When Yürgen’s turn came, he understood the grimace. As moments passed with the light still on him, his head ached and he felt brief, sharp lances of pain, little needle pricks, as if something was piercing the cells of his brain, probing and traveling into them. He must have made a face, and almost cried out, but didn’t. Fortunately, the process did not take long, and the pain went away quickly.
As soon as all of the recruits had been inspected without incident, the truthbot stepped back, and its scary spectrum of light melted back into its body. Sonya Orr touched a plate on the robot’s torso, then read a small screen there, lit up in the middle. “All of you are in the good to excellent range,” she announced as she turned to face them, “you all did well.”
Zayeddi wondered what the difference was between good and excellent, but didn’t ask. Wasn’t the truth an inflexible thing? At least the way she’d described it, where nothing could be concealed? Though curious, he did not want to ask a question that might single him out, saying something that could put him—he almost chuckled at the unintentional witticism—in a bad light.
Sandra Orr said, “I see that some of you have interesting skills, which can be useful here on Skyship. While public relations will be your primary assignments, a couple of you will be assigned to backup duties. LaBecca Moscone, I see that you worked as a sous-chef for a top restaurant. I want you to serve periodically on a food-inspection team, when needed. That is of great importance on this vessel, where food-borne illnesses can be so harmful. If you do well at that, you might be assigned to a team that checks food, preventing Billy Jeeling from being poisoned. And Yürgen Zayeddi, you apparently know how to operate humbabies. What is your skill level?”
“Fairly good. I learned how to fly from a co-worker at the humbaby plant where I worked. She said I was proficient at it, but I got fired before being able to work in the department I wanted, where I could have flown humbabies regularly for quality control.”
“Sounds like brave work, being a test-pilot.”
He laughed. “Oh, humbabies are quite safe. Even with defective mechanisms, the cabins are built of high-strength plastics, with high-tech interior cushioning, restraints, and puff-bags. Humbabies have been known to fall out of the sky and just bounce. Pilots walk away from accidents all the time.”
“Is that so? Can you operate the morph-babies, too? The ones that change shape and are capable of connecting to other craft of their kind?”
“Yeah, those, too. No problem at all. In fact, they’re the most fun of all.”
“We have them here on Skyship,” she said. “The cops use them.”
“I know. The company where I used to work is one of your major suppliers.”
“Well, you are to report to security headquarters and demonstrate your flying skills, with the idea that you might become a reserve pilot, called to duty in case of emergency.”
He nodded.
Sandra Orr picked out a couple of others for comment, then went on to say that she was pleased to have so many truthful recruits. She narrowed her gaze. “I’d hate to have to order punishments for people when they have barely set foot on Skyship.”
He couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not. Maybe not. She didn’t appear to be unkind, but looked very serious, and that robot with her looked deadly, with its no-nonsense demeanor and panels on its body that undoubtedly concealed weapons.
Yürgen hefted his shoulder bag into place and adjusted the strap, as he and his companions followed the attractive woman through the high doorway, to the sidewalk beyond. As he passed the Doric columns he noticed they were cracked and chipped, and the surface beneath Zayeddi’s feet was of a marble-like material, with swirls of black and white. It was badly scratched and worn. The group emerged into the middle of the cavernous interior of Skyship City, a disorienting sensation to him, as he’d thought they would be on one edge of the airborne metropolis, because of where they docked. Buildings around him had unsightly gray or brown patches on their sides, and streaks of black. He found all of this surprising, even startling.
The scale of the flying city was staggering, as he found himself in the midst of a dense conglomeration of high-rise buildings, with hovercars and hoverbuses flying among them, and the odd little helicopter-like humbabies—faster than hovercars—speeding about in large numbers, most of them carrying only one passenger. There were numerous businesses on the street... a restaurant, a clothing store, a pharmacy, a movie theater, and more. He didn’t see any children, but they might be in school.
A group of JeeJees passed by on the sidewalk, wearing black and tan shirts and pants, and he noticed other people milling about nearby, looking around and up at the tall buildings—they were members of various races who were dressed in the colorful provincial costumes of the Empire, yet these were obviously expensive outfits made of fine fabrics with the best tailoring, gold embroidery, and tiers of jewelry. This group looked quite wealthy, and conducted themselves with the perfect posture and demeanor of the high-bred. Confirming this to him, Sonya said they were members of elite native families around the world who were financial supporters of Billy Jeeling, and had made large donations to Skyship. To get on board, they had undergone the usual security checks, including examination by truthbots.
He heard them speaking different dialects. Zayeddi had a good ear, and had worked with various nationalities in his former job. To him they sounded Slavic, AmAnglo, Oriental, Spanish, French, AmAfrican, and perhaps even Latin. Other people, and robots, hurried along a sidewalk that ran parallel to the first one he’d seen—with each sidewalk handling only one-way traffic, going in opposite directions. He saw no motorized vehicles, no place for them, with the exception of a handful of morph-babies at street level, moving carefully through the crowds with uniformed police officers inside, apparently making their customary security rounds.
“I’ll show you to your living quarters,” Orr said. “The building is within walking distance.” Getting close to her, Yürgen noticed that she smelled of an exotic perfume, an unknown (but pleasing) scent to him.
She motioned for the trainees to follow, and led the way at a brisk pace along the sidewalk beneath tall buildings. Yürgen hurried to keep up, moving to her side ahead of the other recruits, and going around other people ahead of them who were not walking as rapidly.
Whenever possible he craned his neck to look upward. The towering buildings were in a variety of architectural styles, many with store-fronts on the street level. Beyond the tops of the buildings he saw what looked like a blue sky, with wisps of clouds—but he knew it had to be artificial. At this altitude, the thin atmosphere wouldn’t look like that, and would be darker, with the twinkling vastness of space showing—as he’d seen from the shuttle before it went into its docking clamps.
Now Zayeddi detected a slight odor in the air, a chlorine-like pungency that he presumed was Billy Jeeling’s secret air-restoration mixture, or something from the skyminers that worked in the skies over AmEarth.
“As you may know,” Orr said, “we’re in the mesosphere at the moment, but will be dropping lower in the atmosphere tomorrow. A lot of thrust is required to move this immense vessel around. We’re roughly the shape of a blimp—a huge one—but we are not a lighter-than-air craft. There are two hundred thousand solar-powered rocket-thrusters on Skyship, with many of them firing constantly to maintain altitude and attitude. If all the systems fail, we drop like a rock.” She chuckled. “But don’t worry. There are so many backup systems that the chances of falling out of the sky are infinitesimal—short of some major, unforeseen disaster, of course.”
“I’ve read about the thruster system,” Yürgen said. “A secret rocket fuel is used, I believe. There are many secret mixtures around here, from what I hear, more than just the formula Billy Jeeling uses to recondition the atmosphere.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” the young woman responded, with an edge to her tone.
Appearing to be a little put off by his comment, she stopped and waite
d for the other recruits to catch up, who were being delayed by throngs of children emerging from a school building. They made happy, boisterous sounds. More children were coming from other directions, threading their way through the crowd, entering the building.
His gaze caught hers for a lingering moment. Orr’s eyes were almond-shaped, and forest green. She called out to the others, who were finally catching up with them.
“It’s the end of one school shift,” she explained, “and the beginning of another one. Work shifts are that way, too. All the buildings on Skyship are in operation twenty-four / seven. Even here, where the interior of the great ship looks so large, space is at a premium.”
She led them around a corner, and in another two blocks she climbed the steps to enter the ground floor of a high-rise building that had enclosed balconies on the front, as did other structures in this block. She stopped in the lobby.
“You’ve each been issued a small studio apartment,” Orr said. “Prepare yourselves for this mentally, because the units are very small. Nothing fancy here... and mine isn’t much larger. How much space does a person need, anyway?”
No one answered the rhetorical question.
They took a highlift to the sixty-eighth floor, and Sonya Orr led them along a narrow, disturbingly dingy corridor. A gray mouse scurried by underfoot, but no one said anything. Orr opened a door, revealing a small, utilitarian room. “Mr. Zayeddi, you’re here.”
His eyebrows raised. “Is this my apartment?”
She smiled. “I know, it looks like no more than an inelegant little room, but it is efficiently laid out, so we like to call it an apartment.”
Grinning, he said, “As long as I can get through the doorway and find a place to lie down and sleep, it’s big enough for me.”
“That’s the attitude I want to see!” At least she wasn’t upset with him anymore, so she seemed to have forgotten about his earlier comments—or at least she was willing to overlook them.
She slid a key-transmitter ring onto the forefinger of his right hand, and in a moment it tightened to fit snugly. These devices were so common that she didn’t ask if he knew how to use it. He noted a round blue spot on top, where he would need to press to open the door, and lock it when he was inside.
He stepped inside while she paused in the doorway. The small room had no windows and was quite dark, even when the ceiling lights went on automatically as he stepped inside. He intended to make the best of it, though, and smiled to himself. For sure, this wasn’t really an apartment, and was barely a room.
“Any questions?” she asked.
“No, this will do just fine.”
She nodded. “I know it’s a sacrifice to live so frugally, but you’re going to be given an important job after you complete training—an infinitely more important position than you’ve ever had before. You can take a break for this evening, but meet me in the lobby tomorrow morning for breakfast, with the other recruits. A buzzer will ring in your room at 5:15 when it’s time to wake up. You will then have forty-five minutes to get ready and show up downstairs.”
She moved on with the others, leaving him alone in his bleak surroundings. Yürgen closed and locked the door, then removed his backpack and unloaded the clothing and other personal articles into a compartment under the bed. The room was efficiently laid out, he had to admit, with a small closet and high shelves. It had no bathroom, but a sign and diagram on the inside of the door described where it was, a shared facility down the corridor. There was no kitchen, either, but he did see an electric tea pot and a container of wrapped teas. He lifted the pot, saw no place to fill it with water. Must have to take it to the bathroom. He sighed.
Yürgen removed his clothing, climbed wearily into bed. Even though the mattress was stiff and uncomfortable, he was deeply fatigued, and didn’t think it would take long for him to fall asleep. But he was so excited at actually being on Billy Jeeling’s great ship that he laid awake for more than an hour.
CHAPTER 10
The stars are a marvelous symphony of light.
—Billy Jeeling, to his son Devv
Lainey appreciated everything Billy did for her. This private dance studio, for one thing. It wasn’t large, because space was limited on Skyship. But it had a nice hardwood floor, sturdy bars for stretching, and even mirrored walls, so that she could watch her moves and perfect them. Paintings of dancers adorned the walls, including one that was her favorite of all, a reproduction of The Rehearsal, by Edgar Degas.
Dancing had always seemed so natural to Lainey, as if she had been born with the ability. She had never taken lessons, but recalled performing in her home as a small child, with her parents, brothers, and cousins for an audience, and their enthusiastic applause. They had always encouraged her, and so had Billy.
Now she wore a white skirt and black leotard, as she went through a series of jazz dance exercises that she liked to do each day for conditioning—energetic moves that included acrobatic leaps in the air, tumbles, and jazz splits. It pleased her that she could perform some of the most difficult routines without professional training, but today she felt a little out of breath. Yet, overall, her conditioning program had a positive effect on her. When she completed these exercises, she often performed a series of graceful pas seul ballet routines.
Billy Jeeling seemed to care deeply for her, but at times she had the uneasy sense that she was not enough for him. Other women flirted with the famous man all the time, but as far as she knew he didn’t return their attentions. Even the relationship he had with Dr. Rachel Ginsberg seemed platonic—Lainey was more confident about that now, though she had once harbored doubts, and fears, about what was going on between them. But recently she and Rachel had engaged in a long, heart to heart conversation, and Lainey went away with the strong impression that the scholarly woman was not her competitor, at least not directly. Rachel was devoted to Billy; that much was quite apparent. Yet she insisted that she didn’t expect more than a professional relationship with him. Then she’d qualified that statement by adding, “Not as long as he cares about you as much as he does.”
Assuming that was true, it put Rachel in a backup position to Lainey—one woman waiting for another to make a mistake. Lainey didn’t like that tenuous arrangement, but at least Rachel had seemed truthful, and honorable in her actions, and didn’t impress her as the type who would do things behind Lainey’s back. If the roles were reversed, Lainey might have acted the same way. Even at Billy’s advanced age, he was an extremely attractive man, and she held no delusions that other women would not line up at his proverbial doorstep, seeking his affections. Rachel seemed to be at the head of that line, and keeping this in mind, Lainey always took great care not to make mistakes, while showing Billy how much she cared about him all the time, constantly telling him how much she loved him.
Lainey took a short break, used one of the stretching bars for her calves and hamstrings. In the stillness of the moment, she heard those irritating machine sounds again. Faint and barely perceptible, like a person with mild tinnitus of the ears who heard ringing whenever focusing upon it, yet trying not to think about it most of the time.
Her thoughts returned to Billy, as they did so often. Was she showing him too much affection? Was she smothering him with her attentions, leaving him no room to breathe? At times he did seem mildly irritated with her, or perhaps it was his natural impatience to get back to his important work. The truth be told, Lainey realized, his work came first, and both Lainey and Rachel were in line for whatever he had left after devoting his energies to his critical environmental restoration work. It was because of his tremendous success in that endeavor that he was the most famous man in the world, and probably the most famous man who would ever live.
Sensing movement on her left, she saw Devv Jeeling enter the studio and stand just inside the doorway, waiting for her. He wore his blue Security Commander’s uniform, neatly pressed. The young black man carried his silver-braided officer’s cap, and his curly hair glistened
, as if he had just showered.
Lainey and Billy’s son were good friends, and professionally they often discussed police and other security matters that Devv handled for the great ship, and how they coordinated with Lainey’s public relations efforts. Sometimes she even relaxed her guard and told him how she felt about his father, and the young man was kind enough to give her useful advice.
Now she completed her dance routine, finishing with a double somersault and landing perfectly on her feet, facing him.
“Not bad,” he said, reaching out to touch her forehead. “A little more perspiration than the last time I saw you, though. You need to maintain your conditioning better.”
She smiled stiffly. “I am not one of your departmental recruits.” By that, she meant the human ones. “Is there a problem?” she inquired, while leading him to a tiny alcove where she kept a dispenser machine for coffee, tea, and other beverages.
They ordered cups of steaming aromatic coffee, and stood while sipping them, instead of sitting on chairs that could be folded open from the wall.
“I want to talk to you about Sonya,” he said. “I asked her to marry me, but she said she has too much work to do on Skyship for that, too much responsibility with her job. Her job? She’s a proctor, working for you, Lainey. That’s not such a huge job, not like mine; you have several other proctors like her. From what I hear, their workload isn’t so big. In contrast, I run an entire police-and-security force, more than four thousand machine and human officers. I’m the one with all the responsibilities and concerns, but Sonya makes a comment about her job? I’m deeply afraid that it’s just an excuse, that she’s slipping away from me.”
“Maybe she really means that your job is in the way, not hers.”
The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Page 8
