To kill him, or not to kill him. That is the question.
—General Rivington Moore VIII
“Billy Jeeling will never leave gracefully,” said the little man at the head of the dining room table. “I know the stubborn son of a puta-whore, and there’s only one good way to bring him down. Public opinion!”
Jonathan Racker cleared his throat, adjusted his bifocals. He was an old man, a Latino who was one of the most famous industrialists in the AmEarth Empire. His words were sharply delivered and concise, with a slight Spanish accent. He wore a tuxedo with an open-collar shirt and no tie—Racker could get away with this in posh surroundings, because he was so rich.
Maureen Stuart was one of the invited guests for lunch in an elegant private dining room, in Imperial City’s vine-covered Tomaah Club, a haven for good old boys where women were hardly ever invited. She felt out of place here. They were in the midst of the luncheon, with clinking silverware, glittering crystal wine glasses, and the murmur of conversation.
She had her left wrist in a medical wrap, from falling in Founders’ Park while jogging two nights ago. It had been late in the evening, not a safe thing to do at that hour, but she was a fast runner and decided to risk it anyway, needing to wind down after a long day at the law firm where she worked. But on one of the dimly-lit garden paths she’d heard something rustling in the bushes, and had increased her speed. Looking back, she saw a man running after her, and shouting crazy things, accusing her of trespassing. It was impossible, of course, because it was a public park, but this guy had staked out at least part of it as his personal turf. At the top of a rise Maureen fell and sprained the wrist, but got up quickly and ran on, managing to outdistance him.
As she glanced around the table now, she noticed two elegantly-dressed men staring at her... one an aged crony of Racker’s with a disapproving gaze, and the other a handsome young Army officer in dress-military uniform, General Rivington Moore VIII—who smiled at her. Each had different things in mind, she thought, because Moore was a well-known womanizer. From a patrician family, he was one of society’s most eligible bachelors, and had used his family connections to rise mercurially through the ranks. He was a five-star general now at the age of 36, and a swaggering, charismatic leader of men. It was said that they would do anything for him. There were stories of a cult of personality forming around him, a fanatically loyal officer corps. She thought he could be dangerous with such charisma, but she’d never spoken out against him. That would be a dangerous thing to do.
His great grandfather, Rivington Moore V, had been one of the most famous and decorated generals in the Final Sweep, a huge military operation that brought every country on the planet, even the most stubborn holdouts, under one world government—the AmEarth Empire. It had involved a series of brutal, multi-pronged onslaughts, but necessary, or so the Imperial leaders claimed, to improve the efficiency of business and political operations on the planet. There was even proof that the subjugated peoples were doing better economically under the unified government than they’d done previously under the control of their own people, because of all the graft and corruption that had been occurring in those individual regimes.
In the days before the Empire, there had also been wave after wave of genocide, of tribes killing each other for the most petty of reasons. Such crimes against humanity had ended with the inauguration of the new unified government, and Maureen had to admit that people she knew seemed happy now, and she was, too, though she did not have any point of comparison with the way it used to be here in the pre-Empire days. That was too long ago, generations past.
For the most part, Maureen believed in the Imperial government and lifestyle, though she was intelligent enough to recognize the fault in this line of reasoning, noticing the way the Prime Minister and other top politicians justified the favored position their privileged caste held, lording over the other peoples of the world. She hoped that what she’d heard was true, that the natives were being treated with more respect now and doing better than they might have otherwise, and were really allowed to follow any religion they chose, as long as they did it peacefully. Even the most radical wings of Islam had been destroyed, and this was the case with the radical fringes of the other major religions as well—Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and even Christianity—as almost all of the violent fundamentalists had either been eradicated or re-educated into the mainstream and more moderate, tolerant views.
A muscular man, the youthful General Moore had dark brown eyes, a small moustache, and a square jaw. She found his eyes hypnotic, and held gaze with him momentarily, before he winked and she looked away quickly. Lady-killer eyes.
Damned sexist! she thought, as she cut a piece of her prime rib with some difficulty, favoring her sore wrist, and took a bite. I’ve got to push back against him, but carefully, without blowing up. Strictly business between us, and at the end of the day I go home and forget about it. They’re paying me well for my legal advice.
“How did you hurt yourself?” Moore asked.
“Punching one of your junior officers who got fresh,” she said, with a wry smile. “His jaw was harder than I thought.”
“Is that so? Maybe I could teach you some martial arts, and you’d do better next time.”
“I already have those fighting skills,” she said, and that part was true. But she added, “I took a crash course right after meeting you, knowing I might need to defend myself against you someday.” She smiled prettily.
His eyes burned a little before he smiled in return. “Is that so?” he said.
“I am married, you know.” She held a cool gaze on him, made him look away first this time.
“I hate like hell going against Billy,” a silver-haired man on Maureen’s left said, rubbing his forehead with an age-spotted hand. “We used to be close, and I remember a lot of good things about him.” Paul Paulo was quite slender, and dressed extravagantly in a white and silver suit, with a tufted white shirt, a diamond watch and glittering rings on his fingers. A stock trader extraordinaire, he was CEO of the world’s largest stock and commodities brokerage, Paulo Hoon & Benedict. He also had a vast real estate empire in the territories, and had been involved with companies that built many of the largest buildings in the capital of the Empire—Imperial City—including the tall and imposing Racker Building.
This magnificent capital city—built from scratch and designed with regal splendor in mind—had been constructed in the Pacific Northwest region of the former United States of America, on the site of what had once been the City of Seattle. The old metropolis had been razed and completely rebuilt in a style more befitting of empire, with broad boulevards, heroic statues, blazing torches, fluttering banners, and buildings in the classic tradition of ancient Greece and Rome. Most of the hills had been flattened so that the planners could lay out the streets and structures in the most dramatic, awe-inspiring fashion.
Beside Paulo sat a man with blond hair and a short blond moustache, Harrison Jennings. A stuffy, erudite man, he was Prime Minister Yhatt’s top assistant, and was known to wear subtle electronic devices to record meetings and transmit them to his boss. She saw a small banner of the AmEarth Empire on his lapel glowing slightly, suggesting to her that it might be electronic.
Paulo cleared his throat. “I remember Billy the way he used to be when Jonathan and I knew him in our younger years, when Billy was making deals with politicians for the operation of Skyship. We were friends with him then, or it seemed that way, and I don’t turn against a friend easily, but he turned his back on us first. Billy Jeeling betrayed everyone on this planet when he placed his own interests above the common good.”
“Here, here!” Racker said, thumping the table. “I’m afraid we’re all sick of dear old Billy, sick of his never-ending monopoly and massive profits. He’s not the way he used to be. His ego got the better of him, and greed.”
“It’s not that we aren’t grateful,” Paulo said. “He did save the biosphere, managing to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle, so to speak. It’s just that he’s gone too far—he’s no longer an environmental savior; he’s an eco-despot.”
A waiterbot stood beside two high, chateau-style entrance doors of the private dining room, scanning the table with its Cyclopean eye for service needs. The ‘bot wore a black tuxedo, had a white towel draped over one forearm. Two other waiterbots refilled water and wine glasses.
Stuart was a top attorney, having made her reputation on Prime Minister Yhatt’s legal team, and in more than twenty years of specializing in political law. Now she ran her own law firm, having left Yhatt’s employment a couple of years ago, but the two of them remained close personally, and often had dinner together in the Imperial Palace, with their spouses. Her husband, Paddy Stuart, was a well-known artist, working overseas now on an important commission for one of the territorial governors. He often gave advice to the First Lady of the Empire, Lorissa Yhatt, who was developing her own skills as a painter. Maureen’s marriage had its ups and downs; they’d quarreled the day before Paddy left, but made up that evening, with lovemaking. He had his ways of melting her heart, and her resistance.
Maureen made a quick perusal of the table, noted a number of business, military and political leaders. Old Racker himself, though barely a meter and a half tall, more than compensated for his “infirmity” (as he called his height) by fighting his way to the top of Imperial society. He was a mailroom to riches story with his fingers in everything, from transportation to computers. He even wrote bestselling books and produced documentaries.
The old industrialist had his fingers in everything, it seemed, with the exception of Billy Jeeling’s monopoly on regeneration and maintenance of the atmosphere, including full ownership of all elements in the air, which only he was allowed to mine and use for a profit. Jeeling held the most closely-guarded secrets in the solar system, so arcane that they weren’t even patented.
“Billy has a signed legal contract,” Stuart said after wiping her mouth with a napkin, “an agreement reached with one of Yhatt’s predecessors, Prime Minister Kelly. The contract is perpetual. I was not on the legal team that set it up—it was before my time, you know—but Prime Minister Yhatt asked me to analyze it later to see if it had loopholes, and I couldn’t find any. Not even a pinhole.”
“And Billy’s son is in line for succession,” Moore said, in a resonant voice. “An aristocracy of the atmosphere. Mister Billy Jeeling and Son, the Monarch and Prince of the Sky.”
Stuart didn’t like Moore’s voice. It was too perfect, as if he had practiced to develop it, and he drew some words out like musical notes. Something had never seemed right to her about him. He was overly charming in all things he did, which undoubtedly enabled him to get his way. But he also had the full force of the entire Imperial Army behind him.
“Mmmm, Mr. Renaldo Yhatt will soon be out of office,” Paulo said. “He’s helped us somewhat, but in only a few months his term is up. What then? Will his successor agree with us, or take Billy’s side?” He looked at Stuart.
“I know you would like to see the contract broken quickly,” she said, “but Jeeling has a legal team that is more than equal to anything we or the current administration can throw at him in an attempt to break the contract. Take my word for it, this is a dead-end. All we can do is what we’ve already been doing—the propaganda campaign to bring Billy down.”
Mutterings of concurrence passed around the table. Waiterbots began clearing some of the plates, while others poured tea and coffee.
Moore: “We’ve tried everything to get details on the gas Billy pumps from Skyship into the atmosphere, even shooting spectrals at it, but he’s got a helluva shielding mechanism up. Our people suspect the gas contains ozone, because his skyminer fleet seeks and absorbs the ozone-eating elements, and restores the ozone layer. He’s also scrubbing CO2 from most of the atmosphere to make it healthier, but he could also be injecting CO2 into the ozonosphere to cool it, thus decreasing the rate of O3 destruction.”
“Temperature in the ozone layer is down two degrees since Skyship went into operation,” a thin Army officer said, on General Moore’s right. “And he’s cleaned up the rest of the atmosphere, too.” Flight General Tilson Bishop was at least twenty years older than Moore, and was his adjutant. In a dress uniform that glittered even more than his superior, Bishop had a chest full of military medals and ribbons.
“We’ve even vacuumed the air after Skyship passed through,” Bishop continued, “at different altitudes. What little we can retrieve of his gas seems to indicate that it’s a complex formula we can’t break down. It seems to be inert in all circumstances, even in intense sunlight. We can’t even get it to react to ozone.”
“I think nitrogen is in there,” General Moore said.
“We’ve tried our own experiments with a variety of formulas,” the thin officer added. “Nothing we try works very well.”
“Some of Billy’s actions could be decoys,” Racker suggested. “Showmanship. He’s all over the troposphere, the stratosphere, and the mesosphere. It’s baffling what he’s doing up there.”
“Maybe we can blame him for screwing up the weather,” suggested a small black woman on Stuart’s side of the table. A career government appointee under the past three prime ministers, Elvira Johnson was the Chancellor of the Exchequer now, with the authority to make large financial decisions—such as how to pay for military ventures. This gave her de facto veto power over General Moore, who was always coming up with big, expensive military plans. But she never seemed to wield that power against him.
Uneasy laughter carried through the room, but none came from Moore. “Hmm,” he said, “couldn’t we use damage to the weather as a battering ram to break through the walls of the contract?”
“Not a chance,” Stuart said. “I’ve already considered that angle and looked into it in depth. It’s weak, not worth the expenditure of our time or assets. Technically he hasn’t violated the agreement. He’s doing a good job on the atmosphere, as evidenced by infinitesimally low levels of skin cancer and respiratory diseases all over the globe. And believe it or not, he’s doing it all within prescribed cost guidelines.”
“Within cost guidelines?” General Moore exclaimed, his voice booming forth, as if he were using a loudspeaker. “What a joke! He receives two hundred billion tax-free ambucks a year, and that’s just for starters, for the use of his secrets. We also pay hundreds of billions to operate Skyship, including salaries for everyone aboard including Billy, unlimited transportation for all who work on the vessel, enabling them to get to the Moon, the Asteroid Colonies, and AmEarth, and every other ridiculous expense you can think of. They even receive cost-of-living adjustments.”
“I’d hate to calculate the total cost of that operation,” Jonathan Racker said.
His gaze wandered and he squinted, as if looking for something in the far distance. It turned out to be a memory. “Decades ago, I was one of the lucky ones with enough money to afford one of those funny-looking UV-suits,” he said. “I hated the face masks the most. And Paul, do you remember complaining that they never came up with a comfortable, decent-looking design?”
Paul Paulo nodded.
Continuing, Racker said, “I hated walking around in that getup looking at people who couldn’t afford to protect themselves properly. They were the walking dead, a lot of them. Especially the fair-skinned ones.”
Maureen nodded. “I was only a child, but I especially hated seeing young people exposed. I lost several classmates, and a five-year old cousin. The sweetest little boy in the world.”
“Yeah. There were skin creams, oral treatments, injections and other treatments for most everyone... but only the UV-suits—radsuits, they called them—were really effective.”
Moore shook his head. “Despite any good Jeeling did in the past, we’ve been spending bi-i-i-g bucks on him. Really big, useless, bucks, because we don’t need the bastard any more. Everyone at this table knows Skyship should be run by the Imperial government, but he doesn’t want that, of course. It would cut off his flow of cash—actually drastically reduce it, if we pay him a pension.”
“And if we do manage to take over,” Chancellor Johnson said, “we’re bound to find financial irregularities, money he spent lavishly on himself. He’s turned Skyship into the biggest squander-mill in history.”
“A huge personal piggy bank,” Moore said, “that he can dip into for anything he wants, without the requirement of any expense reports or audits.”
“We’re looking into the historical matter,” Maureen Stuart said, “the possibility that our Prime Minister at the time—Princeton Kelly—sold the world out on more than one matter, including this big one. We might be able to target his legacy as a way of getting at Billy—pressure from that direction. For one thing, we learned that Kelly’s former business partners were heavily involved in the Antarctic platinum rush that upset so many environmentalists. So Kelly wasn’t the great supporter of the environment that he claimed to be, and if we crack him on that front, maybe it’ll be easier to get to his buddy, Billy Jeeling. Guilt by association. Tar both of them with the same brush. But that’s not going to be an easy process. Kelly is fabulously wealthy, and so is Jeeling. They can throw monkey wrenches at us from all directions.”
“Billy isn’t cozy with Kelly anymore, or with our current Prime Minister, either,” Paulo said. “Yhatt told him to resign.”
“Yhatt was just going through the motions,” Moore said, shaking his head. He waved a waiterbot away, not wanting anything more, and added, “Our eminent leader should have been more emphatic, should have spoken out more against Billy.”
“I don’t like your tone,” Harrison Jennings said.
“Nor do I,” said Chancellor Johnson.
“Your objections are duly noted,” Moore said, his tone and expression condescending. “And anticipated, since you are both political appointees in the current administration, sycophantic followers of the Prime Minister, bending to his every whim and desire.”
They glared at him, and exchanged uneasy glances between themselves.
“Getting rid of Billy Jeeling could require a full-scale military assault on Skyship,” General Moore said.
“Not advisable,” Paulo said. “That would risk the destruction of everything. Ozone holes could reappear, along with dangerous ultraviolet radiation—UV-a, b, and c—high pollution would come back, too, and we’d find ourselves praying for another Billy Jeeling. It’s not possible to move everyone to the Moon or the Asteroid Colonies.”
“I’d still like to call Mister Jeeling’s bluff,” General Moore said. “See who blinks first when we line up our nukes, photon beams and—”
“Out of the question,” Paulo said. “Billy has warned us that the destruction of Skyship would set off a series of massive detonations in the air, damaging the atmosphere so severely that it could destroy virtually all life on AmEarth. And I don’t think it’s an idle threat.”
“The downside of Jeeling’s great plan,” Racker said.
“A clever bluff,” Moore said. “He’s lying.”
“My experts are not so sure,” Paulo said. “With all the ozone and other chemicals aboard Skyship, it could very well be a bomb. You know how touchy that stuff is, and our scientists are afraid it’s even more volatile with the secret ingredients in Jeeling’s mix. Some of the scientists speculate that this could be the secret of the danger—if Skyship blows in the heart of the ozone layer it could set off a chain of horrendous events, ripping through the entire ozonosphere, giving everyone on AmEarth a final, lethal dosage of DUV—damaging ultraviolet. With the exception of a few of us, that is. We still have some rather expensive, cumbersome suits to put on that will protect us. Maybe that’s what Billy’s threat means—a huge absorption of lethal DUV.”
“There won’t be any disaster,” Moore said. “I’ve seen other studies; I’ve even had my people calculate the odds, and the risk is infinitesimally low.”
“I’ve seen studies that say otherwise,” Paulo said, “and with the stakes this high, we must assume the worst... and take extreme care. We don’t want to bumble into anything.”
General Moore glared at him.
“I wonder if Billy ever revealed the danger of atmospheric destruction to anyone before the contract was signed,” Racker said. He turned to Stuart. “Couldn’t that be misrepresentation?”
“No. For one thing, Billy claims it’s a danger that only turned up after Skyship went into operation. We’d have to prove he knew something about it beforehand—not a simple task. And we’d have to know details of what the danger is. But even if we could prove he knew about the danger in the beginning, it doesn’t matter what happened before the contract was signed. He has the most complete hold harmless and indemnity clauses I’ve ever seen. The people of AmEarth and the Empire hold him completely harmless for anything he does in his attempt to restore the atmosphere, including anything unforeseen, and including anything he might have known about all along but didn’t reveal.
“He’s not only protected fully, but he has a complete indemnity agreement that goes the other way—the people of AmEarth and the Empire agree to pay him for damages if anyone harms his operation. I’m surprised that indemnity clause hasn’t been mentioned by Billy or his supporters, because he could make a strong legal claim against all of us, and maybe even against the citizens of the planet—at least the ones marching in the streets and writing against him—for the harm being done to his reputation. Libel and slander, pure and simple.”
“Balderdash!” Moore said. “He’s harmed his own reputation by being a stubborn old fool who doesn’t know when it’s time to quit.”
She shrugged. “Who can say? The matter could be argued endlessly in court, far beyond the lifetimes of anyone here today.”
“Remind me, what sort of military defenses does Jeeling have?” Racker asked. “I’ve forgotten some of the details, the things that have been turned up by spies we’ve sent in, and through other methods.” He took a sip of water, looked at General Moore.
“Stiff,” General Moore said. “Reagan shielding, with kinetic kill missiles, KK480 cannons, Nuke-Packs, one and two-man assault ships—along with a large fleet of armed skyminers—the works. He even has something we don’t—super-cop robots that are nearly invincible, supposedly invented by Jeeling himself.”
“All that’s under the control of Devv Jeeling,” Racker said. “His title is Security Commander, a deceptive commission. He’s as much a military officer as you are, General Moore.”
The young officer grunted in affirmation. “So all we can do is to attack him through public opinion, the way we’ve already been doing? I’d like to do more, a lot more.”
“We just need to be patient,” Paul Paulo said. “We’re gaining important momentum, turning the public against him in increasing numbers.”
“That’s right,” Racker said. “Patience is our byword.”
“If only we could somehow get the Skyship contract declared invalid,” Harrison Jennings said, “it would start the thing snowballing, turning people against Billy even more quickly.”
Stuart had already been over this so she didn’t comment again, except to shake her head at the impossibility of attacking the matter legally.
“Jeeling once referred to the people of AmEarth as his family,” Racker said. “I found it in the transcript of a speech he gave years ago... and if that’s the case, he would feel crushed if most of the public turned against him, which hasn’t happened yet. Right now he’s hated by large numbers of people in the biggest cities, but if the protests grow more widespread and almost everyone turns against him, he’ll be emotionally crushed. I know the man, remember. And so does Paul. Billy has always been sensitive, with manic depressive tendencies, and now he might even be suicidal.”
Paul Paulo nodded somberly. “That speech reveals his Achilles heel. He won’t be able to take the heat if most of his ‘family’ turns against him. It’ll eat up his insides.”
“I must advise you to use the utmost caution,” Stuart said, as everyone rose from their chairs, preparing to leave. “Remember what I said about Jeeling potentially accusing us of libel and slander, and besides that, we don’t want to provide him with any justification for destroying his secrets. It’s a delicate balance, and we need to be extremely careful.”
“We sure as hell can’t sit back and let his little game continue,” General Moore said. Then he muttered something to himself. Stuart saw that he had an odd look on his face, with a very strange, cruel smile. And there was something in his eyes that she’d discerned before, something not right. Though manly and physically attractive, he did not look entirely sane to her, but no one else seemed to notice.