Flashback

Sato snorted what could have been a laugh. “ ‘Body Nazi,’ ” he repeated. “No, I have not heard that term before, but I believe it appropriate nonetheless.”

Joggers passed the rickshaw on the left and right, their fists and lean forearms pumping, their distracted gazes fixed on some distant but reachable goal of physical immortality.

With the foothills of Flagstaff Mountain looming, the rickshaw cyclists turned left into the broad-lawned and leafy expanse of the Chautauqua grounds. The huge auditorium higher on the hill loomed over the Arts and Crafts dining hall and other structures.

After Sato had paid off the two pedalers, Nick said, “What do you know about this place? Not Chautauqua, but the Naropa Institute that rents it most of the year?”

The big security chief shrugged. “Only what the telephone told me, Bottom-san. The university was founded in nineteen seventy-four by the exiled Tibetan tulku Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The name Naropa comes from an eleventh-century Buddhist sage from India. The university was officially accredited sometime in the late nineteen-eighties but unlike most religious universities in your country, it hasn’t really distanced itself from its larger Buddhist organization—Shambhala International, I believe.”

“Are you Buddhist, Sato?” Nick asked.

Sato stared until Nick got tired of seeing himself in the security chief’s sunglasses. Finally the big man spoke. “This way to the administration building, I believe. We’ll have to hurry or be late for our interview with Mr. Dean.”

“Our interview?” demanded Nick.

“I have interest in hearing what this gentleman has to say,” said Sato. “As chief investigator, you may, of course, ask all the questions, Bottom-san.”

“Fuck you,” said Nick. But he stayed away from the word motherfucker.

They hurried.

Nick had heard that the big wood-framed Chautauqua Auditorium, despite being little more than an oversized barn, had—for almost a century and a half—earned performing artists’ praise for its outstanding acoustics. When Nick had come here with his parents as a kid to watch and hear such twentieth-century marvels as Bobby McFerrin, the Chautauqua people had finally patched the roof—previous generations of audiences had been able to look up and see the moon and stars through the cracks and missing shingles—but one could still see the leaves of the trees and sky through gaps in the ancient wooden sidewalls. Now Naropa had rebuilt the walls so there was no view through them any longer.

The stage of the auditorium remained but the rest of the space had been altered for winter institute use, the ancient, rock-hard folding seats taken out and scores of low platforms set up to level the floor. On each platform were dozens of comfortable beds and each bed was ringed by a fortune’s worth of monitoring devices showing pulse, blood pressure, EEG, and the various spikes and sine waves of sleep. Men and women—it was sometimes hard to tell which because of the shaved heads—wearing saffron robes monitored the monitors. Nick guessed that the room held at least a thousand beds.

Nick instantly saw the place for what it was—an infinitely cleaner version of Mickey Grossven’s flashcave: a place where flashers who wanted to go long under the flash had someone to guard them and their belongings and make sure they didn’t stay under so long that their muscles atrophied or their digestive systems shut down from receiving only IV fluids. And where Mickey’s cave had a staff-to-sleeping-flasher ratio of about one to three hundred, the Naropa Institute must have had at least one hovering “expert” to each four bodies under the flash.

Their escort had just left them so Nick was free to say to Sato, “This is where Naropa has made its real fortune the last decade or so. Somebody on the Naropa board of directors decided that the Buddhist goal of ‘being present in the moment’ included having to relive that moment… all moments. The Naropa students here and at NCAR and the former Bureau of Standards building—I think there are about fifteen thousand such students who’ve come to Boulder and Naropa—are doing what they call ‘interior work.’ ”

“Based on Vajrayana teachings on finding and applying internal esoteric energies,” whispered Sato.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Nick. “It maxes out on the BQ meter.”

“BQ meter, Bottom-san?”

“Bullshit Quotient.”

“Ah, so.”

“The Naropa Institute’s also into your Japanese Tea Ceremony, faux-Christian labyrinth stuff, ikebana, healing crystals, out-of-body experiences, Druid ritual, and Wikkan ceremonies… that’s witchcraft to you, Sato-san.”

“Ikebana and the Tea Ceremony are worthy forms of meditation,” the huge security chief said softly. “But not, perhaps, in the hands of these charlatans.”

One of the saffron-robed medics came up a ramp to where Nick and Sato waited by the door. The man looked to be American but had the shaved head of all the teachers and students here. He put his hands together, bowed low, and said, “Namaste.”