The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (2 page)

One evening I made my way down from the bunkhouse, as the top floor of the Banzai Institute is called by those of us fortunate enough to be residents, and on passing the projection room looked in to see Buckaroo Banzai sitting alone while a faded eight millimeter home movie print flickered on the screen. It was a sight I had witnessed on more than one occasion, the man alone with his thoughts and whatever memories the images on screen rekindled, and I mention it here only because of the fortuitous timing. It was only days before the scheduled test run of the new Jet Car in Texas, and the events on the screen took on a special meaning, bearing as they did on the present.

On the screen, a Texas vista, made broader by the sweep of the camera, served as a backdrop for a 1950-model Ford automobile and an expedition of five individuals dressed in the style prevalent in that arid habitat, in boots and hats of the American Southwest. In my mind’s eye now I see them smiling, waving at the camera. It looks more like an outing in the country than a scene of any scientific expedition. Certainly there is no presage of what is to come, not the faintest hint of danger. Comprising the group portrait are two Oriental men, two Caucasian men, and a single Caucasian woman. The sun is sweltering, thermal waves rising off the desert floor which is a dry lake basin. In one corner of the picture I recall surveying instruments, a theodolite. The operator of the camera shifts its focus repeatedly amongst the companions, his hand not the steadiest, and shooting from a lower angle relative to the subjects. He is in fact the young Buckaroo Banzai, a precocious boy of four years, and he now comes into view as one of the Orientals walks forward to take the camera.

Young Banzai is a boy like any other, racially mixed, wearing a red hat and a six-shooter, possessing what all children most require, a pair of loving parents. The Caucasian woman and the remaining Oriental embrace him warmly, and the film changes scenes.

Standing in the doorway of the projection room, I noticed Buckaroo stir. Something in him surged to his throat, and he exhaled audibly. More than thirty years later, the recollection of what was to follow on the screen still made it almost unbearable for him to watch. I must confess to feeling convulsed myself every time I have seen the footage.

Imagine a long torpedo with wheels and a cockpit cut into it so that it might accommodate a crew of two, and imagine yourself further to be the four-year-old Buckaroo watching from behind a sandbagged shelter as your father, at the wheel of the streamlined vehicle, presses the starter only to be engulfed in searing flames. Your mother screams, releases your frightened hand, and plunges herself into the fire in an effort to save your father. An explosion terrible to behold sucks the air out of your lungs, and only the body of your father’s closest friend thrown recklessly across your own saves you from being pelted with bits and pieces of your parents.

For a long time after the film finished and slapped against the reel, Buckaroo did not move. Finally, because I suppose I could bear the pathetic sight no longer, I stepped forward, placed my hands on his shoulders.

“Buckaroo—?”

He looked up, trying to compose himself. “Hey, Reno—” he said, sitting up straighten “I thought everybody was asleep.”

“Just going downstairs for a beer. Can I get you one?”

“No, I’m all right. Think I’ll go to bed. I was just trying to see if there was anything we could learn.”

“Still think it was an incendiary device?” I asked, fully aware of the answer.

“It had to be.”

I nodded. “Xan?”

“Who else? I can’t prove it, though.”

“What difference would it make if we could?” I said, knowing that getting Xan out of his stronghold in Sabah would be like extracting the incisors of a wildcat. No one knew this better than Buckaroo, who had actually been there and had seen the relic city of caves hacked out of mountainous jungle, teeming with brigands and assassins from every corner of the world, afforded by Xan a sanctuary from which they could come and go with impunity.*

*
(Note to the reader: In the adventure
Extradition from Hell,
B. Banzai went to Sabah under the protection of the beautiful zombie La Negrette, introduced to him by Seth. Seth told Buckaroo that his wife, poisoned by Xan, was not dead but alive in Sabah, having been injected with the nerve poison Talava which destroys mind and soul but actually improves one’s health. B. Banzai failed to find any trace of her and barely escaped Xan’s Nautiloids at sea.—Reno)

Buckaroo stood up, resigned to going to bed. “Not a helluva lot,” he said. “I can only kill him once. Good night, Reno.”

“Good night,” I said. “What time we leaving tomorrow?”

“Bus pulls out at ten-thirty.”

“See you in the morning, Buckaroo.”

He nodded. I took the film from the projector and went down the hall to the archives to file it. As I suspected, Mrs. Johnson was still awake, listening to another batch of demo tapes submitted to the Hong Kong Cavaliers, the musical group of which Buckaroo and I were members. One of those persons who languishes by day and does not seem to come fully alive until the middle of the night, Mrs. Johnson, at nineteen the premature widow of Flyboy, was just gathering momentum. Over the indescribable din of a song called “Merry as a Monkey,” she said hello and asked if Buckaroo had said anything about her going to the Jet Car test.

“To me?” I said. “Was he supposed to?”

“Well, it’s been nearly six months.”

By that I supposed she meant her apprenticeship which preceded internship, which in turn preceded residency. In the manner of a hospital, only interns and residents were allowed to go on actual operations, which I pointed out to her.

“But this isn’t technically an operation,” she said. “It’s a tour.”

True, we were presenting musical shows in three cities along the way, but that was mainly for gas money. Our clear mission was the Jet Car test, and beyond the Jet Car test there was the
real
Jet Car test of which only Buckaroo and the residents were apprised. And despite the perceived nature of the trip,
any
trip, there was always the lurking menace of Xan, capable of the basest atrocities. I said this to her.

“Anyway,” I said. “The problem is that with the Seminole Kid, Pecos, and the Argentine with Cousteau on the
Calypso,
we’re a little short around here.”

“Go suck eggs,” she said.

So much for my explanation. I smiled, remembering myself at her age when my quick temper had been legendary. Buckaroo in fact had more than once seen fit to needle me by reciting one of his Oriental maxims: “Young blood needs little flame to boil.” I mentioned this to her, and she found it singularly amusing, as if I should have ever been her age.

“See you when we get back,” I said on my way out the door.

“Good luck,” she called after me.

T
he morning of the scheduled Jet Car test, I was awakened on the bus by the rude breath of Rawhide, who found it necessary to tell me that Buckaroo had been called away, and he, Rawhide, was going with him.

“Called away? What are you talking about?” I said, summoning the fortitude to look at my watch. It was barely four, and the test was to be in less than five hours, on top of which, there had been a concert in Amarillo the night before so that any foray at this hour of the morning seemed a particularly unappealing prospect.

“He has to go El Paso,” Rawhide said in his typical humorless way. “He has to operate on an Eskimo.”

I nodded, somehow knowing it was true. “What about me and Perfect Tommy?” I said.

“Buckaroo wants the two of you to go on out to the test site with Professor Hikita and stand by. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Isn’t the Secretary of Defense supposed to be there?” I asked, raising a small point.

“That’s why we’ll be back as soon as we can,” Rawhide repeated and disappeared. “Try to keep him busy.”

If I had dared to hope it was a nightmare, I was soon dissuaded by the anxious hands of Perfect Tommy shaking me awake for a second time.

“What is it, Tommy? Can’t it wait?”

“Buckaroo’s leaving.”

He had heard the helicopter. I shouldn’t have laughed, but no one ever told Tommy anything. He was the youngest of our number and the good-humored butt of our jokes. Again on this occasion he was the last to know.

“Well, what do we do now?” he said.

“Let’s get some breakfast.”

On our way back to the galley, we passed through that amazing section of the bus known as World Watch One, devoted to a constant monitoring of worldwide satellite and communications traffic. The intern on duty, a young Blue Blaze from Denmark who through no fault of her own had somehow gained the mismatched moniker Big Norse, immediately called to our attention a cryptic message just received from the Seminole Kid off the coast of Sabah, Malaya—a latitude-longitude fix and something about “death dwarves taken aboard.”

I scratched my head, passed the wire to Perfect Tommy. “When did this come in?” I said.

“Just now,” replied Big Norse.

Perfect Tommy proved as mystified as I. “Did you radio back?” he asked.

Big Norse nodded. “I didn’t get an acknowledgement. There’s a strange atmospheric disturbance going on, localized over this area ofTexas. I don’t know if they received.”

“Well, try again,” I said, at the risk of stating the obvious but not knowing what else to say.

“Death dwarves,” muttered Perfect Tommy. “Some more of Xan’s radio-controlled experiments?”

“Sounds like it,” I said, as we were joined by Professor Hikita who insisted on knowing what the ruckus was about. “Xan up to his usual deviltry,” was how I put it.

“Was there an SOS?” he asked.

Big Norse shook her head.

“Then perhaps we’re getting worried for nothing,” said the professor, wrinkling his brow, eyes twinkling. “Perhaps the message means they have taken death dwarves prisoner.”

At that we all smiled, congratulating one another. “Of course!” ejaculated Perfect Tommy. “That must be it! Otherwise—”

The professor cut him short. “Otherwise there is nothing we can do about it.”

We knew the truth of that, all of us stonily grim. To mask his own fretfulness, the good professor forced a smile. “Anyway, we have problems of our own,” he said. “I need some help with these Jet Car calculations, and we haven’t much time.”

B
efore proceeding, I must confess to being utterly lame of mind about the higher mathematics. Whatever explanation I can here contribute regarding that marvelous machine the Jet Car, keep in mind, reader, that it is the layman speaking, and the layman must inevitably rely upon poor metaphor, the turn of a phrase, to relate that which he fathoms only slightly. The result is to hold up one’s hand and mark the spot, so to speak, mentioning almost merely in passing, “Here is where the great leap forward occurred. Now you know.” All of this is by way of saying that it was Perfect Tommy, a whiz at figures in his own right, and not myself, who hovered near Hikita’s shoulder in the desert blockhouse as the professor peered at the Jet Car through a viewfinder and read aloud a stream of computer data.

“T minus five hundred and counting,” announced the professor. “Phaser positive. Latch compressor.”

What thoughts went through his mind that morning I can only imagine, but no soul, not even the phlegmatic Japanese, could have been indifferent to the irony in the situation. Barely thirty years earlier on this same desert track, a vastly more primitive speed machine had poised for takeoff and disintegrated, taking three of its creators with it, among them Hikita’s compatriot and mentor, Masado Banzai. It had been none other than Hikita who had thrown himself across the young Buckaroo and just as selflessly from that day forward, reared the boy as his own blood.

“Power source output zero-zero-niner,” he continued. “Multistage axial compressor latched.”

I made a point at that time of jotting down an unusual personal observation in my notebook which I still find amusing.

All these spit and polish types, careerists from the Pentagon, pretending to be on top of things . . . If they only knew! If they only knew what they are about to witness! Their collars would pop, their socks would fall off. The Secretary of Defense seems impatient, almost bored. General Catburd of the Joint Chiefs is wearing his golfing clothes, anxious only to get to the next fairway. They’re here because the President asked them to come. The President, to his credit, thinks the Jet Car might have military applications. Wait till the test! He doesn’t know the half of it . . . In any case they’ll be excellent witnesses for posterity.