The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (31 page)

 

33

We humans have a habit of celebrating the grotesque, the macabre, the most base and tasteless of all things. And yet, paradoxically, we claim to be the most advanced of all species.

—Glanno Artindale, personal observation (on the eve of his death)

CHAIRMAN RAHMA POPAL
had awoken with a feeling of uneasiness. It was just past dawn now, and he stood on the large balcony outside his bedroom, smoking a pipe of North African hash and gazing out on the colors of the sunrise as they opened up over the greenery of the game reserve and the snowcapped mountains beyond. The powerful marijuana infused his lungs and his consciousness, making him feel a little less anxious, but not enough.

Squinting into the light he saw something in the sky, an object that was drifting downward, dropping slowly toward the earth. He hurried to an antique spyglass on a tripod, and saw that the dark, squarish object was suspended from a barely discernible parachute, its fabric containing the mottled colors of the sky.

This should not be happening. He looked upward, for any sign of an aircraft that might have released its cargo, but saw nothing, only wispy clouds whose undersides were awash in color.

The parachute and its cargo set down in the distance, on a patch of grazing land favored by elk. Two were nearby, and took hardly any notice of the encroachment. Rahma saw his special police rushing to their small patrol aircraft; four of them took off and headed for the site.

He watched through the spyglass, which was quite powerful despite its vintage. Then, hearing voices on his intercom system, he went to a terminal screen just inside the door. There he saw his guards scanning the cargo, transmitting images to him. Something odd and square was inside. He sent a command for them to open it.

The men did so, and removed a strange object that looked as if it had white fur all over it. To his horror, he realized that it was a stout table made of loosely fitted bones, with furry white legs and hooves for feet.

“There's a short letter with it,” one of the guards said, holding a piece of paper up to the camera.

Rahma read it, felt a chill run down his spine, followed by a hot rush of anger on his face. “A little something for your office,” the note read. “Don't worry, this polar bear won't bite you.” It was signed by Premier Woo Hashimoto of Panasia.

A table made out of the remains of a polar bear? It was a grotesque affront against nature on so many levels, not just an attack on Rahma himself. How had this horror gotten past his national defense system? So many questions to be answered, but at the moment, his thoughts were filled with more anger than logic, and a longing to get even. It must be the same dead bear he'd received photographs of earlier, with its legs being hacked off.

“What shall we do with this?” the security man asked.

“Bury it,” Rahma said, trying to calm himself.

*   *   *

DOUG RIDELL HAD
seen long, dismal trains like this before, stopping in the Missoula Reservation, but he'd never expected to board one. Through bleary eyes he watched three powerful engines and a long line of tattered boxcars come to a stop in the station, the brakes squealing loudly. This train was older than most, and more run-down.

He squeezed the hand of Hana on one side of him, and little Willow on the other. Both of them were shivering and crying. Around them stood other families and individuals who were being sent away, all kept in a group by uniformed Greenpol officers in sparkling green uniforms, with shiny helmets and glistening jackboots. Some of the “deportees” looked stoic, others sad or afraid, and a few were obviously angry. Doug felt anger too, a rage that he could hardly control—and deep concern about what was going to happen to his family. But he knew it would do no good to display his emotions; he'd heard of the police killing people for less. He needed to stay alive, for the sake of his wife and daughter.

Maybe Jade would hear of this and get help to them. They had not been allowed to send her a message, or even to contact their friends. It had all happened so fast. Only hours ago, they had been whisked away from the lives they had known—he and Hana from their jobs, and Willow from her school—not allowed to take any possessions except the clothing they wore. They didn't even have jackets. No one in their apartment building would know what had happened to them, although as time passed they would figure it out.

The big question Doug had, and which he didn't want to voice to Hana, was whether they were being relocated to another reservation for humans, or if they would be turned over to the anarchists for recycling.

He looked at her, saw the fear in her tear-filled eyes, and the worry. She was wondering about this, too—and no one was giving them any information.

*   *   *

IN THE THREE
additional weeks that had passed since Artie first flew in the pouch of the glidewolf, the creature had grown to very large proportions, a marsupial the size of a large horse, with a wingspan of almost seven meters. The growth rate had been so rapid that the robotic technicians in the lab were monitoring it daily, using electronic scanners to determine dimensions and weight. Curiously, after a period of enhanced growth that lasted for weeks and weeks, it seemed to have stopped in the last two days. No additional growth at all during that period. It was as if the creature had been desperate to reach a certain size, thinking it didn't have much time to achieve its goal.

Artie was still in Berkeley with Director Ondex, but the hubot had projected an avatar of himself back to the Montana Valley Game Reserve, to continue his work there while he waited for instructions from Ondex about their travel arrangements. Standing in enhanced virtual reality at a bank of monitors in the Extinct Animals Laboratory, Artie wondered if his own educated guesses—the missing data that he'd added to the genetic mix during the laboratory creation of the glidewolf—had anything to do with the size of the creature. The
beast
, he corrected himself. Certainly it was much larger now than the skeletal remains of the extinct animal that had been found on Lord Howe Island, between Australia and New Zealand.

It was early evening, shortly after his shift of duty ended as an assistant to the Chairman. In reality, such shifts never ended, because the hubots and humans around Rahma were always at his beck and call—and besides that, hubots didn't need to sleep, so they tended to be called upon after hours more than the humans. It was about to be that way now, he realized, because his internal sensors—linked to monitoring stations in the building—reported to him that Chairman Rahma was on the slidewalk and about to enter the laboratory.

He heard the double doors opening behind him, and the familiar soft-soled cadence of Rahma's sandals as he approached.

“I always know where to find you,” the Chairman said. “Or, I should say, your avatar.”

“As it should be, Master,” Artie said, turning the avatar to face him.

“A few days ago, your glidewolf became agitated when a sycophantic eco-cop named Andruw Twitty tried to get to me without the proper appointment. After my guards refused entrance to Twitty, the wolf followed his car for more than seventy-five kilometers before turning back.”

“Hmmm,” Artie said. “Remember I told you that the glidewolf had an affection for you? Maybe she's being protective of you, sir, sensing something bad about Twitty, a danger from him. Animals often sense things that humans do not.”

“She's being protective of me? How maternal. Maybe she thinks I'm her cub, then.”

“Don't be too quick to scoff at what she might sense. This is largely an unknown creature, with unknown characteristics.”

“Well, her sensory abilities can't be that great, because her entire species went extinct.”

“On an island long ago. But this is a different place, a different time. Maybe there's a reason why she's made her appearance here and now.”

“I came down here to discuss a different matter with you.” He told Artie about the brutal murder and butchery of the polar bear by Premier Hashimoto, then asked, “I assume that you could create new polar bears in the lab, if they go extinct?”

The hubot's avatar nodded. “Presumably, though we might need a second laboratory to the north, where it is colder than here. Although each species presents different challenges, at least in this case the genetic material would be quite fresh. Just give me the word, sir, and it will happen.”

“Not yet.”

As they spoke, Artie saw the marsupial wolf glide down from a tree in the habitat, landing gently on the ground and tucking its wings. It stared directly at the Chairman through the glass barrier.

“Why is she staring at me?”

“I don't detect any hostility; quite the opposite. Thankfully, she's not focused on me, which suggests that I'm no threat to you.”

“What an odd thing to say. Of course you're no threat to me. You're the revenant of Glanno Artindale, remember? My most loyal and true friend.”

“Look at the size of her pouch,” the hubot said. “It looks big enough to carry you, me, and a couple of other passengers. You wanna give it a try? I'd have to ride with you by EVR, of course.”

“Maybe later. I'm pretty busy right now.”

“All right.”

The Chairman left quickly, saying he had to attend a meeting about the strange Dark Energy powers of Joss Stuart, the mutant eco-tech who was being called “Greenman.”

*   *   *

RAHMA POPAL KNEW
that
The Green Times
was not really a free press. Rather, it was a mouthpiece for his administration, a tool of propaganda used to influence the people across the tightly controlled, heavily censored GSA holo-net, to convince them of the environmental ideals and belief system of the dual-continent American government. In addition, the periodical ran human- and animal-interest features.

Only yesterday, the publisher of the news service and his reporters had gone to see Joss Stuart for a feature story, and had interviewed non-SciO citizens who came into contact with him, including the informant Andruw Twitty, who had remained inside a vehicle at the J-Mac jobsite, concealing himself behind tinted windows while the publisher interviewed Stuart.

Now at the Montana Valley Game Reserve, the Chairman was ready to hear firsthand what the publisher had learned about Stuart when they met, and what witnesses had said.…

“Twitty?” Rahma said, scowling after he heard the information. He sat with his visitor inside his own office, in a sitting area that looked out on the game reserve. “I know that worm. Everything he says must be taken with a grain of salt. He thinks too much of himself and advancing his career.”

“That doesn't mean his information is wrong,” Lucero Wiggins said. “In fact, we have corroboration from other sources of Stuart's strange powers and dangerous behavior.”

The Chairman glowered, but nodded.

“Because of the unusual nature of Joss Stuart's powers,” Wiggins said, “and the possible military implications, I thought I should come to you with this story before publishing anything.”

Rahma leaned across his desk. “Military implications? You mean his Dark Energy power? But it has only limited range, like a Splitter handgun, from what I hear.”

“Think about the defensive net he is able to cast around himself, sir. It deflects people who try to get close to him, but what if it can also deflect bullets—and what if it could be enlarged to immense proportions, encompassing our entire nation? And sir, what if the conditions of the ReFac explosion could be replicated under laboratory conditions, creating more people like Stuart? These are matters we would like to include in a story about Mr. Stuart. Subject to your permission, of course.”

“You were right to come to me,” Rahma said. “Don't publish anything yet. This will require further thought and discussion. In the meantime, bring me every piece of information you develop on him.”

Wiggins rose to his feet. “Yes, Your Eminence. I will do that with pleasure, and I shall await your further instructions.”

After the publisher left, Rahma considered the bizarre situation. Gazing out on the preserve, he saw a large grizzly sniffing around the grassy central area, looking for scraps of food. It wasn't the first time a bear had been sighted near the buildings. He always marveled at the magnificent animals, but kept his distance from them.

Refocusing, Rahma wondered what sort of genetic and cellular mutations the ReFac explosion had triggered in the body of Joss Stuart. What if an entire race of Stuarts could be produced, capable of splitting, greenforming, and casting defensive nets? How would they be bred and utilized? The thoughts startled and intrigued him: an entirely new race of human beings!

When considered with the genetic researches that his hubot, Artie, was performing, it boggled the Chairman's mind. Instead of a small number of hubots and robots involved in creating and caring for resurrected extinct animals and endangered species, there might be a much, much larger program involving Stuart's genetics, perhaps an entire new government department. Of critical interest to him, the mutant's abilities had military possibilities.

Rahma had often wished that humankind could be improved. But would a race of Stuarts make things better, or worse? Humans with splitting and greenforming powers! He found the possibility fascinating, but troubling. Humans already had both destructive and creative inclinations, and a race of people like Stuart could expand both extremes, potentially widening the gap between them. All of the humans in the new race would be armed and dangerous.

What would that mean for the Earth, and which side of human nature would ultimately prevail? Knowing what he did about people and their foolish, selfish tendencies, he assumed the worst.

But he also wondered if the opposing, Janus-like powers could be segregated, if an entire race of greenformers could be created without the conflicting, destructive side. Genetic engineering could accomplish exactly that. For lingering moments, Rahma marveled at the thought of people with incredible creative powers, all instilled with a deep moral sense about the welfare of planet Earth. Finally, an entire race of people that would not disappoint him!