The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (6 page)

For some time speech was impossible, but finally he said, “What’s it to me?”

“Well, I know you have been interested in this sort of thing,” said Xan cagily. “You’ll recall you once came to me through my associate in Hong Kong, a chap named Lo Pep, seeking funds for your research in this area.”

“I have no recollection of such a thing,” said Lizardo, and that much was true. Often just after his medication was administered, his memory became clouded. The staff would tell him things that the redhead had done, and he would try in vain to remember.

“I don’t blame you,” said Xan. “I laughed in your face. I called you a simpleton, and I found your story about coming from outer space through a brick wall patently absurd.”

“I’m sorry, I have no recollection of that.”

“That’s your problem. There’s no doubt in my mind you’re exactly where you belong, but that’s not why I’m calling. I should have had the good grace to make you feel more welcome in my camp.”

“I just have no recollection of any of that. My name is Dr. Emilio Lizardo.”

“How are your own calculations coming on your solid-matter-penetrator?”

“Well—” Lizardo feigned indifference, eyeing the spate of mathematical equations scribbled on the wall in his own jerky hand. “Not bad.”

“That means you’re getting no place. Perhaps you need Banzai’s help.”

“It could be opportune,” Lizardo admitted.

“Very opportune, I would imagine. What would you say if I told you I could spring you out of that institution in a couple of hours?”

“I would say who is this?”

“It’s Xan, you fool! Hanoi Xan!”

The name had a certain ring of familiarity, but again Lizardo could not say how he knew it. There was a hollow click at the other end of the line, and Lizardo regarded the call as he would a prank, meanwhile watching the plucky Banzai catch the errant parasite and stuff it into a sandwich bag before heading back to the Jet Car where his radio was crackling.

General Catburd:
This his frequency? Nobody’s home. Banzai?

Secretary of Defense:
Give me the phone. You tell me, Buckaroo, what in tarnation is this going-through-solid-matter-and-rendering-all-existing-conventional-defense-perimeters-useless-overnight-bullcorn?

General Catburd:
Buckaroo, Catburd here. I’ve got egg all over my face—all right, crow feathers, too—but that’s okay. No room for egos here. We’re all Americans, and I wanna buy that toy of yours. Senator Cunningham here feels the same way—right, Madame Senator?

Senator Cunningham:
Don’t put words in my mouth, General.

Secretary of Defense:
We’ll talk turkey later.

Professor Hikita:
Not for sale, Mr. Secretary. Jet Car is not for sale.

Secretary of Defense:
I wasn’t talking to you, little Hikita-san.

(Rawhide and I move closer to the professor, backing him up in the matter.)

Professor Hikita:
Buckaroo, did you see them? Did you?

Secretary of Defense:
See who?

Buckaroo Banzai: See
them? They about had me and the whole car for breakfast.

Professor Hikita:
They attacked you? They tried to take control of your mind? They exist?

Buckaroo Banzai:
With any luck I have the pictures to prove it.

Professor Hikita seized upon the news, clutching it with the relief of a man from whose shoulders had just been lifted a cumbersome weight. For more than forty years he had lived with self-doubt concerning what he had seen the night of the ill-fated experiment at Princeton. Had he actually seen creatures in the other dimension, or had they been figments of the imagination? He was a scientist, an exponent of the scientific method, and the fact that he had been unable to repeat the experiment and ascertain the truth to his satisfaction had come to be an obsession. In hopes of learning more, he had made the painful journey to visit Dr. Lizardo, only to see with his own eyes the abject folly of the enterprise. Emilio Lizardo was gone; he had ceased to exist, his place taken by the raving red-haired apparition who called himself John Whorfin and who babbled endlessly about his empire somewhere on the other side of Saturn.

S
everal hours later, after Buckaroo had showered and shaved for the news media with the Banzai Institute’s latest invention, a gyroscopic razor that worked on the principle of a spinning top, Lizardo’s antipsychotic medication had begun to wear thin and John Whorfin seized control. This coup d’etat was usually accompanied by an irresistible urge to wander. The combination of a starry night and the fascination of travel often sent the two of them, Whorfin and Lizardo, to a comfortable chair by the window where they watched the heavens through the heavy iron grate that sealed them in.

Whorfin would use these occasions to recite a daily menu of gripes, in particular berating Lizardo with accusations of stupidity and sloth, blaming him for a lack of progress in recreating the Princeton experiment. For his part, Lizardo tried to explain that his scientific work had been hampered by Whorfin’s presence.

“You dominate my brain,” Lizardo would say. “You give me no freedom to think.”

“If I didn’t dominate you, you wouldn’t help me,” Whorfin would reply. “You have no loyalty to the cause.”

“That isn’t true. I want to help you get off planet Earth, because I know I’ll never be free as long as you remain.”

“But you think I’m evil. There is resistance. I can feel it.”

And around they would go. Out of this discord between two souls in one body would come nothing constructive, and every day brought more of the same—Lizardo praying for the next dawn and a fresh dose of medication which would bring him at least a few hours free of Whorfin’s torment. On this particular day, Whorfin seized control with dramatic suddenness and with a volley of furious curses commanded to see the television.

The two of them were still in front of the set hours later, watching replay upon replay of the amazing Jet Car, when the phone on the wall rang.

“You get it,” said Whorfin’s pouting lips, and the right hand (that side of the body in which Lizardo seemed to reside) reached for the phone. In his shaking hand he heard the voice of Xan.

“Who is this?” demanded the villain.

“John Whorfin. Who is this?”

“Xan here, Whorfin. I called earlier. I must have reached Lizardo.”

“Yes, you probably did. What’s on your mind, great Xan?”

“You’ve seen the news?”

“Banzai? Of course!”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“In the past it was always I who made the propositions to you, great Xan. What has changed?”

“Shut up. I made the same offer to Lizardo I’m making to you. I don’t which one of you is which—”

“That’s our problem.”

“That’s the way I look at it.” Xan paused, perhaps second-guessing himself for ever getting involved with these two. “In case you’re interested, I can have you out of that hell hole by tonight. What do you say?”

“I say there’s no doubt you can. Who is to stop the great Xan from doing whatever he wishes? But there is no need—my own boys can get me out easily enough.”

A peal of irksome laughter came from Xan. “Your boys from outer space? What planet is it you’re from again? I forget.”

Whorfin quelled his rage and answered calmly. “Planet 10.”

“Right . . . Planet 10. Well, they haven’t gotten you out so far, have they? How long have you been rotting there?”

“Forty-five years, which is but a day—”

“I know . . . ‘which is but a day’ on your planet. Maybe you’ve got the time, but I’m not sure about Lizardo. He’s not of your planet, is he?”

Whorfin cocked his head a short distance from the phone. Was Xan only humoring him, only pretending to believe his story about coming from Planet 10? Whorfin had learned many things about human beings (and I include Xan in this category only reluctantly), but he did not possess a sense of humor and hence could not comprehend one, much less one as barbed as Hanoi Xan’s.

“You may have a point,” Whorfin said, looking at his gnarled hands. “Lizardo is getting old.”

“And I’d say perhaps you miscalculated as far as your
boys
are concerned. We both know what loyalty among criminals is worth.” With this parry Xan obviously had touched a raw nerve, Whorfin’s own paranoia doing the rest. “They’ve probably got a good thing going on the outside,” continued Xan. “Why should they give a damn about getting you out? What do they need you for?”

Whorfin listened and spoke little, the wheels in his mind turning on their own. His latest conversation with his boys
had
made him uneasy. John Bigbooté had sounded evasive, too busy to be bothered. They had had, by Earth standards, a long time to start life anew without him, without the discipline of a strong hand. Perhaps his fears were unfounded, but now was the time . . .
Banzai had done it! Banzai had succeeded in breaking the dimension barrier! There at last existed the means of going home to Planet 10, if only he could . . .

“I want you to build me what Banzai’s got,” Xan said.

“The Jet Car.”

“Whatever it takes to go through solid matter,” said Xan, practically salivating. “I must have that power!”

On the television, the entry of the Jet Car into the mountain was shown once again, and the attractive network commentator was still sitting next to the fair-haired Perfect Tommy, with Rawhide and myself along for laughs.

Commentator:
Here she is, slowed down as far as we can take it. Lookit there . . . slam. Right into the side of that mountain! Perfect Tommy, Rawhide, Reno, you guys are known as the Hong Kong Cavaliers, Buckaroo’s most trusted inner circle. So I gotta ask, did it surprise you fellows as much as the rest of us when the HB 88, the experimental jet vehicle, went right off the scope and with the device known as the Oscillation Overthruster vanished inside solid matter?

Perfect Tommy:
Nope, not really.

Commentator:
Was Buckaroo acting any different this morning? I mean, in terms of other mornings?

Perfect Tommy:
I don’t know. I was asleep. Rawhide, you saw him.

(The quiet gunsmith Rawhide, uneasy before the cameras, knows only how to speak the truth.)

Rawhide:
I don’t think he went to bed. Buckaroo normally only sleeps an hour or two a night anyway, ever since—

(Rawhide glances at us, notices our keen scrutiny of what he is about to say, and thankfully neglects to mention the profound change in Buckaroo since the death of his wife Peggy.)

Rawhide:
Buckaroo just doesn’t sleep much, that’s all. Plus, Tommy had a late-night petting party that went on till the wee hours. I doubt he could have gotten much sleep anyway.

(The commentator raises her eyebrows in Tommy’s direction, nodding knowingly.)

Commentator:
No wonder Tommy looks so awful today.

(Tommy, ever conscious of his physical appearance, turns several shades of crimson.)

“Money is no object,” said Xan. “I’ll give you a million dollars. Can you build it for a million?”

“I don’t see why not,” Whorfin said, making other plans even as he spoke.

“You’ll report to Lo Pep. He’ll be in touch and can give you whatever assistance you require.”

“Thank you, mighty Xan.”

“Thank you, mighty Whorfin.”

Whorfin hung up the phone, gloating, for he had not the slightest intention of upholding his end of the bargain. He would get what Banzai had, this queer device called the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER, but he would not give it to Xan. He would use it himself to free the rest of his army from the Eighth Dimension and take a short cut through the same dimension to Planet 10, where he would scatter his enemies before him and rule mercilessly.

The only obstacle that lay in his path was Buckaroo Banzai, and possibly the Nova Police, if they knew his whereabouts. Hiding in Lizardo’s body, it was a risk he was more than willing to take.

D
eparture time for Banzai Institute 727 from the El Paso Airport was two o’clock in the afternoon, which put us into New York around eight where we were met by Pinky Carruthers, an auxiliary guitarist with the band. Pinky, his usual irrepressible self, was always a delight to behold. Fond of sporting pink suits and stating that he knew over forty seven thousand unknown facts, that day he was giving anyone who would listen an earful of some new philosophy he had embraced only that morning, something called Kashmirian Shavism. (I have no idea as to the spelling, or even whether such a thing exists.) He was, however, quite obviously taken with the subject, or at least taken with hearing himself pontificate on the matter of the Cosmic Dance of Shiva.