“Thinking about Pecos?” he asked.
“Thinking about all of them,” I replied.
“But particularly Pecos?”
“Maybe.”
We were sorting the 35mm slides taken by Buckaroo in the other dimension, making a new world unto ourselves. “Whadda you think of this one?” “Nah, this one’s better.” “Let’s use this one.” “What’s wrong with this one?” And on it went, the two of us in effect providing our interpretation of the boldest exploit in human history.
Behind us the stern-faced Buckaroo was doing his mental exercises with his sword, mental exercises which required of him strength of hand, and of us, stoutness of heart, as he brandished the razor-sharp blade dangerously near our heads in the cramped cubicle. It had something to do with absorbing energy, the Oriental yin and the yang. Why it had to be done in a tiny room on a moving bus doubtless has implications in physics that exceed my love of science; at all events he performed always without the semblance of a flaw and held sway in so doing over certain inharmonious spiritual elements. While one who rides with B. Banzai learns quickly to expect at any moment to die in the middle of a breath, there is nothing quite like the whistle of a blade above one’s head to bring into focus one’s own mortality.
We had already awakened with a start to find a blurry picture of Penny Priddy in the morning paper, which showed us little that we did not already know. Taken during the excitement of the night before, without the repose essential to a good photograph, her image was as confoundingly elusive as had been the subject herself. Buckaroo, however, had cast his eyes upon it and after examining it with a peculiar expression at the breakfast table had set it near his bathroom mirror. He inspected it at greater length while shaving with his cordless gyroscope. Such was its effect upon him that whatever presentiment any of us had hitherto felt regarding the girl could not, in the spirit of good fellowship, be spoken.
Also discussed at the breakfast table (all manner of things were discussed daily at that appointed hour) was the news of Dr. Lizardo’s escape and, among other items of business, a letter, and an extraordinary demo tape from a stateless Armenian seeking entry to this country in order to join our group. Of the former, we could only conjecture what must be going through Lizardo’s bewildered brain, but found the timing of the escape intriguing. It was very neat, to say the least.
“He must have had help,” said Perfect Tommy. “A seventy-year-old man who has been locked up forty-five years doesn’t just go crazy one day and kill his guard, walk out the door, and conveniently steal a sports car.”
“Correction: he didn’t go crazy. He is crazy,” said Rawhide.
“Yeah, but he can’t drive,” retorted Tommy. “Isn’t that right, Professor Hikita?”
Professor Hikita, indubitably the man who best knew fact from legend in Lizardo’s case, nodded. “I never knew him to drive,” he said. “What kind of car was it?”
“A Maserati,” said Tommy.
“I know he never drove a Maserati.”
The professor’s words inspired us to laugh, though he himself wore a quite opposite expression as he craftily lit his pipe. The professor enjoyed making phrases but seldom provided unambiguous answers.
“Who would have helped him?” pondered Rawhide aloud.
“He had his votaries,” said Buckaroo. “I seem to recall that in his later crimes he had a number of accomplices who were never caught.”
“This was after his hair turned orange?” I asked.
Hikita nodded. “Long after. He was not himself. It is no small thing to take a man’s life.”
“He threatened your life, didn’t he, Hikita-san?” I recalled.
“That was years ago,” the professor said, raising his eyebrows to simulate surprise. “We had rough words, but I doubt him capable. I know too well the limitations of his age.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Buckaroo. “That guard he killed was younger than you. Pinky, put the Institute staff on heightened alert until further notice.”
“Right,” said Pinky, by all appreciable signs his inflamed eyes only half-awake after some nocturnal ramble. “I’ll pass the word.”
“In the meantime the rest of us had better head for the press conference,” Buckaroo said.
“I thought it wasn’t till noon,” questioned Perfect Tommy.
Ill-concealing his restlessness or the newspaper under his arm, Buckaroo strode for the door. “We have something to do first,” he answered.
I glanced sidelong at Rawhide and met his eyes as he entered the upstairs cubicle with the emotions proper to a man who had news to tell.
“What is it, Rawhide?” I said.
“A report just came in.”
“What kind of report?” Now it was Buckaroo speaking, superbly naked save for his breeches. Having smitten his last invisible enemy, he sat on his haunches astride his sword, breathing heavily. An agreeable light fell from the window across the coconut matting on the floor, as Rawhide brought us up to speed.
“The state police found the doctor’s Maserati that Lizardo stole,” he said. “And they lifted a set of prints. You’ll never guess whose.”
“Then why guess,” Buckaroo said. “Especially when you’re going to tell us yourself.”
“Lo Pep!” exclaimed Rawhide.
Our attitude of dismay was unanimous. I can’t remember which of us it was—perhaps Perfect Tommy—who spoke to the serious and deplorable consequences. “Xan’s lieutenant?” he said. “So there is an external force at work here after all . . . an external evil! If he helped Lizardo escape, then Xan must want—”
“The Oscillation Overthruster,” put in Rawhide.
“We should make a special investigation at once,” I said. “We’re the only ones in a position to know what’s happening.”
“No sign of Lo Pep or Lizardo, I take it?” said Buckaroo.
Rawhide shook his head. “The car was wrecked. There were no eyewitnesses, apparently.”
“Get an exact location of the site of the wreck,” said Buckaroo. “After the press conference, perhaps we can drive over to the asylum and retrace their route. Someone may have seen something. Do we have a recent picture of Lizardo?” None of us was certain. “Maybe you can draw one, Reno,” he said to me. “Professor Hikita can direct you.”
“I’ll get right to it,” I nodded. “What about Lo Pep?”
“Lizardo is of more concern,” said Buckaroo. “Lo Pep is a mere hireling.”
I stood to leave at once, but Rawhide demurred, having one further detail. “There’s something else,” he said in a puzzled way. “I was talking with Big Norse, and—”
“And—?” Buckaroo said.
We smiled, Rawhide’s enthusiasm for Big Norse being common knowledge. Not unreasonably, he resented our teasing and on another occasion might have reacted—for he could breathe steam at the mere suggestion that he fancied her—but not today. He was deliberate and to the point.
“She says this whole atmospheric disturbance thing is very curious,” he said. “It seems to be following us.”
“Following us?” Buckaroo asked. “Sounds more like a problem with the equipment.”
“It’s not the equipment. The equipment’s been checked,” said Rawhide. “It’s something else—a heavy electromagnetic pulse, strictly localized, that must have followed us from Texas.”
“More in the nature of jamming, then?” asked Buckaroo.
“Not exactly. More like extremely powerful eavesdropping.”
“On all frequencies?”
“Yes.”
This was a stupefying premise in the sober light of day, a plot of unaccountable proportions which in all our minds brought the vicious rogue Xan into sharp relief. Was he saying that our nemesis was upon us at all times?
“And the source?” inquired Buckaroo. “Where does Big Norse think this listening receiver is?”
Rawhide opened the door, and Big Norse’s tip-tilted nose and golden hair poked around the corner. He
r sturdy bearing, unselfconscious and dignified, bespoke her Viking heritage, as she scanned our faces.
“It seems we have a mysterious pursuer,” Buckaroo said to her.
“That’s my opinion,” she said. “It’s not unheard of.”
“It’s nothing aboard the bus?”
“I’m positive,” she said. “I’ve checked it thoroughly myself with the usual debugging devices and have found nothing. Anyway, it isn’t that. It’s something . . . colossal. I think I’ve located the source of the signal.”
“Where is it?”
She searched for a way of saying it, then pointed at the ceiling.
“A helicopter?” said Buckaroo.
She kept pointing up.
“A satellite?” he asked.
She intimated that was not the case and kept pointing, her shoulders beginning to sag in desperation. “Deeper in space,” she said. “I’ve got my calculations if you’d like to see them.”
“Yes, very much,” said Buckaroo, not quite sure what to make of this young female mathematician, liveried in a Banzai T-shirt and dungarees, whose record was thus far the most outstanding of all the active interns. “Name of God, yes! Save them for me. I’ll be right there.”
She nodded, and Buckaroo responded in kind; whereupon she left, unaware, I’m convinced, of the extraordinary nature of the encounter to which we had all just been privy. Had she really intended to make such a claim? If she were correct, I was in awe and admiration. But if she were wrong, what an intrepid spirit! Her remarks were simply amazing. (Remember, reader, we had not the benefit of hindsight that you enjoy.)
To his credit, B. Banzai seemed to take her incredible story somewhat seriously. After our initial buzz of conversation following her leave-taking, Buckaroo stiffened as if thinking out his line of action. Somewhere, in the black and cold, a million miles from our position, an unknown race was monitoring us. Nothing seemed more fantastic than that, and yet that was what was allegedly happening. Unconsciously, I had supposed we were famous, but I would never have been so gullible as to believe that even on other worlds we were known. The assertion, made even now, seems impudent, and yet we know it to have been exactly the case. However, I’m pushing hither and thither, getting ahead of myself.
“What if they can hear our conversations in this very room?” Perfect Tommy said. “Should we whisper?”
“Not unless you want to,” said Buckaroo, beginning to get dressed. “If they’re millions of miles away, they won’t hear you for several minutes even if you scream.”
“Buckaroo, I was thinking,” I said. “Granted, we don’t yet know where all this will lead, even if in fact whether there’s anything to it—”
“Go on,” he said, then startled me by asking: “Do you believe in the evil eye?”
“What?” I said.
“The Italians have a word for it—the iettatura. The evil eye. Do you put any credence in it?”
“No,” I replied. “It’s just superstition, non è vero?”
“I’m inclined to feel the same way,” he said, then continued dressing. What had led him to raise the issue was left hanging, but it is my theory that it had to do with the girl Penny Priddy, because in the next breath he said, “Too bad the photograph wasn’t clearer.”
“Of the girl?”
“Yes,” he said, coming out of his reverie with an almost audible snap. “I’m sorry, you were about to say something.”
I sensed the time still not right to express my misgivings about the girl—Billy had as yet learned nothing incriminatory about her—and so I continued with my train of thought as we walked out of the room together. “I was just thinking, as I said, that perhaps this electronic signal could be some sort of homing beacon for the extraterrestrials.”
At that moment his eyes fell on me and looked long as if at some fearsome vision. “Firing from the hip, aren’t you?” he said.
“Maybe.”
“Big Norse says they’re up there, and now you say they’re coming here?”
“It’s crazy, I know.”
“You know what such a visit could mean?”
His words shot me through the heart. No, I had denied vehemently to myself just what it could mean. The entire defense forces of Earth might have to be mobilized. Already horror-stricken, I trembled, instinctively knowing that something catastrophic was very likely to happen if I were right.
“I’m sure I’m mistaken,” I said.
But the sheer enormity of what I had so offhandedly suggested had struck me with an impact that was almost physical. Like a change in air pressure, I felt a tremendous lethargy and an inability to wrest myself free from its grip. We are in for it, I thought, when after Buckaroo had carefully vetted Big Norse’s calculations, he spoke the incomprehensible. “I think you may have something,” he said to her.
There was complete silence. It was still early in the day, and yet I had the sensation of being in a Turkish bath. Perspiration was flowing off me freely. For several moments Buckaroo’s entire being had centered on the hieroglyphics of Big Norse’s formulae and figures, and he had now pronounced them accurate.
“It’s coming closer?” he asked, estimating from her figures.
“Yes, although it seemed to appear out of nowhere yesterday morning,” Big Norse replied.
“Over Texas.”
“That’s right.”
I still had not recovered the power of respiration as Buckaroo put on her headset and listened to the noises. There were apparently twin rays of a singular mind, reaching Earth at two points, (viz.) our bus, and the Institute. The Institute had begun to experience a similar disruptive phenomenon with its worldwide communications even before we did; and by comparing their data with our own, Big Norse had by triangulation located the source of the signal and succeeded further in plotting its course and speed. It was a sizeable achievement, and I used the opportunity to tell her so.
“Thank you,” she said, rather complacently. “Anyone could have done it.” I couldn’t have done it, but my want of breath prevented me from contradicting her. “Mathematics comes easy for me,” she continued. “I wish it were the same with music.”
She had been a girl of whom much was expected. By the time she reached twelve in Denmark, she had entered the university, and as a result, grew further estranged each year from the general populace. Her sole concern became the symbols of abstract mathematics, and although an arresting girl to this observer’s eye, she had always felt vexed with boys and even unwell in their company. I daresay she had never even been kissed before accepting a fellowship to the Banzai Institute to study experimental physics.
Her musicianship was the only constituent of her repertoire of talents needing improvement in order for her to “make” residency and join our lively group, and it seemed to her paradoxical that musical composition, so neat on the page and so mathematical in form, should so seek to involve the emotions in its performance. Her problem, I suspected, was not a poor ear, or a lack of facility with her hands, but an overabundance of earnestness.
“How are your piano lessons with Rawhide coming?” I asked.
“Not as well as I would like,” she said earnestly. “We don’t seem to accomplish as much as we should.”
I felt for the first time in several minutes the urge to smile but did not, the increasing severity of B. Banzai’s facial expression overshadowing our idle intercourse, as he perseveringly dotted the reverse of her page of calculations with strange formations of figures.
“It increases and diminishes almost at regular intervals,” he said to Big Norse. “Have you managed to find a pattern?”
“You mean a code?” I queried.
“Exactly.”
She shook her head. “It rather seemed like a greeting to me when I first isolated the major features,” she said. “I overlaid it with several code wheels, but none of them applied. Any suggestions?”
He held up his hand for quiet, listening. “There’s something about it that I percei
ve to be familiar—why? It booms and then lapses into silence.”
Buckaroo then lapsed back into silence himself, anxiously scribbling with pad and pencil; and for the historical record, if nothing else, I inquired of Big Norse her thoughts at this moment.
Her words were well-chosen. “It means there is intelligent life in the universe other than ourselves,” she said.
“And they’re headed this-a-way.”
“They’re a long way off. They may even be lost, or friendly. There’s nothing to be gained by worrying about it until we’re sure.”
I then posed the question I had resisted asking precisely because it so clearly marked the place to which we had come, but now this waggery of fate demanded it. It was perhaps the commonest line of science fiction. “If they continue at present speed and course, when would they reach Earth?” I asked.
“Sometime early tomorrow,” she replied.
I felt the rush of blood drumming in my ears once more and excused myself to go in search of Professor Hikita so that I might execute the drawing of Dr. Lizardo, never dreaming that out of this boiling confusion would soon crystallize a thousand-year-web of sanguinary encounters between Lizardo’s occupant Whorfin and the space voyeurs above us. I departed with something of anticipation, however.
16
Since welding my modest physical and intellectual resources to those of B. Banzai, I have traveled the world over, from horizon to distant horizon, in every mode of conveyance known to man. I have seen parts of the globe that remain veritable mysteries, places where—tired as it sounds—few men have ever set foot. Engendered by a hunger for discovery and adventure, I have surveyed the inertness of the desert, the teeming life of the sea, and the two poles, as well as the loftiest heights and loneliest valleys of this planet; but none of that prepared me sufficiently for the sight that greeted us upon our arrival at the police station where Buckaroo Banzai was to meet Penny Priddy face-to-face, and we were to collect a new recruit.
Standing outside the building—sitting actually, although he appeared to be standing (such was his height)—wearing such a collision of colors that his face appeared animated even when it was not, was the splendid figure of Sidney Zwibel, Buckaroo’s self-doubting medical school colleague. Scarcely within the limits of the probable, he was, as they say, “decked out” like a cowboy in red shirt and bandana, tight-fitting black pantaloons and pinto chaps, and a sublime ten-gallon hat of the sort featured in early Hollywood Westerns. I am tempted to add, Where else?, because I am certain that such an outfit until that moment had never been worn anywhere in the real world. Add a pair of four-inch-high ruby-red cowboy boots, and you will understand why our bus nearly tipped over from the shifting weight of our collective troupe endeavouring to swipe a look at him. I do not stray far from the truth when I say that when he inevitably stood to stretch and rose higher and higher, his luster challenged the permanent brilliance of the sun. Thus did we lay eyes upon our “new recruit.”
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Page 8