The Little Green Book of Chairman Rahma (46 page)

It was as Rahma had always told him: animals were not lower life-forms, and were in fact superior to humans. “Count the ways,” the bearded guru used to say.

Now the Chairman was limp and dead between the hubot and the doctor, and the glidewolf who had taken it upon herself to protect Rahma was transporting his body someplace far away. To recycle it, presumably, as the illustrious environmentalist would have wanted. But why had she included Artie and Valerie, and where were they going?

*   *   *

DEEP BENEATH HIS
mansion in the Berkeley hills, Arch Ondex stood by himself in a bunker, watching monitors and listening to the electronic chatter of robots around him as they performed their duties at workstations, coordinating with robots in other SciO and GSA bunkers around the country. The NDS had gone offline some time ago, and no one knew why. His own operation was relying on other communication links that continued to function.

In the past hour, the huge black and green clouds had passed over the east coast and the Midwest, breaching three of the GSA fortifications and one SciO bunker—or at least that was the assumption, because all communications had been cut off with those facilities. Thirty-four other SciO bunkers had weathered the storm, and even more GSA bunkers. After several minutes of communication delay, those stations were all operational again, reporting that everything on the surface of the ground above them had been completely erased.

There had been no word at all from the Montana Valley Game Reserve, so Ondex wondered what had happened there, and if he would ever see the Chairman again, a man he considered to be his friend despite their differences. A feeling of great sadness enveloped him. So much was being lost.

As the SciO leader waited, he knew there were very few options left for him, and none of them was appealing.…

*   *   *

AN OMINOUS BLACK
cloud approached Joss and his companions, beginning to darken the sky like volcanic ash. From his sentinel position in front of the gnarled old oak tree, he heard an eerie, horrendous sound—violence on an immense, unprecedented scale.

He lifted his hands in the air, holding the force field in place to protect the people around him, extending outward for thousands of meters into the forest. He saw the hazy faces and forms of Evana, Kupi, and the others on the trunks of the trees in their fused state, saw the barely perceptible pulsing of the bark on the trunks as the hybrids breathed in unison with him and with one another, as if all of them were a single, linked organism.

With the energy net woven around them to form a sheltered cocoon, Joss looked through the mesh and watched a massive black cloud streak over the land at ground level, destroying everything outside his sheltered area but passing over him with hardly any effect, just a little buffeting of the force field.

The sky became dusty blue afterward. Joss waited for several long minutes, then held position while an immense green cloud swept over the ground, going around the protective cocoon like a great tinted wind, raining sparkles of green and making musical sounds that were not unpleasant to the ears. Again, Joss's shelter survived, and he saw the hybrid trees still breathing. They remained linked to him.

The entire event had been like splitting and greenforming, but on an unprecedented scale. What had happened?

An hour passed in which he waited and wondered. Inside the protected zone he heard a few forest animals and birds moving about tentatively, not knowing or understanding what had occurred. He could only imagine how still and lifeless it must be beyond … or were seeds already germinating out there? He released the protective force field, watched the strands dissipate.

In the distance he thought he saw something flying, but it was only a momentary, flickering vision, and when he stared hard in that direction he saw nothing, nothing at all. It must be a trick of light, he decided, or his hopeful mind contriving something that was not there, like a mirage in the air. The dreadful truth weighed heavily on him.

Not many have survived this,
he thought.
We are among the few.

Though he knew there had been widespread death, Joss Stuart felt an odd sense of peace and acceptance, that this marked a new beginning for life on Earth.

By himself, he entered the largest cedar in the rescued forest, a magnificent and stately tree that towered over the others. It was centuries old, with wide, spreading boughs that arched upward, and deep green needles. Sliding through the sleek, pale greenness of the trunk's interior to the topmost portion, he gazed out in all directions over a faint green, blasted landscape, extending far, far beyond the small area of trees and inhabitants he had saved.

Tenderly he gazed down at the oak that sheltered his cherished Evana, with her face and form on the trunk, and he saw the branches of her tree sway gracefully, in recognition of his attention. She was his mortal human love, which he retained as an important link to what he used to be, a much less complex version of what he had become today, and what he was evolving toward. On this momentous journey he would lead Evana and the others, and they would learn from one another how best to care for one another, and for the new world that had been bestowed upon them.

He felt the great cedar speaking to him wordlessly, with thoughts drifting through his consciousness from a more intelligent sentience than he'd ever encountered before or even imagined, linked to all living things on the planet.

Joss received a flow of information so quickly that he found it difficult to absorb everything. But it was a learning experience for him, and as moments passed, he was able to bring himself into synchronization with the wordless data being sent to him in a way that his human mind could never have absorbed previously, nor could any computer.

Gradually he understood, and realized that the immense catastrophe had a purpose, a reason for occurring. The plants and animals of Earth would regenerate—not all of them, but a substantial number. He learned that higher-state humans of the future would need links to trees in order to live, would have to regularly recharge themselves inside trees, a symbiosis of plants and humans. There would be a new way of traveling for humankind, using green, earth-rooted life-forms along the way, renewing strength inside them and communicating with them as brethren. It was all part of the process of enhanced evolution for mankind, the only path left open to them for their survival.

People cannot live without trees
, he thought. Humans had only an inkling of this in the past, never realizing the form this relationship would need to take.

These were the great cedar's thoughts, and now they were his own as well.

 

Other Books
By Brian Herbert and Jan Herbert

Ocean

By Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Dune: House Atreides

Dune: House Harkonnen

Dune: House Corrino

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

Dune: The Machine Crusade

Dune: The Battle of Corrin

Hunters of Dune

Sandworms of Dune

Paul of Dune

The Winds of Dune

Sisterhood of Dune

Mentats of Dune

Hellhole

Hellhole: Awakening

Hellhole: Inferno
*

By Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson

The Road to Dune

(includes the original short novel
Spice Planet
)

By Brian Herbert

Dreamer of Dune

(biography of Frank Herbert)

 

*
forthcoming

 

About the Author

Brian Herbert, the son of Frank Herbert, is the author of multiple
New York Times
bestsellers. He has won several literary honors and has been nominated for the highest awards in science fiction. In 2003, he published
Dreamer of Dune,
a moving biography of his father that was a Hugo Award finalist. His acclaimed novels include
Sidney's Comet; Sudanna, Sudanna; The Race for God; Timeweb; The Stolen Gospels;
and
Man of Two Worlds
(written with Frank Herbert), in addition to the Hellhole Trilogy and twelve Dune-series novels coauthored with Kevin J. Anderson. In 2013, Brian published
Ocean,
an epic fantasy novel about ocean environmental issues (coauthored with his wife, Jan).

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK OF CHAIRMAN RAHMA

Copyright © 2014 by DreamStar, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Stephen Youll

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-3254-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-5605-9 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466856059

First Edition: July 2014