PART 1

Rawhide was intrigued when his guest unpacked a long, narrow bundle. He was flat-out astonished when his new friend unwrapped from the bundle a sheathed sword that proved to be a samurai katana in the incongruous confines of an old ranchhouse in Western Wyoming.

Scratching the nape of his neck, the Texan asked mildly, "You expectin' ronin?"

Buckaroo Banzai glanced over at him. The question was not meant unkindly.

"Hold still," Banzai said. Swifter than thought, he whirled the razor-sharp blade from its scabbard and without any hesitation in movement commenced the intricate series of exercises called iaido, centered on the big young cowboy.

Rawhide stood impassive as the long blade whistled and divided the air millimeters from his shoulders, his chin, even his eyes. A small breeze, raised by the speed of the blade, moved a wisp of hair onto his forehead; in the next instant, Banzai's blade trimmed that wisp away. It was several minutes before the young half-Japanese scholar brought the sword to a position of conclusion.

Neither man spoke while Buckaroo Banzai observed the formalities of sheathing the sword. Banzai was a trifle uneasy as he turned his attention back to his friend, whom he knew would not respond well to anything he considered to be showing off.

But even on short acquaintance, Rawhide understood that the odd mixture of character traits that was Buckaroo Banzai did not possess a weakness for vulgar display. He didn't know why Buckaroo had chosen to practice his swordplay in front of him, but he knew why not.

"I needed a haircut," the Texan allowed, running a hand over the untidy waves of his thick red hair. "Shave, too," he conceded.

Buckaroo smiled. "It is a way of thinking, or more properly, of not-thinking," he said. "This was my father's sword, and his father's, for six generations."

Rawhide raised his eyebrows. Tradition in his family was anything that lasted ten years. The family was pretty sure that some of their ancestors had come from Ireland, but more than that... It was another window into Banzai's manifold identity-- and it was to uncurtain that window, Rawhide realized, that the man had engaged in his dramatic display.

"Make a hell of a Wild West act, Buckaroo," Rawhide observed. He folded his arms over his chest with a friendly smile that said the rest of what he was thinking.

Immensely pleased, Buckaroo shot back, "OK, we'll do it, but you'll have to wear a bikini and hold a cigar in your teeth."

Rawhide's deep laugh exploded out of him and became something like a sustained howl. Finally he managed to say "Je-e-e-sus," before laughing again.

Buckaroo Banzai appeared to consider this comment on its merits. "You're probably right," he said judiciously. "You don't have the legs for it."

This set Rawhide off again, almost to the point of choking. "You're a dead man, Banzai," he gasped, but couldn't draw enough breath to make good on his threat.

Banzai took pity on him, after a fashion. "When you're through procrastinating," he said severely, "I'll be out back, saddling up." He exited.

Rawhide grabbed his Stetson and, pausing for a moment's look at the exquisite haft of the samurai sword, took long strides for the door.

~~~

It was early June, no more than late spring in these Wyoming hills that knew so long a winter. The two young men, glorying in the sensation of no obligations, rode almost at random through the high grass and newly leafing trees. Rawhide had spent many summers on this ranch, which belonged to his uncle Joe and aunt Betsy, but the country was new to Buckaroo.

They talked easily, as they had from the very first, of nearly everything. Their fields technically did not overlap, yet they found between themselves an immediate community of interests, both fascinated by areas as widely separated as neolithic irrigation, the curious boxes of Joseph Cornell, and the unknown source of a flea's ability to leap twenty times its height.

Most of all, they shared a conviction that the separation of these fields was a false distinction, that the world and the many arts and sciences exploring its nature were essentially one beautiful and mysterious whole.

"My father once said that 'mystery is the source of all art and science,'" Buckaroo mused. "I was three, but I remember..." his voice trailed off.

"I was wearing a watch for the first time that day, enjoying the juxtaposition of its accuracy and how the second hand went around and around and never came to rest. I could sense the relationship between linearity and cyclic reality; I knew I had a beautiful, simple example of something true right there on my own wrist... My father understood what I was thinking, and said those words to me. For some reason, it made my mother very, very happy that he did..." His voice was nearly inaudible.

"I've never known why, just her joy." Rawhide knew he was listening to a man talking to himself. "Hikita-san doesn't remember it."

"Who?"

Buckaroo snapped back to the present. "Professor Toichi Hikita," he said formally. "My surrogate father. He raised me after my parents..."

Rawhide nodded. "Sorry."

"You'll meet him," said Buckaroo. He grinned suddenly. "You may even like him."

~~~

"Business or pleasure?" The Customs Inspector's sixth sense was going off like a four-alarm fire. Three small, slender men, Oriental -- Chinese? he wasn't sure -- off Northwest Orient 721 from Hong Kong. Gray suits, ties, Homburg hats of a type favored this year by Japanese and Filipino businessmen. The Customs man checked every item in their luggage, even ran his fingers around the collars of their neatly folded shirts, looking for -- what? weapons? He put his fingers down the toes of their shoes, unzippered their dop kits. Nothing, nothing.

But there was death hovering in the air around these men as plainly as if they'd had blood on their hands.

Nothing. The Customs Inspector was frustrated. Malayan passports, but these guys weren't Malays. A few years of Customs work at SeaTac International Airport taught you to recognize many different Oriental ethnic characteristics at a glance. And of course, before that, there'd been his all-expenses-paid tour of Southeast Asia, courtesy of Uncle Sam -- but these guys, he just couldn't place them. Red Chinese, from the North maybe?

A trickle of businessmen from Communist China had been coming through his station during the past year, in the wake of Nixon's visit to Peking -- Beijing, he corrected himself. Spies? He could informally warn his FBI buddy about these three -- he had memorized their names and faces -- but that didn't feel like the right answer, either. Real spies were drab -- you never knew they were there. These guys -- it was subtle, but not beyond notice -- these guys meant danger.

"Business or pleasure?" repeated the Customs man.

"Our business is our pleasure," answered one of them with a polite, false smile.

"And exactly what business would that be?"

"A visit to the son of my father's teacher," said the answer man.

The Customs Inspector stared into his eyes; uselessly, he knew. The man stared blandly back. All three men had strangely damaged left ears, only partially visible under their hats. "Are we talking about tong business?" he asked.

"No. Not tong. I swear it," said the man. This was a surprise. Tong people took oaths with absolute seriousness.

The Customs man frowned, wondering if maybe an oath sworn to a black man wouldn't count. These guys just did not add up. The nearest thing to them he remembered was some of the students who'd come to study with Yip Man, the greatest living master of wing chun kung fu, at his school in Seattle. But last year the old man had 'folded his hands' and moved back to Hong Kong. The Customs inspector missed his teacher greatly.

"What's your destination?"

"Cod-die, Wyoming," said the man. "We meet our friend."

"Cody, you mean," said the Customs man. This baffled him even further, because it probably wasn't a lie. All they had to do was say Seattle or Los Angeles to be free to vanish into the entire width and breadth of the United States. This was too specific to be an ordinary lie.

"Cody," the man repeated carefully. "Thank you."

~~~

The heart of the ranch was a homestead with a cluster of barns and silos, and a few outbuildings like a bunkhouse for the temporary hires during roundup. The main house dated from the second wave of settlers, the ones who could afford glass for the windows from the start. It was a spare, weatherbeaten place whose activity centered on a big kitchen lined with shelves that were bright with bottles of jams, conserves, preserves, fruits and vegetables of various kinds, and even the odd jar of piccalilli, because Rawhide's taste for hot spices was fondly indulged in this house.

In the front room there was a piano, an old upright whose shelf was covered with sheet music for genteel ballads -- 'Flow Gently, Sweet Afton' was on top. Rawhide let his fingers run along the keys, then sat down on the bench and truly addressed the piano. He played at tremendous speed a passage from Bach's 'Sleepers Awake,' one of the most joyous pieces in all music. Buckaroo leaned against the piano, feeling the notes vibrate through his forearms.

The music ended. "That was my mother's favorite," said Rawhide. "I used to play it when she was feelin' sick." He stood up and put his hands in his pockets, and glanced at Buckaroo. "She died when I was twelve," he said. "Hodgkins."

Buckaroo nodded sympathetically.

Half hesitating, Rawhide went on. "I used to read the paper to her, too." He swallowed. "I remember reading to her about your parents."

Buckaroo was motionless, expressionless.

"It was such a weird thing, that rocket car blowing up out on the hardpan. Every paper in Texas carried it," Rawhide said almost apologetically. "It came to me a couple hours ago where I'd heard your name before."

Buckaroo unfroze, nodded. "I was five," he said quietly, and sighed. The memory of that fireball was never far from his thoughts.

"Terrible accident," Rawhide said.

Buckaroo shook his head. His expression grew hard. "No. It was murder."

Rawhide's Aunt Betsy walked in, and, not at a vantage that allowed her to see the shock on his face, admonished her enormous nephew. "Look what you brought in the parlor, all that dirt, now you know better than that." Rawhide dropped his eyes from Buckaroo's and turned toward his aunt. She was a small, grayhaired woman; though her hands and body were worn with many years of outdoor work, her eyes still danced with the merriness of a natural flirt.

"I do claim," she continued to fuss, "you might as well still be twelve years old."

"I am twelve years old," Rawhide told her. The distracted quality disappeared from his tone and he chucked her under the chin. "How could I be any older with you so young and pretty?"

"Oh, get on with you," she said with mock impatience. "Was that you playing Molly's music? It was real nice to hear it again -- play something else, long's you've already brought the front yard in. Play 'The Tennessee Waltz.'"

Rawhide sat down on the piano bench and complied, noticing that Buckaroo seemed deep in thought. Murder. Damn. I really put both feet in the cowpie this time.

Aunt Betsy asked for three more tunes, and Rawhide played them. Finishing up 'The Red River Valley,' he asked, "Buckaroo, anything you'd like to hear?" Fortunately, the music seemed to be pulling Buckaroo back out of himself.

"Oh... yes. Do you know 'Rocket 88'?"

"Nope." Wasn't often he didn't know something. Buckaroo paused, then started to whistle.

Note by note, Rawhide followed, then began fitting chords and riffs. Surprisingly, Aunt Betsy hummed along. "I remember that song," she exclaimed. "We heard it at the Automobile Exposition in Chicago... oh, goodness, could it be twenty years ago?"

Buckaroo flashed a grin that was like light breaking through after a storm. "Play it again, Sam," he ordered in a jaunty Bogart growl, and, as Rawhide obeyed, slipped an arm around Aunt Betsy's waist and swung her into a fast Texas two-step.

~~~

Dinner was chicken-fried steak swamped in gravy and liberally accompanied by fixings. They ate at the big round oak table in the kitchen; the mahogany in the dining room looked like it hadn't been used for a decade. Aunt Betsy had set them all up with dinner, then gone to town for choir practice.

"--a residential community of scientists," Banzai was saying, "a think tank with no ideological agenda, no sponsors. People will be free to focus on basic research -- on what might strike Bell Labs or ITT as whimsy. Feynman won the Nobel Prize for an idea he had while watching a food fight in the Cornell cafeteria; this will be a place where that kind of thinking can happen on a daily basis. We'll fund ourselves--"

"You could probably get a foundation or two to give you a few mil without strings," Rawhide mulled. "The MacArthur, maybe the Dodge, the Ford -- they like this kind of idea. Maybe even get a little seed money from the Feds..."

"No." Buckaroo was adamant. "This institution will be beholden to no one."

"But you'll need -- uh, just the ordinary stuff, autoclaves 'n centrifuges 'n -- lab coats..." Rawhide was looking up at the ceiling. "Sounds like you're going to want some fancy stuff too, a scanning microscope, some kind of particle accelerator, infrared spectrometer... not to mention your mainframe... 'N you'll have housin' expenses-- some kind of stipend -- these days, a geology grad out of Stanford can expect to pick up sixty K right off the bat--"

"We'll buy it ourselves, build it ourselves, rent it, or go without. As for the rest: scientists do not need split level neo-Colonial BMW's. What they do need, we'll find. And what they need most of all, what every mind needs most of all, is freedom to explore. Who wouldn't be willing to sleep on a cot to have that? The ones who want something else," Buckaroo shrugged, "they'll leave."

Old Joe eyed him shrewdly. "Are you founding a research institution or startin' a cult?"

Banzai was unembarrassed. "Commitment to truth brings certain values with it," he said. "Truth is worthless without justice. Action is worthless without responsibility. Dreams, no matter how beautiful, are worthless without reality. I do not believe that you can live one part of your life according to a set of values and abandon them in the rest of your life."

He drew a breath. "No one will be answerable for the substance of his or her research to anyone else; no hierarchy will develop. But in larger ways, each is answerable to all; there cannot be a just society, whether of five people or five hundred or five hundred million, founded on any other precept."

Old Joe leaned back in his chair. His eyes were narrow, measuring slits.

Rawhide grunted. "Who cooks dinner? Who washes the test tubes? Who makes sure the mega-utility bills go in on time and the place ain't gonna blow itself up because some enterprising young genius taps himself into a gas main?"

"We all do."

"Not a chance," said Rawhide. "Ever live in a group house? No rules, no supper."

"It will work," said Buckaroo Banzai. He spoke with the calm of foreknowledge.

Rawhide ran a hand down his jaw and scratched at several days' growth of beard. "I'm not saying it won't, but it would take a lot of doin'. And I don't see how you're gonna pay for it."

Buckaroo grinned. "Remember our Wild West act? That'll produce a substantial cash flow right there." All three men laughed. "Seriously, we all like to do other things that would produce income. During residency, I've been fronting a group that plays the Lone Star Cafe--"

"You sing? Hunh," grinned Rawhide. "I've played piano for cash now and then." He squinted at a memory. "Played for other things, too... one time in Bobodjoullaso, played for millet gruel."

"Ever play for an autoclave?" said Buckaroo.

PART 2

Cody was gearing up for its annual Wild Horse Race, which attracted all kinds of strange people to town for the week. The arrival of three soft-spoken, well dressed Asians occasioned no comment; everyone simply assumed they were some variety of Japanese businessman, looking to hire a cowboy or two to give the folks back in Yokohama or Osaka or somewhere a little extra thrill. The yen had been climbing and the dollar falling steadily for the past year and a half, and Japanese tours had combed through Wyoming and the rest of the Old West in the summer of '72 until people barely noticed anymore. These men weren't carrying cameras, but otherwise they were completely unremarkable.

"We seek the Triangle T Ranch," one said.

"That's Old Joe's place, ain't it?" said a hand. "You want to go down U.S. 14 about twenty miles, 'n look for the yellow mailbox. Turn in there, go to the four-way crossroads, and take the right turning. You'll get there."

~~~

"I think we'll go on up to the winter shed and check supplies." Rawhide hoisted his saddle, settled it on the back of the tall, bony mare, and reached under her belly for the girth. The mare laid her ears back and peeled her lips back from her teeth.

"Watch it," said Buckaroo. Rawhide gave the mare a sharp poke in the short ribs and drew the cinch a notch tighter.

"This old lady is Bad Manners," he said. "She don't bite anymore. Used to, but now she just wants you to forget about the bellyband." He gave the mare an affectionate slap on the rump.

"Hot potato?" wondered Buckaroo.

"Nope." Rawhide smiled; he'd cured the mare's vice with a less conventional remedy. "She got me good 'n solid in the upper arm one time, 'n I turned around and punched her out."

Buckaroo took this as a serious piece of horsemanship, nodding sagely. "Hafta try that."

"Fractured m'hand." Rawhide grunted thoughtfully. "Haven't been that angry more'n twice in my life." He gave a short laugh. "Both times at a female."

"Did you deck the other one?" Buckaroo was pulling the reins over his own horse's head. It was curious how, no matter how softly he spoke, you could always hear his words clearly. His horse, an intelligent gelding called Beau, the ranch's best cutting horse, seemed also to turn to Rawhide for an answer.

"Nope." No elaboration. The two young men rode out of the barn into the glow of early morning, and reined their horses eastward toward the crooked ridge of hills that were still throwing long shadows across the plain.

Half an hour later, riding in shadow across ground steamy with rising dew, they were climbing into the foothills at a scrambling canter. They were playing a kind of keep-away with a small tumbleweed that had blown across their path, and Buckaroo Banzai was the clear winner despite Rawhide's home court and home-horse advantage.

"Ever play bozhkazi?" Rawhide was a bit winded.

Buckaroo smiled. "Sport of kings, my friend."

"Sport of crazed Afghans," Rawhide said. "I've always wanted to try it, never been down that way."

"When you go, I have a Pashtu friend," said Buckaroo. "Tell him that my blessing is upon your brow. His men play with live boars."

"Sounds like fun," Rawhide agreed.

"Or skulls," Buckaroo continued. "Be sure not to admire his wife." His eyes took on a merry gleam.

Rawhide declined to be terrified. "Cabin's right up there," he pointed. They were climbing a draw that narrowed to pass between the hills' rocky shoulders.

"Someone's been up here since snowmelt." Buckaroo gestured at the ground. "On foot. In Chinese shoes." His expression was shifting from puzzled to wary, and he began to turn in the saddle.

"Yeah?" Rawhide stood up in his stirrups to get a better view of the tracks, and leaned forward a few inches. "Where?"

The motion saved his life. The foot that was aimed at the base of his skull scraped along his back instead, and Rawhide, the big mare, and the attacker who had materialized almost out of thin air, all hit the ground an instant later. Rawhide instinctively rolled into a defensive crouch, but still hadn't really seen what hit him until he whirled to check Buckaroo.

Two men were bushwhacking Buckaroo: another unseen attacker and the man who had knocked Rawhide down. Buckaroo had also been lucky, shifting in his saddle, and was now on the ground, scrambling to get his back against rock. Even as Rawhide took his first step, Buckaroo disabled the man who stood between him and the rock face, using a controlled backward tilt to evade a blow and bring his left hand distractingly upwards. The attacker fell for the feint and got a faceful of tumbleweed for his reward; the plant screened Buckaroo's real move, a sidelong kick that gave Buckaroo a clear path to the rock wall.

Rawhide jumped the man who had kicked him from behind. They lost their footing in the loose gravel of the draw and slid downhill, rolling one over the other while pounding with fist and foot and knee, winding up underneath the old mare's belly, tangling with her legs as she tried to scramble free. Luck was with Rawhide again, for as he landed a good solid punch to the jaw, the mare lashed out and caught the man's upper back. The ambusher slumped to ground, his neck broken.

Less than a second after he managed to get his back to the rock wall, Buckaroo regretted it. From over his shoulder, the remaining adversary produced a long blade, a cane-cutting blade. A Malayan blade, Buckaroo thought fleetingly. It rang against the rock; Buckaroo sidled away. Gravel, weed, rock, body, where was there a weapon? The blade struck at him again; again he evaded it, leaping past the lunging attacker, trying to get higher in the draw. Below him, he saw the grey mare fidgeting as Rawhide and the second man rose almost to their knees underneath her. Dodging again, he missed seeing her kick. He threw a cloud of shale and dirt into the air, but his opponent was too far away. Got to get inside that blade, thought Buckaroo. Gravel, weed, rock, body. -- Tumbleweed. He was still clutching it.

The blade sliced toward him again, but now Buckaroo stepped almost into it, twisting at the last instant to spindle the tumbleweed on the stabbing machete.

The clutter distracted the swordsman for only the smallest moment, added only the tiniest extra drag to his follow-through, but that little was enough. Buckaroo Banzai dipped inward and under, aiming his heel exactly at the slightly slowed wrist, and broke it. A second later, he caught the blade in mid-air and, following his circle completely around, opened the man's belly with his own blade.

Still moving, he came within an inch of cutting Rawhide, who had scrambled up just in time to catch the falling swordsman. Buckaroo dropped the blade so that it passed under Rawhide's chin and was completely motionless a second later. Rawhide eased the wounded man down to the dirt; he was conscious, and it looked like he had a decent chance to make it.

The two men said nothing, just stood trying to catch their breath. Rawhide looked around: the mare was standing placidly down the draw, only a few feet from her victim, munching on a bush. The gelding was nowhere to be seen.

Buckaroo followed his eyes, and seemingly read his thoughts. "He bolted uphill," he said. "Prob'ly went up to the cabin," Rawhide said. He turned to face Buckaroo, and saw the wounded man behind Buckaroo weakly raising his left hand with something in it, something that glittered and caught the sun.

Without looking, Buckaroo Banzai whirled like a dervish, counterbalanced by the blade. As if guided by telepathy, the machete struck and severed the hand in which the wounded man had tried to raise a throwing knife.

Showing no emotion, Buckaroo Banzai stepped over to the man and said a word that seemed to be "John?" The dying man spit out a furious syllable. Blood pumped out of his wrist at the rhythm of his failing heartbeats.

Chilled to his soul, Rawhide watched. That guy didn't have enough strength left to throw the knife. The casual ferocity of what he'd just seen made his stomach heave. Cutting an arm off a man who was already bleeding on the ground -- that wasn't battle.

Banzai turned and saw the sickness in Rawhide's face. He straightened subtly and stood still while a few drops of blood fell one by one off the machete, looking Rawhide in the eyes with neither explanation nor apology. Rawhide stared back, and what he saw was as far outside the cowboy code he himself lived by as anything he'd ever encountered in any part of the world. At the core of Buckaroo Banzai was a pure barbarian spirit.

Rawhide swallowed. He turned and clucked to the mare. She ignored him. He looked back at Buckaroo Banzai, then, pointedly, at the Oriental features of their attackers.

"Damn, Buckaroo," he said at length. "You were expectin' ronin."

Banzai bowed his head momentarily. Nothing in his face marked the fierce joy that flashed through him.

Rawhide cleared his throat. "Reckon we oughta bury these varmints," he said in the tone he used for mentioning chores. "Or will someone be comin' for them?"

Buckaroo shook his head. "They failed -- dark disgrace," he said. "Their names will have been forgotten in Sabah by the night of this day."

"Sa-bah?" Rawhide gave it a Texas inflection.

"Malaya, where they're from."

Malaya? Who the hell would come all the way from Malaya to kill a 24 year old surgical resident? Rawhide looked at Buckaroo's face. It was full of trouble, conflict, even indecision. Everything in its own time, he decided. He clucked for the mare again; this time she generously walked up the draw.

He mounted and stretched a hand down to Buckaroo. "Let's ride up to the cabin and get some shovels," he said. "We want to get 'em dug under before the vultures get attentive. There's a box canyon nobody ever bothers with; we'll put 'em down there." I'm going to bury two Malayans on Uncle Joe's ranch without a word to anyone, he told himself. This is one hell of a friendship so far.

~~~

The sun was well up in the sky before the two young men rode out of the little canyon, following the thin line of a creek.

Rawhide grunted, reined in, and dismounted in a single motion, then wavered as his left leg hit the ground. He waded into the stream and motioned to Buckaroo to do the same.

Rawhide dipped his big hat in the water and dumped its contents over his head, closing his eyes with a smile of pure pleasure. He tipped his head back to aim rivulets down the nape of his neck and between his shoulder blades. "A-a-a-a-h."

Rawhide laid down flat in the shallow creek, and again waved at Buckaroo to do the same.

"I don't want my aunt to see any blood."

Buckaroo Banzai nodded, and gave careful attention to soaking out the stains in his clothes. Rawhide noticed him scraping at one tough spot with his nails.

"We could rub some dirt into it," he said. "My brothers and I used to fool her that way."

"Yeah." Buckaroo Banzai stood up, water pouring off him. "Anywhere else?"

Rawhide inspected him carefully. "Nope." He also stood up, and wobbled again.

"What's that?" Banzai gestured at Rawhide's left knee.

"Nothin'. A little crunched."

The physician nodded skeptically. "Walk."

Rawhide limped over to his horse and climbed on. Buckaroo Banzai walked back to the bay gelding, which they'd found waiting peacefully at the winter shed's hitching rail. "What it is, is a lot sprained," he remarked. "What about that?"

Rawhide shrugged. "The truth. Manners came down 'n caught m'leg. Wouldn't be the first time."

Buckaroo Banzai wore a philosopher's smile. "The truth always is the best lie, isn't it?"

"Mmm-hmm." Rawhide scratched the back of his neck and drew and released a deep breath. Buckaroo gave him a measured look. The two men rode at a flat walk, steaming dry, both sunk deep in thought and memory. Half an hour passed before Banzai spoke again.

"I told you my father was murdered."

"Mmm-hmm."

"He was murdered by an enemy -- an enemy to my entire family."

"So he's gunning for you," Rawhide pondered. "Who is he?"

"His name is Xan, Hanoi Xan."

Rawhide's eyebrows climbed. "And who is he when he's at home?"

Buckaroo drew a long breath. "He's the Napoleon of crime, Watson."

At that, Rawhide drew rein. "You're not kiddin'." It was a statement, not a question. He nudged the mare and she walked on. Eventually the two men booted their horses into a canter, riding back to the ranch in silence.

~~~

The hand that held the phone in the Ranchero Motel of Cody, Wyoming, was shaking uncontrollably.

"Mystery..." the voice cracked.

"Well?" A snarl. Even diluted with the crackle and hiss of intercontinental transmission, the voice menaced life and limb.

"Our plan miscarried...." the man's throat closed with terror, but he had said enough.

"Spawn of a pig! Excrement of a microbe! How do you dare to tell me that you failed this simple task?"

"Greatness, as you ordered, I watched in hiding. There was a horse..." started the speaker. His voice wavered.

"A horse?" Thousands of miles away, the voice was diverted momentarily from its tirade.

"It killed---"

"Bah!" roared the voice from Sabah. "Scum! Make no excuses! I will sew you into the belly of a living horse, roast you in a pit of your own digging and feed your worthless carcass to mice! ...

"But first," the voice cooed, suddenly so smooth and reasonable that it turned the hearer's bones to water, "first you will perform your errand. Remain where you are. See no one. Speak to no one. I will arrange."

"As you wish, Brilliance," quavered the man in Cody.

~~~

"Molly called the boys, oh, I disremember... Flopsy, Mopsy, Bugsy, Cottontail, and the Weasel..." Betsy was stretching a fond aunt's prerogative to its furthest limit. "Why can't I recall it-- which one were you?" She turned saucy eyes on her nephew.

"I was Rawhide," the cowboy said austerely. Everyone at the table knew perfectly well that this sudden fit of reminiscence was strictly for Buckaroo's benefit.

"Hmph," said his aunt, pretending to be affronted. "Taking advantage of my dotage, you are."

"Yes, ma'am," said her nephew.

"If your Mama were here, she'd send you to the barn for a week."

"Yes, ma'am," Rawhide said again. He smiled, imagining it. "She surely would." The smile stretched into a grin.

Rawhide's uncle leaned forward, waving a forkful of steak in Buckaroo's face. His tone was at odds with his wife's kindly teasing. "I'll tell you something, young man. Most everyone in this family is snake-mean, but this boy has his mother's nature." He ate his bite of steak and continued, "She was a real nice lady."

Rawhide's feet shifted under the table. "Yeah, she was," he said in a low voice.

"His older brother, on the other hand, ain't worth the bullet it would take to shoot him." Rawhide compressed his lips.

"And Michael--" Uncle Joe paused as Rawhide fixed a look on him from under his brows. "Mike's gone," Rawhide said. If he hadn't been talking to his uncle, the tone would have been a threat.

"Just as well," said his uncle in an equally hard voice. There was a silence.

"Old Buggsy," Rawhide said, taking a big swallow of beer.

"Born to be hanged," Old Joe said, also swallowing beer.

That was one past the limit. Rawhide's chair scraped harshly against the floor and the big young man was out of the room with the screen door slamming shut behind him before either Old Joe or Buckaroo could react.

"Now, Joe, you shouldn't set him off like that," fretted Betsy. "You know perfectly well--" The sound of a match being scraped and igniting came into the house. Not finishing her sentence, she rose to follow her nephew onto the porch.

"Sentimental," judged Old Joe. "From a bad brood and too stubborn to admit it."

"You can hardly fault a man for sticking by his family," Buckaroo murmured.

"Yeah I can," snapped Old Joe. "He's the only worthwhile thing this blood's kicked up for two generations, and I'm damned if I'm just going to watch him go to waste. If Molly had lived, maybe he would have been freed up of all those pest brothers, but he's been carryin' them one way or another -- if he ain't actually bailing one of them out of some fix, he's lettin' 'em eat away at his belly."

Old Joe scraped his fork along his plate. "If they were his own sons, I think he'd kick their ass for them, but they're Molly's sons...."

Buckaroo was silent but completely attentive.

"The young son of a bitch has four or five M.A.'s and Ph.D's and I don't know what the fuck all by now. I can't name you a corner of the earth he hasn't been to, and I also can't name you a single damn thing that either he or the world at large has to show for it."

Old Joe shook his head slowly, his anger fading. "The other damn thing is, I've hardly ever seen him happy." Buckaroo noticed the man was looking at him hard.

~~~

The Splendor of the Asias was feeling cranky.

The fledgling son of his old enemy was proving absurdly resistant to being murdered. Why had the child not perished in the original explosion? Why had the student not frozen in the Antarctic storm? It had been quite arduous to tamper with polar weather in that fashion, and for what? It was becoming vexatious.

He raised a jeweled hand. "Send me Lo Pep," he opined in a dulcet tone. Lackeys scurried to do his bidding.

Lo Pep grovelled in, shivering slightly as his master's eye fell upon him.

"Greatness, you summoned me?"

"Lo Pep, you will perform certain tasks. You will instruct that surviving insect in Wyoming to be an ear and an eye, for surely he cannot be a brain or a hand. You will also replenish our supply of warriors for the Wyoming state. You will arrange for them housing and transportation, which shall be available in that place continuously from this moment forward, as well as a liberal supply of indigenous currency. You will amass them at a convenient location -- Hokkaido would suffice -- and you will instruct them in such refinements of American combat as not being killed by old mares. They will then await further direction. As also, little minion, will you. Go, and do."

"Yes, Sublimity," said Lo Pep, backing away from the old man who called himself the Pivot of Mystery.

~~~

Buckaroo and Rawhide invented a reason to sleep in the bunkhouse that night, both wanting to be free to guard the homestead. Rawhide had produced rifles for both of them, to which Buckaroo added his father's Navy Colts and Rawhide a .38 in a studded leather holster.

They climbed the barn roof and stretched themselves out facing opposite directions along its spine. The moon was near full, and from the high point they could see the ground for at least a mile in every direction.

"Buckaroo, one thing." Cautiously.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't they just shoot us? Is it against their code?"

Banzai uttered a caustic laugh. "Nothing is against that rabble's code; no atrocity is beneath them. Perhaps murder was not their goal today." His face was a bitter mask. "It would be uncommon, but not unheard of."

Rawhide scowled. "What else?"

Another ferocious laugh. "Xan practices black arts."

Rawhide swallowed hard. Black magic? Buckaroo's a scientist-- can he really mean black magic? What the devil have I mixed myself up in? He cleared his throat. "How, uh... how far back does this thing go?"

"Xan's ancestors and mine were blooded in the same wars in the mountains of Mongolia." Rawhide grimaced. First Malaya, now Mongolia? "And his many treacheries descend directly from practices his family and his clan adopted long before this civilization was even thought of."

"Yeah, that's a while," Rawhide muttered inaudibly. He propped his chin on his forearms and stared west toward the foothills of the Absaroka Range.

When his great-grandfather had come to this land, the menace was called Shoshone, and it came from the west and the north, from the mountains. Now that land belonged to Yellowstone National Park, the Shoshone were no more than a colorful tourist attraction, and he was watching over his uncle's house for a menace from so far West it was East. If it ain't one thing, it's another.

"I'll leave in the morning," Banzai said softly, as if reading his mind.

"The hell you will," said Rawhide.

"When Xan has acted once, he is likely to act again," said Banzai. "Also, I must look to Hikita-san's safety."

There was a scritch and a tiny flare as Rawhide struck a match. Weeks ago, the doctor's eyes had said Cancer and the cowboy's eyes had said Forget it. Banzai twisted around. This particular cigarette looked like it might be the occasion for some serious thinking. He turned back, looking east over the plains.

Rawhide, though he said nothing, was remembering the single most disagreeable week of his life. They were dead, they were all dead, Mohammed, his brothers, his whole family ...

Rawhide smoked the cigarette down to a stump, and lit another one from it. The murderers had ridden him out, as nice as you please, all the way to the railway station at Araouane. Mohammed had died in honor, fighting -- but if his guest broke guest-law, it would disgrace his memory. So Rawhide couldn't lift a hand to avenge Mohammed, couldn't even say a harsh word... It was a trail of thoughts he had travelled many, many times over the past two years. I just sat there on that camel like a seasick sack of beans and tried to contemplate the eternal verities... There was no other choice...

"Look, Buckaroo," Rawhide's voice came out slowly, almost reluctantly.

Banzai said nothing. Rawhide lit another cigarette and picked up his narrative.

"Had a friend. He's -- was -- Tuareg. He was also a quantum mechanic, abstract mathematician, 'n a wall-eyed lunatic rider. Met him at the Rad Lab, 'n he took me home to ride with his clan." Rawhide rubbed his forehead. "Kel A^ir, they were, Clan of the A^ir Mountains."

"The veiled riders," Buckaroo murmured. "The terror of the salt caravans." The Tuaregs' name for themselves was Kel Tagilmus, People of the Veil.

"It's hot under that veil, 'n your skin stains blue-- even your teeth," Rawhide remembered. "Anyway, what happened... He died in a blood feud."

And you were there. The thought came out of the night and struck Banzai with absolute certainty.

"So I wouldn't mind getting a few licks in on this Xan."

Buckaroo Banzai was experiencing a rare moment of indecision. Just when his life seemed most placid, its underlying turbulence would break through.

Hikita-san had schooled him since childhood not to leave his back unguarded, to trust nothing and no one. Growing into manhood, Banzai had learned for himself the poverty of such a life, and had chosen instead to gamble on the good, chosen to mix into the world with all its splendors and dangers.

Even so, he'd never abandoned his mentor's teachings so far as to share his risk, or trust his life to any protection but his own. Hikita-san and his father's guns had been his only allies. Indeed, Hikita-san had taught him to be aware at every moment that he might have to kill the man next to him, drilling the lesson in until some corner of Buckaroo's mind was always calculating, almost unconsciously, the best methods by which to accomplish this.

Buckaroo looked over his shoulder. For example, Rawhide, at this instant... a head shot, unless silence was required, in which case, a broken spine. And that had been his life. Until now. A line from the poet Yeats drifted through his mind: Let my glory be that I had such friends as these. He blinked, and passed across the cusp of a decision.

"Okey-doke."

Rawhide yawned. Good. "Shoulda brought some coffee."

Buckaroo shook his head. "Last time I drank your coffee, I almost went skinny dipping off the Enderby Ice Shelf. Pass."

"That you did," Rawhide chuckled. The moonlight seemed a little kinder compared with the whiteout of that storm. "That you did."

In the beautiful Wyoming night, Buckaroo Banzai strained his eyes, looking through the dark lines of trees and fences toward the dark triangles and curves of mountains beyond. What awaited him? Inwardly, he imagined he could hear Hikita's voice: 'No, Buckaroo, what is there now?' The only reason for time is so everything doesn't happen all at once. The thought made him smile, there in the blackness atop the barn.

PART 3

"Lo Pep, attend. I have cogitated, I have mulled."

"Yes, Mystery?"

"Tonight you will dispatch the group from Hokkaido. In addition, you will procure one airplane of the 747 variety capable of departing from Sabah, and a second airplane of the Lear variety to depart from a private hangar in the Western United States of America. You will have each of these aircraft furnished and decorated in a manner suitable for conveying me. You will recall, merely to draw an item to the forefront of that feeble organ, your mind, that my favorite tea is Lapsang Souchong. You will, of course, accomplish these things by tomorrow."

"Yes, Greatness," said Lo Pep, beginning to inch his way backward from the presence.

"Lo Pep," said the dry voice. "I have an afterthought."

Lo Pep hoped that he would not be required to commit suicide after completing his tasks. "Certain smaller of the customary amenities, such as the koi pond, I permit you to omit in the interest of expedience."

"Thank you, Greatness," Lo Pep breathed devoutly, scuttling out.

~~~

Another routine morning pawing people's luggage at SeaTac, thought the Customs clerk. She was more concerned about not snagging one of her beautifully manicured nails than with catching any loose fruit or contraband pints of sake that might come in with the five men whose suitcases she was examining now. Japanese businessmen were basically the best-behaved people on earth, she thought, and this gang of grey suits was no different.

"Destination?" she yawned. She noticed their passports said Malaya, not Japan, but wasn't really interested. There wasn't so much as a badly ironed shirt in all five bags put together.

"Cody, Wyoming," said one man. The others nodded.

Ten feet away, another Customs inspector straightened and twisted to look over his left shoulder. Five Asians he couldn't assign to a particular country, wearing Homburgs and determined expressions. Just like last month.

He watched as they left the Customs area, then ambled over to his colleague. "Ginny, you notice anything about those guys, their ears maybe. . .?"

"Gee, Jack, now that you mention it. . a couple of them had kinda chewed-up looking ears, like boxers, maybe. Why, you know them or something?"

"Or something." Jack Spicer, Customs inspector and former SEAL, was pretty sure he was going to come down with the flu in the next hour or so.

~~~

That first night, Buckaroo Banzai and Rawhide had climbed off the barn roof shortly after dawn, stiff, sleepy, and suspicious. They had decided to sleep in shifts.

They took a week to go "camping," and scoured the ground for signs of Chinese shoes. Near the ambush area, they made the interesting discovery that there had been a third man, who had left the scene alive.

But the weeks had passed in complete quiet. The net result of their activity was that Aunt Betsy claimed to be getting a case of the willies from just watching them. They'd begun to relax, quit sleeping in shifts, quit riding the perimeter every two days. Hikita had forbidden Buckaroo to leave the ranch early, claiming he was more than safe in his lab.

They resumed their Sunday morning routine of going into town to take Aunt Betsy to church and Buckaroo to get the Sunday New York Times from the hotel, which was having them flown in for their upscale clientele. Rawhide used to go to church with Aunt Betsy and leave Buckaroo to read his paper at the hotel, but had altered his habits in the wake of the attack, preferring to stick close to Buckaroo even though his outraged aunt took to calling him a heathen. Most recently, he'd compromised, dropping Buckaroo off to get his paper while he went to gas up the truck and buy groceries.

Old Joe kept his own counsel, but Rawhide found him cleaning his gun collection one day. "Just felt like it," the old man said.

~~~

Armed with three days of sick leave about which he was only slightly guilty, Jack Spicer flew into Cody's small airport, rented a pickup, and began to ask questions.

One of the swell things about Federal identification, he told himself a few hours later, is how everyone just assumes you have all kinds of jurisdiction.

Playing detective in a small Western city was the most fun he'd had since 'Nam -- now there's a sick thought, Spicer told himself. But it was true that he'd lived an entertaining life as a SEAL, especially since his particular specialty had been O.D., or making things go boom. They used to say he could mix a bomb out of toothpaste and monkey piss, and he thought maybe he could. The first and most fascinating thing he heard was that tomorrow a nameless someone was bringing in a private jet from Kuala Lumpur via Hong Kong and L.A. Sure that's a coincidence, he thought, sure it is.

In less than four hours, he tracked his mysterious Asians to a second-story room at Cody's historic hotel, a Western period piece of a building where a young black man in denim jeans and jacket fit in with the decor much better than they did. Spicer took a room down the hall from the Asians, and watched and listened.

Late that night, he heard a short flurry of comings and goings, and got to the front window in time to see a bent figure get out of a curtained limousine and walk slowly into the hotel. Spicer heard him come up the stairs and pass through the door of their room. Three of the five men he'd followed from Seattle climbed out of an old blue panel truck right behind the limo, flanked the old man in his arrival, and followed him through the heavy oak door into their room.

~~~

Behind that door, the air was rich with incense. Instructions were being given in a voice so quiet it barely reached the ears of the team leader, although that worthy, cowering at the feet of his master, was straining to his utmost to attend.

"You will not kill him," said the gentle voice.

"No, Mystery. I will die first!"

"Assuredly you will," agreed the soulless voice from Sabah.

~~~

Sunday morning on the Wyoming plains. Quiet everywhere; the sky a dark pink that had warmed to yellow dawn and a bright fresh morning that promised afternoon heat.

"Gee, I'm real sorry, sir," the hotel's desk clerk, a teenage girl in an authentic Old West gown, was telling Buckaroo. "We have an out of town business group, and they took them all." She paused, enjoying Buckaroo's exotic good looks. "Tell you what, why don't I give them a ring and see if they might let you have one, 'cause they really did get a lot."

Moments later, the girl was carolling, "Oh, that's so nice of yo-o-u," into the house phone. Hanging up, she told Buckaroo, "I just have to run right up to the second floor, and I'll be right back with your paper."

~~~

After a sleepless night of vigilance that produced absolutely nothing, Spicer allowed himself a half hour for breakfast in the hotel's restaurant, sitting by a window where he could see both the front door and the parking area. He was annoyed to see the limo was gone, since he hadn't heard its engine in the night, but he didn't think his quarry had slipped away. The blue panel truck was still in place, and he'd heard signs of habitation in the Asians' room as he come down.

Digging into a luxurious helping of eggs Benedict, Spicer noticed the hotel's pretty young receptionist going upstairs, followed a few minutes later by the customer at the front desk, who moved with some haste. Minutes after that, out of the corner of one eye, he saw the panel truck begin to pull out onto the road, without ever having seen one of the Asian guys come out of the hotel. Spicer dropped his fork and napkin, and raced upstairs.

~~~

At Meyer's Very General Store, Rawhide picked up a week's worth food and supplies for the ranch, including a healthy supply of Old Joe's favorite scotch, and started counting out money.

"How's things, boy?" His uncle's lifelong friend, ranch foreman at the Simpson place, came in and clapped a hand on his back.

"Pretty good," Rawhide allowed. "How y'all doin'?"

"Can't complain. Say, those Japanese fellers ever find their way out there?"

"Japanese fellers?"

"Yeah, four-five guys with briefcases. Thought maybe they was tryin' to buy out Old Joe."

"Nope, never saw 'em," said Rawhide. His mind was racing. "When'd you see them?"

"Aw, lemme think, uh, couple days ago."

That ruled out the threesome he and Buckaroo had already encountered. "Nope, never saw 'em," he repeated.

"Well, they'll get there. You tell your aunt I said hello."

"Yessir, I will," Rawhide said automatically. Buckaroo had been headed for -- the hotel, right?

~~~

Rawhide ran into the hotel, saw no one at the front desk, and raced up the stairs. Seeing a room left open on the second floor, he charged through the door, only to find himself facing a man who was his age, his build, and his size. He had a split second in which to think This is going to be an interesting fight before the other man moved.

Rawhide was wrong. It was no fight at all. Only a moment passed before Rawhide was flat on his back on the floor, completely immobilized, with the other man's hand poised to deliver a killing blow to his throat.

"Where's Buckaroo?" Rawhide growled, too angry to feel fear. The room behind the stranger held no one but an unconscious teenage girl in a frontier dress.

The other man followed Rawhide's gaze. "She's OK, just a little out of it. They didn't hurt her." He frowned, working out which side Rawhide must be on. "You don't look Malaysian," he finally allowed.

"You either," Rawhide said. He hadn't made his mind up as quickly as the other man, and was still perfectly willing to beat the bejesus out of him. Assuming, of course, that the other man ever let him up off the floor. "Where's Buckaroo?"

The stranger let him up. "The target? They had him here, but they got out. It's just been a minute, and I got an idea where they might go."

"Then let's go, huh? My truck's right here," Rawhide said, already heading back down the stairs. The other man fell in behind him, and Rawhide tossed a question over his shoulder. "Who in Hades are you, anyway?"

"Jack Spicer. I'm Federal," said Spicer, hoping it would be enough. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Rawhide. Buckaroo's my guest. If you're Federal," Rawhide said, shooting a glance over his shoulder, "you probably ought to know that."

"I came from the Malaya end of this deal," Spicer said. "Followed these guys to Wyoming." Now seemed like an opportune moment to remind himself that the penalty for pretending to be a Federal cop was ten years in Federal stir.

"Where to?" said Rawhide.

"Airport," said Spicer. Hustling to keep up with the big cowboy-looking stranger, he ran to the pickup and climbed in.

~~~

Buckaroo Banzai was upside down, contemplating his fate. How rich this life was in surprises, he thought, taking him in the course of a single morning from blueberry pancakes in a ranch kitchen to a bruising trip in the dark, trussed like a plucked chicken and hung on a meathook in the back of a truck. That the swarm of men who'd overpowered him came from Hanoi Xan he had no doubt, despite the apparent spontaneity of the hotel clerk's scream and his race to her assistance. Since he was not already dead, it appeared that it was his immediate fate to meet not his Maker, but the villain who had unmade his parents. He learned that Xan was near, thrillingly near, since his captors spoke freely of their master's presence aboard his private jet, stupidly assuming Banzai spoke no Chinese. It crossed his mind that Hikita-san had mentioned rumors of Xan's experimentation with Haitian zombie techniques; perhaps the evildoers' plan that morning was to attempt to enthrall him. Yet Buckaroo Banzai simply did not feel concerned. Every cell of his being was certain that he would be given at least one opportunity to rid the universe of the infestation named Hanoi Xan before it was his turn to leave this life. And he did not intend to waste that opportunity.

~~~

"So what do you know that I don't know?" said Rawhide. The cowboy was driving the pickup as fast as it would go over open range. He swerved to avoid a prairie dog hole, and the truck bounced.

"Two sets of bad hats from Malaysia want to see Cody, Wyoming, and then some old guy flies in from Kuala to Hong Kong to L.A. to here on a private jet with diplomatic clearance last night. Inquiring minds want to know, you know?" The jouncing, jolting ride was worse than being in a Zodiac on a choppy sea, and it had been several years since Spicer was last in a Zodiac.

"What old guy?" growled Rawhide.

"Howard fucking Hughes, maybe," he snarled back. Spicer was regretting not only his breakfast but also the dinner before it, and his mood was not sweet. "You have a plan or are we joyridin'?"

Rawhide's foot eased off the accelerator for a split second, and he shot a glance at his passenger. "We're gonna head 'em off at the pass."

Spicer had to laugh. "OK," he said. "Sure." The pickup went airborne over a little gully and slammed back to the ground.

His stomach suddenly settled itself. Battle-happiness rose in him. So, OK, this big cowboy didn't know how to kill yet, but he was driving like a madman. Yeah, with just a little more training this dude would smoke good like a psycho Frog should.

"That's it," said Spicer. The pickup was following the rim of a mesa, angling toward Route 120 below, and plainly visible on the road was the blue panel truck.

Rawhide nodded. "We'll come out from behind that butte," he pointed, "and block the road." He swung away from the mesa top, down the slope of a dry watercourse, pounding over rocks and brush that punctuated the wash. They swung around behind the promontory Rawhide had pointed out, angled out toward the road -- and suddenly the entire horizon was metallic blue -- and --

"Damn!" said Rawhide as they rammed the panel truck.

The impact carried the panel truck clear off the road, with the pickup pushing it along at a neat perpendicular angle. A few seconds later, both trucks came to a stop, the panel truck jammed up against a boulder and teetering on two wheels.

For Spicer, training took over. "I got the front," he said, and was out of the truck with a drawn knife in seconds. Rawhide took the cue and ran to the back of the panel truck, where the doors were swinging open and two men, slightly dazed, were emerging. Rawhide took one of them at a jump, ramming him against the boulder and scoring a quick knockout. The other man jumped him just as quickly, landing a hard hit to the kidneys which took a lot of the fun out of the occasion for Rawhide. He ducked the next blow and grappled the man, using his advantage of height and weight to swing his opponent onto the rock, only to find the other man taking advantage of being lifted by slamming his foot into Rawhide's knee. Rawhide dropped his hold and brought up his fists.

Spicer came around from the front to find Rawhide breaking an antagonist's shoulder and trading a few broken ribs for the advantage. He left them fighting, and jumped into the back of the panel truck. Inside were a bound man hanging upside down and unconscious, and a guard with a naked machete. In the close confines of the truck, the machete could only be threatening for one stroke, and the man muffed it, with a little help from the SEAL. A second later it was hand-to-hand, with both men reaching for and finding chokeholds on each other's throats and blocks on each other's knives, dancing around on the wobbling floor of the truck and groping for an advantage.

Buckaroo Banzai, stunned in the collision, regained consciousness at this moment and assessed his situation. He was still alive. The truck had stopped. A stranger and one of Xan's bravos were locked in a death grip in front of him. Banzai had never had trouble choosing sides and now, still trussed and hooked, he arced his body over to the combatants and clamped his teeth into the bravo's neck as close to the carotid artery as he could get. Then he slumped, pulling backwards.

Spicer instantly took advantage of the new momentum; a second later it was over, the bravo slumping to the floor with a pierced heart while the captive was still spitting out bits of his neck.

"Excellent move, my man," said Spicer to the trussed stranger. A couple swift strokes of the knife loosed his bonds, and the man fell to the floor of the truck almost like a cat, landing four-footed. He dusted himself off a little as he stood up on the crooked floor of the truck and stuck out his hand.

"Buckaroo Banzai, glad to meet you."

"Jack Spicer," answered Spicer, but Banzai was already moving past him out of the truck. "C'mon, we've got to hurry."

Outside, Banzai found Rawhide, who was wheezing but victorious. "It's him," Banzai said urgently. "He's here."

"The old man?" said Spicer. "You know him?"

Banzai whirled. "It is my destiny to kill him," he said. "Let's go."

The pickup's engine was smashed; the panel truck's engine coughed for them but refused to turn over. Hastily, the three men raised the hood and started looking for reasons.

"Try it again," Spicer yelled to Banzai in the cab.

But a different sound caught their attention. The old dispatcher's radio in the truck's dashboard crackled to life in a wash of static, and a whispery voice hissed out at them from its speaker.

"Goodbye for now, young Buckaroo Banzai," said the voice. "I shall have you under my hand another day."

Buckaroo picked up the dispatch mike, and keyed it. "That day will be your last, Xan."

"Until then, know that my curse shadows all your journeys," came the reply.

"Dude talks like a movie," Spicer muttered to Rawhide.

Less than a minute later, a LearJet screamed overhead, low enough to deafen them and shake the trucks with the force of its passage. The airplane bore no markings and flew with no lights.

Each man stood frozen in his thoughts until even the echo of the jet had faded from the hills. Then Buckaroo Banzai began to move around, casually taking command.

"Whaddya got?" he said to Rawhide.

Rawhide understood. "Some ribs and the same knee, nothing more. How 'bout you?"

"What you see is what I got," Banzai smiled. He was all but insouciant, despite having been so near death minutes before.

Baffled, Rawhide shook his head again. "This is Spicer. He's some kind of Fed."

"Call me Jack--" Spicer started again.

"What kind of Fed?" asked Banzai.

Spicer tensed, but went with the truth. "A Customs inspector."

Buckaroo Banzai was bemused. "You've had some interesting training for a suitcase shuffler," he remarked.

"Before that, I was with the Teams." Seeing incomprehension, he amplified, "Navy SEALs." Banzai was nodding with apparent pleasure. "So, how 'bout you, where'd you get your moves?" Spicer asked Banzai.

"Oh, Mom and Dad, mostly," said Banzai.

PART 4

The three men made camp more or less at random, simply stopping at the first water they found, a little creek. They scrounged enough wood and brush to get a fire going, and Rawhide reached into his knapsack to pull out a bottle from the case of Jim Beam he'd picked up in town. The whiskey was all they'd bothered to pack before they started walking home.

They started drinking somewhat before sundown, and continued steadily as the moon rose and stars came out. Nobody spoke for hours, as if getting drunk on this night was much too serious a business to clutter with conversation.

Moonset, and the ceremonious opening of the fourth fifth, finally loosened their tongues. Questions and answers flowed freely, while the soothing warmth of the alcohol numbed their bruised bodies into a semblance of comfort.

"Lemme see if I got this straight," said Spicer, somewhere around midnight. "This dude's biggest ambition in the world is to wax your ass, and you wanna start some international scientific shindig so he can just look up your address in the phone book."

"I think I would have to say that Hanoi Xan's biggest ambition is to rule the world," Buckaroo said professorially, "and the Institute's telephone listing would be a secondary effect rather than a principal goal, but otherwise your summation is correct in its essentials."

"And this research deal is just gonna be a do-whatever kind of thing."

"Correct."

A side issue distracted Spicer. "What about making plastique out of toothpaste and... nah." He reached for the bottle.

"Nah?" said Rawhide, passing it.

"Nah," said Spicer, and swallowed. "Well ... maybe. You know, an awful lot of things in this world will go boom."

"Plastique?" filled in Buckaroo, taking a swig.

"Check," said Spicer. "Why not? I sure could groove on seeing that old guy go boom."

Rawhide thought about it. "I'd rather shoot him."

"I'd rather disembowel him with my grandfather's sword," Buckaroo Banzai said levelly.

There was a pause. "Well, yeah, that'd do him," Spicer finally agreed. "But I guess I jus' like to hear them booms."

"Armaments?" said Rawhide. This vision of the Institute was new to him. He decided to drink on it.

"You've seen the consequences of defenselessness," said Banzai.

Rawhide had to allow that he had, but it still stuck in his craw. "Only kind of bomb might interest me is one that'll kill the buildings 'n leave the people standing." He passed the bottle to Spicer.

Spicer was looking at Banzai fairly seriously. "We used to talk a lot about limited-range, shaped, target specific, and especially quiet . . . . that was our wish list. Quiet booms."

"Right up our alley."

"But this Hanoi cat's gonna be out there the whole time takin' pot shots at you?"

"If bees be."

Spicer took a long pull on the bottle. "Sweet Jesus, man, that ain't no way to be living. Why don't you just dig a hole somewheres and pull the daylight in after you?"

"Because I don't want to," said Buckaroo.

It took the others a minute or so to realize that these simple words were, in fact, a complete and serious answer. Silence wrapped the group.

Finally Spicer spoke. "Well, I guess I know a Team when I see one. But my Mama sure didn't raise me to die in New Jersey."

Banzai smiled. "Glad to hear it, Sluggo."

"What?"

"No." Buckaroo waved the bottle back and forth slowly. "Who."

"Who?"

"You."

"Sluggo was bald," Spicer pointed out. It was simply the first objection that came to mind.

"He was white and bald," he added a minute later. A trifle ponderously, Rawhide nodded agreement.

"Ends in a vowel," Buckaroo said persuasively.

Spicer looked at Banzai long and hard, then shook his head. "You're a crazy man, so I'm gonna humor you," he said. Then, "pass the whiskey."

Buckaroo sent it the long way, by Rawhide. As he let go the whiskey, Rawhide gave Spicer a considering glance. "Sluggo," he nodded, straightfaced. Spicer nodded back at him, and then at Banzai. "Sluggo?" he queried, solemn as a gravedigger.

He lifted the bottle to the night sky. "Yo, Sluggo-o-o-o," he yelled. He brought his gaze back down to earth and nodded at his two cohorts. "How I spent my summer vacation," he said in salute, and drained the bottle.

~~~

Sheriff's deputies found them at first light; Aunt Betsy had raised an alarm upon coming out of church and finding neither her nephew nor her nephew's friend nor her husband's truck.

Of the panel truck and the five defeated bravos, there was no trace, though skid marks and the teenage hotel clerk's story made clear that events had befallen as they described. Banzai seemed unsurprised, and Rawhide was learning to be; Sluggo took his cue from them and was mainly grateful that he wasn't being arrested for impersonating a Federal officer.

When the sheriff's office was done with them, Rawhide went with Old Joe to tow the pickup home. Buckaroo was taken to the hospital to be checked for a concussion and would catch a lift from the deputies if the doctors okayed him to leave. Sluggo, who was unscratched but somewhat hungover, went back to his hotel room to call his boss and attempt to explain that he and his flu germs were moving to New Jersey.

Sluggo shook Rawhide's hand as they parted, jiggling the cowboy's freshly taped ribs. "I'll see you back at the ranch," he told Rawhide. "Damn, I've always wanted to say that."

~~~

Away from Banzai, and with the artificial cheer of the whiskey wearing off, Rawhide brooded: I left him alone. The sight of Banzai in the morning light, with a face beaten pulpy and wrists almost skinless from the scraping of the rope that had bound him, had jolted him to a deeper awareness of the danger his friend lived with. And that's just what shows, he thought. In less than a month, I got lax. He shook his head slightly. If it hadn't been for the intervention of Sluggo and his special talents, Buckaroo would be dead or on his way to Asia... I make a speech about licks and then I let him walk right into their hands. Shoot the piano player, he thought, disgusted with himself.

He was in the kitchen pensively swallowing a Bud when he heard the crunch of a car arriving on the gravel drive outside. It could only be Buckaroo returning, and when no one came into the kitchen, Rawhide poured down the last of his beer and walked out to the bunkhouse.

He found Buckaroo Banzai loading his rucksack and rolling up the mattress on his bed. Muscles tightened in Rawhide's jaw as he clenched his teeth over the words of dissuasion he wanted to speak. I shoulda been there. Period. He leaned in the frame of the bunkhouse door, watching the caution of Banzai's movements, dictated by his battered, stiff and sore body. Rawhide shook his head. He's got every right to go. He studied the grain in the floor's planking, but didn't leave.

Buckaroo turned around and looked at him; Rawhide looked up and met this scrutiny candidly, all his regret and sense of responsibility plain in his face. Buckaroo Banzai reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, and dropped a ticket folder onto his bed.

"What's that?" Rawhide asked.

"Ticket to Hikita-san's lab in New Brunswick" said Buckaroo.

Rawhide clenched his teeth again, and looked down, shaking his head. I shoulda been there.

Something slapped at his arm. Buckaroo was holding something out to him, also a folder. Rawhide took it. "What's this?"

"Same thing."

Rawhide took the envelope, but shook his head. "Don't know if I should do this." It was an appealing image, building something out of nothing, a research facility that wouldn't be tangled up in red tape and blue pencils. A place that would have stock and music and good company and high standards. A place whose focus on results wouldn't secretly really be about getting tenure or attracting money from the NIH or the Departments of Agriculture or Defense or Commerce. Just do the work. That, and worry about keeping Buckaroo alive. "Not sure I can."

Buckaroo frowned, genuinely puzzled. Rawhide explained. "You could be dead. I didn't have much to do with it that you aren't. He's good; y'all won't need me."

The frown cleared. "Of course I will. You're Rawhide."

Rawhide shook his head. All that responsibility; all that future. "Not sure I can."

~~~

Buckaroo Banzai strolled into the ranch kitchen, where Old Joe handed him a beer without asking. Aunt Betsy had floured up the drainboard and was rolling pie crust, with a sack of California peaches standing by. Joe and Buckaroo popped their beers, and went out on the porch to drink them in the late afternoon sun. Aunt Betsy came out, and the three of them leaned on the porch railing and watched the slant light turn the plains gold.

Buckaroo turned to Rawhide's aunt. "Betsy tell me true, wouldn't you leap at a chance to leave all this behind and come live in an industrial park in New Jersey?"

She gave him a roguish smile. "Well, sugar, if it were you that was askin', I just might. I just might at that." But she threw a wink to her husband.

Old Joe glanced up at Buckaroo with no visible concern that the man was about to elope with his wife. From Buckaroo's face, still swollen from its battering, Joe's eyes travelled over to the ranch's small bunkhouse.

~~~

The bunkhouse door darkened. Rawhide, mending a snagged saddle blanket, looked up expecting Buckaroo and found Old Joe bearing down on him, carrying the ancient silver-mounted Henry rifle that reputedly had won this land for the family.

"I want to talk to you, boy," said his uncle. "Hard talk. And I mean to make you listen."

"Shoot me?" Rawhide gestured at the Henry.

His uncle ignored this. "What you got, son, is a lotta degrees and nothin' to do," he said firmly. Rawhide grew restless and stood up.

"Your foot, if I have to," said his uncle.

"Take m'whole leg," Rawhide said, half incredulous. A point blank hit from a Henry would knock down a buffalo, which was what they were intended for.

"It ain't loaded," said Old Joe, disgusted. "Don't turn stupid on me. Point is, I want your attention."

Rawhide sat down, and set his jaw. "Shoot," he said humorously. But he fixed his eyes to the floor, shy of what was coming.

"You're getting to the age where a man should do something with his life. You've been in school, so you know about bugs and Arabs and the criminal mind." Sic transit ent., anth., and psych., thought Rawhide. "You left out biochem," he said.

"Bug juices," grinned Old Joe. "And baseball. Damn near broke my heart when you quit playin'." He paused. "And piano playin'. And stock. Fact is, you're good at a lot of things and it don't matter a damn 'cause you got no purpose."

Rawhide's temper flared. "And you're gonna give me one?" he growled.

Old Joe was unimpressed. "Don't bare your teeth at me, boy. You turned down what I offered years ago, and you were right to. You could run this place in your sleep but some part of you would always be wanting to be elsewhere.

"Now look at yourself now, sittin' out here in the shadows and thinkin' you're not good enough to watch a friend's back, well, that's just pitiful, ain't it?"

Rawhide moved to rise again. His uncle slammed the butt of the rifle onto his foot, and he sat down hard.

Old Joe continued, "Get good enough, it don't take me to tell you that. But now here's what that part is: this Buckaroo Banzai has big big ideas -- ideas that are too big for him, and he has sense enough to suspect it. But two of you might could do some of those things."

"His things," said Rawhide.

His uncle shrugged. "You got plans of your own, walk away anytime. Put yourself together a band and hit the road. But just now you don't got those plans, besides which you like this Banzai."

Rawhide's eyes flashed up from the floor to stare at his uncle. Old Joe met the challenge impassively.

"You like him a lot," Old Joe said. "Otherwise you wouldn't have helped him plant those two reprobates in Hat Creek Canyon without a word to me."

Rawhide's head dropped and the breath whistled out between his teeth. For a long silent minute he shook his head back and forth disbelievingly. "You got a lotta moves for an old-timer," he said finally. His voice was low and shamed.

"My goddamn land, boy," said Uncle Joe. "You think I don't know what happens on it?"

Rawhide snorted, and sighed. "Guess you do." He sighed again, and raised his head to look his uncle in the eye. "I'm sorry." He pulled a thin smile. "Guess the damn coyotes tell you everything."

"Them and the buzzards." Old Joe moved forward and caught Rawhide's head in the crook of his arm, drawing the young man's face to his chest for an instant. Rawhide accepted the embrace, even leaning into it as the old man ran thick fingers across his nephew's mat of coppery hair. Uncle Joe smacked Rawhide on the top of the head for emphasis as he pulled away. "Go found yourself an Institute, y'hear?"

Rawhide watched in silence as his uncle stumped through the bunkhouse door. The silver of the Henry rifle blazed suddenly with reflected sunshine as the old man moved out into the daylight.

~~~

... Peggy Simpson, our ineffable chanteuse. Thus it was that Peggy's casual likening of the Institute's research facilities to "a topflight neurosurgical clinic with a house band" formed the earliest blueprint for the formation of the apprentice, intern, and residency programs, with the latter distinction reserved for those scientists who are willing and able to serve as syncopated music performers in the frequent forays of B. Banzai and the Hong Kong Cavaliers on the tour circuit. The return of those early interns who did not remain to become residents to their natal lands could not sever their loyalties to B. Banzai, and their global dissemination proved the origin of the helpful network of Blue Blazes whose earnest and reliable efforts bolster the forces of social sanity around the world. Of course, once the "Crazy B B Circle" radio program began airing, the number of Blue Blaze Irregulars multiplied beyond anyone's conception except, inevitably, that of B. Banzai, who foresaw...

excerpted from Pictures from the Promontory Reno Nevada, Granite Press 1978

reprinted by permission

~ 30 ~