Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  Howards cut her off with a pseudo-chuckle sound. “I’m much more interested in life than in art, aren’t you, Sara?” he asked. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Then, with little-girl prim petulance: “And I never said you could call me Sara.”

  Howards ignored it all as if speaking into a one-way vidphone connection. “You’re in the kinesthop business,” he said, “and I’m in the life business. The business of eternal life. Don’t you find that the least bit interesting?”

  “I don’t find you or your horrid Foundation interesting at all,” she said. “You’re a loathsome man, and what you do is sickening and disgusting, setting a price on…on life itself. The only interesting thing about you, Mr. Howards, is how you manage to look into a mirror without puking. What do you want from me, why did you drag me here?”

  “No one dragged you here,” Howards said smoothly. “You came of your own free will. You weren’t…abducted.”

  “And if I hadn’t come of my own free will, I would’ve been abducted, wouldn’t I?” she said, feeling anger burning away fear. “You can go fuck yourself with your stainless-steel cock, Benedict Howards!”

  “I’ll tell you why you came here of your own free will,” said Benedict Howards. “You can’t con me with that purity crap; no one cons Benedict Howards. You came here because you’re fascinated, like everyone else, you came here to get a whiff of forever. Forget about conning me, I’ve seen it all, isn’t a man or woman on Earth wouldn’t like a place in a Freezer ready and waiting when they die, wouldn’t want to know that when that black circle closes in, snuffs you out like a candle, it’s not forever, blackness isn’t forever they don’t fill you with formaldehyde and feed you to the worms, and no more Sara Westerfeld, not ever. Better to close your eyes that last time knowing it’s not the last time, doesn’t have to be a last time, in a century or a millenium—doesn’t matter ’cause all you feel is a good night’s sleep—they’ll thaw you out, fix you better than new, and you’re young and healthy and beautiful forever. That’s why you came here, and no one’s twisting your arm, you can leave any time you want to. Go ahead, turn your back on immortality, I dare you.”

  And all the while his eyes were measuring her like a sausage, cold weasel-eyes sulphur-satan eyes, watching his own words bounce back to him off her face, feeding back to his calm, sure, basilisk smile that said he knew it all, knew next words she would say why she would say them knew her insides knew her buttons better than she did, and for reasons of his own which she could never encompass, was about to push them.

  “I…I don’t suppose you brought me here to discuss existential philosophy,” she said, wanly.

  “Philosophy?” Benedict Howards said, making the word shit in his mouth. “I’m not giving you some Berkeley academic bullshit, I’m talking hard reality, woman—death, hardest reality there is. You know anything harder? I don’t, and I’ve looked death square in his ugly face, and you’d better believe that, fading closing circle of black with your life leaking away in tubes and bottles, is the ugliest face there is. And that’s going to happen to you, Sara Westerfeld, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Next week, or next year, or sixty years from now you’re gonna be looking down into that pit with no bottom, and the last thing you’ll ever think is that you’re never gonna think anything again. You took that in Philosophy at Berkeley, Miss Westerfeld?”

  “What are you trying to do to me?” Sara screamed from the rim of a dark ugly crater bottomless hole being nothingness spume of evil festering lizardman scrawling unspeakable terminal fear-images on the shithouse walls of her mind.

  “I’m trying to buy you, Miss Westerfeld,” he said softly. “And, believe me, you’ll be selling. No one says no to Benedict Howards. Because I pay good coin; I buy you totally, but I pay totally too. I buy with what everyone wants.”

  “You’re insane!” Sara said. “I don’t want any part of you at any price for any reason at any time.”

  “Think what it’s like to be dead,” Benedict Howards almost cooed hypnotically. “Dead…nothing but a pile of worm-eaten flesh rotting underground. That’s the end of you, Sara, the end of all your goddamned principles, the end of everything you ever were or wanted to be. You don’t beat death, Miss Westerfeld; everything else you ever do or don’t do adds up to nothing but a pile of garbage sooner or later. And it’s always sooner.”

  “Why…why…” Sara mumbled. No one talks about things like that, she thought. You live with it by ignoring it, whiting it out, or they peel you screaming off walls. Why don’t you scream when you hear yourself, Benedict Howards?

  “I’m telling you about death so you’ll value your life,” Howards continued, “your immortal life. Because you don’t have to die, Miss Westerfeld, not permanently, not ever. A place in a Freezer, secure, yours when you die—but you’ll never really die. You’ll just go to sleep old one day and wake up young the next. Doesn’t that beat being dead, Miss Westerfeld?”

  “A place in the Freezer—in return for what? I don’t have that kind of money. Besides, it’s not fair—a few people who have something you want going on and on, and everyone else dying and gone forever. That’s what’s so horrid about you and your Foundation—people dying by the thousands and a couple million rich bastards like you living forever! A Public Freezer Program would—”

  “Now who’s a goddamned philosopher?” sneered Benedict Howards. “Sure, no one should die. But since I can’t Freeze everyone, I Freeze those who have something to offer in return. I’m a monster because I can’t do favors for everyone? Public Freezer horseshit! I’ve got the only viable Freezer system that exists or ever’ll be; you do business with me, or you’re eaten by the worms. You’ll feel goddamned virtuous when you die, but it won’t make you any less dead. What do you say, you can get up and leave and never hear from me again?”

  Aware only of her flesh, lips, blood-filled tongue, as she shaped the words, saliva-taste, tooth-feel of mortality, Sara said, “All right, so I’m still sitting here. Sure, I don’t want to die, but you don’t have me yet. There are still a few things I’d never do, not even to live forever.”

  She flashed horror-images of fates worse than death on the screen of her mind: Mutilating Jack’s crotch with her teeth devouring living puppy whole rotting in ordure for a thousand years murdering her mother fucking Howards…Hungry hoping search for prices too high to pay to smug, ferret-eyed, all-knowing A-head satan, she felt powerless in cutting-edge monster reality, knowing truth unbearable—death is the end, what crime too terrible to make her embrace it? Please, she prayed to her mind, let it be something too terrible to stomach!

  “Relax,” said Benedict Howards. “I don’t want you to murder anyone, and I’m not hot for your body. You want to live forever you gotta do just one little thing. You gotta go get your ass in the sack with Jack Barron.”

  It hit her where she wasn’t, through no defenses at all to the soft woman-flesh of her mind. No unspeakable blood-crime, just Jack’s mouth on mine again body hard angles filling me tearing me apart with sweetness laughing tongues together in our secret places mingling of juices—Jack! Jack!

  But she saw the cold measuring eyes of Benedict Howards and it all made hard-edged power-sense. How much does this slimy thing know? she thought and knew that Howards must know everything, everything that factored into his pattern of power. Jack’s an important power-creature now, a measurable quantity of A-head reality-power, measured by Howards, wanted by Howards, maybe feared by Howards too, and I’m just the price Jack sets on delivery: Sara Westerfeld, back in bed, in love like Berkeley days, but on now-Jack cop-out terms. Go back to Jack, and then live forever with lying ghost of years-dead Jack slunk so low he sends lizard-man Howards to pimp for him…

  “So Jack’s slunk this low?” she asked cynically. “And what’s he supposed to do for you when you deliver my body?”

  Benedict Howards laughed. “You’ve got it all wrong. Barron knows not
hing at all about this, and he never will. Not from me…and not from you either, eh? I’m not selling you to Barron. You’re going to get Barron to sell something to me. I want Jack Barron to sign a free Freeze Contract just like the one I’m offering you. And that’s the deal. The day you get Barron to sign a Freeze Contract with the Foundation, I sign yours. And that’s all you’ll ever have to do with me, after that you and me are even. You can leave Barron or stay with him or even tell him the whole truth, it’s no skin off my teeth then. What do you say, isn’t it the bargain of a lifetime? A long, long lifetime…?”

  “But I don’t love Jack,” she insisted. “I despise him almost as much as I despise you.”

  “Your love life doesn’t concern me,” Howards said, “even though I’m reasonably sure you’re lying. Let’s not kid around, you’re not Little Mary Sunshine. You’re humping everyone in creation. Tell me you’re in love with all of them. So make it with one more man who means…nothing to you for a couple weeks, long enough to get him to sign that contract, and you’ve got immortality, and that’s more than you get for screwing half the Village. And we both know you can get him to sign, we both know he still loves you, eh? And who knows, you may find yourself liking it, we both know that too, don’t we, Miss Westerfeld?”

  “You’re a foul, slimy man,” Sara whined. “I hate you! I hate you!” Turn your back on it, she told herself. Walk away walk away from forever forever walk away from horrid power-reality walk away from Jack from Howards let two lizard-men tear each other to pieces, they deserve each other.

  But Jack…Jack’s in danger; sleepwalking through a forest of hard steel knives poor blind Jack surrounded by—blind? Yes! Yes! Blind! Oh, you fool, Benedict Howards, you horrid blind fool! And it spread itself out before her like a kinesthop gestalt vision in her mind: Jack, poor blind, cop-out Jack, sleepwalking dream of plastic success, faceless death-god Howards’ spiderweb trap spun from bone-white lair around him. Me, last thread in web of evil; love, my love, Jack’s love, used like spider-spit cable in pattern of power.

  Could it really be Benedict Howards is such a fool? Fool, yes! Blind to love, tuned out from love’s power—the fatal flaw in the bone-white lizard-plan. Because turned-on Jack, angry Jack, love-filled Berkeley Jack-and-Sara Jack would become apocalyptic angel to destroy Howards destroy Foundation lovers strong against the night against which no faceless lizard-man death-god could stand, against the old Jack Barron that was meant to awaken…

  I’ll give you Jack Barron! she thought, but I’ll give you my Jack Barron. Be brave. Yes, yes, take the deal, go to Jack, love him, get him to sign the contract…

  “Those contracts,” she said, tightly-contained, shrewd, “they’ll be the usual contracts, public irreversible? We both get to keep the legal copies?”

  Howards smiled a knowing smile. “I’d hardly expect either of you to trust me,” he said. “You’ll both get standard contracts, in triplicate.”

  “You’re a shrewd, ruthless, ugly man,” Sara said. “You knew you’d win in the end, and you have. It’s a deal.”

  Yes, she thought, a deal. Dance to your tune till the contracts are signed, Jack and me together again, this time forever. Forever! And not the new-style cop-out Jack, but the old Berkeley Jack-and-Sara Jack. Yes! Drag Jack down, rub his nose in lizard-man shit, then tell him, tell him every dirty word, how Howards used me, used him, uses everyone, made me his whore…

  Then an angry Jack, apocalyptic angel to destroy you, Benedict Howards, Jack, my Jack, awake and alive again, Jack and Sara back together again the way it was meant to be. And this time, forever. Forever!

  “A pleasure doing business with a girl like you,” said Benedict Howards with a sly smile, flashing ferret-eyes seeing into her belly, sending a cold fear-tremor through her secure have-cake-and-eat-it-too plans—how much does the lizard-man know, how deeply do his weasel-eyes see?

  Be brave, be brave! she told herself. Lizard-man death-god’s blind to power of love color wavelength he just can’t see, can’t factor love into spiderweb of power. What kind of man could suppose he could turn warm soft love into cold steel-edged weapon of paranoid power?

  6

  “Marry me, Carrie baby,” Jack Barron said in the warm, naked afterglow of all night long as the morning sun shone through the bubble-skylight of the bedroom on the plastigrass greenery ivy-covered bedstead rubber-plant patio off-pink flesh of Carrie Donaldson and wrote an Adam-and-Eve scenario for the penthouse bedroom set.

  Carrie Donaldson muttered unintelligible sarcasm into the pillow beside him. She always wakes up hard, Barron thought, can’t stand a woman does the whole bleary, bruised, wilted-orchid schtick the morning after; Sara used to wake up on the bounce, on me, all over, bang-bang, wake me up, not vice-versa. You asked for it, Miss Donaldson, keep an eye-body-lock-on-kook-Jack-Barron network orders smart-ass chick.

  He reached behind, fumbling through reptile-warm bedstead ivy, flipped a switch on the control console, waited for reaction as the glass wall-door to the patio slid aside and a naked May morning twenty-third floor breeze rippled plastigrass, tingled his toes, goosefleshed the trim uncovered ass of Carrie Donaldson. She squealed, reflex-fetaled against him, and looked up from the pillow hard-awake, said: “Fuck you, you goddamned sadist. I’m freezing!”

  Barron turned a rheostat on the console to an intermediate position; electric heating coils built into the mattress began to send warmth up through their bodies, blood-temperature bed in crisp outdoor breezes. “I hope you don’t mean that literally; that was quite a night, and I don’t feel up to it. Let me catch my breath, anyway.”

  “About as serious as your proposal,” she said, rolling over on her back away from him, small breasts foreshortened mounds bellyskin drumtight from protruding ribcage, juncture of long muscular legs still suffused with redness, Barron noted with masculine me-Tarzan satisfaction. “I think I know how Benedict Howards must feel.”

  Barron arched an interrogative eyebrow.

  “Thoroughly screwed,” Carrie Donaldson said with punchline deadpan flash-smile timing.

  Barron uttered a short, pro forma laugh. Good old Carrie, he thought, favorite all-business no-bullshit network watch-dog All-American lay. He stared at her tight cool face, hard-edged, composed even under rat’s nest morning-after long black hair, wondered what went on in that network-flunky head of hers. Too good a fuck to fake it, he thought, but where’s the connection between her cunt and her head at, anyway? What’s she really getting off me? No better balling than she’d get from anyone else who could keep up with her one for one, and all the emotion of an anaconda. Head filled with open-secret network orders, box with plenty of heat for anyone who can cut it, and no gut-connection at all between. Just once, Miss Carrie Donaldson, I’d like to really fuck with you, fuck with that so-called mind of yours, that is. But how do you mindfuck network-programmed electric-circuitry-computer with sexy long black hair?

  You bug me, Carrie, he thought, ball you week after week, lots of body action, and nothing going on with your head at all. Network calculation that fine? Are powers that be aware good old Jack Barron digs perpetual cool-head challenge without gut-involvement, stasis spice of sex-life, or too much smarts for network bigwig monkeys?

  “What’s going on in that furry head of yours?” Carrie said, flicking at hairs dribbling around his ears with fingers cool against his earshells.

  “Now there’s a turn-around question if ever I—” Barron was interrupted by the chime of the bedroom vidphone extension. He twisted over on his back on one elbow to face the control console, punched the hold button, transferred the call to the living room complex, remote-activated the gas jets of the living room firepit, jumped out of bed, walked bare-ass into the living room, noted with wry amusement that Carrie, alerted to possible business function of call by network head-programming, was trailing, just as mother-naked, a few steps behind him.

  Barron went to the wall complex, took the standard vidphone out of its niche next to the automati
c vidphone recorder, sprawled on the deep-pile red carpeting, positioned the vidphone camera to show only his face, made the connection, impulsively turned on the recorder and said, “Jack Barron here,” as Carrie squatted down to his left, judiciously out of range of the vidphone camera.

  Barron started as the vidphone screen showed the egg-bald skull, broad neoslavic face of Gregory Morris. Republican fluke (squeaking in between powerful S.J.C., and Democratic candidates) Governor of California, de facto head of the semivestigial Republican Party, saw that Carrie recognized Morris—cool secretary-eyes a shade wider—he recovered his cool as he added up the points Morris had just made for him with Carrie.

  “Good morning, Mr. Barron,” Morris said, confident voice-of-power, fake-power, thought Barron, without a hell of a lot to back it up. “And congratulations.”

  What the hell’s this? Barron thought, sneaking a glance at Carrie, eyes ever wider, wet lips open, digging boss-man spoiled-brat network-charge lover flapping jaws with real live Governor in the altogether, knowing that whatever the fuck Morris wanted, what he meant to Jack Barron was a way to play with Carrie’s head at last, knowing just how and for what he would play this call, with Brackett Audience Count of exactly one, namely Carrie Donaldson.

  “Congratulations for what, Morris?” He said, flunky-accenting the name, and yes, now Carrie’s eyes were strictly eating him up.

  “For your last show,” Morris said. “A first-rate hatchet-job. You must’ve cost Howards’ Freezer Bill five votes in the Senate, maybe a dozen in the House. You’re about to make history, Mr. Barron. That show impressed a lot of people, important people. You know that the Republican Party opposes the Utility Bill because it would stifle free enterprise in the—”

  “Horseshit,” Barron said, digging effect of word on notorious prude Morris, effect of effect on Carrie as Morris pretended the breech of fartsy gentleman etiquette hadn’t happened. “You oppose the Freezer Bill because there’s big Foundation money behind various Democrats, and you know you’re permanently off Howards’ gravy train, and you’d love to sell out too except Howards ain’t buying. It’s a little early in the day for mickey mousing, Morris. What’s on your mind?”