11

It was so easy to discover bad things about large corporations, and so difficult to find anything good. As just one example of their transgressions, the major corporations provided only a tiny percentage of the employment in the United States, but were plundering a much higher percentage of human and planetary resources. The bottom line was, they contributed the minimum and took the maximum.

—Chairman Rahma Popal, Commentaries

CHAIRMAN RAHMA STOOD at the balcony railing outside his third-floor office, feeling the warmth of afternoon sunlight on his gray-bearded face. The greensward stretched into the distance, with its wetlands and grazing pastures for buffalo, elk, and other animals—a pastoral view that was edged by evergreen forests extending from the valley up to the mountains. Several hundred meters to the left, he saw the net- and fabric-covered aviaries and the adjacent clearplex-and-alloy greenhouses, a network of connected structures that were filled with endangered species of birds and plants.

In the other direction stood the Shrine of Martyrs, a black marble mausoleum where ten of Rahma’s fallen comrades from the revolution were entombed. Their electronic images adorned the interior walls, and there were reliquaries for each hero containing some of their personal things—a piece of uniform fabric, a ring, a watch, a pair of eyeglasses, a little book of haiku, a lock of hair, and the like. Rahma used the shrine as a private sanctuary, where he could visit with his dead comrades and honor them. There were hundreds of facsimiles of the shrine around the GSA (all built to scale), for the use of the public.

He had just finished a sparse vegan lunch and midday tryst with Jade Ridell, a young redhead he had invited to become one of the women living in his personal compound. She was pretty and had a cheerful personality, as well as considerable intelligence, though he didn’t think she could ever be a threat to his favorite for the past two years, Dori Longet, or to Valerie Tatanka, the doctor at the clinic who was also his lover.

At his desk inside, he’d just read several reports, one on the Quebec attack that took place two days ago. Half a dozen Army warplanes had been destroyed there by a small rebel group, one that didn’t seem to have any Corporate financing. The saboteurs had been questioned and summarily executed.

Another report concerned the much more troubling Bostoner attack that took place four days ago. A pair of enemy combatants who survived had been interrogated. One had refused to answer questions and had died during the grilling process; the other had received a serious head wound in the battle, and had lapsed into a coma. Yesterday, however, the man began slipping in and out of consciousness, mumbling incomplete sentences with unintelligible words, such as “voleer,” and references to something that sounded like “VT digging technology,” which Rahma’s investigators and engineers suspected had something to do with the craft burrowing underground.

Thus far, no one understood how the mysterious burrowing machine worked, because it had been detonated by a self-destruct mechanism. There had been evidence of a place where the machine emerged from the ground, but further investigation of the site had revealed nothing more. Had it been hidden there and dug its way out for the sneak attack, like a desert fighter hiding in sand and leaping out to strike? That sounded like the most plausible explanation, but if the attackers had buried the sizable machine there, how had they eluded detection from satellites? Weather patterns were being analyzed in detail now, to see if there had been extended periods in which visibility from orbital space might have been impaired. With no more answers yet, Chairman Rahma tried to think of something else.

As he gazed out on the broad expanse of greenery and the snowcapped mountains, he could almost envision an entire planet like his cherished game reserve, much the way it had been millions of years ago. How marvelous that would be! In his mind’s eye he imagined vast forestlands as well as mountains, rivers, lakes, and seas, all undamaged by mankind in his self-seeking, relentless drive to hold domain over every aspect of Earth and its resources.

In his boyhood Rahma had imagined becoming a dedicated environmentalist one day, working to preserve nature habitats for future generations of humankind to enjoy. By the time he reached his teens he came to realize, however, that his goals were too small and that his focus on humanity was wrong, that his thoughts were being filtered by a worldview that had proven harmful to the Earth. He became politically active, after deciding that he had to think on a much larger scale, and that he wanted to reverse the historical course of ecological ruination by man, in whatever way he could. In the process he developed a more mature worldview, in which people mattered only to the extent that they could protect and enhance nature. He often reminded himself that his own life no longer mattered, except to advance the restoration of the planet.

His involvement with the street revolution and the Berkeley Eight revolutionary council had been momentous in his life, enabling him to disseminate his ideas to a wide audience. The subsequent work he had performed as Chairman of the Green States of America had been a stepping-stone in a larger plan in which he hoped to expand greenification to other regions around the world. But entrenched Corporate and other political interests held foreign lands in such vise grips that he had grown to think that it might be impossible to ever expand beyond the Americas, and that he would have his hands full maintaining what he had accomplished here. Every day he received reports of guerrilla tactics being employed against GSA interests—hit-and-run attacks that often did not result in the perpetrators being killed, caught, or even identified.

He regretted the human deaths that resulted from forcing more than a billion people to relocate, but the tens of millions who died were either weak or resisted. Their ongoing deaths were not his fault, and he felt very little personal guilt over them.

This planet comes first, he thought.

Going back inside his office, the Chairman saw a red light flashing on his bamboo desk, in a code that indicated he had a visitor waiting for him. He voice-activated the door to his outer office, and it slid open with almost no sound. The trusted hubot Artie stood in the open doorway, looking in with the eyes of the Chairman’s dead friend Glanno Artindale. “You have a visitor,” the hybrid said, in a throaty voice that approximated that of Glanno.

“I have no appointments scheduled this afternoon.”

“We thought you would want to see this one, Eminence. It is Director Ondex and one of his subordinates.”

“Ondex again? What does he want this time?”

“He would not tell me, only said it was a matter that he could discuss only with you.”

Rahma Popal’s shoulders sagged. “Very well. Send the bastard in.”

Moments later, the tall, patrician man marched in, followed by a female assistant in a white gown and two Greenpol officers carrying their helmets. The assistant had a large volume under one arm.

The Chairman exchanged signs of the sacred tree with Ondex, then sat at his desk. The visitors remained standing.

“You have not yet submitted your identification package for the genetic database,” Ondex said.

Rahma smiled. “A joke? A bit of amusement? Why are you really here?”

The Director of Science scowled. “No joke, Eminence. It is required.”

“Don’t be absurd! I do not need to submit an identification package! I am the Chairman of the Green States of America!”

Ondex snapped his fingers, and the assistant handed the thick volume to him. Rahma noticed that it was a federal law book.

Opening it to a marked page, Ondex read, “‘For the good of the GSA, every citizen must comply with identification procedures.’”

“You SciOs don’t run the ID database,” Rahma said. “Greenpol does, and need I remind you? I control the police.” He nodded to the officers, but they were looking at the floor, not at him.

Ondex smiled. “But under the GSA Charter, every branch of government—including mine—has access to the police database.”

“You’re going over the line now, you nitpicking SOB. You tend to your duties, and I’ll tend to mine.”

“Since you helped draft the law, you should understand it better than anyone. Aren’t you a citizen of the GSA?”

“Of course, but—”

“Then you must submit cell samples to the DNA bank, along with details of other identifying features of your body. This should have been done years ago.”

The Chairman shook his head, but more out of dismay than anything else. The genetic database had been his own idea, so that his Greenpol forensic pathologists could study the brains and cellular material of eco-criminals and other miscreants, to come up with medical treatments that would prevent the living from repeating their crimes—drugs, brain wipes, genetic reprogramming. But his researchers were having trouble coming up with useful patterns or treatments, and Rahma had been considering abandoning the program.

“All right,” he said, in exasperation. “If the bureaucracy must be fed, let’s get it over with.”

Ondex closed the volume, and snapped his fingers crisply.

The Greenpol officers stepped past the Director of Science and stood on either side of Rahma Popal. One took cell scrapings from the skin on his arm and neck, along with fingerprints, and snippets of gray hair from the back of his head. The other officer performed retina scans and caliper readings of Rahma’s ears and nose and took a series of photographs of his face from several angles. Then both of them performed thermal imaging of his brain, using scanners that cast varying colors of light on different portions of his cranium. After that, they ran another scanner over his clothing, picking up all the details of his body.

“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 reservations 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.”