Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Dig?” Barron said. “If there was such a treatment, and it did involve murder, that would sure explain a lot of funny things, wouldn’t it folks? Would explain why Mr Howards is so hot to get his Freezer Utility Bill passed, get himself a nice commission, with his Foundation answerable only to that commission, and the commission controlled completely by the President… Especially if the President we elect is answerable only to him. What about it, Mr Howards, doesn’t that make sense?”

Gelardi inverted the images, and Howards’ stricken face once more dominated the screen. “You—” he began to shout. And then Barron could all but see a shade pulling down behind his desperate eyes, a shade of silence, his only possible retreat.

“Okay,” said Barron as the images reverted, “so Mr Howards doesn’t care for… hypothetical situations. So let’s talk about hard facts. Let’s talk about Presidential candidates. (Watch them libel laws!) Now I’m only repeating what I read in the papers—but a lot of people thought that the late Senator Theodore Hennering had the inside track to the Democratic nomination, and things being what they are, that meant the inside track to the Presidency. Before his… unfortunate accident. Tell us, Mr Howards, were you a Hennering man—or was Hennering a Foundation man?”

Howards came out fighting this time as his audio came on and the images on the screen inverted: “That’s libel, Barron, and you know it!” But before he could get in another word, Vince flashed him back into the silent Coventry of the lower-left quadrant hotseat.

“Libeling who? Now there’s a good question,” Barron said. “You or Hennering? Anyway, I’m not libeling anyone, just asking a question. Fact: Hennering was a sponsor and the Senate floor leader for the Freezer Utility Bill. Fact: Hennering’s Presidential balloon had mighty big bread behind it. I gotta watch those libel laws, folks, so you’ll have to add it up all by yourselves—one and one makes… Got it, folks? Cause here comes some more hypothetical stuff.

“Let’s say that a Foundation which the libel laws prevent me from naming has bought itself a Presidential candidate who the libel laws prevent me from naming got a lot of muscle behind a certain bill—which the libel laws prevent me from naming because they’ve got a beep! beep! treatment that amounts to murder, and let’s say that our unnameable Senator from Illinois doesn’t know about this treatment. Are you with me so far, out there? Ain’t it wonderful, living in a free country where you can . . . hypothesize anything you want so long as you don’t name names? Even when you all know what names to put into the blank spaces.”

He paused and clocked how Howards’ face had become a pasty mask, how he didn’t even seem to be paying attention, knowing for sure it was all over now.

“Let’s go one step further. Let’s say that our unnameable Senator finds out about this here… treatment. Let’s say he doesn’t like it one bit. Let’s say he calls up the unnameable head of the unnameable foundation and tells him precisely where he can stuff his unnameable treatment. Let’s say our Senator tells him he’s gonna oppose his own bill, blow the whistle on our hypothetical foundation on the floor of the Senate. That means our hypothetical foundation head’s gonna be tried for murder, unless… unless something happens to close our Senator’s mouth. Tell us, Mr Howards—just hypothetically, of course—if you were the head of our hypothetical foundation and this Senator’s big mouth was your ticket to the electric chair, what would you do?”

“—sue you!” Howards’ voice shouted as Vince switched the images and cut in his audio. “Sue you for libel! I’ll get you, Barron! Send you to the chair! I’ll—”

Gelardi hustled him back into the lower-left quadrant hotseat like a sergeant-at-arms, and Barron felt the moment hang in the air. Nitty-gritty time, he thought. All I gotta do is spring it; I’ve got him set up for the kill. Kill myself with him maybe, with that contract as a signed confession, me and Sara—Sara! SaraSaraSara… No more Sara… He felt slug-green things drip-dripping the stolen life-juices of broken babies within him, and in a flash of pure, blessed berserker rage knew that it had to be get Bennie first, and try to save himself later.

“Now let’s get back to what’s laughingly known as the real world,” Barron said. “Fact: Senator Theodore Hennering was killed in a mid-air plane explosion which conveniently destroyed any evidence that might be of murder, hypothetical or otherwise. Fact: A few weeks later, Hennering’s widow just happens to get herself run over by a hit-and-run rented truck. What do you say to that, Mr Howards?”

Vince flashed Howards to three-quarters screen just long enough for him to mutter, “How should I know? Coincidence—” before he was cut off again, and Barron was back at three-quarters screen.

Here comes a tricky part, Barron thought. If I can get him to admit it, at least I’m off the libel hook.

“And another fact that nobody knows: Madge Hennering called me before she was killed, told me that Benedict Howards had threatened to kill her husband shortly before he died, just before he died, because Hennering had found out something about the Foundation that was terrible enough to make him switch sides. And that’s not libel either, friends,” Barron lied, “because I can prove it. I have the whole conversation on tape.”

“It’s a lie!” Howards screamed, as Vince flashed him on, then off. “Lie! Goddamn fading black circle lie! Lie!”

“Watch that, Bennie,” Barron said, giving his puppet-mask on the screen an ironic smile, “you’re calling me a liar, and that’s libel, and I can prove it with the tape.”

Barron paused, knowing what the next link in the chain had to be. Gotta come right out and accuse him of murdering Hennering, and that is libel any way you slice it without legal evidence which I ain’t got unless he gives it to me—and he won’t unless I climb out on that limb. Okay, smart-ass, this is the real nitty-gritty, the razor inside—go! go! go!

“Last week I flew down to Mississippi to talk to a man who claimed—you saw it here folks—that someone had bought his daughter for $50,000,” Barron said, still playing footsie with the libel laws. “Now, if some foundation needed children for an immortality transplant operation… get the picture, folks? Three people, and only three people knew I was going down there: Governor Lukas Greene, a very old friend; the woman I loved, and—Mr Benedict Howards. Someone shot the man I went down there to talk to, a real pro job, and he almost got me too. One of those three people had Henry George Franklin killed and tried to kill me. Who do you think it was, my friend, my wife, or…?”

Barron paused again, half for the effect, half hesitating at the bank of an abysmal Rubicon, knowing the total mortal danger his next words had to bring. Howards’ inset face on the monitor screen was ashen but strangely calm, knowing what was coming, knowing he couldn’t save himself, but also knowing that the power to destroy was mutual, was also his. Fuck you, Bennie! Barron thought. Banzai for the Emperor, live a thousand years! Yeah, a thousand years…

“Or Benedict Howards, who bought that man’s child to cold-bloodedly vivisect in his Colorado labs, Benedict Howards, who is immortal with the glands of a murdered child sewn into his rotten hide, Benedict Howards, who murdered Theodore Hennering and his wife and Henry George Franklin, Benedict Howards, who tried to kill me. After all, Mr Howards, murder’s cheaper by the dozen, isn’t it? You can only fry once.”