The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (6 page)

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 salvaged 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.

Beneath his feet there were underground GSA offices and data banks, laboratories, genetic libraries, and artificial habitats where other endangered animals were bred in captivity, for eventual release into the wild. The snow leopard was not sent down there, however, because it needed to roam in cold climes and develop its territory, or it would have a markedly higher likelihood of dying. In the subterranean labs, sick or injured animals were also treated, and viruses were carefully segregated to prevent them from spreading.

There were other animals kept underground as well, a small menagerie of previously extinct creatures that had been brought back to life—strange animals from long ago, kept inside habitat enclosures that were under the direction of Artie. There were dodo birds down there, as well as great auks, various other birds, thylacines, wolves, foxes, and rodents, all resurrected through a process of computerized genetic reconstruction that Glanno Artindale developed, and which Artie now understood better than anyone. One day Rahma and Artie hoped to release the creatures into the wild, but first a great deal of research and experimentation was needed, in order to make certain they could survive on their own, and to avoid setting off chain reactions of detrimental ecological consequences.

It deeply saddened Rahma Popal that more than 99 percent of the animal species that had ever lived on the Earth were now extinct, and a quarter of the living species were endangered. Some of the die-offs had occurred as a result of natural disasters, but too often the disasters were unnatural and man-made—owing to industrialization, sprawling human settlements, and clear-cutting of trees that destroyed wildlife habitats, along with millennia of endless, terrible wars. The ecological blights caused by man and his greedy, selfish ways seemed endless. Most human beings had not been living in harmony with their environment since the Age of Agriculture ended long ago, when man embarked hell-bent on a course of wreaking havoc on the Earth for the sake of his own selfish creature comforts.

As just two examples, the dodo bird and the thylacine had been decimated by humans who hunted them: the dodos for food on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and the thylacines on Tasmania because they were preying on ranchers' sheep. In his heart, Rahma liked Glanno Artindale's “Resurrection Plan,” but he worried over how practical it really was. So much had changed since the legendary days when the exotic, romanticized creatures thrived on the planet.…

Just behind the Chairman was his residential yurt, round and made of renewed-growth cedar, with a single, high-ceilinged room and a retractable roof that enabled him to lie on his cot and gaze up at the stars on clear nights. Out in the vastness of space—so far away that he could hardly imagine the distances involved—there had to be pristine regions untrammeled by mankind, worlds and star systems where ecosystems had not been destroyed. He couldn't imagine any place worse than Earth, and even with all the restoration work he had ordered on the northern and southern American continents, a great deal remained to be done before the planet was healed.

The regions that were now under Rahma's green government, with their varying ecosystems, were like wounded animals that needed to be brought back to health, and he considered himself a steward of nature, the chief steward of nature. Unlike the Panasians and other nations that ignored the environment, and even bragged about doing so.

He remembered the old pre-revolution days when environmental activists worked with the regulatory departments of towns, cities, and states to obtain wetland designations, conservation agreements, fish habitats, parks, bicycle lanes, and the like. On numerous occasions they had also attempted ambitious national improvements as well, such as clean air and water regulations, laws for the restoration of the ozone layer, for the combating of global warming, and for the preservation of forests, as well as endangered species designations. There were even international efforts to encourage the cooperation of industrialized nations with one another.

But corporations and other entrenched interests pushed back extremely hard on the bigger issues, employing legions of lobbyists and lawyers to make clever but disingenuous arguments that got the laws watered down, enabling the tycoons to keep generating huge incomes for themselves. The whole process of trying to make meaningful changes was so slow and frustrating that Rahma decided to do something much larger than anyone had imagined before. He and his comrades elevated the epic struggle to protect the planet, speeding up the process by carrying their critical messages into the streets. They did so with great determination. And powerful weapons.

Now the Chairman realized he had come a long way, and deserved to be proud of his accomplishments. But he couldn't rest on his laurels, and didn't want his followers to do that, either—because complacency left the openings that the enemies of environmentalism looked for, the openings they would plunge through if given the opportunity.

 

7

There are certain controls necessary to maintain our green economy and its allied political underpinnings, to keep the Green States of America from being undermined. Among the most important: absolute sovereignty over the holo-net communication system, restricting it to our nation and monitoring every user. This electronic surveillance and control program was initiated by pro-green hackers who once specialized in eavesdropping on Corporate and U.S. government interests, and were instrumental in disrupting their use of the Internet during the revolution. After the formation of the GSA, the hackers used their talents to protect the radical new government. Thus, in a supreme historical irony, they focused on accomplishing the exact opposite of what they did before. They became part of the new establishment.

—Advisory Committee to the Chairman, among its key findings

SETTING ASIDE HIS
worries for the moment, Rahma Popal joined one of the circles of dancers for a few spins to a modern version of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” He held hands with a buxom redhead on one side and a tall, long-haired man on the other. The woman, in her early twenties, had pretty, dark green eyes that sparkled mischievously. Her hair was waist-length and straight, except for one braided section.

She smiled at him and squeezed his hand hard, holding on momentarily when he decided to pull away and leave the circle. In another group of dancers, he saw Dori Longet watching him again.

“Your Eminence,” the redhead said, with a smile, when she finally let go. “I'm Jade Ridell. You'd like to spend time with me this evening?” He recognized the code words; they were not difficult to interpret.

“Of course.” So many girls called themselves Jade, Olivia, Emeralda, Ivy, Fern, or some other variation of (or suggestion of) green, sometimes forsaking their birth names. This pleased him very much, but their compliance also amused him. When it came to women who he liked to spend extended periods of time with, he preferred the ones who were able to think more for themselves. Dori was like that, and so was Valerie Tatanka (a Native American doctor who ran the medical clinic on the game reserve), but both of them had their share of irksome traits. As he left Jade, he saw Dori walking toward her purposefully.

The Chairman smiled at Jade, then watched as his hubot assistant, Artie, crossed the grass to the administration building, a much larger yurt with seven floors and upper-level patios for viewing antelope, bison, moose, white-tailed deer, grizzlies, wapiti, and other wildlife.

But Artie was not going upstairs. He had other matters to attend to in the underground levels, matters in the Extinct Animals Laboratory that the Chairman considered of doubtful utility. And yet it was something his long-lost friend Glanno Artindale had wanted, so out of respect for the dead man's wishes, Rahma had allowed the program to continue.

It certainly was altruistic, tending to dodo birds and other resurrected, formerly extinct species, but of what use were such animals in modern habitats, and what potential harm could “the newcomers” inflict as invasive species? It all seemed—well, he hated to use the phrase—but it all seemed as if the program should be as dead as the proverbial dodo bird.

*   *   *

SOUTH OF THE
game reserve, in the Missoula Reservation for Humans, a man stood in line in a large room, waiting to speak with a clerk. This was the JAO, the Job Assignment Office of the government, and he was reporting as ordered for reassignment. The walls were adorned with murals of trees, mountains, and rivers, except for one wall that featured a towering artist's rendition of Chairman Rahma Popal, surrounded by martyrs of the revolution—those who had given their lives so valiantly in the formation of the green nation. It was warm in the room, with the faint odors of juana smoke and body odors in the air. Doug Ridell hardly noticed such smells at all, since they were so commonplace.

With all of the automation available to the GSA, he didn't understand why his job reassignment couldn't be handled in some more efficient manner, so that he didn't have to appear in person. It seemed like a waste of time and energy. Still, he would say nothing of this, for fear of being considered a social nonconformist, which could result in having him put under observation by the authorities—or worse.