A short distance downshore, the target had been marked with orange paint—a series of old cabins on the riverbank where the staff of the club used to live. Kupi fired up the Splitter, causing the black barrel to glow along with a low, mounting roar—and then she cut loose with waves of black energy particles, splitting and melting the structures into gray, gummy masses on the shore. Moments later, Joss swung the platform around and let fly with his greenforming Seed Cannon, spewing cartridges into the air and detonating them with sparkles of green in the night, scattering seeds that would soon begin growing a native ground cover.
Behind the observation barrier, the dignitaries clapped and cheered.
As Joss finished, he joined Kupi on the turret platform and they waved to everyone, while the applause continued. “These are a bunch of limousine liberals,” she said to him, “unscrupulous people who have used the Green Revolution to line their pockets with cash. Rahma only accepts the new elite grudgingly for the sake of green manufacturing and services, and I know he’s tried to rein in the excesses. But he’s changed since the revolution, lost some of the idealism I remember in him.”
“That’s understandable,” Joss said. “He’s getting old.”
“Maybe we should split and greenform this whole stinking group,” Kupi said, “to remove bad elements from the human gene pool. Our Chairman is always talking about creating a more perfect, unselfish human being. Well, we can give him a boost in the right direction, and greenform the pile of slime that’s left over.”
“That would not be a good idea,” Joss said.
The auburn-haired woman looked at him, her eyes feral and sensual, in a way that he recognized. “All right,” she said, “I have a better idea anyway.”
9
Eco-crimes are worse than any others, bar none. Compare them with the rape of a person, for example, or murder—or any number of other traditional crimes. But all of them pale in comparison with the rape and murder of a planet—and that is what eco-crimes are, causing the destruction of a beautiful, sacred thing. This is the worst sort of crime, ravishing the Earth Mother who gave birth to human life. What can possibly be more contemptible, and what penalty must mankind pay for this?
—Commentaries, Charter of the Green States of America, March 17, 2043
DYLAN BANE STOOD at the center of the command bridge of the great machine, watching the bright purple webwork of light around the hull as it bored through the mantle of the earth at more than seven hundred kilometers per hour, passing through all types of rock and soil as if they were not obstacles at all, and then closing the tunnels behind. He heard the faint, high-pitched keening of the process.
Around him, silver-uniformed officers and crew members worked the controls of the subterranean craft, using powerful ground-penetrating radar to guide the way—making course corrections based on this, while taking into account the ground-mapping data they had accumulated from prior journeys. This voleer machine could pass through earth, rock, underground springs, and even magma, though the pilots made efforts to avoid the latter because high ambient temperatures expended more fuel in the cooling process.
Bane had eighteen of these great machines now, all of them a clever adaptation of the secret splitting and greenforming technologies that the SciOs guarded so closely, and upon which they based their power structure. Like a huge underground submarine with no conning tower, the voleer was a tube as long as ten soccer fields and as high as a three-story building. From his vantage on the forward slope of the hull, he not only had a view outward, but inward as well, through clearplex decking to the huge, mostly empty cargo hold.
He smiled to himself, certain that he would eventually bring the loathsome SciOs crashing down, along with Chairman Rahma Popal, using secret machines like this one to transport troops and war equipment. But he had to implement his guerrilla plan precisely, based on exquisite planning. There was no room for mistakes, such as those made by others in the attacks on Bostoner and Quebec. Those were small-time military assaults, no more than bee stings on the corpus of the Green government that were soon healed. When Bane finally made his move, it would be much, much bigger.
As soon as an additional twenty-seven voleers were completed and fully tested, he would have forty-five great machines back at his base camp in central Mexico, filled with armaments and fighters—enough to attack and retreat in numerous places, disappearing into the ground at will. It would drive enemy commanders crazy trying to figure out a way to retaliate, and before they could respond, all of their forces would crumble into dust, along with the vile hippie government.
And none of them would understand how it had happened. Though he had been raised in a well-to-do Corporate family, in his youth he had refused to follow in his father’s footsteps with Bane Enterprises, a company that manufactured plastic bottles. He’d loved his parents, but had seen the environmental damage caused by plastic, and didn’t want to earn money from that source. As a result, he’d pursued his own interests and developed his own talents, going to work for a laboratory in California and earning his way as a research scientist.
For years Dylan Bane had gone to work every day, staying with the laboratory when it was taken over by the post-revolution SciOs, and ultimately becoming one of their most trusted researchers. This résumé had served him well later when his family came under attack for their activities. He alone had survived among them.
Now he glanced over at Marissa Chase as the young officer approached him. “Within three hundred kilometers of the Buenos Aires Reservation for Humans,” she reported, with a crisp salute. “Making our final course correction to Delta Fifty-seven.”
Bane grunted, looked away. He had no time for his customary thoughts about the attractive woman. Moments later, the ship came to a grinding stop inside a large underground cavern that was quite deep and high, considerably larger than the voleer.
As hatches slid open he heard a buzzing over the rumble of the idling voleer engines, and saw the inside of the Delta 57 cavern, an expanse that was full of shipping containers that hovered in the air like giant bricks, each of them remote-controlled and self-propelled. In the midst of these containers flew tiny, black, bumblebee-shaped guideships, each with a human operator inside, for the purpose of air-traffic control and loading efficiency in the confined airspace.
Looking at the black chrono embedded in the skin of his wrist—a mechanism that had the appearance of a tattoo with the numerals in motion—Dylan Bane set the timer on the multifunction device for eighteen minutes, which sent a transmission throughout the ship and cavern, synchronizing the loading operations. He needed to get loaded and be on his way quickly. This was not just a practice maneuver, though that was part of the reason for the trip to the Argentine Territory of the Green States of America. He had another purpose in mind as well, one of equal importance. His operatives in this region had been accumulating essential materials, soldiers, and military equipment.
On missions such as this one over the past several months, using a number of voleer tunneling machines, he’d been making clandestine trips to obtain assets that he needed for the war effort—taking military personnel and matériel back to Michoacán. His far-flung martial operations were completely underground and electronically veiled, in multiple locations linked by vanishing tunnels, bases that could be reached quickly by machines that regenerated rock and earth behind them, leaving no apparent tunnels in their wake.
Around the sides of the immense vessel and on top of it, cargo hatches slid open and containers sped aboard, stacking and interlocking themselves in the holds, sometimes adjusted by the pilots of the tiny guideships. A number of the self-propelled containers held soldiers who had passed through Bane’s stringent security-screening procedures and selective memory wipes—and these troops were loaded into a separate cargo hold, where they could leave the boxes and move into more comfortable quarters. But first, they had to be loaded aboard quickly and efficiently.
It had not been difficult to obtain conscr
ipts from disaffected people who had been forced into adverse conditions by the radical GSA government and its severe environmental and human-relocation policies. The trick was to get the right people under the right circumstances, and put them to the best possible use. Though Bane had his own harsh methods, at least he valued people and what they could contribute—unlike the fascist Chairman and his animal-loving, tree-hugging legions.
He watched the minutes and seconds pass, then saw yellow lights flash in the cavern, indicating that they had only two minutes for all outside personnel and equipment to get clear of the vessel before it relaunched. A mad scramble of guideships and unloaded containers ensued—bumping into one another as they tried to pull back to the perimeter of the cavern, not nearly as smoothly as Bane had seen in other secret caverns he had in the Americas.
At precisely the eighteen-minute mark, the immense voleer closed all exterior hatches and surged ahead, leaving the cavern behind and intact, except for those guideship and container occupants who didn’t get clear in time.
For those who survived, he would order more drills.
10
For reasons of patriotism, children are encouraged to report their parents, relatives, and friends for violations of the law. Throughout history certain governments have understood this, and so shall we, when it comes to dealing with criminals. Children, hear me! The state is your family, and I am your true father.
—Chairman Rahma Popal, remarks to the First Assembly of the GSA on Earth Day 2043
AS JOSS CROSSED the continent by train from the Quebec Territory, he scanned a holo-net card from his Uncle Trig asking him how he was doing, and when they might get together—a message that had been delivered to him by an automated system that lowered it from the ceiling. Uncle Trig Stuart lived alone on the Salt Lake City Reservation, his wife, Gertie, having died the year before. Joss spoke in a low tone to the card that hovered in front of him, watched his own words appear in the reply section. Just a few comments about where he’d been and how he didn’t expect to be in Salt Lake City for several more months. He didn’t say so, but it could be even longer than that; his important job was keeping him very busy, and he didn’t want to interrupt his career by asking for too much time off.
After completing the message, he watched it seem to melt into the ceiling, for transmission back to his uncle. It was after dinner, and daylight was waning, fading like a ghost into the approaching darkness.
He tuned out the conversations around him, watched the scenery whir by outside. Joss couldn’t recall ever having seen so many pristine mountains, lakes, wetlands, and evergreen trees as there were on this route. Truly, it was stimulating for him, and gave him some hope for the future of what the Chairman called “the wounded planet.”
It seemed odd to Joss that he and Kupi had witnessed two attacks against GSA military installations in the last few days, first in Bostoner and then in Quebec. He’d commented on this to her, but she’d said it was just happenstance. There were always attacks around the country, caused by Corporate interests, criminals living in the wilderness, and other groups that didn’t like Rahma’s new form of government, one that was unlike any in the history of human civilization.
At one time, this northern region of the Green States of America had been part of Canada. Even before the massive, ragtag revolution against the Corporates, it had been one of the nations that showed concern for the environment, and took steps to protect it. Most of that impetus, however, came from the common people, and less so from the government, and only grudgingly from Canadian and multinational Corporate interests that had operations in the country. When the Chairman’s regime took over, this region still needed considerable cleaning up, but not nearly on the scale of the blighted regions to the south.
The maglev train in which Joss rode could have completed the four-thousand-kilometer journey in less than a day, but it made stops along the way to drop off some of the Janus Machine crews and their machinery at work sites. He and his crew had not been among those with assignments, owing to the demanding schedule of splitting and greenforming they’d already endured in the east. As a reward for their hard work they were bound for their homes in the Seattle Reservation and a brief vacation. Within the hour, they had just returned from a sumptuous dinner in the dining car, and Joss still felt the warmth of roast pork and a fine Pomerol wine in his belly.
At the moment, Kupi sat across from him at a passenger compartment table, dealing samba cards to him as well as to two other male members of their crew, the tall, jocular J-Mac driver Bim Hendrix and an aging mechanic for the non-proprietary vehicle systems, Sabe McCarthy. The deck of cards had photos of filthy, smoke-belching industrial sites on the backs, each with a red line across it; other decks depicted notorious Corporate tycoons, eco-criminals, and Army of the Environment military victories.
“Doesn’t it ever strike you as curious that we get to eat meat,” Kupi asked, “while hundreds of millions of other people are told to eat protein substitutes?”
“Not at all,” McCarthy said. “We work our butts off for the state, and deserve the few perks we get. We put in longer hours than other folks, get more important work done.”
“Right,” Hendrix said, picking up his cards and sorting his hand quickly. “Kind of makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? What if we got fired and had to eat regular food?”
“Pray to Green that never happens,” Kupi said.
“The sarcasm of Kupi Landau,” McCarthy said, scowling as he studied his cards.
“Be careful,” Kupi said with a tight smile, “I do have a talent for violence.”
“And for dealing bad cards,” McCarthy said.
Annoyed, Kupi narrowed her gaze and stared hard at him.
“Enough of that,” Joss said. “Let’s save our hostilities for industrial sites, OK?” He didn’t like the way the conversation was going. His crew had been on the road for nearly a month, and with the accumulated fatigue, emotions had a tendency to get raw.
Grunts of affirmation passed around the table, and the samba game proceeded. Fortunately for Kupi’s state of mind, she made a number of good draws and captured the pot, which enabled her to meld cards on the table. As her simulated wealth accumulated she began to smirk at McCarthy, but he didn’t react.
The train slowed down on its maglev rail. Joss heard two bells over the public address system, followed by a woman’s voice. “The signaler is routing us onto a siding, ladies and gentlemen, to wait for a relocation train to pass.”
“It has the right of way,” Hendrix said.
Everyone at the table knew that. Relocation trains were full of people who were being moved from their previous homes in polluted areas onto new reservations for humans that were being constructed as massive public works projects, with much of the labor performed by convicts. Due to the rushed construction schedules there had been many safety-related deaths—but to justify that, the Chairman said the program was a priority even higher than the work of Janus Machine crews, since dense population centers harmed the environment much less than sprawled developments and their infrastructures. Because of high demand for reservation space as they continued to be built, however, many people were confined to their previous towns and cities, or placed in rudimentary containment camps under armed guard—until something opened up for them.
Looking at a viewing screen on one end of the passenger car, Joss saw images of a long train approaching from the rear, speeding around a curve of tracks. Guided by maglev engineers, hundreds of shabby, green, windowless boxcars thundered by, causing Joss’s train to shake and shudder. Out the window, he saw the train disappear into the distance. Thousands and thousands of people were crammed inside those cars. He’d seen relocation trains before and didn’t like to think about conditions inside them—except he assumed the high-speed maglev trips were short.
A government information video appeared on the passenger car’s wallscreen, showing the various methods of relocation, including trains like the one
ahead of them and huge transport aircraft that carried thousands of people at a time. The planes looked pregnant with their big bellies full of people.
The image switched to a utopian reservation for humans, showing crowds of people going about their daily business with saccharine smiles on their faces. “Historically these northern territories have been sparsely populated,” a female announcer said, “and now hundreds of millions of people are being relocated here. ‘Relocation is good. Relocation is green.’” It was one of the mantras.
* * *
DOUG RIDELL HAD a full schedule, going to apartments in the more prestigious districts of the Missoula Reservation, maintaining and repairing the robots of privileged citizens who were above his own station. He wore a pale green work coverall and a backpack filled with tools.
He considered his new job something of a promotion, though there had been no talk of a pay increase or providing his family with more benefits, and he could only wait to be notified about such things. But for the most part he had been enjoying the reassignment, despite having no previous experience dealing with the public, with their varying personalities and moods.
On the forty-second floor of a gleaming, glass-walled apartment building, Ridell placed his hand-held précis against a scanner on a tenant’s door. After confirming his identity, a fashionable woman let him in; he knew her name from the assignment log: Mrs. Kristine Longet. An attractive blonde with a figure that filled her expensive clothing nicely, she was perhaps forty-five or fifty, with cold blue eyes and an icy expression that exuded superiority.
“I thought you would be here an hour ago,” she said.
The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma Page 8
