The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (16 page)

“Yeah, as long as we can knock it off the hoof.”

Kupi stared out a side window. “No rules except one: survive. I like the sound of it.”

“You would, Kupi, being an anarchist. You say there are people out in the woods, hiding and living off the land. But what if there were so many anarchists out there that they needed to form rules in order to keep from bumping into each other and having problems? What if the anarchists found they needed—I hate to say it—some form of government, or just a police force?”

She smiled. “You seek to trap me with your logic, but you're extrapolating too far, setting up a preposterous scenario. Yes, there are anarchists living in the woods at this very moment, beyond GSA control, but there are not so many that they would consider forming governmental or quasi-governmental entities. True anarchists would rather die first.”

“And are you a true anarchist?”

She reddened. “Perhaps not, but if I am not pure I am not alone in having flaws. There are, admittedly, certain attractive elements to the lives that you and I lead. I must admit that I get a major rush whenever I fire Black Thunder!”

“And when we run out of areas to split and greenform? What will you do then?”

“What any good anarchist would do. I'll just fade to black.”

“Meaning?”

“I haven't thought it through completely.”

“How about our relationship? Have you thought that through completely?”

Kupi swung out of her power station and leaned over Joss, kissing him on the neck and moving around to his mouth. “What's to think about?” she asked.

“A lot,” he said. “Sometimes I think we're too different to last.”

“Then live for today, my love.” She kissed him passionately.

He pulled away and looked at her, feeling his mounting desire, but trying to suppress it. “What about tomorrow?”

“We're back to work tomorrow, Joss. You know that. We're taking a train to the Berkeley Reservation, the glorious capital of Rahma's counterculture revolution.”

“You know I'm talking about more than that; I'm talking about all of the tomorrows in our lives.”

“How romantic, and poetic. So, you want to talk about our relationship, eh? I thought that men were terrified of the ‘r' word, but here you are bringing it up.”

“I just want to know where we stand.”

She smiled, and it struck him how much younger than forty-five she looked. In her early thirties like him, he thought, as she nuzzled against him and breathed hot air on his ear.

Trying to resist her advances, Joss said, “If you don't want to talk, think about this. In seventeen minutes, the ship's computer will demand that we resume our power output, or it will fly us back to the reservation.”

“It took us an hour to get here,” she said, unbuttoning her blouse and revealing her bra. As always, her underclothes were black.

“That was with us propelling the plane. Without us, the return speed could be faster.”

“Then we'd better hurry up,” she said, loosening his belt and pulling off his trousers and shoes.

He felt too weak to resist her, at least physically. Moment by moment, Joss found her animal nature consuming him, taking him over completely. And without another word, they tumbled onto the deck. Their lovemaking was better than ever before, feral and spontaneous.

Joss had not been able to find the right words, didn't want to hurt her. But afterward, looking into her brown eyes and seeing the pain and sadness there, he realized that she understood what he'd been trying to say anyway. Their passion was only delaying the inevitable.

 

16

Corporate religious fanatics have called us amoral, but that is not correct. It's just that we have a different moral compass from theirs, and the two do not point in the same direction. Our goals are selfless; theirs are self-serving.

—Chairman Rahma,
The Little Green Book

IT WAS A
chilly, damp morning on the game reserve, with lacy mists lingering over the ground and the grazing animals. Rahma Popal had been up since dawn three hours ago, when he and Dori Longet had made love and watched the play of colors across the hills to the east. Afterward she had gone over his daily schedule with him, preparing him for the business of the day. Then she went to breakfast with her parents, who were allowed to visit her on occasion. He'd seen them walking toward the communal dining area.

As the Chairman strode to the central meeting yurt he wore one of his simpler robes, a plain brown garment with a white peace symbol on the lapel. His advisers didn't like him to dress in this manner, without the trappings of high office or impressive government sigils, but he didn't care what they said. The Green States of America was really a separate entity from him, and it had its own energy, its own momentum. To keep himself sane and free of hubris, and to avoid being consumed by the GSA, the Chairman had developed a habit of dipping in and out of its various structures and formalities.

In doing this he sometimes thought of his former girlfriend from the revolutionary days, Kupi Landau, the fiery anarchist who used to dream of separating herself entirely from the cruel societal games that humans liked to play, and all of the attendant configurations, whether petty or significant. Since their amicable breakup almost twenty years ago, he'd been monitoring her progress with various reports that came in on her, and often he worried over her well-being. She was so outspoken! Even so, despite all, he still cared about her, albeit in his own way. Rahma cared about all of his women, whether they were still living with him or not.

In the past year he'd received numerous reports about Kupi's personal behavior, with some of the most interesting specifics coming from Andruw Twitty, the roommate of her present boyfriend. Chairman Rahma had never met Twitty personally, only by avatar projection whenever the young man passed along secondhand information, things that Kupi's boyfriend had purportedly said about her. But Rahma knew Twitty's parents, and remembered their valuable contributions to the victory over the Corporates, when they firebombed a key enemy military building. They held administrative positions now with the GSA's important Quality Control Division, responsible for ensuring that products were manufactured according to strict green guidelines.

Twitty was one of the informants scheduled to report to Rahma this morning, with the topic being the activities of anarchists who worked for the GSA government. Though all Black Shirts had promised loyalty to the government and its philosophical underpinnings, they still needed constant monitoring, because of the naturally rebellious nature of their kind.

Strolling across the grass to the meeting yurt, Rahma saw Artie out in front, talking with yellow-uniformed hubots on the security force as they ran electronics over the building and around the grounds, constantly looking for breaches. It was just routine, one of the periodic checks that they performed in cooperation with the special Greenpol police who had been assigned to guard him. The hubots were very good about details.

“No problems, Master,” Artie said.

“Very good.” The Chairman swept by him and entered the yurt, where he sat cross-legged on the wooden floor at the center of a large room. Waving his hands in readiness, he began to see the avatars of men and women appear out of the ether and take seats in a half circle facing him. He counted eight realistic apparitions.

This morning he would take their reports in the alphabetical order of their surnames, a diversion he'd decided upon at the last moment. All informants were not given the honor of being in his presence in this manner. There were thousands of them who sent in information on a regular basis, but through a culling process handled by his subordinates, these were the ones he would see today, on a particular topic. Some, if their information proved useful, would receive monetary rewards or other perks.

And, though he could see their projected faces and they could see him whenever he addressed them separately, the EVR system had been set up so that none of the informants could see the others, and they could not hear one another's words, or the Chairman speaking to the others. For Rahma's convenience, the eight of them seemed to be sitting together as simultaneous visitors, but in reality he carried on compartmentalized, private conversations with each of them. It was enhanced virtual reality, customized for the Chairman's purposes.

*   *   *

IN THE DINING
yurt, Dori and her parents selected from the buffet of organic vegan foods. She noticed that her father avoided the fresh cherry tomatoes, as he always did, opting instead for a synthetic Montana omelet and a large glass of papaya juice. Pierre Longet was a successful businessman, selling small, highly efficient solar collectors that were exported to rural areas of Eurika, for the use of farmers and villagers who did not have access to centralized power grids.

A small, stout man with a high forehead and thin white hair, he was always quiet, and allowed his wife to dominate conversations. This often frustrated Dori, because she enjoyed being with him, and often had to go out of her way to draw him out. He had a wealth of interesting stories that had been told to him by his old-country French grandparents, and he had a way of bringing old events back to life with words—if Dori could only squeeze them out of him.

Now she listened while her mother went on a complaining binge, as she sometimes did, especially when she didn't get a good night's sleep—which was the case with her now because she'd had to rise early to catch the maglev train from the Missoula Reservation. Out of earshot of any other diners she'd been criticizing the buffet selection, the cool temperature in the yurt, and even the slight wilting of wildflowers in vases on the tables.

They selected a corner table, well away from others in the large room, where they could talk privately. Kristine Longet removed her heavy coat and laid it over an extra chair. Simulated gold bracelets encircled her wrists. As she sat down she looked across the table at Dori and said, “An awful, impertinent serviceman came to our apartment the other day to work on our cleaning bot. He actually had the temerity to try to shake my hand. And do you know why?”

Dori took a sip of the strong coffee. “No, Mother.”

“Because his daughter is here on the game reserve.” She lowered her voice even more. “He says she's one of the Chairman's women.”

Dori smiled. “Well, he does have quite a number of ladies around him all the time. He's always liked the companionship of the opposite sex.”

“I've never understood how you could be so relaxed about that,” the older woman said. She nibbled on a small vegan patty, one of several on her plate, of varying colors and flavors.

“Maybe it's because I'm his favorite.”

“Well, you'd better watch yourself. Her name is Jade Ridell, and her father seems overly ambitious.”

“That's her over there,” Dori said, nodding toward a table across the room. “The pretty redhead reading an e-book.”

Kristine Longet stared long and hard, wrinkling her face into a scowl.

“She seems nice enough, Mother.”

“Don't ever trust her. Women can be very manipulative.”

“Oh, don't worry, Mother, I've always had lots of competition around here, and I manage to fend them off.”

“You are getting older, dear. Don't forget that.”

“I'm only thirty-one!”

“You can't hold on to your beauty forever.”

“You seem to be managing well for yourself,” Dori responded, while catching a bemused glance from her father.

This pleased her mother. “Thank you for that.”

“Besides, the Chairman depends on me to keep track of important business matters for him.” The pretty blonde paused, thinking of the liaisons with other women she sometimes coordinated as well. “And certain personal matters.”

*   *   *

AS SHE SAT
across the dining hall, Jade Ridell was reading an interesting electronic book,
Mega-Corporations: The New Colonialists
. It described a time before the Green Revolution when the largest international corporations were like colonial nations, except instead of plundering third-world nations of their resources, the gluttonous, amoral corporations plundered average consumers of their hard-earned assets. This occurred in the United States, in Europe, and in every region where people could afford discretionary spending. The big corporations sucked up their money like huge vacuum cleaners.

Jade happened to be looking up from the book when she noticed the evil glare from Dori's mother. On one level she didn't understand how the woman could be that way, but on another—on a very
female
level—she understood completely. The mother wanted her own daughter to retain her primacy among Rahma's women.

Although her own family (and especially her father) had pressed Jade to do well, to advance in this haremlike realm, she was not consciously trying to harm anyone else in the process, or hurt their chances. Whenever she was with Rahma (and they would be together after his meeting), she just tried to be herself, showing her natural strength of personality while generally deferring to what he wanted. In every dealing they had, be it sexual or just going someplace together on the game reserve, she let him know the obvious—that he was the boss—but she didn't wilt to his every whim. She showed considerable backbone, but not too much, not so much that it irritated him. He seemed to like this about her.

She wanted so much to please the great man. And in that respect she felt very good about herself, because she genuinely liked him. Not just because he was so powerful, or physically attractive for his age, but because of who he was in his heart, because of the far-reaching, unselfish dreams he held for this planet and its life-forms. She had never met anyone who resembled him in the smallest degree; he was, truly, one of a kind.