Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Not only Barron,” Howards said. “Anyone I choose. You, for instance. You’re right about one thing: Barron loves you. First thing he asked when I made the offer was for immortality for you too. And…”

The cruelty in Howards’ eyes raped her as he smirked, waited for her to ask the question, sucking pleasure like a junkie from watching her squirm.

“And?”

Howards laughed. “Why not?” he said. “I can afford it. It’s a nice little daisy-chain this way—I buy Barron with immortality for the both of you, and I buy you with the same thing, and I buy your help in making sure he sells. Three for the price of one. You can have love and life, both forever. Think about that, you and Barron, forever. And if you don’t deliver, I tell Barron everything and you’ve blown it all—him and immortality. That’s not such a hard choice, is it, Miss Westerfeld? You’ve got twenty-three hours. I won’t be talking to you again. I don’t really have to, do I?”

And he broke the connection.

Sara knew how right he was, how right he had been every step of the way. Eternal life with Jack or… nothing. She thought of Jack, young and strong beside her, together for a million years, growing and growing together in the innocent strength of adolescence—the strength that comes from not really believing you’ll ever have to die—but based now on truth, not self-delusion, giving the courage to do anything, dare anything, soft-flesh knight in the armor of immortality, and the world what they could make it forever and ever… Growing without growing older, like that ocean sunfish that keeps getting bigger and bigger, never ages, never dies… Jack like that, and me with him forever!

And Benedict Howards forever, a small sly voice reminded her. Feeding forever on power and fear and death and Jack… Jack his flunky, keeping him there in his bone-white temple of death while aeons and billions of people are born and die and are gone forever like smoke, while Howards and those who fawn on him like on some awful death-god live forever at the price of their souls… With a pang of despair she realized that this was the world that was coming, Jack or no Jack, with his help or despite him, inexorable as Judgment Day, and no one could stand against it, against Foundation power of money and life eternal against death. Benedict Howards was right. He was almost a god, god of life and death. God on the side of evil and nothingness; the Black Christ, and no one his size to stand against him.

No one but… but Jack Barron! she thought. Oh, yes! yes! Jack’s smarter than Howards, stronger than me. If Howards makes us immortal, what hold can he have over Jack then? If Jack’s already gotten all that Howards has to give, and if he hates Howards the way I hate him… Not even Benedict Howards could stand Jack Barron then—the full, true Jack Barron, fighting for me and for himself and for hate and for everything we ever believed in, armored in immortality!

She felt both proud and afraid, realizing what lay in her hands, and hers alone. Billions of immortal lives, and hers, and Jack’s. Jack was strong, clever; he would know how to keep immortality, and destroy Howards too, bring immortality to the whole world. President, maybe…? Luke thinks so… What could Howards do then? Yes! Yes! It was all in her hands, she could make Jack immortal, make him hate, wake him up to what he was always meant to be. She could do it; she only had to be brave alone for one moment in a life that could be endless. And I will, she vowed. And as she waited for Jack to arrive she savored what it was to at last think of herself as a woman—as Sara Barron.

Catching him preoccupied, the stomach-drop of the elevator was just one more jolt in a day of jolts for Jack Barron. He stubbed out the butt of his Acapulco Gold in the elevator ashtray, caught up with his belly tried to catch up with his head as the elevator sucked up the sealed shaft to his slice of California twenty-three stories away from New York’s stinking paranoid gutters. And he got a flash of what the penthouse playpen (with genuine authentic Sara Westerfeld at last installed) really meant to him.

Time machine is all, he thought. California science-fiction time machine to a past that never was, pot-dream California of the mind that never could be, big league action through the eyes of Baby Bolshevik kid didn’t know where the big leagues were really at, dream made real by Bug Jack Barron bread—but making it real changed the dreamer. What Sara just can’t understand—got the balls to do it, sure you can make dreams real, but getting out in the nitty-gritty’s gotta change the dreamer, ’cause he ain’t dreaming anymore; he’s real, doing real things, fighting real enemies, and when he’s cut he bleeds real blood, not ectoplasm. Which is why I’m a winner, and all the old Baby Bolsheviks except maybe Luke are all losers. Too hung-up on big beautiful acidhead dreams to risk losing it, risk losing Peter-Pan selves by getting their hands dirty making it real. Stay a dreamer, and you’ll never have your dream; get down in the nitty-gritty, and when you get your dream you see what horseshit it was in the first place.

Game of life’s run by an ex-con cardshark, he thought morosely as the elevator came to a stop and the door opened. Deck’s marked, dice loaded, and the only way you don’t go home in a barrel is to play by the house rules, namely no holds barred.

He crossed the foyer, entered the dark hall, heard a Beatle album playing, picked up on the subliminal presence of Sara. And he remembered that he had to decide for her too; her immortality was in the big pot too. Feeling her presence filling the apartment with Saraness, making the joint at last a home, it was impossible to believe that the gestalt that was the total Sara could ever cease to be, become nothing more than a random pattern of inert food for the worms.

But it can, he thought. Doesn’t have to now, but it can, and the cat who can do it is Jack Barron. Say “no” to Howards, and you’re not only coming on with the kamikaze schtick, you’re murdering the only woman you ever loved, and so what if it’s forty years from now? So what if she never knows it? It’s still murder, is all. Ugliest word there is, murder. No holds barred is the name of the game, but don’t put yourself on, Barron, at murder even you draw the line. Only crime that’s always wrong no matter what the circumstances, murder. Blowing Bennie’s brains out’d just be killing, and that’s cool, but letting Sara die when you can save her just by signing your name, that’s murder.

Yeah, sure, but how do you know what you’re getting into if you do sign that contract? Could be things worse than murder. Like genocide—and isn’t that Bennie’s bag, save the winners and let the losers die, and wouldn’t Sara be a loser on her own if Howards didn’t want me, to the worm-ovens with the rest of the untermenschen losers…? Choose one from column A, or one from column B (eggroll and won-ton included in the dinner): genocide or murder.

He knew it was not a decision he had the right to make alone. Sara’s life too, not just mine. I’ve gotta tell her the whole thing, what a woman’s for, isn’t it, someone in the whole shit-eating world you can be up front with, take it or leave it? Got enough trouble playing footsie with Howards, at least I can have truth between me and Sara.

She was out on the patio, leaning against the parapet, staring out over the East River at Brooklyn, long dusk-shadows twilighting the rush-hour traffic in the street far below.

“Jack…” she said, turning as he stepped out on the patio; and he saw a strange manic desperation in her eyes, glazed over pool-deep darknesses, and something grim and fragile in the lines of her face, and she seemed to be looking into him and at the same time through him. In a weird way, he almost recognized that look… yes, look of some vip on the show about to parrot a memorized set-spiel.