The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Read online

  This time he was going for a speedy ride around the tubular guideways, which he enjoyed. He liked to do this on occasion, to soothe him and clear the troubles out of his thoughts. Afterward, an hour from now, he was scheduled to meet with his son Devv, who was the Security Commander on Skyship—in charge of safety, police, and defense operations.

  CHAPTER 2

  Negative information about a public figure spreads like a virus, and when that happens the virus can never be killed. The targeted person’s reputation is permanently sullied, even if lies, half truths, and distortions are being told about him—and damage lingers even if the fabrications come to light.

  —Bengal Tate, reporter for Imperial City News, a defender of Billy Jeeling

  Fog enveloped the sprawling industrial facility, except for seven bright red stacks that poked through the soup into the cerulean sky, each bearing the golden imperial emblem of the AmEarth Empire. It was just before the morning shift, and Yürgen Zayeddi trudged across the parking lot with other workers. A big, burly man with eyeglasses, he scuffled his feet as he gazed up at yellow, pollutant-free smoke that belched intermittently from the stacks. A sour, metallic odor wrinkled his nostrils, a smell he had never gotten used to.

  Some of the fog was beginning to clear, and to the east a ghostly moon hung just above the horizon, a fading remnant of night.

  This humbaby factory, on the outskirts of Jefferson Township in the Atlandia Province, performed all stages of production, from the harvesting of raw materials to the design and assembly of the insect-shaped aircraft that were so prevalent in large cities, and also flew around the cavernous interior of Billy Jeeling’s Skyship, high over AmEarth.

  Reportedly this factory was responsible for a high percentage of all humbabies that were used by the one-world government of the planet, aircraft that were constructed entirely of high-strength plastics. Zayeddi wondered what percentage his own efforts at the facility contributed. Incalculably low, he presumed, and he envisioned a huge analog calculator with a fat decimal point on its screen and trillions of zeros to the right of the point. Somewhere on the infinite right would be the numerals indicating the nano-percentage of his own contribution.

  He knew how to fly all of the humbaby models in manual mode, having learned from one of the quality-control technicians, an older woman who was a friend of his. He thought the aircraft were simple to operate for specialty work outside of autopilot mode, but he’d heard others say they couldn’t get the hang of the controls. They were tricky for some folks, he supposed, with a console operated via a thought-command headset worn by the pilot, but he’d had no trouble at all. His friend said he could be a quality-control technician himself someday, and she arranged to put Yürgen on a waiting list for one of those plum jobs. He hoped to be selected one day, so that he could escape the drudgery of his present position.

  Now he heard the argumentative voices of men and women, and saw a man in a rumpled gray suit addressing the workers from a grazzeen knoll.

  Yürgen pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose, hurried around other workers to see what was going on. Two associates of the man on the knoll, identically attired in frumpy suits, were distributing leaflets.

  Some of the factory workers discarded the leaflets and stalked away in disgust, while others listened impassively or read the literature. The name Billy Jeeling was in the air, on the lips of the rumpled orator.

  “We need to get rid of Jeeling,” the man shouted. “He’s outlived any usefulness he ever had, and is way overpaid for what he does.”

  “We’d better get back to work,” one of the onlookers said, a gruff little oriental woman. “Where’s Plant Security?” Tama Suzuki was one of the supervisors in Zayeddi’s department. She marched off, followed by a number of her co-workers, heading toward a high rollup door that was partially visible in the fog.

  “Jeeling is the biggest crook in history!” the man on the knoll bellowed. “He’s had the Empire mesmerized... he pulls in billions of ambucks a year from his Skyship monopoly, paid out of your atmospheric gas taxes. Can you imagine money like that? How do you suppose he’s managed to garner all that cash? He’s got powerful political and business leaders in his pocket, that’s how! He’s paying them off!”

  “Filthy liar!” a woman shouted.

  “Skyship is Billy’s money pump!” the man retorted. And the insolent man kept talking... despicable, heretical utterances that Yürgen couldn’t bear to hear. As far as he was concerned, Billy Jeeling was a god, and could do nothing wrong. But this detractor’s lips kept going, and he droned on and on.

  The fellow’s suit was bargain-basement, with the sheen and double creases of poor ironing. He was young, with a prominent nose, and spoke with an artificial passion... as if he didn’t believe his own words. White, lying spittle frothed around his mouth.

  “Shut up about Billy!” Yürgen shouted.

  The man shot back: “Our atmospheric gas taxes give us the right to know what kind of a man Jeeling is!”

  “You’re insulting our greatest hero!” Yürgen screamed. “The man who designed and built Skyship!”

  “Almost forty years ago. Big damned deal.”

  “It’s still functioning well, still doing its job. Show some respect for Billy.”

  “He costs us too damned much!”

  Yürgen Zayeddi knew this wasn’t true. He’d read everything he could find about the great man. “Are you kidding? His Skyship restored atmospheric gases to healthy, balanced levels, including the ozone layer—going into operation when millions of people were dying each year from skin cancer, and going blind, when UV-rads were pouring in and most of the air on the planet was unhealthy to breathe. Billy saved us all, you damned ignorant fool!”

  “You’ve obviously been brainwashed, and we’re here to tell the truth about him.”

  “Bull, that’s all you’re slinging! You don’t know what you’re talking about. Key life forms in the food chain were dying off before Billy rescued AmEarth, and the crisis was especially acute in the oceans—the essential food chain of organisms we need to keep the fish we eat healthy. Ocean acidification was preventing crustaceans from growing shells. Global warming was altering ocean currents, while other human-caused factors were killing coral reefs and depleting oxygen levels in the seas, creating huge dead zones where fish could no longer live, and only jellyfish could survive. It was the beginning of the end for all of us, a fast track to the complete extinction of humanity. Billy deserves whatever the hell he’s paid!”

  Without being fully aware of it, Yürgen had moved onto the grazzeen knoll, very near to the man, closer than anyone else. The infidel kept blabbering against Billy Jeeling. Nonsensical, inflammatory stuff. The wildest of lies. Behind him, in the distant sky just above the horizon, the spheroid shape of Skyship appeared, casting a golden day-glow, as if it were a second sun in the heavens—a trick of onboard projection mechanisms, Zayeddi had heard. It was a bit of showmanship that he liked.

  He felt an infusion of righteous rage, could hardly keep himself from tearing the bastard apart. He saw the unholy mouth that wouldn’t stop moving, and felt violently ill to his stomach, with a burning, bubbling bile coming up.

  “Get out of here!” Yürgen shouted, leveling a death-stare at the defamer.

  Looking suddenly frightened, the man ceased his chatter and inched backward.

  No one on God’s green AmEarth, not even the High Deity Himself, stood above Billy Jeeling in the estimation of Zayeddi. As far as he was concerned, Jeeling always spoke the truth, the purest, most virtuous flow of words in all of creation.

  I love Billy Jeeling, he thought, his emotions having welled to the surface. He couldn’t see Skyship anymore, perhaps because the projection mechanism had been turned off.

  He lunged at the young man, who stumbled backward, only saving himself from falling at the last possible moment. “Do you know you’re going to die today?” Yürgen asked, reaching into a jacket pocket, as if to bring out a gun. />
  “All right!” the man said, backing up even more. “I’m leaving, OK?” He waved his hands to his associates. “Let’s clear out!” he yelled.

  They packed their remaining leaflets and hastened across the parking lot. Zayeddi was so angry that he felt as if his blood pressure was rising to a dangerous level, and his entire body seemed about to explode. He tried hard to slow his racing pulse, heard dim voices around him, people hurrying away to work.

  Before he could recover, he decided to chase after the proselytizers. When they saw the large, angry man coming, they quickened their pace.

  “Why did you come here?” Yürgen screamed. “Who are you?”

  They didn’t respond. Leaflets fell from the grasp of one of them, and a gust of wind lifted the papers, scattering them over parked vehicles.

  Yürgen was gaining on them. He could almost smell their fear, the reeking terror discharged by lying, crawling things, and he wanted to tear out their lying tongues. No one spoke against his idol Billy Jeeling!

  The men hurried out of sight around a high metal fence, and Zayeddi heard several small jet engines start, one after another.

  Three rocket-cycles shot out in a line and lifted into the air in flashes of golden color, a helmeted man leaning forward on each, his baggy suit flowing in the wind. Over the parking lot, a packet whooshed high in the air from the rear of each cycle, followed by three little midair bursts. Thousands of leaflets rained down on the lot and the parked vehicles.

  Moments later, he saw activity on a hillside above the mill, where two roads intersected. He wiped his eyeglasses, and spun a tiny dial on the edge of the frame, zooming the intersection into a clearer view. The zoom didn’t hold at first, and he had to tweak the dial until the image finally held.

  At least a dozen cycle riders were in rendezvous there, all dressed in rumpled suits like missionaries, and riding gleaming, golden-hued cycles. Presently they raced away together into the morning sun that was just rising over the hilltop.

  Unable to settle himself down, Yürgen Zayeddi headed for the factory. He would be late, but it was unavoidable. Maybe he should bring a weapon to work from now on, to deal more effectively with any heretics who might come back. They’d be sorry if they did.

  He grabbed one of the leaflets and read it as he hurried to work, going through the rollup door. It was headed, “JEELING LOOTS PUBLIC COFFERS!” The text rambled with wild allegations, including charges that Jeeling overbilled the AmEarth Empire for expenses, and carried on illicit sexual activities with the young men and women in his employ, members of his intensely loyal corps of JeeJees. Fuming, Zayeddi spent a few minutes cleaning up more of the leaflets and throwing them in trash receptacles.

  He was almost an hour late when he finally made it to the long assembly line on the main floor, where he faced his scowling supervisor, Nelson Badger. The supervisor was small and stocky, at least a head shorter than Yürgen. The line was in motion, and beside it Yürgen saw someone else working at his station.

  “Didn’t anyone call Security?” Yürgen demanded, raising his voice to be heard over the machinery and voices in the factory. “I expected help out there, didn’t get any. You heard what happened in the parking lot?”

  “I did, and you were observed in argumentative, vociferous behavior... on company property.” Badger’s thick black brows were knitted in displeasure as he looked up at the much larger man.

  “They were spouting lies about Billy!”

  “Ah yes, our Great Benefactor, Mr. Billy McVie Jeeling. And you, I am told, are the most ardent of his supporters.”

  Yürgen studied the supervisor for a moment, noting that Badger’s mouth was framed with deep furrows across the sides and bottom. The thin lips were turned up sardonically at each end, showing that he was poised to criticize whatever Yürgen said.

  Just say one thing against Billy, Yürgen thought, and I’ll ruin your day. He felt his gaze narrow dangerously. His skin felt hot.

  “You’re late for work,” Badger said. “We can’t have that.”

  “But I was chasing them off and cleaning up the mess they left.”

  Badger shook his head. “Uh, uh, uh,” he said. “Not in your job description. You are an assembly-line technician, second class, nothing more. You are assigned to connect parts on the landing gear of the humbaby and pass them on down the line, all according to procedure, according to government regulation. You are not a guard dog.”

  Yürgen hadn’t been in a fist fight since high school more than fifteen years ago, but if Badger pushed him only a little more...

  “Well, off to work with you,” Badger said, almost matter-of-factly. His expression went blank. “We have a schedule to run.”

  “Is Security going to keep guys like that from coming back?” Yürgen pressed.

  “Stay within your job description, Mr. Zayeddi. We don’t need Billy-Boy fanatics wasting our time around here!”

  “You’d better stop talking that way.”

  “Or what?”

  This guy deserved a split lip, as a minimum.

  Yürgen took a wild roundhouse swing, but missed when Badger saw it coming and stepped back nimbly, while shouting for help. Four uniformed security men rushed over, gripped Yürgen with strong arms and escorted him toward the open rollup door. In the background he heard Badger shouting that he was fired, and he was shoved outside into the parking lot.

  The fog had cleared, and the morning sun was well over the top of the hill now, brightening the intersection where the cyclists had rendezvoused. Soon Zayeddi would pass that intersection, going home from this place for the last time. He lingered outside the factory building for several moments. The finality of it hit him hard. He’d worked here for seven years, had gotten used to it.

  “Beat it fella,” one of the security guards said, from behind, “before we have to bring in real cops.”

  Feeling despondent, Yürgen walked away slowly. When he was outside the gates, a tall, thin man with a neatly-cropped beard approached him. He wore a dark suit, was accompanied by an unusual robot that was much shorter. The machine had a protrusion on top resembling a head, but without a face—except for what looked like a speaker patch in front where a face might have been. On the front of the torso, a vertical light tube pulsed soft orange. The light washed over Zayeddi for a moment, then withdrew. He didn’t like that. It gave him a brief tingling sensation, which he found disturbing.

  “I’m Vernon Tracy,” the man said. He extended a hand, but Yürgen didn’t shake it.

  “I saw the whole thing,” Tracy said, withdrawing his hand, “the way you courageously stopped those men from spreading their lies and chased them off. Most impressive on your part, I must say.”

  “Thank you, but my employer does not agree. I’ve been fired.”

  The man nodded, as if he already knew this. “You must be very upset,” he said.

  “What did that robot just do to me?” Yürgen asked. “The orange light that touched me for a moment?”

  “He was just testing your veracity and sincerity. Mmmm, one of the more basic forms of lie detection that we use.” He looked at a screen on the robot’s side, then turned to Zayeddi and asked, “How would you like to go up to Skyship?”

  “Are you kidding? What do you mean?”

  “We’re on the lookout for dedicated Billy Jeeling loyalists like you. We have a growing public relations program that you might be interested in, organizing people to spread the truth. You would be trained on Skyship, and then assigned to duties back here on AmEarth. Up until now, this has only been a small program, but our manager, Lainey Forster, wants to enlarge it.”

  It sounded terribly exciting to Yürgen, but he wanted more information before accepting. He’d never heard of such a program.

  He noticed that small white bubbles had begun to move up inside the robot’s orange light tube, didn’t know what this meant.

  Yürgen narrowed his gaze, studied the man and his peculiar companion. He had never heard of the
PR program, was trying to determine if it was real or some ruse by Billy’s enemies, to get him off the street, maybe even to harm him. What was that robot doing?

  “Well, does this sound interesting to you, or not?”

  “Are you offering me a job? I’d be paid?” The man did look sincere, and Yürgen wanted so much to believe. He had no job or other source of income, and would like to do something significant to help Billy, even if it involved taking a chance.

  “Yes to both,” the man said. He named a salary that sounded good, then extended his hand once more. “Now, shall we try this again?” The offer was a little more than Yürgen had been earning in the factory.

  Finally, he nodded and shook the man’s hand, noting a firm grip. They talked for a few more minutes, in which the new recruit obtained details of what he needed to do next, and where he was supposed to report to a shuttle the next morning, to be taken up to Skyship.

  He could hardly contain his excitement.

  CHAPTER 3

  Skyship is the greatest technological wonder in history, and the most mysterious.

  —Rolf Joseph, AmEarth News Service

  Lainey stood just inside the high-arched doorway of Billy’s office, looking at him. He sat at his gleaming white desk, on that remarkable maglev chair. He smiled at her, then grunted as he lifted himself onto a platform beside the chair, and then slid back down onto the seat of the chair again—one of the exercise regimes he followed every day. Back and forth he went. The paraplegic wore a black and tan SkyCorps uniform, with the blue-sky emblem of Skyship on his lapel. He had powerful arms and shoulders, compensating for the loss of his amputated legs.