Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“I’ve got something I’ve gotta tell you,” Barron said, crossing the terrace, leaning against the parapet close enough to taste her breath but unable to bring himself to touch her.

“And I’ve got something I have to tell you,” she said, and he saw her jawline go white, a pulse twitch in her left temple.

“Later, baby,” Barron said, knowing it was now or never. Whatever’s uptighting you can wait, Sara, he thought. Either you’ll forget all about it, or you’ll be really uptight after I lay it all on you.

“It’s about me and Howards,” he began. “I suppose by now you know there’s some hanky-panky going on there, and I owe it to you to let you in on what’s shaking. And big things are shaking, bigger than you could ever imagine, bigger than all this President bullshit, bigger than… bigger than anything’s ever been, bigger than anything you can even think of. Bennie Howards is hot for my bod, Sara. He needs me. He needs Bug Jack Barron to push through his Freezer Bill, to… to put over something… well, something people just won’t stomach. He’s desperate, he’s hotter for my bod than Luke or Morris or—”

“I know,” she said in a tiny voice all but drowned out by the rush-hour traffic-roar from the street below, and he sensed a huge electric-potential-tension charge building between them, reached out for her hand gripping the cement lip of the parapet to bleed off the electric hum in the air between them; and her skin was rubber, cold and dry, as if she were a thousand miles away talking through vidphone circuit-insulation, and he found with a kind of relief that he was slipping into the Bug Jack Barron cool Wednesday-night-feedback game, hating himself for doing it, hating himself worse for being thankful. And what the fuck does she mean she knows?

“Yeah,” he said, “I suppose it’s been pretty obvious. (But has it? he wondered, feeling danger-signals of future-shock precognition surging down time lines toward him.) But before you do the whole cop-out number, you better hear the coin he’s paying. Immortality, Sara, immortality. Bennie’s boys have licked aging. He’s keeping it real quiet ’cause there’s a big catch—it’s real expensive, like he’s talking about a quarter of a million bucks per treatment, and even with that kind of bread, he claims he can only treat about a thousand people a year. But it’s no shuck; it’s the real thing. He says he’s had the treatment himself, and when you listen to him gibbering about it you know he’s not bullshitting. That’s where it’s at, immortality for maybe a thousand people a year, people who can get up a quarter million, people who Bennie chooses, and everyone else is stuck with three score and ten, is all. And that’s why he’s so hot for me—he wants me to help him shove that down the throat of the General Unwashed: immortality for the few, and death for everyone else. A lot harder to peddle than Chevys or dope. But…”

He stared into the unreadable vacuum of her eyes that seemed to mock him, accuse him, and he sensed his words going straight through her like a commercial out across the city to Brooklyn and beyond, and she seemed to be waiting for something, and he waited for her to speak, scream, yell, jump up and down, do something, anything, react. But she just stood there, and even the pressure of her hand in his didn’t change, and Barron felt cold and afraid and didn’t know why.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” he said. “But for us, free. That’s the deal, Sara. I agree to play ball with Howards, and we both get ironclad contracts out in front. That’s the decision I’ve gotta make by tomorrow—sign the contracts, and we both have immortality, or tell Howards to fuck off and throw it all away. And not just immortality—he’ll cream me, try to cost me the show, and I’ll have to play games with Greg Morris & Co just to keep our heads above water. Some choice! But it’s got to be our choice, not just mine.”

“I know, Jack,” Sara said. “I know it all.”

“Come on, will you?” Barron snapped, bugged at the deep unreadable pools behind her eyes (damn big soulful brown eyes, Christ knows what’s really behind them, Christ knows if anything’s behind ’em but Peter-Pan acid bullshit—where is your head at, Sara?). “Okay, so it’s hard to get down, but don’t just stand there gaping at me. And what the hell you mean you know it all?”

She pulled her hand away from his, touched his cheek, then let her hand fall to her side, and when she spoke, she looked away from him, down, down at the brawling honking streets of rush-hour Manhattan, and from the set of her jaw and the quaver in her voice, Barron knew she was staring down, deep down, into some private freakout snakepit.

“You’re not the only person Benedict Howards’s used,” she said, “that… that monster can buy anyone— anyone, Jack. He’s the most thoroughly evil man in the world, and now he can go on buying people and using people and holding life-and-death power over people forever… He’s evil, and clever, and totally amoral, and he can give anyone anything they want. Everyone’s got his price, and Howards can afford anyone he needs to buy, that’s what he told me, and I didn’t believe it. But now… now… oh, Jack, is it wrong to want to live forever? Everyone wants to live forever, and I want you to live forever, does that make me so rotten, so…? Jack!”

And she whirled, flung herself into his arms, not sobbing but clutching him to her with manic strength. But even as his reflexes passed soothing hands over her back, Barron went steel-cold as he struggled with her words, rejected them, felt them stinging back like dry-ice bees.

He pushed her away, holding her shoulders at arms’ length, stared into her stricken face, muttered: “You…? Howards…?”

“You’ve got to, Jack…” she said. (Her lips began to quiver, her eyes were wet, she was shaking in his rough hands.) “Don’t you see? If you sign the contracts, then we’re immortal, we’ve got all that Howards can give and no one can take it away from us. Don’t you see? You’re the only man in the world can stop him, destroy him. You’re the only man big enough to stand up to Benedict Howards and his loathsome Foundation. You’ve got to! There’s no one else! But I don’t want to die, I don’t want you to die… Sign the contracts, and then… then we can fight him together, and he can’t do anything to hurt us…”

Barron shook her, shaking himself. “What the fuck is this? Stop gibbering, damn you, Sara, and tell me what all this is about!” But he knew with dread certainty what it was all about. Bennie got to her, he thought. Somehow, somewhen, the slimy motherfucker got to her, found the handle… The—

“I love you,” she sobbed. “You’ve gotta believe I love you. I did it because I love you. I love you, Jack, I’ve always loved you, I’ll always—”

Barron slammed her body up against the parapet. “Cut the shit,” he said cruelly, feeling the cruelty cut into her, cut into him, grim razor of reality and way down below he heard the sounds of metal and rubber and concrete abrading synthetic world of steel cutting edges way down there below him. “In words of one syllable—what’s the scam with you and Benedict Howards?” And he felt himself coming on like living-color Jack Barron backing a vip into a corner. And knew no other way to react.

He saw Sara stare blankly into his eyes with numb wet eyes like those of a mindless parrot as she spat it out, spat it all out like pieces of rotten meat.

“He…He had me dragged to his Long Island Freezer. He promised me a free Freeze Contract if I got you to sign one. I told him to go to hell. But… but that man sees right into your guts, sees what he wants to see, and he knows how to use it, knows more about the dirty places inside you than you do yourself. He knew… knew deep down that I still loved you… Don’t you see I wanted you, I never stopped wanting you, just stopped knowing it, and when Howards gave me an excuse to go back to you, a good excuse… He conned me into conning myself into thinking I could con you. I thought I hated you, but I thought maybe I could change you back to the Jack you were meant to be if I went back to you and got you to sign the contracts and then… then did just what I’m doing now, tell you everything, show you what a swine Howards is, kind of man you’re involved with stops at nothing, and how a man like that can make anyone climb right down there in his sewer with him… Oh, Jack, how you must hate me now!”