Why were they allowing him to live? Did they need him alive for their destructive purposes, and know that they could prevent him from destroying them? Would they keep him going indefinitely, as a host organism for their frightful purposes? Why had they shifted from the safety of Skyship to him?
The possibility that he was hosting something that had killed Tobek was terrifying, but more than that, it enraged him. He wasn’t going to let them use him as a conduit, wasn’t going to tolerate that!
I’m not dead, he thought, and he realized that he was still in front of the mirror wall, and that he must have been staring into his own silver eyes for all the time he’d been thinking.
But they killed Tobek for such thoughts.
Then Billy considered two possible differences. First, Tobek had written of his hatred in his journals, of his desire to destroy the creatures. When he wrote of this, he had them trapped on Skyship, and was performing experiments on them, and devising a way to get rid of them. Second, Tobek had apparently not been possessed by the creatures, for whatever reason. Not before nor after his death.
The creatures could read Tobek’s journals, but not thoughts?
It was all very confusing to Billy, but he was beginning to think that they could not read his thoughts, although they could recognize—and prevent—any overt attempt to destroy them. Somehow, they had discovered that Tobek was planning to get rid of them, and they had gotten him first. Maybe it was when Tobek was building the mysterious device that still remained unfinished on a laboratory table. The overt action of building something to kill them was what sent them into a killing frenzy against the brilliant old man.
Billy resolved to come up with his own way of annihilating them, to the very last one—doing it in such a manner that they would not know it was coming.
To his dismay a strange sensation came over him, and he grew very cold quickly, similar to the way he’d felt when the silver light sought out and killed Moore and Racker. The silver creatures were on the move again, extending themselves from his body all the way to AmEarth, stretching out, seeking and preparing to destroy. He grew colder and colder, couldn’t stop shivering. And in his brain he saw the Imperial Palace of Prime Minister Yhatt, as well as the elegant Prime Minister himself, standing at a window—as if watching for what was about to assassinate him. He was dignified and heavy, with a prominent nose and an intense manner about him.
The silver thread of light streaked close to the palace, but went around to the rear and entered a different portion of the massive building, a slender beam of illumination that passed through the corridors, then under the door and into the parlor where the Prime Minister was standing at the window. Behind him, the light began to pool in the center of the ornate room, as if it were an army gathering its forces, preparing to attack. Billy felt the coldness of the thread still connected to them; it was as if the creatures in his body were shooting from him to the palace, and concentrating there.
Billy struggled to withdraw the terrible force, but it was too strong, and kept doing what it wanted to do. It was going to kill the Prime Minister of the AmEarth Empire!
In the images that filled his mind he saw five people in the parlor, and heard the Prime Minister’s wife Lorissa scream in terror, a shrieking, terrified sound. Servants in white tuxedoes entered and stood by the doorway. Then two men in dark uniforms hurried in past them, security officers with their ion-pistols drawn.
The pooling light began to extend across the floor toward Renaldo Yhatt now, while the others watched in terror and shouted warnings to him. The Prime Minister turned to face the threat but remained stoically where he was, as if he had accepted his horrible fate and was not going to make any foolish attempt to escape it.
While the light advanced slowly and inexorably toward him, spread wide on the floor to prevent his escape, Renaldo Yhatt spoke in his resonant, leader-of-the-empire voice, with a calmness that astonished Billy. “Leave this room,” he said to his companions. “All of you. Now.”
His wife and the security officers refused to move, but the servants left. Then Maureen Stuart and the long-haired man—Billy wasn’t sure who he was—went to the door, with the man pulling her away. Another man with a blond moustache accompanied them. A servant opened the door for them, and they stood there looking back in horror as the bright stream of silvery creatures advanced toward its prey.
On Skyship, Billy Jeeling focused with all of his might, attempting to withdraw the murderous light, trying desperately to save the life of the Prime Minister, and perhaps the others in the room as well. He remembered that Maureen Stuart had been with Racker earlier, and had not been killed. The combined creatures had allowed her to run and warn the Prime Minister, and they did not seem interested in her now. They had not killed Sonya Orr, either, and Billy still didn’t know why they had visited her.
Now as Billy struggled for control, he felt a subtle shifting, like a change in pressure at altitude, and the silver light on the floor of the remote dining room began to retract, becoming a point of light at the end of a long beam that had snaked its way into the room. To his relief, Billy saw that everyone in the room was still alive.
Abruptly, the light went into a blur of reverse motion, and in a few moments it was back on Skyship, slipping back into Billy’s body.
He felt a sensation of extreme coolness from the activity. He also realized that he was breathing hard, and as odd as it seemed he was even perspiring. And somehow he seemed to have had an effect on the creatures, convincing them not to kill the Prime Minister. Could there be any other explanation? Possibly. But he realized one thing for certain. The creatures were going after people who opposed Billy Jeeling—the force that attacked Skyship, General Moore, Jonathan Racker, and—very nearly—Prime Minister Yhatt.
Why were they doing that?
And they didn’t destroy all of Billy’s foes, it seemed; only the ones who presented the most danger. Maureen Stuart had been part of the conspiracy against him; of that he was certain. But she had not been killed. And neither had Yhatt, despite reports reaching Billy said that he was also involved in the conspiracy against him. The two of them must have been secondary in the plans against him, not the prime movers.
A week ago, Maureen had not known about Moore’s feigned peace delegation and the attempt to kidnap Billy, and she hadn’t known about the later military strike force, either. The crazed General had orchestrated both assaults on his own, and somehow the creatures felt that Moore and Racker were more culpable in trying to destroy Billy than Prime Minister Yhatt or Maureen Stuart had been. Perhaps that had made it easier for Billy to convince the organisms not to kill the Prime Minister.
And it might explain the brief interest the space devils had in Sonya Orr, without killing her. It suggested that she was not entirely loyal to him, but was not a serious danger. In any event, Sonya was no longer on board Skyship.
The images in Billy’s mind were gone now, as if they had slipped away and vanished into deep space.
He was still in front of the mirror, gazing into it with silver eyes as if it were a window into everything, into the events on AmEarth and into the vastness of space. Finally, he looked away from his reflection. The horrible creatures were inside his body; he felt their cold stirring, speeding this way and that in their nano-realm, sending chills of fear down his spine. And when they settled down, ceasing most of their motion, his body grew warmer.
But he didn’t feel at all settled. The creatures had motives, and they had made him an unwilling participant in their strange scheme, whatever it was.
CHAPTER 34
There are billions and billions of secrets in the universe, and a sizeable share of them involve humankind. What, for example, do dreams really mean? Much effort has been devoted to answering this question, but the so-called experts have only managed to come up with a dunghill of unprovable conjecture.
—Branson Tobek, entry in one of his laboratory journals
On the high walkway Billy sat in
his chair, with his Starbot machines standing sentinel nearby, on high alert. He saw the blinking, shifting lights on their six torsos as they scanned in all directions, looking for dangers. He had programmed them well, and usually their presence gave him comfort, but not now. He felt threatened by a menace that had already invaded his body, having gotten past the sophisticated security systems that were supposed to protect Skyship, and him.
Now he looked at Starbot, the leader of his personal security force. The machine’s lights shifted as he awaited Billy’s commands. But there were none at this moment. Instead, Billy transmitted an electronic signal from his chair to dim the lights on the walkway. Then he gazed through the overhead windows into the dark firmament. It was the middle of the night, and galactic star systems appeared to be twinkling on when he looked at them—and in the far, far distance he saw more stars flickering on, as if a great master switch had been thrown.
In his entire lifetime he’d only been close to a few people—real people, not robots in the likeness of human beings. There’d been Branson Tobek and Billy’s beautiful wife Reanne, as well as Dr. Rachel Ginsberg, and a handful of others. In recent years, increasingly on Skyship, he’d mostly confided in robots, the ones he had programmed to be the most trustworthy, and the most wise. Of those, Lainey and Devv had been at the top of the list. He relied on them, and truly cared about them, as if they were real people.
But lately, after the revelations he’d made about their true makeup, he’d found it necessary to pull away from these two. While they’d taken the news as well as could be expected, Billy could still see the stresses on them he’d caused, and he felt bad for this. Yet, there had been no choice. Morally, he could not have kept such a secret from them forever, nor from the other Lazarus series ‘bots.
He hoped Lainey and Devv would understand one day and truly forgive him. He was counting on that, because they would be the primary leaders of Skyship in the future... after he was gone. Billy felt as if he were on the exit ramp right now, parting from the great vessel, leaving behind everything that had meant so much to him.
But of all the challenges in his life, this one was huge: he needed to figure out what the damnable space devils were up to, why they had inhabited his body.
He motioned for Starbot to come to him, and the robot dutifully approached. “Master?” he said.
“Run program,” Billy said. “Tell me what you have observed about the behavior of the space devils.”
The program ran for several seconds. Then: “Think of robotics, Master, which is a special skill and knowledge of yours. The creatures are either on kill mode, or off kill mode. They are extremely dangerous to you, and to AmEarth.”
Billy wished he could consult with Devv about this, the Security Commander, but he sensed strongly that this problem went beyond anything Devv knew, or anyone else on board Skyship knew, for that matter. It was something alien to anyone’s experience, something he needed to figure out in his own way. Besides, Billy was uncomfortable being around Devv now, and Lainey. Things had changed in his relationship with both of them, and not for the better.
“Do you think they’re using me to boost their energy somehow?” Billy asked the robot. “Their destructive power?”
“That is possible, Master. But I also think they are protecting you. And they seem to want—or need—to remain inside Skyship, though I cannot determine why.”
“It is peculiar,” Billy said, “when they once seemed to want to escape.” He went on to tell Starbot what Tobek had written in his journals, that the late inventor’s experiments on the space devils had adversely affected them, to such an extent that they could never be allowed to go free, or the consequences would be catastrophic.
“It would appear that they could escape from Skyship now if they wanted to,” Starbot said. “They got out of the sealed laboratory through the bio-lock, and since then they have used their combined power to defeat attacking ships, even sending death beams to AmEarth to kill some of the bad guys.”
Billy considered this for several moments. As a robotics expert, he knew how to organize information and put it to use. He would attempt to use his special skill, as Starbot called it, to deal with the problem. He would assemble the available data, take it apart, and put it back together. This pointed to a big problem: the available data.
These creatures seemed to be a force of cosmic nature, carrying secrets with them that had existed since time immemorial. As a collective, living entity, they might be as old as the most ancient of star systems.
Billy continued this line of reasoning, and explained it to Starbot.
He postulated that the creatures had discovered Tobek and the interesting, very unique machine, Skyship. Out of curiosity they had come calling, and had entered the vessel. The inventor saw that as an aggressive, unfriendly act, whether or not it was. Yet, because he interpreted it as hostile and tried to kill them, they got to him first, and killed him.
The destruction they had caused might be no fault of their own, because they were only seeking to adapt and survive, as they had done for so long. Even so, these creatures still represented a monstrous threat to the world, and a grave danger to the entire human race. Billy had more complex feelings about them than Tobek’s had been. Billy felt a strong sense of gratitude toward them, but he was deathly afraid of what they might do.
“I go back to my earlier question,” Billy said, “about why they’re inhabiting me. I think I do boost their power somehow, and as you suggested, they want to protect me. The two things go hand in hand. As long as I am well, they are stronger. Obviously, they want to be stronger.”
“But not to escape from Skyship.”
“No. So, they’re protecting me, and by extension, Skyship, too.”
“Maybe they would protect anyplace you were, whether inside a building, a vehicle, or Skyship.”
The two of them went silent, each considering the known facts in their own way. The blinking lights on Starbot shifted slightly.
“You’ve thought of something more?” Billy asked.
“They are complex creatures, with complex motives.”
“They’ve been helping me against my enemies,” Billy said, “and for that I am deeply grateful. They have protected Skyship and its important mission, and have safeguarded me. Perhaps they just need a bit of guidance from me, and I could help them perform good deeds. Somehow, I managed to pull them back when they were going after President Yhatt, and they didn’t kill them. That has to be a step in the right direction.”
“Yes,” the robot said. “Common ground. Find it and build on it.”
As Billy considered this, he saw tiny glints of silver in the air, appearing out of nowhere, flickering this way and that like miniature gleaming fish, coming and going, as if they were swimming in the air and then vanishing into an unseen portal, through some trick of light and reality. Excited and intrigued, he reached out to them, but they skittered away. They seemed jittery, afraid, but kept glinting, and drawing close, warily, before darting away.
“Can you see them?” Billy asked.
“I see them, Master. It’s hard to say where they came from, but at the moment it seems that all of the space devils are not inside your body. This suggests that the ones we are watching either came from inside your body, or outside of it—only two options. I think they are from outside, and for whatever reason, the ones we’re looking at never were inside your body.”
Billy reached out again, and this time the creatures did not flee. Instead, they gathered around his hand, turning his fingers silver and making them tingle a little, but not making him feel cold as before. This suggested to him that they were not entering his body yet. As if to confirm this, he saw sections of light withdraw from touching him, replaced moments later by other creatures who barely contacted him and then departed. Finally, the apparent curiosity settled down, and Billy saw a bright glimmering in the air, just beyond his reach.
“Perhaps the most bold and adventurous of their members
went into my body earlier,” Billy said, “and ever since, the rest have been observing, trying to see if some disaster befalls the brave ones.”
“That is likely.”
Billy Jeeling smiled. The creatures, even if they lived up to the name Tobek had given them, gave him a strange feeling of serenity. Space devils. Yes, he supposed they were that, and they had proven themselves dangerous, but he couldn’t help feeling affection toward them.
At this moment in time, they made him feel comfortable. He fell asleep in his chair, with the silver creatures swirling in his thoughts—a mass of them, with no individual characteristics visible. Tobek had said he’d seen them in individual detail through a magnascope, and said they were fierce looking and very ugly, but that didn’t matter to Billy Jeeling at the moment. They were his defenders.
~~~
Billy dreamed about a huge beam of silver light sweeping over the entire planet, killing his enemies like flies, dropping them wherever they were, whatever they were doing, marking them for death while saving others, the ones who had never turned against him, and the ones who still loved Billy Jeeling. In that huge swath, both Yhatt and Stuart were killed, and Sonya Orr as well—telling Billy that their earlier reprieves had only been temporary.
An allied reason occurred to him, and he shuddered as he slept. In saving the three of them, maybe the space devils wanted him to believe they could discern among his enemies, and they would only kill the worst of them. Maybe they were trying to get him to let down his guard, so that they could get their way without his interference. And the truth had come to him in a prescient dream.
The creatures were a huge time bomb, waiting to go off. And they were holding him prisoner.
~~~
Hearing Billy scream in his sleep, and seeing him twist and writhe in his chair, Starbot tried to awaken him, calling out his name and shaking him vigorously. The Master seemed to be having a nightmare, and was unable to extricate himself from it.
The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Page 24