“Sorry that had to happen.” Feeling a twinge in his stomach, Joss knew this was the first time that Andruw had killed anyone, and he thought of the many times he’d had to use lethal force against perpetrators himself—especially the last occasion, when he killed three and found a way to change careers afterward. For him it had never been easy, but Andruw was taking it differently, as if he enjoyed it. The man’s eyes gleamed with a wild ferocity that made Joss uncomfortable.
“People like that don’t appreciate the wonderful utopia that Chairman Rahma established for the benefit of all life in the Green States of America,” Andruw said.
Joss swallowed a mouthful of stir-fry with its seasoned tofu. “You couldn’t have used a stunner setting and captured the fugitives instead of killing them?”
He wrinkled his blocky face in displeasure. “That’s an odd comment for you to make. I’ll try to forget you said it, though perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, considering your close relationship with Kupi Landau.”
Joss bristled. As an eco-cop, his roommate could submit authoritative testimony about what he had just said. Andruw had earlier shown an interest in what he called the “disloyal” comments of Kupi, but her occasional faux pas were widely known and tolerated at high levels of the government. So far, at least.
Staring across the table at his roommate, Joss felt anger and mounting concern, which he attempted to conceal. His own record was outstanding and he was Kupi’s boss, but he didn’t want to step over any lines. Any citizen could turn in another one for making disloyal remarks or activities, as long as they could provide proof to the authorities. He’d heard of evidence being accepted that seemed less than convincing. But evidence from an eco-cop carried weight, and besides that, Andruw was from an influential family. Both of his parents were high-level GSA bureaucrats, having been appointed to their positions by Chairman Rahma, rewarding them for their contributions to the victory against the Corporates.
Joss was ambitious himself, but in a different way. As a child, he had dreamed of doing something important with his life, but he had always planned to advance through legitimate good work, not like this Andruw and his nefarious ways.
With Andruw, his ambition seemed increasingly twisted and creepy. He wanted to advance his career so much that he would take any opportunity to do so, and would even distort information, putting a spin on it to make whatever point he was trying to assert. More and more, Joss had noticed him twisting facts in everyday conversation and in his dealings with other people, and he had no doubt that he would use similar tactics against Kupi and Joss as well, if he saw the opportunity and felt it was personally safe to do so. This roommate was no friend, and Joss was looking for an opportunity to break off the relationship, but in a way that would not make it look like he was trying to hide something from an eco-cop.
“There was nothing wrong with my question,” Joss said, holding his gaze with the younger man. “The Chairman likes to put on public trials of criminals as examples for others, as preventative measures. When I had your job I was taught to use deadly force only as a last resort.”
That got him! Joss thought, seeing a flash of worry on Andruw’s face. Now I’m on the offensive. Joss pressed forward. “You considered the alternatives, I presume?”
“It’s all in my report,” Andruw said, his pale gaze darting around. “By the way, how’s your relationship going with that middle-aged anarchist? You still playing doctor with her?”
“My … relationship … with Kupi is none of your concern.”
“Is she still complaining about worn, overused Janus Machines?” Andruw was trying to use something to his advantage that Joss had told him in casual, unguarded conversation.
Leaning forward on the table, Joss raised his voice, for controlled effect. “Need I remind you, Andruw, that Kupi Landau is still a trusted comrade of Chairman Rahma? I would suggest that you consider not only your actions today, but what you’ve been saying to me! You seem to be out of balance.” He paused for effect. “Perhaps I should report you?”
Andruw looked as if he had been spanked. He turned to his meal, but his lower jaw moved oddly as he chewed, and his eyes showed fright and frustration. Fumbling in his pocket, he brought out a juana stick and lit it, then took several drags to calm his nerves, finally stubbing it out in an ashtray, but not completely. A thread of gray smoke rose from the remnant as the men ate their meals in uneasy silence.
Looking out the window, Joss had a nice view of one of the larger parks in the reservation. His lower-floor unit was among the advantages of his position running a Janus Machine crew, though he’d never thought it was fair how Andruw—the holder of a substantially lesser position—had pulled strings to become his roommate. The young man was crafty, and seemed to have a way of advancing his career by saying the right things to the right people in government.
Down in the commons, Joss saw a large section of fenced pea patches, bathed in sunlight, and men and women working the crops, along with schoolchildren and their teachers. He smiled, liked the thought of children learning where food came from, and how to grow it. Some of the kids were also pulling weeds as their classroom assignment, because insecticides were not permitted anywhere in the Green States of America. Other youngsters were tending to the composting piles.
The children had all been born after the formation of the GSA. While still in their mothers’ wombs, they’d heard the soothing sounds of the ocean and the wind played for them by their parents, and when they were babies these sounds were piped into their basinets. When they were old enough to understand language, they wore headsets for an hour a day, over which they heard various natural sounds of the earth, along with subliminal messages about the need to care for the planet. In a sense it was brainwashing, Joss realized as he thought about it, but it was for a fabulous cause.
Outside the fenced areas, red foxes, raccoons, and a variety of other wild animals ran loose. Greenpol cops strutted along paths on their normal inspection rounds, ticketing or arresting anyone who violated the eco-rules or damaged the park environment in the slightest way. These police were eco-vice beat cops and had a zero-tolerance policy, with humans permitted only in certain areas on defined pathways, and not allowed to litter, damage any plants, or even to step on a bug or swat a fly.
At least not in public view. Inside residences and offices it was a different matter, and people found ways to eradicate pests. Both Joss and Andruw had killed insects and laid illegal traps for mice, with hardly a comment exchanged between them about it. Such violations were minor and technical, and everyone except the most avid animal rights zealots ignored them—fanatics who didn’t mind if animals or birds defecated in their homes, or if cockroaches contaminated their food.
He also noticed a white-robed Science Overseer strutting about the park, with people on the path getting out of his way. The SciO stopped and spoke with a green-uniformed police officer, and pointed to a man walking ahead of them. Though the SciOs and Greenpol were different government agencies, they sometimes worked in concert with each other on crimes. The Greenpol officer hurried after the man, for some infraction.
Joss preferred to watch from here, instead of putting himself in a position where he might receive an infraction. His apartment building had a nice health club with a swimming pool and jogging track on the seventy-eighth floor, and he intended to go up there this afternoon for some exercise.
Looking across the table, he said to Andruw, “Maybe you should have a couple of drinks and try to wind down. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve been through a difficult event.”
Andruw’s eyes flashed, but he nodded.
Joss finished eating and rose from the table, carrying his biodegradable foodware items to a garbage chute, where he tossed them in.
13
Chairman Rahma sometimes defies security measures that are in place to protect him; he likes to mingle with crowds while his hubot guard force scrambles to keep up. This is an obvious weak point that could be exploited, should we ever
wish to assassinate him. But that would make him a martyr, and potentially more dangerous in death than in life. Better to exploit his other known weaknesses, and bring him down militarily. He and his progressive followers don’t like to fight. Despite the mob violence they demonstrated in the Corporate War, they are essentially apologists, appeasers, and peaceniks—not hardened for battle like us. But do not underestimate them, especially the violent anarchists in their midst. The Greenies have their own will to survive, and access to powerful SciO technology.
—Dylan Bane, in a speech to his military officers
DYLAN BANE DID not like the secrets harbored by other people, but he very much liked his own. At the moment, he was riding in one of them, burrowing through the Earth at a high rate of speed, listening to the faint keening sound and watching the play of lights around the hull as the voleer cut through rock and earth, then closed each tunnel behind it, as if it had never been there.
He stood on the command bridge inside the twenty-sixth craft of this type that he’d ordered built, taking a test ride with the pilots. The voleer was beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in the Southern Mexico Territory, heading in a northerly direction.
“The problems with this ship are minor, sir, and easily fixed,” said a man in a smudged gray work suit. One of the design technicians, Brad Powell, activated a wall screen, showing close-up details of the elaborate cross-beams of light that were caused by friction around the hull as it cut through the crust of the Earth and plunged forward.
“Look there,” he said, using an electronic pointer to identify an illuminated strand in a webwork of light on the forward section. “See how the color of that section is faintly purple?”
Bane grunted.
“As you know, it should be brighter purple, reflecting a higher rate of burrowing speed. We just need to calibrate the cutters and angles when we get back to the shop. Not much delay at all, sir, you can still make your schedule.”
“Very good. Take care of it.”
“I will, sir.” The man moved away, went about his duties.
For several moments, Bane watched the hypnotic dance of lights, the intricate play of webbing that seemed to stretch and bend around the ship, as if the beams of light were shoring the tunnel to keep it open, preventing it from collapsing. He knew it was far more complicated than that, because once he had been a SciO researcher and engineer himself.
Shortly after the formation of the Green States of America in 2043, the SciO leadership had assigned Dylan Bane to be in charge of a top-secret SciO research team, investigating all possible uses of splitting and greenforming technology. At that point it was only known to have environmental and offensive military applications, but Arch Ondex and other SciO leaders suspected that there might be others.
In a little less than three years, Bane’s team thought they had found something significant, something he called “vanishing tunnel technology.” In initial tests it worked on a small scale, but would not scale up to the proportions needed to make the tunnels useful from the military standpoint that he knew Ondex wanted, proportions large enough for war machines and soldiers to pass through them.
Then one evening, working alone in the laboratory, Bane performed a complex series of high-order calculations and executed drawings that solved the problem. As he stared at the pages in detail, he knew without a doubt that the vanishing tunnel technology would work on a large scale.
By that time, the GSA government had wiped out the rest of the Bane family for their involvement in Corporate affairs, first taking their assets and then their lives. Dylan Bane, laboring in a secluded laboratory, had been overlooked; ostensibly he had been a contributor to the new reality, something he secretly called the “new unreality.”
So he’d decided to keep the scientific discovery to himself, and had laid the groundwork for this by making certain that all information about the project went through him to higher-ups, and by entering falsified technical information about the project into the SciO computer system.
For some time, Bane had seen enormous profit potential in the vanishing tunnel technology, and he began to rationalize about keeping the entire benefit for himself, because he had contributed more to the discovery than the rest of his team combined, and most of his family had been murdered—a family that he’d loved despite their failings. He’d never liked being a SciO lab technician, having to follow their unending rules, the reasons for which were never explained to him in any way that made sense.
Three weeks after coming up with the vanishing tunnel solution, Bane had put to death his entire research team with an acidic poison gas, sprayed in their faces. He then faked their suicides by leaving computer notes ostensibly written by them, asserting they killed themselves because they couldn’t complete the project and didn’t want to live with the shame. He’d even left a facially mutilated body that was supposed to be his own, but in reality was brought in from the outside and wasn’t even a team member. To falsify the identity of that body, Bane had salted it with a fake skin overlay—an undetectable spray that he’d prepared from his own DNA, making it appear to be his body if anyone took a skin scraping.
Before making good his escape, Bane destroyed his calculations and drawings, along with all lab records, prototypes, molds, blueprints, and backup files—leaving behind counterfeit technical information to lead the SciOs astray when they attempted to resurrect the experiments.
The rest had been comparatively easy. After building his first small voleer machine, he’d been able to travel underground and pop up wherever he pleased, stealing whatever he needed—food, money, raw materials, even priceless artworks and other valuables.
He recalled one of the raids he’d made a couple of years ago. After boring through the planetary crust beneath the Atlantic Ocean, he’d navigated the subterranean craft so skillfully that he’d emerged inside the grounds of a chateau in the Loire Valley, where a retired French industrialist was supposed to have lived. The man was a collector of paintings by Monet, Matisse, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and Renoir—and reportedly he had billions of dollars’ worth of artwork in this one location.
In possession of advance information on the security system, Bane was prepared to shut it down with electronic signals, then go in and remove the best paintings from their frames, roll them up, and cart them off. But when he surfaced on the northern perimeter of the estate, he saw scaffolding all around the chateau, and work crews operating around the clock—affording him no opportunity to get past so many people.
Bane had departed, perplexed, only to learn that the chateau had been purchased by an American businessman in exile, a former Corporate mogul who was turning the elegant old building and the grounds into a tacky amusement park with a Louis XVI–Marie Antoinette theme, including a large gift store to sell reproductions of clothing, jewelry, and furniture from the period. Through further investigation, Bane learned that similar amusement parks and casinos were being constructed throughout Europe, usually with some fairy-tale or cartoon theme. To Bane, it seemed the height of foolish decadence, but he saw humor in it. When the Corporates were driven out of the Americas, they took some of their bad taste with them.
But he and his subordinates made other raids, highly lucrative ones. In the process Bane raised enough money to construct additional small voleers, scores of them, followed by larger and larger machines, until he set forth on the present military strategy with the largest machines of all, and tens of thousands of human and robot soldiers—along with elaborate security precautions to protect his compact but powerful army.
For what he had in mind, he wouldn’t even need the three nuclear submarines that were in his arsenal. He preferred to use his own Splitter Cannons (transported by voleers), employing Dark Energy technologies that made even the most advanced nuclear missiles look totally out of date. He visualized the voleers surfacing and disgorging troops, assault vehicles, and high-speed aircraft to strike the targets, and strike them hard.
Dylan Bane felt cert
ain that his magnificent plan would work. He intended to bring down all of his arrogant enemies, and they would not know what hit them.
14
The greatest leaders have woven a mythos around themselves, an embroidery of legends and half-truths that make them seem larger than life. But embroideries are destructible, and so are the men and women they protect.
—Chairman Rahma Popal, private notes
ARTIE HAD BEEN monitoring the progress of the unusual creatures in the Extinct Animals Laboratory, looking in on them whenever he could get a few moments away from the ongoing demands made on him by Chairman Rahma.
The glidewolf had been growing quickly, having nearly doubled in size in the past couple of weeks. It was around the size of a full-grown wolf now, but with reddish brown fur, a marsupial pouch, and batlike wings. The creature had been fitted with an electronic tracking device and a camera, in a combination unit mounted on top of its head in such a way that it did not irritate the animal, and so that it could not remove it.
Now the hubot stood in the creature’s subterranean eucalyptus forest habitat, gazing upward as the glidewolf climbed a trellis to reach the ingress and egress hatch high up in the techplex ceiling, a hatch that had been made large enough to allow for the creature to grow even more, or for other, larger creatures to get in and out, should they be permitted to do so. The wolf went through, and disappeared from view.
On an internal receiver, Artie watched topside videos of the glidewolf loping across the oval-shaped techplex toward the nearby evergreen forest, where it scampered up tall cedar and fir trees and then launched itself into the air, gliding for great distances over the grasslands and wetlands of the game reserve. The marsupial’s head-top camera showed views straight ahead of it as the creature soared on thermals, with its long feathery tail raised high to form a rudder, and its wings extended to each side—a wingspan of almost three meters.
The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma Page 11
