The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (5 page)

At the risk of digressing further, I must say that B. Banzai had empirical evidence supporting his ideas, or I am confident he would never have staked his own life as well as the Banzai Institute’s great world renown on the outcome. This evidence derived from an experiment gone awry in the 1930s at Princeton University in New Jersey, during which Professor Hikita and a scientific colleague named Dr. Emilio Lizardo accidentally glimpsed a burst of enhanced consciousness radiation or, put simply, alien life on another dimension. From this void of brilliant colors came the despairing screams of the damned, captive monstrosities that defied belief, much less description. Lizardo had, in fact, for a brief moment that seemed an eternity, been sucked halfway into the void through a supposedly solid wall. Alien hands clutched at him! What further horror he witnessed as a result of the terrifying ordeal was never known, except to say that when he emerged to safety he was plainly mad. His hair had turned to orange, and he fled in terror, almost immediately embarking upon a life of crime. Subsequently he was captured by the authorities and sentenced to an asylum where he never recovered. (More on this shortly.)

Well aware of Lizardo’s case, B. Banzai nevertheless undertook the perilous journey to the seat of consciousness, into the mountain, his devouring passion to
know
perhaps even fanned to flame by the prospect of danger. What he saw there has been widely viewed, insofar as the film he brought out with him. One may see the hideous shapes, the hues of unnatural color, the fragments of mysterious light, and the rest of it, along with the voices that still cause my skin to creep with terror; but watching another fall through a trapdoor is not the same as failing through it oneself. Film is not the reality and cannot convey the
true feel
of the place, if
place
is the word. B. Banzai’s obsession had become all too real, and he had no way of knowing, once inside, whether he would ever escape.

General Catburd:
Where is he? Will somebody tell me?

Rawhide:
Sit down, General.

General Catburd:
Not until I get an explanation.

“Like a roller coaster ride through a meteor shower,” was how Buckaroo would initially describe the experience of traveling through what has come to be called “The Eighth Dimension” by the popular press. The G-force was apparently vastly greater than anything ever experienced on earth. The car’s two inch thick windscreen broke as if struck by a sledgehammer, Buckaroo’s Plexiglas helmet shattered, and he was hurled back in his seat and riveted there like a helpless doll. Gigantic static electrical charges lit the unfamiliar atmosphere laden with acrid odors. Amid tears and wailing and ferocious stinging pests that managed to penetrate even Buckaroo’s flight suit, there were the fearsome veils I have already mentioned. A red viscous stream and its tributaries were encountered, swirling like a great river toward an unknown destination. Sinister shadows with sweat-grimed faces and membraned eyes attempted to grasp hold of the car as it shot past, adopting any such desperate means as might help them escape the dreadful place. One such beast even came face to face with B. Banzai as it fell headlong across the hood of the car and managed to hang on for a moment, its horrible stare and foam-flecked mouth a sight Buckaroo will not soon forget. To the young reader’s excited fancy, this may all seem the stuff of romantic adventure, but I must believe Buckaroo Banzai when he tells me that never in his life had he felt such . . . yes, fear was the word he used. These angry demons had a way of infiltrating even the spirit. B. Banzai hearing them jabbering with glee within his brain, experiencing the pulsing exhilaration of pure evil, chaos. “Now I know how Lizardo felt,” he remembered thinking. But he was stronger than Lizardo. The psychic attackers could not subjugate him, although if the incredible journey had lasted a moment longer . . .

Of the terrain, I have alluded to the red river. In addition there were vast chasms of hissing swamp and stench, alpine ranges with countless crags, which B. Banzai avoided with difficulty. Spurts of flame issued with volcanic energy from unseen sources, forming huge thunderclouds and gurgling rock formations of fantastic shape. Here and there the topography seemed to fall away altogether, and there were descents into great voids of pandemonium, illuminated by flashes of momentary radiance. These blinding rays would last but for an instant, to be followed by a darkness likened to liquid ebony, total and all-enveloping. At one point, a gasping B. Banzai recalled looking up into a heaven full of stars, only to realize he was upside down and the glowing lights were not stars at all, but millions of eyes peering up, lost souls in the black mantle of eternity.

As for those of us back in the blockhouse, we held our breath; for although the harrowing passage seemed to last forever, in fact it was mere seconds before the Jet Car blasted out the opposite side of the mountain to our cheers of victory tempered with relief. Like owners of a winning thoroughbred, each of us—Rawhide, Perfect Tommy, Hikita, and myself—felt a part of a glorious moment. (How glorious we could not yet even guess!)

“Banzai!” shouted Hikita, thumping the table with his fist, and I turned, feeling a muscular hand grip my shoulder. It was Rawhide, that quietest of men, dancing a jig and embracing me. To the others, the invited guests, we must have seemed mad, but we didn’t care. For once the news media were as good as speechless, confronted with the story of the century.

Commentator:
I have seen something strange, something very strange.

General Catburd:
Certainly irregular.

(Senator Cunningham jumps a foot into the air, her heart contracted with excitement.)

Senator Cunningham:
He’s done it! He’s gone through the mountain without a scratch! Oh, my God!

Secretary of Defense:
Oh, my God!

He
had
done it, but Buckaroo could not relax just yet, having his hands full trying to slow the still-speeding Jet Car, wooing it like a woman. “Easy now. Come on,” he cajoled, tugging a switch to release the trailing parachute, but would it be enough in the scant space remaining before the next ring of mountains? There would be no more passing through solid matter today; he was low on liquid helium. The OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER was of no use. It was strictly man versus machine now. He plunged the brake to the floor and tugged at the wheel. To his dismay the loss of hydraulic brake and steering pressure had been greater than he thought.

A billion or so people awaited the result on television and none with greater anticipation than Xan. His expression no longer so arrogant, permeated by dark depression over the incredible achievement of Buckaroo Banzai, he felt events now crowd in on him with a rush. One hand reached for the telephone as he watched B. Banzai struggle to stop the car. He dialed the number of a home for the criminally insane in Trenton, New Jersey, and requested to talk to Dr. Emilio Lizardo, one of the inmates.

In the same instant he knocked aside a glass with an angry blow. Banzai had stopped the car in the nick of time, as the soulless Xan had expected and perhaps deep down had hoped he would, for it was never fated that Banzai die by accidental means. That happy moment would belong to Xan and his ruffians, if Xan had his way. The joy of driving a dagger through Banzai’s heart would be Xan’s destiny, and his alone.

“Hello.” It was a curious voice at the other end of the phone, a thick Neapolitan accent speaking from a long distance.

“We have a bad connection,” said Xan.

“No, I am weak,” was Lizardo’s reply.

“Are you watching television?”

“No, I’ve just been drugged.”

“You’re lucky.”

“What’s on?”

“Banzai. Turn on your set.”

N
o hurried explanation could account for the insane, wild, unkempt figure which Dr. Emilio Lizardo had become. Once handsome and faultlessly groomed, now he was a twisted creature with pendulous cheeks and unsightly paunch, his only solace the treacherous antipsychotic drugs given him daily. So far and so long had he deteriorated that one could faithfully say that the best that could await him now was a painless death. Inflamed eyes beneath a shock of red hair, he was nightmare incarnate, a fitting mate for the devil himself. Trembling in every limb as one crazed, which indeed he was, he dropped the phone and surged for the television with a terrible whoop. Looking neither right nor left, he fell back limp in his armchair and clasped his hands to keep them from flopping. His beloved TV was coming alive; and by turns recoiling and seething like a reptile, he watched as the smoking Jet Car came to rest in a thicket of stump mesquite trees and B. Banzai clambered out the driver’s window.

Ah, yes, Banzai . . . convinced somehow by his own dementia that the two were kindred souls, Lizardo had followed B. Banzai’s exploits over the years. He had more than once even sent friendly overtures to the Banzai Institute.

“How’s your work coming, pal?” I recall one such letter. “My suspicion is you need help.”

Buckaroo had paid little heed to the message, but I had inquired about the unusual name. It had rather caught my fancy. “Who is this Dr. Lizardo?” I had asked him.

“He’s a true tragic figure,” Buckaroo had said. “An incalculable loss to science and to those who knew him.” He had gone on to relate the circumstances of the experiment gone awry in the ’30s, the close friendship that had once existed between Lizardo and Professor Hikita, fellow professors in the Princeton physics department. As for the “other vexatious business,” as Buckaroo put it, no one could say. “The whole thing about going into another dimension, another sideband of consciousness, is still so foreign to us that perhaps we won’t really understand his case until long after his death.” All in all, the entire bizarre tale made a lasting impression on me, arousing more pity than anything else.

“Did you ever meet him?” I asked Buckaroo finally.

“No, I never did,” had been his reply. “Hikita-san went to see him once, and Lizardo had to be restrained from attacking him. He’s simply not the same man.”

Still, though they had never met, to Lizardo it seemed more than coincidental, uncanny almost, how his and B. Banzai’s paths had intertwined over the years; how through Banzai’s mathematics Lizardo felt he had come to know the man and know him well. To Lizardo, B. Banzai’s was the only mind near his equal. They approached problems similarly; they shared the same cosmology. They were the twin jewels of intellect on this planet. Still, there were differences. Banzai was an upstart, a Johnny-come-lately to the field of extra-dimensional physics. He had started with the ground plowed already, plowed by the blood and sweat of the Great Pioneer Emilio Lizardo. Granted, Banzai had inherited his parents’ talents and then some, but no one should forget that it was he,
he,
Emilio Lizardo, who as a young man with dreamy eyes and jet-black hair had smashed the never-before-broken dimension barrier. The Greatest and Most Unappreciated Scientist of His Time, who before being framed and unjustly incarcerated for crimes he had no knowledge of, had, in a flash of vision, dared catapult himself through a solid wall before running off terrified into the night.

Why had he run? Who was he? Whorfin? Who was Whorfin? Sometimes in the early morning when the dawn tinged the east and he had just received his antipsychotic dosage, he caught a glimpse of his old self behind the eyes, the eyes of this obviously schizophrenic red-haired old man whom he did not know but had learned to obey. The eyes seemed to scream: Help me. Who am I? What am I doing here?

What was Banzai doing now? Lizardo stalked the TV and crouched. Upon taking inventory of the Jet Car, B. Banzai had discovered two unusual physical specimens which he carefully put into plastic sandwich bags to be labeled although they defied classification. From the wind screen, he removed a handful of foul-smelling gelatinous substance that looked clammy, hot to the touch, at least on TV, and close quarters inspection of the car’s undercarriage disclosed a curiously shaped parasite that attached itself to the drive shaft and now resisted attempts to dislodge it. B. Banzai appeared to pick at it with a stick but without much success.

“That sucker’s stuck,” muttered Lizardo. “What the hell is it?”

His outstretched prehensile hand reached for the phone he had dropped, as he watched Banzai poke at the apparently lifeless object only to have the thing spring at him and go skittering across the desert. Banzai in rapid pursuit. “What am I watching?” demanded Lizardo, finding Xan still there.

“Do you see that mountain in the background?” Xan said.

“Yes.”

“Banzai went through it.”

There was a moment of silence, Lizardo bereft of movement except for the odd palsy. “He what?”

“He went through the mountain. He drove that car of his through a piece of rock a mile wide.”

A creeping awareness of what Xan meant came over Lizardo’s unseeing bloodshot eyes. He who had labored day and night these past many decades, whose fierce devouring passion it had been to duplicate that singular moment when he had stepped through a brick wall as if it were slush, had now merely turned on the television to see the usurper Banzai snare his glory.