Like an owl, Penny watched me, her rapt attention attending every word of my tale, dwelling on every line of it. It was not the reaction I had expected but one I was happy to note. “So that’s how Alexander died?” she said. “He kissed her?”
“No,” I replied. “One of his soldiers saw through her and stole a kiss himself.”
“Or perhaps he did not see through her,” she parried. “Perhaps he only wanted a kiss before Alexander got there.”
“In any case, her plan was foiled. The end, when it came for her, must have been a blessed relief. It couldn’t have been pretty.”
“For her or the soldier who kissed her,” she pointed out.
“Oh, he died instantly. Her kiss was painless.”
She smiled at me rakishly, saying, “That’s the most roundabout proposition I’ve ever heard. Do you want a kiss, Reno?”
“It might ease my mind.” I said, whereupon she put her lips to my own and kissed me like a pagan. When she withdrew and I took a breath, no harm having come to me, I apologized at once. “I was wrong about you,” I said. “Please forgive me.”
(Bear in mind, reader, I was delirious with fever.)
18
We had not yet begun to worry unduly about Buckaroo Banzai. His locator put him on the road to Grover’s Mills, and at last report he was still following the Yoyodyne van, presumably at a sensible distance. Were life to mirror our intentions, however, it would be nowhere near as entertaining. B. Banzai may or may not have realized from the curious “phone call” that he had an appointment with destiny, but I am certain he could not see the serpentine road by which he would arrive; else he would have taken greater precautions. But how can one anticipate the behavior of extraterrestrials, friend or foe? They were the great unknown factor, the jokers in the deck, which in turn meant a new set of rules.
We have but conjecture to rely upon as to why the Yoyodyne van suddenly veered sharply into the ditch by the side of the road and reversed its course, nearly running down B. Banzai in the process. The most probable explanation is that the three Lectroids inside received a radio message from home base, informing them of the downed thermopod. Essentially a life craft dispatched by the Nova Police father ship to find Buckaroo Banzai, it was shot down by those now-famous duck hunters whose posthumous pictures have appeared in so much of the media.
The details of the incident are well-known but merit repeating for the record: Two duck hunters on a weekend outing north of Grover’s Mills fire into what they think is a phalanx of mallards. The mallards turn out to be electronic camouflage for a bizarre UFO approximately the shape and outer texture of a tangerine. (How this electronic camouflage is done by both the Nova Police and the Lectroids themselves I will come to later.) The UFO crashes into the upper branches of a tree; the terrified duck hunters observe what seems to be a dread-locked Jamaican emerge from the craft in a silver Nova Police spacesuit; the “Jamaican” loses his footing and crashes to the ground—upon his death turning into a hideous thing from another world, that species which on Planet 10 is called an “Adder,” a sleeker, less brawny sort of creature than the Lectroid and of a darker color, thus giving rise to the racial epithets heaped upon them by Whorfin and his followers.
By this time one can imagine the panic of the duck hunters, gazing in disbelief at the dead Adder on the ground, when a second “Jamaican” manages to scramble down the tree and with a graceful gait makes a run for it, carrying some kind of package under his arm. Despite being pursued by the duck hunters’ spaniel, he reaches safety, delivers his “present” to us, and thereby becomes a linchpin in our story. In person, full-limbed and wonderful-looking in human camouflage, he is the redoubtable John Parker, whose indispensable help in saving our world has earned him the undying gratitude of peoples and nations everywhere.
Upon seeing John Parker come out of the craft, the duck hunters hasten their retreat to the CB radio in their car. Having no idea how many such beings might be found inside the space pod, they decide to summon help. A state police car receives their SOS and is there within minutes, setting the scene for the arrival of John Bigbooté and company.
What thoughts must have gone through the three Lectroid minds when the news of the downed Adder craft was radioed to them? It must have hit like a bombshell. It could not be an accident, a mere coincidence that it crashed within miles of Yoyodyne, the Lectroids’ last refuge. The universe was too large, the chance too small of such a thing happening at random. It could only mean that their colony had been discovered, or had been monitored for some time. Perhaps always, thought John Bigbooté. Once an avid believer in the tenets and leadership of John Whorfin, Bigbooté now harbored considerable doubts. In Whorfin’s absence, Bigbooté had, in a sense, become his “own man.” He had taken over the reins of Yoyodyne in 1939, shortly after he and Whorfin had founded the company with the proceeds from Whorfin’s criminal escapades. Whorfin-as-Lizardo, already a wanted man, was soon arrested by Hoover’s G-men, but the fledgling new armaments company continued, its survival assured by the coming World War and cold war era. Under Bigbooté, the company had grown into the nation’s largest privately held defense manufacturer; and as its “innovative CEO,” as Forbes magazine had called him, Bigbooté hobnobbed with bureaucrats and captains of industry. Under his stewardship, company earnings had soared, key defense contracts had been bidded for and won, and there had been plans for expanding the company’s share of the ever-growing international arms trade by opening a branch in London. Toward that end a piece of property on West India Dock Road, in the heart of Limehouse, had been bought, and an artist’s conception of a new facility lay at that very moment on his desk back at Yoyodyne. Of course he had told John Whorfin nothing of this. All John Whorfin was good for was carping. He, John Bigbooté, had built Yoyodyne into all that it was today despite the constant interference and meddling of John Whorfin. Once before, Bigbooté had raised the question of the company’s growth and the inevitable prospect of hiring humans, and Whorfin had berated him loudly over the phone, threatening his life. Whorfin was an imbecile, Bigbooté was convinced, and the same was doubly true, unfortunately, of his own subordinates. The other two members of this management troika so highly regarded by business publications, John O’Connor and John Gomez, were irretrievable losses. Both careless simpletons, he dared not trust them with anything of importance, certainly not his true opinion of John Whorfin. No, for better or worse, he, John Bigbooté, was an unusual Lectroid, unique even. He had original thoughts, a rudimentary knowledge of Earth history, and even a lot of money. He was almost cultured.
The only cloud on the horizon, until now, had been the disagreeable affair of the Navy’s top secret Truncheon sub-killer, a carrier-launched plane with advanced sonar and highly sophisticated solid-state hydrophones designed to recognize the “signatures” of Soviet Delta class submarines and identify them by name, from up to a distance of several hundred miles. By Planet 10 standards, the technology was fairly primitive, the job definitely ‘doable’ within the billion dollar budget allotted. The problem, as usual, had been Whorfin, and his insistence on diverting massive resources from the Truncheon program to the accelerated development of the secret Panther ship, that huge craft intended to enter the Eighth Dimension and collect the remnants of the Lectroid army and carry them home to ultimate victory over the Adders. As a result of this ongoing misappropriation of colossal amounts of funds, work on the plane had fallen far behind schedule. A congressional committee had interested itself in the matter, and he, John Bigbooté, had been subpoenaed to testify on the Hill. He had defended the company staunchly and vigorously. In the opinion of the company lawyers, the congressional questioners “hadn’t laid a glove” on him, to use their parlance. But the investigation was not over and showed no sign of going away. Worse, he feared that the reputation of the company had been permanently damaged. There was even some talk of an “on site fact-finding tour,” an inspection! The very thought made him tremble . . . hordes of media gad-flies
and snoop-types from the General Services Administration poking their noses into every corner of Yoyodyne. Such a visit would require a huge generated field of electronic camouflage, and what if there were not ample time to prepare? What if something went wrong? They would find the Panther ship! How would he explain that away? Damn John Whorfin! It was perhaps a blasphemous notion full of bravado, but for some time now John Bigbooté had mulled the possibility of killing John Whorfin and eating his brain. Under happier circumstances, Whorfin had been like a father to him; but that was all remote now, those blissful bygone days spent shuttered from the cold and darkness without, wrapped in the company of trysting, writhing Lectroids and the frigid gray of Planet 10.
No, the more he thought on it, the more compelling the idea seemed. For the sake of the greater family of Lectroids and the aerospace company he had built into a thriving concern, it had to be done. By eating Whorfin’s brain, he, John Bigbooté, by law would become Lectroid Leader. There would be no one to dispute him, no one to whom he must report every purchasing order like a measly errand boy, no imperious sufferer of flatulence in whose eyes he must continually strive to pass muster. At the thought of killing, the old excitement returned. His eyes were lit with an icy shine, his stomach taut. It was a Lectroid tenet that the greatest deeds were possible to a murderous mood. The severity of the act must be indescribable, an attack so vicious that it would cause the entire universe to take notice, and other murderous betrayals to seem but trifles in comparison. He recalled once enjoying Julius Caesar some years ago in his “reading period” and resolved to look at the play again. How many blows had been delivered Caesar? He would stab Whorfin twelve times that number! It would be so easy! John Whorfin in that ridiculous Three Brained Being’s body! By the Oath of the Flying Fish, that bloodthirsty winged beast, he would have Whorfin’s three brains!
He dared tell none of this to anyone, nor invite coconspirators. He must choose his moment carefully and act alone, he thought as he caught sight of the state police car parked by the side of the road up ahead, and John O’Connor tapped him on the shoulder.
“That’s it,” said John O’Connor. “These are the coordinates.”
Bigbooté slowed the car and shook his head in response to an offer of a dry-cell battery from John Gomez. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m trying to quit.”
John Gomez shrugged and raised the battery to his mouth, touching both poles with his tongue. His eyes rolled up with pleasure, and there was the faint odor of burning carbon.
“There it is!” exclaimed John O’Connor, having caught sight of the pod in the tree. “It’s the Nova Police, all right! Look—human hunters.”
“We’ll have to kill them,” said Bigbooté, parking the van behind the state police car. “We’ll have to kill them all.”
“No survivors,” seconded John O’Connor.
After a quick check of the crate containing Professor Hikita in the rear of the van, they got out of the vehicle and walked toward the space pod despite the warnings of the state trooper to stay back. Bigbooté, his murderous confidence growing, merely produced his Yoyodyne ID card.
“Yoyodyne, officer,” he said jauntily, to gain the poor fellow’s trust. “I think she’s one of our birds.”
The officer approached skeptically until he saw Bigbooté’s identification. “Bigbooté?” he said, pronouncing it Big Booty.
“Bigbooté,” Bigbooté corrected. “Chief Executive Officer, Yoyodyne Propulsion. And these are my assistants, John O’Connor and John Gomez. What happened here?”
Behind the lawman, the Lectroids could see the hunters still in a state of shock, standing near the grotesque body of the Adder. Gomez decided to walk over to look for himself.
“The duck hunters evidently shot the thing down,” the officer said, again glancing at the plastic ID cards. “Yoyodyne, huh? That big aerospace outfit?”
Bigbooté nodded. “Yeah, we were doing a little testing of a sensitive nature—I can’t tell you exactly what—there must have been trouble with the guidance system. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“It inconvenienced that fellow,” said the officer, indicating the dead Adder who at that precise moment was being kicked ruthlessly by John Gomez. Caught in the act, Gomez backed off. “What do you think you’re doing?” the officer shouted at him.
Bigbooté caught Gomez’s attention and gave him a signal as evanescent as lightning. “It’s okay, officer, it’s just one of our ’droids. We have some tools in the truck. We’ll chop down that tree and get everything out of here right away. John Gomez, why don’t you go back to the van and notify headquarters that the situation is under control—?”
The officer, by now totally off balance despite beginning to sense the menace of the three so-called business executives, protested feebly that nothing should be touched, but was outnumbered, as John Gomez went briefly back to the van and returned with a power saw. In the meantime, Bigbooté had called the hunters over on the pretense of questioning them so that they stood with the patrolman, Bigbooté and John O’Connor flanking them. None apparently had any idea of the peril they were in, Bigbooté’s mirthfulness having its desired effect in disarming them.
“Yeah, that’s one of our ’droids,” Bigbooté joked. “Must have been flying north for the winter.”
“You mean south,” replied one of the hunters.
“South,” laughed Bigbooté, his fearsome stare lingering on the quaintly dressed hunter who had caught his small mistake. “That’s why it was lost.”
“Looks like no ’droid I’ve ever seen,” said the hunter. “The other one ran so fast my dog couldn’t catch him.”
This was the first Bigbooté had heard of a second Adder, and it betokened trouble. By some odd conceit it had not occurred to him that a second Adder might have evacuated the craft. It was unlike Adders to move on foot. He conferred quickly with John O’Connor and dispatched him to scout the area. Where would a single Adder go? he wondered. Why were they out here in the middle of nowhere in the first place?
What he could not know, of course, was that the thermopod had been on its way to Buckaroo Banzai, following the azimuthal beam from the father ship detected earlier by Big Norse. What he also could not know was that my gallant chief B. Banzai was at that instant less than fifty yards from him, observing events from inside the van, where he had already freed Professor Hikita from the crate and informed him of the strange phone call enabling him to see Lectroids in their true form.
In addition, he had shown Professor Hikita the odd markings he had written in ink on the palm of his hand, as the phone call had “dictated” them to him. He had had no time to analyze them, did not even understand why he had scribbled them, except that in some manner or other they represented something of staggering importance. Having no time to copy them, he moistened his hand and pressed his palm to Hikita’s forehead, leaving behind an electrical shock and the symbols intact and legible, albeit reversed.
“There’s a motorcycle behind those bushes,” Buckaroo said. “Ride it to the Institute and get busy on these formulae. For some reason I feel we haven’t much time.”
“But what will you do?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Buckaroo replied. “I’d like to get a peek at Yoyodyne and see what we’re up against.”
“What do you mean, Buckaroo?”
“There isn’t time to explain. Just go . . . quietly.”
Without delay the professor slipped from the van to the bushes where the motorcycle was hidden, raising the heavy machine and pushing it some distance down the road before starting it. Buckaroo Banzai meanwhile worked his way closer to the thermopod in the tree. To say that he had never seen anything like it is tautological. Striving for a better look at it and the dead Adder, he circumambulated the field before finding a shallow pit ideal for his purposes. There, slightly below the general level of the ground and hidden by a copse of small cedars, he was afforded a straightaway look at all that was about to happen. Unfortunat
ely for the hunters and the state policeman, however, his presence could not bias events. I will give the gruesome particulars.
While John Gomez pulled the crank on the gasoline-powered saw and prepared to cut down the tree holding the thermopod, the patrolman took it upon himself to intervene. Aware that state police reinforcements had been radioed for and believing John Gomez in fact to be a sensible corporate executive, the officer did not realize until too late that he was in mortal danger. Holding up his hands as if to say “that’s enough,” he stepped toward John Gomez and was quickly sliced in half by the marauder’s power saw.
At this, the hunters ejaculated in horror and were just as rapidly slain by John Bigbooté’s Herculean bare hands, as he banged their skulls together with a sickening thud. An attitude of professional and utter cold-bloodedness attended the entire operation, which took less than five seconds in toto. In that interval, three innocent men had been executed, and John Gomez turned matter-of-factly to saw the tree.
From behind his hillock, if I may call it that, B. Banzai gaped punily, for that was all he could do, given the speed of events. He lay in this state of great churning agitation, his chest heaving with thoughts of revenge, when he heard a sound behind him.
Nimbly reaching for his pistol and turning in one move, he found himself confronted by the snide smile of John O’Connor, the Lectroid which Buckaroo had lost track of, O’Connor having been sent to prowl the woods in search of the Adder John Parker. If the sight of the drawn pistol was intended to frighten O’Connor, it did not. (The Lectroid has no such reasoning. They are bred as fighters pure and simple, like the pit bulldog.) He merely looked at B. Banzai as if much acquaintance already existed between them and said, “Buckaroo Banzai. I can’t think of a fitter moment to kill you.”
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Page 12
