Spylets are Forever, page 10
If they had the right house, of course. Dressed in their visible, everyday SPIsuits, Janey and Alfie marched up the garden path, and Janey rapped on the familiar front door with her Girl-gauntlet. Even before she’d finished knocking the door swung open, and a strapping sandy-haired teenage boy stared out at them, tossing his ridiculously long fringe out of his eyes. ‘Come in,’ he said.
Janey and Alfie looked at each other. ‘You don’t even know who we are,’ said Alfie.
‘Yeah, I do,’ said the boy. ‘I’ve been following you. Well, parts of you.’ He pointed to Janey’s Ultra-gogs.
‘You’re the Head Boy . . .’ said Janey, remembering.
He stuck out a hand and grasped Janey’s own in a very firm handshake. ‘Jakobi Delacroix – Kobi. I’ve been watching you since you turned up before the fashion show. Some strange stuff going on, eh? You been getting my messages?’ His vividly pale blue eyes sparkled mischievously.
The Spylets gazed at the older boy. So this was Jakobi, Head Boy, Geneva’s brother, and owner of Bob, and best friend of Solomon Brown. Janey stared at him again. Geneva’s brother? Wouldn’t that make him . . . Uncle James? What messages? And why would he have been sending them to her?
‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Sorry! Yes. We need to see Geneva.’
‘Right. I’ll come with you.’ Jakobi shook Alfie’s hand as they stepped inside, and he led the bewildered pair up the stairs to Janey’s own bedroom.
Geneva was perched on the end of the bed, chatting animatedly to Maisie Halliday, who was coiled up on a rug on the floor, still holding her clipboard. ‘I always knew it was you that he . . . Kobi! Get out.’
‘Aw. Love you too, sis,’ said Kobi with that same smooth, easy cheerfulness.
‘You’re so weird, Kobi. Did you ever wonder if you were adopted?’
He grinned. ‘No. But I thought you were.’
Geneva turned to Maisie. ‘Do you know, he’s so vain about that fringe that he won’t even go out on a windy day.’
‘Don’t be rude. I’ve brought some people to see you.’
Geneva jumped up, surprised. ‘Oh! Jane Blondette. Nice to see you – how did you know where I . . . ? Maisie, what’s up?’
Maisie Halliday had stood up and was now standing face to face with Alfie, who was doing his best not to gawp at the sight of his mother as a girl. She bit her lip in puzzlement as her gaze took him in from head to toe.
‘Nice teeth,’ said Alfie. They were pre-SPI teeth, neat and pearly.
‘Teeth? What a strange thing to comment on. Are you a Brown?’
Alfie frowned, and looked himself up and down. ‘A brown what?’
‘A Brown. One of the Brown family.’
‘No, I’m a . . .’ Janey kicked him before he could say ‘Halliday’. ‘I’m Alfie, er, Knickers. I’m one of the Knickers family.’
At that Jakobi guffawed, as Maisie Halliday said, ‘Strange. Related, maybe.’
Geneva shoved her brother. ‘Kobi, there’s someone else at the door. Go and get it instead of interfering here.’
‘I’ll be back,’ said Jakobi with a wiggle of his sandy eyebrows.
‘Geneva, I need to talk to you,’ said Janey, unsure how to start. This was her mother. She’d spent so much of her life lying to her, not able to tell her the truth. No more, she decided. There wasn’t time.
‘You might want to sit back down again,’ she said, just as Rosie Biggenham burst through the door.
‘You’d better listen up,’ blurted Rosie, ‘because it’s all completely true and magic! Kobi, you go away.’
‘Make me,’ said Jakobi, folding his arms and pushing out his biceps.
But when four angry girls turned on him (and Alfie, still suffering from shock), he backed away with a mocking smile. ‘You’ll be sorry when you need a big strong lad around. I can see Mr Knickers isn’t going to be any use to you. But all right, girls, I’ll leave you in peace.’
As the door closed behind him, Janey X-rayed until she was sure he’d gone downstairs and then turned to the crowded bedroom. ‘I don’t know where to start, but here goes . . .’
It took about twenty minutes for her to explain as much as she possibly could to Geneva and Maisie, and to fill in various gaps for Rosie and even for Alfie. To their great credit, nobody stopped her until she said, ‘So now Solomon’s been carted away, and Boz is really sick, and I still have to find my dad as a grown-up, which is why we came here in the first place.’
‘This is . . . insane! Surely you don’t expect us to believe this?’ Maisie bristled with indignation as Geneva gazed at her toes, open-mouthed, shaking her head from time to time.
‘I know it sounds crazy,’ said Janey. ‘But, Geneva, Boz sent me here – he says you’re the answer.’
‘Me?’ Geneva stared at her. ‘I don’t even know Boz. Why would I be the answer?’
Janey frowned. ‘You don’t know Boz? But you marry him in the future.’
At that Geneva howled with laughter. ‘Isn’t he still at primary school or something? He must be years younger than me, if he’s not even appeared at Everdene yet!’
‘I think he’s just home-schooled because he’s very bright,’ Janey suggested.
Geneva shrugged. ‘Even more reason! I’m not marrying a nerd!’
‘Are you sure you don’t mean Solomon?’ said Maisie quietly.
‘Maisie, how many times – it’s not me Solomon’s interested in,’ said Geneva.
‘That’s right!’ Janey grabbed Maisie’s hands impulsively. ‘You! He likes you. That’s why he was hanging around you at the fashion show, and . . .’
Geneva and Maisie both fell around giggling on the floor, but Janey suspected she could hear a note of relief in Maisie’s laughter. Alfie, meanwhile, looked ready to throw up.
Geneva turned back to Janey. ‘We shouldn’t be laughing, but you have to admit it all sounds very farfetched. Like something on the telly.’
‘Prove it to them, Blonde,’ said Rosie. ‘Put on your Invisibubble. I made these,’ she added proudly.
So Janey did a few SPI-buy demonstrations, and by the end both girls looked very sober. ‘But why?’ asked Geneva. ‘Why am I the answer? I don’t get it.’
‘It’s something to do with your name, I think.’ Janey pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and wrote ‘GENEVA’ on it in the same way Boz had done. ‘See, two Es and a V are underlined. It’s the same in R-Evolver and BELIEVƎ. Does that mean anything to you? And then there’s this symbol we’ve been seeing everywhere – the backward E with a cross through it.’
Geneva threw up her hands. ‘I’m sorry. Nothing. Maybe it’s something to do with Switzerland? Geneva’s the capital. And there’s a cross on the Swiss flag.’
Janey shook her head. ‘I don’t know. That’s all we have. Apart from . . . well, there were these palindrome squares in Sol’s den.’
And in two little noughts-and-crosses grids she sketched out the two boxes side by side.
And at the same moment, she and Alfie saw it. Alfie let out a low whistle. ‘DNA. Far out.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ said Maisie briskly. Janey almost smiled. It was suddenly very clear where Alfie had got his dislike of not being the first to know everything.
He squared his shoulders. ‘DNA stands for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. It’s what our cells are made from, in two strands that twist around like a . . .’
‘Helter-skelter,’ said Janey slowly. ‘Like the BELIEVƎ slide.’
‘It contains the genetic information about how we’re made,’ said Alfie, looking rather pleased with himself.
Janey gasped. ‘No! Not you, Alfie. I mean, of course, you’re made the same way too, but don’t you get it? This is all about females. All the names on the BELIEVƎ slide are female! Mum! I mean, Geneva, that’s why Boz said you’ve got the answer. Have . . . have you got a family tree?’
‘What, like an . . . oak or something?’
‘No, a chart that shows all your family background.’
‘Oh!’ Geneva looked a trifle embarrassed, then her expression cleared. ‘Yes! Grandmere embroidered something like that for me, seeing as how my parents died when I was young. Wait here!’
In seconds she was back with a large picture frame in her hands. She levered it on to the floor and they all dropped to their knees around it. ‘There’s me,’ she said, pointing to her name, which had Jakobi’s name next to it and a little line leading up to another pair of names: Monique Delacroix and Andrew Bond. Janey gasped. ‘Yes! Monique the Unique Delacroix!’
‘Both my parents died in a skiing accident. Rosie’s parents were with them at the time. That’s why I . . .’ She stopped, blushing, but Janey knew what she meant. That’s why she looked out for Rosie when nobody else did. Their families went way back. Geneva traced her finger up the line above her mother’s name. ‘Grandmere brought us up so we use her name. Here she is: Marie Delacroix.’
Janey nodded. ‘They’re all the names on the BELIEVƎ slide. That’s how each generation is listed – by the female. And there’s another one.’ She grabbed a pen and traced a line to the side of her mother’s name and wrote ‘Boz Brilliance Brown’, and then drew another line down from the pair of them. ‘Me,’ she said, writing JANE BLONDE on the glass. ‘The last one.’
‘The last in a long line of spies,’ said Alfie thoughtfully. ‘It was on your mum’s side, not your dad’s. Weird.’
They all stared at each other as the implications sunk in. Somehow the BELIEVƎ technology traced their DNA through the mother and twisted it back in time so they could travel through the generations via the double helix of which DNA was formed. No wonder it was making people sick. They were rewriting their very existence.
Alfie tapped the pane of glass carefully. ‘So if you’re the last one, who’s the first? THE MIGHTY EVE?’
‘She’s so many names back,’ said Janey. ‘It’s impossible to say. Our first ancestor?’
At that Alfie whipped off his PERSPIRE. ‘Don’t know if this will work here, but let’s try . . .’ And he tapped ‘First Ancestor Eve’ into the Google bar as the girls watched, agog. ‘Thank goodness your dad’s a genius,’ he said, pointing at the screen, and then he went white.
Janey followed his finger. ‘The most recent common ancestor is known as Mitochondrial Eve. There is no suggestion that Mitochondrial Eve is the same as the Biblical Eve,’ she read aloud. ‘Living one hundred and forty thousand years ago, she is believed to be the woman from whom all living humans are descended. Scientists have named her Eve.’
‘THE MIGHTY EVE!’ whispered Rosie reverently.
Janey sat back to let the information sink in. They were all descended from one woman: Eve. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered, suddenly understanding the B4 EVE message that Boz had given her. ‘Dad wants me to go back one hundred and forty thousand years to Eve’s time. I can’t . . . How will that help? Alfie, what’s wrong? Don’t worry. I won’t do it!’
Alfie was staring at her and then at Maisie. ‘This is all about the mothers. What about the fathers?’
So he’d worked it out. Sol’s true identity. Alfie swallowed hard. ‘Who did I remind you of?’ he whispered. ‘Who?’
Maisie shrugged. ‘I . . . well, I don’t like to say really, but you’re a lot like . . . a lot like Solomon Brown.’
‘And I’m also a lot like . . . Copernicus. My father.’
‘I’m sorry, Alfie,’ said Janey, but the words just wouldn’t stretch to make it any better.
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‘He wasn’t that bad,’ Alfie said, leaning over as if he was going to be sick. ‘Young Solomon just wasn’t that bad! A bit full of himself, but he couldn’t have turned into . . . into something so evil.’
Maisie grabbed hold of Alfie’s collar. ‘Pull yourself together.’
‘All right, Mu-um,’ moaned Alfie. ‘What’s up with you?’
‘You all keep talking about Sol as if he’s some kind of monster,’ said Maisie gruffly. ‘Well, he’s not. He’s my friend. He’s very helpful and kind, even though he doesn’t like to show it.’
‘It makes sense. Even his name,’ Jane whispered, thinking aloud. ‘Solomon . . . Sol . . . Doesn’t that mean “sun” in French or Spanish or something? Copernicus’s sun mask!’
Alfie still looked nauseous. ‘I can’t believe it. So my father wasn’t always terrible. He was trying to help little Bozzy. I heard him.’
Everyone jumped as the SPIV around Janey’s neck trilled and a dark voice penetrated the room. ‘Jane Blonde, I have a hostage. I’ll surrender him – but only in exchange for you.’
‘It’s him!’ squeaked Alfie, staring in horror at the SPI Visualator.
Janey felt her heart thump beneath the SPIV. The image on the tiny screen was difficult for them all to see, so she took off her Ultra-gogs, held them in front of the Visualator and commanded the glasses to project.
Solomon Brown’s handsome face glowered at her venomously from Geneva’s white wardrobe door. ‘The Boy-battler,’ she whispered. ‘The Invisibubble Boy-battler I gave him in the ambulance. He used it to escape. But where did he get the SPIV?’
‘Never mind that. I see you can be intelligent when you want to, Blonde,’ said Solomon lightly, licking the salty trail of blood across his upper lip. In the future, the gash on his face would get worse and worse with each transformation until he wouldn’t be able to stand for it to be seen in public. And then he’d have his sun mask hammered out, until even that wasn’t enough and he’d appear in SPIRIT form only. Knowing his fate, and despite all he had done, she felt pity for him.
Until he grabbed a handful of hair and pulled up the face of the person at his feet so that it too could be seen on the screen. ‘Boz,’ cried Janey. ‘Don’t! That’s my . . .’
‘Right again,’ said Solomon. ‘Your wonderful leader. We’ll have you on Pop Quiz soon. Oh. No, we won’t. Because you’re not going to live.’ His voice quavered, and Janey recognized that it wasn’t just madness or fury fuelling his words. It was sadness too.
‘They were going to send me away, Blonde.’ Solomon let Boz’s head drop again, but kept hold of the SPIV around Boz’s neck so that he dangled from it like a scarecrow losing its stuffing. ‘Put me in a mental institution. Fix electrodes to my head. Wipe my memory clean. All because of him.’
‘It’s not his fault,’ cried Janey. ‘He’s just a boy, and he’s sick!’
‘I know he’s sick.’ Venom at the betrayal of his family dripped through every word. ‘They all are – the whole family. Lancelot Brown, my ancestor. Ha! – what kind of psychopath has to have a whole village put underwater just so he can build a pretty garden? You see where I get it from . . . where we get it from.’
‘He’s not sick like that, and neither were your ancestors,’ said Janey furiously as Alfie put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘It’s the time travel, and his inventions. They’ve made him sick.’
‘Ah yes, all those marvellous inventions you told me I’d created.’ Solomon sighed, a long shuddering sigh that seemed to turn Geneva’s bedroom cold. ‘I believed you! I suppose I wanted to. Do you know how long I’ve been sidelined by this brilliant little brother of mine? How long I’ve played second fiddle while the family simper over him? He’s not even at Everdene yet – imagine how much worse it will be when he’s in the same school as me and takes over my little headquarters under the stage. I can’t take it. I won’t . . . won’t take it.’
Maisie jumped forward and shouted awkwardly into Janey’s chest. ‘Don’t do anything silly, Solomon. Please. Some of us . . .’ She searched for words. ‘Some of us really do appreciate you.’
Solomon’s anguished face softened. ‘Thanks, Maisie. But I think you’re a bit of a lone voice.’
‘No, she’s not!’ shouted someone behind her. Alfie fell forward, scarlet in the cheeks. ‘I mean, I don’t really know you, and I’ve never had much time for you so far, but you’re not all bad like we thought you were – um, are – and you don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. But don’t hurt that little boy,’ he added, seeing Boz slumped at Solomon’s leg.
Solomon’s burning gaze sought Janey. ‘And what about you, Blonde? What do you think of me?’
‘I . . . I think . . .’
She couldn’t. Couldn’t think. Suddenly she was just nervous Janey Brown again. Put on the spot by someone bigger and more powerful. And what did she think of him anyway? Standing down a boy not much older than herself, a boy who had as yet done nothing wrong, was miles away from coming face to face with an arch-rival who had carried out countless evil crimes. ‘It’s just . . .’
Get a hold of yourself, Blonde, she told herself. This was just like it used to be when she tried to stand up to Alfie, the most popular boy in school, and the headmistress’s son to boot. And that had worked out all right. She took a deep breath. ‘I think you’re bluffing,’ she said. ‘You won’t hurt him. He’s your brother. You love him.’
‘I do?’ Solomon threw back his head and laughed. ‘I do! You’re right. So no, I won’t hurt him myself. But I don’t need to. He’s dying anyway. The squid thing hasn’t helped him recover the same way it helped me.’
From behind Geneva, Rosie shouted out: ‘That’s because the squid is YOU, you idiot! You’re sapping strength from yourself, don’t you see?’
‘Well, at least I’m alive. I’m so alive. I will stay . . . ALIVE.’ And Solomon pointed a finger directly at the SPIV screen. ‘JB, I won’t hurt him. But I will definitely hurt you. Come and fight, if you’re spy enough.’
‘Where?’ screamed Janey, watching in terror as Solomon strode away, dragging her father by the scruff of the neck like a puppy about to be drowned.
Solomon let out a horrible hollow laugh, and Janey saw the split of light and dark as his hand dipped into the R-Evolver time machine. ‘Where my sun is rising, Blonde. I’ll see you where my sun is rising.’
And they all watched, dismayed, as he dropped the crumpled heap that was Boz Brilliance Brown on the grass and disappeared inside the tractor tyre.
