The Assassination of Billy Jeeling Page 3

  Despite this, and despite the fact that Billy was getting old now, Lainey Forster thought he was the most handsome man she’d ever met, and the most magnificent representative of the black race she’d ever seen, even in the movies. His skin had very few lines and was quite dark, as if there had not been much interbreeding in his lineage with lighter-skinned races, such as her own. The explosion on Skyship had destroyed his legs, but it had not changed his good looks or gentle personality, and had not prevented him from making love with her. She only wished Billy would fight back more against the ongoing smear attacks against his character, the rapidly mounting campaign of innuendos and lies.

  He was one of many people who refused to use the internet, or the implanted mindwave technologies. To keep up with current events, Billy only read printed newspapers and reports from his staff—all delivered to him daily. She saw the morning editions stacked neatly on a side table, looking very old-fashioned in the midst of all of the technology in his office and on Skyship. She couldn’t tell if he had looked at these periodicals yet, but noted that the issue on top was turned face-down. The daily staff report sat beside it.

  Through the window behind him, Lainey saw the glistening spires of the unique onboard city, and fat, insect-like humbabies flying back and forth, carrying passengers. Many of the buildings were connected by elevated, clearplaz-enclosed walkways, and she saw people and robots scurrying back and forth on them, going about their assignments. There were countless tasks to perform on Skyship, and most were important, designed to keep the ship operating at peak efficiency.

  She struggled to frame the words she wanted to say to this great man, the important advice she needed to give him now. She took a deep, apprehensive breath, anticipating the usual resistance from him to her ideas about the need for more effective and widespread public relations efforts. His oversized desk was almost completely bare, and high-polished. The only item on it was a glassplaz cube, containing an opaque purple liquid... he’d told her it was the initial stage of the secret atmospheric-gas mix, in liquid form.

  “Have you seen the newspapers today?” she asked.

  He didn’t reply and kept exercising, going back and forth from chair to platform, sweating and breathing harder. His black, curly hair was uncombed and longer than normal, with graying locks dropping across his eyes, making it difficult at times to determine the direction of his gaze. His long-sleeved uniform had plain epaulets on the shoulders—nothing to distinguish rank. She noted dark marks of perspiration around his armpits.

  He completed the exercises, returned to his high-tech chair, and looked at her importunately. His dark eyes were clear and alert, despite his age. “Well?” he said. “What is it you want to say to me this time?”

  He seemed to already know, was acting edgy. She moved closer and stood in front of the desk. “You’ve seen the papers?”

  “Just the headlines, the increasing demonstrations against me in the major cities. The details don’t interest me. I don’t really care that much what people think of me.”

  “But of course you do.”

  He didn’t reply, but from his hurt expression she could see that he did care. He cared a great deal.

  “There’s a new story in several papers,” she said, “that you lied about your family history, that your ancestors were never slaves at all, and instead they were nobility, AmAfrican chieftains who kidnapped men and women from enemy villages and sold them to slavers, to be taken far away in forced servitude, on other continents. That’s not true, is it Billy?”

  He hesitated for a long moment, then looked pained when he said, “I’m afraid it is. More ignobility than nobility, I’m afraid.”

  “But why, Billy? Why did you lie about such a thing?”

  He stared hard at her. “It was a fiction my grandparents came up with decades ago, to survive in the black community, to keep people from turning against them. It was just a harmless family story, carried from generation to generation. In turn, I carried it on, as my father and mother did before me.”

  “The newspapers are also saying you lied about your entire personal history, Billy, that you enhanced it by claiming you received a degree in science from a black university and then went to work in the aeronautics industry. They said you never specified the school in any interviews or press releases because you didn’t even graduate high school, and you never named the aeronautics companies because you never actually worked for them.”

  He sat there looking sad, hanging his head a little and not commenting.

  Lainey didn’t like this conversation, as if she were a prosecutor or an interrogator digging deep into the lies of a witness. But she pressed on. As the Director of Public Relations she had to know the truth. “Apparently there is a record of you entering a robotics contest when you were in high school, but you never submitted anything for judging. You were living with an aunt at the time, but you seemed to vanish afterward, and no one knows where she went.”

  “She was my great aunt, actually, and she was quite old. She died not long after I moved out of her house.” He paused, shook his head in dismay. “Everything you just said about my background is correct. It’s all true, but I don’t want to admit it in public.”

  “And who is Devv’s mother? People are asking about that, too.”

  His gaze narrowed. “People are asking, Lainey, or are you the one asking?”

  The comment stung. “They’re asking, believe me. Look, I’m here to help you, not attack you.”

  “His mother’s name is my business. It’s very personal, okay?”

  “Why don’t you just tell the truth about everything, Billy? You’ve still accomplished great things with Skyship. Where were you in those early years of your life, after you dropped out of high school? What were you really doing, and how did that cause you to design and build Skyship? Who is your son’s mother, and how did you meet her? Where is she now?”

  “I won’t answer any of that. I’m sorry, but I have my reasons, and they are good reasons.”

  “Your enemies are making a field day out of this, Billy. They’re saying, ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire.’ Meaning, you must be concealing much more. And that, it seems, is true.”

  “I’m tired of talking about this crap. I don’t have time for ridiculous discussions. It’s a waste of my valuable time.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Billy, I’m with you. But the reality is that there are opposition groups popping up all over the AmEarth Empire and even in the off-world colonies... and the numbers are growing at an alarming rate. We need more PR efforts. Your enemies are increasing their attacks against you, coordinating them cleverly with the various groups. These people are highly organized, Billy, and it’s getting worse because of your lackluster responses. We need to put far more effort into this than we have in the past. You need to tell the complete truth about your early history, and about your family. Get it all out, admit to whatever lies and half-truths you’ve been telling. People will forgive you because of all you’ve accomplished.”

  “All of them won’t forgive me.”

  “No, but many will. I’m pleading with you, let me do more counter-propaganda. So far you haven’t allowed my people to do much; you wouldn’t approve the ‘details’ of what I wanted to do—except for allowing us to distribute old press releases about you... flattering stuff. We sent them to media people in the larger cities, asking them to run favorable pieces on you. Some did, and some didn’t. But it’s horribly obvious that we need to do a lot more. The ugliness is increasing too quickly, and I’m afraid—”

  Billy Jeeling raised a hand to quiet her, shook his head stubbornly. Obviously he wasn’t interested in hearing any more of this. Nonetheless, she pressed on.

  “As much as you hate to hear this, we need to use the internet,” she said, “as well as the mindwave systems that are implanted in billions of people—I’m sure your enemies are using these technologies against you, so you need to do the same against them. We can sen
d audiovisual broadcasts from here that will be received instantaneously by a variety of technologies all over the Empire, including on the remote colonies. We can broadcast your voice, your face, your words.”

  Billy smiled ruefully. “When people wake up in the morning, it will be to me in their brains telling them what a great guy I am?”

  “Could be, if they’re tuned to receive our broadcasts. And I think they will be. Anything you say is interesting, Billy, it’s big news. Whether the messages appear in their brains or not—that’s up to the users. As part of a stepped-up print-media campaign, candid interviews with you would be good, and a documentary on your fascinating life—including the construction of Skyship. We can feature scientific reports too, about the horror of skin cancer, eye problems, breathing diseases, and a variety of deadly afflictions people suffered, before your wonderful, miraculous discoveries were implemented. This is urgent, Billy. We need to do something, really do something. And we need to do it right away.”

  “Needed it yesterday, right?”

  She nodded.

  He gestured for her to sit down, and she slipped into one of the white hover chairs in front of his desk, supported by a barely discernible platform of air. The chair felt a little loose when she sat on it, so perhaps it needed to be adjusted. It was something she’d mentioned to Billy in the past, because he liked to tinker with mechanical things and electronics. But this was not a good time to mention that. She was already after him about much more important matters.

  He didn’t say anything for several long moments, so perhaps he was at least considering what she’d been saying.

  As she waited, a ringing filled her ears... along with other noises... the faint whirring of precision machinery? She couldn’t quite identify the sounds, had heard them around Skyship on numerous occasions; they came and went. She’d asked Billy about them, but had received only vague replies... something about the atmospheric-stationing mechanism on the ship, he usually said, while suggesting that she was probably sensitive to particular frequencies. Right now, the irritating sounds seemed to come from beyond a wall, or beneath her feet. At times they seemed to almost be inside her head.

  Lainey chewed on her lower lip, stared at Billy. She didn’t want to say anything about the whirring now, but found it so deeply disturbing that she couldn’t help herself. “I’m hearing those machine noises again,” she said. “They’re very strange. I’ve never been able to figure out exactly where they come from, and you haven’t clarified—”

  “Don’t worry about them. They’re simply part of Skyship. As I told you before, you needn’t concern yourself with them.”

  “All right, Billy. Whatever you say. But they are irritating.”

  He grabbed the pile of newspapers, along with summary sheets that were secured to each. While she waited, he read the summaries, one after another, and scanned some of the actual articles and editorials, commenting on a couple of them to her. Then he studied the latest report from his staff.

  Finally he stopped reading, and leaned back in his maglev chair, which made a curiously antique squeaking noise. Lainey followed the direction of his gaze, toward a large viewing port on one wall. Skyship was tilted slightly in its atmospheric-stationing, so that AmEarth was visible clearly below them, one of the attitudes that the vessel’s automatic systems took on a regular basis, while maintaining the onboard gravitonic system; the passengers did not feel anything unusual, despite the off-kilter views. The planet was a blue-green giant swirling in angry white clouds. She identified the vortex and eye of a hurricane kilometers below, so far away that it wouldn’t affect them.

  Billy Jeeling’s dark eyes grew moist momentarily, and he pushed the newspapers and summaries toward her on top of the desk.

  “Other than my personal and family history, the stories about me are garbage,” he said. “A complete crock. I’m not making huge profits for myself or ‘my cronies,’ or living like a king. You know that yourself, Lainey. Facts are being blown out of proportion, or manufactured out of thin air. Much of it is innuendo, with no proof whatsoever.”

  “Proof doesn’t matter, Billy, once your enemies say what they want to say about you, it finds its way onto social media and goes viral. When we don’t respond to many of the allegations, or have only weak responses, some portion of the public thinks it’s all true. And the numbers of people who oppose you increase.”

  “The sleaziest reporters are coming out of the woodwork, writing about me.”

  “Yes, they are.” Lainey didn’t hear the machinery sounds anymore. That was something good, anyway.

  He fell silent.

  “Billions of people still love you, Billy. Before you came to the rescue, the atmosphere was peppered with ozone holes, letting in ultraviolet and cosmic radiation. The air in major cities was unfit to breathe, and that’s where most of the protests are occurring? It makes no sense! But this can be part of our counter-attack. Those people are breathing easier because of you, their kids are healthy because of you, so they should be grateful, not critical.” She nodded. “Yes, we can do something with that.”

  “It’s completely bizarre, Lainey.”

  She slid the papers to one side of his desktop. “We can call the stepped-up PR effort the Truth and Fairness Campaign, or something like that.”

  “All right, I’m listening.”

  Finally, she thought.

  He activated his chair, and it traveled smoothly on air to a magnascope by the window. The scope had a hooded overhang, and he went under it. A screen in the hooded area flashed on, throwing pale gray light past him into the office. The scope moved, made a series of computer tones.

  “What are you looking at, Billy?” she asked, walking over and standing behind him.

  “Sunbathers on a beach. I’m zoom-focusing. Young couple lying on their backs in Southern AmCal; their bodies are perfect, Lainey. Skin just right, not too tan. They aren’t afraid of the sun, are too young to ever have been. It’s completely safe to go to almost any beach on the planet now, because of my Skyship!”

  “Those young people are the fruits of your work,” she said, “the healthy, breathing future of mankind.”

  He motioned for her to step further under the hood, and when she was fully inside he adjusted the magnascope. It beeped and moved, and a beautiful desert scene appeared, with a camel caravan proceeding past sand dunes that were sculpted like waves. Billy touched more controls, and brought up the view of a wide river flowing through a verdant green valley, dotted with picturesque farms. While she watched silently, he showed cities with gleaming buildings that reached for the sky, as well as a range of jagged mountain peaks, and a pristine alpine lake surrounded by tall pines. Finally, he showed her the ocean and a large pod of humpback whales that was not going anywhere; the marine animals just appeared to be having a good time with one another.

  “I love AmEarth,” he said, as he switched off the scope and they moved out from under the hood. He looked at her, wiped a tear from his eye. “Don’t people understand that? Don’t they understand that I want the whole planet to be vibrant, and all of its inhabitants to enjoy healthy, productive lives? I love the forests, the lakes, the mountains, the oceans, and all living creatures. I even love my enemies, and only want the best for them, as I do for everyone else. I don’t have a personal bank account, and all of the money I earn goes toward keeping Skyship operational. I don’t live opulently, just in a small, cramped apartment. The Prime Minister of the AmEarth Empire lives in a palace, not me.”

  “Your enemies—including the Prime Minister, I’m afraid—are clever, and are casting you in an unfavorable light, while touting their own achievements with parades and other pageantry. Sometimes I think the Empire is more illusion than reality, more spectacle than substance.”

  Billy said bitterly, “The people love their imperial leader in his ceremonial uniform, his pretty wife, and their attractive family.”

  “Yes, they do—and many people are living well because of the mili
tary conquests of the Empire, and the front seats they’ve had in the big, plundering show. But lots of people also know about your altruism, your environmental activism. I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, Billy, but I’m going to admit to you that I’ve taken the liberty of recruiting loyalists for a new public relations campaign, hoping you will allow me to send them out on important assignments, more than you’ve permitted in the past. A shuttle of volunteers will be arriving soon.”

  “Yes, use the recruits as you see fit. But keep this in mind. I’m not going to talk about my family, my education, or my early work history. And nothing about the identity of Devv’s mother. No mention of these things in our responses, either, Lainey. They are not open for discussion.”

  She could tell he meant it, by his emphatic words and the intensity in his dark face, so she just said, “We’ll have to work around those things, then. We’ll target other matters. I’ll take care of it, exactly as you wish.”

  He went back to the gleaming white desk, but positioned his chair on one side now. She waited for him to say whether he wanted to talk more, or whether she should leave and go about her duties. She stood a few meters away, noticed stains on his tan slacks. He needed tending all of the time, mothering, almost—although she didn’t feel like a mother toward him. She loved him in a different way, and wanted only the best for him. This was a truly great man, a magnificent person in all ways.

  “Now it’s time for us to strike back hard,” she said. “You and I both know that some high-level leaders are targeting you, trying to bring you down. Prime Minister Yhatt, and that rude, outspoken officer in the Imperial Army, General Moore. There are others, too. Maybe we should go after them in the court of public opinion.”

  “No, I only want to focus on defending my record, because it’s a good one, and we have a lot of facts to prove it. I will not sink to their level.”

  “All right.”

  “Without the gas mixture I pump into the air, it would have taken centuries to restore the atmosphere naturally, assuming that humankind could have made any substantial headway against the industrial and other sources of pollution. I provided a shortcut to salvation. In your new PR campaign, I want you to emphasize the condition of the atmosphere before Skyship, and what we’ve done to improve it.”