Think and grow rich.
—Napoleon Hill
“So, in a few words, tell me what you are calling about,” said Xan robotically into the phone. “I can understand entire sentences.”
“The peripatetic Mr. Xan . . . ! At long last! Did you get my Christmas birthday package, Mr. Xan?” the fresh voice at the other end asked. “The Dr. Grabow pipe covered in Lectroid skin, along with the Lectroid bio samples I sent to you on behalf of Lord John Whorfin . . . ?”
“Who told you I favor a Dr. Grabow pipe?” Xan wanted to know, bringing the phone closer and confirming his suspicion that a small angry dog, most likely muzzled, was snarling ferociously in the background.
“Short list, Mr. Xan. Point being, it’s in your CIA file and psychological profile,” replied the voice. “I have a buddy with access to that very sensitive information, the kind of secret info that could get me dragged into court and possibly shot.”
“Yet you do it without shame,” Xan observed with growing skepticism.
“This I do not dispute, because I believe in the miraculous . . . why fate picked me above all men. Something miraculous is happening.”
“River deep, mountain high,” said Xan. “How wonderful for you.”
“Because I’ve stopped being stupid and doing good deeds for murderers and have asked John Whorfin for forgiveness . . .”
“I believe you,” said Xan, rolling his eyes.
“Only the best go on to be test pilots.”
“Right.”
“. . . because I’m a sick man who has begun smoking dope and some other stuff and pissing on fire hydrants, headed for a divorce with a driving need to make some money.”
“And break your oath. You must have feelings for me . . .”
“I’m a believer, Mr. Xan, yessir, why I’m reaching out asking you to vouchsafe me your favor. Merry Christmas and a cheery winter solstice and Happy New Year—let me be among the first to wish you the best on this happy occasion with my modest earth-changing gift.”
“In exchange for my hard-earned, no doubt,” Xan said. “As I said to your so-called John Whorfin fella . . .”
“Ha, ha. Go slow, said the turtle, by way of Mr. Contreras in Panama City . . . maybe you heard of him? I also sent along a secret map of the largest deposits of rare earth elements on the moon, just to let you know I’m no bounder, but a serious person to be taken seriously, having access to US government intelligence of the highest level . . .”
“Of course you do,” Xan said. “Looking out your window, what do you see?”
“I don’t have a window, guv’nor. I’m in the basement,” said the flat American voice.
“Watching the moon.” Xan laughed, imagining the caller in a top-secret underground room aglow with computer screens.
“Surveyed by our secret Lawn Boy rover,” claimed the caller. “The same used in Afghanistan to map your vast opium-poppy holdings.”
Once again it occurred to Xan to hang up; but something, perhaps fate, stopped him. Instead, he salivated over his own reflection in his Jensen silver dinner bowl, where he had been picking at the remnants of the pickled-headcheese omelet. Therein, he glimpsed a gentleman with neither classic good looks nor the face of a leprous crone, in the way many have described him; rather, he was at once something altogether more inviting and imposing. Beneath an absurdly fitting toupee, he bore the tattoo of a single star on his bald pate, indicating that he had assumed divine status, while on one side of his face he found much else to admire—a seductive amber eye more or less the color of his equine false teeth, a floppy goat’s ear, and penciled eyebrows to match a snowy brush mustache beneath a nose that did not seem proportional to his face, along with a pockmarked, leathery complexion slathered with beauty ointments and lip gloss. His other side bore the effects of palsy, however, presenting the same facial features but hanging limp and grotesque. Thus sated with equal parts self-love and self-hate, he reached for a dark chocolate with his left hand, whose illustrated palm had begun to itch. As the sensation intensified, the tattoo thereon—a triangle circumscribed inside a circle of esoteric symbols—began to glow and itch even more until he licked it with his slithery, elongated tongue, which he used also to moisten his eyes in the absence of tear ducts.
“Go on, tell me more, if you have my dossier in front of you,” he said, gazing into the tattooed eye and beginning to contemplate the possibility of probing this stranger, perhaps cultivating him as a confidential source.
“I don’t have it, but I could probably get it,” the caller boasted. “Give the devil his due. I admire your joie de vivre! I know you own all the opium and emerald mines in Afghanistan and all the Frankenstein corn in Nebraska, Mr. Xan. I am aware also of your eleven-thousand-dollar investment in Yoyodyne to help Whorfin build his homecoming ship back in the day.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Xan replied, forcing a laugh and smelling danger. “Must be something you’ve picked up on talk radio or read in one of those crusty men’s magazines. You obviously have me confused with someone else.”
Now it was the caller’s turn to laugh hysterically. The antics of a lunatic madman, Xan thought.
“Oh, yes, sorry to cast a blot upon your reputation, Mr. Xan! Haw! You’re also into games and naughty fun and seek to establish a totalitarian one-world government with yourself as chief. That’s why they call you the evil that pisses gold and throws dust in men’s eyes, who steals the sunshine and does not sleep until his enemies are eradicated. I think we both know that man . . . woof! Woof, woof!”
The caller could be heard barking now in tandem with the small dog, whom he eventually interrupted to address in a radically different infantile voice. “I don’t give two squirts of piss—what’s nagging you? You travel, you eat well, just dawg the phawk up! Take charge of your manhood!”
Xan meanwhile was rolling his eyes and muttering, “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred . . . down the bunny trail.”
“What did you say, Mr. Xan? I hope I didn’t miss anything.”
Hearing the caller’s “normal” fake French voice return, Xan said, “You’re somewhere out there, aren’t you, Mister . . . ?”
“My name is superfluous, but it’s Antoine. One Antoine French, the Marquis of Lincoln,” replied the caller.
“Of course it is. One Antoine French . . . because you’re American. Extra points in the originality department.”
“Okay, you got me, sir. I wish I could come back with something sassy. Just call me Amerigo Vespucci, the Duke of Earl.”
“I prefer to call you Knucklehead, but I do not give a damn about it, as you sound like an unsavory character with a certain cerebral liability or social disorder who couldn’t quite cut the mustard,” said the older man.
“Please don’t throw cold coffee on me yet, Mr. Xan. Understand I am not some kind of quack, or a half-wit, but am obliged to be a shady phawk for now and walk in the shadows since I am calling from a top-secret American military installation, my pit stop in purgatory.”
“Things don’t always turn out well, Mr. French. I, too, walk in the shadows and am often mistaken for another,” Xan said.
Without warning, French again seemed to bark at someone else. “Cinch up your straps, cowgirl. This is poker but a shite-ton harder.”
Xan interrupted to say, “If I told you to phawk yourself, it would probably just confuse you further.”
“Ding, ding, good one, Mr. Xan! You can take that one to the bank. I was only a fighter pilot spending my best years cinching my asshole tight, pulling out of tailspins and aerial acrobatics, pissing on terrorist hovels and turning their caves into Funkytown . . .”
“And did our conscience turn black?”
“I killed them like lice, guv’nor, like sugar ants, same as I shot down John Whorfin over Jersey . . .”
“You shot down John Whorfin? You, and not Banzai?” Xan replied, gnawing at his manicure to keep from laughing.
“There has to be a reason, right? Though in reality I’m a man of high morals who tries to live the right way, but unfortunately I’m damaged and have had to shift gears, according to the ineptitude and lame skills of orgasmic pussies who somehow pass for adults and dishonor the uniform—in it for the drama, ha, ha—and the broken world as I understand it. Not saying I’m a hero . . . others have done bigger, badder shite. I only phawked the terrorist monkey while braver men held its tail, so this is not a cue for sympathy. Nor am I asking for your approval, though I do have an appreciation for goodwill. The bottom line is that Lord Whorfin—with whom you were speaking—is alive as surely as I’m talking to you, although in a good deal of pain and on an emotional roller coaster. Naturally, he doesn’t trust people. His enemies enslaved his followers and put him out to pasture in the Eighth Dimension, but he intends to come roaring back with a cold, hard bitch slapping.”
“Also not to be confused with reality,” said Xan derisively. “Sounds like he has more lives than Felix the Cat. Where is he?”
“In a room secure as a safe . . . but perhaps not for long. He’s pregnant, you know—”
Xan fell uncharacteristically mute.
“—and has been imprisoned in a secret government laboratory where his host and compadre Emilio Lizardo lost the sparkle in his eye . . . dying of advanced adenocarcinoma and gestational diabetes, among other things, such as self-inflicted injuries. The docs are trained fools, unfamiliar with alternative life forms, and have taken away his Mexican salsa.”
“Big shocker. To summarize your point?”
“God’s fruits, the gift of life made of stardust and Mexican jumping beans. But if Lizardo expires, Whorfin gets flushed out his ass gasket. That’s why, Mr. Hanoi Xan, I am communicating.”
“You want some of my famous ‘Hole in Your Stomach’ salsa?”
“Haw, no, because I need some big-ass muscle and I’d like very much to get Emilio to a chiropractor in Brazil who thinks he might just be able to kick his smooth bottom into gear.”
“A likely story. Are you broke, French?”
“Broke as a joke, guv’nor, but it’s not about the greenbacks,” the caller claimed, “although if I had your kind of money, I could throw mine in the trash . . .”
“How about a gun to shoot yourself? What caliber hole would you choose?”
The caller dropped his pseudo-French accent for a moment and protested, “Yes, I am trying to advance myself, Mr. Xan. I think most of us are. So if you are not interested in assisting Emperor Whorfin on his homeward flight—as the one person most suitable in the world to help him—please allow me to put another flea in your ear. Might you be interested in acquiring Buckaroo Banzai’s Jet Car plans?”
“Jet Car plans?” Xan said, instantly perking up but in no mood for self-torture. “And the overthruster? I don’t like games, French, or having my leg pulled.”
“Mr. Xan, m’lord, I’m not pulling your leg, believe me. Pulling your leg would be very reckless. I’m talking the entire set of blueprints to Buckaroo Banzai’s Jet Car, including the oscillation overthruster, superslick vinyl wrap, and a custom smart-grid timing belt.”
“A smart-grid timing belt?” questioned Xan.
“Based on Tesla’s 1929 patent but using an improved numerical system for the directed ZQ photon energy beams’ x, y, and z pyramidation point—something I strongly recommend if you want to go through solid matter,” said the strange caller.
There was a pause as Xan cleared his throat and suddenly had the urge to visit the bathroom. But was it excitement or wariness of overstimulation he was feeling? The caller meanwhile continued: “I don’t need to tell you we’re talking a Planck temperature somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.41679 x 10 to the 32nd, Kelvin, in a matter of a picosecond . . .”
“In your neighborhood, Mr. French?” he said. “You must have a straitjacket in every color.”
“Well put, guv’nor. Haw, haw, I tip my hat to you, but Mr. Contreras sent me. He thought you might be interested.”
“Contreras doesn’t have this number.”
“No, but don’t forget I work for the United States government with a top-level, code-only security clearance. For example, I know something about your ancient feud with Buckaroo Banzai . . . having something to do with the Pythagorean theorem and the value of the hypotenuse. So my point is that I have access to materials thirty-five levels above Top Secret and things could get very messy for me. Just making this call, I’m the accursed fellow incriminating myself . . . damned from the start, sir, so the quicker we wrap this up, the better . . .”
“Now you’re making some sense,” Xan agreed, glancing at his timepiece. “The quicker, the better.”
“The sum total is maybe I’ve made a blunder, because you do not see my love but think me a schemer rather than a victim of the first order, trying to hand you a key to unlock the power of the universe. But it seems I’ve dialed a wrong number.”
The caller was agitated, breathless, and Xan felt like a cigarette, craving the taste of menthol. Somewhere in the house a door slammed and startled him.
“Don’t get jumpy, French,” he said. “I’m listening.”
From the other end came a sigh, then what sounded like a repressed sob, then a hiccup . . . and finally a snarl and a medley of dog noises.
“What I mean is, I could spend the rest of my life in the Iron Bar Hotel,” the American said gravely. “I could go up in flames at any moment. I would need to disappear.”
“You would perhaps need to die.”
“I’ve considered that, Mr. Xan, and made arrangements. My bug-out kit is ready, but I’m already in too deep, so I might as well stir some shite. As a guarantee of my good faith, I’m sending another package out to Mr. Contreras. In the meantime let’s keep in close touch, though I most look forward to visiting you in one of your imperial courts, where, if you would confer upon me your seal, your World Crime League signet ring, I will happily kiss it.”
“Then your knees must become tough as a camel’s. But play me and I will vaporize your sad booty.”
“Haw. Under your divine left hand, what is not possible on our joyful journey?”
“Most definitely, French. You’re a live man.”
“Please . . . Antoine.”
“Antoine . . . I’m handing you to my assistant, who’ll give you instructions so that it arrives in tomorrow’s dispatch bag. Thanks for reaching out.”
“No. Thank you, Mr. Xan. Woof! Woof!”
After a brief conversation with Satrap that mainly consisted of coded hand gestures, Xan lit a cigarette and took his customary eyedropper of calomel before resuming his night voyage, floating down a winding river . . . that middle zone between sleep and wakefulness . . . before taking flight and letting his wings take him wherever they wished to go . . .
. . . as through a patch of sky John Whorfin appeared, dressed in white, with a black beard and searing dark eyes, saying, “I am the worst of the worst.”
“I respect your game, Whorfin,” he murmured. “But there can be only one True Son of Heaven.”
Of course he was used to hearing from pranksters and petitioners of almost every nationality, many of whom begged to serve under his flag as errand and whipping boys, even if it meant sticking wires in their heads and being controlled like remotes. Of these, only the lucky champions with “sunlight on their faces” would ever rise to the level of Lasiqs or self-sacrificing companions and assassins. And of these rising luminaries, fewer still would undergo baptism with their own blood and tears to become full-fledged apprentices in the business affairs or propaganda wing of the one-thousand-year-old organization handed down from the khans and the Secret Order of Assassins. Finally, only a minute number of companions would be invited to join the governing bodies, the Diaconate and the Bishopric, and become franchisees in the most elite den of iniquity and society of king criminals ever to exist: the transnational Interlocking Directorate, informally known as the World Crime League . . . the same organization that “Antoine French” now apparently wished to join; and although Xan was preternaturally wary of trading in sensitive government secrets, particularly with someone who seemed slightly off his rocker, in his long and colorful experience spanning generations, it was always the risks not taken that rankled him the most and kept him awake nights.
This man French had not named his price, but if he really could produce Banzai’s Jet Car technology, most importantly its oscillation overthruster, the sky was the limit. Moreover, based upon French’s delicate mental state, Xan reasoned that the offer was time sensitive. It was also only prudent to assume that French was shopping his materials elsewhere . . . to governments or even to the Banzai Institute itself, the very thought of which caused Xan to ball his fists with hate.
In this context the keen reader may recall the well-known line from Du Fu, favorite poet of both Buckaroo Banzai and Hanoi Xan: “The carp swims early to find the fishermen still unfurling their nets.” I have heard Buckaroo Banzai offer something like the very same advice—“Life is short: we arrive late and leave early, when it is better to do the opposite”—and examples of the worth of this truism abound. In arriving sooner than expected, the lone warrior slips past enemies sent to dispatch him; the earlier worm avoids the early bird; the early arriving salesman hears office gossip and gains much valuable intelligence that will serve him well against his competitors. More importantly, it is to be hoped that unaccounted arrivals may constrain the Furies and Fates from acting mischievously in concert.
By the same token, Xan was not one to remain in one locale for long . . . a restlessness owing as much to his mercurial moods as threats to his safety. For decades his favorite watering hole had been the Shepheard Hotel in Cairo, where he kept an apartment. But the Shepheard was no longer the Shepheard of legend, and Egypt was no fun these days. Political events in that part of the world had robbed his tranquility, and it was much the same with his underground mansion at Petra, which had its own set of problems. Old Ma’rib was of course out of the question, and it would be reckless to take his entourage to North America. Of course there was always the annual salt trek across the Himalayas, but good weather was still months away. Nonetheless, the strange call from Nevada had left him second-guessing, obsessing over his own safety. And there were other alarm bells, as it was quickly learned that only a few days earlier Contreras, a worthy assassin and loyal Lasiq, had taken a swan dive into the Panama Canal and failed to come up for a breath.
So now was not the time to dither. Directly French’s package arrived in Marseille the following day, it was brought by special courier to Orsay and placed upon Xan’s white grand piano.
As Xan examined the crumpled cardboard box bearing the label (in shaky block printing) hanoi xan, devil’s own, with awe and reverence, he thought, “This has to be a joke. If not, it’s even more hilarious.”
Untying a red Christmas bow on the box’s lid, he delved into a trove of wadded graph paper to find—wrapped in a piece of shimmering, almost liquid-like vinyl material marked superslick—a round, fist-sized object spray-painted the color of trophy gold, with various wires and gauges attached. The crinkled pages of the graph papers themselves, smeared with food and coffee stains, displayed numerous crude drawings and fanciful descriptive captions penciled in the same chicken scrawl: submarine-mounted dark star oscillatron thruster . . . nitro-fueled la-z-boy recliner . . . high-density-foam nonsagging (firm) cushions . . . with saddlebags, nuke knobs, cup holder, the lance of destiny tachyon shooter in tinfoil (a long Pitot tube protruding from a chaise lounge recliner). Still other pages were covered with detailed designs, elaborate calculations, and additional captions: blue aurora, meissner superslick effect, eighth dimension resonant frequencies and trapdoor algorithms, dimension-shifting superconducting oversquare pushrod quantum nanothruster, increased electromagnetic tectonic torque and overthrust angle w/ zero resistance and decreased stroke-to-bore ratio, time the warp (faraday cage warp bubble vacuum effect) into swirling black hole (dark energy)!!!
Besides these items—and I report it here only for the factual record and the serious student—there appeared at the bottom of the box an added holiday bonus buried in a crumpled Las Vegas Review-Journal: two gift baskets—one crammed full of summer sausages and cheese, the other chock-a-block with varieties of fruit—both of these wrapped in red-and-green holiday cellophane. So put yourself in Xan’s shoes, dear reader. Taken together with the crude clay model that resembled a human heart or perhaps a child’s rattle box, the diagrams and so-called formulae themselves appeared to be a joke, as if sloughed off in a matter of minutes and so shoddily sketched that the accompanying calculations and tech specifications could scarcely be taken seriously, even after Xan slipped on his reading glasses and tried to make some sense of it all. He was after all no physicist, but the sloppiness of the overall presentation suggested either a sick sense of humor or mental laziness on the part of the sender, leading him to deem the documents as likely counterfeits.
“Tant pis,” was his reaction upon examining the contents of the box and experiencing a sense of disappointment that was almost personal. Whence this feeling?
Handling the absurdly crude clay model of an oscillation overthruster, he could be excused for reminiscing about his earlier association with John Whorfin and the motley band of Lectroid stragglers at the Yoyodyne Corporation. If only . . . if only, he mused . . . if not for Buckaroo Banzai, things might have been different. Despite Whorfin’s boundless egomania, a great alliance might have bloomed.
But beyond the dashed hopes represented by French’s joke box, there was something else that inflamed Xan’s brain, that sent his thoughts in another direction and bears mentioning. By this I mean his loneliness, his alienation . . . indeed his very conviction that he himself was a kind of alien not of this earth. How else to explain his superhuman talents? His inexplicable longevity?
Either he was a god or a being from another world—what else could account for his superiority?
Granted, he did not know the answer. There was no scientific evidence that he possessed actual alien DNA, and his true origins were lost in the mists of antiquity; but in effect he believed himself to be an alien among lesser humans and therefore something of a kindred soul with the Lectroid Whorfin. Paradoxically, however, he also believed aliens of various denominations were fairly commonplace, living unnoticed among us. Proof of their presence could be found in the simple act of watching television and pushing the pause button, thereby capturing people with alien facial expressions.
“Look at that one,” he would tease and show others just such a face caught in midspeech. “Zombie or alien?”
But to return to the bundle of papers sent by Mr. French, there was also something else: a loose bundle of government documents stamped top secret / sensitive compartmented information. Even skimming the surface of these pages, Xan became convinced they were not to be brushed off quickly and set them aside for future reference; and with a signal he instantly summoned Satrap and his muscular shield maidens, who measured his testosterone against his baseline and gave him multiple injections south of the border, in his nether region: B12 with Benzedrine, cocaine and a cocktail of steroids, amniotic fluid, rhinoceros horn, human growth hormone, and perfumed oils he called “arse sweeteners.” The same attendants next laced his bespoke oxfords and dressed him in red parachute pants and Charlemagne’s supposed seamless robe of Christ, to which overall effect he added a gnarled walking stick said to be carved from the true cross itself—passed down from Constantine and his mother, Saint Helena—and customized with Xan’s own adornment, a desiccated stingray tail said to possess magical properties of its own. By means of these holy relics, and like a moth drawn to the light, he flitted several times around the ceiling before directing himself toward a portal flanked by blazing sconces and a quartet of singing castrati carolers known as Death Dwarves. Each pair of these consisted of a dwarfish naked eunuch, tattooed chin to wrist and perched piggyback-style atop a muscular “bottom.”
Now, weary of self-propulsion or in keeping with some procedure of long standing, Xan allowed himself to fall into the arms of Satrap, who cradled him like a swaddled infant and led the way, as the King of Crime and his colorful entourage swept forward into the ballroom.
“It’s a holly jolly Christmas!” a hundred voices cheerfully intoned, followed suddenly by a manic bout of mariachi music announcing the arrival of Xan and the hundred-dollar gratuities he tossed like confetti.