The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (36 page)

For anyone who
could
prove they were there on official government duty, Joss took them aside and provided them with any information they needed, usually about splitting and greenforming conditions that the crew was encountering at various sites. For any other questions that happened to arise about his physical transformations and powers, Joss deferred to the bi-weekly sessions he had decided to grant to Dr. Mora and his SciO research team, and to whatever they wanted to report. In a laboratory environment they had been testing his ability to split matter, to generate greenforming seeds at will, and to shield himself with a protective net of black light.

Today there were two J-Mac jobs, and they'd already completed the first, an assignment to repair the faulty work of another crew that had failed to properly clean up and seed the site of a Corporate agribusiness farm that had been using toxic chemicals on its crops.

Now Joss's crew was on its way to a site that had been overlooked previously, a hidden ravine where old motor vehicles and other junk had been dumped and were rusting away. For a change, Joss and Kupi rode in the forward cab with the tall driver, Bim Hendrix, as the truck bumped across the desert. In the side mirrors Joss saw clouds of dust billowing behind them.

That morning he had heard about Andruw Twitty; reportedly he had died of a heart attack at the Chairman's game reserve, but that sounded suspicious, because Andruw had been young and healthy, having passed stringent police physicals that were required every year to remain on the force. As for the reason that Twitty was at the game reserve, Joss agreed with Kupi's assessment that he had probably gone there to say bad things about the two of them, lies and distortions. Even so, Joss tried to stop thinking ill of the dead man, preferring to remember good things about him.

In the back of his awareness, Joss heard Bim Hendrix telling stories, and Kupi laughing. The driver was a wellspring of humorous anecdotes.

“Okay, that's enough from me,” Hendrix finally said. He'd been talking for the better part of an hour. “Now let's hear someone else's best funny stuff. Hey, Joss, how about you?”

“Anything we had to say would pale in comparison with your stories,” Joss said. “Right, Kupi?” He nudged her in the side.

“Oh no,” she said, “I'm just full of anarchist jokes. You wanna hear some? Did you hear the one about the Black Shirt, the Corporate president, and the eco-criminal, all deciding at the last minute that they wanted to get into heaven, no matter all the bad things they'd done in their lifetimes?”

Hendrix groaned, said he had heard the long and convoluted story before, a variation on what used to be called “shaggy dog stories” in the pre-revolution days. “Not again,” he said. “Please, not again.”

The three of them chuckled and then fell silent. Intermittently, Joss glanced over at the navigation holo that danced in the air beside the driver. Leaning to his left, Joss studied it and then saw the ravine ahead of the rig, just coming into view.

“Almost there,” Joss said.

The driver slowed the long truck and steered it onto a wide expanse of rock. Near the edge of the ravine, he stopped and got out, looking for the best place to set up. This was one of his other duties.

“Remember I said we were like Shiva, the Hindu god, when we operate the Janus Machine?” Kupi said.

“Uh-huh.” Joss watched Hendrix as he walked along the rim of the ravine. From the truck, Joss saw dented, rusted vehicles and appliances heaped down there.

“I've been thinking about it,” Kupi said. “With your raw ability to split and greenform, that gives you both Shiva powers, too—destroying and creating.”

“I guess that's right. But my abilities are small-scale. I'm no god.”

“Do gods even exist?” she asked.

He smiled. “Not for anarchists.”

“Or Greenies,” she said, “unless it looks like a tree.”

 

40

I will tell you a little secret, my friends. Some of my fellows on the revolutionary council called me “Father Earth.” They said Mother Nature was tired and overworked, and she needed help.

—Chairman Rahma Popal, his first Berkeley speech, delivered at Sather Gate on the old campus

LSD, MARIJUANA, METHAMPHETAMINES,
cocaine, heroine, and more—in the form of food, injections, or pills. All in colorful packages that were arrayed neatly on a tray held by a pretty female servant, who knelt beside the Chairman where he sat cross-legged on the deck. The girl had short, curly black hair, and her skin was golden brown. He did not know her name.

It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and Rahma rode in the clearplex viewing compartment of a solar soarplane as it flew silently over the Montana Valley Game Reserve. Director Arch Ondex and two uniformed AOE officers sat with him in a small circle, also cross-legged, with animals and plants of the game reserve visible through the clear floor beneath them. The others were General Rolph Preda, the supreme air and land commander for the GSA, and Admiral Karlos Hansen, in charge of naval operations. Each of them held a copy of
The Little Green Book
on his lap, having read passages from it aloud during their meeting, looking for inspiration to face their current leadership challenges. Even Rahma, who had written the slender volume packed with ideas, liked to refresh himself by thumbing through it from time to time. He called it “going back to the basics.”

“That's enough for now,” Rahma said, closing his own copy. Then, while the others shut their volumes, he intoned one of the quotations, “‘In Green We Trust.'”

“‘One Nation Under Green,'” the others said, in unison. It was the response specified in the book, following any passage read aloud by the Master himself.

Not far behind them flew the large glidewolf, Gilda, whose protective attitude toward Rahma had become accepted by the Chairman as an everyday occurrence. According to Artie, the animal was keeping its distance from him and from everyone else, but not from Rahma, whom she monitored constantly, as if they were of the same family. She seemed to have only one goal in life, day after day—his protection. Whenever Gilda was missing from her eucalyptus forest habitat, she was usually found on the rooftop (or clinging to an exterior wall) of whichever building the Chairman happened to be in. The creature tried to conceal herself and remain in shadows, and despite her size she was pretty good at this.

The Chairman looked over the offerings on the tray held by the servant, selected a Mary Jane brownie and peeled the biodegradable cello wrapping off partway, so that he could nibble on the delicacy. This was one of the gourmet snacks kept in the well-stocked cupboards of the game reserve's communal kitchen.

He'd been feeling a little worn-out today, hoped he wasn't coming down with something. A nagging tickle in the back of his throat suggested otherwise.

Earlier, he had been thinking about Jade Ridell, missing her and feeling bad about sending her away. For a long time he had stared at one of the printed images he took of Jade in the aviary, with the little exotic bird perched in her hair and the comical expression on her face. It had been one of many good times that he and the young woman had shared. His eyes had misted over.

He knew where Jade was working in the Missoula Reservation now, waiting tables in a gentleman's club. He'd had nothing to do with her getting the job; he'd only checked on her afterward, and he would again, from time to time. Perhaps, after the passage of a few months, he would recommend that she be given a more important job, one that took advantage of her intelligence and not just her stunning beauty. But he could never be with the attractive young woman again, could never even see her again. Her parents had acted disgracefully, and in the Green States of America nothing was worse than an eco-crime.

Rahma tried to put Jade out of his mind. In his position, he could not afford to be sentimental. He'd felt close to women before, and there was always an ending point for each relationship, and a beginning point for another—with a great deal of overlapping because of the number of females involved. With a deep sigh, he told himself that he needed to get over Jade, but sometimes that did not seem possible.…

Through the clear floor of the soarplane, Rahma saw a simple monument in the grassland below, where the mutilated body of the polar bear had been buried. Hashimoto had turned a rare, treasured animal into a table! It was a … he hesitated to use a non-secular word, but it was a sacrilege. Yes, a sacrilege, indeed. An affront against the holiness of nature. He loathed that man, but at least Rahma had the satisfaction of knowing that the Premier's pet bridge had been destroyed; Rahma had gotten the good news from Artie just before boarding the soarplane, bolstered by the news that some of the Panasian people were daring to say the GSA had done a good thing, and that the boondoggle bridge should never be rebuilt.

Despite the deep-seated hatred that ran between the two leaders, Rahma was proud that he had taken steps to avoid nuclear war while doing everything possible to bolster GSA defenses, thus thwarting whatever his archenemy might have in mind, be it small or large. He didn't want innocent people to die in a nuclear exchange. A war on that scale would surely be the biggest environmental disaster in history—a legacy that he, of all people, did not want. For the sake of the planet and its living organisms, he needed to do whatever he could to avert all-out warfare, short of inviting Hashimoto to share a water pipe. He shuddered at the thought.

Chewing slowly and letting the savory brownie melt in his mouth, Rahma watched the attractive servant move to the other men, all of whom selected doses of harder drugs. The Chairman didn't mind that they did this on duty, as long as no one overdid it. After they made their selections of minimal doses, he waved the serving girl away. She went into the rear compartment, closed the door behind her.

Beneath the soarplane the Chairman saw a magnificent Arabian stallion racing across the grassland beneath them, ahead of half a dozen other horses, of varying breeds and colors. The graceful manner in which they galloped across the land, their manes and tails flowing, always gave him a rush of pleasure, and today the experience was enhanced by the brownie, which was particularly good. He felt its soothing drug taking hold of his consciousness, brightening the colors he saw and making him more lucid. The deciduous trees of the groves were in full color, the glorious gold and brown hues of fall.

For more than two hours the men had been floating on the air currents, discussing military matters over lunch and transmitting coded orders to subordinates. A week ago, Director Ondex had revealed the breakthrough in the vanishing tunnel research program, and the SciOs had performed successful tests since then. Now they were hurrying to set up a full-scale manufacturing program to build large tunnel machines that would be capable of making surprise attacks against the enemy.

Rahma and the military officers wanted more information, but in his usual fashion Ondex was refusing to provide it. Even so, they had come to an understanding. The Army of the Environment would focus on building up conventional and nuclear forces and on beefing up defenses even more. As to where and when the foe might strike next, no one had a clue. They knew only that they had to prepare themselves defensively and offensively, as quickly as possible. On that much, they both agreed.

The solar soarplane, operated by one of the Chairman's hubot pilots, flew low but not too low, making hardly any noise in its smooth passage over the animals. The craft was perhaps fifty meters above the ground now, and its passengers had just finished their meal. The drugs were for dessert.

Across the circle of people on the floor, Rahma saw the dark eyes of Admiral Hansen sharpen from the small packet of cocaine he had just snorted. His features were ruddy and weathered from years spent on the sea, with deep creases around his mouth and eyes. “People are saying that Stuart is an eco-messiah,” he said, “that he's appeared on Earth at this time for a reason, to fulfill a fateful purpose. What do you think, Mr. Chairman?”

“If he is a green messiah, it doesn't really matter what I say, does it?” Rahma coughed, took a sip of water to clear his throat. He'd been feeling run-down in the last few days.

“But is he that, or is he a genetic accident from the ReFac explosion?” Ondex said. “Fate or accident?”

“Accident,” General Preda said. A tall officer with a flair for style, he wore a yellow silk scarf around his neck, and an antique medallion commemorating the 1968 riots at the Chicago Democratic Party convention.

“My scientists have been conducting additional tests on him,” Ondex said, “and his powers—while interesting—seem to be rather limited. For example, he's only been able to split small objects, and his greenforming capacity is not great. The latter power was latent until recently, and we had thought he would get more proficient at it with time, but he seems to have reached a plateau. Dr. Mora thinks that Stuart doesn't want greater powers and has subdued them—either intentionally or subconsciously. We've also taken cellular samples for laboratory use, attempting to clone Stuart, but thus far there has been no success. Whenever the technicians attempt to manipulate the disembodied cells in any way, they wither and die.”

“A defense mechanism?” Rahma wondered.

“Perhaps. In any event, unless we can solve that, we aren't going to be able to create more of him by any process. You know the history of problems trying to clone human beings, and in his case he's only part human, making it even more complex. But even if we could replicate him in some manner, how much power would the copies have, and of what use would they be to us? We can generate more power with machines than he possesses.”

“Oh well, at least we checked it out,” Admiral Hansen said.

“Maybe Stuart is a sign, though,” Rahma suggested, “a sign from the spirit of the planet that only this type of human will enable us to reach the Golden Age I seek; only this kind can live in harmony with the environment.”