Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  Watching the commercial fade into his own face on the monitor, Barron felt a weird psychedelic flash go through him, the reality of the last week compressed into an instantaneous image flashed on the promptboard of his mind: Sitting in the studio chair, electronic feedback-circuitry connecting him with subsystems of power—Foundation power S.J.C.-Democrat-Republican power, hundred million Brackett Count power—he was like the master transistor in a massive satellite network confluence circuit of power, gigantic input of others’ power feeding into his head through vidphone circuits, none of it his, but all feeding through him, his to control by microcosmic adjustment; for one hour, 8-9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, that power was de facto his.

  He felt his subjective head-time speeding up, like an alien drug in his bloodstream, at the focus of forces far beyond him yet at his command as letters crawled across the promptboard an electric-dot message that seemed to take ten million years: “On the Air.”

  “And what’s bugging you out there tonight?” Jack Barron asked, playing to the kinesthop-darkness shapes double-reflected (backdrop off desktop) in his eye hollows ominous with foreknowledge of the shape of the show to come. “What bugs you, bugs Jack Barron,” he said, digging his own image on the monitor, eyes picking up flashes as never before. “And we’ll soon see what happens when you bug Jack Barron. The number is Area Code 212, 969-6969, and we’ll take our first call right…now.”

  Now, he thought, making the vidphone connection, nitty-gritty time, Bennie-baby, better be good and ready, here it comes now. And the screen split down the middle; left half a pallid gray on gray image of a dough-faced middle-aged woman with deep lines of defeat-tension etched around her hollow-bagged eyes like dry kernels of mortal disaster, a hag-gray ghost begging her living-color image for alms from the gods.

  “This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air, plugged into me, plugged into one hundred million Americans (drawing out the words for special audience of one, one hundred million, count ’em Bennie, 100,000,000) and this is your chance to let ’em all know what’s bugging you and get some action, ’cause action’s the name of the game when you bug Jack Barron. So let’s hear it all, the right here right now live no time-delay nitty-gritty; what’s bugging you?”

  “My…my name is Dolores Pulaski,” the woman said, “and I’ve been trying to talk to you for three weeks, Mr. Barron, but I know it’s not your fault. (Vince gave her three-quarters screen, put Barron in upper righthand corner catbird-seat, living-color Crusader dwarfed by yawning gray need. Just the right touch, Barron thought.) I’m calling for my father, Harold Lopat. He…He can’t speak for himself.” Her lips quivered on the edge of a sob.

  Jesus Christ, Barron thought, hope Vince didn’t feed me a crier, gotta underplay this schtick or I’ll push Howards too far. “Take it easy, Mrs. Pulaski,” he soothed, “you’re talking to friends. We’re all on your side.”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “it’s just so hard to…” Her eyes frightened and furtive, her jaw hardened to numbness, the tension came across beautifully as she forced herself calm. “I’m calling from the Kennedy Hospital for Chronic Diseases in Chicago. My father, he’s been here ten weeks…die…die…he’s got cancer, cancer of the stomach, and it’s spread to the lym…lymphatics, and the doctors all say…we’ve had four specialists…He’s dying! He’s dying! They say they can’t do anything. My father, Mr. Barron. My father…he’s going to die!”

  She began sobbing; then her face went off-camera, and a huge pale hand obscured the vidphone image as she picked her vidphone up, turned its camera on the room. Trembling, disjointed, out of focus pieces of hospital room stumbled across the monitor screen: Walls, wilted flowers, transfusion stands, bed, blankets, the thousand deathhead’s wrinkled ether-smell shriveled face of a ruined old man, and her voice—“Look! Look! Look at him!”

  Jeez, Barron thought, pumping his screen-control foot-button even as Vince changed the monitor-mix to three quarters Jack Barron the lower lefthand quadrant still a jumble of sliding images, old man’s face fingers vased flowers trays of needles bedpan—hideous gray montage of death by inches now muted at least, surrounded by full-color embracing image of concerned Big Brother Jack Barron, and Dolores Pulaski’s screaming sobs were a far-away tinny unreality as Vince bled her audio and Barron’s voice reestablished control.

  “Take it easy, Mrs. Pulaski.” Barron stopped just short of harshness. “We all want to help you, but you’ll have to stay calm. Now put the vidphone down in front of you, and just try to remember you’ll have all the time you need to say what you want to. And if you can’t find the words, I’m here to help you. Try to relax. A hundred million Americans are on your side and want to understand.”

  The woman’s face reappeared in the lower left quadrant, eyes dull, jaw slack, a spent, pale-flesh robot-image, and Barron knew he was back in control. After a little hair-tearing, she’s got nothing left in her, you can make her say anything, she won’t make more waves. And he foot-signaled Vince to give her three-quarters screen, her schtick to the next commercial, as long as she stayed tame.

  “I’m sorry I had to be so short with you, Mrs. Pulaski,” Barron said softly. “Believe me, we all understand how you must feel.”

  “I’m sorry too, Mr. Barron,” she said in a loud stage whisper. (Vince, Barron thought, on the ball as usual, turning up her volume.) “It’s just that I feel so…you know, helpless, and now when I can finally do something about it, it all just came out, everything I’ve been holding in…I don’t know what to do, what to say, but I’ve got to make everyone understand…”

  Here it comes, Barron thought. Sitting on the edge of your sweaty little seat, Bennie? Not yet, eh? Keep cool, Bennie-baby, cause now you get yours!

  “Of course we all sympathize, Mrs. Pulaski, but I’m not quite sure what anyone can do. If the doctors say…” Give, baby! Shit, don’t make me fish for it.

  “The doctors say…they say there’s no hope for my father. Surgery, radiation, drugs—nothing can save him. My father’s dying, Mr. Barron. They give him only weeks. Within a month…within a month he’ll be dead.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “Dead!” she whispered. “In a few weeks, my father will be dead forever. Oh, he’s a good man, Mr. Barron! He’s got children and grandchildren who love him, and he’s worked hard for us all his life, and he loves us. He’s as good a man as anyone who ever lived! Why, why should he be dead and gone forever while other men, bad men, Mr. Barron, men who’ve gotten rich on good men’s sweat, they can live forever just by buying their way into a Freezer with the money they’ve stolen and cheated people like us to get? It’s not fair, it’s…evil. A man like my father, an honest, kind man, works all his life for his family, and when he dies he’s buried and gone like he had never existed, while a man like Benedict Howards holds…holds immortal lives in his filthy hands like he was God…”

  Dolores Pulaski blanched at the weight of the word that hung from her lips. “I didn’t mean…” she stammered. “I mean, forgive me, to mention a man like that in the same sentence with God…”

  Jeez, spare me the Hail Marys! Barron thought. “Of course you didn’t,” he said, picturing Howards sweating somewhere in the bowels of his Colorado Freezer with no place to hide. He tapped his right foot-button twice, signaling Vince to give him a two-minute count to the next commercial as he paused, casually kind, before continuing. “But tell me, Mrs. Pulaski, what are you asking me to do?” he said, all earnest choir-boy innocence.

  “Get my father a place in a freezer!” Dolores Pulaski shot back. (Beautiful, thought Barron. Couldn’t be better if we were working from a script; you’re show biz all the way, Dolores Pulaski.)

  “I’m afraid I don’t swing much weight at the Foundation for Human Immortality,” Barron said archly as Vince now split the screen evenly between them, “as I’m sure you’ll remember if you saw the last show.” The promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.” (Don’t fail me now, Mrs. Pulaski, come out wit
h the right line and I make you a star.)

  “I know that, Mr. Barron. It’s that Benedict Howards…one man in the whole world who can save my father, and he sells immortality like the devil buys souls. God forgive me for saying it, but I mean it—like Satan! Who else but Satan and Benedict Howards are evil enough to put a price on a man’s immortal life? Talk to him, Mr. Barron, show the world what he’s like. Make him explain to poor people dying everywhere without a hope of living again how he can set a price on human life. And if he can’t explain, I mean in front of millions of people, well, then he’ll have to do something about my father, won’t he? He can’t afford to look like a monster in public. I mean, an important man like that…?” The promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.”

  “You’ve got a point, Mrs. Pulaski,” Barron said, cutting her off quickly before too much more peasant shrewdness could come through. (Such a thing as too show biz, Dolores Pulaski—can’t stand a straight man steps on my lines.)

  Vince expanded his image to three-quarters screen, cut Dolores Pulaski to a prefadeout inset, cut her audio too, and a good thing, the chick’s getting a wee bit naked, Barron thought as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.”

  “Yeah, Mrs. Pulaski sure has a point, doesn’t she?” Barron said, staring straight into the camera as his living-color image filled the monitor screen in extreme close-up, darkness-shadows, bruised sullen hollows framing his eyes. “If there’s a reason to set a dollar value on a man’s chance at immortality, there’s sure as hell a reason to hear what it is, with all America watching, with a bill pending in Congress to make this monopoly on freezing into Federal law. And we’ll get the answer from Mr. Benedict Howards right after this word from our sponsor—or a hundred million Americans will know the reason why.”

  What a lead-in! Barron thought as they rolled the commercial. Dolores Pulaski, you’re beautiful, baby! So long as you don’t flip out again while I’m playing chicken with Bennie…

  He punched the intercom button on his number one vidphone. “Hey Vince,” he said, “keep your finger on that audio dial. It’s me and Bennie all the way from here on in. I want Mrs. Pulaski seen but not heard. Keep her audio down, unless I ask her a direct question. And if you gotta cut her off, then fade it—make it look like a bad vidphone connection not the old ax. Got Bennie on the line yet?”

  Gelardi grinned from behind the control booth glass. “Been on the line for the last three minutes, and by now he’s foaming at the mouth. Wants to talk to you right now, before you go back on the air. Still got 45 seconds…?”

  “Tell him to get stuffed,” Barron answered. “He’ll have more time than he can handle to talk to me when he’s on the air. And, baby, when I get my hooks into him, he won’t be in any position to hang up.”

  Poor Bennie! Barron thought. Two strikes already. He’s playing the master’s game on the master’s turf, and he’s gibbering mad to boot. And as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” Barron suddenly realized that for the rest of the show he held Benedict Howards, the most powerful man in the United States, right there in his hot little hand, to play with like a cat plays with a wounded mouse. Can kill his Freezer Bill just for openers if I get that feeling; do him in all the way any time I want to close my fist just gotta twitch and he’s had it, is all. Cat and mouse. And Luke and Morris out there now, wondering just what the hell game I’m playing…maybe theirs? It’s what they’re both hot for, ain’t it—Jack Barron down on the Foundation with high-heeled hobnails and off to the races…? So hung on “Hail to the Chief” the poor bastards could never dream there could be bigger game in town…

  “On the Air” the promptboard said.

  Barron made the number two vidphone connection and Dolores Pulaski appeared in a small lower-right inset, with Howards seemingly glowering down from the upper left quadrant at her across the color image of larger-than-either-adversary Jack Barron. Groovy, Barron thought as he said, “This is Bug Jack Barron, and the man on the screen with me and Mrs. Pulaski is Mr. Benedict Howards himself, President, Chairman of the Board, and founder of the Foundation for Human Immortality. Mr. Howards, Mrs. Pulaski has—”

  “I’ve been watching the show, Mr. Barron,” Howards interrupted, and Barron could see him fighting for control, eyes hot in the cool and earnest mask of his face. (But he still can’t keep from dripping acid, Barron thought gleefully.) “It’s one of my favorites and I rarely miss it—it’s sure long on excitement; you know how to create heat. Too bad you’re so short in the light department.”

  Tsk, tsk! Watch it Bennie, your fly’s open and your id’s hanging out, Barron thought as he smiled nastily into the camera. “That’s my job after all, Mr. Howards,” he said blandly. “I’m just here to turn the spotlight on things that need seeing, like…turning over a lot of wet rocks to see what crawls out. I’m not here to tell anyone anything; I just ask questions America thinks need answering. Enlightenment’s gotta come from the other end of the vidphone, your end, Mr. Howards.

  “So since you’ve been watching the show, let’s not bore a hundred million Americans with repetition. Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty. There’s a man dying in a hospital in Chicago—fact. There’s one of your Freezers in Cicero, isn’t there—that’s a hard fact too. Mrs. Pulaski and her family want a place for Mr. Lopat in that Freezer. If he isn’t Frozen, he dies and never lives again. If he is Frozen, he’s got the same chance at immortality as anyone else in a Freezer. You hold Harold Lopat’s life in your hands, Mr. Howards, you say whether he lives or he dies. So you see, it all boils down to one simple question, Mr. Howards, and a hundred million Americans know that you and only you have the answer: does Harold Lopat live or die?”

  Howards’ mouth snapped open, and time stopped for a beat; he seemed to think twice, and closed it. (Got you right on the knife-edge, Bennie—the Nero schtick: thumbs up, the cat lives, thumbs down, he dies. Thumbs down, you’re a murderer in front of a hundred million people. Thumbs up, and you’ve opened the floodgates and the dam’s busted for every deadbeat dying everywhere, people, Mr. Howards, people, is all, free Freeze for everyone on Emperor Howards…Whatever you say next, Bennie, it’s gotta be wrong.)

  “Neither you nor Mrs. Pulaski understands the situation,” Howards finally said. “I don’t have the power to say who’s to be Frozen and who isn’t. Nobody does. It’s sheer economics, just like who can afford a new Cadillac and who has to drive an old ’81 Ford. Fifty thousand dollars or more must be assigned to the Foundation for every man Frozen. I assure you that if Mr. Lopat or his family have the requisite assets, he will be Frozen, if that’s what they want.”

  “Mrs. Pulaski…?” Barron said, foot-signaling Gelardi to cut in her audio.

  “Fifty thousand dollars!” Dolores Pulaski shouted. “A man like you doesn’t know how much money that is—more than my husband makes in eight years, and he’s got a wife and a family to support! Even with Medicare, the specialists, the extra doctors, aren’t covered, and our savings, my father’s and my husband’s and my brother’s, are all gone. Why don’t you just make it a million dollars or a billion; what’s the difference, when ordinary people can’t afford it, what kind of filthy…” Her voice trailed off in crackles, fading simulated hisses as Gelardi cut her off.

  “Seems to be a bug in Mrs. Pulaski’s connection,” Barron said as Vince rearranged the images, giving Howards’ naked discomfort half the screen alongside him, Dolores Pulaski reduced to a tiny inset-creature looking on. “But I think she’s made her point. Fifty thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of bread to hold on to, taxes and cost of living being what they are. You know, I knock down a pretty nice piece of change for this show, I probably make more money than ninety per cent of the people in the country, and even I can’t squirrel that kind of bread away. So when you set the price of a Freeze at fifty big ones you’re really saying that ninety per cent of all living Americans gonna be food for the worms when they die, while a few million fat cats get the chance to live forever. Hardly seems right tha
t money can buy life. Maybe the people who’re yelling for Public Freezers—”

  “Commies!” shouted Howards. “Can’t you see that? They’re all Communists or dupes of the Reds. Look at the Soviet Union, look at Red China—they got any Freezer Programs at all? Of course not, because a Freezer Program can only be supported by a healthy free enterprise system. Socialized Freezing means no Freezing at all. The Commies would love—”

  “But aren’t you the best friend the Communists have in America?” Barron cut in, signaling for a commercial in three minutes.

  “You calling me a Communist!” Howards said, forcing his face into a soundless parody of a laugh. “That’s good, Barron, the whole country knows the kind of people you’ve been involved with.”

  “Let’s skip the name-calling, shall we? I didn’t call you a Communist…just, shall we say, an unwitting dupe of the Reds? I mean, the fact that less than ten per cent of the population—shall we say, the exploiters of the working class, as they put it—has a chance to live forever, while everyone else has to die and like it…is there a better argument against a pure capitalistic system that the Reds can dream up? Isn’t your Foundation the best piece of propaganda the Reds have?”

  “I’m sure your audience isn’t swallowing that crap,” Howards said (knowing it damn well is, Barron thought smugly). “Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain it so that even you can understand it, Mr. Barron. Maintaining Freezers costs lots of money, and so does research on restoring and extending life. It costs billions each year, so much money that, for instance, the Soviet government simply can’t afford it—and neither can the government of the United States. But an effort like ours must be financed somehow, and the only way is for the people who are Frozen to pay their own way. If the government tried to Freeze everyone who died, it’d go bankrupt, it’d cost tens of billions a year. The Foundation, by seeing to it that those who are Frozen pay for it, and pay for the research, at least keeps the dream of human immortality alive. It may not be perfect, but it’s the only thing that can work. Surely a man of your…vast intelligence should be able to see that.”