The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Read online

  Rawhide could at last open the glass door and attempt to take Buckaroo in his arms, finding him disheveled and deadly pale and in a terrible state of agitation. He implored Buckaroo to sit and rest a moment while he administered a restorative, but Buckaroo curtly pushed him aside. “There isn’t a moment to be lost,” he said cryptically. “The world’s in mortal danger.”

  Relating to how B. Banzai was seized with this sudden intuition was the fact that his body still exuded a formidable electrical charge, which Rawhide learned to his intense discomfort when he sought to grasp him. Meanwhile, Buckaroo had started off for the hotel ballroom, and Rawhide, thoroughly frightened now, followed closely behind.

  Speaking for myself, Professor Hikita and I had found an unexpected repository of scientific information in the person of Penny Priddy. For some inexplicable reason, she had without warning opened her mouth and, as much to her own surprise as ours, had begun to speak in the most learned terms about the theory of consciousness radiation and her own “pet hypothesis” that said radiation, or the universal force known as ch’i, was in fact not merely the Clairvoyant Reality popularized by certain exponents of the pseudopsychic, but was nothing less than a new grand unified theory. B. Banzai had resplit the atom into many dimensions, exploding four coordinate space and time. After listening to her for several minutes, far from being annoyed, I was rather in awe and thrilled to the fact that she was suddenly one of our party, even the cynical news media having fallen under the charm of her intelligent personality.

  “Of course information comes through the senses,” she interposed between statements of Professor Hikita. “No one here is suggesting otherwise. The way an object smells or looks—these are its physical properties—but it has, in addition, an essence, its unitary identity, which is communicated through consciousness radiation. To use the famous apocryphal story of Newton’s encounter with the apple, Newton was correct insofar as his mathematically accurate theory of gravity went, but he did not go far enough in his Principia. He failed to see consciousness as a fundamental force. The perfect example of the falling apple as manifest consciousness escaped him entirely, even when it struck him on the head. In everyday terms, using the analogy of a baseball pitch, consciousness is neither the pitcher nor the catcher—it is the moving ball. In music, neither the violinist nor the spectator—it is the melody that floats from the strings, millions of vibrating molecules. It is The Thing Which Makes Itself Known; it is Newton’s apple, a particle closely related to the graviton and gravitino hitherto unincorporated in any unification theory. I believe Buckaroo has called it somewhere in his writings ‘The Door That Opens You,’ meaning we need not seek other levels of consciousness but be neutral and free of psychic obstructions. Consciousness is neither sought nor seeks; it radiates everywhere.”

  At that moment, as I hung on her every word, the door through which Buckaroo and Rawhide had left was suddenly flung open, and in amazement I saw Buckaroo, seemingly possessed of a form of madness, pointing with trembling hand at someone across the room. “Stop them!” he screamed. “They’re Evil from the other dimension!”

  In a flash he was after them, the Lectroids who have since come to be identified as John O’Connor and John Gomez, the two of them making ungainly leaps for the nearest exit, bounding like human kangaroos with Buckaroo and Rawhide in pursuit. In the same instant, their comrade John Bigbooté appeared unexpectedly at our rear, having stepped through the curtain behind the dais and grabbing Professor Hikita while pressing a pistol to his throat. In a loud shrieklike voice he cried out, “Anybody moves, the Prof gets it through the esophagus!” (The throat area, we came to learn, was their own mortal spot, their heads being thickly plated.)

  The effect of his dramatic announcement was to freeze those of us near him and to cause Buckaroo and Rawhide to lose valuable steps in their race for the main doors. Those of us on the dais could but attempt to collect our wits and appraise the situation that was unfolding with lightning rapidity. (Remember, reader, we had not heard of such a thing as a Lectroid, and to everyone except Buckaroo they still appeared as normal, if somewhat awkward, human beings.)

  It was at some point in the confusion that I saw Bigbooté’s eyes shift away from me and made the instinctive play to go for my gun. It turned out to be a mistake, which in hindsight I readily admit, as Bigbooté’s reactions proved faster than I had anticipated and he nailed me with a single shot, his bullet striking me in the shoulder area and knocking me backwards over the table. Another inch and it would have pierced a lung, New Jersey later told me. Three more inches, and it would have been my heart, although I wasn’t thinking of any of that then, as I watched Bigbooté jerk the professor through the curtains and disappear. Tommy immediately followed, only to find the door through which they must have gone somehow firmly shut. At all events, he could not budge it open and so was forced to run to another exit, losing crucial seconds in the process.

  In the meantime, New Jersey was bending over me and attending my wound, his voice hoarse with emotion when I vainly tried to rise. “Just lie still,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “It’s not that,” I muttered. “The Overthruster—”

  Then it was the voice of Penny, as pretty as an angel in that moment, holding something small and shiny in one hand. “I’ve got it,” she said. “Buckaroo handed it to me when he left the room. He said, ‘Hold my thruster,’ and I said I would.”

  At least that was something, I thought. I only hoped the professor would come to no harm. That was the last thing I remembered for some time, feeling the onrush of a faraway dreamy feeling, as New Jersey pulled a needle from my arm. (His wampum belt we had so derided held his medical supplies, as it turned out.)

  I will now relate, as it has been related to me, what happened in my absence. Buckaroo and Rawhide had gone after the Lectroid duo, O’Connor and Gomez, in different directions only to run into one another again at the conclusion of their respective chases in the hotel parking garage, where O’Connor and Gomez, reunited with Bigbooté, were seen loading a crate roughly the size of Professor Hikita into a Yoyodyne van. From across the garage, Buckaroo and Rawhide both raised their pistols and ordered them to stop, and when they did not, Buckaroo fired, the gun discharging without any discernible result other than the sight of a slightly affronted John Bigbooté rubbing his head as if he had been tweaked by a mosquito. When Buckaroo attempted to fire again, Rawhide, still thinking the targets human and his chief momentarily under great stress, deflected Buckaroo’s barrel, much to the latter’s irritation. “It doesn’t matter!” Buckaroo yelled. “Let me put it plainly! They’re devils!”

  In the meantime the three Lectroids had scrambled into their van and raced up the exit ramp; and when Buckaroo identified himself to a passing motorcyclist, the chase was resumed in earnest, B. Banzai riding in tandem with the cyclist who quickly showed himself to be quite fearless and also bitterly drunk to the point that he would not have hesitated to die for the cause in any number of deadly maneuvers. Even Buckaroo, who had just traveled faster than the speed of sound through a mountain and a man to whom I have said fear was a stranger, had at last met that stranger. Within several blocks of the hotel, his hand was already turning the nonexistent door-handle to jump for it when the cyclist uttered a wild scream and Buckaroo ordered him to pull over to the curb before he hurt someone. For whatever reason, the man surprisingly complied and Buckaroo was truly glad.

  “I’ll have this returned to you,” Buckaroo said, and the man, giving him a queer intent look, waved as Buckaroo sped away on his machine.

  “You’re Buckaroo Banzai!” the poor receding figure was heard to exclaim.

  When Buckaroo related the story to us much later, we all laughed uproariously, although at the time the events occurred, Buckaroo was anything but amused. In the jumble of the chase, he had lost sight of the Yoyodyne van and now scrambled madly to catch up, threading recklessly through traffic and at last espying the vehicle near the outskirts
of town.

  If anything, falling far behind the vehicle for a time now proved advantageous to B. Banzai, as it appeared to the Lectroids (if such things occurred to them at all) that they were suddenly out of danger. Buckaroo was astute enough to surmise the same, and thus was able to trail them easily by keeping his distance.

  This situation continued for the better part of an hour, during which time he communicated to us over his Go-Phone, updating us at intervals and again illustrating the versatility of the cellular radio,* an invention of the Banzai Institute and one which already gave promise of revolutionizing worldwide communications.

  *(Cellular radio, or simply “cellular,” is a fairly recent technological breakthrough of the Banzai Institute enabling persons with small units the size of a cigarette lighter or a wristwatch to telephone from anywhere in the world. It interfaces with all existing telecommunications networks, including satellites, can receive and transmit video, can communicate with any computer, and can even navigate electronically, as airplanes do. Cellular, in short, represents a total communications system without wires.)

  Informed of my condition (he had not known I was wounded), he insisted on knowing what had been done for me and dispatched us all to the Institute where we were to begin investigating at once the shadowy company known as Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems. Even in my dazed state, (he name struck a chord, although I could not say why.

  “How about you, Buckaroo?” Rawhide asked.

  “I have a hunch that’s where I’m going,” he said. “I’m switching on my locator just in case.”

  (His “locator,” a cellular emergency beacon, would allow us to know his location within fifty feet at all times.)

  Despite the fact that we itched to know more, we accepted his instructions without question and prepared to move on them, but there was one matter he had not thought to address; this was the issue of Penny Priddy. Had we been soulless, we could have easily left her behind. Speaking for us all, I think we still had our doubts about her, this business of identical twins leaving us shaking our heads, and now this sudden and unexplained outburst of hers at the press conference! What to make of such a girl? The night before she had seemingly taken a shot at us, and now here she was nursing me, taking my head in her lap, and sponging my forehead with a cool cloth whilst saying the most soothing words. The night before, and this morning at the jail, she had appeared as but an unassuming unlettered vagrant, a gamine, who we now learned possessed an astonishing familiarity with B. Banzai’s theories and with even a few of her own! And yet in the next breath, when pressed by Tommy, she disclaimed any knowledge of such things, saying she had “no idea” what came over her, disavowing the very erudition with which she had just mesmerized us. Again, as I have said, who is she?

  Still, we couldn’t abandon her. Buckaroo would have had our skins had we tried, and, truth to tell, she was not unpleasant to be around. Given enough idle theorizing, anyone can sooner or later be painted in the worst lights, and in person there was certainly nothing sinister about her. If she had long carried a torch for B. Banzai, then so had many women. There was no crime in that, nor in her plaintive condition, nor least of all in her poverty. As I reminded Tommy, we are not members of a secret society, charged as judge and executioner. We are, hopefully, good citizens bearing the unmistakable hallmark of decent people everywhere—a willingness to help our fellows. I said to Tommy, “If she portends bad things, do we have the right to commit minor crimes against her because she might do worse to us?”

  “Don’t try to talk like Buckaroo,” he said.

  “Isn’t that what Buckaroo would say?” I replied.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then why don’t you wait and ask him?”

  He looked at me silently, then said, “All right, she comes with us. But I don’t like it. I want to go on record.”

  And so he did. His objection is here duly noted, as is the fact that she did accompany us on the bus back to the Institute, indeed sitting beside me, where she continued to concern herself with my comfort. (Luckily, the bullet had only cut flesh, but the soreness was not insignificant.)

  As she leaned across me to pull aside the curtains covering my window, I inhaled a faint breath of the most unusual perfume I had ever encountered and complimented her on it.

  “It’s Chinese,” she said.

  “Chinese,” I pondered aloud. “It’s very different. What’s it called?”

  “It’s called I Don’t Remember,” she said.

  “Interesting name.”

  “Well, you know the Chinese.”

  “Not really.”

  I did not really mean to fence with her, but now she had me. I was intrigued. All the old questions, my doubts about her, came back, and I queried her stonily.

  “Where did you buy it?” I asked. “I’d like to get some for my friend.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Pecos.”

  The name made her smile, but only for a moment. Perhaps my stare disconcerted her, or perhaps it was something else which caused her to look away, the colored radiance having left her cheeks. I sensed I had gained the advantage. (How mistaken I was!) I also confess to having searched her face, now more revealed amid the sunlight, for any surgical marks. Although I could see none—in fact I was struck most by her expression of gentleness—she was clearly restive under my gaze.

  “What is it?” she said, impatiently.

  “It’s that sweet odor,” I said. “I’d give anything to know where you got it.”

  “I promise to get you some. I really don’t know where I got it. It must have been a present from someone. Anyway,” she said, “that’s not what you were really thinking.”

  “No?”

  “Tell me your private mind, Reno.”

  Again. I inhaled that rare fragrance, scarcely perceptible and yet exquisite, as though it were her very breath, my flesh at once burning feverishly as if by the urgency of some torrid blaze. I felt a surge of fear, that the lock on my inner door was giving way, my immortal soul fleeing in horror from those latent abysmal instincts she had awakened within me. Suddenly the thought of death gave me no pain. This life was a mystery I despaired of ever solving, and I had perforce to be content with leaving it, my brain beginning to swim as if some occult change in the atmosphere had summoned the most weird nonsense, the strangest fantasies, and bade them to dance as airy figures before me. With each succcssive whiff I grew dizzier, my hold on reality more tenuous. A dull red crept to my temples, a shimmering phoenix took flight, and just then the timely voice of New Jersey pulled me back from that remarkable intoxication.

  “Get me a wet towel,” he shouted.

  “I think he’s delirious,” I heard Penny say, as I felt the coolness of water.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You’re suffering from ague,” New Jersey said. “Are you all right?”

  “Her perfume—”

  “Her perfume?” New Jersey sniffed. “What’s that got to do with anything? You two take it easy—we’ll be at the Institute in a few minutes. Reno, you’re going straight to the infirmary.”

  “I’m all right,” I protested and saw Tommy dimly across the aisle, a gleam of “I told you so” in his eyes, looking down on me in more ways than one.

  “I’ll be around if you need me,” New Jersey said, rising to leave.

  “I’ll take care of him,” Penny replied.

  Once more “alone,” the circuit of my riotous thoughts broken, she remained to stroke my hair with graceful gestures and stare at me, almost hypnotically. I would like to say her smile gladdened my heart, but I cannot. When she leaned close, I could still smell that most subtle of lures, and I was more convinced than ever that the evasive scent was not a perfume at all. It was her breath, it was she!

  As we neared the Institute, I wished to test my theory by bringing matters to a head. After some preliminary conversation about her past—the death of her parents and her identical twin sister in that
terrible fire, about which she was confused by recent events; followed by her adoption by a distant relative out west in Wyoming; her flight from home as a troubled adolescent; a brief time as a religieuse in a convent; her adventures as a world traveler; her failures in various careers—the talk turned to me.

  “You’re the writer, Reno,” she said. I did not deny it. “You write the Buckaroo adventure books.”

  “I take notes and report what I see.”

  “What did you do before you joined the outfit?”

  “We in the ‘outfit,’ ” I said, “don’t ask one another such personal questions, but since you didn’t know better, I’ll tell you. I had my own think tank, but I got tired of thinking—I wanted some action.”

  “What are you working on now?” she asked. “Or should I say what new adventure are you taking notes for?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Bui I am reminded of a story from classical antiquity, in which an Indian prince sent a beautiful girl to Alexander the Great as a gift. Naturally, the young conqueror was smitten by her loveliness, but what was more amazing about the girl, what set her apart from every other of her sex, was the strange delectable perfume on her breath, sweeter than any flower. It was this seductive scent which covered her terrible secret.”

  “Which was—?”

  “That all her life she had been raised on poisons, nurtured by them, fed them from her birth, so that the deadliest toxins became her element, as natural to her as water and the air we breathe, and in time she became poisonous herself . . . lethally so. Her embrace was literally the kiss of death.”