“Nope,” said Bill. “That’s it.”
Tommy chewed his gum faster. “What are the odds of a hundred guys working for the same company with the same first name?” he asked.
“I could get you the exact odds in a second,” Billy said, “but I’ll tell you this—it’s more than a few million to one.”
“And look at the last names,” I pointed out. “Those aren’t all your everyday names.”
Some were, and some weren’t. As I have stated before, some Lectroids carried regular last names taken at random from a Manhattan telephone book, whereas others, those names which now drew our eyes, were evidently translations of Lectroid pictographs, their primitive form of writing.
(To clarify a point, all inhabitants of Planet 10, Lectroids and Adders alike, for the purpose of this book have the first name “John,” although it is to them less a name than a form of greeting, comparable to the use of “che” in the Argentine or, to a lesser extent, our own “hey”)
There, interspersed among such ordinary names as Jones or Smith were such queer ones as these:
John Icicle Boy
John Small Berries
John Repeat Dance
John Ya Ya
John Careful Walker
John Take Cover
John Thorny Stick
John Many Jars
John Mud Head
John Ready to Fly
“Look at this,” Tommy laughed. “What is that? They have a lot of Indians working for them?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “This is crazy. Maybe this isn’t their real file. It must be some kind of joke . . . a dummy file.”
“Trust me,” said Billy convincingly. “It’s their real file.”
None of us knew what to say to shed any light on the matter, and so we all quietly meditated. New Jersey meanwhile, that fresh spirit among us, had been gazing quietly at the screen all along and formulating a question of his own. “Look at the social security numbers,” he said.
In the excitement about the names, we had overlooked the numbers; yet in their own way, they were just as astounding. They followed a sequential pattern discernable to the human eye. “What are the odds of this?” I must have muttered aloud, for Billy promptly replied.
“About ten billion to one,” he said.
“How difficult is it to access the Social Security Administration’s files?” Rawhide asked him.
“It’ll just take a second.”
While Billy went off to pull wires, the rest of us conjectured about what the strange data could mean. “It’s like the song of an unknown bird,” said Rawhide. “I know I’ve never heard it before. I just wish I knew what kind of bird it was. Buckaroo was muttering something about Planet 10.”
“It’s the planet I postulated as existing years ago,” said Tommy, “due to the irregular orbit of Pluto. It might be a planet, it might be a moon.”
“Buckaroo said it was a planet,” said Rawhide. Tommy shrugged. “But how would people travel from there to here?” Rawhide wanted to know.
“People?” I asked.
“Whatever we’re talking about,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s any such thing,” I said flatly.
“Any such thing as what? Extraterrestrials?” Tommy said.
I dug in my heels. “Exactly,” I said. “Until I see one, there’s no proof—just a string of circumstantial evidence. This supposed signal from space that Big Norse picks up, the weird phone call to Buckaroo, after which he starts seeing things, and now this whole Yoyodyne connection. I admit it looks weird but—”
“You have to admit it’s quite a coincidence,” said Tommy.
“Definitely,” I said. “But nothing more at this point. As a scientist, I’m not prepared to leap to a conclusion.”
Nor was anyone else, it appeared; complete bafflement being our shared predicament for the moment, as Rawhide once more posed his question: “How would people, or other beings, travel between here and there? Assuming the Planet 10 we’re talking about is a part of our solar system, which it may not be—it’s not as though it’s the most unique name around—it would still require years to make the trip, unless we’re talking about the speed of light, a spacecraft simulating a photon. But nothing I know of prepares me to accept that possibility.”
I nodded in agreement, doing some quick mental arithmetic. “How far is Pluto? About 30 AU?* That’s nearly three billion miles.”
*(1 AU = approximately ninety-three million miles, the mean distance from the earth to the sun.)
“At the speed of light about a four-hour trip,” said Tommy.
“Right. At the speed of light,” I said.
“It took Marco Polo twenty-four years to make his round trip from Venice to China,” interposed New Jersey.
“So?” I said.
“So, nothing,” the rangy doctor replied. “There’s no law that says trips can’t take a long time, that’s all.”
Perfect Tommy was quick to concur, though adding, “I don’t think they would have even had to come through this dimension the whole way.”
“You mean the Oscillation Overthruster?” Rawhide said.
“That’s one way,” said Tommy. “Or they might have gone through a rotating black hole, traveled spirally, reversed direction and passed into another space-time world—another dimension. It’s possible they have maps of such things and could take a short cut by simply leaping forward whatever amount of time the trip would have taken, using an Oscillation Overthruster or some such device to reappear wherever they wanted back in this dimension.”
“In which case they would not even have had to come from our solar system,” Rawhide said. “They could be from anywhere.”
“Exactly,” said Tommy. “It’s hard to imagine there being any kind of life on Planet 10. If it’s like Pluto and the other outer planets, only more so; it has extremely low density and is probably composed mainly of methane ice.”
If there were any clue couched in our conversation as to what we were up against, we overlooked it, and so were reduced to sparring about vortices in nature and the like, until Billy enthusiastically called us over to his desk near his beloved IBM 370 to show us what he had come up with. I gathered that our collective look of incredulity amused him, as we stared at the information on the screen.
“Is that some kind of joke, Billy?” Rawhide said.
“The joke’s on somebody,” Billy retorted. “Look at those dates.”
He was of course referring to the dates on which the Yoyodyne employees had first applied for their social security numbers. As it happened, they had all applied on the same day—November 1, 1938—and in the same town—Grover’s Mills, New Jersey!
“I can’t believe this,” said Rawhide.
“There must be a simple sufficient explanation,” someone else said.
“Does this mean they’ve worked for Yoyodyne their whole lives? All of them?”
“Most likely.”
“That’s more than forty-five years. They must all be old men!”
We all stood there, restless with the inadequacy of our brains to fathom what could possibly lay at the core of the mystery, when New Jersey, who for several moments had sat idly swinging his feet over the edge of Billy’s desk, abruptly snapped his fingers as if struck by a furious flash of intuition and began to chatter: “The first day of November 1938 . . . Grover’s Mills, New Jersey . . . why does this seem so familiar to me? I wasn’t even born yet . . . but something about it . . . Grover’s Mills . . .”
“Yeah . . . Grover’s Mills,” I seconded. “Where have I heard that before?”
“It’s where Yoyodyne is,” said Tommy innocently.
“Besides that,” I said. “There’s something else—”
New Jersey was already ahead of me, his mind harking back for some reason to that little mnemonic rhyme we all learned as schoolboys: “ ‘Thirty days has September, April, June, and November, but when short February’s done, all the rest ha
ve thirty-one’ . . . thirty-one, October, Halloween, 1938 . . .” Then with a tremendous volcanic vitality of which I would never have guessed him capable, he jumped to his feet, exclaiming, “Halloween, 1938 . . . Grover’s Mills, New Jersey! Don’t you get it?”
“I think so,” I said.
I wanted to say “yes” at all costs, such was his high pitch of nervous excitement, but the puzzle still did not come together for me until he said, “Orson Welles!”
At once I knew what he meant. With a smile and a flash of his teeth, he was on the verge of dancing. “Orson Welles!” I said. “That’s it!”
“That’s what?” said Tommy and Rawhide, still not guessing what had so set our nerves atingle.
“Orson Welles’s famous radio broadcast of 1938!” spurted New Jersey. “His Halloween broadcast of Martians landing in Grover’s Mills!”
“The famous hoax,” Tommy replied.
“Not necessarily,” said New Jersey.
Tommy looked at him, it suddenly dawning on him what New Jersey meant. “Nah,” he groaned, unwilling even to consider such a thing.
“Everyone thought it was real,” New Jersey said, “because it was real!”
Oppressed by a strange foreboding, Rawhide’s face was deeply furrowed. He did not dismiss the idea out of hand, but . . . “How?” he asked. “You’re saying real aliens landed, and Orson Welles covered it up?”
“Maybe,” New Jersey said. “Maybe they paid him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Tommy. “Orson Welles is a great artist.”
Billy, by far our junior, had been quiet but now could not resist asking. “Orson Welles? The guy in the old wine commercials? The guy is a master salesman. He could sell anything—”
“Including a landing of space aliens as a giant hoax,” I said, hardly believing my own ears.
“But how?” again stressed Rawhide. “If people saw them—”
“Maybe they ‘saw’ them only in a cinematographic sense,” said New Jersey.
“What do you mean?” asked Rawhide.
“What I mean,” said New Jersey, as I marveled at the clarity of thought of this stranger among us, “is that as in a movie, people saw the beings and yet did not see them, some sort of camouflage being used. Did any of you notice an inexplicable level of anxiety among those in attendance at the press conference today, or was it just me?”
On thinking back, I was forced to admit he had touched upon something. There had been an almost palpable apprehension in the room, frayed nerves and a general agitation of mind that had seemed almost contagious and which I had at the time attributed merely to the momentous occasion. I, myself, had felt the onset of a headache shortly after entering the room; and although I had at the time thought nothing of it, when I mentioned it now, the others spoke of having experienced similar symptoms.
“Why?” Tommy wanted to know.
“Perhaps because some part of our mind was seeing something horrible and repressing it,” said New Jersey.
“That would explain the headaches,” I said.
“We were seeing, then—?” Tommy hesitated to say it.
“The same thing Buckaroo was cognizant of seeing when he returned from the phone call,” New Jersey said. “Monsters from Planet 10.”
It still sounded strangely in our ears; and yet as I sat there trying to arrange my opinions in my mind, I realized there was something to this theory of New Jersey’s. The sun was still shining and birds were twittering in the sky, and through the window all appeared normal and bright with happiness. Only those of us in that room, and Buckaroo Banzai, knew that anything was amiss. Just how badly amiss we could not know, but the valorous Adder John Parker was, even as we spoke, on his way to illumine us.
22
Events were moving faster now, as Pinky Carruthers could attest at the main gate. Within a span of ten minutes, Professor Hikita rode up on the borrowed motorcycle and announced he was going straightaway to his laboratory and was not to be disturbed, and John Parker, the Adder, arrived on a bicycle.
Although Pinky Carruthers could see him only as a human, John Parker was nonetheless incomprehensible to him, both in language and appearance. Still in his Nova Police silver suit, John Parker got off the bike and sidled up to the gate, proceeding to offer Pinky a package resembling a hat box.
“Buckaroo Banzai,” was the only intelligible word he said at first, and then he pointed to a Buckaroo Banzai comic book which he also carried and which he later told me he had used to inquire directions of people he met along the way. That he arrived at all must be considered something of a miracle: one solitary being of his race, alone on a strange planet, having to hitchhike, and then to ride a bicycle the last twenty miles to see us. I have, in my private moments, wondered whether I could have done the same, had the tables been turned. It is a hypothetical question, but it serves to remind me of his stalwart spirit and unshakable resolve which must never be forgotten.
Upon listening to the strange visitor for a few moments, Pinky Carruthers was able to make out a few more of his words—for it was English John Parker was speaking, only a heavily accented version of it which required patience of the listener. “Need see . . . Buckaroo Banzai . . . message from John Emdall, Planet 10,” was the essence of what he said as Pinky took the package over the top of the gate and said:
“Sorry, pal. Everybody need see Buckaroo Banzai.”
And that was the end of it, or could easily have been the end of it, if Pinky Carruthers had not in hindsight sensed something extraordinary about the visitor, the more he thought on it, and returned to the gate to look for him. Alas, he was gone! Or so it appeared. But there was still the package the fellow had brought, and without opening it (according to security procedures, all incoming packages to the Institute must be X-rayed) Pinky resolved to follow up on the matter himself.
At full gallop, he carried the package to our security section himself, and after it had been put through tests, opened it. Inside he found the well-known Planet 10 hologram disc now on display at the Smithsonian, although at the time he had not a hint of its importance or even its function. It resembled somewhat a long-playing phonograph record but was thicker and slightly oblong. Growing more excited, Pinky wrapped the object up immediately and delivered it to us.
Amid our examinations of the strange object, Buckaroo Banzai arrived. Following his introductions of Casper and Scooter Lindley and after answering a barrage of our anxious questions wanting to know the details of his adventure, his attention turned to the hologram disc.
“Have you played it?” he wanted to know.
“No, it just got here a few minutes ago,” Rawhide said. “A black guy brought it to Pinky at the gate.”
Buckaroo’s eyes grew wide as he turned to Pinky. “A black guy? Wearing a silver suit?” Pinky nodded. “Where is he?” Buckaroo demanded.
Poor Pinky was downcast. “I let him get away,” he bemoaned. “I had trouble understanding him. When I realized it might be important and went back to look for him, he was gone. I have a couple of the boys out looking for him.”
“Good,” said Buckaroo, indicating the irregular disc he was holding. “No, matter—this was why he came. Put it on.
He handed it to Big Norse, and she laid it carefully on the turntable. We were standing in his study, and I can recall our exact positions relative to one another as she let the phonograph needle down gently. “Anything from Pecos and Seminole?” Buckaroo quickly asked.
“Nothing,” I said, doing my best to put the subject out of my mind. “Not a peep. Big Norse says that strange signal from space is coming closer to Earth, resulting in worldwide communications difficulties, so that’s probably the problem. Apparently it’s some kind of enormous energy field.”
“That’s where the little ship carrying our black friends must have come from,” surmised Buckaroo. “From the mother ship.”
A discharge of sparks from the needle striking the grooves of the revolving disc interrupted him, and a
gasp escaped our lips as there suddenly flickered from the spinning “record” the life-sized three-dimensional image of a black woman in a gleaming dress made of the same silver material worn by John Parker and the other Adders. Feature by feature, she may well have been the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. At least at that overpowering moment, I could think of none other justified to hold a light before her loveliness.
“Salutations, great Buckaroo Banzai,” she said with the same accent as John Parker’s, speaking extraordinarily slowly in order to be understood. “I am John Emdall from Planet 10 of the Alpha Centauri A system. I appear before you to warn that a common grave danger confronts both our worlds.”
I remember glancing over at Perfect Tommy in the midst of this incredible sight and observing him with his mouth open. He had been right, as it turned out, about Planet 10 not necessarily being of our system, and perhaps he was correct also about their mode of travel. Had the space voyagers entered a rotating black hole and emerged in the future?
“After a bloody reign of terror on our planet, the hated leader of our military caste, the self-proclaimed ‘Lord’ Whorfin, a bloodthirsty butcher as evil as your Hitler, was overthrown by freedom-loving forces,* *(The Lectroids were bred by the Adder majority expressly for fighting wars of planetary defense, but in time the Lectroids grew ambitious and seized power for themselves, overthrowing civilian rule.) tried and condemned, along with several hundred of his followers, to spend eternity in the desolation of the Eighth Dimension. Death was deemed too good for their ilk,” John Emdall said and went on at some length to describe how Whorfin had escaped his place of confinement by taking possession of Doctor Lizardo’s body when the latter had so unfortuitously become lodged in the wall, half in and half out of the Eighth Dimension, during the abortive Princeton experiment. Somehow the doctor was now two places at once—in this dimension as a possessed old man and in the Eighth Dimension as his youthful and vibrant former self (so that in this respect, at least, Whorfin had not been lying when he told that part of Lizardo still in this dimension that his younger self waited in the other). How John Emdall even knew what had happened during the Princeton experiment as well as all these subsequent years, I have no idea. And John Parker claimed not to know her method, although he was probably not at liberty to tell even if he had known. At all events, this “woman,” this creature John Emdall, had a disquieting way of knowing everything.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Page 15