Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

But he wondered if the cards he held were really as unbeatable as they looked, too damn good for the league I’m playing in, is Bennie really that bad? Am I really that good? Goddamn, Bennie knows something I don’t, is what I’m playing this game for in the first place, and you know that whatever that something is it’s the ace in the hole for somebody, and how the fuck can I know whose ace it is until I know what it is?

And whatever it is, baby, it’s big, big enough to make Howards blow bubbles with his tongue when he had the opening to make points on the show I gave him; big enough to scare him shitless when he caught himself almost blowing it—and big enough to make him blow his cool in the first place, and with a reptile like Howards, that is like big.

Barron snubbed out the joint in an ashtray. No grass today, he told himself. Today Riverboat Jack’s in the big game for the big pot, and you better be sure your head’s all here when Bennie—

“Mr Barron, Mr Benedict Howards is here to see you,” Carrie’s tinny voice said, dry-icewise, over the intercom.

“Send Howards in, Miss Donaldson. Thank you, Miss Donaldson, go fuck yourself, Miss Donaldson,” Barron said, the last without breaking rhythm but after he had snapped off the intercom.

As Howards half-stormed half-slunk in through the door, slamming a prop-attaché case stuffed no doubt with prop-documents down on the desk top and sitting down immediately without speaking like a Russian diplomat arriving at the umpteenhundredth session of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, Barron felt a flash go through him as he looked at a Benedict Howards he had never seen before—a stone-seat-grim efficient Texas speculator, who had come from the Panhandle with holes in his pockets and who had fought and connived his way to the fifty-billion-dollar point where he held life versus death power over two hundred and thirty million people, would own the next President of the United States like a deaf

Smith County judge. It was the big leagues, all right, and Barron knew it.

But Bennie knows it too, he thought as Howards stared at him like a stone basilisk, waiting for the man whose turf he was on to make the first move. Seeing Howards, Mr Big League Action himself looking at him with not anger, not quite fear in his eyes but cold and, for the first time, shrewdly-calculating appraisal, Jack Barron dug the image of power mirroring genuine near-fear of the living-color image of himself—and, in Howards’ cold eyes granting him the ultimate compliment of emotionless scrutiny, got a heady muskwhiff of his own power.

“All right, Howards,” Barron said, in a cold voice he saw caught Howards half off-balance, “no bullshit, no pyrotechnics. You’re here to do business, I’m here to do business, and we both know it. Give. Make your pitch, and in words of one syllable.”

Howards opened his attaché case, placed three copies of a contract on the desk. “There it is, Barron. A standard Freeze Contract, in triplicate, signed by me, the assets clause marked ‘Assigned by Anonymous Donor’ and made out to Jack Barron, effective immediately. That’s what you throw away if you don’t play ball, a Freeze, free and clear, and no one can take it away from you.”

“And of course, that ‘anonymous donor’ would reveal himself as Benedict Howards, along with a copy of the contract to the press, if I sign it and then don’t play ball,” Barron said, feeling the calculus of power filling the air with the gold-stench of necromancy.

Howards smiled professionally. “I’ve got to have some insurance. All right, Barron, just sign on the dotted line, and we can get down to the business of repairing the damage your big mouth has done to the Freezer Utility Bill.”

“That wasn’t the deal we made, and you know it,” Barron told him. “You’re not hiring a flunky, you’re leasing my specific services as, shall we say, a public relations counselor? That’s freelance work, and it means I gotta know everything about the product I’m supposed to peddle. Everything, Howards. And, for openers, I gotta know exactly why you’re so hot for my body.”

“After last night, you ask me that?” Howards snarled. (But Barron saw that the snarl was calculated.) “Thanks to you, the Freezer Bill’s in real trouble. I need that bill, which means I need votes in Congress, which means I need public pressure on my side, which means I need your pipeline to a hundred million votes, which means, unfortunately, that I need you. But don’t misunderstand me, you say ‘no’ to me, then I need your scalp nailed to the barn door—and I’ll get it. You’re in too deep, Barron. You either play my game, or you don’t play any game at all.”

“You’re lying,” Barron said neutrally. “Your Freezer Bill was a shoo-in till I started making waves, and I didn’t make waves till you started playing footsie with me. So it couldn’t have been to save the Freezer Bill that you were after my ass in the first place. Had to be something else, something bigger, and I don’t screw around with anything that big till I know exactly what it is.”

“I’ve had enough of you!” Howards snapped and now Barron was sure he had finally pierced Bennie’s cool. “You spend so much time trying to convince me how dangerous you are, all right, all right, I’m convinced. You know what that gets you? It gets you pounded to a pulp same as I’d smash a scorpion, unless you play ball. Scorpion’s deadly, could kill me if I gave it a chance, but that doesn’t mean that the moment I see it’s really become dangerous I can’t squash it like a bug. ’cause it is a bug, and so are you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Barron said, half-calculatedly, half-responding to adrenalin-signals. “Don’t give me the idea I’ve got my back to the wall. ’cause if I get to having an itchy back, I’ll do a show on the Foundation that’ll make the last one seem like a Foundation commercial. And the next will be worse than that, and worse, and worse every week till you can get me off the air. And by then, Bennie, it’ll be way too late.”

“You’re bluffing, Barron,” said Howards. “You don’t have the guts to blow your whole career just to get me. And you’re not stupid enough either to throw yourself out in the cold, a ruined nobody, with no place to go.”

Jack Barron smiled. Bennie, he thought, you’ve walked right into it. You’re out of your league after all, bigshot, here comes them four aces in the hole. “Funny you should say that, Bennie,” he drawled, ’cause the fact is I got all kind of people telling me there’s someplace I ought to go.”

“That I can believe,” Howards said dryly,

“Good to see you’ve still got a sense of humor, ’cause you’re gonna need it. Because if you force me to blow the show by knifing the Foundation, it won’t just be crazy revenge. Y’know, I got people asking me to do just that, powerful people like Gregory Morris and Lukas Greene begging me to play their game, and do you in, and to hell with Bug Jack Barron. And they’re offering me something bigger than anything you’ve laid on the table so far to do it, too,” Barron said and waited for the straight line.

“You’re bluffing again,” said Howards, “and this time it’s really obvious. What could anyone offer you that’s bigger than a place in a Freezer, a chance at living forever?”

You’re beautiful, Bennie, show biz all the way, Barron thought as he made with the tailor-made punchline:

“Would you believe the Presidency of the United States?”

“Would I believe what?” Howards goggled, seemed about to say something cute, then Barron sensed him backing off, putting one and one and one together in his head and getting only two and a half, not knowing how to react, whether it was a gag or pure bluff or some weird new equation of power. He sensed that Howards was waiting for him to speak—and sensed status-relationships in a state of uncertain flux.