The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma

by Brian Herbert

  “I feel like I’m being arrested by my own police,” the Chairman said, as he watched the officers accumulate the information and mark off a checklist on an electronic clip pad.

  “In view of your high position, Eminence, no one would object if you supplement this with updated information from your doctor each time you have a physical examination,” Ondex said.

  “Well, don’t you think of everything!”

  Director Ondex narrowed his eyes and said, “Perhaps your information should be analyzed to form the basis of the perfect human being that you seek—one that reveres the planet Earth and takes every possible action to enhance nature.”

  “Ah,” Rahma said, “but I’m not perfect and I’ve never claimed to be.”

  “Oh, but you are! At least, we’ve been led to believe that. You represent the ideal of goodness and selflessness, the ultimate and faultless human that you would like to create among your followers.” His mouth twisted in a cruel smile. “Think of it—an entire race of Rahma Popals. I could put some of my own SciO researchers on it right away.”

  “Greenpol analyzes my ID package, not you.”

  Ondex bowed, but his eyes flashed in a way that made Rahma realize that he would do it anyway.

  “It’s a pity you can’t read my thoughts from cell samples,” Rahma said, “or you’d learn what I really think of you.”

  “I think you’ve made that abundantly clear,” the SciO leader said. He moved toward the door, with his assistant close behind him. The two Greenpol officers hesitated, now awaiting instructions from the Chairman.

  He nodded, said, “Go ahead and add my information to the database.”

  They bowed, and hurried off.

  In a short time the data would be assembled and organized onto computer files, then loaded into the GSA genetic library system for distribution across the network. Every department in the government would have quick access to the identification package via terminals.

  How ironic, Rahma thought, that a program of his own design had found a way to annoy him. And he wondered what, if anything, the researchers would discover when they analyzed his file. Under the Charter he had no way of stopping the process, or of reining it in.

  The question was, what would the SciOs do with the information? Find some way to compare Rahma Popal with known eco-criminals? Was this part of a coup attempt?

  He didn’t want to believe that.

  * * *

  FOLLOWING THE MEETING, the Chairman and Artie took an elevator down to the lowest subterranean level beneath the game reserve, to a bunker that could not be blasted open by ground-penetrating bombs of any kind—not Splitter, nor conventional, nor nuclear. They strode past banks of computers inside clearplex, temperature-controlled chambers, with hubots, robots, and human technicians operating the controls. These terminals accessed databases of human genetic material, as well as Greenpol files on criminal activity throughout the nation’s two continents.

  The crime files were supposed to be complete copies of everything that Greenpol had in its files, updated moment by moment as new information was obtained and modified as a result of their forensic studies and other scientific investigations. Rahma saw the blinking lights and shifting tallies, the graphs that flashed across viewing screens as more surveillance and criminal information on GSA citizens was added constantly, and the files of the deceased were moved to other sections—more than a billion names of the living and dead, with more being added each moment. He was certain his own information was not in the system yet.

  Continuing on, they passed the International Section, which contained additional data on humankind that was collected by other police agencies around the world—much of the information Eurikan, and only a little of it Panasian—all shared with the GSA.

  Greenpol officers and hubots assigned to the large bunker worked at the machines, bustling back and forth inside the clearplex enclosures and in the corridors as Rahma and Artie walked by.

  The Chairman paused at a wide viewing window, where Greenpol officers busily tended to monitors that displayed reports on different types of criminals—Ecological, Corporate, Monetary, Violent, and others. There were overlaps among the categories, with some names appearing on more than one, but this was accounted for in statistical summaries.

  “Give me the Most Wanted lists,” Rahma said.

  Touching his robotic hand to an interface on the wall, Artie used AI thought commands to bring up the required data, and display it on half a dozen screens that the Chairman could see. For each category of criminal behavior there were lists of names, and the faces of the most-wanted fugitives.

  For a moment Rahma looked over the rogue’s gallery of Corporate criminals, noting that some had no faces shown, because the perpetrators had been clever in covering their tracks. “Look at all of these files on criminals, with their devious, sneaky minds,” he said. “If only more humans were like you, Artie, without guile or selfish cleverness. Truly, all of the worst is represented here in these files.”

  “Yes, Master, many of these are immoral minds. But data on great humans is archived here as well, and soon your own personal information will be included in the records, adding to the weight of good.”

  “Mmmm. Yes, Artie. Nice of you to say that.”

  “Would you like me to access thermal images of human brains, to compare the cerebral cortexes of criminals with those of great people?”

  “Not today, Artie.”

  “Master, if I may say so, I’m looking forward to seeing the information on your brain in the data system. There is much to be learned from you, in all respects.”

  “I am not without fault. I’ve admitted this many times before, to many people.”

  “But Master, if green were a full-blown religion, you would be a saint. Actually, a god.”

  Rahma chuckled, but said, “Environmentalism is not a real religion. It only has elements of similarity.”

  “Shall I list the similarities, Master?”

  A long pause. Then: “No. My zealots accept the green mantra without questioning it, and many people refer to me as a green guru, or a minister preaching the gospel of green. There are other religious parallels as well, but I hope they are only temporary, until we can restore natural balance to the planet.”

  “You are right, Master. Might I recommend one exception to your ‘temporary’ comment, sir—the sacred tree? That is a very nice concept, an enduring symbol of ecology, and I think we should keep it.”

  “We’ll find a way to do that, Artie.”

  “Very good, Master. I have already added our discussion to my data banks. Someday it will undoubtedly prove useful.”

  “It must be interesting for you to have access to so much information, Artie, so much more than you can possibly tell me, or reveal in the highlights you provide.”

  “I am interested in whatever I am programmed to be interested in.”

  “Of course you are.” He patted the loyal hubot on his humanlike shoulder, marveled at how real he looked. He’d even seen women on the compound flirting with him, until they realized their mistake.

  The Chairman then focused on another list, one that included the white-bearded, pockmarked image of Mord Pelley, one of the most notorious at-large eco-criminals. A former rancher in Texas, he lost his property to eminent domain and killed three government agents who tried to serve papers on him. Afterward he went renegade, and from hiding he charged that the government was a spoils system for revolutionaries who were misusing their authority, and profiting unfairly from it. Others (such as Rahma’s ex-lover Kupi) had made similar remarks, but not nearly so vociferously or with as much vitriol.

  Privately, Rahma thought that Pelley had been right about some of his criticisms, but he had not said so at the time and never would, because of the egregious crimes that the man had committed. Reportedly he was living in one of the North American wilderness regions, leading hundreds of followers in despoiling greeneries instead of remaining legally on one of the reser
vations for humans. Pelley was also an avowed Christian, a follower of one of the banned religions. There were no legal religions at all in the Green States of America. It was a one-hundred-percent secular state, with no exceptions, no loopholes.

  Chairman Rahma sighed. He didn’t have time to think too much about the reasons that people rebelled against his rules. He would rather retrain people who ran afoul of the law, but that was a lot of trouble. For some time now, he’d been thinking it would be easier to just have 99.9 percent of the GSA population recycled and be done with them—despite his regrets about killing people.

  He moved on, leading Artie down the corridor.

  His government had many failings. In order to form the Green States of America, Rahma had made concessions out of necessity, especially to the SciOs in gratitude for their contributions to the victory over the Corporates. But at times he wondered if the new system was really better than the old. As one of the adverse side effects of his greenocracy, he’d been noticing the emergence of power structures around him that mimicked decadent old systems that the Corporates and their predecessors had developed. Oligarchic systems that were intolerable to him, but he had not yet come up with a way of eliminating them without causing problems in relationships that were important to him.

  It seemed to him that these familiar power structures were exceedingly human in their makeup, and that he could never prevent the worst aspects of human nature from constantly reasserting themselves.

  To some extent he isolated himself from the nastiness of politics and vying personal interests by living on this game reserve and spending as much time as he could with the animals he loved so much. But he couldn’t bury his head in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. He had to keep track of what was going on in his government.

  The two of them walked past laboratories in which sick and injured animals were being treated, and a bank of separate elevator systems for the animals—to take them up to the surface when they were well enough to be released onto the preserve or taken to another site with more suitable environmental conditions.

  Presently they paused in front of another genetic bank that the Chairman maintained separately from the one operated by Greenpol. This system, networked to other game reserves that were under GSA control, contained information on all of the animal species on earth, with the exception of humans, whom Chairman Rahma considered to be the most dangerous animal of all.

  They spoke for a long while, and again Rahma expressed something that was always on his mind, either at the top of his awareness or near the top—his ongoing disappointment in mankind.

  Considering this for a moment, Artie said, “Perhaps I am fortunate that only my eyes are human, Master.”

  12

  The Corporates used an insidious form of social engineering on masses of people, enticing them to live in widespread suburbs and drive personal vehicles across vast networks of roadways. Our valiant leaders reversed that process on the American continents and eliminated the sprawling infrastructure, as well as internal-combustion engines. They also made great strides in changing the mentality of people who craved such things.

  —a children’s history primer

  THOUGH JOSS AND Kupi had discussed living together during the past year, they maintained separate apartments in the Seattle Reservation for Humans, a few blocks apart. Each of them had government-assigned roommates to share their compact living units, though that could be altered if they completed a series of electronic reassignment applications and went through the approval process.

  A year ago Kupi had mentioned the possibility that she could be in love with Joss, though he said he was not so certain of his own feelings. And besides that, Joss told her he wasn’t sure how an anarchist could feel love for someone who didn’t share her extreme belief system. In response, Kupi had insisted that her feelings for him were deep and “transcended” anything else. Thereafter, even without his commitment to her, she frequently said she loved him, and it had been making him uncomfortable.

  His separate living arrangements from her were for the best, Joss had decided, because he’d been trying to find a way to tell her that the two of them were hopelessly different, and he didn’t see how their personal relationship could continue. Finally, after she asked him repeatedly what his feelings for her were, and not getting a response that pleased her, Joss sensed that Kupi might be getting resentful. The last time they’d made love, before boarding the train for the final leg to Seattle, the experience had been awkward, without the usual ease and wild passion they had shared so many times before. But it was more than that, he believed strongly. They thought differently about so many issues that he’d lost count.

  Above all, Kupi could never possibly replace the lost love of his life, Onaka Hito, who had loved him so briefly, with such grace and beauty, and then had vanished back to her distant home in Panasia.

  Joss intended to discuss the situation with Kupi the following day, when they went on an eco-tourism trip that was being given to them as a bonus for their hard work on the Janus Machine crew. Other members of the crew had selected different bonuses, so they would not be with them. It would be a semi-automated flight with no pilot or other passengers, so Joss and Kupi would have time to talk while they exercised on machines that generated power for the craft.

  The Seattle reservation where they lived was a dense concentration of high-rise buildings between the snow-capped Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, and home to more than twenty-eight million people. Before the Green Revolution this had been a center of Corporate and military-industrial power, with the head offices and plants of many of the leading companies, whose shares were traded on the corrupt, risky stock exchanges that were manipulated by Corporate interests for their own excessive profits.

  To make way for the new reservation, Chairman Rahma had ordered the destruction of facilities that had once been owned by well-known corporations that used to be based in the region—all of which he considered decadent, because they were so large and exerted so much influence in the governmental corridors of power. He also flattened the sprawling suburbs, knocked down bridges, and contracted the footprint of Seattle and the surrounding cities, so that greenforming could take place around the new reservation. Today the Seattle reservation utilized a minimal amount of land for residential and business purposes—and it was a center for green industries manufacturing solar panels, electric-powered vehicles, wind and wave turbines, rooftop hydroponics systems, bicycles, ornithopters, and other ecology-oriented products.

  During the current break from his busy work schedule, Joss had been home for two days, sleeping more than usual and staying inside for the most part. It was nearly dinnertime now, and he stood at a control panel in the kitchen of his fourth-floor apartment, punching buttons to order two automated stir-fry meals containing spicy tofu and soy protein—one for himself and one for his always-punctual roommate, Andruw Twitty, who was due to arrive at any minute. Joss made his own meal even spicier, adding a three-star measure of red chili sauce.

  Here on the reservation he did not have the option of ordering meat dishes. Ordinarily those were only for the road, and for what the esteemed Chairman called the “favored few” who contributed the most to his greenocracy. Joss had never understood the morality or logic of who could or could not eat meat, and when. Conceivably, he would have thought that the vegan Chairman and his government would mandate that everyone give up eating the flesh of dead animals, but that was not the case. Maybe the inspirational leader was just being realistic. In any event, it was not something that Joss talked about much, for fear that he could lose his dining privileges, and possibly cause others on his Janus Machine crew to do so.

  He heard a soft whir as his automated kitchen processed ingredients to prepare the food, finally heating it with stored energy from solar panels and wind turbines far up on the roof of the ninety-story apartment building. It didn’t take long before two meals dropped onto a tray beneath a glowing orange light. Joss glanced a
t the watch embedded in the skin of his wrist, smiled at the pinpoint timing as he heard the front door open and click shut. Presently his roommate strode into the kitchen.

  A Greenpol eco-cop, Andruw was short and square-jawed, with a narrow blond mustache. In his mid-twenties, he removed his polished green helmet and hung it on a hook by the door, then removed his holstered handgun and set it on a bench. His face glistened with perspiration, and his uniform was uncharacteristically wrinkled and soiled. He had a strange gleam in his pale blue eyes.

  “Looks like you’ve had a tough day,” Joss said. He had been an eco-cop detective himself, before the transfer to a Janus Machine crew that Kupi had arranged for him.

  “You heard about the four escapees from the reservation?” Andruw asked.

  Joss nodded. Every news board had been carrying their descriptions. “Our meals are ready.” He placed the two trays on the small dining table, along with wrapped packages of napkins and serving utensils.

  Andruw pulled up a chair and sat down, his expression suddenly smug. “We got ’em good today. The perps were living in the woods, killing deer and birds, cooking meat on open fires. In clear violation of environmental laws.”

  “No doubt about that.” Joss brought two glasses of beer from a dispenser. He took a sip from his own as he sat down, savored the hoppy, slightly bitter flavor that he had specified.

  Andruw quaffed his own glassful, then said, “I recycled two of the bastards this afternoon, in the name of Chairman Rahma. They tried to get away, but I hit ’em between their shoulder blades with energy beams.” He grinned. “I’ve been practicing on the range, and I’m a pretty good shot now.”