Miss Buddha (58 page)

“And, yes, for the first day, or week, it
seems to work, until the side-effects of this new pill breaks you
out in hives or make you unable to sleep or relax, calling for more
drugs that will help you in that direction, which, of course, have
their own side-effects and which may or may not mix at all well
with drugs already in the system—all the while the stillness is not
only forgotten but so obscured as to now be impossible to sense or
find.

“I view the pharmaceutical epidemic as just
that, a threat to true happiness as insidious and as real as
obesity and over-consumption. We in the Western world are burying
ourselves alive, we are doing all we can to kill the unkillable,
and we’re doing a pretty good job of it.”

Her voice, over the last sentences, had
risen to almost a shout. So when she said nothing more, the silence
was palpable.

But in this silence Ananda heard something
that made him turn his head. It was the soft murmur between the
three men by the door, one of whom was filming Ruth’s lecture—an
unlikely candidate for that, is what Ananda thought. The words
whispered back and forth held agitation, an urgency, reinforcing
Ananda’s uneasy feeling about them.

He tapped Clare’s shoulder and looked back
at the men. “What do you make of them?” he whispered.

Clare turned. Took them in. Turned back to
Ananda, but before she could speak, Ruth said, “Man for man, woman
for woman, we were happier two hundred years ago, with far less
product to consume. With far fewer—if any—drugs to suffocate the
stillness.”

Then she paused again, and Clare looked back
over her shoulder at the three men. “Agents of some sort,” she
said.

“Agents?” Ananda’s whisper was too loud,
more like a soft shout. Ruth even looked in his direction.

“I’ve learned to spot them,” said Clare. “It
comes with my professional territory. That’s either CIA or FBI or
some other Internal Security Outfit.”

“Government agents?” Ananda clarified, as
Ruth said:

“If we are ever to return to, or find, true
happiness, we need to join ranks with the mystics and learn to
renounce this avalanche of product. We must learn to live simpler
lives that do not require drugs to get us up in the morning, and
drugs to tuck us in at night.

“The stillness cannot die, cannot be killed,
no matter how much you may have been convinced that it can. It is
still there, within each and every one of you, intact, alight. But
you need to slow down, you need to still the avarice that drives
you to consume, you need to take a trip out to the ocean, or over
to the mountains and listen to nature for a while, and know that
this is what nature sounded like a hundred years ago, a thousand, a
million years ago, still unperturbed though a little sad to see the
folly of man, the supposed rulers of the earth.

“If you allow it, your inner stillness will
shake its shackles, will displace even mountains, and rise to
prominence once again. Nowhere else will you find true
happiness.”

After another brief survey of her class, she
ended in her usual way: “Questions?”

Even before the lights undimmed the line had
formed. Many questions. Ananda knew that she had touched a nerve,
and at just the right time—considering the lectures she had given
them to date. This was the precise thing to convey.

Turning to the line of students, Ananda also
caught the last of the three men leaving the hall, apparently in a
hurry. He tapped Clare’s arm again, and she turned. But they had
gone.

“Are you sure?” said Ananda. “Government
agents?”

“Positive,” said Clare.

:

“It’s not so much what she says. From what I
can gather there’s really nothing new there, but it’s how she says
it. The kids, and the adults as well, lap it up and in, they take
it as gospel. I’ve never seen kids listen so hard.” Agent Roth was
back at his car, cell phone stuck between cheek and shoulder while
he was opening the driver-side door. Fisk and Johnson were heading
for their car a few rows over.

Fisk looked back, gave Roth a
see-you-back-at-the-office wave. Roth waved back in the
affirmative.

“What do you mean, how she says it?”
Anderson, his direct report at the other end of the line, spoke
with a southern accent, Texan through and through, and proud of
it.

“She is, well, spellbinding,” said Roth.

“Spellbinding?”

“Yes.”

“As in sorcery?”

“Now that you mention it,” said Roth.

“Get your ass in here,” said Anderson. Not
kindly. Not unkindly.

:

Filing out of the hall with the rest of the
audience, Ananda discerned more than one whisper of “The Buddha”
among the young men and women surrounding him. He looked over at
Clare to see if she noticed as well, but she seemed wrapped in her
own thoughts.

Another phrase caught Ananda’s ear, and more
than once. It was “Messenger.”

:

Ruth’s office, in stark contrast to other
staff offices on both sides of hers, was free of clutter to an
almost sterile degree. Pristine is the word that always occurred to
Ananda.

Ruth, who greeted them standing, now sat
down behind her desk, and motioned with her hand for Ananda and
Clare to pick a chair each—there were four or five to choose from,
to accommodate small informal student conferences.

“Wow,” said Clare. “You really have their
ear.”

Ruth smiled and nodded. Looked over at
Ananda. “Yes, it’s going well.”

“There were many adults in the audience as
well,” Clare observed.

“The faculty,” said Ananda.

“Curious at first,” said Ruth. “Now quite
sincere. Interested.”

“It may be going a little too well,” said
Ananda.

Clare seemed to know what he was referring
to, but Ruth did not. “Always one to worry,” Ruth said. “What do
you mean, Ananda?”

“There were government agents in the back of
the hall this time.”

Her smile faded and Ruth took a long hard
look at Ananda. Then over at Clare. Asked her, “Were they?”

“Yes, definitely. No question,” said
Clare.

“Should I worry, or leave that to Ananda?”
she said.

“I think,” began Clare, and then looked over
at Ananda as if to garner agreement. Ananda nodded slowly.

“I think,” said Clare again, then followed
it with: “that you should not not worry.”

“Meaning?” said Ruth.

“Meaning, government agents do not normally
monitor university lecturers. They are here for a reason, Ruth, and
that might well be a cause for worry.”

“I guess you don’t disagree,” said Ruth to
Ananda.

“This is not a joke,” said Ananda.

“I didn’t mean for it to be.”

“You are attracting an awful lot of
attention,” said Ananda. Then added, “Again.”

“I have a job to do,” said Ruth.

“I know that.”

“Have you been stepping on any toes?” asked
Clare.

“Toes?” Ruth and Ananda spoke in
near-unison.

“Yes. These people usually don’t show up
unless someone’s rights, or territory, has been violated, or
infringed upon.”

Ruth and Ananda exchanged searching glances.
“No,” said Ruth. “I don’t think I have stepped on any toes.”

“Well, you’ve earned someone’s official
interest,” said Clare. Then added, “And that’s not necessarily a
good thing.”

::
108 :: (Los Angeles)

A decade or so before he was recruited by the
FBI—he had just turned twelve at the time—George Roth became a
celebrity, at least in some circles, when he discovered and
reported a supernova in the constellation of Orion.

At eight, he had decided he would be an
astronomer when he grew up. At nine, with his interest in stars not
abating, his parents (who were pretty sure that astronomy was not a
well-paid occupation, if indeed it provided work at all) grew
concerned.

At ten, after many subtle, then
not-so-subtle attempts to dissuade him from his chosen stellar
path, his parents finally humored him and helped pay for a used
Meade, 12” telescope, which George would carry up to the roof of
his suburban apartment house any night that was—or might prove—free
of clouds.

At eleven he grew what his parents would
refer to as “obsessed” with supernovae and began to scan the skies
for them.

A supernova, should you be lucky enough to
have your telescope trained in that direction (though distance
will, of course, have bearing on its brightness—one spectacular
supernova in 1604, for example, made a star so bright it was
visible during the day for over three weeks), will simply appear as
a bright though short-lived star among the endless sea of permanent
stars in the skies. And who’s to say that a field of millions of
supernova-free stars yesterday has a brief guest today, unless you
notice a change—ever so slight, obviously—in the fabric of the
star-field.

George Roth had that remarkable ability. And
not only with stars. He could spot disruptions or changes in even
the most intricate patterns. “Just a knack, I guess,” he answered
one interviewer after his reported supernova had been confirmed by
three independent (and official) observatories.

He had been scanning Orion for the week
prior, section by section, memorizing (and recognizing) the pattern
of each, looking for that small disturbance that might, that just
might, be the brief flash of that giant explosion so incredibly
many light years away.

Returning for a tenth scan of the
constellation, he viewed section one (no change), section two (no
change), section three (no change), but section four had changed.
The flicker was, to him, unmistakable. And it had not been there
the night before. How could he be certain? Well, he just was.

He made a careful note of the position in
his log, then packed up his telescope and went down to his
computer. Not only did he email all of his astronomy-buffs friends,
but he also reported his sighting to several astronomical societies
both in North America and in Europe.

Two hours later he had one official
confirmation, from Hawaii. Yes, that was indeed a supernova.

The following night, it shone a little
brighter, and the night after that, brighter still. Then it began
to fade, and after a week, it was gone.

George felt like a hunter who had just slain
his most elusive prey. Walking on clouds.

Word spread fast that a twelve-year old had
beaten the combined astronomical profession to the Orion supernova
punch, and for the next week or so he grew quite famous. Three
television crews arrived within hours of each other. The national
papers carried his picture. The local papers did several stories,
both about him and about his parents, and about astronomy in
general.

It was a big deal.

But as such excitements do, this one soon
died down as well, letting George get on with what he liked the
best, training his telescope on the night-sky in search of mammoth
explosions.

This all changed one sweltering August night
when his mother was killed by a stray bullet.

George had walked with her to the nearby
grocery store, and was now helping her carry the bags home. One
moment she was talking to him, asking him something, the next
moment she, mid-sentence, fell silent.

She sometimes did this—when thoughts struck
her, which they did now and then—so for the first fraction of a
second George sensed nothing wrong. Then she dropped her bag, and
she dropped to the sidewalk. That is when George turned his head
and saw that something terrible had happened. He also saw the
speeding Audi, and those inside that car.

There were several other witnesses to the
shooting, most of whom reported a speeding car, one of whom
confirmed it was an Audi, but none of whom could with any degree of
certainty tell even how many people might have been in the car,
much less what they looked like.

All except George. He had not only noticed
the three men in the car, he had noticed the gun in the hand of the
front seat passenger.

Initially, the police did not take him
seriously, there was just no way. It had happened too fast. No one
else could identify them. George insisted.

In the end, George did clearly identify the
shooter, who eventually, as part of a plea-bargaining deal,
confessed to aiming for (and missing) his intended target, and
accidentally killing George’s mother.

This marked the end of George’s interest in
astronomy. His priorities had changed, is how he put it to his
father. He had decided to deploy his talent more constructively, he
wanted to join the police force. Wanted to become a detective.

Long story short: he succeeded. And so
spectacularly, that he soon caught the attention of the local FBI
office, who felt that his talents could be better utilized at the
federal level. His seniors at the department (though somewhat
reluctantly), as well as George himself, agreed.

And so: Agent George Roth. Pattern wizard
extraordinaire.

Now assigned to detect what kind of
disturbances this apparent genius named Ruth Marten might cause in
the relatively peaceful societal fabric.

::
109 :: (Los Angeles)

Phil Anderson rose his well-exercised six
feet to his usual impressively straight as Roth knocked and
entered. Anderson folded his arms. Unfolded them. Joined his hands
behind his back. Then made to sit down again, but remained
standing.

“So, George. What have you got?”

Roth closed the door behind him, and took a
quick look around Anderson’s office, just to make sure they were
alone. Nervous habit. Then thought about taking a seat, but since
Anderson remained standing thought it best to do the same.

“Well, she certainly has their ear. In a big
way.”

“In a dangerous way?”

The question took Roth by surprise, or,
rather, the intent of the question. He saw his assignment as a more
or less routine check-up on someone of rising popularity, they
always warranted a closer look. There had been no mention of
danger, or threat to any one or thing; or of whatever his boss was
certainly implying. Until now.