Free The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai by Earl Mac Rauch Page A

play. This in itself is rather unusual, for despite his many other natural gifts, he is a fledgling pianist at best and is ordinarily loathe to play in public. On this night, however, he seems to have forgotten where he is. His face is brooding, his eyes far away as he inflicts upon us the first chords of a song we have not performed since Peggy died. For a moment the rest of us stand irresolute, confused. Is he actually going to play it? Does he want us to accompany him? The others are as uncertain as I. The song had been Peggy’s favorite. It frightens us to hear it. There is something intangible, abnormal in the air as he begins to sing the sad lyric of unrequited love. Then suddenly . . . the sound of a shot! We whip out sidearms, join forces around our leader. Is there a plot afoot? Club security men dive for Penny Priddy, struggling to disarm her, when a second shot is fired harmlessly into the ceiling. The club is a screaming melee, as they drag her toward the door.)
    Penny Priddy: Let me go! Let me go, you creeps!
    Buckaroo Banzai: Let’s have calm. Calm down, everybody. Everybody okay? Anybody hurt? Anyone in need of a doctor?

    (The house lights come on, as we holster our weapons, and for an unobstructed moment gain a clear view of Penny Priddy. Almost as one, we gasp. What intended treachery is this? She is amazingly the mirror image of our dead Peggy!)
    My eyes immediately darted to Buckaroo, the poor devil. What must he think? A queer look on his face, he was in immediate consultation with Rawhide, who quickly left the hall to pursue the secret of the girl.
    “Did you see her?” he asked us.
    I consequently shrugged, not wanting to believe what I had seen with my own eyes. It was the same with the others, the shock to our nerves leaving us spellbound and speechless. After all, the very idea was incomprehensible. We must have been seeing things. I myself suspected at once the malevolent genius of Xan somehow in this but said instead, “Your piano playing gets them every time, Buckaroo.”
    He nodded, stabbing thoughts testing his sanity. “I heard someone crying. I must have had a premonition,” he said.
    “Must have.” I nodded. “I don’t know what else it could’ve been.”
    A numb feeling tugged at my heart. Either someone had embarked upon a hellish scheme against our chief, or cruel Fate had made him its sport. Either way he would have no surcease of bitter memories for sleepless nights to come.

13

    F ollowing the discovery of the night guard’s body and the disappearance of the inmate known as Dr. Emilio Lizardo, a furious hunt for the callous criminal was immediately organized. Airports and train stations were watched, roadblocks erected; but in vain. Although the stolen sports car was found in a rural county of the state wrapped around an electric light standard, it seemed that death would have none of Whorfin. He had walked away from the violent collision and headed straight to a telephone.
    “Operator,” he shouted. “I want to place a person-to-person call, collect, to John Bigbooté, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems, Grover’s Mills, New Jersey. Tell him it’s John Whorfin calling, from the outside. W-H-O-R-F-I-N. Got that?”
    He had to wait several minutes, as his party, the alien Lectroid called John Bigbooté, had to be found and roused from sleep, a circumstance which only confirmed in Whorfin’s mind the timeliness, nay, the necessity, of his escape. Clearly his fighters, once fearsome to behold, had grown enfeebled. It pained him to think it, but even the cold mouth of the grave, even the hideous Eighth Dimension (its Planet 10 name) was preferable to the bourgeois life of ease. Nothing good could come of years of peace—muscles atrophied, the will failed. Soldiers who had once fought back-to-back fell to bickering among themselves amid the creature comforts. No, it was best he had arrived. He would make inquiries, establish the iron discipline needed. He would make examples!