Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  “Sara—”

  “You’ve got a short memory, Barron. Your wife signed the same contract too—makes her an accessory to murder just like you. There’s any murder trial, it’ll be a triple trial, she’s in it with us. And she never knew what was coming off, did she? You got her into it, and if you don’t play ball it’ll be you killing her. Don’t hand me any crap about murder. You’re a murderer too, Barron, whichever way you turn.”

  “You…you’ve told her…?”

  “Do I really look that dumb?” Howards said. “You’re a lunatic, who knows what you might do, even with your own life on the line. But Miss Sara Westerfeld, or Mrs. Jack Barron—whichever the hell it is—we know what she’s like, don’t we? Of course I haven’t told her. Why should I, that’s my final insurance. I don’t tell her a thing, so long as you play ball. That’s how I know I’ve got you. And I do have you now, don’t I, Barron? Come on, say it, I want to hear you say it.”

  Shit, Barron thought, he does have me. He knows it, I know it, he knows I know…I’m trapped! Can’t tell Sara, she’d…worse than leave me, she’d freak out altogether. Gotta…gotta…what? What the fuck can I do?

  “All right, Howards, for the moment we’ll play it your way.”

  “For the moment! That’s good, that’s real good, Barron. For the moment. For the next million years! And you know something, friend? Sooner or later you’re gonna thank me, you’ll see what I mean. You can’t help wanting to stay alive, can you? Immortal…fifty years or so, and you’ll understand it’s worth anything to be immortal, anything…eviscerated nigger bodies in heaps of…You’ll thank me, Barron. You’re immortal, you’re more than a man, your life’s worth a million of theirs. Give it time. You’ll learn to like it, my guarantee.”

  And from Howards’ mad eyes Barron sucked a fear, a mortal fear the like of which he had never felt before: fear that Howards might be right, fear that in fifty or a hundred or a thousand years the things inside him would rot him to a gutted hulk, fear that someday he might stare into those paranoid monstrous eyes and see—himself.

  18

  No way out, such a goddamn neat trap, Jack Barron thought as he paced the patio under the gray, overcast New York sky, feeling the damp chill of the lull between down-pours through the upturned collar of his sportjac. The setting sun painted the cloud layer with ugly smears of dirty purple, and the waning rush-hour street noises seemed to have been made more savage by the wet black mulch (compounded of rain and good old New York filth) that covered the sidewalks, streets, cars, people scurrying bug-like in the onrushing dusk twenty-three stories below.

  Tuesday night. Yeah, soon it’ll be night, and then morning, then dusk again, and then 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. And then…what, man, then what? What the fuck you gonna do? What can you do?

  Inside, Sara was playing one of the scratchy old Dylan albums she had brought up from her pad, and the grating old ricky-ticky voice from the simple funky past mocked him with a random moment of worn-out irony:

  “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…”

  Poor old Dylan should be alive now, get a charge out of how close to the nitty gritty he comes twenty years later. Poor paranoid bastard was just a little too early for real Paranoiasville, is all. Knew then where it’s at now, and wouldn’t it be cool if it could be that simple, the good old Samson-smash schtick, get in that studio chained to the satellite network and bring the whole fucking schmear down around everybody’s ears.

  And you could do it as easy as playing the tapes, riffing on Bennie and giving that hundred million Brackett Count audience the straight scam on slimy green glands drip-dripping the vampire life-blood of broken babies forever and ever into your veins, and how they got there, who put ’em there and why, tear ’em out bleeding and dripping and throw them in the faces of a hundred million dumb slobs and let ’em see just what a fucking hero their kick-’em-in-the-ass Black Shade Jack Barron really is, foam at the mouth and rip Howards and his Foundation and all his flunkies to little bloody pieces…All you gotta do is reach out and push, and all those stone walls come smashing down, pounding everything to pieces, you got the balls to stand there screaming and do yourself in, do Sara in…

  Barron winced as it came to him that the name of the song Sara was playing was “Tombstone Blues.” And that’s where it’s at, exactly where it’s at.

  Howards may be crazy as a bedbug, but he sure knows where one thing is at, and who knows, maybe he’s right, maybe only one thing does matter—life, is all, just staying alive. Comes nitty-gritty time, no man’s got the choice’ll do the kamikaze schtick. Sara…yeah, Sara in there, stoned silly on adrenalin since we got back from Colorado, thinking now we got it all made, immortal and together forever, and tomorrow night is Judgment Day for Bennie Howards, with Baby Bolshevik back-to-the-people Jack Barron ready to bring the Apocalypse and we march arm and arm into the sunrise, Battle Hymn of the Hail to the Chief Republic coming on in the background as we fade in on Forever.

  Sara…Sure, con yourself into believing it’s all for Sara; wasn’t for Sara, you’d kamikaze right into Howards, right into accessory to murder and banzai for the Emperor, live a thousand years.

  Sure you would. A thousand years…a million years, throw it all away. Sure you would. Wasn’t for Sara, you’d kill yourself dead to take Howards with you. Sure you would. The fuck you would!

  Dead…dead…Barron rolled the word around his mind, squeezed it like a lemon for the acid juice of gut-reality. Dead…death…No one ever came back to give you the straight scam on how it felt. Maybe someday they’ll thaw someone out of the Freezers and then you’ll know what it’s like to be dead before you die. But no slot for murderers in the Freezers, no flash-freeze straight from the electric chair sizzle—“If you black, when you go you don’t come back.” The Black Shade…Yeah, there’s another side to Luke’s Madison Avenue mickey mouse slogan, like dead, like death, like a million years of everything shot to shit or a million years of nothing. Sure you would. It’s all for Sara, old Jack Barron’s not afraid to die. The fuck he isn’t!

  Tombstone Blues…

  Yeah, you got class, Barron, you make the hero scene, you do it up brown; throw away more than thirty, forty years, throw away a million years forever, and who knows, maybe a hundred years from now, there’ll be losers huddling in some fucking attic thinking what a noble cat old Jack Barron was (remember him?) and a lot of good it’ll do you when you’re dead. The fucking Black Shade…

  “But if you black, when you go you don’t come back.”

  That what they see when they see a shade? Pale white papier-mâché mask over black reality black color of death black color of Forever black color of emptiness black color of loser black color of the jungle inside black babies black pit of black blood feeding a pale white forever-vampire?

  That’s the nitty-gritty choice—white or black, winner or loser, alive or dead, and no ground between. Stand alive forever on a pile of dead bodies—or be one of the bodies, that’s where it’s all at.

  Wasn’t for Sara, you’d be on the side of the losers, side of corpses dead forever and you with them forever—you’re the fucking Black Shade, aren’t you? Sure you are! Sure you would!

  And like a sewer leaking gray blood-muck it began to rain again, a dirty gray New York uptight rain straight from special effects.

  Before him, the city was a dirty wash of colorless gray on gray, and in the living room behind him Sara had turned on the color organ and it was scintillating the room with colors…music…the homey orange glow of the firepit over the rich red carpeting and wood-paneled walls…Sara, bouncing about, alive and innocent and immortal…the living-color science-fiction California of the mind he had created twenty-three stories above the gray New York murk, and he had to let the rain hit him, fat and wet and dirty, for long gray minutes before it bugged him enough to g
ive him the balls to go inside.

  The living room was rank with the taste of Forever. He could taste it in the thickness of the carpeting the ersatz phoenix-flame of the firepit the jang of steel guitar over harmonica-wheeze over the squeaking-door voice of Dylan (dead Dylan), the drum-roll of the rain on the skylight facets flashing with random color organ patters the sweet funk of potsmoke in the air the wall of electronic gizmos in living-color satellite-network reality-contact with the whole wide universe, listen to the smell of Forever flashing! Life!

  Life…Life was orange wood smell flames searing steak juices trickling down potsmoke music color blue color red color emerald clinking off the glass skylight facets, was harmonica riffs honking the night, was every tension-feel of every muscle moving as he walked across the carpet giving under his weight, was air going in-out-in bringing the smell of rain of flame of pot of the woman-musk of Sara, was the taste of his tongue in his mouth, was everything happening every moment in the electric universe inside him, was the surge of his own blood in his arteries—and life was Sara.

  White skin he could feel with his eyes taste with his nose, rounded nakedness framed in an open black velvet robe lying with legs unselfconsciously bare and open on the orange-furred couch, moving her loose blonde hair in delayed afterbeat to the rhythm of the music, waving a half-smoked Acapulco Gold (getting ashes on the rug again, dammit!), the piebald flashes from the color organ ricocheting off the skylight facets and caressing her flesh with a thousand scintillating fingers of lovely-obscene stroking light, and on her face an open smile of feral child-happiness child-innocent of babies torn apart slug-green glands drip-dripping behind big brown nipples of pleasure screams of dying black faces behind—cool it, man, cool it!

  Like the best image-Sara ever fucking twenty-six-year-old image-Jack Barron stage center on the monitor of his mind, she was there and perfect, breasts still tight-skinned massive softnesses smooth skin of Berkeley Acapulco L.A. nights hair freely flowing, there in his pad, in his California-wet-dream controlled reality, would always be there, young soft gonad-vision forever, alive forever, his forever, Sara forever…And beneath the soft smooth nakednesses, slug-green trails of black baby-blood drip-dripping drip-dripping drip-dripping…

  “Jack! You’re sopping.”

  She bounced to her feet, breasts moving nice and easy hide-and-peek like puppy-noses with the tensual black velvet robe as she walked barefoot across the carpet in long overstrides toward him and he moved real cool-like toward her, kicking off damp slippers (the fuck with the rug!), tossing aside the sportjac, and then letting her playful fingers take off the damp shirt as he functionally dropped his pants, kicked them away, and they stood lightly touching each other in robe and jockey shorts.

  Eye to eye, pool-deep eyes of Berkeley-past-New York-present not merged into a forever-future, eyes that had won, had won him on her back-in-the-old-Berkeley-bag terms, had won immortality like a free lollipop to lick forever, forever hers, forever free, no piper to pay, woman’s eyes shining, that had won every wet-dream of the girl, all in those hungry eat-me eyes—and it was all a lie.

  All a shuck, and tomorrow night she’ll know, know for sure where her big hero is at when I start doing riffs on Bennie’s Freezing competition instead of giving him the knife she’s expecting. No way of keeping that from her, but at least she doesn’t ever have to know about slimy slug-green baby glands drip-dripping inside her.

  He dropped his gaze from her innocent accusing eyes, rested his attention on the tactile shape of her neutral crotch-reality body, breasts hanging free and easy in the open robe over the kettledrum of her belly with its off-center mole a second navel leading his eyes to the haircurled triangle-parting of her smooth-skin curving full woman thighs, all so tactually hyperreal, like the massive sculptured reality of a Michelangelo realer-than-real living-marble statue and, if he played Bennie’s game, just as eternal.

  “Jack…” She smiled, sighed, misinterpreting the sweep of his eyes, let the cool black velvet robe slither off her shoulders as she wriggled her arms out of the sleeves, breasts bobbing, then half-threw, half let herself fall against him, soft breasts against his self-felt hardness, image-contrast man-woman interface, with his consciousness living on the line between as he felt the full woman-strength of her arms contracted around his ribcage, strong, young, fiercely-tender woman-arms, young and strong and smooth like…like a healthy female animal, like young, like strong, like healthy, like forever.

  She giggled against his chest, hooked her naked leg behind his knee, pulled back against the joint with her leg as she shoved her body-weight forward, and toppled him like a puppy over on his back, the warm rug-fur on his naked skin an electric charge erotic contrast with the smooth cool of the velvet robe he had half fallen on. He took the fall lightly, pulling her mock-fiercely down on top of him, dug the kick of the hard real woman-muscles of her shoulders beneath the skin-patina of softness on his fingertips as she moved, round on round, belly to belly against him.

  She pulled off his shorts, and now they were naked against each other, primal Sara pure flesh-taste of rounded masses moving against him in slow funky rhythm, and he reached out with both hands and smoothed her sweet wicked ass real and round and warm legs contracting froglike up and around him, opening herself to him, coaxing him in hair-on-hair teasing as her mouth moved up his chest in a quicksilver trail of hard little biting kisses up his neck across his jaw, and he caught a glimpse of white wet pearled teeth and pink tongue-tip, closed his eyes, hips picking up on her slow-building pelvic rhythm as their mouths met.

  Mouth to open mouth, tasting her breath in the warm wet soul-deep cave, and like an eruption of massive world-filling wet life-flesh her tongue poured itself into his mouth, filling it, engulfing it, overwhelming him with wet-on-wet sly man-woman role-reversal pleasure, filling his world with a huge, blind, wet-writhing organism, an amorphous damp creature with a will of its own like a blind pulsing thing from deep inside body-secrets, like a thing of glandular sentience from deep inside life’s secret juices overflowing drip-dripping wet huge alive and pulsing, drip-dripping alien life-juices into his mouth, moving and mocking and filling his cheeks with pulsing naked flesh-secret, heavy syrup drip-dripping like green slug-slime tongue-gland warm-blood wetness from carcinoma-ridden bodies of broken babies, choking, drowning him in stolen life-juices, cloying oversweet immortality-honey from black children sleeping the long slide to Forever, catheters glucose-needles meeting in obscene trunk-line tube of death down his throat, her heavy huge rolling gland-organism-tongue choking him, choking him, choking him, retch-reflexes building against his will toward a gut-heaving spasm of broken black babies glands wet and writhing-tongue life-warm blood-filled blind organism, stolen life-juices filling his mouth in horrid pelvic rhythm—

  In a mindless spasm-reaction, he pushed her mouth away as the retch wracked through him in a mercifully-dampening anticlimax, and she lay inert atop him, confused eyes bleeding as he stared at her like a cornered animal, trapped and panting.

  “Jack…? Wha…? You…”

  She stared down at him with wounded, stunned eyes as he felt the membranes of his cheeks singe-contract like an alum wither-reaction, his tongue a lump of dead shoeleather in his own mouth.

  I just can’t cut it, he realized. Can’t live with the taste of my woman the taste of slug-green glands, tasting the stolen life-juices inside her every time I touch her. I gotta tell her, or we’ll be lumps of dirty meat to each other forever, living a lie forever, lost to each other forever. Gotta tell her, is all, no matter what happens.

  “Truth between us, Sara,” he said. “I…there’s something I’ve just gotta tell you.”

  She stretched against him, cupped his cheeks in hands that felt like damp leather. “What’s with you? I’ve never seen you like this…When I kissed you it was like kissing a…(Her body twitched against him.) And you got…sick, didn’t you? I felt it.”

  “It’s not you, Sara. I swear it’s not you, baby. It’s me,
the whole fucking world, Benedict Howards…”

  “Benedict Howards? What in hell does making love to me have to do with Benedict Howards?”

  Barron grimaced. How the fuck do I say it: see, it’s like this, baby, you’re a murderer, dig? Got stolen glands inside you, just like me, life-juices of broken babies oozing so bloody thick I taste it when I kiss you?

  “Sara—oh, what the fuck!” he snarled, feeling a hopeless spasm of futility, a get-it-over-with, riff-it-out, retch-reaction. “There just isn’t any easy way to tell you. We’re murderers, Sara, we’re both murderers. Yeah, we got immortality inside us—but you know what it looks like? Looks like slimy green glands—ever see a gland?—all green and wet and dripping ugly slimy stuff, but it keeps you alive, and us it keeps alive forever, glands is all, and you live forever. But they’re not our glands, Sara, we stole ’em. Stole ’em from children, dead, broken children…”

  And his body writhed in a gooseflesh spasm.

  Her eyes seemed to draw back light-years distant; he felt her body go limp, her hands fall like dead flounders to his chest as she muttered, “What are you talking about?”

  “What Howards did to us,” he said, “the immortality treatment. It’s a gland-transplant, is all. They irradiate glands to keep ’em in perfect balance, and then they keep your body from aging, forever, something they call Homeostatic Endocrine Balance. But not our glands, dig? Children’s glands. It only works on children’s glands. That’s why Howards killed Hennering—he found out the Foundation is buying the children, soaking them in hard radiation to balance their endocrine system, then transplanting their glands to make adults immortal.”

  “But…but the children, what does…losing their glands do to the children?”

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Barron shouted, the vibration bouncing her bare breasts against him. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? It kills them, Sara, it kills them! If the radiation hasn’t killed them first, the transplant operation kills them, and they just throw away the bodies like so much garbage. Because you and I are alive and immortal, two kids Howards bought for the purpose are dead. It’s murder, I’m trying to tell you, pure, simple murder!”