“I know exactly what you mean. We have something special.” He paused as he put on his shorts and an undershirt. “More than special. That’s not a good enough word for it.” And he really felt that way, beyond the powerful physical attraction he felt for her. They had talked for hours during the night, in between the lovemaking. She was interested in many of the same things he was—science, art, history, philosophy, and goals in life. Sonya was intensely devoted to Billy Jeeling, just as Yürgen was, yet she also wanted a family someday—and so did he.
He dressed quickly. They kissed at the door by a statuette of Billy Jeeling, spoke of when they might see other again, that evening. After a long embrace, they separated and Yürgen opened the door.
He was shocked to see Devv Jeeling there in his Security Commander’s uniform, his face contorted in rage. Yürgen felt an impulse to take a step back, but held his ground.
“What are you doing here?” Devv demanded. He slammed into the other man, hitting him with a shoulder, and tried to get past him. But Yürgen gave him a forceful shove in return with his hands, knocking him hard against a wall and causing his officer’s cap to fall off. The statuette rocked on its stand, but didn’t fall.
Sonya ran forward, said, “I want you to leave, Devv. Now!”
Ignoring her, Devv drew a laser-bow from a holster and cocked the weapon, causing it to flex backward, ready to fire. It didn’t need to flex. This was just for show, like the visual display of a wild animal, to intimidate and frighten an adversary. But the device really was capable of firing arrow-shaped shafts of light, and they were known to cause extreme pain and a slow death, from internal hemorrhaging. He pointed the deadly weapon at Zayeddi’s chest.
Yürgen sneered. “Not man enough to fight me without that?”
“I don’t need any more than my fists to deal with you!” Devv uncocked the laser-bow and holstered it. He advanced toward the other man.
Sonya stepped between them. “Stop this. Both of you!”
With an angry grunt, Devv pushed her to one side.
But she stepped between the men again. “I want you to leave, Devv. Now! Get out of here, damn it!”
He punched her in the face, and she cried out in anger, then swung her own fists at him, striking him on the arms. Yürgen tried to pull them apart, but Devv managed to hit her again, an even harder blow to the face. This backed her up, and this time she looked injured, putting her hands to her face, while cursing him.
Yürgen shoved Devv back toward the doorway. He simmered with anger toward the intruder, felt like hitting him. It was a peculiar situation, a man in a security officer’s uniform, acting unlawfully.
“That was a real manly thing to do,” Sonya said to Devv.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you shouldn’t be here with him, shouldn’t—”
“I told you to get out of here,” she said. Sonya picked up his fallen cap, threw it at him, and he caught it.
“You heard her,” Yürgen said. Pressing his face close to Devv, he mustered more courage and said, “You’re a creep. Sonya knows it, and that’s why she’s with me.”
Devv didn’t say anything. His eyes burned with rage and pain as he glared at Yürgen, and then at Sonya.
Yürgen would fight him if he had to. They were around the same height and weight, but Yürgen assumed the other man had training in combat techniques he didn’t know. That didn’t deter him. He would protect Sonya any way he could.
Sonya went around both men and held the door open. “Out,” she said to Devv. She didn’t look well, seemed to be in pain and had red bruises on her face.
Devv put on his cap, as if to leave, but said, “Look, I’m really sorry I hit you. It will never happen again.” He appeared to be near tears.
“That’s right,” she said, “because we’re finished. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Looking as if the world had fallen on top of him, Devv Jeeling started to say something, but wilted under her glare. He turned abruptly, and hurried away.
When he was gone, Yürgen examined her reddened cheek and forehead, saw both areas beginning to swell up. “You’d better get some ice on your face.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks for being here, but I need to be alone now. Okay?” She didn’t meet his gaze, looked away. Now she appeared to be confused.
Yürgen felt uncertain about what he should do. She might have a concussion. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She nodded, but motioned for him to leave, waving a hand in the direction that Devv had gone. Yürgen left, saying, “I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
Sonya didn’t answer. She closed the door quickly.
CHAPTER 22
“There are certain events in the life of each person that form critical junctures, where absolutely correct decisions must be made—or that life will tumble off a cliff, and take others over the edge with it.”
—Billy Jeeling, in a note to his son, Devv
Billy had too much on his mind to sleep, even with the medications he took. The clutter of thoughts were worse than ever, it seemed to him, though he didn’t see how that could possibly be the case, because of how incredibly crowded his calendar had been during the construction of Skyship, when Branson Tobek was still alive.
Nonetheless, it was as if all the decades of problems had mounted up and come to a climax at this very instant, all the years of secrets he’d been forced to keep by Tobek, and the personal stresses that resulted because he didn’t know certain information, and didn’t know how to solve particular problems. Very important information had been kept from him. He knew a great deal about repairing the planet’s fragile atmosphere, more than any other living person—but the rub was this: any other living person. Tobek was dead, and Billy had checked the memories of every robot on the ship for help, not turning up anything he didn’t already know, or have in the written instructions that Tobek gave him during the construction of the huge vessel. Instructions that Billy still had, well-organized and in a secret place.
He’d been tossing and turning all night. Now it was shortly before dawn, and he rode his maglev chair on its smooth cushion of air, out of the apartment and through the corridor. Then he took the highlift to a lower level, and exited into a wide interior space. He saw no one except numerous security robots, on duty.
Ahead lay the doors to the core of the ship, a place where only he and a handful of his most trusted robots could go. These were tall, burnished black doors, with the blue-sky insignia of Skyship on them. He touched a control pad on the chair, and the doors slid open quickly, with only a little noise of machinery. A chill ran down his spine as he thought of what he was about to do, something he had been putting off for a long time—telling himself he was never going to do it, but knowing deep in his soul that he would have to do it anyway some day. That he would have to do it.
The time had finally come.
His chair floated through the doorway, and the large doors snicked shut behind him.
The brilliant inventor Branson Tobek had lived with a whole host of marvelous technological and scientific secrets as his closest companions, but there had been far too many of them, and now Billy needed important information. At the top of the list, Tobek had told him that the ship contained something extremely dangerous, and that if the huge vessel ever blew up, it would set off disastrous chain reactions in the atmosphere, causing so much damage that all life on AmEarth would be virtually wiped out.
Alarmed, Billy had asked for more information, but always he had been given delaying excuses, due to the complexity of the required explanation, or some other reason—and told that he would be informed tomorrow, or the day after that, or the following week. Then the old man had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, taking his secrets with him.
Later, Billy had felt obligated to pass the dire warning on to his political enemies on the planet, acting as if it came from his own knowledge—but it hadn’t. All he’d really had was a sincere, foreboding sense that
Tobek had been telling the truth, and that Skyship was potentially a bomb of devastating proportions. The great ship contained a deadly secret, an extermination secret, but what was it?
The answer, he felt certain, lay inside the sealed laboratory of the dead inventor, perhaps in Tobek’s personal journals that the robots had placed inside the great man’s tiny apartment, within the lab complex. The hidden laboratory, and Tobek’s adjacent living quarters, had been sealed up ever since his troubling death, with those mysterious silver flashes around his body, and the horrific eruptions of silver blood.
What had the strange flashes been, and could they possibly be connected with Tobek’s dire warning?
Even though Billy had been feeling a sense of loyalty to the old inventor, who hadn’t wanted him to pry into whatever lay hidden inside the laboratory complex, he also felt a strong loyalty to the people of AmEarth, and he was deeply concerned about their well-being. And of the two conflicting loyalties, he was coming to realize, the latter affected far, far more people, and undoubtedly had much greater historical significance. Billions of lives hung in the balance.
He could not continue to operate in the dark when the stakes were so high. The slightest problem with Skyship could enlarge into something terrible. He needed to get to the bottom of the enigma, needed to take action instead of waiting. Something had unnerved Branson Tobek. Billy had seen that in his eyes when the old man spoke of the danger of atmospheric destruction. So there was a risk in entering the hidden laboratory, maybe a big one. This was a Hobson’s choice, with no good option. Despite all, he had to go inside.
His pulse was going wild. Billy had to get to the three journals, and read them. He’d been going over options in his mind, ways to accomplish that—and he had a plan.
Several robots were still inside the sealed sections, and Billy could communicate with them from outside. He brought his chair to the viewing window, where he had a vantage of the room at the rear and the casket of the great Branson Tobek. A man whose accomplishments were mighty, but who had died without publicity, with only Billy knowing what a great scientist and visionary he had been. His body lay, undeservedly, in a plain, unmarked wooden casket, built by the lab ‘bots.
Nervously, Billy touched a control pad under one arm of his chair. Moments later, a robot appeared on the other side of the thick glass, a shiny black machine with multiple-arms. It was of a series that Billy had built for Tobek, customized to assist the old inventor with tasks in the laboratory. A vertical light tube appeared on its torso, and began to glow softly green, pulsing as the sentient machine awaited a command.
Billy activated a transmitter, spoke into it. “Go to Tobek’s apartment and retrieve his three red journals. I want you to pass them to me through the bio-lock.” He pointed to his right, at a glassed-in box that was mounted beneath the main viewing window—a box that had a small pass-through door on the inside, and another door on the outside.
The robot surprised him, as it said in its mechanical voice, “You were commanded to leave the laboratory sealed, not to tamper with anything.”
“I’ve thought this over carefully. The bio-lock will vacuum the air in the interior chamber, allowing me to reach inside safely and get the journals. The laboratory will remain sealed, as Tobek specified.”
The mechanical voice had no inflection. “That sounds like a violation. It is not in the spirit of Master Tobek’s intentions.”
This was a strange comment from a robot, suggesting that the machine was capable of analyzing the nuances of intentions. Tobek must have added something to its programming.
Raising his voice, Billy said, “Place the journals into the bio-lock immediately, and they will be cleansed. I shall then open the door on my side and take them, while your side will remain sealed.”
The robot stood motionless, pulsing green in its light tube, then yellow.
Billy felt mounting anger, stared hard at his mechanical adversary. It was obvious that this machine would not retrieve the journals, and even if Billy got inside by breaking in, the robot would summon its brethren and prevent him from doing what he wanted to do. Billy could take a force of security ‘bots with him, in a show of force, but that might result in unwanted damage to the laboratory, or even the activation of self-destruct mechanisms, or worse. Much worse. And if he went inside himself, that would be a clear violation, a broken promise.
But Billy had an ace in the hole that just might work. He had designed this particular robot, and just might be able to override any commands that Tobek had given to it. Unless Tobek had taken that possibility into account, and set up clever safeguards.
He sent the override signal, and repeated his command in a firm voice.
The robot’s light tube changed back to green and then darkened. The mechanical servant went into an adjacent room, disappearing from view. Moments later it returned, holding all three red, leather-bound volumes in its arms. Billy caught his breath in anticipation.
But at the bio-lock the robot hesitated, and focused its sensors through the glass on Billy Jeeling, who narrowed his gaze as he looked at the robot. The machine’s light tube began to pulse wildly, yellow again, followed by bright white light. Then finally the light tube went dark again, and the machine did as it was instructed. One by one, the books were placed inside the chamber, in a neat pile. The door closed on the robot’s side.
With the leather-bound books inside the bio-lock, the chamber glowed a spectrum of glittering, metallic colors, including bright reds, blues, greens, and yellows. The colors diminished, but remained there, lingering in a thin, patchy fog of spectral streaks inside the bio-lock. He’d never seen the device produce a display like that before, and wondered about it. Something to do with the books? He’d never put books into a bio-lock before. He issued a command and heard a whooshing sound, as his side of the compartment opened up. He no longer saw the mist, and assumed everything inside had been sanitized, so that no organisms could escape from the laboratory.
He took the volumes and tucked them into compartments on his maglev chair. At the doorway, he happened to look back, and thought he saw a very faint glow of silver in the air, around the closed bio-lock door on his side. But the glow vanished almost before he could think about it, and he turned away. His focus was elsewhere now, not on any doubts.
In his own apartment a few minutes later, Billy began to read....
~~~
Branson Tobek’s penmanship was compact and hurried, with the letters of some words so rounded off that they were virtually unidentifiable. It was far and away the most difficult-to-comprehend handwriting that Billy had ever seen, yet from years of experience working with the older man, receiving a steady stream of written notes and instructions from him, Billy knew how to read the words and make sense of them. It had been an essential thing to learn, to avoid mistakes in the construction of Skyship. There had to be no misunderstandings.
Now he found himself reading the material smoothly and quickly, only pausing to ponder about a handful of words and phrases before continuing on. He felt like a man running across open ground, seeking something in the distance, drawing closer and closer to it. Tobek had written these passages very rapidly (as he always did), out of an urgency to get the information committed to paper—and now Billy read as fast as he could, anxious to learn what secrets might be on the pages. He didn’t take the time to read every sentence, but got the gist of what each section was about before moving on.
The first volume and a portion of the second provided an overview of the years of design and construction of the great atmospheric ship, while the rest of the pages chronicled key events afterward, including details about some of Tobek’s interactions with Billy. This did not surprise Billy, but it dismayed him to find complaints about him on these pages, particularly concerning questions that he had constantly asked, seeking clarification, and which Tobek often found annoying and time-consuming. But there were also long passages in which the old man wrote of what a dedicated, intelligent an
d loyal assistant Billy was, and how the ambitious Skyship project could never have been completed without his able assistance. There was also a section in which Tobek described Billy as “the greatest and most faithful friend I have ever had.”
Tears began to run down Billy’s cheeks; he pulled his head back and wiped them away quickly, not wanting to dampen the pages—which he considered sacred. He hoped he was still being faithful in what he was doing now.
He read for hours, skimming some sections, skipping others, and slowing where it really got interesting. He found passages that described the construction and testing of Billy’s authentic, humanlike robots, the Lazarus series that included Billy’s “son” Devv, and Lainey Forster as well, who so resembled Billy’s lost love Reanne—and the ten others who were in service on Skyship, as well as the backup units in storage.
That morning, Billy issued instructions to his staff and robots that he was not to be disturbed. Finally, at shortly after noon, he found something very important near the end of the second volume. A chill ran down his spine at the realization.
Trembling slightly, he stared at an entry made more than nineteen years ago, on an October evening: “I was using the magnascope, peering into an unusual, incredibly beautiful beam of moonlight, a gleaming ray of silver, when something startling occurred, an event so dangerous that I hesitate to even write about it. And yet, I must.”
Billy took a deep, anticipatory breath.
From an operational standpoint, he was familiar with the magnascope that was now in his own office, which Tobek had designed and built. Billy often used it for close-up views of his beloved AmEarth, and—at higher settings—to peer as far as he could into the galaxy. He recalled that Tobek had once told him he was also designing attachments that would make the magnascope even more powerful, so that humans could theoretically see all the way into other galaxies, and potentially into the entire universe. He said he had developed an “expandable unit,” a basic magnascope that could be retained, and enhanced with attachments. But Billy had never seen this modified scope or any of its accessories, and though he’d asked about this, Tobek had always deferred to another subject, one he invariably said was more important, and urgent. It was a common tactic employed by the old inventor.
The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Page 16