Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  He knows! thought Howards. He knows fading black circle of eviscerated—no, no, he can’t know that. It’s gotta be another smart-ass bluff.

  “I don’t know what game you’re playing now, Barron,” he said, “but whatever it is, and whatever you want, it won’t work. You’re on my ground now, and this’ll be the last time you’ll dare to forget it.”

  “You wouldn’t be threatening me, would you?” Barron asked, with that snotty phony innocence. “It doesn’t pay to threaten me. Haven’t you learned that? Apparently not. Thought you could handle me the same way you did Hennering, didn’t you? But you can see it didn’t work.”

  So he found out about that coward Hennering, and he knows it was me bought that dumb Mississippi hit—and he thinks he can use it! Could that be all it is, not fading cancerous balls of bloody cotton picaninny circle of assassins plastic vulture beaks up nose, down—Get hold of yourself, man! There’s no way he can know. And even if he does, he’s here, and you’ve got him. And he soothed himself by stroking the guard-call button hidden under the lip of the desk.

  “What did you come here for anyway?” Howards said.

  “Just what I said on the phone, Sara’s in your outer office, and we both want the immortality treatment. We’re exercising our legal option under the contract, and we want the treatment now. Any objections?”

  Howards found himself almost laughing. The idiot’s here to somehow force me into doing exactly what I want him to—and after he kept refusing to do it. But that doesn’t make sense!

  “No objections,” Howards said a bit uncertainly. “You play ball with Benedict Howards, you’ll see a deal’s a deal.”

  “Groovy. I’ve got no objections now because I know the big secret, found it out in Mississippi. Five kids bought for about a quarter million dollars, and then someone tries to kill me to keep me from finding out, and there’s only one logical conclusion since you’re the only man knew I was going to be there long enough in advance to contract out a hit.”

  He knows! He knows! Someone talked! Palacci? One of the doctors? Yarborough, Bruce, Hennering (no, Hennering’s dead!)? Some son of a bitch talked, sold out to the fading black circle of eviscerated death maggots up nose down throat, some cocksucker sold out a million years…or is he just bluffing again? Does he know it all, or just faking? Got to find out…

  “You can’t be this stupid, Barron,” Howards said. “You said yourself you knew I killed Hennering. (Give it away, admit it, see if he twitches…No! No! Howards thought as Barron smiled placidly, not moving a muscle, that much he really did know.) So why did you come here? You know I’d have the balls to kill you if I killed Hennering, a goddamn Senator. What makes you think I’ll make you immortal now, when I could kill you a lot easier than I killed that prick Hennering, and a lot cheaper too?” And under the desk, he touched his thumb to the guard-call button.

  Barron reached into his sportjac pocket (a gun? Howards thought wildly in a moment of pure panic), and put what looked like a small transistor radio with two speaker-grids down on the desk. One of those new Bell miniphones, Howards thought.

  “That’s why,” said Jack Barron. “Recognize it, don’t you? It’s one of those new miniphones that feed directly into the phone-satellite circuit, and it’s been picking up every word you said, feeding it directly back to New York to three separate vidphone recorders. And before you can even think about making a move, there’ll be five separate copies of the tape sent to five different mailing services with orders to send ’em to Luke Greene, Gregory Morris, the F.B.I., the A.P., and the Colorado fuzz—unless I’m back in New York on Tuesday to stop ’em. Murder, Howards, you’ve admitted to murder, and it’s all on tape to be shouted from the rooftops by your own voice, if anything happens to me…or even if I don’t like the way you smile.”

  Benedict Howards sighed a sigh of naked relief. You prick, you’ve trapped yourself, he thought, thinking anything could matter once you came here. Murder! What a joke, murder. Thinking to threaten me with electric chair death sentence your own funeral, Barron! He doesn’t know, doesn’t know the only thing that matters. By tomorrow I’ll have the same weapon, electric chair death sentence to use on immortal Jack Barron any time he thinks of crossing me. Murder! You’re too much, Barron, and to think you had me going, fading black circle of eviscerated niggers trap you too, and tie you to me, immortal murderers both of us, with a million years to lose…and he walked right into it. All that smart-ass conniving led him right here to me!

  “Well, Howards, the game’s over, give!” Barron said. “Let’s hear all the nice juicy details on your immortality treatment, and don’t bother to tell me what lab techniques you used to develop it, that I already know.”

  Howards smiled as he pressed home the button. So that’s it, he knows about eviscerated fading black nigger children from black scum would sell their own flesh got no right to live, and he thinks we just used ’em for expensive guinea pigs. No sense in telling him now he’s wrong. Wait till after the operation. Let him feel how he’s hooked when he wakes up immortal. Won’t have to tell him who’s boss then, he’ll tell himself.

  “Don’t worry, Barron,” he said, “you’ll have your answer soon enough. But not until you can understand what it really means.”

  “I warn you, Howards, you’ll tell me everything now or—”

  And then two uniformed guards, pistols drawn, burst in.

  Barron got to his feet wheeling, blanched for a moment as he stared into the barrels of the guns. But by the time he had turned his back on the guards to leer at Howards, that fucking smart-ass smirk was back. But the joke was on him!

  “Won’t work, Bennie. I know you’re bluffing. Go ahead, have your shaved apes shoot me right now, I dare you. And those tapes go straight to—”

  “Shoot you, Barron?” Benedict Howards smiled triumphantly. “Why would I do that? You’re much too valuable alive and immortal. These gentlemen will simply escort you to the hospital, wouldn’t want you to get lost. You guys pick up that woman in the outer office too, on the way outside. You’ll both have the operation and be back safe and sound in New York on Tuesday, just as you planned, but with one minor modification—you’ll be more than ready to take orders from me.”

  “You’re crazy,” Barron said. “But who cares, I’ve still got you where I want you, no matter what you think. So we play your game till I leave here. Why not, I’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. But why the guns? You can tell your creeps to put ’em away, they don’t need ’em.”

  “Just a precaution,” Howards said. “When you’re guarding a million years it pays to take precautions. But don’t worry, when you wake up immortal you’ll know just what I mean.”

  Know what it means to wake up each morning, breathe the air, know it’s forever so long as you own ten thousand acres safe from assassins, Congressmen, President, Freezer Utility Bill holding back the fading black circle, safe, safe behind impregnable walls of power, safe forever in cool closed rooms in impassable mountains, know what’s to lose when you’re immortal, know that you lose what I lose if you don’t play ball…

  Know what it means to be my flunky all the way, Barron: power of my word eternal life or death eternal in six feet of maggots eviscerated niggers with plastic beaks up nose down throat laughing for a million lost years just my shut mouth between you and the fading black circle, way it’s your shut mouth between death and me and it’ll be shut forever, those tapes both our electric chair dead flesh shriveled balls death sentence, in it together for the next million years—just you and me.

  And the fading black circle of maggot arms holding us together, always there to hold back with ten thousand acres of impassable mountains, Congress, President, silence…But always there waiting with plastic tubes maggot-filled bedpans of life’s fluids leaking away…But you’ll never get me, none of you—not Benedict Howards, not fading black circle electric-chair assassins eviscerated rolling-eyed niggers you’ll never be strong enough to take it away, n
ot ever, never…never…Never! Never! Hold back the fading black circle with life-against-death power! Never! Never! Never let them take Forever away!

  He saw that Barron was looking at him in bewilderment, and behind it there was confusion, fear, and disgust. Christ, what do I look like? I’ve gotta control it, take it easy, the long view, million-year insurance amortization! Yeah, yeah, get hold of yourself, it’s all right, no fading black circle of cancerous picaninnies electric-chair death sentence ever’s gonna be able to take it away…

  But he heard his own voice sound like an alien thing, pale and croaking, as he shrieked: “Get him over to the hospital! Take him away! Take him away!”

  Never! Never! They’ll never make me die! Fading black circle…you always lose never win…I’ll kill you! Kill you! I’ll never die!

  17

  Guns and a long white corridor…green mountains looming over ether-smelling sheets…lemon-colored ceiling…soft sunlight shadows becoming bright-blue fluorescent operating-theater glare lying warm and weak on a soft pillow…the guns of the guards lifting him on to the stretcher-table…pentothal-needle of drowsy indifference…wheeling the table past looming cool mountains…cold white robes of the cold white doctors…nurses burbling machines…impersonal steel of scalpels blued by harsh fluorescent lighting…cotton swab in the warm comfortable bed with the shadowed mountains on the ceiling…smell of hospital mingling with the smell of fir trees…the needle dripping sleep in the pit of his arm…And behind him he sensed another table’s vibrations, wheeling into the blue-white operating theater behind him (Sara?) on the shore of the consciousnessless sea unable-not-wanting to move…the white robes…blue-scalpel machinery of the operating theater blurring to white sheets, lemon-colored ceiling, cool green mountains…anesthesia-euphoria of awakening-weakness…smell of ether to pine needles, lemon-colored doctors…

  Then (when?) the blurring became a memory of a moment past—and Jack Barron was awake, fully conscious, aware in retrospect of an interminable sojourn on the interface between sleep and wakefulness, images of the preoperative past molding with the postoperative indefinite present as if that unrememberable moment of crossover had been prolonged ten thousand years. But now he was finally awake all the way, and he was:

  Lying in bed, his head on a warm white pillow, his unfocused eyes staring up at a lemon-yellow ceiling, and to his left was a full-length door-window looking out past buildings on the Rocky Mountains, and the smell of pine drifted in past the heat-curtain shimmer that kept out the cool mountain breeze.

  Jeez, he thought, what day is it? How long have I been out? No calendar in the plain white-walled room, only the bed and a small hospital table, not even a clock. And if they used Deep Sleep recovery, which they probably did, no way of telling how long I’ve been out.

  Confused memories swam into focus. Those cats with the guns took me to the operating…No wait, they took me to this room, put me on a stretcher-table, gave me a needle, and I was already half out when they wheeled me into the operating room, and then they wheeled someone else in after me—must’ve been Sara—last thing I remember. Sara must be immortal now too…

  Immortal…? Don’t feel any different, at least I don’t think I do. Tuning in on his body Barron felt a slight soreness in the muscles of his stomach, a barely noticeable kink in his back, felt kind of comfortably weak and drowsy, like lying in bed the morning after a hard night. Nothing different, really, I still feel like me, is all.

  Is anything different?

  Barron strained his mind trying to remember just exactly how his body had always felt, not something you’re really aware of unless you’re real tired or sick. My imagination, just looking for it, or do I feel just a little different? Hard to tell. I don’t feel sick. A little weak from the operation, maybe, whatever it was, but no x-Ray-vision Superman powers, that’s for sure. Weak, yeah, but it’s a funny kind of weak, feels almost too good, like when I get up I could go run a mile…or is thinking maybe I’m immortal just playing games with my head?

  Immortal…Shit, how do you know you’re immortal till you’ve lived a couple hundred years? No reason to suddenly feel different. Thing is, I suppose, you just keep feeling the same, young and healthy and strong the way you started, when you turn forty, fifty, seventy, a hundred…What feels different, I guess, is you don’t ever feel different, forty, a hundred, two hundred years, and you still feel the same, and that can’t feel different till after it hasn’t happened.

  Immortality—no reason to feel any different, they could tell you it was just your appendix out, and you’d never even know.

  Hey, am I immortal, or could the whole thing be a shuck? How the hell can I know, got only Bennie’s word for it. Could be they just faked it to cool me, I’d never know, can’t trust Bennie, and that’s for sure. Well, it doesn’t make any difference, win or lose, that game’s played out. Either way, when I get back to New York, Bennie’s had it. Next show I’ll really do him in…got those tapes safe and sound to make sure I get out of here alive, immortal or not, and maybe…

  Why not? Get Bennie on the line, then play the tape on the air…What can he do? Sue me for libel, when it’s his own voice libeling itself? Dunno, better check first with lawyers—tapes can be edited, faked; they’re not evidence in court. Does that mean I’d have to prove another way he’s a murderer, or else he’d have a libel case? Unless I can con him with the tapes into confessing on the air…Shouldn’t be too hard to do. Seems like he’s finally flipped all the way, the way his eyes looked…maybe I could pull it off. It’d sure be nice and tidy, but dangerous as hell if I couldn’t bluff him. Better think about that, and get some good legal advice…maybe G.O.P. lawyers…?

  The door opened, and a dark man in a white tunic, obviously a doctor, peered inside, said: “Ah! Mr. Howards, he’s awake. He’s come out of it.”

  And Benedict Howards followed the doctor as he stepped inside.

  “Well, Palacci,” Howards said, “go examine him. Tell me if it took.”

  “No need to, Mr. Howards,” the doctor replied. “If he’s alive and awake now, it took. The only danger was that the antibody suppressants might not work and his body would develop an allergic reaction to the grafts. That does happen, you know, in about two cases out of a hundred. But if it had happened he’d be running a high fever, probably be in a deep coma. In fact, by now he’d most likely be dead. It’s all right, he’s immortal and well, just like the woman.”

  “Sara!” Barron shouted, feeling a stab of guilt that he had forgotten. “Sara’s all right?”

  “Better than all right,” said Howards, and his eyes were still mad and gleaming the way they had been in his office…how many days ago? “She’s immortal now, just like you. And like me. How does it feel, Barron? How does it feel to wake up immortal, smell that pine in the air, and know you’ll never have to die? So long as you cooperate, of course.”

  “I don’t feel anything, Howards,” Barron said guardedly. “I don’t feel any different at all. How do I know you didn’t just open me up and close me, or just drop me in a Deep Sleep chamber for…how long has it been? What day is this, anyway?”

  “It’s Monday,” the doctor said. “You’ve been—”

  Benedict Howards raised his hand, cut the doctor off. “I’ll do the talking,” he said. “When can he get up, Palacci? There’s a few things I want Mr. Barron to see. Time he knew for certain, dead certain, who’s boss.”

  “With forty hours of Deep Sleep recovery, he could get up right now. Strictly speaking, it’s not really a major operation. We don’t have to plant the grafts very deep.”

  “Well, then go get him his clothes,” Howards said. “Mr. Barron and I have a few things to talk over in private.”

  As the doctor left, closing the door behind him, Barron propped himself up against the bedstead. He felt surprisingly strong and much more in control of the situation than he did flat on his back.

  “All right, Howards,” he said, “so prove I’m immortal. I’ll admit
I have no idea how it should feel, but it seems to me all I’ve got is your word for it, and all your word and thirty cents’ll get me is a ride on the subway. Just remember those tapes. You gotta keep me happy to keep me cool, and you gotta keep me cool just to stay alive, and you better not forget it.”

  “Sure, you and your smart-ass tapes…” Howards smirked. “When you get back to New York, you’ll mail all the copies to me and we’ll have a nice little bonfire.”

  Barron smiled. He’s really flipped for sure. “What planet you say you’re from, Bennie? You prove you really delivered, and I just might let you off—just maybe, depends how I feel. But those tapes are the property of yours truly, and I think I’ll just keep ’em around to keep you—you should pardon the expression—honest. The penalty for murder is death in the chair, and you better keep that in mind.”

  “I’ll try to keep it in mind, Barron,” Howards said. (But his paranoid loonie eyes were laughing. Laughing!) “And I think you’d do well to remember it too. And you are immortal, and I will prove it. I’m gonna show you everything, give you a guided tour of the whole operation. You’re gonna find out just how you were made immortal, and believe me, that’ll prove to you that I really delivered.”

  “You’re gibbering, Howards. How’ll that prove anything?”

  Howards laughed, and in the chill certainty behind his paranoid eyes Barron got a flash of mortal dread, knowing for certain, dead certain, that Benedict Howards was now sure he had everything in the bag.

  “All in good time,” Howards said. “You’ll see. You’ll see what my percentage was in making you immortal all along. Maybe those tapes do put my life in your hands, but your own immortality is what gives you to me. All the way, Barron, I own you now, you’re my flunky now, and you’ll never be able to forget it. But wait till your clothes get here, then you’ll see. Oh, man, will you see!”