The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (13 page)

Trembling, she gazed at the coin in his hand. By the glow in her eyes I knew the riddle was solved and her aching ordeal, if not over, would soon be, all being quiet and hush as she came forward to claim the sovereign.

“My coin!” she said breathlessly. “Where did you get it?”

“Your
coin?” Buckaroo said. “Your father gave it to you?” She nodded vigorously. “And one to your sister?” Again she assented, as he pressed the coin into her eager palm.

“Thank you!” she rejoiced. “I lost it. Where did you get it?”

“From your sister,” he replied. “The one they told you died in the fire with your parents.”

Wiping away tears, she did not comprehend a word he was saying. It flew in the face of a lifetime of belief, but there would be time later for protracted explanations. What was plain was that B. Banzai had once again carried all before him and, not to rhapsodize unduly, had saved her life as he had rescued untold others. Under one pretense or another, her release from the authorities was won by him, and she clambered aboard our bus with wide-eyed exuberance, neither knowing nor bothering to ask into what vortex she might be heading.

B
efore moving on to the press conference where it is well known B. Banzai glimpsed the extraterrestrials for the first time, I would be remiss if I did not resume the account of Whorfin. Having begun his work with a phone call to Yoyodyne, it fell fittingly upon a company wrecking truck to transport him to the company site outside Grover’s Mills, where he found his worst suspicions confirmed. The morale of his troops was lamentable, and far from receiving a hero’s welcome, Whorfin was met with disbelief and even a certain scorn, as though his Lectroids blamed him for their condition of exile instead of being grateful for their survival. There was every kind of wailing and woe imaginable; and although a few of the heartier fellows (officers, in the main) greeted him with their usual tremendous shrieks, the compound as a whole had become a den of debauchery, given over freely to every sort of Earthly vice and idleness.

His face contracting with rage and eyes narrowing ominously everywhere he looked, Whorfin sallied forth among them, bringing home his rash message of impending doom unless the Panther ship was finished and the OVERTHRUSTER obtained from the Banzai project. Only the state of emergency, “the anxiety of the hour” as he put it, imposed upon him certain restraints and prevented him from ordering indiscriminate executions. Still, certain offenders cried out to be punished in what can only be characterized as a flagellantic ritual peculiar to that race of warriors. Whatever their motive, whether to prove their slavish devotion to their master Whorfin or to demonstrate their capacity to endure torture, these Lectroids would one after the other step forward to recite litanies of self-accusations and to pronounce themselves deserving of the most inhuman cruelties for their crimes. That they did so of their own volition (it was confirmed by the Nova Police and the captured grimy documents at hand) is in no way explained by the simplistic dictum, “They weren’t human,” for in combat it was later seen, and I can attest to the fact, that they felt pain as fully as our own kind. But, apparently their fanaticism overrode what little reason dwelt behind their bulging foreheads, and in repeated displays of this abject worship of power they would, after prostrating themselves before John Whorfin, readily suggest specific tortures appropriate to their misdeeds—unfailingly such exquisite methods of slow and agonizing destruction that the mind is moved to anguish to think of any living thing subjected to them, much less wittingly volunteer.

At the head of their list of transgressions was not, as we humans might expect it to be, bloodshed; bloodshed, even murder, was of no consequence to them one way or the other unless it imperiled the group as a whole. Numerous recorded cases of homicide and assault against humans have since been found in the Yoyodyne archives. Highway robbery, especially in the early fledgling days of the company, was even encouraged as a means of garnering precious working capital. Frolicsome violence—instances whereby the Lectroids’ presence on this planet might be made known—were judged more harshly, but even in this, the passage of decades without discovery had lulled the creatures into a sense of security. It would delight me to add the qualifier “false,” but the facts of the matter are otherwise. Had two certain events not happened, the Nova Police would not have undertaken to alert us as they did, and in all likelihood the aliens would be among us still, living unnoticed. I refer of course to the momentous experiment in Texas and the subsequent escape of the scourge Whorfin from the mental asylum.

So what were these crimes for which several of the self-confessed perpetrators paid by being beheaded in reverse order, i.e., from the feet up? Foremost among their fatal offenses were those activities which fell loosely into the category of decadent living. Vegetarianism, art collecting, bathing, consorting with the “daughters of men”—all were forbidden and equally odious in Whorfin’s eyes because they sapped the fighting spirit of his minions and made their habitation on this planet more palatable, which in turn could only detract from his stated goal of returning to Planet 10 and seizing power. Besides this practical consideration, there was old-fashioned bigotry at work as well, to which he appealed at every opportunity. Earth has, it irks me to say, an apparent reputation throughout the universe as a planet of devils, and the impotence of human knowledge is much derided. Whorfin often spoke pointedly to this prejudice among his followers when condemning the “unnatural” practices I have noted above.

I have before me a collection of Whorfin’s speeches and writings from prison which were delivered faithfully in his name to John Bigbooté over the years of his leader’s absence. They provided an illuminating look at the Lectroid mind, the most significant aspects of which I shall attempt to summarize before moving on.

The typical Lectroid is above all in awe of power. Power for its own sake in his
raison d’etre,
and he is obsessed with its attainment and exercise. To his underlings he is devoid of mercy, indeed has no sense of such a concept, whereas to his superiors, i.e., those holding power over him, he is obeisant and servile to the point of eagerly sacrificing his own life, as we have seen. The Lectroid does not thirst for knowledge or beauty, has no record of intellectual attainment, has never produced a single notable figure in any area of endeavour, save one: the field of battle. His attitude toward such things as history and culture, even his own, which he does not bother chronicling, is one of the utmost indifference. All that matters in his scheme is lust for power, his single-minded will to possess a thing by destroying it.

Insofar as his personal habits, the Lectroid is filthy by preference, it being common for him to bathe but twice in a lifetime, (viz.) at birth and after his wedding night. It is evidently a belief of theirs that washing shortens one’s life and is “unmanly,” and having encountered many of them in close combat, I can vouch from firsthand experience that both as a tenet of faith and as a practical matter there is much to be said in favor of their squalid appearance. With a heavy coat of decorative grease paint on top of layer upon layer of encrusted dirt thick enough to be spooned out of their palms, added to their already thick hides, they are able to withstand all but the most powerful blows and projectiles.

They have apparently but a single fear, and that is the fear of ridicule. They lack the most elementary sense of humor and are, unless of a mood to fight, quite reserved, even somnolent. For this latter trait, I am most grateful; otherwise, having not caught many of them napping, the scales of our engagement might not have tipped so propitiously in our favor.

By and large carnivorous, they are wont to supplement their intake of smoked meat with large doses of electrical current, although the years on our planet has seen them grow to rely increasingly on what is called “junk food,” many of them foregoing their traditional diet entirely in favor of sweet cakes and candy bars in bright cellophane. As a result, they were by this time mired in lethargy which, compounded by the gravity problem, had caused their normally robust physiques to deteriorate to an appalling degree. Although, in this also we were fortunate.

For physiologic reasons I will avoid harrowing the reader with, sexual coupling with beings other than their own kind is an impossibility for them. But that is not to say that they do not enter into a kind of sexual frenzy in the presence of pain and death, whether it be their own or another’s. To the Lectroid, sex derives its value merely from its relation to power, and cases of them abducting human “brides,” both male and female, for sado-masochistic purposes are now known to abound, as the ever-growing cache of hacked bones exumed from the damp tunnels of Yoyodyne amply bears out. It is as if within these creatures’ extraordinary propensity for inflicting and suffering cruelty there had to be developed the whole range of our emotions. Within the bounds of their cruelty is both pain and pleasure, love and hate, and even something hideously resembling art.

The same metaphor of destruction as a form of possession, which I have mentioned, could be seen repeated in the condition of their private compound. Away from the public portion of the Yoyodyne plant, in that secret hangar where the Panther ship was being constructed, valuable machinery lay broken and helpless, seemingly vandalized in orgiastic fits of fury, vilely humiliated so as to confirm who was master. In a safer time, such profligacy would have been of less concern, but now it could easily spell the difference between success and failure; and failure meant—

“Failure means death!” shouted Whorfin, haranguing them in their native tongue with that strange Italian accent he could not avoid. Dreadful to behold when he was in such turmoil, he paced to the right and the left, making a spring like a great cat now and again to recapture the attention of his corpselike audience. “How could you take vengeance on machines?” he railed. “Are they your enemy? What have these low objects done to you, except in your pitiful imaginations?”

Neither was he averse to flinging himself down upon the floor to implore them. “Because you have done this, we have lost precious hours! Days! Above us, the Nova Police! You hide, they seek! History is made tonight. Character is what you are in the dark! I should slay a score of you, nay, two score; the sight of your heads rolling would give me comfort! But in your heads is where your vital essence lives! I need that essence to fulfill my desire. Without your companionship, I am but a poor old dreamer, more dead than alive, trapped in this miserable three-brained being’s feeble body, led on only by irrational hope. No power of mine can get us off this rock! I freely admit it, and yet the appointed time has come! I have cast the die! And yet you gibe and mock me. I came here expecting to find the great ship finished. Instead I find the equipment turned on its side.” He sighed, gauging their expressions. “Is it payment you want? Booty? It’s waiting for you on Planet 10! The dusky ones have your payment! So do their dusky wenches! Payment of another kind, the Nova Police will surely give ye!” Now he was giving them the medicine. They were with him now, their hard eyes brightening. “My wisdom can err! My knowledge is small compared to the Flying Fish.” (The god they idolized—Reno) “But the Flying Fish is never wrong, and the substantial terrors of my mind are laid to rest when he speaks to me, as he has. Gather closer, closer.” The beasts came nearer so that he could lay his hands upon them with a certain tenderness. “I have a message from the Flying Fish.” His face torn with passion, he resorted to the time-honored debating trick of taking a piece of paper from his pocket and pretending to read from it. “He addresses us: ‘Mighty soldiers of Whorfin, ignorant fools, listen to Whorfin when he tells you that the time has come to reclaim your planet. A thousand years of waiting has culminated in this moment of great importance. You must finish the Panther ship in these short hairs remaining!’ ” An obvious slip of the tongue engineered by the accursed Lizardo, Whorfin quickly shaking his head violently and correcting himself: “ ‘In these short hours remaining, you must succeed because you labor within the very jaws of death! For the sake of cruelty if nothing else, murder those who have brought you to this desolation! Listen a second time! Murder those who have brought you to this desolation!’ ” So choked with emotion and theatrics had his voice become that huddled figures long thought dead were beginning to emerge from the shadowy tunnels of Yoyodyne, more Lectroids coming forward, drawn by his inhuman oratorical powers. “ ‘There is no time to be lost. In the space of waiting, all may be lost! No more beheadings, no more volunteers. Show your unconquerable strength by getting to work, using every resource to finish the craft and stealing Buckaroo Banzai’s Oscillation Overthruster!’ ” He crumpled the paper, concluding by saying, “I need three volunteers.”

Every arm in the place shot up, but Whorfin’s gaze had already settled upon three of his most capable lieutenants the aforementioned John Bigbooté, Chief Executive Officer of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems; John O’Connor, Vice President, Research and Development; and John Gomez, Vice President, Controller. They would be the ones, chosen over all their companions, for this mission so glorious and decisive to their race, and it was they who appeared as an unlikely trio at the press conference wearing forged credentials.