The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Read online

  Although over my Go-Phone I hastily alerted all interns to watch for them, I had the sinking feeling that the Lectroids had made good their getaway; but at least they hadn’t succeeded in poaching anything, I thought. We had gotten off easily enough, it seemed, but that did not take into account the disastrous news about Penny Priddy which we would soon receive. Having caught the OVERTHRUSTER and stuffed it into her large plastic handbag, she had run only as far as the other side of the building where, according to her, she saw Rawhide enter. Seeking to turn the OVERTHRUSTER over to him, she had instead been forced to look on helplessly as John Bigbooté, that phantom Lectroid who seemed to be everywhere at once, met Rawhide on the stairs and left our close friend mortally wounded in his wake, and then proceed to snatch Penny Priddy when she yelled out in horror.

  As John Parker and I ran down the steps to the lobby to pursue O’Connor and Gomez, we encountered Buckaroo, Perfect Tommy, and New Jersey already leaning over our dying friend, whose proud spirit at least remained unbroken.

  While New Jersey gently lifted his shirt to reveal the small but deadly wound the poisoned barb had made, Rawhide fought the venom with every ounce of his strength, drawing us all closer to tell us what had happened and how he loved us.

  Cupping his head in his hands, Buckaroo sought to comfort him. “It’s all right. You’re gonna be all right,” Buckaroo whispered.

  “I guess so,” said Rawhide. “I’ve got the finest doctor in the world.”

  Buckaroo looked to New Jersey, who had just extracted the “stinger” from Rawhide’s swollen flesh, and then turning his gaze on John Parker, raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner, as if to say, “Is there any hope?”

  John Parker shook his head, took the stinger from New Jersey, and promptly stepped on it, a faintly audible death rattle escaping the organism (for it was a living thing) as John Parker squashed it repeatedly, grinding it into the floor.

  “Good God,” said Tommy. “What is that thing?”

  “What killed Sam, I guess,” uttered Rawhide, the portent of his own remark not escaping him. “What’s gonna kill me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Buckaroo, quickly removing his own shirt to wrap it around his friend, who had begun to shiver violently, his skin turning a drawn, yellow color, as if waxen, glistening with beads of sweat.

  “Tell me about death, Buckaroo,” said Rawhide. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, friend.”

  We had all begun to turn away from the sight, one by one, overcome by emotion, until at last only Buckaroo had the fortitude to continue looking upon our friend.

  “Is it a cold numbness?” Rawhide asked, his eyes fixed and unseeing in their expression.

  “Yes, it could be,” replied Buckaroo.

  “Then I’m in trouble,” said Rawhide and tried to laugh, his body convulsed by the slow spread of the poison.

  “Come on, Rawhide, don’t give up,” Buckaroo pleaded. “Don’t give up hope.”

  Rawhide grimaced, though it had the effect of a smile. “You remember what Aristotle said about hope?”

  “ ‘Hope is a dream by one who is awake,’ ” recalled Buckaroo.

  “And education?”

  “ ‘The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.’ ”

  “And Alexander, when he was dying, surrounded by all his companions—”

  “ ‘I see that my funeral will he a big one,’ ” Buckaroo answered, prompting Rawhide to look around.

  “Where’d everybody go?” he said.

  “We’re here,” the rest of us assured him.

  “Maybe I’ll see Peggy,” he said. “You won’t be jealous, will you, Buckaroo?”

  “Of course I’ll be jealous.”

  “I wouldn’t mind going there for a visit. It’s like Aristippus said. Remember him, Reno?”

  “A professional rhetorician. A companion of Socrates,” I said. “You mean about the house of the courtesan—?”

  Growing too weak to talk, he said softly, “You tell the story, Reno.”

  “Once when Aristippus was going into the house of a courtesan, one of the youths with him blushed, and Aristippus said, ‘It’s not entering that is troublemaking, but being unable to come out.’ ”

  He smiled almost boyishly then, his eyes slowly closing. “That’s death. And why is it better to be a beggar than uneducated—?”

  His voice was so faint I could barely hear him, but I fought back the burning in my eyes and replied, “ ‘It is better to be a beggar than to be uneducated; the beggars must have money, the others need to be made human.’ ”

  He reached out then, squeezed all our hands once, as Buckaroo shook him, unwilling to let him go. “Rawhide! No! Don’t let it take you!”

  “Guess I’m just lazy,” he said with his dying breath. “I guess that’s why I joined up in the first place—to escape the curse of toil. I can’t wait to see Peggy.”

  He gasped, as the poison at last gripped his heart. Then, trying hastily to say something more, as if its significance he had forgotten until that moment, only the first part of his thought escaped his lips. Those cryptic words we have turned over in our minds ever since: “Buckaroo,” he whispered, “the penny paradox—”*

  *(What did Rawhide mean by this? We would have no shortage of theories. Was he referring to Penny Priddy or to the penny paradox so familiar to science buffs and which can roughly be stated in something like the following terms: Since the same part of the moon always faces us, does the moon rotate on its axis as it circles the earth? The same question can be elucidated by using a pair of “pennies” or any round objects:

  If a penny is rotated about a second one that is fixed in place, the question is: Does the first penny rotate once or twice around its axis when revolving around the second penny? For an observer who watches both pennies from above, the first penny rotates twice; for an observer on the fixed penny, only once. Therefore, to the eyes of an observer on the earth, the moon does not rotate, although it rotates once in relation to the stars.

  So what did Rawhide intend to say? Could the “penny paradox” in some way be connected to the riddle of Penny Priddy? I believe so, and the reader will learn of my theory in a future work.)

  And with that he was gone. Buckaroo held him tightly, and tears streamed down our cheeks. He was gone, and yet I know this: I felt his wraith among us immediately and have felt it near ever since. Such bonds as exist among those of us who live together and fight side by side cannot be torn apart by death. Anyone who doubts it does not realize the true power of the human will. As Buckaroo said later at his funeral: “He loved and slew, made music and made merry; he never possessed more than he could carry on his horse . . . and although it is said one can enter this life through one door only but can leave it through many, who is to say the door does not swing both ways?”

  Who was Rawhide? I do not know. That was the only name by which I ever knew him. In all but the important ways, I was unfamiliar with everything about him. I knew from rumor or from idle comments he may have dropped in our conversations that he had once been a baseball player and continued to be fond of the sport, that he was an amateur folklorist and naturalist who had spent considerable time in La Plata. Indeed, he had traveled all over the world before meeting Buckaroo. There was a picture in his room that I recall, a photograph of him sitting on horseback in blue burnoos and veil between two similarly dressed stalwart fierce-looking Arabs—“Touaregs” he called them, true desert riders. The quiet sensitive side of him was drawn to the works of Hudson, the novelist; and although he was a topflight scientist, a biochemist by training, he was foremost an imaginer, a man of vision, and yet unpretentious in his tastes. No matter how trying or miserable a situation might become, to Rawhide it was never worse than disagreeable. That was the extent to which I ever heard him complain. I recalled at his funeral a time when the two of us spent a week in the water of the Naruto Straits in the Inland Sea of Japan. Our rubber Zodiac with most of our provisions h
ad been sucked into the largest tidal vortex we had ever measured and had very nearly taken us with it. Incapable of swimming against the current in the straits which at times reached a velocity of 4–5 MPS, we drifted for a week past shoreline and on out into the open sea, floating and subsisting on only the melted ice in a thermos chest, before we were spotted and our lives saved by Japanese fishermen. Once we had been given something warm to eat and had been put to bed, I asked him if he would characterize our week-long ordeal as anything other than disagreeable.

  “Not so bad as a week I’ve known,” he said, “when Mrs.‒‒‒‒‒ (his wife) and I passed a whole ten days in a friend’s condominium in Los Angeles with nothing but a couple of tins of cocoa and some oatmeal to eat.”

  That was the sort of man he was, a stoic and a gentleman of the kind seldom seen anymore. Of his ex-wife and children, if any, I know nothing, having never met them. But, if they happen to be reading this, I offer them my condolences and my assurance that they have reason to be proud.

  Our silent grieving for our fallen comrade-in-arms was quickly interrupted by two simultaneous events: the arrival of a badly shaken Professor Hikita and a call I received over my Go-Phone from Mrs. Johnson.

  “Somebody’s got Penny Priddy!” she exclaimed. “Three men—they’re taking her out of the compound!”

  “Penny?” Professor Hikita interposed. “I gave her the Overthruster!”

  We were off like a shot, all of us as one possessed, but we were too late. The Lectroids, perhaps recalling Penny’s impressive grasp of B. Banzai’s theories from the press conference, had spirited her away on the grounds that something was better than nothing. Or perhaps they felt they could entice B. Banzai to do their bidding by holding her hostage. What they evidently did not know was that the very object they so desperately sought was at Iast within their reach. They had only to look through Penny Priddy’s purse. That they did not find it strains human credibility, but the fact that our planet remains is proof enough.

  At the time, however, we had to assume the worst. The Lectroids and John Whorfin had the OVERTHRUSTER. John Emdall would quickly learn of it and precipitate a global nuclear war, or would perhaps destroy the earth even more quickly with whatever weapons she had at her disposal. Thus, our position was suddenly more precarious than it had been even a few minutes before. Buckaroo ordered the bus boarded immediately for the journey to Yoyodyne, but even so, we were confronted with a fearful decision: whether to alert John Emdall that the OVERTHRUSTER had fallen into Lectroid hands or withhold the information from her. Perfect Tommy and I advocated the second choice, arguing that by telling Emdall the news she dreaded most we would in effect be waving the red flag in front of the bull, with the Earth caught in the middle. Neither of us believed that she could resist annihilating our planet for very long, armed with such information—certainly for not as long as our original deadline had entailed. Dared we entrust this unknown ruler who was not even of our species with such dismal news of our own making? In view of what would certainly seem to her to be an example of our incompetence, how could we rightly expect to be given a second chance, possibly at the expense of her planet?

  I admit now that this argument was absolutely unhindered by logic and any power of clear thinking, as B. Banzai sufficiently pointed out to me. “If we cannot even pinpoint the source of her intelligence about our activities, nor have any way of knowing how that intelligence is communicated to her, we must in all likelihood assume that she knows already what has happened,” he said. “At least by telling her fully ourselves, we may be able to convince her of our pure intentions and so argue for more time. Otherwise, she could only construe our silence as devious or worse, perhaps even in collusion with the Lectroids. It must have crossed her mind that there is nothing to prevent us from helping the Lectroids off our planet as quickly as possible so as to provide her with no excuse for our destruction.”

  “In other words, she might think we let the Lectroids have the Overthruster?” I said. “So that they could escape and we’d be off the hook?”

  “Exactly.” Buckaroo nodded. “Except she knows better and must have ways of keeping informed as to our every move.”

  “John Parker?” I asked. “Or that big radio receiver in the sky?”

  “I doubt it. I doubt we’ll ever know,” he replied. “But John Parker could be useful to us. Tell him I’d like to see him.”

  We were standing in World Watch One, our sophisticated electronics eavesdropping post aboard the bus, where Big Norse had succeeded in opening a channel of communications with what we believed was the Adder father ship. As I flicked on the intercom and told Pinky Carruthers that I’d like to see John Parker upstairs, I watched Big Norse listen to the Adder signal in her headphones and write out two words—Nova Police.

  “Tell them we have a message for John Emdall,” Buckaroo said.

  “In their code?” Big Norse asked.

  Buckaroo assented. “In their code, their language, whatever it is. Tell them it’s urgent.

  While she sent the message, Buckaroo simultaneously placed a call to the President. It was the first the outside world would learn of our extraordinarily perilous situation and the expedition we were embarked upon.

  24

  So much has been written about our raid upon Yoyodyne that I confess to having nearly succumbed to the temptation of leaving it out of this journal altogether; and yet I recognize—how can I not?—its continuing hold upon the popular imagination. One would think we would be satiated with the details by now. Certainly, its main events need no repeating, as they have been stylized and improved upon by better writers than I. Every schoolboy and girl now knows of the adventures of Scooter Lindley who at the point of a gun reclaimed the OVERTHRUSTER for the Banzai Institute. Equally incorporated into the public mythology by now is the aerial triumph of John Parker and Buckaroo Banzai over Whorfin’s Panther ship in the skies of Grover’s Mills, the fate of Earth literally hanging on the winner. How does a writer embellish upon such a Wassercheide of human history? Whose pen can add one meaningful word to the documented result? The planet and the race were saved—this is the legacy of our deeds; the rest is only so much gossip.

  However quarrelsome I might be with the idea of recovering this ground, the expected advent of this published journal has brought me numerous letters and inquiries from the public, many of them dealing specifically with the question of our combat against the Lectroids . . . “How did you fight them?”, “Were they as stout as advertised?”, “Are any left among us?”, and the like. In order, then, to allay some doubts and raise others in terms of certain falsities about the raid that have been disseminated, I now address myself to the truth of what happened, using transcripts and my own hitherto unpublished notes to keep to a minimum the natural tendency of any writer to enhance the facts.

  8:33 P.M.—B. Banzai’s call to the president’s hospital room at Walter Reed is patched through after great difficulty with atmospherics. With the President, the Secretary of Defense, whose almost frantic desire to get his hands on the OSCILLATION OVERTHRUSTER is well known.

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  Hello, Mr. President. How’s my favorite patient? Any tenderness?

  The President:

  Buckaroo! What’s it like out there . . . (unintelligible) . . . in the real world?

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  Not too terrific, sir. I apologize for the interruption—

  Secretary of Defense:

  Buckaroo—

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  Mr. Secretory—

  The President:

  What’s going on?

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  Something very unusual. We have reason to believe that there are, moving freely among us, alien space creatures known, as Lectroids, disguised as humans and the owners and operators of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.

  The President:

  Yoyodyne Propulsion?

  Secretary of Defense:

  The people working o
n our top secret Truncheon sub hunter-killer? Under control of alien nationals?

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  Not exactly, Mr. Secretary. Alien Lectroids from Planet 10, a planet in a distant two-star system. There isn’t much time to explain, but camouflaged as human beings, what they’re really doing, forget your Truncheon sub hunter-killer, is building an enormous rocketship to escape back through the Eighth Dimension, and—

  The President:

  Buckaroo, Buckaroo . . . slow down . . . (unintelligible). We go back a long way together.

  (John Parker has arrived in World Watch One, and B. Banzai immediately urges him to speak.)

  John Parker:

  Excuse me, but time is short. To prevent John Whorfin’s escape, my comrades at this very moment are taking up a geostationary position over New Jersey. The situation is explosive.

  The President:

  Who the hell are you?

  John Parker:

  I am John Parker. Who are you?

  The President:

  I’m the President of the United States. What are you talking about, man?

  Buckaroo Banzai:

  This “man” as you called him, is not a human being, Mr. President. He is an Adder, a representative of the Nova Police.