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 Mi
ssoula 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.
Taller than most of the people around him, Ridell had a neatly trimmed brown beard and wore his best green-and-orange paisley suit (with bell-bottom trousers), along with a patterned tie and sandals with dark socks. Other men were similarly attired, so he knew he didn’t stand out from them; but then again, he didn’t want to be different, at least not in any bad way. Still, he did hope for a good assignment.
While in line he thought about his wife, Hana, who worked for the reservation’s parks department on one of the numerous gardening crews. He wished the two of them had better jobs, and that they had a larger apartment, and more privileges. At breakfast that morning their eleven-year-old daughter, Willow, had asked what her older sister, Jade, was doing in her job for Chairman Rahma. No one had given the child details before this, though they were well known to the parents. Jade was a member of the great man’s harem now, selected for her beauty and intelligence to join him on the game reserve where he lived.
“Something to do with caring for the animals,” Hana had replied, as she exchanged a knowing glance with her husband.
A human animal, Doug had thought, and he’d said, “We don’t know what her job assignment is yet.”
Ridell hoped his beautiful older daughter did well. It was important to the entire family.…
When his turn came he handed the female clerk a small electronic device called a précis, which contained a summary of his life, including details of his education and family, where he had worked, and (in a code that he could not read) information on his personality—whether he took orders well, learned quickly, and the like. The hand-held device had an illuminated amber screen. She touched one of the control pads on it.
“I was a machine-repair technician before,” he said, “in a factory on the outskirts of the reservation.”
She said something, in a low tone that he could not hear. The woman had short black hair that glistened with a gel that made it stand out in little spikes.
“Excuse me, but what did you say?” he asked.
Her dark eyes flashed. “I can see where you worked.” She pointed at the screen on the hand-held device. “It’s all right here.” The précis screen, which previously had been amber, now glowed pale orange.
“Of course, I’m sorry. My previous job was noisy, and I have some hearing loss from it.”
“I see.” She asked him a number of questions, details of his experience. Repeatedly he had to ask her to speak louder, which she did.
The woman made entries in the hand-held device, then connected it to a computer at her desk, which took a moment to process the new data. Finally the screen on the connected précis turned pale green. She removed it and handed it back to him.
“This is your new assignment,” she said. “Report tomorrow at seven a.m.”
The screen showed that he was going to be working for one of the government’s robotics servicing units. An address was provided on the south side of the reservation, and the name of a contact person.
Out on the street Ridell passed a greengrocer, a drug-injection booth, and a family guidance center (an abortion clinic), then waited for bicyclists to pass before crossing the wide street. On the other side he stepped onto a sidewalk that had sensors embedded in the surface, to collect the energy of his footsteps. The buildings on this side of the street had terraced vegetable gardens running up their outside walls, and he knew the accumulated energy of the sidewalks was used to pump water up to the gardens.
He turned onto a street that sloped upward gradually, toward the apartment building where he lived with his family. Ahead in the street, he saw a produce truck slowing for bicyclists going uphill ahead of it, who showed no inclination to get out of the way. They were even swarming over the oncoming lane, going in the wrong direction, so that the driver could not pass them. Since bicycles always had the right of way against motorized vehicles, he waited patiently, going slowly behind the pack.
Seeing something out of the corner of his eye, Ridell turned to his left, just as another bicyclist raced past him, went around the car, and approached the rear of the group of bicyclists.
A pedestrian, an elderly woman near Ridell, shouted, “He has a gun!”
He saw her pointing at the bicyclist, but couldn’t see any weapon. The rider caught up with the group, and now Ridell heard him shouting, and saw him waving a handgun, causing the other bicyclists to scatter. To Ridell’s horror he fired at a woman several times, causing her to crash and fall to the pavement.
The attacker darted down a side alley and disappeared from view. The woman didn’t move; blood pooled around her head. Hesitantly, a man and a woman approached her, in an apparent attempt to give aid. To Ridell, however, she looked dead. Maybe it was a lover’s crime of passion, a relationship that had gone terribly wrong.
Police sirens were already whining.
To avoid getting involved, Ridell turned and hurried down another street, taking an alternate route home. Surveillance cameras would identify and track the killer as he fled. Undoubtedly the man was already being monitored—and he must have known he would be caught quickly by the efficient, high-tech methods of the police. But his hatred of the victim must have run so deep that he didn’t care. There would be no trial. The cops would kill him on the spot, the moment he was apprehended.
Reaching another street, with the siren noise a couple of blocks away, Doug Ridell thought he might like his new job better than the old one. The factory noise had been driving him crazy, and he was happy to get away from it. Still, he was eager for Jade to advance in her own career, so that she and the entire Ridell family could move up to a higher social rung, with a larger apartment and all of the perks that went with it.
He wondered if his daughter was having sex with Chairman Rahma at that very moment.…
* * *
ARTIE WENT THROUGH an open doorway and took an elevator to one of the lower levels, where he boarded a slidewalk that transported him through a long tunnel. After rounding a corner, the hubot sent an electronic signal from his AI core, causing thick double doors to slide open ahead of him, doors that were carved with raised images of extinct animals. Disembarking from the slidewalk, he walked inside, where he felt a slight change in air pressure.
There were separate forest, arid bush, jungle, and other environments here, with vegetation stretching far into the distance. It was a network of complex subterranean habitats, with sunlight passing through the techplex ceiling overhead to warm the irrigated, nutrient-fed interiors. In the sky visible through the ceiling, he saw the sun peeking around puffy clouds.
At the front of the enclosure, he paused to examine an array of settings on a control panel, specifying the humidity for various zones of the underground facility, zones that were separated by electronic barriers that flickered and waved slightly from delicate disturbances in the air.
Two robot technicians worked the controls, part of a larger team of automatons that were linked electronically to Artie and transmitted a constant stream of valuable data to him.
The hubot saw a red gazelle run by, darting through the bush section and vanishing into the distance, then heard the warbling call of a thrush—both among the once-extinct creatures that had been resurrected with a combination of cellular material, historical information from observers, habitat information, and other data, forming what the inventor of the system, Glanno Artindale, called “genetic blueprints.”
Many animal species went extinct in the past five hundred years because they were hunted by humans, or because they were killed by predators such as rats, snakes, monkeys, or owls that were brought in by humans who had no understanding of the consequences of their actions. Often the habitats were destroyed by humans or by other related conditions—and to a very large extent the unfortunate creatures went extinct on islands, where their numbers were limited and where conditions changed enough to wipe them out. On those islands, they were sometimes visited by the crews of sailing ships, careless men who had no concern for what they were doing to endangered species.
In order to resurrect a particular species, the laboratory technicians entered all of the known data into the Artindale Computer System, including descriptions of the creatures made by centuries-past sailors (often Portuguese and Dutch) and other observers, along with the data from scientific papers and even the wildest of conjectural writings. This included genetic, hair, and other cellular information that had been assembled, as well as known facts about the habitats in which these creatures lived, including what they probably ate as well as data on other creatures that competed with them for resources or preyed on them—and which creatures the extinct species might have, in turn, preyed upon themselves. The tiniest, seemingly most innocuous observations were included, and the computer system then filtered out the most improbable data, focusing instead on characteristics that the creature most likely had.
The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma Page 5
