendent along each furred side, all capped off by a tail to end all tails. It was as golden as his original one had been, but somehow each long strand of wool had separated, stood on end and fanned out, so that Trouble now resembled some mythical creature . . .

  Half cat.

  Half golden peacock.

  ‘Wow,’ breathed Janey and G-Mamma together. Trouble just sniffed, flipped his enormous tail backwards and forwards, then snapped it shut as he curled up at Janey’s feet.

  ‘Ha! I have . . . excelled myself!’ squealed G-Mamma, grabbing the rest of the wool. ‘Imagine what I could make for myself! Eyelashes like . . . caterpillars. No more mascara! Waist-length hair. No. Why stop there? Knee-length hair. FLOOR-length hair. Yes!’

  Before her SPI:KE could disappear into the Wower with her knitting needles, Janey said, ‘That all sounds great, G-Mamma, but I’m not sure it would be very practical.’

  G-Mamma stopped dead. ‘But . . . Oh, I suppose you’re right.’ Her face fell, then brightened. ‘Wait! What about wigs! G-Mamma, Wig Wonder of the World.’ She could obviously picture it already, and her face folded into pre-rap rapture. ‘That’s it. Listen!

  ‘Your little head still feeling bare?

  Just get G-Mamma’s Wonder Hair!’

  Janey smiled. ‘I don’t think you need a new business, G-Mamma,’ said Janey. ‘What with Dad lost in time, and Mum trying to run two different organizations, you’re more than busy enough. Any . . . any progress on finding Dad?’

  Janey hardly dared to ask. The R-Evolver was possibly the most complex and frightening piece of machinery that her father had ever invented, and G-Mamma was being rightly cautious in finding out exactly how it worked before sending anyone through it.

  The SPI:KE sighed, her enormous gold SPIV rising and falling on her chest. ‘Well, I’ve spun the R-Evolver both ways on the Pet Jet,’ she said. The R-Evolver was currently masquerading as a spare wheel on the fighter plane in the allotment behind the garage. ‘And I keep chucking things into the middle of the tyre, hoping something will show me what to do. No luck so far.’

  ‘What have you put in it?’

  G-Mamma ticked the items off on her fingers. ‘A book. An apple. A doughnut. Chinese ta
keaway. A SPIsuit, in case it reaches your father. Newly knitted jumper, in case he’s cold.’ She held up a skein of fluffy orange wool, a colour Janey knew her dad would never wear in a million years. ‘And then I threw a plate in. For his takeaway.’

  ‘And nothing’s come out again.’

  G-Mamma shook her head, then jumped up. ‘Oh, apart from this. I think it must be a bit of the book. I found it this morning next to the R-Evolver.’

  Janey took the scrap of paper from between G-Mamma’s electric-blue fingernails. She studied it carefully, turning it over to look at the front and the back, and frowned. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  They both stared at the printed paper. There was just one word on it, in large, bold type:

  EMOCME

  ‘This doesn’t look as though it came from a book,’ said Janey. ‘If it did, there’d be some sign of words around it, or printing on the back.’

  ‘Maybe the R-Evolver changed it somehow.’

  ‘Or maybe,’ said Janey, getting excited, ‘it’s a message. A code! Something from Dad.’

  ‘In that case, brainy Janey,’ said G-Mamma, ‘what do you think it means?’

  But just then the SPIV on the chain around Janey’s neck buzzed, and Janey remembered something. ‘Alfie,’ she said as soon as her friend’s face appeared on the SPIV screen, ‘that marble I gave you in music . . .’

  Alfie’s face paled, reliving the trauma of the music class. ‘Oh, right, thanks for reminding me,’ he said bitterly. ‘How embarrassing was that?’

  ‘Did you also drop a note when you were in our garden last night?’

  ‘What are you talking about? I thought that marble was a present. A present that got me into detention, I might add. And why would I have been in your garden?’

  Janey held her breath for a moment, then gazed at G-Mamma over her flashing knitting needles. ‘In that case, Agent Halo,’ she said carefully, ‘I think you’d better make sure you’re here tonight. Because some Spylet boy – who looks remarkably like you – is leaving us messages. Be here at midnight.’