Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

Poor Bennie! Barron thought. Two strikes already. He’s playing the master’s game on the master’s turf, and he’s gibbering mad to boot. And as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” Barron suddenly realized that for the rest of the show he held Benedict Howards, the most powerful man in the United States, right there in his hot little hand, to play with like a cat plays with a wounded mouse. Can kill his Freezer Bill just for openers if I get that feeling; do him in all the way any time I want to close my fist just gotta twitch and he’s had it, is all. Cat and mouse. And Luke and Morris out there now, wondering just what the hell game I’m playing… maybe theirs? It’s what they’re both hot for, ain’t it—Jack Barron down on the Foundation with high-heeled hobnails and off to the races…? So hung on “Hail to the Chief” the poor bastards could never dream there could be bigger game in town…

“On the Air,” the promptboard said.

Barron made the number two vidphone connection and Dolores Pulaski appeared in a small lower-right inset, with Howards seemingly glowering down from the upper left quadrant at her across the color image of larger-than-either-adversary Jack Barron. Groovy, Barron thought as he said, “This is Bug Jack Barron, and the man on the screen with me and Mrs Pulaski is Mr Benedict Howards himself, President, Chairman of the Board, and founder of the Foundation for Human Immortality. Mr Howards, Mrs Pulaski has—”

“I’ve been watching the show, Mr Barron,” Howards interrupted, and Barron could see him fighting for control, eyes hot in the cool and earnest mask of his face. (But he still can’t keep from dripping acid, Barron thought gleefully.) “It’s one of my favorites and I rarely miss it—it’s sure long on excitement; you know how to create heat. Too bad you’re so short in the light department.”

Tsk, tsk! Watch it Bennie, your fly’s open and your id’s hanging out, Barron thought as he smiled nastily into the camera. “That’s my job after all, Mr Howards,” he said blandly. “I’m just here to turn the spotlight on things that need seeing, like… turning over a lot of wet rocks to see what crawls out. I’m not here to tell anyone anything; I just ask questions America thinks need answering. Enlightenment’s gotta come from the other end of the vidphone, your end, Mr Howards.

“So since you’ve been watching the show, let’s not bore a hundred million Americans with repetition. Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty. There’s a man dying in a hospital in Chicago—fact. There’s one of your Freezers in Cicero, isn’t there—that’s a hard fact too. Mrs Pulaski and her family want a place for Mr Lopat in that Freezer. If he isn’t Frozen, he dies and never lives again. If he is Frozen, he’s got the same chance at immortality as anyone else in a Freezer. You hold Harold Lopat’s life in your hands, Mr Howards, you say whether he lives or he dies. So you see, it all boils down to one simple question, Mr Howards, and a hundred million Americans know that you and only you have the answer: does Harold Lopat live or die?”

Howards’ mouth snapped open, and time stopped for a beat; he seemed to think twice, and closed it. (Got you right on the knife-edge, Bennie—the Nero schtick: thumbs up, the cat lives, thumbs down, he dies. Thumbs down, you’re a murderer in front of a hundred million people. Thumbs up, and you’ve opened the floodgates and the dam’s busted for every deadbeat dying everywhere, people, Mr Howards, people, is all, free Freeze for everyone on Emperor Howards… Whatever you say next, Bennie, it’s gotta be wrong.)

“Neither you nor Mrs Pulaski understands the situation,” Howards finally said. “I don’t have the power to say who’s to be Frozen and who isn’t. Nobody does. It’s sheer economics, just like who can afford a new Cadillac and who has to drive an old ’81 Ford. Fifty thousand dollars or more must be assigned to the Foundation for every man Frozen. I assure you that if Mr Lopat or his family have the requisite assets, he will be Frozen, if that’s what they want.”

“Mrs Pulaski…?” Barron said, foot-signaling Gelardi to cut in her audio.

“Fifty thousand dollars!” Dolores Pulaski shouted. “A man like you doesn’t know how much money that is—more than my husband makes in eight years, and he’s got a wife and a family to support! Even with Medicare, the specialists, the extra doctors, aren’t covered, and our savings, my father’s and my husband’s and my brother’s, are all gone. Why don’t you just make it a million dollars or a billion; what’s the difference, when ordinary people can’t afford it, what kind of filthy…” Her voice trailed off in crackles, fading simulated hisses as Gelardi cut her off.

“Seems to be a bug in Mrs Pulaski’s connection,” Barron said as Vince rearranged the images, giving Howards’ naked discomfort half the screen alongside him, Dolores Pulaski reduced to a tiny inset-creature looking on. “But I think she’s made her point. Fifty thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of bread to hold on to, taxes and cost of living being what they are. You know, I knock down a pretty nice piece of change for this show, I probably make more money than ninety per cent of the people in the country, and even I can’t squirrel that kind of bread away. So when you set the price of a Freeze at fifty big ones you’re really saying that ninety per cent of all living Americans gonna be food for the worms when they die, while a few million fat cats get the chance to live forever. Hardly seems right that money can buy life. Maybe the people who’re yelling for Public Freezers—”

“Commies!” shouted Howards. “Can’t you see that? They’re all Communists or dupes of the Reds. Look at the Soviet Union, look at Red China—they got any Freezer Programs at all? Of course not, because a Freezer Program can only be supported by a healthy free enterprise system. Socialized Freezing means no Freezing at all. The Commies would love—”

“But aren’t you the best friend the Communists have in America?” Barron cut in, signaling for a commercial in three minutes.

“You calling me a Communist!” Howards said, forcing his face into a soundless parody of a laugh. “That’s good, Barron, the whole country knows the kind of people you’ve been involved with.”

“Let’s skip the name-calling, shall we? I didn’t call you a Communist… just, shall we say, an unwitting dupe of the Reds? I mean, the fact that less than ten per cent of the population—shall we say, the exploiters of the working class, as they put it—has a chance to live forever, while everyone else has to die and like it… is there a better argument against a pure capitalistic system that the Reds can dream up? Isn’t your Foundation the best piece of propaganda the Reds have?”

“I’m sure your audience isn’t swallowing that crap,” Howards said (knowing it damn well is, Barron thought smugly). “Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain it so that even you can understand it, Mr Barron. Maintaining Freezers costs lots of money, and so does research on restoring and extending life. It costs billions each year, so much money that, for instance, the Soviet government simply can’t afford it—and neither can the government of the United States. But an effort like ours must be financed somehow, and the only way is for the people who are Frozen to pay their own way. If the government tried to Freeze everyone who died, it’d go bankrupt, it’d cost tens of billions a year. The Foundation, by seeing to it that those who are Frozen pay for it, and pay for the research, at least keeps the dream of human immortality alive. It may not be perfect, but it’s the only thing that can work. Surely a man of your… vast intelligence should be able to see that.”