Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad

  “All right,” Barron said with razors in his voice, “I’ll tell ’em!” He reached into a pocket, pulled out the same blank papers he had used before.

  “See this, folks? This is a Freeze Contract, a very special Freeze Contract. It entitles the client to have the Foundation for Human Immortality make him immortal…”

  He paused, waved the paper at the camera like a bloody shirt.

  “This is my contract,” he said.

  And the promptboard flashed “Off the Air.”

  The commercial rolled, and behind the glass of the control booth Barron could see the confusion, the deathwatch smell, and Vince’s face seemed ten years older as he stared through the glass and then spoke into the intercom circuit:

  “Jack what are you—”

  “Keep me on the air, Vince,” Barron said.

  “What in hell is going on? Do you realize what you’re doing?”

  Do I realize what I’m doing! Barron thought. Did I ever realize what I was doing before tonight?

  “Just keep me on the air, Vince,” Barron said, “and make damn sure Howards stays on the phone.”

  Gelardi hesitated, and Barron could read the pain on his face as he said: “The network brass is screaming. You’ve laid them open to the biggest libel suit in history. They’re ordering me to keep you off the air. I’m sorry…”

  “This is my show, Vince,” Barron shouted, “and you can tell those fuckers to get stuffed! You can also tell them that every word I’ve said is true, and the only way they can avoid a libel suit is to keep me on the air and let me prove it.”

  “That’s pretty dirty pool,” Gelardi said as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.”

  “It’s a pretty dirty world, Vince,” Barron said, and he broke the intercom connection.

  How’s this for the old power-junk, Barron thought. Benedict Howards totally raving out of his mind, and I’ve got him trapped on my turf where I make all the rules, can change ’em anytime I want. Howards, with all his power, with his dirty fingers in every Democratic pie, I can do more than save myself—that’s no real sweat now—I can kick the whole cabal that runs the country to pieces, throw the next election so wide open anyone might win. Right here, right now, live!

  A dream, yeah, a Jack-and-Sara dream, just me standing at the focus of everything and kicking the whole rotten schmear apart. Dream made reality—I got the monster that knows where all the bodies are buried (shit, who you think buried them in the first place!) right where I want him, ready to pick him apart…

  Sara! Sara! If only you were here to see the show now, baby! Bug Jack Barron goes down, it’ll go down with a bang that’ll take the whole sorry mess with it. Sara…Sara…it’s the only way I know how to cry for you.

  He stared at the meaningless commercial on the monitor as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” and knew that in half a minute his image, a reality that was realer than real, would burn into a hundred million eyes as if they were in the room with him.

  No, they would be sucked in deeper than that, they would be in his head, behind his eyes, seeing and hearing only what he wanted them to, nothing more and not a phosphor-dot less.

  And in a strange reversal of perspective, he saw that if they all were a part of him, the image-Jack Barron was also a part of them. What he had always avoided had come at him from where he least expected it—Bug Jack Barron, like it or not, was power, terrible, unprecedented power, and with it came the unavoidable choice that had faced every power-junkie since time began: to have the sheer gall to fake being something greater than a man, or cop-out on the millions who had poured a part of themselves into your image and be something less.

  And as the promptboard flashed “On the Air,” Jack Barron knew there was only one way he could play it. Been called a lot of things, he thought, but humble was never one of them!

  On the screen, the pack of Acapulco Golds fades out and is replaced by a face, an expanded vidphone image, gray, fuzzy, somehow bloated. There is something inhuman about the eyes, a too-bright rodent emptiness and the mouth is trembling, the lips beaded with spittle.

  Over this close-up of Benedict Howards, a voice, controlled, unwavering, yet with an undertone of suppressed agony that gives it total conviction, the voice of Jack Barron:

  “Surprise! Surprise! We’re back on the air, and in case you tuned in late, the man you’re looking at is Benedict Howards. The man you’re looking at thought he could buy anyone in the United States, me included, and you know something—he was right.”

  The black and white face on the screen seems to shout something soundlessly at this, as if the words will not come, and then suddenly it is gone and the face of Jack Barron, in close-up, fills the screen. His sandy hair is a tangle as if the pregnancy of the moment has forbidden him to comb it; his eyes seem huge, leaping out of the screen from deeply-shadowed pits, and somehow he looks older and younger all at once.

  “Think you couldn’t be bought, out there?” he says, and the words are bitter, knowing, yet also somehow ironically forgiving. “Pretty sure of that, aren’t you? So was I, baby, so was I. But what if the man that was buying was Benedict Howards, and the coin he was paying for your bod was eternal life? You so sure now? Really? Then think about what it’s like to be dead. You say you can’t? Of course you can’t, ’cause you can’t nothing when you’re dead. Think about that, because you’re all going to die, gonna be nothing—dead. Unless Benedict Howards thinks he has a good reason to give you eternal life. And he thought he had a good reason to buy me—so he bought, and I sold. No excuses, friends, I just didn’t want to die. Would you? So now I’m immortal, with the glands of a dead child sewn inside my hide. How’s that grab you? You hate me—or is that twinge in your gut just envy? But before you make up your mind…”

  Now the left half of the screen is filled with the face of Benedict Howards, a gray specter of menacing madness that Jack Barron pins with his big green eyes as he says: “Go ahead, Howards, tell them the rest.”

  “Rest…?” Benedict Howards mumbles like a lost little boy. “What rest? Isn’t any rest, just fading black circle life leaking away in plastic tubes eviscerated niggers…you’re killing me, Barron, throwing me to the black circle of death closing in choking me choking me…you’re killing me! Rest…? Rest…?”

  Jack Barron’s sky-blue sportjac and yellow shirt, his sandy hair and wounded eyes, seem like an oasis of embattled humanity beside the gray gray madness that radiates from the left half of the screen, as unreal and preternatural as a grainy newsreel of Adolph Hitler.

  “You forgot your little kicker, didn’t you Bennie?” Barron says. “Back in Colorado, folks, Bennie told me I’d never have the b—, ah, cojones to do what I’m doing now. Remember Bennie? Remember the contract? Remember the special clause you wrote in just for this occasion? Remember what you said you’d do?”

  Howards face seems to expand like a gray balloon, and it fills the entire screen and he begins to babble, his voice dopplering upward in pitch as the words pour out faster and faster: “I’ll get you Barron, swear I’ll get you for this, you murderer you killer on the side of the fading black circle closing in, you killed me, Barron, get you kill you like you’re killing me…”

  Jack Barron’s living-color image appears in the lower-lefthand quadrant, a frail, vivid splotch of fleshy humanity, threatened by yet somehow more cogent than the gray newsreel monster surrounding him, a contrast that makes you proud to be a man.

  “Got your name on the contract in black and white,” Howards babbles shrilly, “a legal confession in any court in the country. Murder! Yeah, he’s a murderer, accessory to murder, I can prove it, got his name on the contract accepting legal liability for the results of the immortality treatment—if it’s murder, sends me to the chair, you fry with me, Barron; you’re a murderer too!” Coming from the gray unreal monster, the words are unreal, and there is a blessed relief of tension when the images reverse and Barron’s flesh-and-blood face fills three-quarters of the screen,
and Howards’ black and white newspaper photo face appears tiny in the lower-left quarter of the screen, as if a more natural order has been restored.

  “Too? I’m a murderer too?” Barron says, and every syllable seems to carry a total conviction, coming as it does from a man, not an image.

  “You are! You know you are I can prove it, you’re a murderer too!” the little newsreel figure says.

  Jack Barron turns from the thing below him, stares out from the screen with pain and fury written in those huge green eyes. Those wounded human eyes.

  “I’m a murderer too,” he says. “You heard the man, folks, too. I’m a murderer too. Didn’t I tell you I sold out to Howards? He made me immortal, and to get that I signed a contract that made me legally liable for every result of that treatment, including a charge of murder. Yeah, murder, because the Foundation’s been buying children, killing them and transplanting their glands, and I’ve got pieces of some poor dead kid sewn inside me. So I’m a murderer too.”

  The image of Benedict Howards winks out, and the face of Jack Barron fills the entire screen. And as it does, something seems to happen to that hard-edged face. It goes soft, vulnerably soft, and the big eyes seem to become wet and shiny, guilty, self-accusing—a face that makes you want to comfort the hurt soul behind it, a face that in its pain bears the mark of unquestionable wrenching truth.

  And when Barron speaks, his voice is quiet, subdued, without an iota of guile in it:

  “I’m going to ask something of you out there that I’ve never asked before. I’ve got no right to do it, but I’m going to ask you to believe something just because I say it’s true. I didn’t know. I really didn’t know that my immortality meant killing a child until I woke up in a hospital bed and Benedict Howards told me.

  “Look, I’m no little tin saint, and we all know it. I admit I wanted to live forever bad enough to sell out to Benedict Howards, and you’ve got every right to hate me for that. But murdering children is something I would never stomach under any circumstances for any reason, and that’s all I’m asking you to believe. Proof? Howards has all the proof on his side, the signed contract and the best witnesses money can buy to say that I knew what I was doing. And you’d better believe it, money can buy plenty. The only proof I’ve got that I’m telling the truth is that I’m right here in front of you, laying my life in your hands and saying it, telling you the whole truth because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise, and to hell with what happens to me. It’s all up to you out there. I ask you to believe that I’m telling the truth.”

  Silence, three full seconds of dead silence that seem to crawl on forever, as the face of Jack Barron stares out from the screen, the eyes like a pair of open wounds, windows into the soul within, hurt eyes, strangely humble eyes, and yet with a certain open defiance, a guileless defiance with no defenses but the truth. And in that very open and defenseless defiance, the certainty of the truth behind.

  An unbearable moment of human reality leaping out from the flat phosphor-dot pattern of the screen…

  And then suddenly the moment passes, and a certain hardness returns to Barron’s face (but a hardness made poignant by the knowledge of the softness behind it), and purposefulness comes back into his eyes.

  “Only one more thing to tell you, friends,” he says, “and then you’ll have the whole ugly truth. Now you know what Bennie did for me; the question is, what was I supposed to do for him?”

  The grainy gray face of Benedict Howards appears in the lower-left quarter of the screen, and now Barron is not a victim but an inquisitor as he stares down at him.

  “What about it Howards?” Barron says. “Do you tell them or do I? Go ahead, tell them! Tell ’em how you’ve been buying up children, tell ’em how many Congressmen you got in your hip pocket, tell ’em your plans for the next Democratic convention. And tell ’em what you wanted me for, tell ’em what I was supposed to do for you.”

  Howards’ face expands to fill three-quarters of the screen, with Barron in the upper righthand corner, his eyes flaying the gray image like whips.

  “No! No!” Howards screams. “You got it all wrong, don’t understand, no one understands, gotta push the fading black circle back forever…Life is all I want, I’m on the side of life against death! Senators, Congressmen, Governors, President—gotta be on the side of life, not the side of the fading black circle closing in eviscerated niggers vultures’ beaks up nose down throat choking away life in tubes and bottles—”

  Howards is suddenly compressed into the lower lefthand corner of the screen, screaming silently as Jack Barron ignores him, stares straight out from the screen, says:

  “That’s where it’s at, folks. All I was supposed to do is lie to you. Tell enough lies to get that Freezer Bill passed, and then help Bennie elect his tame President—and guess which party he has bought? I may stink to high heaven with Foundation B.O., but half the Democrats in Congress stink worse than I do. I can’t name names, but just maybe now some of ’em’ll have the guts poor Ted Hennering had and stand up and be counted. And if they don’t…well, just read a list of the Congressmen who support the Foundation Bill. Can’t sue the Congressional Record for libel!”

  Now Howards’ face fills the entire screen, his eyes glazed and rolling, little flecks of spittle spraying from his trembling lips as Barron’s voice-over begins to almost chant: “You’re a dead man, Bennie. Dead…dead…dead. You’re gonna fry till you die. Till they kill you dead. Dead…dead…dead…”

  “Nooooooo!” Howards screams. “I’ll get you get you all kill you buy you own you destroy you forces of the fading black circle nobody kills Benedict Howards, Senators, Governors, Congressmen, kill ’em all own ’em all kill…Nobody kills Benedict Howards! Nobody, never, young and strong and…”

  Howards’ mad eyes stare straight out from the screen, and his screaming becomes harsh, clipped, savage. “Barron! Barron! I’ll get you, Barron! Kill you! Kill you! Kill!”

  From nowhere, a great gray fist suddenly fills the entire screen—and then the whole screen goes dead, a scintillating field of speckled gray and white static and over it an electric serpent hiss.

  Just the dead screen and the hissing static for a beat, then the gray field of random electric impulses is pushed up into the upper-righthand corner as if by the hand of Jack Barron, who fills the rest of the screen in a head-and-shoulders shot, pointing to the square of hissing nothingness (like the random non-being of the grave) with his eyes.

  “You, out there, you suckers, you!” he shouts. “Look at the thing you made! We all made Benedict Howards, we always make our Benedict Howards, because there’ll always be men who know the Big Secret: we can all be bought. Who wants to die? Who wants to live in a rat-trap? Who wants to eat garbage? They know it, and they suck on it—politicians! Power-junkies, giving you just enough to keep you bought with Welfare and Medicare and Niggercare and nice-sounding lies; crumbs from the table, is all! Just enough to cool it, and not a crumb more. Hold your noses and take a good look around you for a change—we’ve got a thousand little Benedict Howards calling themselves Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Presidents. And the only difference between them and Howards is that they’re not in his league, they’re pikers. What are you gonna do about it? Sit on your fat asses like you always have? Or maybe go out and get yours—anyone with a kid can get a nice piece of change for his bod. A lot more than thirty pieces of silver. Well, suckers, had enough? Or are you gonna let it go on and on and on till you die? Just remember, though, when you die now, baby, you die alone.”

  Barron pauses, and almost laughs the old inside-joke laugh as he says the next words with the old endearing bad-boy shrug: “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to wait some more to get your licks folks—till after this word from our palpitating sponsor.”

  EPILOGUE

  Never…never…never…never kill me, Barron! No no no no no one kills Benedict Howards, Your Honor! Buy you, Your Honor, kill you own you with the power of life against death, Your Honor…m
ake you immortal, Your Honor…Barron’s on the side of the fading black circle, Your Honor…I’m innocent, on the side of life, Your Honor…No one kills Benedict Howards, Your Honor! No one! Young and strong and healthy soft-skinned women in air-cooled circles of power Los Angeles, Dallas, Vegas, New York, Washington, forever, Your Honor…

  Benedict Howards paced the small room endlessly; planning, scheming, mumbling threats to himself. It was a pretty bare room, not quite what he was accustomed to, but not really very much like a prison cell either. Yeah, he thought, maybe those goddamn lawyers knew what they were doing after all.

  “My client is obviously mentally incapable of standing trial at this time.”

  See, Barron, even you couldn’t do it! Nobody can do it, nobody kills Benedict Howards! Young and strong and healthy for the next million years! Forever! No electric chair, no prison, just a nice public sanitarium commitment until those goddamn expensive lawyers figure out a way to get me off scott-free. And they will, they said they would, promised me they would! They got all the time in the world to get me off, got a million years (“…paranoid delusions…”), got enough time to breed me lawyers (“…semi-hallucinatory state…”), yeah, breed whole new races of the bastards (“…incapable of standing trial…is to be confined in a hospital for the criminally insane until such time as he may be deemed mentally competent to stand trial…”), controlled mutation whole new races of purebred lawyers can kill that murder indictment and then I can get out of here, when it’s safe.

  Benedict Howards insane! What a joke! Joke on Jack Barron, Senators, Congressmen, President, Your Honor. You prick, Your Honor, I didn’t even have to buy you, Your Honor, you could’ve lived forever, Your Honor, but you cretin you, you did just what my lawyers wanted you to, put me here where the fading-black-circle electric chair can’t get at me, never get at me, while my lawyers hold it back, push it back, keep it back for a million years.