The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma

by Brian Herbert

  Knowledgeable in plant pathology, Joss was proud of his own careful attention to detail and meticulous work ethic. He looked down on others who were inattentive to their duties. As a team, he and Kupi Landau were highly rated for their skills, which put them in demand for the most challenging assignments, where their superiors didn’t want mistakes to be made.

  Joss worried as he thought of Kupi and her tendency to be independent, no matter the consequences. On the job she always performed her assignments with technical proficiency and thoroughness, never leaving any target standing after firing her black cannon, thus setting the stage for Joss to follow and scatter the seeds of his profession. But she was by no means an example of the perfect J-Mac employee. Her attitude and sharp tongue often got her negative attention, and if any other person ever said the things she did, that person would be summarily dismissed, or worse. Kupi kept getting away with more than others could, because of the important connections she’d made in the Corporate War and her significant contributions to what the Chairman called “our great and glorious green victory.”

  So far she had eluded serious trouble but there had to be a limit, and Joss remained wary. He genuinely cared about the older woman and wanted to protect her, but didn’t want to lose his own career by his personal involvement with her. He feared that one day she would step so far over the line with her comments that no one would be able to save her, not even Chairman Rahma Popal, Kupi’s former lover during the war.

  Now Kupi was telling stories from the legendary early days of the Army of the Environment again, when the Chairman’s closest friend Glanno Artindale had been a hero of the revolution. He was killed in Atlanta in February 2041, when a U.S. Army battalion opened fire on a crowd of peaceful demonstrators that the Chairman was leading. Glanno Artindale died in Rahma Popal’s arms, a scene that was immortalized in an iconic photograph used as a recruiting poster for the rebellion. The incident on Peachtree Street made him a martyr, and the words “Remember Glanno!” became a rallying cry for the ragtag army of environmentalists, anarchists, hippies, animal-rights activists, draft-card burners, and the homeless that ultimately overthrew the powerful Corporates and their entrenched allies.

  Joss heard Kupi talking about her affair with Popal now, describing how they met more than twenty years ago when both of them were members of the radical revolutionary council in California that became known as the Berkeley Eight. They were the ones who first conceptualized the Army of the Environment, with its expressed goal of throwing out the greedy Corporates and their puppet United States government, and replacing them with a new and altruistic form of green governance. In one celebrated brainstorming session, where the participants consumed heroin-laced marijuana, LSD, and other powerful hallucinogens, Kupi had helped come up with the words of the GSA Loyalty Oath, in which citizens pledged fidelity to “one nation under green, and the greenocracy on which it was founded.”

  “Rahma swept me out of my sandals,” Kupi said to her tablemate now. Then, with a girlish giggle, she added, “And out of the rest of my clothing!”

  Having heard her say this before, Joss exchanged smiles with her across the aisle. Though she and Joss were lovers these days, she’d been quite open with him about her sensational past. The tall, willowy woman had been the Chairman’s number one girlfriend for more than two years. She’d also been a key strategic adviser in the fledgling army that ultimately overthrew the entrenched power brokers and their cronies.

  That was heady stuff. Really heady stuff.

  “Of course, I wasn’t Rahma’s only girlfriend,” Kupi said, looking back at her fellow anarchist as she sipped a cup of tea thoughtfully. “He had many, and I never questioned him for his sexual proclivities.” She laughed. “At least he wasn’t interested in little boys.”

  Joss gazed outside again, remembered how he and Kupi had met almost five years ago at a ceremony where he’d received a national award for his achievements as an eco-cop, after busting a ring of notorious environmental criminals and killing three of them in a shoot-out, a group that was secretly cutting old-growth trees in wilderness areas and shipping wood products overseas. He’d found the older woman attractive and seductively mysterious, with her enigmatic personality, black clothing, and exotic beauty, and they’d hit it off immediately. Later that evening there had been an explosion of sex between them, and in the ensuing days it had not abated.

  During one intimate moment with her, he’d expressed his desire to retire from Greenpol, admitting that killing eco-criminals—as necessary as that had been at the time—had not been something he could stomach again. It was not something he’d wanted to reveal to his supervisors on the force, because of the harm it could do to any career he chose, since “good citizens” should be happy to kill as many eco-criminals as they could. In fact, according to The Little Green Book, “Murder in defense of the planet is not murder,” and Joss believed that wholeheartedly, but he’d exterminated more than his share of bad guys—nineteen in his career—and he could bear no more.

  At his request, Kupi had kept his feelings secret, and in a matter of weeks she’d used her influence to get him transferred to the Greenforming Division of the government and a position on her Janus Machine crew, where he learned how to operate and maintain the equipment. He’d shown almost immediate skill as a greenformer, and in three years he was promoted to command the small crew, with the suggestion from his Berkeley managers that he could eventually rise much higher.

  His sudden status above Kupi had not been a problem at all; she had encouraged his promotion and had not wanted to run the crew anyway. “I don’t ever want to be the boss,” she’d quipped. “I just want to complain about them.”

  Joss felt a slight jolt as the train switched from one electromagnetic track to another, and then accelerated. Off in the distance, beyond a cleared area, he got a glimpse of one of the latest relocation reservations for humans that was under construction, with cranes towering overhead. He looked back as the site vanished from view, uncertain of the name of that one. Joss thought it was a good idea to keep people on such reservations and prevent them from going out of bounds and harming the environment. There had been too many millennia of rampant ecological abuses committed by human beings, with their filthy industries, endless wars, and outright neglect of anything beyond their small circles of self-interest.

  The fellow anarchist at Kupi’s table said something to her in a low tone that Joss couldn’t make out. He was a soft-spoken, effeminate man.

  “I’ll always care about Rahma,” she replied, “but I could never live with him again. He has so many … eccentricities!”

  Joss shook his head, hoped she didn’t finally say something that would be the proverbial last straw. He knew she had been forced out of a leadership position shortly after the AOE defeated the Corporates, because of her outspoken criticisms of powerful progressive leaders surrounding the Chairman. A number of her shocking comments from years ago were still remembered, including her accusation that many of the GSA leaders were “living for the wrong kind of green—the money kind.”

  So far she had never questioned the honesty or integrity of the Chairman himself, and that must have been her saving grace, because he continued to watch out for her welfare. And as for those she had spoken against, some had tumbled from power under the withering, disapproving eye of Rahma Popal and Greenpol. But others remained, and new green profiteers kept cropping up, like noxious weeds.

  Across the aisle, the anarchist rose and staggered away, unsteady on his feet. He’d consumed a lot of wine at this sitting, and Joss had seen him drinking earlier as well.

  “You’re unusually quiet today,” Kupi said to Joss, scooting into a place across the table from him and stubbing out her juana stick in an ashtray. “You’re not jealous of me talking to another man, are you?”

  He watched the man go through a door between cars, said, “With a gay guy? Hardly. But I am jealous of you. You’re a better person than I’ll ever be, Kupi, the mo
st honest person I’ve ever met, unafraid of the consequences of truth.” He smiled gently. “Unlike me, you have the full courage of your convictions.”

  “Or I have the stupidity of them.” Her brown eyes glistened with fire. “Sometimes I don’t know what you see in me. I’m a lot older than you are, more than fifteen years.”

  “I never noticed.” He leaned across the table, kissed her tenderly.

  “Shall we find a private place?” she asked.

  “We should wait,” he said. “We’re almost to Quebec Territory.”

  Even without a sleeping compartment, there were still places on the train for them to make love; they’d done it before. But he pulled away and looked at her, knowing that the two of them cared about each other, but he was coming to realize that the physical side of their relationship was most of it—and without that, they would have little in common. She was mysterious, which he would normally find intriguing, but she kept too many secrets to herself for his liking, saying he wouldn’t want to hear them anyway. It had become a barrier between them.

  Joss had slept with a number of other women in his adulthood, to see what it was like before settling down. Now he longed to be with one person, and though he was only thirty he felt a mounting urgency to find her. By any measure, his relationship with Kupi Landau was unusual; she was one of a kind, and that was interesting to him, even alluring. But he couldn’t feel really close to her.

  Whenever Kupi made love to Joss it was a raw, primal thing, from a deep-seated anarchist violence in her that both excited and terrified him. She was like a wild thing from the deep woods—a creature that could never really be civilized and did not belong here. She only tolerated civilization, only tolerated him, and would ultimately break free.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking about you,” he said, with a gentle smile.

  6

  Is it possible to go too far for a good cause? If Chairman Rahma’s radical environmental policies are allowed to continue, couldn’t it result in the total extinction of the human race? Is that what he really wants?

  —Unanswered Questions for Chairman Rahma, a banned book

  IT WAS INDEED a day of celebration, with long-haired, braless women and bearded men dancing in circles on the grassy area by the yurts, in the midst of blaring Rolling Stones music and juana smoke drifting in the air. Though only mid-morning it was already warm, and Rahma Popal felt perspiration forming on his brow. The distinguished, gray-bearded man wore a lightweight, long green robe, with yellow ribbing on the collar and sleeves, and a golden peace symbol pendant around his neck. In his late fifties, he prided himself on remaining physically fit.

  He smiled as he looked out on the people, many of whom had obtained passes to visit him at the Montana Valley Game Reserve, where he maintained his austere home and government headquarters. A number of them carried copies of The Little Green Book, and some had the volumes open, reading the sayings and poems of the Chairman.

  Others were women who lived with him on the set-aside land, including one who kept watching his every move, Dori Longet. After being with him for more than a decade, the small, curvy blonde had become his favorite, but he’d been noticing irritating traits about her, jealousies that annoyed him. She claimed to understand his need to have sex with numerous women, but often she attempted to act as a go-between for him and his various liaisons. At times he found this especially irritating and unnecessary, like a layer of bureaucracy that other women had to go through to get to him.

  And yet he’d grown increasingly reliant on her intelligence, to the degree that he had her arranging his daily schedule—keeping track of the appointments he had with government and business officials, as well as with other visitors, and taking care of many of his personal matters. Dori was usually well organized and businesslike, and he appreciated her for that. At times, though, she expressed her displeasure at his wide-ranging sexual interests, especially if she thought a particular woman was manipulative and deceitful, and didn’t really care about him, as she did. Truly, Dori was a remarkable woman. He had to admit that.

  The newcomers among the dancers were from a select list of invitees, having passed stringent security and progressive loyalty tests. The festivities would extend far into the night, an orgy of sex and drugs. He enjoyed such activities himself, but whenever he partook of them he invariably felt guilty afterward, that he had succumbed to yet another human weakness. But these were private thoughts, which he shared with no one. After completing his work today, he would join the party, enjoying the various delights anyway. Despite his lofty goals, he was only human after all, and these pursuits were not harming the planet. In fact, he rationalized, they provided a sense of camaraderie between himself and his avid followers, and he used every opportunity—sometimes even while making love—to espouse the gospel of green.

  He lifted his arms in the air, and the dancers began to chant to him lovingly, “Rahm-m-m-m-a … Rahm-m-m-m-a … Rahm-m-m-m-a…”

  Around the perimeter he saw scores of yellow-uniformed hubots looking on attentively, human-looking robots who attended to security details and other matters for Rahma Popal, sometimes working with special Greenpol police who had been assigned to guard him. Constructed of synthetics that simulated human beings in their appearance and motions, each of them contained a small amount of functioning biological components—organs and other body parts that had been salvaged from dead people, often heroes of the Green Revolution. This was one of the Chairman’s ways of honoring their memories. The hubots also had simulated human emotions, as well as humanlike odors and other characteristics that made them hard to discern from the real thing.

  It was to this game reserve in the Rocky Mountain Territory that Rahma initially brought the snow leopard and other endangered species that were rescued, either from missions in which he participated personally or those that were conducted under his orders. The reserve, which he used as his base of government operations, was in a verdant river valley surrounded by slopes of evergreen trees and mountains, north of the Missoula Reservation for Humans.

  A number of yurts encircled a central expanse of grass, buildings that were used for administrative, medical, and other purposes and as barracks for hundreds of his own children who lived on the compound with him, along with some of their mothers, but not all of them. Several had run off; others had been assigned to jobs around the GSA, and two were recycled for criminal activity—one for murdering a rival for the Chairman’s affections, and the other for an egregious environmental crime.

  Rahma always had a stream of new women coming to live with him on the compound, and there were invariably competitions among them, sometimes involving naked exhibitionism to gain his attention. He liked attractive women around him; the more the better. He called those on the compound his “wives,” though there were never any marriage ceremonies involving them.

  Gradually the chanting died down, though the dancing and music continued. One of the hubots stepped forward to hand the Chairman a sheet of recycled paper. His name was Artie. Like others of his kind, except for a slight translucence to his skin that was visible up close, he was almost indistinguishable from a human in appearance. For this reason, hubots were required to wear wide armbands that bore the silver, stylized image of a machine mechanism on it.

  “Dori asked me to give you your daily schedule,” the hubot announced, in a male voice.

  “Oh?”

  “I fear she’s a bit perturbed with you today, Master.”

  “Did she say why?” Looking over at her, Rahma caught her hostile gaze.

  “She did not.”

  Sometimes the Chairman didn’t understand why she was upset with him, or what he might have done wrong in her eyes. No matter, it would pass. Her moods always did, and the two of them would resume their relationship as if nothing had happened. “Thank you,” he said.

  Around the same height as the Chairman, the hubot gazed at him with dark blue eyes that had been sal
vaged from a dead human and bio-fused into a droid robot. The eyes were reused in this fashion after having been salvaged twenty-two years ago from the body of Glanno Artindale, the iconic hero of the revolution who died after a Corporate attack on peaceful demonstrators. Now Artie was not only a top aide; he was very special to the Chairman, because Glanno had been his closest, most loyal friend. Sometimes when Rahma looked into the eyes of the hubot he saw his fallen comrade again, all the way to his soul. It was like that now, giving him pause. With programming that Rahma had specified, Artie even had mannerisms and expressions that mimicked those of the dead man. The hubot even knew many of their old stories, of times Rahma and Glanno had shared.

  Artie even liked some of the same jokes as Glanno, such as the one about a redneck and a green-neck, and how they differed because the redneck drove a pickup truck with a gun rack, while the green-neck drove an electric car with a bicycle rack. Rahma could still hear Glanno’s great, boisterous laugh resonating whenever he told a funny story, or heard one.

  Glanno had been more than a comrade, and more than a friend. During an extended marijuana binge the two men had even become intimate, but that had ended when Glanno sobered up and realized that Rahma would never give up his numerous female lovers, not even for him, not even because of the closeness of their relationship. After their brief affair they continued to be friends, but it was never the same between them, and Rahma always felt a certain tension that never seemed to go away.

  Then Glanno died, on that awful day in Atlanta.

  Now, after a moment to regain his composure, Rahma Popal scanned his schedule. Later this morning he would meet with his children, to give them lectures on ecology and on treating animals properly. And before that, he had a meeting with a government official, a little over an hour from now.

  Through hazel eyes he gazed thoughtfully toward the slopes of the tree-covered foothills, and up to the snowy mountains beyond, where the male Panasian snow leopard had been released, after fitting it with an electronic tracking device. The beautiful animal would require special attention; there were not many of them left on the planet, and Rahma had only three others up there with him, one of which was female. He sighed as sadness enveloped him. Ultimately it might not be possible to save this remarkable species, but he would make every effort.