The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma

by Brian Herbert

  The voices became shouts, and suddenly Joss sat straight up, squinting in bright beams of light. He blinked his eyes, and for several moments he couldn’t focus. Noises clashed around him, unidentifiable in their cacophony. Something stung his arm, then his leg.

  Joss realized he was on a mattress, then felt hands lifting him to his feet, and someone attempting to confine his wrists in a restraining device. SciO security officers! They filled the bedroom, some carrying powerful flashlights. It was nighttime.

  He felt a little groggy, realized that the stinging had been sedative shots. Anger suffused him, and the grogginess subsided quickly. He pulled one hand free, and with it he wove a black net of energy around him that crackled in the air and pushed the intruders away. They grunted and struggled mightily against him, but ultimately the force field repelled them, leaving them cursing.

  “There’s no use trying to take me prisoner,” Joss said. “Didn’t Doctor Mora tell you what I can do?”

  One officer stepped forward, a woman in a tight uniform, with two silver bars on her glistening green helmet. “Before your recent unfortunate incidents, you were known for your loyalty to Chairman Rahma’s government. If that’s true and you weren’t trying to deceive anyone, I’d like you to put yourself in our shoes, and in the shoes of the Chairman himself. If you do that, and you’re honest, you can’t help but see that we can’t leave you here, can’t let you stay on the run like this. Here in the Green States of America, every person must be accounted for. It is the law, a just and proper law.”

  Joss hesitated, wished the explosion had never occurred, and that he was back in his old life with Kupi Landau, leading a Janus Machine crew and traveling around the GSA, doing good work.

  “I just want my old life back,” he said.

  “That’s not possible, not since the explosion changed you.”

  “I can still supervise a Janus Machine crew. Send me back to my crew and let me resume my old life. If you do that, in my spare time, when I’m not working, I’ll try to be cooperative. I cooperated with Doctor Mora until I lost hope that I would ever be permitted to go free. The SciOs wanted to make me a test animal for the rest of my life, wanted to make that my career, in exchange for room and board in a velvet-lined prison. Well, that’s not the career I want.”

  “Let me understand what you’re proposing,” she said. “If you’re permitted to resume your old job with your old crew, you’ll open yourself up to further SciO investigations?”

  “Within reason. Look, Officer, I want to know what’s happening to me too, but I won’t be abused, won’t permit anyone to run roughshod over me. I want you to take me straight to my J-Mac crew, wherever they are.”

  “I’ll be right back.” She left the room, returned fifteen minutes later. “We have a deal,” she said. “They’re sending a copter to pick you up and transfer you to a private SciO jet. Your crew is in the Northwest Mexico Territory, near the Sonora Reservation for Humans.”

  Joss didn’t ask who gave her the permission. He only cared that an aircraft was being sent for him, and he would soon be away from this place.

  Minutes later a small helicopter landed in the street, then lifted off into the night sky with lights blinking and Joss in the passenger seat. On the way to the airport outside the Berkeley Reservation, he considered possibilities, and a troubling thought flickered across his mind: they could transport him somewhere remote and try to keep him there, too far from civilization to return on his own.

  They wouldn’t dare, he thought. The SciOs needed his cooperation for their experiments.

  32

  It is said that when Chairman Rahma Popal heard of Joss Stuart’s powers, he wept. Whether from sorrow, joy, or even envy, it is not known.

  —“The Mutant Man,” a black-market article

  IT WAS A retro-style private plane that looked like a twentieth-century Learjet but larger, with a carbon-fiber fuselage and two supersonic FocuSol engines that were powerful enough to propel a much bigger, heavier aircraft. The passenger cabin continued the retro theme with wood paneling and art deco styling (reminiscent of Pan Am and TWA in the 1930s) that cleverly concealed modern creature comforts.

  In the cabin, Dr. Mora had provided extensive details to Joss about the supersonic plane and the young man had listened politely, all the while looking out the window at the pastel sky of approaching dawn, trying to determine if he was being tricked and taken somewhere other than the agreed-upon place. Perhaps it was an accumulation of Kupi’s cynicism about green profiteers that he’d listened to over the years, combined with his own negative experiences as a SciO prisoner, but Joss was beginning to distrust people, and even the government, something he’d never anticipated. He didn’t like feeling that way, had always tried to be positive and optimistic, but reality was pushing its way in on him, changing him.

  “We’re going a little north to avoid storms,” Mora said, as if anticipating Joss’s concerns. The two of them sat at a small round table. “Then we’ll swing south toward the Sonora Reservation. Don’t worry. Our pilots know what they’re doing.”

  Joss didn’t respond, just stared out the window. His vegan casserole and a glass of soy milk sat untouched before him.

  At the forward bulkhead of the passenger compartment, the stewardess opened a wood-panel cockpit door to take coffee to the pilots, providing Joss with a brief view of two men wearing old-style blue-and-gold airline officers’ uniforms and caps, before she returned to the passenger cabin and closed the door behind her.

  Gazing out the window from this altitude, Joss was having difficulty determining where he was. He saw a vast wilderness below of pine forests, lakes, rivers, and craggy mountains, and no visible reservations for humans. It was disorienting. His stomach rumbled, burned from acid.

  The plane banked, and as time passed, the landscape and colors metamorphosed, from greens and blues to the dry browns and golds of canyons and high desert plateaus. Presently he saw high buildings jutting out of the desert, gleaming like a mirage in the afternoon sunlight. It was one of the least-populated reservations, with a much smaller core of high-rise buildings than others.

  “The Sonora Reservation for Humans,” Dr. Mora announced.

  Joss nodded, concealed a sigh of relief. It looked as if the SciOs were keeping their word to him after all, and he might not need to use any of his contingency plans to oppose these people. Even so, he would remain wary.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T WANT to do anything before seeing his crew, didn’t even want to wait for them to return to the hotel from their day’s work. Immediately after landing, Joss boarded a solar-powered vehicle, an off-road, teardrop-shaped sedan driven by a SciO security officer. They headed northward across the dusty expanse of high desert. Since Joss’s J-Mac crew would be working in the area for at least another week, Dr. Mora remained back at the reservation, saying he wanted to set up a facility to do further research work on Joss, under a schedule the two of them would arrange. It was a warm afternoon, and even though the windows were up and the sol-air-conditioning on, Joss still smelled the gritty dust that penetrated the vehicle’s seals. Within an hour, they lost sight of the reservation.

  On the bumpy ride to his crew’s worksite, Joss identified areas that had recently been split and greenformed with native seeds, so that cacti and scrub brush grew over what had once been towns and roads—forming new patches of plants that had not yet matured as much as those around them. In this region, as elsewhere all across the Green States of America, even the smallest and most scattered blights of human civilization were being returned to nature, so that all citizens could be relocated to the reservations, and confined there for the most part.

  Joss understood the need for this, and looked forward to rejoining his crew, with whom he could perform work that would take his mind off those peculiar and disturbing changes that had taken place in his body. Through it all, he hoped that he could maintain control over the destructive power. Perhaps he would receive a stroke
of luck, and the intrusive energy would wane; he didn’t really want any part of it.

  Through the dusty windshield of the vehicle he saw the profile of a Janus Machine, and felt a rush of pleasure when he made out the familiar numerals on the side of the big truck: 129. It was his old rig, and the black cannon was firing at a site in the opposite direction, though Joss was not sure of the target.

  When the car arrived and the crew saw him through an open window, they stopped work and rushed to greet him. Kupi Landau was the last to jump down onto the sand. As Joss stepped out into the warm, dry air, he saw her grinning at him. “It’s about time you showed up for work!” she exclaimed.

  The aging mechanic, Sabe McCarthy, tilted his owl helmet up and patted Joss on the back. “Good to see you, boy!”

  “What do you mean calling me boy, you old fart?” Joss said, grinning. “Have your forgotten I’m your boss?”

  The others gathered around him, and he gave each of them a hug, the longest for Kupi. It was good to see all of them with their helmets tilted up, showing their dusty, grinning faces.

  As Kupi pulled away from the embrace, she touched the keloid scar that crossed Joss’s forehead and ran down the side of his face like a green vine.

  “I’ve lost some of my looks,” he admitted.

  “Oh, I don’t think so at all. You have a much more interesting appearance now, and quite sexy.”

  Joss grinned. She sounded sincere. He saw a balding, black-bearded man walking toward them from the Janus Machine, carrying his helmet under one arm. Joss didn’t recognize him.

  “I’m Tom Ellerby,” the man said, “your place mark while you were away.” He leaned forward, gave Joss a strong handshake. “I operated the Seed Cannon, anyway. Kupi’s been running the show.”

  They exchanged small talk. Then Ellerby said, “Kupi has a little more work to do, and then we can greenform. Your cannon is loaded with native hydroseeds tailored for the locale and weather, ready to go. You feel like firing it off in a few minutes?”

  “I don’t know,” Joss said, “maybe you should finish this site.” He looked toward the area that had been split, saw a scarlike slash in the landscape, a large trench that was partially full of water. “What exactly are you doing out here?”

  “Rerouting an underground spring system,” Kupi said. “Repairing it, actually. Strip miners and oil-well drillers played havoc with the landscape and the aquifer, disturbing the ground and diverting the natural flow of water. Chairman Rahma wants to bring more people into the Sonora Reservation, but can’t until the water supply is improved. Following instructions from the AOE Corps of Engineers, I’ve been using low power settings to rearrange dirt and rocks, improving this section dramatically.”

  She pointed at the long open trench. “See how the water level is receding? It’s going exactly where it should now. The Corps just inspected the site and said we can seal up the hole.” She scowled. “People say anarchists only destroy things. This proves otherwise, eh?”

  Joss nodded. And looking at Ellerby, he said, “Why don’t you go ahead after she’s finished? I’m just here to see everyone today. We can work out the duties afterward.”

  “Nothing to work out,” Ellerby said. “I’ll take a transfer to another crew, and you can have your old job back.” He was quite pleasant, but seemed ill at ease.

  “All right,” Joss said, “but I want you to go ahead and shoot the cannon this time. You selected the seeds and loaded them, so by rights this is your assignment.”

  “You two work out the details,” Kupi said, walking toward the Janus Machine. “I’ve got a trench to fill.”

  While Joss watched from the safety of a blast barrier, Kupi fired the Splitter barrel repeatedly, using low power settings to move mucky soil back into the trench, after which she covered it back up and evened out the surface so that no depression could be seen in the topography.

  When it was his turn, Tom Ellerby fired the Seed Cannon twice, showering hydroseeds over the disturbed, moist ground.

  Moments later Joss stepped out from behind the blast barrier and greeted Kupi as she climbed down from the Janus Machine. “I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get my life back,” he said.

  “The experiments are finished now?” she asked. The pair strolled around to the other side of the Janus Machine, where they gazed out on the restored landscape.

  “Not yet,” Joss said. He explained the arrangement he had with Dr. Mora and the SciOs.

  “Sounds better than before, anyway,” she said.

  Joss heard the sound of a vehicle behind him, and voices, but he didn’t look in that direction. Instead he peered out at the worksite and said, “Ellerby missed a section.”

  “He’s not as skilled as you,” she said.

  “It’s quite noticeable, maybe thirty meters square.” He pointed toward the foreground of the site. “See it?” He felt his heartbeat surge.

  “Yeah. I’ll tell him to refire the cannon.”

  With the acceleration of his pulse, Joss felt a peculiar sensation. He seemed to be absorbing a lot of energy from the warm sun overhead and noticed the green, vinelike scars on his arms bulging, and tiny, bright green scars on his fingers that he had not seen before.

  Involuntarily he raised a hand. It grew rigid, and green light lanced out of his fingertips, bathing the flawed area in a wash of sparkling green particles, a rain of color. A chill of realization ran down his spine.

  It didn’t seem possible, and yet.…

  He squinted, and on the ground in the flawed area he saw seeds now, spread evenly and ready to grow—and he knew they had not been moved from the rest of the site. Somehow he had generated them from the natural environment, and they were exactly the right mixture.

  “How did you do that?” A man’s voice, behind him.

  Turning to look, Joss felt as if he were in a dream, unable to extract himself from it. His heartbeat slowed. Two men and a woman approached him, in matching dark green business suits.

  “I’m Lucero Wiggins,” the older of the men said, the one who had just spoken. He had a sparse blond beard. “Publisher of The Green Times. And these”—he designated the pair with him—“are my reporters. I ask you again, how did you do that … that trick?”

  “It was not a trick, and I don’t know,” Joss said. “Look, I really don’t want attention from the press. I’ve already agreed to cooperate with the SciOs for their continuing investigations.”

  “Can you still use the Dark Energy?” the female reporter asked. Small and prim, she had oversized glasses and her hair was secured in a tight bun. She stared at him intensely, reminding him of a SciO laboratory technician.

  Joss stared at her, felt enough irritation to cause the fingers of one hand to darken and glow. He waved his hand angrily, making slender black strands appear in the air and linger. He glared at a basketball-size rock, and a black thread of energy shot at it like a whip, melting it into a gray mass.

  Then, taking a deep, calming breath, Joss caused the black strands of energy to dissipate, by force of will. “I had no idea I could greenform as well as split. I don’t understand what’s happening to me at all.”

  “Marvelous!” the other reporter exclaimed. “Most interesting. How do you feel when you do these things?”

  “Anxious and nervous,” Joss said. “And hyped up. My metabolism becomes like a hummingbird’s, making my heartbeat feel like ten times normal.”

  “Doesn’t that frighten you?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, but not so much for myself. I’m more afraid that I’ll misuse the powers and hurt someone.” Joss paused. “I suspect the powers will eventually wear off, or at least I hope they do. They are just an aberration, can’t last.” He took another deep breath, continued to calm himself. At least he had some control over his body, but the unwanted presence had a way of activating itself without his conscious intent.

  The publisher and reporters asked a handful of additional questions, and Joss tried to be cooperative. Th
en, at his request, they departed, agreeing to contact Dr. Mora for additional information, and to seek permission to observe future experiments. As they opened doors and climbed into their overland vehicle, Joss noticed another passenger inside, sitting in the back with the reporters. Though he couldn’t make out the face in the interior shadows it was a man, Joss decided, his face shaded by the brim of an outback hat. Something seemed vaguely familiar about him, but the doors closed quickly, blocking Joss’s view with dark, tinted windows.

  Unable to make a memory connection, he put the question out of his mind. The man’s identity didn’t matter, really, and he was probably a complete stranger. So many citizens resembled one another in appearance, and he encountered a lot of people. Besides, he had too many things to think about that were far more important.

  33

  We humans have a habit of celebrating the grotesque, the macabre, the most base and tasteless of all things. And yet, paradoxically, we claim to be the most advanced of all species.

  —Glanno Artindale, personal observation (on the eve of his death)

  CHAIRMAN RAHMA POPAL had awoken with a feeling of uneasiness. It was just past dawn now, and he stood on the large balcony outside his bedroom, smoking a pipe of North African hash and gazing out on the colors of the sunrise as they opened up over the greenery of the game reserve and the snowcapped mountains beyond. The powerful marijuana infused his lungs and his consciousness, making him feel a little less anxious, but not enough.

  Squinting into the light he saw something in the sky, an object that was drifting downward, dropping slowly toward the earth. He hurried to an antique spyglass on a tripod, and saw that the dark, squarish object was suspended from a barely discernible parachute, its fabric containing the mottled colors of the sky.

  This should not be happening. He looked upward, for any sign of an aircraft that might have released its cargo, but saw nothing, only wispy clouds whose undersides were awash in color.