Norman Spinrad - Bug Jack Barron

“Too? I’m a murderer too?” Barron says, and every syllable seems to carry a total conviction, coming as it does from a man, not an image.

“You are! You know you are. I can prove it, you’re a murderer too!” the little newsreel figure says.

Jack Barron turns from the thing below him, stares out from the screen with pain and fury written in those huge green eyes. Those wounded human eyes.

“I’m a murderer too,” he says. “You heard the man, folks, too. I’m a murderer too. Didn’t I tell you I sold out to Howards? He made me immortal, and to get that I signed a contract that made me legally liable for every result of that treatment, including a charge of murder. Yeah, murder, because the Foundation’s been buying children, killing them and transplanting their glands, and I’ve got pieces of some poor dead kid sewn inside me. So I’m a murderer too.”

The image of Benedict Howards winks out, and the face of Jack Barron fills the entire screen. And as it does, something seems to happen to that hard-edged face. It goes soft, vulnerably soft, and the big eyes seem to become wet and shiny, guilty, self-accusing—a face that makes you want to comfort the hurt soul behind it, a face that in its pain bears the mark of unquestionable wrenching truth.

And when Barron speaks, his voice is quiet, subdued, without an iota of guile in it:

“I’m going to ask something of you out there that I’ve never asked before. I’ve got no right to do it, but I’m going to ask you to believe something just because I say it’s true. I didn’t know. I really didn’t know that my immortality meant killing a child until I woke up in a hospital bed and Benedict Howards told me.

“Look, I’m no little tin saint, and we all know it. I admit I wanted to live forever bad enough to sell out to Benedict Howards, and you’ve got every right to hate me for that. But murdering children is something I would never stomach under any circumstances for any reason, and that’s all I’m asking you to believe. Proof? Howards has all the proof on his side, the signed contract and the best witnesses money can buy to say that I knew what I was doing. And you’d better believe it, money can buy plenty. The only proof I’ve got that I’m telling the truth is that I’m right here in front of you, laying my life in your hands and saying it, telling you the whole truth because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise, and to hell with what happens to me. It’s all up to you out there. I ask you to believe that I’m telling the truth.”

Silence, three full seconds of dead silence that seem to crawl on forever, as the face of Jack Barron stares out from the screen, the eyes like a pair of open wounds, windows into the soul within, hurt eyes, strangely humble eyes, and yet with a certain open defiance, a guileless defiance with no defenses but the truth. And in that very open and defenseless defiance, the certainty of the truth behind.

An unbearable moment of human reality leaping out from the flat phosphor-dot pattern of the screen…

And then suddenly the moment passes, and a certain hardness returns to Barron’s face (but a hardness made poignant by the knowledge of the softness behind it), and purposefulness comes back into his eyes.

“Only one more thing to tell you, friends,” he says, “and then you’ll have the whole ugly truth. Now you know what Bennie did for me; the question is, what was I supposed to do for him?”

The grainy gray face of Benedict Howards appears in the lower-left quarter of the screen, and now Barron is not a victim but an inquisitor as he stares down at him.

“What about it, Howards?” Barron says. “Do you tell them or do I? Go ahead, tell them! Tell ’em how you’ve been buying up children, tell ’em how many Congressmen you got in your hip pocket, tell ’em your plans for the next Democratic convention. And tell ’em what you wanted me for, tell ’em what I was supposed to do for you.”

Howards’ face expands to fill three-quarters of the screen, with Barron in the upper righthand corner, his eyes flaying the gray image like whips.

“No! No!” Howards screams. “You got it all wrong, don’t understand, no one understands, gotta push the fading black circle back forever… Life is all I want; I’m on the side of life against death! Senators, Congressmen, Governors, President—gotta be on the side of life, not the side of the fading black circle closing in eviscerated niggers vultures’ beaks up nose down throat choking away life in tubes and bottles—”

Howards is suddenly compressed into the lower lefthand corner of the screen, screaming silently as Jack Barron ignores him, stares straight out from the screen, says:

“That’s where it’s at, folks. All I was supposed to do is lie to you. Tell enough lies to get that Freezer Bill passed, and then help Bennie elect his tame President—and guess which party he has bought? I may stink to high heaven with Foundation BO, but half the Democrats in Congress stink worse than I do. I can’t name names, but just maybe now some of ’em’ll have the guts poor Ted Hennering had and stand up and be counted. And if they don’t… well, just read a list of the Congressmen who support the Foundation Bill. Can’t sue the Congressional Record for libel!”

Now Howards’ face fills the entire screen, his eyes glazed and rolling, little flecks of spittle spraying from his trembling lips as Barron’s voice-over begins to almost chant: “You’re a dead man, Bennie. Dead… dead… dead. You’re gonna fry till you die. Till they kill you dead. Dead… dead… dead…”

“Nooooooo!” Howards screams. “I’ll get you get you all kill you buy you own you destroy you forces of the fading black circle nobody kills Benedict Howards, Senators, Governors, Congressmen, kill ’em all own ’em all kill… Nobody kills Benedict Howards! Nobody, never, young and strong and…”

Howards’ mad eyes stare straight out from the screen, and his screaming becomes harsh, clipped, savage.

“Barron! Barron! I’ll get you, Barron! Kill you! Kill you! Kill!”

From nowhere, a great gray fist suddenly fills the entire screen—and then the whole screen goes dead, a scintillating field of speckled gray and white static and over it an electric serpent hiss.

Just the dead screen and the hissing static for a beat, then the gray field of random electric impulses is pushed up into the upper-righthand corner as if by the hand of Jack Barron, who fills the rest of the screen in a head-and-shoulders shot, pointing to the square of hissing nothingness (like the random non-being of the grave) with his eyes.

“You, out there, you suckers, you!” he shouts. “Look at the thing you made! We all made Benedict Howards, we always make our Benedict Howards, because there’ll always be men who know the Big Secret: we can all be bought. Who wants to die? Who wants to live in a rat-trap? Who wants to eat garbage? They know it, and they suck on it—politicians! Power-junkies, giving you just enough to keep you bought with Welfare and Medicare and Niggercare and nice-sounding lies; crumbs from the table, is all! Just enough to cool it, and not a crumb more. Hold your noses and take a good look around you for a change—we’ve got a thousand little Benedict Howards calling themselves Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Presidents. And the only difference between them and Howards is that they’re not in his league, they’re pikers. What are you gonna do about it? Sit on your fat asses like you always have? Or maybe go out and get yours—anybody with a kid can get a piece of change for his bod. A lot more than thirty pieces of silver. Well, suckers, had enough? Or are you gonna let it go on and on and on till you die? Just remember, though, when you die now, baby, you die alone.”