The Assassination of Billy Jeeling

by Brian Herbert

  She cut him off, saying, “I notice you still call him ‘father,’ despite the terrible thing he did to you.” Lainey looked at him through the thin plates of plaz.

  Nodding as he piloted the aircraft, Devv said, “Despite my shock and anger over learning I’m a robot instead of a man, and all my feelings that Billy betrayed me, I can’t stop remembering that he did create me after all—just as he designed and built you—and we would never have had the wonderful experiences we’ve had if he hadn’t done that for us.”

  “It’s not easy for me to forgive him,” she said.

  “But you still love him, don’t you? Just as I do?”

  Lainey felt tears in her eyes, wiped them, but they kept coming. She wasn’t human, but had human emotions nonetheless—the emotions of Billy’s lost love Reanne that had been imprinted into her. She sat silently for several moments, trying to compose herself, didn’t answer his question.

  “I’m sorry if I brought that on,” he said.

  “It’s not your fault. You were about to tell me something Billy—your father—said to you once.”

  “He said that the hull of Skyship is not what it appears to be. He mentioned it almost in passing, then changed the subject quickly, but what do you suppose he meant by that?”

  Lainey shrugged. The wave of emotion had passed, and she’d stopped crying. “I don’t know. I’ve never understood how this ship operates. Only Billy knows all of its secrets, like Tobek before him. Did you see anything about the hull in the journals?”

  “Nothing unusual, though the journals are not complete plans. Those must still be inside Tobek’s laboratories. But I’ve been sensing something about that particular comment Billy made, maybe the way he said it.”

  She smiled softly. “You sensed something with your artificial sensors. That happens to me, too. I knew there was something unusual about you, before I learned you were a robot.”

  “So both of us sense things, Lainey, though I don’t see how that could be part of our programming—so it must have to do with our human imprints.” He looked around. “I’m going to set the morph-baby down here, and then take it into one of the deep tunnels.”

  “You’re sensing something again?”

  “I am, and it’s strong.”

  Devv kept the craft on hover-mode, looking for a place to land. Lainey heard the smooth, humming sounds of the small flying vessels around them, and beyond that, the busy, clamorous noises of Skyship City. She also heard the chronic spinning sounds in her head, the background noises that had always disturbed her so much, though now she knew what they had to be—her own robotic systems, perhaps when her mechanical pulse was higher than normal. That part she hadn’t analyzed.

  Devv hit a series of controls, and suddenly loud rock music went on inside Lainey’s module, startling her. Many of these police modules were operated by robots, and she’d heard about this deep-bass, throbbing music, because for some reason the normal robots liked to listen to it when they were on patrol. Devv grinned, corrected his mistake, and landed.

  On the ground, the unusual aircraft shifted its modular configuration, so that Lainey’s and Devv’s units were no longer side by side. After a bit of shifting and clicking, her module locked into place directly behind his. He was still at the controls as they rode a cushion of air up a ramp that spiraled past buildings, to the upper sections of the great ship.

  “Billy favors the high walkway,” Devv said, “so I think we should actually go onto it, instead of just flying by and scanning it. Let’s check inside every connecting passageway personally, to see where he might have gone.”

  “You could be right about this,” Lainey said, “because you and I both know Billy keeps secrets, and the ones about us could just be the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Yeah, Skyship is huge, a vast network of secrets, and Billy is the gatekeeper.”

  “Though I still care deeply about him,” Lainey said, “I hate that he betrayed me, leading me along and manipulating me for his own purposes—or for the larger purpose of Skyship, it would be more fair to say. But he should have been honest with me, should have told me in the beginning that I was a robot. Instead of playing my heartstrings, making me think we had something special between us, something deeply personal.”

  Devv didn’t reply, just steered the morph-baby through the passageway as it spiraled upward.

  “And you, too,” she said. “Instead, he played games with both of us—or maybe we were just a cruel experiment for him, and he took detailed lab notes on our robotic operations.” She paused, took a long, agitated breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t say so, but it is troubling the way he handled us, and stressful now that we know about it.”

  “We both still care deeply for him,” Devv said. “But what does that mean for you? How does the way you feel now compare with the way you used to feel?”

  “Hmm, I guess I feel badly bruised, so much that I don’t want to love him anymore, but I can’t help it. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I feel something like that, too—except as a son to his father, instead of your damaged feelings for the man you love.”

  “Whatever I still feel for Billy,” she said, “I don’t think it’s a forced, programmed thing. No, it’s something else, something I developed during my relationship with him—because of my human imprint with the personality of his dead wife, and all she felt for him—but also because my original programming enabled me to come up with my own experiences, adding to the imprint.”

  “Sounds plausible.”

  Devv guided the morph-baby through a doorway, and onto the high walkway. Then he turned the craft slightly sideways and stopped, so that both of them could see a good distance down the central maglev track, and the walkways on either side for non-handicapped people. There were a handful of managers bustling along in both directions, as they often did, going from one building to another, or just getting some exercise during work breaks.

  Using his security code, Devv opened several doorways, one after another, smooth and quick. Some led to storage rooms or additional ordinary enclosures, while others led into corridors. He narrowed the search parameters, tailoring them to where Billy might have gone, and finally he found two windowless corridors with maglev tracks. One was short, and led to a private reading room with a small library, one of several that Billy maintained on Skyship.

  Another maglev corridor was much longer, and had rampways that led upward to the highest levels of the huge vessel—to areas that Lainey had heard from Devv were for maintenance and various mechanical operations. He’d also told her that some of the rooms in this area, and in other sections around the perimeter of the ship, contained atmospheric-stability and thruster equipment, as well as access points for the many nozzles that sprayed formula-gas into the atmosphere. The morph-baby rounded a turn, went smoothly up another ramp. At the top, they came to a stop at a blank perimeter wall, and Lainey saw something else.

  She caught her breath, found herself staring at Billy’s famous maglev chair, and it was empty. He was nowhere to be seen. Her heart sank, as she worried about him.

  Looking equally concerned, Devv stepped out and examined the chair, then brought out a hand-held scanner, which he pointed down two corridors, one of which ran to the left, and the other to the right. The scanner shone a pale orange light ahead of it. Then Devv ran the scanner along the outer wall they were facing, methodically checking every portion of it.

  “Nothing,” he said at last, shaking his head. “The scanner shows no openings, no cavities behind the wall. It says we’re next to the exterior skin of Skyship, the hull, and if Billy got through it somehow, he’s outside the ship.”

  “So we’re at a dead end?”

  “Maybe,” Devv said, “but I’m going to do a little further investigation. I want to drill into the wall here, and see what’s beyond... if anything.”

  Alarmed, she said, “Drill into the hull of Skyship? Couldn’t that cause a catastrophic loss of pressure?”

&
nbsp; “Not the way I’m going to do it. Before drilling, we’ll seal this entire area off from the rest of the ship.”

  “Like an airlock, you mean?”

  Devv Jeeling narrowed his gaze. “Exactly. I’m not going to give up easily. I could be wrong about this, but we’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Just when you think you are at a dead-end in your inquiries and all seems lost, a new avenue will open up.

  —Branson Tobek, notes on the design of Skyship

  Billy knew they were looking for him. Tobek had set up monitoring devices inside the hollowed-out skin of the immense ship, and in other key sectors, such as the hidden core. Within this tiny, secret chamber at the pinnacle of the vessel, Billy had instruments collecting surveillance data on the areas of Skyship he had specified—so that he could watch his pursuers, and know where they were at every moment, and how close they were to him.

  He was entirely silver now, except for his clothing, and he rather liked what he saw in the reflection of a side window. It gave him an idea for a new series of androids, similar to the Lazarus series with the memories and shapes of human beings, but with shining silver skin and hair.

  He preened for a moment, watching his reflected image, and said, “I do look rather striking now, don’t I? Elegant, I would say. This could become quite fashionable someday.”

  He went over in his mind how he might design and build the new robots, without using space devils. It would take a great deal of lab work, a lot of time and effort. He caught himself, felt a sinking sensation.

  I don’t have a lot of time.

  It was a thought the space devils could not read, and he was thankful for that. He felt them inside, sometimes stirring a little, but mostly calm, as if they had found a secure and comfortable nest in the center of his body. They seemed to like where they were.

  His pursuers were just beginning to penetrate this section of the ship’s hull, so they had broken through a portion of his electronic security, and knew about the concealed tunnel system. He estimated it would take them at least two days to complete the scanning of the numerous hidden areas, and physical searches. He was only a hundred and twenty meters above the place where they were beginning their quest—but the labyrinthine system of conduits and secret chambers was filled with challenges that would slow them down.

  It was a complex maze with numerous physical and electronic dead-ends, and only one route to the pinnacle, and back. And it was more than a maze. Like a Chinese puzzle box the passageways constantly shifted when intruders were inside, with tunnels sliding away and barricades popping up where there had been none before, making it extremely difficult for any outsider to figure out.

  In the solitude here—away from the steady stream of interruptions from people with problems and questions—he found a feeling of deep serenity, where he could focus and think. In the past, whenever his followers knew where he was, too many matters ended up going through him, as people were nervous about making a mistake. He’d been noticing this increasingly in recent months, during the constant pressure from Moore, Racker, and Paulo in their relentless campaign of character assassination against him, and physical attacks.

  All three were dead now, though his former friend Paul Paulo had himself been betrayed by Moore, and had lost his life for it. Yet the disturbing residue of their dirty work remained.

  They successfully assassinated my reputation, he thought, bitterly. No matter what I do from now on, I can never get my good name back. There will always be millions of people who believe the worst about me, the lies.

  He examined the array of controls on the instrument panel in front of him. For a moment, his gaze locked onto a small yellow touch-pad, within easy reach. Then he looked away from it and studied other controls, not wanting to activate the touch-pad, and not wanting the space devils to know what he was thinking. They could not read his thoughts at all, because he’d often thought of how much he hated them and wanted to be free of them, and nothing had happened to him. Without any doubt, it had to be overt action that triggered their dangerous response, such as Tobek’s clear attempt to destroy them.

  Just then, a screen flashed on in front of him, and he was startled to see an image of Branson Tobek in natural color, speaking to him. “My dear friend and colleague Billy, if you are hearing this, it means I am dead. This is the first of several messages I have set up around Skyship, to provide you with information that will be essential to you in operating the facility. There are reasons why I did not wish to provide you with everything previously.”

  Excited, Billy adjusted his position on the chair, and listened as his long-dead mentor spoke from the grave. Then the voice shifted and became slightly different, while the image of Tobek remained frozen, the expression unchanging and the lips not moving.

  “Some of what I am about to tell you is synthesized, meaning that I never actually spoke certain words you are about to hear—but they were compiled based upon extremely accurate computer projections of what I undoubtedly would have said, based upon a range of possible events. In this way, the comments have been tailored to my last moments alive, and what I said at that time—that you were never to open the sealed laboratory complex, that you were to leave all inside and untouched.”

  This is really peculiar, Billy thought, but he stared at the image in fascination, and listened.

  “It has only been a day since I died,” Tobek said, his voice shifting again and his lips moving once more, “and I want to begin with information about the space devils, because there are things you need to know about them.”

  Billy jerked his head back in surprise. A day since he died? No, it has been eleven years! What does he mean? Something must have gone wrong with the timing he set up!

  Now Billy heard Tobek explain in some detail what the space devils were, basically the same as he had already written in the journals Billy wasn’t supposed to have seen. Then the voice shifted, the facial expression and lips froze, and he said, “I assume the space devils are still trapped where I left them in the core of the ship, in the sealed laboratories I told you not to touch. They attacked me in there, because they learned I was trying to destroy them.”

  So, I was right, Billy thought.

  The voice became more natural, and Tobek’s lips started moving again, in synchronization: “The good news is that I have been able to cause considerable harm to the devils, through my experiments. And because I have seriously damaged them, they are unable to leave Skyship, and must remain here for the rest of their existence. If they were ever to be exposed to the atmosphere or to space, they would perish. The explanation for this is too complex for me to explain, Billy, because you were not privy to the extensive research I did on the creatures, all the experiments that took me a great deal of time and effort. In fact, you did not even know they existed when I was working on them.”

  That’s true, Billy thought, because he didn’t learn about them until he read about them in Tobek’s journals.

  “The space devils are the source of the dire problem that I have warned you about, the series of dangerous chain reactions that will occur in the atmosphere if Skyship were ever destroyed, or seriously damaged—but the immense danger only exists if they are aboard the vessel. Their existence, combined with an explosion of Skyship, is the problem. If the space devils are removed, a detonation of the vessel—though terrible—would not set off any chain reactions in the atmosphere.

  “You might be wondering if the harm I have done to the creatures reduces the likelihood of this occurring—and I can say with certainty that the answer is no. I must insist upon extreme, extreme caution. And, since you are hearing this recording, my critical experiments are no longer being conducted.”

  Much as I suspected, Billy thought. The space devils are the problem, in more ways than one. Damn them for killing my friend! It was a tragic loss, such a brilliant, man, taken away when he was needed so much.

  “One week from now,” Tobek said in his natural voice, “I w
ill provide you with more information. Return here at noon in seven days, and the identity markers of your presence will activate another audio-video recording.”

  A week? Billy thought. I can’t wait that long!

  Billy added the new information to what he already knew, that the creatures went zealously after his enemies. He theorized now that they were seeing him as the leader and protector of Skyship, which was their haven, since they couldn’t go out into the atmosphere or into space anymore, or they would die. And beyond that, they seemed to have found an additional refuge inside his body, as if he were a second safe harbor for their kind, with the added benefit that they could amplify their power through him. It all sounded crazy, except it really was happening to Billy, and he could only see one way out.

  He saw it all with perfect certainty.

  They stirred inside once more, and he said soothing things to them, to calm them down.

  CHAPTER 40

  Each person has the makings of great heroics inside, and of dismal, abject cowardice. It is the complex play of opposites within the human psyche that activates one or the other.

  —Devv Jeeling, notes from a speech to his security-force academy

  With Yürgen’s ability to operate humbabies, he had been activated as a reservist, and told to join five other pilots, on a team assigned to fly outside the upper perimeter of Skyship and look for abnormalities. Though Devv Jeeling had taken precautions to seal the area he was drilling inside the great vessel, he wanted to make absolutely certain nothing unusual happened to the hull, because they were working so close to it. The ship was in geostationary orbit, high over AmEarth.

  At mid-morning Yürgen Zayeddi took off with the others, and outside the great city-ship he began to circle the hull on the section that was his responsibility—the highest latitudes of the immense, blimp-shaped vessel. Due to the tremendous size of Skyship, and the meticulous scrutiny they were ordered to employ in the investigation, this meant that each pilot would need most of the day to complete his assignment.