Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  Sara looked out over the living carpet of light that was the city, the great anguished body of humanity of which she was but an insignificant part, and the blackness above and below seemed to be calling to her with the surf-sound of the timeless sea from the buoying depths of forever; calling, promising forgiveness, and a way out…the only way out…

  “Didn’t you ever think,” she mumbled, “that there are things better than reality, cleaner, purer, where no one can touch you with death or the blood of children oozing inside you or anything that’s rotten and dirty and evil…”

  “Goddamn it,” Jack snarled, “you’re stoned out of your mind! You’re freaked out on acid! Get hold of yourself, Sara, ride it out, baby…Jesus H. Christ, how could you be so dumb, what a time to drop acid! With all this shit going on, you knew you had to have a bummer. Why the hell did you do it?”

  Standing there, with Jack’s image a gray on white ghost from a million miles away and a thousand years ago on the vidphone screen, she herself wondered why. A bummer, sure, she had known deep down it would have to be a bummer. But how could anything be worse than reality, worse than torn fragments of murdered children sewn inside her, inside Jack, and Benedict Howards going on and on forever? With or without acid, it was all a bummer, a bummer that would go on and on and on forever, with no way to ever come down, a freakout she could never wait out…unless…

  She lifted the vidphone off the pedestal and set it on the parapet lip, the screen now at her chest-level, and Jack’s face was a black and white specter looking back at her with blind, uncomprehending eyes. I’ve got to make him understand…he’s got to understand.

  “Please, Jack, you’ve got to understand…” The words gushed out of her in a self-propelled torrent. “There’s no way out, not in what you call reality, it’s a trap, and there’s no way out for either of us except…except death, except turning ourselves off and sleeping dreamless innocent dreams forever…Reality…Don’t you see, the only answer is something greater than reality, purer, cleaner, infinite, something to give yourself to, something that can wash it all away, something to merge yourself with, something infinite to be one with—”

  “Spare me the parlor Buddhism, will you?” Jack said. “I wish you could hear yourself, I mean I wish you could hear yourself baby, ’cause your head’s just not there. You’re gibbering, and you’re starting to scare me. Take it easy, Sara, and for chrissakes do what I tell you. Go inside, sit down on the couch, put on some happy music, and wait it out. You’re stoned. Remember you’re stoned. It’s just a bum trip, is all. You’ll be all right when the acid wears off. Whatever happens inside your head, remember it won’t last forever, you’ll come down. Remember, you’ll come down.”

  “Come down!” she found herself screaming at him. “I’ll never come down! It’s not the acid, it’s me. Dead children’s glands inside of me, that’s not the acid, Benedict Howards, that’s not the acid, what I’m doing to you, that’s not the acid…It’s me, me, me, and it stinks!”

  “Sara! You haven’t done anything to me, I’ve done it to you…”

  She studied his face, and even on the black and white unreality of the vidphone screen, the man, the essence that was Jack, JACK BARRON, leaped out at her from the darkness through layers and layers of phosphorescent reality, pulsing image-waves of his face on the pillow blue and stubbly on the vidphone with Luke naked beside her in the Berkeley attic her knight in soft-flesh armor brave beside her the Black Shade they call him his tongue inside her the taste of his body, wave after wave of JACK BARRON images flashed from the vidphone screen through her, merging and dancing on the back wall of her mind. Overlapping, flashing, reversing, contradicting in a cresting-wave pattern, the sum of the images forming an essence that coalesced like a standing-wave formed from the flux, an essence that shone with an unwavering light—an essence that was pure Jack.

  And the Jack that she saw dwarfed and flickering on the tiny vidphone screen before her seemed an anguished denial of the greater Jack that blazed across the screen in her mind. That was the real Jack Barron, a Jack Barron who could never cop out just because he was Jack. No matter what he did, that Jack was still JACK BARRON (in flaming capital letters). And how many times was I sure that Jack was wrong and he turned out to be right? JACK BARRON…a creature bigger in every way than herself, and hadn’t she always known it, even when she hadn’t known she knew, wasn’t it why she loved him? Bigger than herself…bigger than anyone, not her Jack, but Jack’s Sara, how could she ever be anything else? Or want to be.

  And that’s what I’m taking from him because he loves me, because he can’t see me die—I’m taking away JACK. And if he loses Jack, I lose Jack, the world loses Jack—because I love him and he loves me. It’s not right!

  “Jack…Jack…I love you, I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I love you!”

  “I love you too, Sara,” he said quietly, soothingly, and she felt that marvelous gyroscopic sense of tenderness, and she loved him for it and hated herself for his loving her. I’m destroying him…

  “I know you do, and I’m sorry…I’m sorry you love me and I love you. It’s destroying you, Jack, it’s making you something less than what you were meant to be. I can’t let that happen…I won’t let it happen!”

  Won’t let it happen! The thought filled her mind. I can’t let it happen. Got to save Jack…save him from lizardman Howards…dead things in my body…got to save him from me. From me!

  And as she stared out over the endless lights of the amoeboid city spreading out below her like the throng before the Mount, she knew who really stood at the summit of that mountain, who they all looked to, who could do it, could bust it all wide open, destroy the Foundation Black Shade Social Justice President of the United States. Luke was right, it was Jack—Jack all the way, and a whole nation riding with him, and me, only me bringing him down.

  I’m all that’s stopping him from being JACK, the Jack that everyone needs. He loves me, he’ll always love me, he’ll never leave me, and as long as I live I’ll never be able to leave him, we’re too deep into each other. As long as I live…

  With a sudden, mindless leap she found herself crouched on the narrow concrete parapet beside the vidphone, staring at his image only inches from her face, muscles tensed smoothly like a cat gathering to spring.

  “Sara! What the fuck are you doing?” Jack shouted, and she sensed him fighting fear for control and knew he would win. He would always win. “You’re stoned!” he snarled, and the harshness in his voice was a purposeful slap across the face. “Remember you’re stoned, and get the hell off there…but do it slow and easy, don’t get shook, first put one leg on the ground, then put all your weight on it before you step down…Sara! Come on! Snap out of it!”

  “I love you Jack,” she said to his tiny distant image. “I love you, and I know you’d always love me. That’s why I’ve got to do it. You’ve got to be free—free of me so you can really be Jack Barron, free to see what you are and what you’ve always been and what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to be free! And so long as I’m alive you’ll never be free. I’m doing it because I love you, because you love me. Good-bye, Jack…Remember, only because I loved you…”

  She straightened her legs convulsively, and stood waveringly upright on the narrow parapet as the vidphone beside her feet shouted: “Don’t do it, Sara, God, don’t do it! You’re stoned out of your mind! You don’t know what you’re doing! For chrissakes, don’t jump! Don’t jump!”

  But the voice that called to her was mechanical and tiny and seemed to be coming from another world, a black and white unreal vidphone world encapsulated in the meaningless thing by her foot, where she couldn’t even see it; a voice drowned out by the surf-roar that cloaked her shoulders with sighing green tentacles, the fetid wet breath of torn babies within her green tentacles of light crawling up her back from within pushing her forward with an avalanche of dead children a million maggots writhing under her skin. And before her, above her, below her, all around her w
as the soothing black velvet nothingness of an infinite ocean, buoying like pillows to an endless, dreamless sleep, pure and clean and safe forever from pain and remorse and dead bodies of broken babies, calling, calling, calling, “Give yourself to me.”

  “Sara!”

  Jack’s voice was a fading cry from a world already abandoned, the memory fading, an unreal nightmare world of frog-green tentacles broken babies dripping slime under her skin the bone-white crocodile-smile of Benedict Howards on his green plastic lily-pad on a pile of dead bodies, forever and ever, and Jack chained to him by a thousand links, and each one of them her body…

  For him! For him!

  The taste of Jack at last free at last Jack all Jack was a delicious orgasmic spasm through the muscles of her legs (“Sara! Sara!” she heard him scream), and she too was free—free as a bird, with the air whistling through the pinions of her hair, weightless, buoyed, her consciousness expanding outward in rippling waves that merged with the blackness in streamers of mist till all that was left of what was hers alone was a blazing word-shape-smell-taste that whited out every sensory-synapse:

  JACK and stars spinning across her retinas JACK and

  the skin of her face pulled drum-tight JACK free

  fall nausea JACK mass rushing up JACK screams

  below JACK fear JACK acid freak-out JACK

  for you JACK I’m afraid JACK help me

  JACK no no JACK don’t want JACK

  death JACK forever JACK no

  JACK no JACK no JACK no

  JACK no JACK no no

  JACK flash of b-

  linding pain

  JAC-

  •

  20

  •

  Sara

  No! it ca-

  n’t have happen-

  ed. Sara you’re not

  Sara dead no! not dead

  not down there on the sidewalk

  in a puddle of—Sara! Sara! no no no,

  You can’t be dead! Can’t be dead! No! No! Sara!

  Sara you crazy bitch, how could you do a thing like this to me!

  How could you do a thing like this to me…The foulness, the utter selfish foulness of the thought brought Jack Barron’s mind back into reality from the point of anesthetic blackout into which it had retreated like a whipped dog howling.

  The vidphone screen before him showed a crazy slash of black sky over a section of the concrete parapet off which—

  He reached out, snapped off the vidphone, and in the same motion fumbled an Acapulco Gold out of the pack on his desk. He jammed it into his mouth, lit it with the table-lighter, and sucked the smoke in-out-in-out-in-out in savage compulsive pants.

  How could you do a thing like this to me—oh, Barron, you shit you! How could you do it to her? You bastard! You heartless motherfucker! Sara! Sara! You…you…

  He flagellated himself with images of her eyes: pool-deep eyes before she blew him wide and shiny my hero little girl eyes naked beside him in Berkeley attic cold eyes boring through him shouting cop-out! the day they broke up eyes glazing and opaqueing to stainless steel mirrors as their flesh crawled from each other the last night (last night! last night there ever was between them and a night spent as strangers!) poor lost phosphor-dot eyes like windows into gray on gray blind acid jungle inside naked and writhing, and I could see it building and building like runaway cancer, and all I could do was gibber into the fucking phone while her eyes grew crazier and crazier as she was sucked deeper and deeper into the acid freakout nightmare, eyes from the nowhere nonreality of LSD insanity, and all I could do was watch on the phone while she jumped; poor crazy lost eyes, and I couldn’t do a fucking thing but watch her jump!

  SaraSaraSara…No Sara any more, never, no Sara Sara Sara Sara Sara-shaped hole against the sky of his night that would never be filled, not in a million years, and he had a million years, dammit, a million years to be without her, a million years to watch her jump, million years to know he killed her—

  Bullshit, man! he thought. Stop trying to con yourself…Guilty, maybe you should feel it, but you don’t. You didn’t kill her, damn it, it was the acid, was nothing you did or could’ve done, was Sara freaking out into her own crazy bag again, doing it to save me, make me free to be the fucking Baby Bolshevik hero I never was…to save me…From what, from living? From caring? From giving a shit about what happens next? Sara…Sara…I didn’t kill you, you killed me!…killed the best things inside me, is all. Tore out my flesh-and-blood guts, replaced with electronic circuitry, can’t even make myself cry knowing you’re dead. Was nothing I did that killed you, Sara, was what I was. Murderer…vampire off babies…not even that, was it Sara?

  Was fucking cop-out, is all! Was seeing my bod owned by that fucker Howards, body not even my own, with slug-green pieces of immortality-slime drip-dripping inside me, was seeing me selling out to Bennie…You didn’t kill me, and I didn’t kill you, we were both dead already, died when we couldn’t stand to touch each other last night, that motherfucker Howards killed us both. Killed us both by making us immortal, now ain’t that a pisser?

  Sara…I can’t cry for you Sara, don’t have any tears left in me. But…I can kill for you, baby, kill that fucker Howards! Oh, yeah, I can kill for you, all right! Can hate, all right! Maybe you were right in your own dumb way, ’cause you’re gonna get what you wanted, you and those hundred million dumb bastards out there.

  Yeah, I’ll do a show like no one’s ever seen! They want their fucking hero, I’ll give him to them on a silver platter, see how they like it! Let the stupid bastards out there see where it’s really at for once in their lives—how’s that for a television first?

  The vidphone began to chime. Barron made the connection, and Vince Gelardi’s face appeared on the screen, ashen, stunned, and Barron knew that he knew even before Vince muttered: “Jack…the police just called…Sara…”

  “I saw it all happen, Vince,” he said quickly, determined to spare Vince the agony of telling him. “Don’t say anything. Don’t even tell me how sorry you are. I know…I know…”

  “Jack…I hate to have to bring it up but we go on the air in nine minutes. I’m trying to get through to the network brass so we can run an old tape, so you don’t have to—”

  “Forget it!” Barron snapped. “I’m gonna do the show tonight, gonna do it for Sara! Show biz, baby…the show must go on, and words from the same picture…”

  “Jack you don’t have to—”

  “But I do, man! More than any show in the history of this whole dumb business, this one’s gotta go on! See you in the studio, Vince—but thanks anyway.”

  “Jack,” Vince Gelardi said over the intercom circuit, his face gray and lifeless, all too real to come off real in the network-reality world behind the control booth glass, “look, you don’t have to go on the air. I checked with the powers that be, and I got the okay to run one of last month’s tapes if you…I mean…”

  Jack Barron sat down in the white chair behind the black-wash-over-kinesthop background, clocked the cameraman (cameraman he never noticed during the show) staring ashen-faced at him, saw that the promptboard was live and showed “3 Minutes,” and somehow he could sense the disaster-aura reaching all the way to the monkey block behind the control room.

  And it bugged him. Fucking network brass coming on like they really care how I feel with Sara Sara…Yeah, sure, all they want to know is does it mean a fiasco if I go on the air with her body not yet cold, where’s that crazy Barron’s head at now, Gelardi, think he can go on the air, Jeez, if we do a rerun unannounced now, after the stuff he’s been rapping out these past few weeks…Oh, my aching Brackett Count!

  But that, Barron thought, is show biz. The show must go on, there’s no business like show business, and like that. But why must the show go on? No big secret, it don’t go on, that audience out there might get the idea that there was only a human being like them behind that image, and that would screw up the ratings. Which is enough reason in this business to do anything.


  Yet Barron felt pissed that the whole damn crew was preparing its ulcers for a massive disaster. The show must go on—bullshit, sure, just a dumb-ass game, but what the hell isn’t? This show’s gonna go on, all right, and the brass won’t believe the ratings ’cause this is kamikaze night, and they’re gonna get the Big All, the topper to end all toppers, the greatest show on earth: Two living-color stars of stage, screen, and gutter politics going at each other for blood.

  “Snap out of it, Vince!” Barron said, cracking his voice like a whip for control. “I’m going on the air, and this is gonna be a show like no one’s ever seen. Stick with me, baby, keep me on the air no matter what I do, believe me, I know what I’m doing, and if you cut me off, and the network doesn’t back you up, you’re fired.”

  “Hey, man…” Vince crooned in a wounded tone of voice as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “It’s your show, Jack…”

  “Sorry, Vince, I didn’t mean to threaten you, I just gotta be sure you’re on my side and I stay on the air no matter what, and to hell with the network and the F.C.C.,” Barron said. “There’s a thing I gotta do that’s bigger than the show, and I have to know you won’t try to stop me. It’s nitty-gritty time, buddy: who you working for, the network or me?”

  “Where was I eight years ago?” Gelardi said, still hurting. “You’re the best in the business, you are this show. It’s your baby, not the network’s and not mine. You didn’t have to ask—you know I work for you.”

  “Okay, then hang on to your hat. Get me Bennie Howards on the line—and don’t worry, I guarantee he’ll go on,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.”

  “Calling out first?”

  “That’s the way we play it tonight. A television first—I bug me.”

  Gelardi shrugged, and a ghost of the old crazy-wop smile came back. “Who you want in back-up and safety?” the old Gelardi said. Good old one-track Vince!

  “No back-up or safety tonight, just me and Howards—mano a mano.”