The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (45 page)

“We don't need to run from the robots anymore,” Mord Pelley said, in the midst of the celebratory atmosphere. “Not if Joss can bring everyone back to life.”

“But what if
he
dies?” old Nanette asked. “Joss, how would you bring yourself back to life?”

Joss didn't have an answer for that. What were the limits of his abilities? There had to be limits of some kind, and he didn't think he was immortal, didn't feel like he was. But each time he entered one of the trees and reemerged, he felt more and more invigorated, and stronger.

What was he becoming? Joss didn't know, but he felt robust, and even more so with Evana standing beside him, still holding the wildflowers. She gripped his hand tightly.

Finally, she was gripping back.

 

49

We are life rafts for one another in a dangerous, unpredictable universe.

—Joss Stuart, one of his post-mutation thoughts

THE NONHUMAN DEFENSE
System went offline quite suddenly, leaving Artie without an important contact to the outside world. His AI mind remained alert, searching for options. He could still attempt satellite calls to other government agencies, but he didn't know what good it would do. Perhaps he was better off not knowing any more details.

The hubot considered shutting off his sensory programs, so that he would not feel any simulated pain when the end came. But a humanlike emotion surfaced, reminding him that Glanno Artindale had been a man of courage and a hero of the revolution, so he changed his mind.

Turning toward the increasing noise behind him, Artie thought the bunker was being split apart by the ferocious black storm, arriving earlier than expected. Instead, he was surprised to see that the powerful glidewolf was making all the commotion. Finally breaking through, she burst into the room, ripping the door off the hinges and slamming it into a wall. Gilda's pale yellow eyes were wild, her jaws open and razor-sharp teeth glistening.

Standing on her haunches, the creature used her forepaws to hold the sides of Rahma's body between them, and she slid him into her pouch. Then, for a long moment, she gazed at Artie, her eyes questing, as if looking for something. Suddenly she lunged at him, but he didn't move. She stopped just short of the hubot and raised high on her haunches, towering over him.

He still didn't move.

The wolf then gripped him firmly with her forepaws and tucked him inside her pouch too, beside the body of the dead man. Artie felt the pouch tighten snugly around his body from the shoulders down, keeping his head out so that he could see.

Rahma's doctor and lover, Valerie Tatanka, stood nearby, watching silently, somberly. She held a copy of
The Little Green Book
. The glidewolf walked up to her and sniffed. Then, seemingly satisfied, the animal widened the pouch and slid Dr. Tatanka into it as well (without any protest from her), making everything snug again, with Rahma's body between the doctor and Artie.

Afterward the animal just sat there, not doing much of anything. Looking up from the pouch, Artie saw the long snout of the creature sniffing vigorously, as if smelling some sort of a scent. The animal looked this way and that with its feral eyes. Artie felt tenseness in the body, and a low, agitated pulse throbbing through the skin. He exchanged uneasy glances with Dr. Tatanka.

Artie listened carefully, aided by his electronic linkage to the bunker's security and surveillance system, and he detected no unusual noises in the structure or the outside tunnels. Everything seemed to have paused, the proverbial calm before the storm. Outside, he knew the sky would darken at any moment, and the mega-blast would scour the landscape. The NDS was still offline, but they were based to the west of him in Berkeley, so they might not have been hit yet.

He felt certain that the stygian storm would break through the heavy techplex roof over the extinct animal habitats, but this bunker control room had layers of protection that just might keep it safe.

The hubot didn't think he would have to wait long to find out.

*   *   *

SEVEN HUNDRED KILOMETERS
to the west.…

Joss looked up at the cloudless blue sky beyond the trees, but had an odd sensation of uneasiness, a powerful, ineffable feeling that something was very,
very
wrong.

On impulse, he summoned the people of the tribe to gather around him. When they were all assembled he wove black protective threads around every one of them, and found that he could extend the force field even farther than before, encompassing an entire section of forest. Now he left the shield shimmering in place, and working quickly, he found that he could merge each person into a different tree and leave them inside—utilizing cedars, firs, alders, cottonwoods, and elms, but avoiding the oak for the time being. In each case, he entered the tree with them, then slipped back out alone, leaving them inside, with their faces and breathing bodies showing in hazy, pulsing definition on the trunks—like an eerie, living form of bas relief.

Some were afraid, but Joss assured them that he was taking a necessary action. “I can't explain why, or how I know this, but something terrible is about to happen, and this is what we all need to do.” At the very end of the process, he slipped Evana into the oak tree, then went back outside himself. From there, he stood sentry, gazing around at the sentient trees that were now his tribe, and up at the cerulean blue sky, visible through the mesh of the force field. Everything was eerily calm, with not even a breath of wind blowing.

*   *   *

AFTER RECOVERING FROM
the deadly Michoacán earthquake, General Bane had regrouped his forces, to the point where he was ready to launch his attack against the GSA, in coordination with his Eurikan allies, who were scheduled to begin moving military assets toward the GSA in a matter of hours—to solidify Bane's victory. He had planned for every eventuality that he, his war-room advisers, and his allies could think of. But even the best of plans faced unknowns, things that could not possibly be taken into account.

His subterranean base was five hundred meters beneath the frozen tundra of the North Canadian Territory, in an out-of-the-way region. Earlier in the day he had performed last-minute military exercises underground, by digging and restoring vanishing tunnels over a large area, like an army of high-tech moles. During the maneuvers, he'd surfaced twice with the electronically veiled assault vehicles to carry out simulated attacks against mock-GSA facilities—destroying rock formations that had stood for millions of years.

It all went satisfactorily, and he'd gone back underground afterward, closing up both tunnels behind him. Or so he thought. Unknown to him, a technical problem had caused one of the tunnel doors to remain ajar—just a little, and no one was monitoring the security system, so he was not made aware of the problem. The lapse could not have come at a worse possible time for this man who'd been having so much trouble getting his attack force online.…

Shortly before the military exercises, he had been in his underground office monitoring strange radio reports of a monstrous weather system crossing the Atlantic Ocean at a very high velocity. One newscast he'd been listening to had broken off when the reporter was in midsentence. He'd tried to find another satellite station, but unknown to him, he was running out of time.…

Now he was back at the radio, searching for more information on the weather, but all he got was static—no news reports of any kind. Perplexed, Bane switched off the radio and leaned back in his chair to think. Then he heard something, a dull roar at first that became louder and louder, and he felt a vibration in the floor and walls that knocked him off his chair. The radio, his personal weapons, and other objects in the office tumbled on top of him or slid toward him, and he tried to protect himself by crawling under the desk. But it was moving, too.

When the Splitter blast came, it chewed up dirt and rocks around the partially open tunnel entrance and ripped the heavy door off completely, sucking it into a whirlwind that melted it into its basic elements. Within seconds, the storm surged down into the tunnel and cut through the voleer machines in the subterranean base, disintegrating and transforming them into primal goo, then surging full force into the other tunnel door, blasting that one away, too.

Bane's office, though, was accessed via a side tunnel, and he had closed a series of thick alloy doors behind him to get there. Miraculously, those doors held, and he survived. But when he emerged and saw the destruction, he wished he'd been killed in the blast.

*   *   *

SOUTH OF BANE'S
base, the powerful Splitter blast approached the Rocky Mountain Territory.…

In the Missoula Reservation, Jade Ridell left a medical clinic, deep in thought as she walked in the direction of her apartment building. The doctor had confirmed a suspicion she'd been having that she was pregnant, and he'd asked her if she wanted to report to a family guidance center to have the baby aborted. No, she'd told him, her voice filled with emotion. It was Chairman Rahma's baby, and she intended to keep it. At least she would have that part of the man she cared about so much.

She rounded a corner, felt a brisk wind, and tightened the collar of her coat. Her apartment building was in view now, a glass-walled tower. Since leaving the game reserve she'd worked in a gentleman's club, wearing skimpy outfits and waiting on tables. A lot of men showed interest in her, but she didn't give them any encouragement. She had not recovered from the severe shock of being sent away by the Chairman, and of losing her entire family. There had been no word from her parents, and she was terribly worried, especially missing her little sister, Willow. The two of them used to sit and talk for hours, sharing special times. Now Jade didn't know if she would ever see her again, or their parents.

Hearing a roar, more than the normal street noise, she looked around, but saw nothing. The sound increased, and the sky darkened ominously.…

*   *   *

FOR SEVERAL SECONDS
Artie heard the blast chewing through techplex, alloy, and everything else, getting louder and louder. Presently the noise level dropped off completely, and again it was quiet, but for only a few minutes before he heard another roar, like that of a great wind. The roar increased and then passed quickly, leaving stillness behind.

Now the glidewolf climbed over debris and made it out into the corridor, bringing her passengers along. Walls were partially caved in, and the slidewalk lay in ruins, but the animal climbed nimbly over more debris piles and found enough airspace to soar out toward the extinct animal habitats.

There were no longer double doors separating this area from the corridor, and where numerous resurrected animal species had once lived, only a deep, storm-scoured hole remained in the dirt, with a faint green cast to the surface where it had been reseeded. To Artie's simulated senses, the air smelled musty, and humid.

Moving her wings only slightly and perhaps catching a draft of air that Artie did not notice, the animal soared up and out of the hole. The sky was a peculiar shade of gray-blue, darker to the west where Artie assumed that splitting and greenforming blasts were continuing their course across the American continents. Though it should still be daylight now, he saw no sign of the sun and the illumination was low, as if the valley didn't know whether it was day or night.

The glidewolf circled over the strange green-seeded landscape, which had been scoured of all plants, along with the administration, medical, and other yurts, the greenhouses and aviaries, the shrine, the soarplane field, and all roads leading in and out of the game reserve. Artie thought a few animals might have survived; animals sensed things, and some would have attempted to find cover wherever they could before the cataclysm—inside caves or burrows, or in low, sheltered spots of terrain. He could only hope. Everywhere he looked the ground was barren and faintly green, and the seeds would germinate quickly, so that in a matter of weeks the entire area would look much as it might have millions and millions of years ago. He thought of birds, and worried about them. Where could they have hidden? He saw none flying, and nothing moving on the ground, either.

As the glidewolf flew across the valley, Artie looked down where the ruins of a small, remote town had once been, having been emptied by the Green Revolution but not yet visited by a Janus Machine crew. Now none of that was necessary, because the site was gelatinous, completely smoothed over. Soon it would all be covered with vegetation, as if man had never made any mark there.

Standing inside the pouch of the glidewolf with her head out, Valerie Tatanka stared ahead, her black hair blowing in the cool air. She had tucked Rahma's body down into the pouch, forming a lump that was visible now, between her and the hubot. She still had a copy of the Chairman's great book with her; Artie had seen it moments ago.

On his internal sensors, he noted that the marsupial wolf was setting course in a westerly direction, following the track of the twin storms, somehow staying aloft on currents of wind, without the necessity of climbing trees and relaunching herself. There were no trees on the blasted landscape below—only a sea of green seeds. He didn't know where the wolf was going, or how long it would take to get there. Artie's internal programs told him nothing; he found himself unable to calculate any probabilities.

Clinging to the edge of the pouch under the soaring creature, the hubot wished he could communicate better with her, that he could understand her better. Previously their connection had been on a fundamental level, as lab manager to lab animal, with him creating her in the first place, and then providing her with the basic necessities for her survival.

But all of that was in the past, and she seemed to have evolved in front of his eyes, changing in incomprehensible ways. Without a doubt, the creature was extremely intelligent, possessing mental and sensory skills that he could hardly imagine.