Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries . . .
Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head.
—Sophocles, Oedipus the King
Hours after presenting a free concert from our hotel rooftop, Sir Buckaroo Banzai, MD, GBE—a voice of moral conscience without parallel in our age and ranked among the top ten minds of all time—attended a dinner in his honor at the Institut de France, where he engaged in a freewheeling colloquy with a roomful of reporters whose long-winded questions inevitably touched upon the human angle: “How did you feel, Buckaroo, already a chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, when you heard you were to receive the Grande Médaille from the Académie des sciences, joining the immortal ranks of the great savants like Pasteur, Lavoisier, and Benoit Mandelbrot? . . . What are your feelings at this moment? . . . Where does this rank among your many palmarès, such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Franklin Medal and the Gruber Prize for genetics? . . . How badly do you wish your wife Penny could be here? . . . Or your unfortunate parents? . . . Or the man who practically raised you, your colleague and mentor, Professor Hikita?”
It is worth noting here that Buckaroo is in many ways the most private of men and well known to regard such questions as tiresome and bordering on intrusive; yet it was hard to fault the reporters, since their audience doubtless would be keen to know the full gamut of the great man’s emotions with regard to the sensational events in recent history—although these feelings easily could be guessed. Indeed, the term “peaks and valleys” can hardly do justice to the emotional roller coaster ridden by a man who, in short order, saved the world from John Whorfin and Red Lectroid aliens and experienced the heartbreak of losing the two people dearest to him. I refer of course to the Jet Car crash in Bhutan that killed his new bride, Penny Priddy—a tragedy compounded by the subsequent disappearance of her body from the remote mountain site while Buckaroo himself lay in a coma for days, on the knife’s edge between life and death—and the mysterious death of his surrogate father, Professor Hikita.
Finding such personal questions anathema, Buckaroo naturally preferred to change the subject; and perhaps owing to the hallowed surroundings of the French Academy and fortuitous questions put to him concerning the present state of science in the world, he began to ruminate aloud extemporaneously (a long, digressive dialogue that I have edited into a monograph): “First of all, I want to express my very sincere appreciation and gratitude to the Academy, particularly for the wonderful Festschrift given to me in memory of Professor Hikita, my intellectual mentor and sparring partner.”
Clearing his throat to remove a lump, he forced a smile and said, “Fellow scientists, distinguished academicians, waiters and food preparers, journalists, and various recognizable members of the World Crime League . . .”
Amid titters of nervous laughter, he pressed on, saying, “All my life, even from an early age, I always had the feeling that I was two people: an exile living in the ‘here and now’ and a stranger watching myself from another perspective, an inhabitant of another dimension no less real. For some years, thinking this an aberration of my mind alone, I immersed myself in the study of abnormal psychology, yet without finding the answers I sought; and gradually it dawned on me that, rather than attribute the phenomenon to my imagination, I would do well to investigate the actual existence of other dimensions: another way of saying the universal secret of all time, a unified theory encompassing all scientific knowledge. Little did I envision how controversial this field of inquiry would prove to be.
“Around the same time I was reading a lot of science fiction in those halcyon days of youth, and I could not help being struck by the dystopian view of scientific research as inherently dangerous—a byproduct of the post–World War II atomic age. The message in a real sense seemed to be that any semblance of faith in scientific progress as a power for good is overshadowed by the threat it poses to humanity’s soul or even our very existence. Since human curiosity inevitably leads to investigation, which may in turn lead to dangerous knowledge and eventually a doomsday scenario—so the argument goes—scientific research must be closely monitored, even curtailed; therefore it follows that human freedom itself must be closely monitored, even curtailed.”
With few listening to what had turned into a somewhat esoteric and tendentious discourse, there was a clamor for him to sing something instead. These requests he deflected gracefully, albeit hinting that he might change his mind and joking that once he started singing, people usually had to pull him away from the microphone. Watching him so charm the room, I could not help but be reminded of Freud’s phrase—”the light-suffused face of the young Persian god”—when a reporter brusquely buttonholed me to ask the following: “Why do you Hong Kong Cavaliers give yourselves permission to police the world? Explain to me again, Reno—why is it always your job to save the planet?”
As Buckaroo’s amanuensis and unofficial spokesman for our group, I had heard the question so many times that it struck a sore spot with me, and I answered as I always do: “It’s a valid concern and one I frequently bring up with world leaders, who, after all, grant us diplomatic immunity to do our work, so perhaps you should direct the question to them. And perhaps we should all put our heads together and come up with a better system to stop imminent threats; but if the world is in a very dark place at the moment or your neighbor is spewing trash onto your property, we can’t just sit back, particularly if we are the last resort. Rolling over and doing nothing is not in our DNA.”
“No worries,” he said, his mood changing rather dramatically from coolly professional to warm and intimate. “I loved your surprise show last night at the Olympia, especially the new single, ‘Time Bomb Ticking.’ Any chance we’ll see you in Chittagong this next leg of the tour? Or at least get the T-shirt concession?”
“I’ll put you in touch with Mrs. Johnson, head of our international fan club. She’s here in town, having a listening party tomorrow night, and knows where all the bodies are buried,” I said, and we exchanged contact information.
In return for the small gesture, the Chittagonian could not have been more effusive in his gratitude: “Thank whatever god in heaven for people like you, Reno! You, Tommy . . . Pecos . . . Buckaroo . . . the whole band and all your extended family.”
“Family owned and operated. The quality goes in before the name goes on,” I said, recalling an obsolete advertising slogan and turning my attention back to Buckaroo, who was still holding forth extemporaneously.
“But the world requires more than better science—it requires better people. Speaking more than seventy-five years ago, Carl Jung said, ‘Our technical skill has grown to be so dangerous that the most urgent question today is not what more can be done in this line, but how the man who is entrusted with the control of this skill should be constituted.’ I needn’t remind you how I used to be laughed at when I was the first to warn the world that spying eyes could be watching you through your TV set . . .”
Amid rueful chuckles he said, “Who’s laughing now? It was largely in recognition of this problem that I established the Banzai Institute, a place where scientists may develop not as inhuman cogs in the R&D machine, intent on dominating the natural world, but as intrepid adventurers seeking to gain insight into our broader nature as human beings in the grand scheme of the universe . . . or, to paraphrase Vladimir Lenin in a different light, to live with our hearts on fire and our brains on ice . . . but with humility and compassion for all.”
Our little band had blown through Paris, at least in part, to investigate a tip that Henry Shannon had set up shop in the city’s environs; and as I listened to Buckaroo’s keen insights from the back of the room, my eyes were ever watchful for physical threats. At the same time, I could not help noticing a certain ennui among many of the reporters, who seemed to prefer rolling their eyes or staring at their handheld devices to the act of listening to the noblest, most honorable man in the world. Of course their behavior was not surprising to me—it is after all the self-absorbed culture in which we live—and I confess to being distracted myself in the meantime by a certain well-known TV network personality and host of her own fashion and reality show. I am speaking, naturally, of Desdemona “Mona” Peeptoe, who sauntered up to me in her signature fetish stiletto pumps and shoulder pads.
“Way to go, Buckaroo. Get on your soapbox, tell off these elitist media types for their spoon-fed pap,” she urged, standing as always in her on-air pose, pushing her pelvis and one provocative foot slightly forward like the perennial talent show contestant she once was.
“How are you, Reno?” she began with an air kiss and a condescending tone and, after a round of awkward pleasantries that skipped over our tumultuous personal history together, started to press me in her best interview style: “And how are things at the Institute? Still sleeping in the bunkhouse, sixteen deep?”
“It’s a living,” I said, biting my lip so as not to return her incivility. “We believe in equality and family values, humility foremost among them.”
“I’m unbelievably impressed. Congratulations on your humility, Reno,” she jested . . .
. . . as we were interrupted by Parisian friends of mine: a brilliant thinker and commander of the Legion of Honor, who, along with her celebrated novelist husband, peppered me with French cheek kisses in passing, prompting Mona to roll her eyes in pique.
“One of Buckaroo’s old flames,” I informed her by way of smoothing her feathers. “Blue Blazes Julia Joy and her husband June Bug. We met at the Institute years ago.”
“Never heard of them,” she replied while making it clear she was no longer listening to me, but to Buckaroo, who in response to overwhelming popular demand had begun to croon one of our group’s best-loved ballads . . . “I Need an Answer” . . . a tune so steeped in heartache, love, and loss that it ironically seemed to attain curative powers, allowing me to drape my arm around her.
“Getting a little misty in here,” Mona announced, dabbing at something in her eye. “What a sad thing. And what a terrible sense of survivor’s guilt he must feel. Her body could be anywhere by now . . . even in Hanoi Xan’s backyard toolshed.”
“Don’t, Mona, not today on this happy occasion,” I pleaded. “Don’t even mention that unholy animal . . .”
“And of course you’ve heard the worst,” she continued, “that Penny may have been a shady lady, a spy for Xan all along. Of course I hope the truth is not so ugly.”
“I’ll pass on your sensitive tip,” I told her with only a trace of sarcasm—not that she seemed to give a whit for my opinion.
“I’m just saying Buckaroo looks tired, sounds hoarse, doesn’t seem to radiate the old puissance,” she said. “His skin looks bad, his bed hair kind of oily . . . or maybe it’s just his horrible baby-shit-green suit in homage to les académiciens . . . but then the tacky silver boots and awful tangerine bolo tie . . . he almost looks incognito!”
“It’s my bolo,” I informed her. “I bought it just this morning when I went out pigeon hunting in the Bois.”
“Always covering for the boss,” she said with another roll of the eyes. “Even so, Buckaroo still needs to talk to a fashion person. He looks ill put together.”
“You might look ill put together, too,” I said without hesitation, “if you’d just gotten back from the Fifth Dimension and spent three sleepless days performing brain surgeries in a hyperbaric decompression suit.”
“The Fifth . . . ? I thought he went to the Eighth.”
“He’s been to both, plus a couple of others.”
“No wonder,” she said flippantly. “Probably wore himself out, to say the least . . . I heard him say interdimensional travel is like making love, times a hundred, but then there’s the dark side, the dark sectors as well. I just hope he didn’t get his cavities probed like some of those UFO people.”
“Jealous?” I said.
“Funny,” she replied, meaning the opposite. “And funny you should say that. I have to tell you I’m hearing rumors that Buckaroo is not just tired, but a little off these days.”
“Off? As in . . . ?”
“As in exponentially out of control with more than a few loose screws, a broken shell of a man on a morphine pump . . .”
“Let’s not exaggerate. The screws are in his skull and a fractured pelvis, plus six broken ribs,” I told her irritably and apparently without effect.
“I’ve even heard the neurologists are telling him not to operate a motor vehicle, much less the Jet Car, because of the concussion and possible cosmic-ray damage to his brain,” she said . . . another statement I refused to dignify with a response, mainly because I had some idea of what she was talking about.
“Sorry to burst your bubble, Mona,” I said, shaking my head. “You make it sound like he sits home all day, trembling in his house slippers . . .”
“What my sources are telling me,” she insisted—then, seeing me less than pleased with her line of questioning, moderated her tone: “Perfectly understandable after the Jet Car crash and his brain concussion, not to mention the emotional toll. His heart must be aching, pushed to the brink of madness by such a thing . . . after saving the world from space aliens, only to lose the woman, the young bride, he loved above all else . . . ! Like I said, I can’t even get my head around his loss.”
“He’s lost a lot,” I agreed. “But they can’t take away his fight against injustice. He consoles himself with work—”
She continued: “And on their honeymoon, with him at the controls. My God, how horrible. He would have given her the world wrapped in a bow, and now . . . look at him, successful in everything and yet all alone and hurting. And then Hikita, his surrogate father, committing ritual suicide. Does anyone really believe that? Who commits hara-kiri in a wheelchair, wearing Birkenstocks?”
I could only reply, “We all wish it could have turned out different.”
“So does Hikita,” she scoffed. “The whole world knows Xan had the professor done in, and so does Buckaroo. That’s why I’m not one to badmouth the poor guy’s fashion sense or kick him while he’s down . . .”
“Of course not,” I said, biting my tongue. “I know you too well.”
These words were a nod to our history together, but she proceeded as if she hadn’t heard: “. . . the genius domus of his eponymous Institute and best-selling author of Les pensées de Buckaroo Banzai . . . a man who, as they say, was born in a manger on the Fourth of July, rewrote Newton’s second law, and is now about to receive the Grande Médaille from the illustrious French Academy, not to mention guest conducting the Orchestre de Paris tomorrow night. And what about this scuttlebutt I’m hearing that President Monroe intends to appoint him American ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s . . . ?”
“Exactly that . . . scuttlebutt you can scuttle,” I answered her. “I can promise you that Buckaroo hasn’t the time or the inclination to sit and sip tea with diplomats, when he can accomplish so much more on his own . . . and with higher forms of life.”
Now she couldn’t resist a dig at him: “Oh, pardon us, ‘immortal one,’ too wise and all important to show us lesser mortals the way . . . !”
I interrupted to say, “Nice try, Mona, but nonsense . . . that’s not Buckaroo. He has never claimed to be a guru who can show anyone ‘the way,’ even if he wanted to. The idea is laughable at best. Even I know there is no ‘way’ to happiness. Happiness is the way . . .”
“Happiness,” she sighed, giving me a look of longing mixed with outright disgust. “My dear Reno, ever the homespun philosopher . . . and the best worst mistake I ever made. It kills me to my soul the way we left things between us.”
On hearing those words, I experienced a future memory of the two of us walking along the river, pausing to kiss in view of Haussmann’s façades and a watchful gargoyle or two. But of course this would not happen during this trip, if at all.
“Your high platform-wedge heels grinding me underfoot” was all I said.
“Like my stilettos. And you loving every minute, pouring your heart out!” She laughed and suggested I take her to the Jockey Club later that evening for martinis and some meaningful conversation, provided I could wangle her an interview with Buckaroo.
When I told her I would not be a go-between, she replied, “Very well, since you look sober and bathed, I’ll go with you anyway.”
A glance at my watch dispelled even that plan, however, obliging me to say, “Next time, Mona. I’m afraid the airport cocktail bar will have to do.”
“Oh,” she pouted. “Not even a macaron from Carette in the place du Trocadéro?”
“Something’s come up,” I explained. “I have to leave for Fukushima tonight on a special mission.”
“Zut alors. How convenient, and mysterious.”
“Tsunami science is that, indeed.”
“Last Year at Fukushima . . . the movie of our lives,” she sighed with exaggerated disappointment. “Then at least tell me something I don’t know already. For my millions of viewers, care to give us your most amazing Buckaroo factoid?”
“He has a birthmark in the shape of a guitar,” I answered without hesitation.
“His true-blue Mongolian spot? That’s old news. Everyone knows that,” she retorted. “Is this how you treat me, Reno? Your sweet, forgiving Mona . . .”
“Okay. Rumor has it he’s got two left feet,” I suggested.
“Seriously, Reno? Do I look brain dead to you?”
“If you don’t believe me, ask why you’ve never seen him dance,” I said. “Ever see him do a two-step, much less a suicide death drop like me?”
She cocked an eyebrow and cleared her throat, then resumed, “I thought it was because even after two years he must be slowly dying inside, though I guess he’ll keep marching on in search of Penny because that’s what he does. Where is our friend Xan, by the way?”
“Follow the flies,” I said with a shrug.
“In fact, I have it on good authority several of Hanoi Xan’s top lieutenants have been spotted in town lately, which would explain why you added a Paris tour stop at the last moment.”
I held my tongue, saying only, “The tour’s going great guns. Totally sold out the first leg in Scandinavia and the Baltics, cut a rollicking track for the new album with the Swedish Radio Orchestra . . . got detoured to the Gulf states, where we saved a local musician from the gallows.”
“Funny business, show. Oh my word . . . !” she cried out, causing me to whirl and look.
Distracted by this exchange, I may have neglected to mention that some unbridled French journalist, doubtless smelling fresh blood, had just interrupted Buckaroo about the monster Hanoi Xan, whereupon Buckaroo, to his credit, tried to reply in a civil way; but, alas, the feeding frenzy had already begun. More impertinent questions followed until, suddenly and in the space of an instant, a member of the Academy—Jean Lafitte, the noted Belgian experimental physicist—shoved his way through the crowd of reporters, waving the ceremonial sword bestowed upon all Immortals and screaming with a maniacal hatred in his eyes, “Pour Shang-Ti et la martyre! Naître, mourir, renaître encore . . . !”
At least that was the way my ears heard it . . . as Buckaroo deftly sidestepped the white-haired octogenarian’s épée thrust and Perfect Tommy did the rest, materializing seemingly out of thin air to disarm the old fool and drag him across the worn carpeting to a security official.
“Lafayette, we are here!” he shouted.
“Wow . . . Perfect Tommy . . . how’d he pull that off? Reno, why didn’t you tell me Tommy was here with you and Buckaroo?” Mona said accusingly.
“Jamais deux sans trois, tout de phawking suite,” I explained . . . as Tommy reappeared a moment later with a partial cigarette, drinking Coke from someone’s tossed bottle and moving his body in the slinky way a cat stalks, all without breaking a sweat.
“No matter where you go, there’s always a nut on the loose. That shitbird was jabbering about Blue Snow Cone and wanting to die, drunk as a skunk, and carrying a bag of weed,” he calmly informed us.
“It can only be for that reason no one was hurt,” Mona said.
“Almost a riot situation,” Tommy agreed.
“And credit your quick thinking, Tommy,” she added. “Nice work . . . although a sword fight would’ve been a bonus, or a shooting. Too bad . . . the Wild West angle. Or was it all part of the show? What the hell is Blue Snow Cone . . . ?”
Tommy and I traded looks; but where I hesitated, Tommy jumped in, blabbing to Mona like an excitable schoolboy. “Only the biggest blackmail plot in the history of Mother Earth, which Hanoi Xan threatened to turn into a ‘blue snow cone’ by sabotaging the hadron collider at CERN. It’s a long-ass story, but the idea was to cause an experimental mini black hole to release giant clouds of cold atom matter that could freeze Switzerland and the heart of Europe and perhaps even the entire planet. Jean Lafitte probably had a hand in it, but Buckaroo foiled their little game, so now they want his hide more than ever . . .”
“The World Crime League, you mean?” asked Mona.
Tommy nodded. “Along with his brain, his Jet Car, his oscillation overthruster, you name it. Last I heard, the reward on his head was ten million dollars, to be paid in this life or the next.”
“Just the icing on the cupcake I needed,” Mona said excitedly, already moving away. “Excuse me, Reno and Tommy, nice talking to you . . . but I have a deadline, gotta run. Always a pleasure. Keep your nose clean, Reno dearie. Je t’embrasse! Ta-ta . . .”
I watched her sashay away and muttered, “Tommy, you heroic jackass. You just spilled the butter beans.”
“Following your lead, old man. C’est comme ça,” he replied with a shrug.
Meanwhile, throughout the entire episode, Buckaroo scarcely interrupted his remarks to an audience that was by now paying rapt attention.
“I’m afraid that what has happened is that our well-founded fear of the atom has jaundiced not only our view of science, but our view of humanity as well,” he was saying, “and the dystopian, apocalyptic message so common in modern science fiction ignores that powerful capacity for good inside us and teaches instead that humanity is the great antagonist on the planet—Man as machine and insatiable destroyer of Nature—who must be rescued for our own good from science and therefore from ourselves, who can’t be trusted.”
“Spoken like a true greedy American,” griped a Frenchman in the crowd . . .
. . . whom Buckaroo overheard and answered with a grin, “Yes, and you may thank the nonprofit Banzai Institute, not only for its consulting services, but for your mobile Go-Phone and several hundred other technical and pharmaceutical patents that finance our good works in ninety-three countries around the world.”
Amid a show of nodding heads and a few knowing smiles, he concluded, “As a scientist who has glimpsed the possibilities of other dimensions all around us, I believe that active curiosity—asking too many questions and eating from the tree of knowledge—is what makes us human. This relentless pursuit of the unknown is both my professional vocation and my passion in life . . . my Beruf, as Max Weber would say. We must never stoop to thinking that we are a beastly failed race somehow unworthy of our own habitat, when the simple truth is that we’re an immature species who have not been around very long.
“I myself am often painted as a lurid combination of Prometheus and Pandora for having broken the Standard Model of Physics and for the Banzai Institute’s nonreliance on government or Wall Street investors, notwithstanding the fact that we perform honest public service and bring music to the world through a variety of aggregations, such as the Bunkhouse Jazz Cats, the Banzai Brass Band, and the Hong Kong Cavaliers.”
Now the applause became prolonged, and more than a few beaming faces turned our way, causing Tommy to grin and wave back . . . as Buckaroo began to wrap up his extemporaneous remarks.
“As Beethoven said, ideas of a divine nature come into being through the electric language of music. As we improve our critical-thinking skills based upon facts and data, we must also elevate humanity and its noblest inventions: virtu and the tools of reason in harmonic balance with our animal nature. This was my aim years ago when, in my ongoing quest for the fundamental particles and universal theory of everything, I first established the Banzai Institute, a kind of artists’ colony–cum–think tank and summer camp for talented translational scientists and original thinkers, modeled after Yaddo and others, where we ask the big questions in a world grown suspicious of big ideas and self-appointed deep thinkers . . . where our aim nevertheless is to seek truth and do good.
“So call me old fashioned. I still believe in Bacon’s Novum organum and the modern Enlightenment project, but am also drawn to the Rousseauian argument that human beings have traded their best and true nature for the comforts of civilization. The mystery for me, at bottom, is the meaning of life: to try to figure out the sense of it all by working together with a generosity born of that universal spirit. That is to say, science is always a work in progress, and I am able to view the natural world as full of magical phenomena not yet understood by the Standard Model or Western epistemologies—something like the Buddhist notion of a living, vibrating universe that permits absurdities and even contradictions: the superposition of two states in quantum physics, for example. As we say at the Institute, ‘Expect the impossible.’ ”
A beep from his watch now led him to wind things down: “Sorry, folks, it seems I got a little carried away and rambled on a bit. That’s about the size of it. Thanks for hearing me out. Merci beaucoup . . !”
Along with applause came a flurry of questions: “When’s your next trip in the Jet Car?” “How’s your health, Buckaroo?” “Any news on Penny?” “What did you find at the center of the earth on your last trip?”
Of these queries, he ignored all but one: “What did I find at the center of the earth? I found a stone left by the Vikings.”
Quite likely, no one knew if he was kidding or not, and he threw everyone further off balance with a snap of his fingers, as if something had just occurred to him.
“I almost forgot . . . a little tidbit you might want to share with your audience. Based on our analysis of multiple transit timing variations in Saturn’s orbit—detected by both NASA’s Cassini probe and our own Large-Array Observatory—the Banzai Institute has discovered what we believe to be a radioactive planetoid of unknown origin parked in one of Saturn’s rings, a finding since confirmed by the GRAPES-3 muon telescope in Ooty, India. That’s all I can tell you at this time, but the Institute will be issuing a press release tomorrow, and I’ll schedule a news conference in the near future.”
“A planetoid?” the reporters erupted. “A big one? . . . You mean like a planet? . . . And it’s parked in India? . . . You mean like something manmade, Buckaroo?”
“No, I wouldn’t say it’s manmade,” he answered with a cryptic smile, “but possibly nonnatural, made by someone.”
“What?! What are you saying, Buckaroo?” arose the clamorous response.
“It’s still only preliminary, mind you,” Buckaroo replied, choosing his words carefully so as not to provoke pandemonium. “But we believe it may be a probe from beyond our system actively scanning and archiving our transmissions. Vive la France et vive la vie, mes amis! And good luck in your future endeavors!”
“Vive Buckaroo Banzai!” members of the Academy chanted in response and then looked back at Tommy and me. “Vive les Hong Kong Cavaliers!”
“Garde la foi!” I returned, raising my glass. “Fraternity! Sorority!”
Armed now with the knowledge of all that was to follow, one cannot fail to look back and imbue the moment with high drama. Yet at the time, I merely recall glancing at my watch, thinking of Mona and the late-night flight I had to catch. Certainly no one in that room, no less Perfect Tommy and I, could guess that our world already stood on the edge of a precipice, the brink of destruction, as Tommy lit a bummed cigarette, gulped the last of his secondhand Coke, and remarked nonchalantly, “Vive la vie and vive la me.”
Again Buckaroo turned to go, but now was hoisted aloft by admirers, leaving only more questions in his wake. A new planetoid? Was this a big deal or a nonstory? Who cared about Saturn and its crazy rings, anyway? But an alien probe and the fact that Buckaroo Banzai himself had chosen to reveal the discovery! That made it newsworthy, and within minutes, even as he crowd-surfed upon the shoulders of his fellow knights and académiciens, the headline flashed around the world and beyond.