Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

But it made her more afraid. Faceless building like windowless faceless Freezer faceless death-god Howards’ faceless polite message faceless polite messenger faceless-ness of Jack’s damned real world, power-world where people are faceless images to each other pawns on chessboard faceless game of life and death.

Never my world, she thought. Like overdose bummer-style reality, bad acid freakout, A head world, all sharp cutting edges paranoia. Feel like soft-flesh creature in metal forest world of knives, cocks like steel pistons.

Jack… Jack, you son of a bitch, why aren’t you here with me? Jack’d give you yours, Benedict Howards! Warm loving courage to light up the world, gauntlets thrown in faces of cops Berkeley cops Los Angeles cops Alabama cops rednecks’ fists judges, me and my man against all comers balling in open airy spaces feel of his body beside me in bed on one elbow on the phone with Luke setting the world straight our friends listening faces shining to the voice of hope in my bed making it all seem possible. A man is all, Benedict Howards, not perambulating lizard-creature, sweet cylinder of flesh, stronger, more enduring than oiled steel piston.

Oh, Jack, where did you lose it where is it where are you I need you now my knight in soft-flesh armor arms around my waist, facing down, shaming, howling mob with only your voice for a sword, our love for armor…

She shuddered as the bald man opened a door, led her through a deserted outer office—half-cup of coffee still on empty secretary’s desk, as if witness suddenly cleared away from scene of ghastly lizard-human flesh-steel assignation. And she remembered how alone, how totally alone, how separated in time and space she was from her one and only knight in rusty armor—all that was left of the Jack that was the pain of the memory.

And she remembered his last words to her, sad, lorn words, with not even the warmth of anger: “The time of the Children’s Crusade is over, baby. Find yourself a nice idealistic boy with a nice big dick, and maybe you’ll be happy. You can’t cut it with my world, you can’t cut it with me. I’ve got my piece of the action, and I don’t go back to being a loser even for you, Sara.” And he hadn’t even kissed her goodbye.

The chill of the memory forged a kind of steel within her. Holding the memory of the Jack that had been to her for warmth, and the image of the Jack that was for anger. She stepped into the inner office as the bald man stepped aside, holding the door for her, said: “Mr Howards, this is Sara Westerfeld.”

And closed the door behind her.

The man behind the ultra-stark, bare, teakwood desk (not his desk, she thought, he doesn’t use this office often, desk hasn’t been lived on) looked more like someone’s rich Uncle Bill—pink, square-dressed, loosely-pudgy in old-time 70s maroon suit and ascot—than Benedict Howards, swimming sharklike in currents of death-madness-power.

He motioned her to an expensive, badly-designed, uncomfortable teak-and-horsehide chair in front of the desk with a soft heavy hand, said: “Miss Westerfeld, I’m Benedict Howards.” And looked at her with eyes like black holes feral rodent eyes kinesthop eyes shiny shifting flashes of power-fear eyes junkie-intensity eyes that said here there be tigers.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, sinking on to the chair which she suddenly realized was purposely uncomfortable, cunningly designed to uptight asses, hotseat-interrogation chair, focus of paranoid A-head pattern of power.

Howards smiled a crocodile smile of false-uncle geniality, snapping pink face into a basilisk dead-flesh pattern around his shrewd mad eyes, said: “What I want from you, Miss Westerfeld, is nothing beside what I’m prepared to offer.”

“There’s nothing I could ever want from you,” she said, “and I can’t imagine what you could want from me. Unless (could it be as silly-safe as that?) you’d like some kinesthop pieces for this office. Maybe designs for the whole building? I’ve done office buildings before, and this place could certainly use—”

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?”