Lainey was also troubled by the affair that Zayeddi had been having with Sonya Orr, a relationship that led to her being attacked by Devv Jeeling. Hopefully, Sonya had not been seriously injured, though she refused to see Dr. Ginsberg, and had gone back to AmEarth for medical treatment. There was no excuse for hitting a woman, and there were rumors that Devv would be suspended and put on trial for injuring her, but other rumors held that this wouldn’t happen at all, and the argument was being called an unfortunate incident, with mistakes committed by both Sonya and Devv. Even more rumors held that Yürgen Zayeddi and Devv Jeeling were going to fight a duel to the death. As Zayeddi’s boss, she had confronted him about this an hour ago, and he’d denied that anything like that was slated to occur.
She’d been waiting for instructions on what to do about Zayeddi. He was considered a hero on Skyship because of the saboteur he killed, but perhaps it would be better if he were relieved of his duties and sent back to AmEarth. This afternoon she expected to receive word one way or the other, because she’d been summoned to Devv Jeeling’s office. He hadn’t said why, but she suspected it had something to do with that dead student, and the one who killed him. Undoubtedly there would be more stringent security measures after this, and Devv might want to review them with her, and implement something.
But when she entered his office, she saw him studying a thick leather-bound book. Two more like it were stacked on a corner of his large desk, to his left. He took a few moments before looking up at her, then said, “I’ve been reading about us.”
She didn’t know what he meant. The pages open in front of him were handwritten, in a compact penmanship that was difficult to read. It didn’t look familiar to her, and she’d never seen this book before, or the other two. An electron microscope stood on a rolling cart beside the table, an instrument she had not seen anywhere on Skyship except in the crime laboratory at security headquarters.
“These are the secret journals of Branson Tobek,” Devv said. He sat back in his chair, stared up at the ceiling for a moment, and let out an exasperated sigh before looking back at her. “He’s the real designer of Skyship, not Billy Jeeling.”
She remained standing. “Branson Tobek? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Nor had I, before my father gave these journals to me, and told me the truth about the construction of Skyship. It seems that Tobek was the reclusive type, I mean really reclusive. He didn’t want to deal with anyone except Billy Jeeling, so he set up a small apartment and a laboratory complex in the core of Skyship, and gave instructions to Billy about how the massive vessel was to be constructed. My father—I’m not sure if I should continue to call him that, after what I’m about to tell you—didn’t want it that way, but the old inventor insisted, so Billy went along with the ruse, and became the public face of the project.”
“This Tobek thing is really big news. We don’t want it to get out, do we?” She assumed now that he was going to discuss public relations issues with her, how to keep a lid on the new information while setting up a backup plan in case it ever leaked.
“No, we don’t. These volumes contain explosive information, and not just about Skyship. There’s something about you and me, too. In fact, Lainey, there’s so much startling information in these journals that I don’t know where to begin—for one thing, Tobek was concerned about dangerous, silvery organisms that got aboard the ship. They might still be here; Billy isn’t sure.”
“You’re calling him ‘Billy’ now?”
Devv slid the open book toward her on the desk, turned the volume around so that she could read it. “There,” he said, pointing. “This will explain why. It’s one of the places where your name is mentioned, and mine.”
She looked, couldn’t read the handwriting, but did identify what looked like her name, and Devv’s. “This is very difficult to read,” she said.
“Tobek’s swift penmanship takes some getting used to, but you’ll want to learn what he had to say, as I already have. This is devastating news, Lainey, and I don’t know of any delicate way to break it to you, but it seems that you and I are somewhat related.”
“Somewhat? What does that mean? Are we cousins? Distant cousins? Is that what you’re saying?”
“We’re both robots, Lainey, of a very advanced, humanlike design, in what Billy Jeeling calls the Lazarus series.”
Her voice rose. “What are you talking about?”
“Bio-robotics, he calls it. We’re androids.”
“You’re a robot? And I am, too? Don’t be ridiculous!”
“That’s what I thought. But it’s true. I wish it weren’t, but it is.” He looked away. “I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to you, but Billy insisted that I do it.”
“I can’t believe this.”
He scowled, and said, “Billy was not only Tobek’s assistant during the construction of Skyship. He was also the robotics expert, and did such a good job on you and me, and on a handful of others, that none of us had any idea we were not human. Simulated blood flows through our veins, and we have sexual and other bodily functions that are very close to those of humans. We eat meals and digest them; we smell and hear things; we seem to get mildly ill on occasion; our skin can be burned. We have emotions. But it’s all artificial, in our construction and programming.”
“This can’t be true!” She stared at the open page, couldn’t read it even if the handwriting were clear, because her vision had blurred from the shock and stress. She felt confused. Her thoughts and emotions whirled.
“Sadly, it’s true. And Dr. Rachel Ginsberg is in on it. That’s why she was able to ‘heal’ me from what appeared to be a fatal injury, when the attackers tried to kidnap Billy Jeeling. Ginsberg and Billy just swapped out a few of my parts, tuned up others, repaired my artificial skin, and I was ready to be released from the hospital. I even have simulated remnants of pain from the ‘injury’ to my head, which seemed so grievous.”
Lainey was stunned.
“If you need proof of what I’m telling you,” he said, “I suppose we could arrange to have something violent done to you, too, and you’d see how quickly you’d be up and running again. But I don’t recommend that. Billy wouldn’t like it. You see, Lainey, even though you’re a machine, he cares deeply about you, and he’s afraid that drastic repairs could take away remnants of the human being that he modeled you after—Reanne Jeeling, his lost love from long ago, his wife. She died tragically. You have been implanted with a small amount of her cellular material, and this affects your appearance, as well as your personality, skills, and memories.”
Devv reached inside a desk drawer, brought out a photograph and placed it on the open book. “Billy sent this to me today. It looks like you, but isn’t. That’s Reanne Jeeling, before she was killed in the collapse of a building during an earthquake.”
Lainey stared. “She’s the one who was supposedly your mother?”
“No, if that even matters anymore, because of the way I was actually created. Before revealing the truth about me, when he was still lying, Billy told me my mother was a woman he met before Reanne. But my ‘mother’ never existed, of course, because he built me as a robot and imprinted me with his own modified cellular material, affecting my appearance and behavior.”
Lainey thought the image of the woman looked like her twin, but she’d never had her own hair cut so short, nor had she ever worn oversized earrings like this woman had on. In the picture Reanne was holding hands with a much younger Billy Jeeling at a campground of tents, with a blue lake and white-capped mountains behind them. Lainey had never been there in her life; she was certain of it. The woman looked so much like her, however, that if a couple of details were changed to match how Lainey wore her hair and jewelry, even she would not be able to tell the faces apart.
“To reduce any doubts you might have, let me take a blood sample from you,” Devv said. “We’ll look at it under a microscope to see how it compares with real human blood.” He brought out a small device that h
e clamped on her forefinger, causing a brief lance of pain. Then he opened the specimen chamber of the microscope and slid the device and its sample inside. A small screen flashed on above the chamber. He motioned for Lainey to come and look.
She saw two specimens of red blood, side by side—one marked that it was from an unidentified human, and the other from “L. Forster.” They appeared to be quite different. He described the comparative cellular structures in more technical terms than she understood, then said, “Your cells—and mine—are not fully biological. They are infinitesimally small electromagnetic particles, which look and act like blood. In reality, we are very sophisticated machines.”
Lainey did not want to believe this. Yet the revelation, as startling as it was, felt oddly correct to her, and served to explain why she sometimes heard strange whirring sounds, and other machine noises when no one else did.
It explained something else, too. She stared at Devv, and he looked back—and for a moment Lainey had an eerie, alien feeling. Now she knew what it was she’d been intuiting about him for some time, that something was not quite right with him. As it turned out, there was also something not quite right with her.
Lainey felt utterly hopeless, that she and Billy Jeeling could never be a couple in the real sense. And she knew something that tore her heart apart, actually her mechanical heart, she was coming to believe.
This is why I couldn’t get pregnant, she thought. I never can.
She felt dismal. Her emotions ran wild, simulated emotions, undoubtedly. Yet no matter what they were, she had them, and they ran the gamut from despair to sadness to rage. Billy Jeeling, who had always professed to care so deeply about her, had been lying to her for years, and had sent a surrogate to deliver the devastating news. She hated him now, and wished he’d never designed and built her in the first place.
CHAPTER 28
It is most peculiar that he is a master of robots, atmospheric restoration, and other forms of high technology, but does not embrace the internet, implanted communicators, or other advanced work-saving systems.
—Excerpt from “Enigma Man,” one of the Jeeling news articles
Sonya was surprised to see a uniformed General Rivington Moore VIII—her older brother—standing near her shuttle as she departed from it, on the landing field of the Imperial City Spaceport. He was accompanied by two men and a woman, also officers. His companions wore caduceus medical insignia on their lapels, entwined snakes with wings on top. It was just before sunset, with long shadows stretched across the field.
“One of our Skyship operatives sent me a mindcom,” he said, as soon as he and the medical personnel were out of earshot of the other passengers. “Apparently you have not been feeling well? Very bad headaches? I’ve been extremely worried about you, so I brought these doctors to diagnose you right away. You didn’t send me any information.”
“I couldn’t transmit because something has gone terribly wrong with my mindwave communicator, on both the military and the civilian frequencies.” She pointed at her head, grimaced when a needle of pain stabbed her temple. “I took a couple of blows from Devv Jeeling, and the thing went haywire.”
“So that’s it.” His gaze narrowed. “I assume there’s no way to patch things up with him now?”
“Not a chance. I told him I don’t ever want to see him again. I just needed to come straight back here and get it fixed.”
The young General shook his head in displeasure, seemed to care more about the gap in future intelligence information than her welfare. “How did things go wrong between you two?”
She looked at the other officers, then at her brother. “Is this a conversation you want to have here?”
“They all have security clearance,” he said, “of the highest level. My personal security clearance.”
“Are you trying to blame me for what happened on Skyship?”
“I would remind you, that you were on duty there, one hundred percent of the time. What caused the fight?”
“Didn’t your other operative tell you?”
He didn’t reply, was looking increasingly angry.
“Since you already seem to know, Rivington, I found someone else I like on Skyship, and Devv got jealous over it. But he had no right to hit me; there’s no excuse for striking a woman.”
“Under ordinary circumstances that might be true, but when you are on an important assignment, you are obligated to exercise extraordinary care.” His gaze narrowed. “You didn’t do that this time, did you?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something? I was not specifically assigned to enter into a relationship with Devv Jeeling when you sent me to Skyship. That just happened. I thought I liked him, and the connection had the bonus of giving us access to inside information.”
She grimaced in pain, could barely raise her voice enough to make him hear her. “I’m suffering severe headaches, seeing VR images in front of my eyes, and hearing messages that fill my brain. Overlapping pictures and sounds are driving me crazy.”
He looked at the female doctor. “Captain Tolliver, can you check her implant?”
The officer nodded, stepped forward to her. “From your bruises it appears that your boyfriend hit you on the cheek and on the forehead?”
“Yes, the blow to my forehead was the second one, and after that my mindwave implant started acting up.”
“Hmmm, blows such as those do not normally cause problems with these units, or with the civilian models, because all are implanted with deep needle-sensors into the inferior and superior colliculus of the midbrain. Nonetheless, something could have been jolted when he hit you.”
The doctor removed a small white device from her jacket pocket, ran it over the top of Sonya’s head and around the sides and front. “Your implant is indeed malfunctioning. It needs to be removed.”
“How fast can you do it?” Sonya asked. The pain had subsided, but she was still seeing the jumbled images and hearing the cacophony of voices.
The doctor pointed to a mobile medical station, parked by the terminal building. “Immediately,” she said.
“All right,” General Moore said. “Let’s get you fixed up and send you back.” He led the way to the medical station.
“I’m not so sure about going back,” Sonya said. “Things have gotten complicated on Skyship. More than the relationship with Devv.”
He stopped and looked at her inquisitively. He didn’t look angry any more. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m not sure if Billy Jeeling is that bad of a guy. I’m not sure if he deserves what we’re doing to him. He should retire, I agree with that, but—”
“You’re not one of my advisers,” he said in a curt tone, and then stalked away abruptly, leaving his sister alone with the medical team.
CHAPTER 29
Many surprises are not of the good kind.
—Billy Jeeling, journal entry
It was late afternoon, and Billy had gone to his office to read a new security report. For days, his technicians had been searching thoroughly for any additional sabotage that the treacherous Rand Baker might have committed, but nothing had been found. Apparently the threat of more damage had been concocted as the man lay dying, a pathetic attempt to make himself more important than he actually was.
Billy gazed out the windows, beheld a spectacular golden glow above the horizon of AmEarth as the sun set, with the visible portion of the planet indigo blue and veiny white, against the pale hues of the sky. The views from Skyship never ceased to impress and captivate him.
He heard a commotion in the outer offices, turned away from the view. A large red warning light on the wall began to flash, and sirens wailed furiously, a cacophony of noise.
A young security officer burst in with hardly a knock, made a circling hand salute and spoke with shortness of breath as he tried to be heard above the alarms and sirens. After a failed attempt to be heard, he shouted over the noise. “Sir, Lieutenant Theo Costelli reporting. Scanners picked up a large military forc
e closing fast from AmEarth, with weapons armed!”
Feeling his pulse quicken, Billy glanced back at the window. The sun was dropping behind AmEarth’s horizon, a golden orb vanishing into the depths of space. He didn’t see any attack craft, but alarms continued to howl.
Devv Jeeling hurried into the office, stood nervously beside the officer, as he continued. “Something is wrong with our defense systems!” the lieutenant said, his voice cracking under the stress. “We’re working to fix the problem.”
“Something to do with Rand Baker?” Billy asked, looking at his son, and then at the officer. “Is this what his dying threat meant?”
Costelli shrugged and said, “Sir, no one knows, but that would be a good assumption.”
Devv turned red in the face, obviously upset.
There were explosions and the sounds of gunfire, seeming to come from an upper level of Skyship.
Billy coughed, felt raspy pains in his chest. Something had gone wrong with the air in his office, and he smelled a caustic odor of ozone-mix. He coughed again, leaned over a control panel on top of his desk, and touched the buttons necessary to pump clean air into the office. The momentary loss of air quality didn’t seem to bother the others as much.
His discomfort subsided.
Robotic security officers were running through the corridor outside his door, making urgent machine noises. Human officers were in their midst, shouting warnings and commands.
Devv was flushed and sweating, had a frantic look in his eyes. His gaze darted around, wildly. “I need to get you out of here, Father!” He rushed to a wall inside the office, pressed a button. The wall slid open, revealing a dimly-illuminated tunnel and a maglev track.
The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Page 20
