People were still filing into Sacramento's Arco Arena and seating themselves. There'd been a bomb threat, not the first for an Ngunda appearance, and the search had delayed the opening for more than an hour. The arena was not more than half full, and the inflow had already thinned notably.
Even half full impressed Duke Cochran. If I were one of Ngunda's public, he told himself, I'd have gone home—or stayed home—and watched it on TV. But obviously ten or twelve thousand hadn't felt that way.
The great majority of bomb threats were fakes. Most were examples of the so-called "two-bit sabotage" that had become common, producing gross confusion and delay for no more than the cost of a pay-phone call. And if enough people went home, an arena wouldn't earn out the cost of putting on the event and cleaning up afterward. Enough of that, and arenas thought twice about handling events offensive to activists or even political parties.
Like most people, Cochran was in favor of the new law making terrorism and armed insurrection capital offenses, but they didn't apply to two-bit terrorism. So now most public phones required identity cards. Anonymous telephone and Web threats were harder and harder to get away with.
Shortly the flow of people thinned to a trickle. He wondered if any had managed to smuggle in a weapon of some sort. Security scanners were manned at every entrance, capable of picking up anything including fiber glass pens. Their computers analyzed all of it, instantly and unobtrusively. A plastic grenade might look like a pocket flask; a ceramic, one-shot pistol could resemble a key case; a bag of explosive could be swallowed, and detonated by what appeared to be a hearing aid. Anything that suggested the size, shape, or composition of a large catalog of unacceptable objects brought a quick followup by guards with drawn guns.
But human beings were resourceful. One never knew.
Now the program participants entered, and took their seats on the speakers' platform. There were four of them—four plus a pianist and her instrument. Cochran assumed the piano, too, had been thoroughly scanned.
Among the four speakers, Ngunda Aran stood out. And not, it seemed to Cochran, because he was black. He radiated charisma—a charisma boosted, Cochran suspected, by the energy of the thousands of admirers in the arena.
Cochran himself sat in the second row, in the press section. In a section of the first row were about a dozen young people: college students with a role in the program. A microphone stood on the floor in front of them.
On the platform, a woman got to her feet and approached the podium—Sacramento's mayor. Adjusting the microphone to her height, she cleared her throat softly to alert the crowd, then spoke. As introductions went, it was brief and intelligent. She introduced herself, then Ngunda, then the guest singer, and finally the chairman of the Philosophy Department at Cal State Sacramento. Probably, Cochran thought, the professor considered himself an Ngunda scholar.
He kept his comments short, too. Then Ngunda himself stepped to the podium.
"Good evening," he said. "I am Ngunda Aran. Thank you for your patience during the bomb search." He turned, acknowledged the mayor and professor, then continued: "This evening I will focus on karma."
The voice is part of it, Cochran thought. Deep and rich.
"Karma is neither punishment nor retribution, though it can be perceived as such. It is a force that helps us learn. And one of the lessons—just one of them—that humans learn from karma is that acts balance out over time."
Cochran wasn't impressed with Ngunda's opening. He glanced around at the crowd. Most seemed to be paying close attention. But then, if they weren't interested, they wouldn't be there.
"The term karma is often applied to two different, though similar, sorts of phenomena. The most important is the karmic nexus, formed by killing someone, crippling or wrongly imprisoning them, brainwashing them, or in some way effectively blocking their chosen course of life.
"But even rudeness is sometimes spoken of as karmic, and this can be confusing. The sorts of unpleasant acts we perform many times in every life do not create a karmic nexus. If they did, each life would be a complex maze of between-life agreements with hundreds of people, for prearranged opportunities to balance and extinguish karma. The scheduling problems and compliances would be impossible. So I do not use the term karma for anything that does not create a nexus, a specific karmic note payable to the bearer sooner or later."
He paused, scanning around, seeming to register each person his eyes touched.
"Then, you might ask, what becomes of the negative energy created by lesser acts? As our lives roll by, we find ourselves doing innumerable good acts, large and small, not because of any karmic nexus to be canceled, but because it seems appropriate. Often these are simply random acts of kindness. But at other times we are making amends for old wrongs of lesser sorts than those which create a karmic nexus. In either case, these good acts serve to clean up the environment, so to speak. We do not graduate from the cycle of lives and deaths without having approximately extinguished the negative energy we've created. Including, of course, extinguishing all our karmic nexuses. . ."
Cochran glanced again at his watch; the talk was barely under way. Then he looked around at the audience. Their attentiveness was nearly total, so far as he could tell.
Ngunda continued for fifteen minutes more, then sat down again, and the mayor stepped to the podium to introduce the singer: Jenny Tallhorse. "The Dakota Nightingale," someone had dubbed her. She wore what appeared to be doeskin, bleached white, and ornate with beads and fringe. The "tall" in Tallhorse was appropriate. According to the critics, the nightingale part was too. She was a contralto, comparable, it was claimed, to Marian Anderson.
She sang two numbers. Then the crowd stood and applauded until, smiling, she stepped again to the microphone. Her encore was in what he supposed was the Sioux language. Somewhere he'd read or heard that her family was from the Devils Lake Reservation, though she'd grown up in Minneapolis. It occurred to him that when he was done with this Ngunda gig, he might approach her about co-authoring her autobiography. It ought to be interesting, and it ought to sell well. And she was a great-looking woman, worth getting close to.
When she'd finished to another standing ovation, the professor moved to the podium, Ngunda with him. "In the front row," the professor announced, "are twelve undergraduate students from Cal State Sacramento, volunteers from the University Discussion Club, that meets weekly to discuss current issues, events, and personalities. Students, if you will please stand up . . ."
They stood to mild applause, most of them looking self-conscious as the professor named them. Then they sat again. "They will," he explained, "ask Mr. Aran questions related to the subject of karma. Ms. Guzman, you are first."
A student from one end of the row stood up and approached the microphone. "Mr. Aran," she said, "I don't believe in karma, and I don't see how you can. I can't see any legitimate evidence for it."
"It's your choice to believe or not," the guru replied. "Karma operates regardless of disbelief. And it's all right not to believe. There is no punishment for not believing."
The student sat down, a little perplexed at the answer. Another was recognized and answered, then a third arose to ask his question.
"Should you even be teaching karma?" he asked. "If people believe in karma, they'll use it as an excuse to do harm. In India, the Brahmins have used karma for thousands of years, as an excuse to dominate and abuse the lower castes."
Ngunda looked mildly at the young man. "The key term there is 'excuse.' The word 'karma' is sometimes evoked to justify doing harm. In general, however, the harm would be done regardless. "The young man looked somehow annoyed as he returned to his seat. A young woman took his place at the microphone.
"What about professional abortionists?" she asked, her voice accusatorial. "They've killed millions of babies! Innocents! That's worse than any other kind of murder!"
Ngunda's reply was calm and mild. "The soul—that which makes a person human—does not unite with the body until the first breath is taken after birth. Karma-wise, to abort a fetus is equivalent to aborting a puppy."
"That's not what the Bible says!"
"The Bible says nothing about when the soul assumes the body. But even if it had, the people who recited and wrote the Bible were limited in both their knowledge and their understanding. And some had agendums beyond what they may or may not have thought were the intentions of God or the words of Jesus."
Oooh! Touché! Cochran thought. He decided Ngunda had more to recommend him than he'd realized.
The journalist became aware, then, of a new quality in the silence of the crowd. As if most had been unprepared for such blunt iconoclasm. It affected the professor, too. He paused for a troubled moment before introducing the next student.
The young woman got up and stepped to the microphone. "Mr. Ngunda— Excuse me, Mr. Aran, I mean. What—what good is karma? Why would a god ever invent it in the first place, except as punishment? And I've read some of your stuff in the New Age Wonks' Club House. You say the Tao doesn't punish. You said it here tonight."
Her initial diffidence had fallen away, replaced by a tone of challenge.
"Karma," Ngunda answered, "uses the positive and negative energies of the games people play to make sure each of us learns certain lessons. In order eventually to cycle out of the Earth School, and into what you might think of as the graduate curriculum. Which, I might add, is much less traumatic."
The girl still stood at the microphone, and spoke again, upset now. "You said 'inevitably.' But you've also said and written that 'all is choice.' How does choice go with inevitable? Suppose I don't choose to balance off some karma? And anyway, saying 'all is choice' is bullshit! My older sister was hit by a car last year, and killed! She certainly didn't choose that! She was happily married, with two neat kids!"
The girl was glaring now. Cochran's gaze shifted to the professor in charge, who sat looking as if he didn't know what to do.
"Ah," Ngunda said, "from some viewpoints it can certainly seem like bullshit. But suppose that in the year 1606, you were galloping on a horse recklessly and ran someone down, killing them. Without ill intent. Unless it was a karmic payoff, that incident would create a karmic nexus. One which sooner or later you would deal with, for it was your decision, your choice to ride as you had. Thus at some future time, often centuries later, you would either be killed by your earlier victim, or in some manner save a later incarnation of that victim. In either case extinguishing the nexus.
"Each of us, between lives, decides what karmic nexuses, if any, we'll undertake to cancel in our next life. Then we make between-life agreements with other parties to cooperate. Between lives, the troubles that often go with living as humans—the griefs and fears, the anxieties and pains—seem rather academic. So we plan boldly.
"But reborn again, things seem quite different, and in addition we rarely remember, consciously, the karmic act or the agreement. Our Essence, our core self remembers—our offstage prompter so to speak—but Essence does not compel. Or explain, for that matter. It nudges, sometimes lightly, sometimes more forcefully, but it does not compel. One or both persons may avoid the connection, perhaps choosing to be elsewhere, or simply rejecting the act. Or other events may intervene; that is common. But over subsequent lifetimes, the pull of the nexus will strengthen. Sooner or later, the principals will choose to extinguish the nexus."
Cochran watched frowning. He didn't feel well, and wondered if he was coming down with the flu. Still unhappy, the girl returned to her seat. One by one, the other students rose and spoke. The eleventh abandoned karma as a topic. "Mr. Aran," she said, "if you died tomorrow, what one effect would you want to have had on the world?"
Ngunda's grin was wide and electric, startling Cochran. "I would wish to see materialism and gain replaced as the focus and orientation—the focus and orientation—of human beings and human society. Replaced by compassion, and awareness of our oneness of spirit. For we all are part of the Tao—of God, if you will—and the Tao is present in each of us, as our Essence."
Again there was a moment's silence. Then applause began, building, spreading through the arena, people rising to their feet till most were standing. Cochran too found himself on his feet, without knowing why. The guru's words hadn't impressed him.
The hairs prickled on his forearms, his nape. He's powerful, Cochran told himself, and wondered again what this man was really after. Perhaps Aran himself controlled Millennium after all, rather than some behind-the-scenes manipulators.
But as he worked his way through aisles and corridors, Cochran dismissed the notion. Because in his mental universe, money and know-how outweighed charisma.
In his room that night, Duke Cochran slept restlessly, dreaming strange dreams that slipped away on wakening.