Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

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 lizardman 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 lizardman know, how deeply do his weasel-eyes see?

Be brave, be brave! she told herself. Lizardman 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?

“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 rubberplant 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-the-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 nobullshit network watchdog 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 automatic 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 SJC 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 bossman 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 breach 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?”