No automobiles or powered vehicles of any sort were allowed in Boulder. Even the police cars and fire engines depended on bicycle power. Sato was directed to one of the underground parking garages that ran for two miles along the east-west line of Table Mesa Road. Parking was expensive since each slot was in its own bombproof cradle (and this after having to pass through two CMRI portals on the way in). From the garage, one could proceed into Boulder on foot, but since the metro area of about two hundred thousand people was almost twenty-eight square miles in size, most visitors opted for renting a city-owned Segway or—much cheaper—a bicycle, human-pulled rickshaw, pedal-yourself pedicab, or bicycle-pulled rickshaw. (Every time Nick visited the People’s Republic, he thought of how his old man would have enjoyed the irony of the city that couldn’t stand the thought of dogs and cats being degraded as “pets” having a transportation system based on human beings, mostly immigrants housed in city barracks, pulling rickshaws.)
Sato and Nick opted for a double-wide rickshaw pulled by two Malaysian men on bikes.
The ride was about three miles and Nick tried to relax as the rickshaw jolted up Table Mesa to Broadway, Broadway to Baseline, and Baseline west a half mile or so toward Chautauqua Park.
The Boulder Chautauqua had been there since 1898. Based on the idea of the original Chautauqua, in western New York, and part of the burgeoning Chautauqua Movement in the 1890s, it had been founded in Boulder by Texans who wanted a place with cottages, a dining hall, and a barn for lectures and musical events where they could escape the Texas summer heat. When Mark Twain lost his fortune through bad investments in a typesetting machine and took to the lecture circuit again just before he turned sixty, the circuit was mostly through Chautauquas around the nation. Many summer Chautauquas were mere tent cities, but a few such as the one in Boulder boasted permanent residences and large buildings for the educational, religious, and cultural lectures and courses.
This Chautauqua was perched on a grassy shelf above Boulder that backed against the greenbelt and a web of hiking trails. Nick had come up to Boulder with his parents when he was a little kid to hike those trails. It was still a popular hiking area for Boulderites, although occasional sniper attacks and a resurgence in the mountain lion population had somewhat reduced the number of hikers.
Much farther to their right, beyond Canyon Road at the edge of this residential district, rose the high minaret of Masjid Ahl al-Hadeeth Mosque. Boulder’s prohibition on any structure taller than five stories was more than sixty years old, but the city council had waived that restriction for the Masjid Ahl al-Hadeeth and its minaret was three times the old legal building height. Local Muslims and the New Caliphate had shown their appreciation with major financial contributions to the city and by demanding that Boulder evict any and all Jews currently living within the city limits. The city council was taking the request under advisement (and Nick had seen the online
Sato interrupted Nick’s broodings by saying, “It’s a good thing that our Advisor diplomatic status allows us to keep our weapons.”
Nick grunted.
“You did not bring an extra magazine, did you, Bottom-san,” Sato said softly.
“My daddy taught me that if fifteen isn’t enough, another fifteen or thirty won’t help,” Nick said tersely.
Sato nodded. “Indeed. But those Government Motors geldings are hard to kill. Well, you should not need your weapon here in Boulder. It is the most peaceful city in Colorado, is it not?”
“One of them,” said Nick.
Besides the occasional rickshaw or pedicab, the streets were filled with spandexed and heavily helmeted cyclists on featherlight bikes that cost a million new bucks or more. There were also joggers and runners everywhere—hundreds and thousands of joggers and runners, many in sweaty spandex but some almost nude and others totally nude.
“The People’s Republic seems to be a very healthy place,” Sato said. “Not modest, but healthy.”
“Oh, yes,” said Nick. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Body Nazi’? Lots and lots of Body Nazis in the People’s Republic.”
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 Chogyam 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.”
“
“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
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…
