Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  Five points for you, Bennie, Barron conceded. Thing is that the fucker’s essentially right. Letting the few that are Frozen now feed the worms won’t get anyone else into a Freezer, and if you got a thousand people dying for every slot open, well baby, that’s where life’s always been at—the winners win, and the losers lose. But you’re too right for your own good, Bennie, muscle talks, and muscle’s what you’ll get from good old Jack Barron.

  “Of course I understand the hard economic realities,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “I mean, sitting here, fat and healthy and thirty-eight years old. Dollars and sense and all that crap, on paper your Foundation looks real good. Yeah, I understand, Mr. Howards. But I wonder if I’d feel so damn philosophical if I were dying. Would you, Mr. Howards? How’d you like to die like Harold Lopat—broke, and the life leaking out of you drop by drop, while some cat in a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit explains real logical-like how it’s economically impractical to give you the chance to live again some day?”

  To Barron’s surprise, Howards seemed genuinely stricken: a mist of what seemed like sheer madness drifted behind his eyes, his jaw trembling, Howards muttered something unintelligible and then froze entirely. The basilisk himself turned to stone? Bennie Howards with an attack of conscience? Barron wondered. More likely something he ate. Well, it’s an ill wind, he thought as the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.”

  “What’s the matter, Mr. Howards,” Barron asked, “can’t you identify with the situation? Okay, Mrs. Pulaski, let’s give Mr. Howards some help. Please turn the camera of your vidphone on your father and hold it there.”

  Vince’s right on the ball, Barron thought as Vince blew up Dolores Pulaski’s small inset to virtually fill the entire monitor screen as the image danced fragments of walls, vase, ceiling, then became a huge close-up black and white newspaper photo-image of the wasted old man’s face, a long rubber tube trailing from one nostril and taped to his forehead; the gray deathbed photo tilted at a crazy home-videotape angle, and made the closed blind eyes of Harold Lopat seem to stare down at the image of Benedict Howards in the lower left-quadrant like an avenging ghost of death looking down at a scuttling insect after kicking over a wet rock, as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.”

  And Jack Barron, in a once-in-a-blue-moon off-camera spectral-voice gambit, etched Howards’s face into a mask of terror and fury with precise scalpel-words: “Look, Howards, you’re looking at death. That’s not $50,000 on your balance sheet, that’s a human being, and he’s dying. Go ahead, look at that face, look at the pain, look at the disease eating it up behind the mask. Only it’s not a mask, Howards, it’s a human being—a human life in the process of being snuffed out forever. We all come down to that in the end, don’t we, Mr. Howards? You, and me, and Harold Lopat, all of us, sooner or later, fighting for just another breath, another moment of life before the Big Nothing closes in. And there, but for $50,000, go you or I. What’s so holy about fifty grand that it buys a man’s life? How much is $50,000 in pieces of silver, Mr. Howards? A thousand? Two thousand? Once a man’s life was sold for thirty pieces of silver, Mr. Howards, just thirty, and he was Jesus Christ. How many lives you got in your Freezers worth more than His? You think any man’s life is worth more money than was the life of Jesus Christ?”

  And Gelardi filled the screen with the face of Benedict Howards, ghost-white in an extreme close-up that showed every razor nick, every pimple, network of coarse open pores, the eyes of a maddened trapped carnivore as Jack Barron’s voice said, “And maybe we’ll have some answers from Benedict Howards after this word from our sponsor.”

  Jesus H. himself on a bicycle! Barron thought gleefully as they rolled the commercial. Days like this, I scare myself!

  “Oooh, does he want to talk to you!” Vince Gelardi’s voice said over the intercom circuit the moment the commercial was rolling. “Sounds like he’s down with hydrophobia.” Barron saw Gelardi grin, give him the highsign, start the count with “90 Seconds” on the promptboard as Benedict Howards’ face appeared on the tiny number two vidphone screen and his voice came on in the middle of a tirade:

  “…to the fucking fishes! No one plays games like that with Benedict Howards. You lay off me, you crazy bastard, or I’ll have you off the air and in jail for libel before—”

  “Fuck off, Howards!” Barron said. “And before you shoot your big mouth off again, just remember that this call goes through the control booth, it’s not a private line. (He shot Howards a cool-it, we’re-still-fencing, don’t-spill-the-beans look.) You know where all this is at, and you’ve got about sixty seconds before we go on the air again to give me a reason to lay off—and I don’t mean a lot of dumb threats. I don’t like threats. Tell you just what’s gonna happen in the next segment. I’m gonna tear you to pieces, is all, but I’m gonna leave just enough left so you can throw in the towel during the next commercial and save what’s left of your ass. Unless you wanna be smart, meet my terms now—and we both know what those terms are.”

  “Don’t threaten me, you goddamned clown!” Howards roared. “You lay off, or I’ll just hang up, and when I get through with you, you won’t be able to get a job cleaning cesspools in—”

  “Go ahead, hang up,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.” “I’ve got five calls just like the first one—only seedier—lined up to fill the rest of the show. I don’t need you on the air to do you in. One way or the other you’re gonna learn it doesn’t pay to screw around with me, ’cause unless you come around by the next commercial your Freezer Bill has had it, and your whole fucking Foundation will stink so bad you’ll think Judas Iscariot was your press agent. How’s that grab you, bigshot?”

  “You filthy fuck—” and Gelardi cut Howards off just in time as the promptboard flashed “on the Air.”

  Jack Barron grinned at his own image filling the monitor—flesh-eyes digging phosphor-dot-eyes in adrenalin-feedback reaction—and he felt a strange light-headed exhilaration, a psychic erection. More than anticipation of the coming catbird-seat five-aces-in-the-hole poker game for the big chips with Howards blood humming behind his ears, Barron felt the primal sap rising, the hot berserker joy ghost of Berkeley Baby Bolshevik jugular thrill of the hunt, amplified by electronic satellite network hundred million Brackett Count living-color image-power shooting sparks out of his phosphor-dot eyes, and for the first time felt himself giving the show over to the gyroscope of his endocrine system and didn’t know what would happen next. And didn’t care.

  Gelardi gave Howards a lower left-quadrant inquisition dock inset—Dolores Pulaski having finished her schtick—as Barron said: “Okay, we’re back on the air, Mr. Howards, and we’re gonna talk about your favorite subject for a change. Let’s talk about money. How many…er, clients you figure you got in your Freezers?”

  “There are over a million people already in Foundation Freezers,” Howards answered (and Barron could sense him fighting for purchase, trying to anticipate the line of the jugular thrust he knew was coming). “So you see, Freezing is not really just for the few at all. A million human beings with hope for eternal life someday is quite a large—”

  “You ain’t just whistling Dixie,” Barron interrupted. “A million’s a nice round number. Let’s continue with our little arithmetic lesson, shall we? How much would you say it costs to maintain one body in a cryogenic Freezer for one year?”

  “It’s impossible to come up with an average figure just like that,” said Howards. “You’ve got to figure in the cost of preparation for Freezing, the cost of the Freezing itself, amortization on the Freezer facilities, the cost of replacing evaporated coolant, power to run the pumps, salaries, taxes, insurance…”

  “Yeah, we know you run a real complicated show,” Barron replied. “But let’s take a generous average figure no one can say is stingy…” Lay the trap right, he thought. True figure can’t be more than three thou per stiff per year, and he’s gotta know it, so give him more than enough rop
e…“Let’s say $5,000 will cover it, five thou per client per year. Sound reasonable?—or am I way too high? I don’t have much of a head for business, as my accountant keeps telling me every year around April fifteenth.”

  “I suppose that’s about right,” Howards admitted grudgingly, and Barron could see the fear showing through his eyes. (Scared shitless, eh, Bennie? ’Cause you don’t see where all this is going, ’cause you know there’s something happening and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?)

  “And in order to be Frozen, you’ve gotta sign over a minimum of $50,000 in liquid assets to the Foundation in order to cover costs, right?”

  “We’ve gone through all that,” Howards muttered, obviously uncertain as to what was going to happen next.

  “All rightie…” Barron drawled, foot-signaling to Vince to kill Howards’ audio. He stared straight into the camera, tilted his head forward, picking up darkness-shadows reflected off the desk-arm of the chair from the kinesthop background in the hollows of his dead-end-kid innocent eyes, gave a little bemused inside-joke grin. “Okay, out there, we’ve got the figures, now let’s all do a little arithmetic. Check me, out there, will you? I’ve got a lousy head for figures—at least the numerical kind. Lessee…multiply how many bodies in the Freezers by $50,000 per body…That comes to…ah…ten zeros and…why, that’s fifty billion dollars, isn’t that right folks? Foundation’s got at least fifty billion bucks in assets. Now there’s cigarette money! About half the defense budget of the United States, is all. Okay, students, now one more problem in multiplication—$5,000 for each body for a year times a million bodies in the freezers…in nice round numbers it comes to…five billion dollars. Now, let’s see—if I had fifty billion bucks to play around with I ought to be able to make—oh, say ten per cent a year on it. Couldn’t you, out there?—and wouldn’t you like to try? That comes to…why, it’s about five billion dollars, isn’t it? What a coincidence! Same as Foundation expenses—one tenth, count it folks, ten per cent of the Foundation’s total assets. Boy, numbers are fun!”

  Visualizing the path to the punchline, Barron signaled Gelardi to give him a two-minute count to the next commercial and to cut in Howards’ audio.

  “What the hell is this?” Howards snapped. “Who do you think you are, the Internal Revenue Service?”

  “Patience, Mr. Howards, patience,” Barron drawled with purposefully irritating slowness. “Jack Barron, great swami—knows all, sees all, tells all. Now let’s try some simple subtraction. Subtract five billion in expenses from five billion a year in interest on your assets. That leaves a big fat zero, doesn’t it? That’s exactly how much maintaining those million bodies in the freezers cuts into that fifty billion bucks in assets you got squirreled away—zero! Not at all. How neat! And that’s how you hold on to your nonprofit, tax-exempt status, isn’t it? Expenses balance income. And that $50,000 each client chucks in—why, that’s not nasty old income at all, is it? Technically it’s not even yours, and that keeps the Income Tax boys’ hot little hands out of your till. Boy, I’d like to borrow your accountant!”

  “What’re you gibbering about?” Howards said, with a totally unconvincing show of incomprehension.

  “I’m gibbering about the small matter of fifty billion dollars,” Barron told him as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.” “Fifty billion dollars free and clear that you’ve got to play around with above Freezer expenses, a fifty-billion-dollar slush fund. Who do you think you’re putting on, Howards? That’s enough bread to provide a free Freeze for every man, woman, and child who dies every year in the United States, and in Canada too, for that matter, isn’t it? Fifty billion bucks sitting there, while Harold Lopat and millions like him die and are gone forever while you poormouth us! What does happen to that fifty billion, Howards? You must have mighty big holes in your pockets or else—”

  “Research!” Howards croaked frantically. “Without research—”

  Gelardi, anticipating even as Barron foot-signaled, flashed “30 Seconds” on the promptboard and cut his audio off.

  “Research!” Barron mimicked, his image now filling the entire monitor screen, a mask of righteous indignation scowling into Brackett Audience Count estimated hundred million pairs of eyes.

  “Yeah, sure, research, but research in what? Research in how to buy votes in Congress to get this cozy little set-up written into law? Research into how to own Governors and Senators and…who knows, maybe your very own Presidential candidate? I don’t like to speak ill of the dead—the conveniently permanent dead—but you were awfully tight with a certain late Senator who was putting on a rather well-financed campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, weren’t you? That come under ‘research’ too? Fifty billion bucks worth of research—with people like Harold Lopat dying all around you every day. Research. Yeah, let’s talk about research! And we’ll have plenty of time to discuss fifty billion dollars’ worth of scientific—or is it political—research after this word from our relatively impoverished sponsor.”

  As they rolled the final commercial Barron felt a weird manic exhilaration, knowing that he had set up a focus of forces which in the next few minutes could squash the fifty-billion-dollar Foundation for Human Immortality like a bug if Bennie proved dumb enough to not holler “Uncle.” Fifty billion bucks! Never added it up before, Barron thought. What the fuck is he really doing with all that bread? Shit, he could buy the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court out of petty cash, if it came down to it. Talk about big-league action! Bennie Howards is bigger than the whole fucking country!

  Yeah, but right here right now no time-delay live, he’s nothing but a punk I can dribble like a basketball. And what’s that make me? Luke and Morris maybe not as crazy as they sound…?

  He made the connection on the number two vidphone and Howards, his eyes now reptile-cold gimlets, stared up at him from the oh-so-tiny vidphone screen like a bug trapped in amber.

  “All right, Barron,” Howards said in a dead-flat, money-talk voice, “you’ve made your point. We’ve been playing your game, and we both know I’m no match for you at it. You hurt me, and you hurt me bad. Maybe you can do more damage to me than I thought possible, but I warn you, you play ball and get me out of this mess or I’ll really finish you and quick. And don’t con me, you know damn well I can do it. You keep this up, and you’ll find out just how much muscle fifty billion dollars is—I’ll use every penny of it, if I have to, to pound you to a pulp. You’ll lose more than your show, I can have your tax returns for the last ten years investigated, sue you for libel and buy the judge, and that’s just off the top of my head. Play ball, remember what you’ve got to lose—and what you’ve got to gain.”

  And it brought Barron down like a bucket of ice water smack in the face. Sure, I can finish the hatchet-job, he thought, but good-bye Bug Jack Barron, and good-bye free Freeze, and Christ knows what else the bastard can do to me—kamikaze’s the name of that game. An old Dylan lyric ran through his head:

  “I wish I could give Brother Bill his big thrill;

  I would tie him in chains at the top of the hill,

  Then send out for some pillars and Cecil B. De Mille…”

  Yeah, I can do him in and he can do me in if we both want to do that Samson schtick. Bluff’s the name of the real game.

  And the promptboard told him he had sixty seconds to play his hand.

  “Look Howards,” he said, “we can do each other in, or play ball and cool it. Your choice, Bennie-baby. You know what I want, the straight poop plus that other thing. I don’t change my mind—matter of principle. So maybe I’m bluffing, so call me on it, I dare you. But before you do, ask yourself what you’ve got to gain by calling me that’s worth the risk of losing what you’ve got to lose. I’m a dangerous lunatic, Howards, I’m not afraid of you. You that sure you’re not afraid of me?”

  Howards was silent for a long moment, bit his lip, then said, “All right, you win. It’s all negotiable. You get me out of this, and we’ll
talk turkey on your terms. Good enough?”

  The promptboard flashed “30 Seconds” for instant decision on the course of the rest of the show and all that was riding on it. As close to “Uncle” as you’ll hear from Bennie, Barron knew. He’ll say anything now to get off the hook, thinks he can maybe welch later, those fifty-billion-bucks Foundation aces, but he doesn’t know all the aces I got—Luke and Morris’ fun and games up my sleeve, enough to bluff him out for good, comes nitty-gritty time, no matter what he’s holding. So okay Bennie, you get off the hook or anyway I don’t give the descabello, leave your bod bleeding but alive.

  “All right, Howards, things don’t get any worse tonight, but don’t expect to make any big points in the next ten minutes either. All I’m gonna do is make things kinda fuzzy in all those heads out there.”

  “But you’ve got me backed into a corner,” Howards whined. “How you gonna get me out of this with a whole skin?”

  “That’s my line of evil, Bennie,” Barron said. He flashed Howards an ironic man-in-control smirk. “What’s the matter, Bennie, don’t you trust me?”

  And the promptboard flashed “On the Air,” and Gelardi gave Howards the same lower left-quadrant inquisition seat as before.

  “Now what were we talking about?” Barron said. (Gotta back off real gradual-like, and not too far.) “Ah, yes, research. Fifty billion dollars’ worth of research. Since by some fancy sleight of hand the Foundation is tax-exempt, I think that the American people have a right to know just what kind of…research that money is being spent on. Now, we can always check this with the tax boys, Mr. Howards, so let’s have the straight poop—just what is your annual research budget?”