Bug Jack Barron

8

“Deathbed at go” the promptboard flashed, and Jack Barron, clocking Vince’s smart-ass Sicilian-type grin, was sure Gelardi had to have Mafiosa blood in him somewhere even though he claimed to be strictly Neapolitan. The promptboard flashed “45 Seconds,” and Barron shuddered as the last seconds of the opening commercial reeled by—schtick was a bunch of diplomats relaxing around the old conference table with good old Acapulco Golds. Ain’t as funny as it looks, he thought, vips run the world like they’re stoned half the time anyway, and for the other half things are worse. Wonder what Benny Howards would be like high? Well, maybe tonight all hundred million Brackett Count chilluns gonna see—they say adrenalin’s like a psychedelic, and before I’m through tonight, Bennie’s gonna go on an adrenalin bummer he won’t believe.

Watching the commercial fade into his own face on the monitor, Barron felt a weird psychedelic flash go through him, the reality of the last week compressed into an instantaneous image flashed on the promptboard of his mind: Sitting in the studio chair, electronic feedback-circuitry connecting him with subsystems of power—Foundation power SJC-Democrat-Republican power, hundred million Brackett Count power—he was like the master transistor in a massive satellite network confluence circuit of power, gigantic input of others’ power feeding into his head through vidphone circuits, none of it his, but all feeding through him, his to control by microcosmic adjustment; for one hour, 8-9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, that power was de facto his.

He felt his subjective head-time speeding up, like an alien drug in his bloodstream, at the focus of forces far beyond him yet at his command as letters crawled across the promptboard an electronic-dot message that seemed to take ten million years: “On the Air.”

“And what’s bugging you out there tonight?” Jack Barron asked, playing to the kinesthop-darkness shapes double-reflected (backdrop off desktop) in his eye hollows ominous with foreknowledge of the shape of the show to come. “What bugs you, bugs Jack Barron,” he said, digging his own image on the monitor, eyes picking up flashes as never before. “And we’ll soon see what happens when you bug Jack Barron. The number is Area Code 212, 969-6969, and we’ll take our first call right… now.”

Now, he thought, making the vidphone connection, nitty-gritty time, Bennie-baby, better be good and ready, here it comes now. And the screen split down the middle; left half a pallid gray on gray image of a dough-faced middle-aged woman with deep lines of defeat-tension etched around her hollow-bagged eyes like dry kernels of mortal disaster, a hag-gray ghost begging her living-color image for alms from the gods.

“This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air, plugged into me, plugged into one hundred million Americans (drawing out the words for special audience of one, one hundred million, count ’em Bennie, 100,000,000) and this is your chance to let ’em all know what’s bugging you and get some action, ’cause action’s the name of the game when you bug Jack Barron. So let’s hear it all, the right here right now live no time-delay nitty-gritty; what’s bugging you?”

“My… my name is Dolores Pulaski,” the woman said, “and I’ve been trying to talk to you for three weeks, Mr Barron, but I know it’s not your fault. (Vince gave her three-quarters screen, put Barron in upper righthand corner catbird-seat, living-color Crusader dwarfed by yawning gray need. Just the right touch, Barron thought.) I’m calling for my father, Harold Lopat. He… He can’t speak for himself.” Her lips quivered on the edge of a sob.

Jesus Christ, Barron thought, hope Vince didn’t feed me a crier, gotta underplay this schtick or I’ll push Howards too far. “Take it easy, Mrs Pulaski,” he soothed, “you’re talking to friends. We’re all on your side.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said, “it’s just so hard to…” Her eyes frightened and furtive, her jaw hardened to numbness, the tension came across beautifully as she forced herself calm. “I’m calling from the Kennedy Hospital for Chronic Diseases in Chicago. My father, he’s been here ten weeks… die… die… he’s got cancer, cancer of the stomach, and it’s spread to the lym… lymphatics, and the doctors all say… we’ve had four specialists… He’s dying! He’s dying! They say they can’t do anything. My father, Mr Barron. My father… He’s going to die!”

She began sobbing; then her face went off-camera, and a huge pale hand obscured the vidphone image as she picked her vidphone up, turned its camera on the room. Trembling, disjointed, out of focus pieces of hospital room stumbled across the monitor screen: Walls, wilted flowers, transfusion stands, bed, blankets, the thousand deathhead’s wrinkled ether-smell shriveled face of a ruined old man, and her voice—“Look! Look! Look at him!”

Jeez, Barron thought, pumping his screen-control foot-button even as Vince changed the monitor-mix to three quarters Jack Barron, the lower lefthand quadrant still a jumble of sliding images, old man’s face fingers vased flowers trays of needles bedpan—hideous gray montage of death by inches now muted at least, surrounded by full-color embracing image of concerned Big Brother Jack Barren, and Dolores Pulaski’s screaming sobs were a faraway tinny unreality as Vince bled her audio and Barren’s voice reestablished control.

“Take it easy, Mrs Pulaski.” Barren stopped just short of harshness. “We’ll want to help you, but you’ll have to stay calm. Now put the vidphone down in front of you, and just try to remember you’ll have all the time you need to say what you want to. And if you can’t find the words, I’m here to help you. Try to relax. A hundred million Americans are on your side and want to understand.”

The woman’s face reappeared in the lower left quadrant, eyes dull, jaw slack, a spent, pale-flesh robot-image, and Barren knew he was back in control. After a little hair-tearing, she’s got nothing left in her, you can make her say anything, she won’t make more waves. And he foot-signaled Vince to give her three-quarters screen, her schtick to the next commercial, as long as she stayed tame.

“I’m sorry I had to be so short with you, Mrs Pulaski,” Barren said softly. “Believe me, we all understand how you must feel.”

“I’m sorry too, Mr Barren,” she said in a loud stage whisper. (Vince, Barren thought, on the ball as usual, turning up her volume.) “It’s just that I feel so… you know, helpless, and now when I can finally do something about it, it all just came out, everything I’ve been holding in… I don’t know what to do, what to say, but I’ve got to make everyone understand…”

Here it comes, Barren thought. Sitting on the edge of your sweaty little seat, Bennie? Not yet, eh? Keep cool, Bennie-baby, ’cause now you get yours!

“Of course we all sympathize, Mrs Pulaski, but I’m not quite sure what anyone can do. If the doctors say…” Give, baby! Shit, don’t make me fish for it.

“The doctors say… they say there’s no hope for my father. Surgery, radiation, drugs—nothing can save him. My father’s dying, Mr Barron. They give him only weeks. Within a month… within a month he’ll be dead.”

“I still don’t see—”

“Dead!” she whispered. “In a few weeks, my father will be dead forever. Oh, he’s a good man, Mr Barron! He’s got children and grandchildren who love him, and he’s worked hard for us all his life, and he loves us. He’s as good a man as anyone who ever lived! Why, why should he be dead and gone forever while other men, bad men, Mr Barron, men who’ve gotten rich on good men’s sweat, they can live forever just by buying their way into a Freezer with the money they’ve stolen and cheated people like us to get? It’s not fair, it’s… evil. A man, like my father, an honest, kind man, works all his life for his family, and when he dies he’s buried and gone like he had never existed, while a man like Benedict Howards holds… holds immortal lives in his filthy hands like he was God…”

Dolores Pulaski blanched at the weight of the word that hung from her lips. “I didn’t mean…” she stammered. “I mean, forgive me, to mention a man like that in the same sentence with God…”

Jeez, spare me the Hail Marys! Barron thought. “Of course you didn’t,” he said, picturing Howards sweating somewhere in the bowels of his Colorado Freezer with no place to hide. He tapped his right boot-button twice, signaling Vince to give him a two-minute count to the next commercial as he paused, casually kind, before continuing. “But tell me, Mrs Pulaski, what are you asking me to do?” he said, all earnest choir-boy innocence.

“Get my father a place in a freezer!” Dolores Pulaski shot back. (Beautiful, thought Barron. Couldn’t be better if we were working from a script; you’re show biz all the way, Dolores Pulaski.)

“I’m afraid I don’t swing much weight at the Foundation for Human Immortality,” Barron said archly as Vince now split the screen evenly between them, “as I’m sure you’ll remember if you saw the last show.” The promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.” (Don’t fail me now, Mrs Pulaski, come out with the right line and I make you a star.)

“I know that, Mr Barron. It’s that Benedict Howards… one man in the whole world who can save my father, and he sells immortality like the devil buys souls. God forgive me for saying it, but I mean it—like Satan! Who else but Satan and Benedict Howards are evil enough to put a price on a man’s immortal life? Talk to him, Mr Barron, show the world what he’s like. Make him explain to poor people dying everywhere without a hope of living again how he can set a price on human life. And if he can’t explain, I mean in front of millions of people, well, then he’ll have to do something about my father, won’t he? He can’t afford to look like a monster in public. I mean, an important man like that…?” The promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.”

“You’ve got a point, Mrs Pulaski,” Barron said, cutting her off quickly before too much more peasant shrewdness could come through. (Such a thing as too show biz, Dolores Pulaski—can’t stand a straight man steps on my lines.)

Vince expanded his image to three-quarters screen, cut Dolores Pulaski to a prefadeout inset, cut her audio too, and a good thing, the chick’s getting a wee bit naked, Barron thought as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.”

“Yeah, Mrs Pulaski sure has a point, doesn’t she?” Barron said, staring straight into the camera as his living-color image filled the monitor screen in extreme close-up, darkness-shadows, bruised sullen hollows framing his eyes. “If there’s a reason to set a dollar value on a man’s chance at immortality, there’s sure as hell a reason to hear what it is, with all America watching, with a bill pending in Congress to make this monopoly on freezing into Federal law. And we’ll get the answer from Mr Benedict Howards right after this word from our sponsor—or a hundred million Americans will know the reason why.”

What a lead-in! Barron thought as they rolled the commercial. Dolores Pulaski, you’re beautiful, baby! So long as you don’t flip out again while I’m playing chicken with Bennie…

He punched the intercom button on his number one vidphone. “Hey Vince,” he said, “keep your finger on that audio dial. It’s me and Bennie all the way from here on in. I want Mrs Pulaski seen but not heard. Keep her audio down, unless I ask her a direct question. And if you gotta cut her off, then fade it—make it look like a bad vidphone connection not the old ax. Got Bennie on the line yet?”

Gelardi grinned from behind the control booth glass.

“Been on the line for the last three minutes, and by now he’s foaming at the mouth. Wants to talk to you right now, before you go back on the air. Still got 45 seconds…?”

“Tell him to get stuffed,” Barron answered. “He’ll have more time than he can handle to talk to me when he’s on the air. And, baby, when I get my hooks into him, he won’t be in any position to hang up.”

Poor Bennie! Barron thought. Two strikes already. He’s playing the master’s game on the master’s turf, and he’s gibbering mad to boot. And as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds,” Barron suddenly realized that for the rest of the show he held Benedict Howards, the most powerful man in the United States, right there in his hot little hand, to play with like a cat plays with a wounded mouse. Can kill his Freezer Bill just for openers if I get that feeling; do him in all the way any time I want to close my fist just gotta twitch and he’s had it, is all. Cat and mouse. And Luke and Morris out there now, wondering just what the hell game I’m playing… maybe theirs? It’s what they’re both hot for, ain’t it—Jack Barron down on the Foundation with high-heeled hobnails and off to the races…? So hung on “Hail to the Chief” the poor bastards could never dream there could be bigger game in town…

“On the Air,” the promptboard said.

Barron made the number two vidphone connection and Dolores Pulaski appeared in a small lower-right inset, with Howards seemingly glowering down from the upper left quadrant at her across the color image of larger-than-either-adversary Jack Barron. Groovy, Barron thought as he said, “This is Bug Jack Barron, and the man on the screen with me and Mrs Pulaski is Mr Benedict Howards himself, President, Chairman of the Board, and founder of the Foundation for Human Immortality. Mr Howards, Mrs Pulaski has—”

“I’ve been watching the show, Mr Barron,” Howards interrupted, and Barron could see him fighting for control, eyes hot in the cool and earnest mask of his face. (But he still can’t keep from dripping acid, Barron thought gleefully.) “It’s one of my favorites and I rarely miss it—it’s sure long on excitement; you know how to create heat. Too bad you’re so short in the light department.”

Tsk, tsk! Watch it Bennie, your fly’s open and your id’s hanging out, Barron thought as he smiled nastily into the camera. “That’s my job after all, Mr Howards,” he said blandly. “I’m just here to turn the spotlight on things that need seeing, like… turning over a lot of wet rocks to see what crawls out. I’m not here to tell anyone anything; I just ask questions America thinks need answering. Enlightenment’s gotta come from the other end of the vidphone, your end, Mr Howards.

“So since you’ve been watching the show, let’s not bore a hundred million Americans with repetition. Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty. There’s a man dying in a hospital in Chicago—fact. There’s one of your Freezers in Cicero, isn’t there—that’s a hard fact too. Mrs Pulaski and her family want a place for Mr Lopat in that Freezer. If he isn’t Frozen, he dies and never lives again. If he is Frozen, he’s got the same chance at immortality as anyone else in a Freezer. You hold Harold Lopat’s life in your hands, Mr Howards, you say whether he lives or he dies. So you see, it all boils down to one simple question, Mr Howards, and a hundred million Americans know that you and only you have the answer: does Harold Lopat live or die?”

Howards’ mouth snapped open, and time stopped for a beat; he seemed to think twice, and closed it. (Got you right on the knife-edge, Bennie—the Nero schtick: thumbs up, the cat lives, thumbs down, he dies. Thumbs down, you’re a murderer in front of a hundred million people. Thumbs up, and you’ve opened the floodgates and the dam’s busted for every deadbeat dying everywhere, people, Mr Howards, people, is all, free Freeze for everyone on Emperor Howards… Whatever you say next, Bennie, it’s gotta be wrong.)

“Neither you nor Mrs Pulaski understands the situation,” Howards finally said. “I don’t have the power to say who’s to be Frozen and who isn’t. Nobody does. It’s sheer economics, just like who can afford a new Cadillac and who has to drive an old ’81 Ford. Fifty thousand dollars or more must be assigned to the Foundation for every man Frozen. I assure you that if Mr Lopat or his family have the requisite assets, he will be Frozen, if that’s what they want.”

“Mrs Pulaski…?” Barron said, foot-signaling Gelardi to cut in her audio.

“Fifty thousand dollars!” Dolores Pulaski shouted. “A man like you doesn’t know how much money that is—more than my husband makes in eight years, and he’s got a wife and a family to support! Even with Medicare, the specialists, the extra doctors, aren’t covered, and our savings, my father’s and my husband’s and my brother’s, are all gone. Why don’t you just make it a million dollars or a billion; what’s the difference, when ordinary people can’t afford it, what kind of filthy…” Her voice trailed off in crackles, fading simulated hisses as Gelardi cut her off.

“Seems to be a bug in Mrs Pulaski’s connection,” Barron said as Vince rearranged the images, giving Howards’ naked discomfort half the screen alongside him, Dolores Pulaski reduced to a tiny inset-creature looking on. “But I think she’s made her point. Fifty thousand dollars is a hell of a lot of bread to hold on to, taxes and cost of living being what they are. You know, I knock down a pretty nice piece of change for this show, I probably make more money than ninety per cent of the people in the country, and even I can’t squirrel that kind of bread away. So when you set the price of a Freeze at fifty big ones you’re really saying that ninety per cent of all living Americans gonna be food for the worms when they die, while a few million fat cats get the chance to live forever. Hardly seems right that money can buy life. Maybe the people who’re yelling for Public Freezers—”

“Commies!” shouted Howards. “Can’t you see that? They’re all Communists or dupes of the Reds. Look at the Soviet Union, look at Red China—they got any Freezer Programs at all? Of course not, because a Freezer Program can only be supported by a healthy free enterprise system. Socialized Freezing means no Freezing at all. The Commies would love—”

“But aren’t you the best friend the Communists have in America?” Barron cut in, signaling for a commercial in three minutes.

“You calling me a Communist!” Howards said, forcing his face into a soundless parody of a laugh. “That’s good, Barron, the whole country knows the kind of people you’ve been involved with.”

“Let’s skip the name-calling, shall we? I didn’t call you a Communist… just, shall we say, an unwitting dupe of the Reds? I mean, the fact that less than ten per cent of the population—shall we say, the exploiters of the working class, as they put it—has a chance to live forever, while everyone else has to die and like it… is there a better argument against a pure capitalistic system that the Reds can dream up? Isn’t your Foundation the best piece of propaganda the Reds have?”

“I’m sure your audience isn’t swallowing that crap,” Howards said (knowing it damn well is, Barron thought smugly). “Nevertheless, I’ll try to explain it so that even you can understand it, Mr Barron. Maintaining Freezers costs lots of money, and so does research on restoring and extending life. It costs billions each year, so much money that, for instance, the Soviet government simply can’t afford it—and neither can the government of the United States. But an effort like ours must be financed somehow, and the only way is for the people who are Frozen to pay their own way. If the government tried to Freeze everyone who died, it’d go bankrupt, it’d cost tens of billions a year. The Foundation, by seeing to it that those who are Frozen pay for it, and pay for the research, at least keeps the dream of human immortality alive. It may not be perfect, but it’s the only thing that can work. Surely a man of your… vast intelligence should be able to see that.”

Five points for you, Bennie, Barron conceded. Thing is that the fucker’s essentially right. Letting the few that are Frozen now feed the worms won’t get anyone else into a Freezer, and if you got a thousand people dying for every slot open, well baby, that’s where life’s always been at—the winners win, and the losers lose. But you’re too right for your own good, Bennie, muscle talks, and muscle’s what you’ll get from good old Jack Barron.

“Of course I understand the hard economic realities,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “I mean, sitting here, fat and healthy and thirty-eight years old. Dollars and sense and all that crap, on paper your Foundation looks real good. Yeah, I understand, Mr Howards. But I wonder if I’d feel so damn philosophical if I were dying. Would you, Mr Howards? How’d you like to die like Harold Lopat—broke, and the life leaking out of you drop by drop, while some cat in a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit explains real logical-like how it’s economically impractical to give you the chance to live again some day?”

To Barren’s surprise, Howards seemed genuinely stricken: a mist of what seemed like sheer madness drifted behind his eyes, his jaw trembling. Howards muttered something unintelligible and then froze entirely. The basilisk himself turned to stone? Bennie Howards with an attack of conscience? Barron wondered. More likely something he ate. Well, it’s an ill wind, he thought as the prompboard flashed “90 Seconds.”

“What’s the matter, Mr Howards,” Barron asked, “can’t you identify with the situation? Okay, Mrs Pulaski, let’s give Mr Howards some help. Please turn the camera of your vidphone on your father and hold it there.”

Vince’s right on the ball, Barron thought as Vince blew up Dolores Pulaski’s small inset to virtually fill the entire monitor screen as the image danced fragments of walls, vase, ceiling, then became a huge close-up black and white newspaper photo-image of the wasted old man’s face, a long rubber tube trailing from one nostril and taped to his forehead; the gray deathbed photo tilted at a crazy home-videotape angle, and made the closed blind eyes of Harold Lopat seem to stare down at the image of Benedict Howards in the lower left-quadrant like an avenging ghost of death looking down at a scuttling insect after kicking over a wet rock, as the prompboard flashed “60 Seconds.”

And Jack Barron, in a once-in-a-blue-moon off-camera spectral-voice gambit, etched Howards’ face into a mask of terror and fury with precise scalpel-words: “Look, Howards, you’re looking at death. That’s not $50,000 on your balance sheet, that’s a human being, and he’s dying. Go ahead, look at that face, look at the pain, look at the disease eating it up behind the mask. Only it’s not a mask, Howards, it’s a human being—a human life in the process of being snuffed out forever. We all come down to that in the end, don’t we, Mr Howards? You, and me, and Harold Lopat, all of us, sooner or later, fighting for just another breath, another moment of life before the Big Nothing closes in. And there, but for $50,000 go you or I. What’s so holy about fifty grand that it buys a man’s life? How much is $50,000 in pieces of silver, Mr Howards? A thousand? Two thousand? Once a man’s life was sold for thirty pieces of silver, Mr Howards, just thirty, and he was Jesus Christ. How many lives you got in your Freezers worth more than His? You think any man’s life is worth more money than was the life of Jesus Christ?”

And Gelardi filled the screen with the face of Benedict Howards, ghost-white in an extreme close-up that showed every razor nick, every pimple, network of coarse open pores, the eyes of a maddened trapped carnivore as Jack Barren’s voice said, “And maybe we’ll have some answers from Benedict Howards after this word from our sponsor.” Jesus H. himself on a bicycle! Barron thought gleefully as they rolled the commercial. Days like this, I scare myself.

“Oooh, does he want to talk to you!” Vince Gelardi’s voice said over the intercom circuit the moment the commercial was rolling. “Sounds like he’s down with hydrophobia.” Barron saw Gelardi grin, give him the highsign, start the count with “90 Seconds” on the promptboard as Benedict Howards’ face appeared on the tiny number two vidphone screen and his voice came on in the middle of a tirade:

“… to the fucking fishes! No one plays games like that with Benedict Howards. You lay off me, you crazy bastard, or I’ll have you off the air and in jail for libel before—”

“Fuck off, Howards!” Barron said. “And before you shoot your big mouth off again, just remember that this call goes through the control booth, it’s not a private line. (He shot Howards a cool-it, we’re-still-fencing, don’t-spill-the-beans look.) You know where all this is at, and you’ve got about sixty seconds before we go on the air again to give me a reason to lay off—and I don’t mean a lot of dumb threats. I don’t like threats. Tell you just what’s gonna happen in the next segment. I’m gonna tear you to pieces, is all, but I’m gonna leave just enough left so you can throw in the towel during the next commercial and save what’s left of your ass. Unless you wanna be smart, meet my terms now—and we both know what those terms are.”

“Don’t threaten me, you goddamned clown!” Howards roared. “You lay off, or I’ll just hang up, and when I get through with you, you won’t be able to get a job cleaning cesspools in—”

“Go ahead, hang up,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.” “I’ve got five calls just like the first one—only seedier—lined up to fill the rest of the show. I don’t need you on the air to do you in. One way or the other you’re gonna learn it doesn’t pay to screw around with me, ’cause unless you come around by the next commercial your Freezer Bill has had it, and your whole fucking Foundation will stink so bad you’ll think Judas Iscariot was your press agent. How’s that grab you, bigshot?”

“You filthy fuck—” and Gelardi cut Howards off just in time as the promptboard flashed “On the Air”.

Jack Barron grinned at his own image filling the monitor—flesh-eyes digging phosphor-dot-eyes in adrenalin-feedback reaction—and he felt a strange lightheaded exhilaration, a psychic erection. More than anticipation of the coming catbird-seat five-aces-in-the-hole poker game for the bit chips with Howards blood humming behind his ears, Barron felt the primal sap rising, the hot berserker joy ghost of Berkeley Baby Bolshevik jugular thrill of the hunt, amplified by electronic satellite network hundred million Brackett Count living-color image-power shooting sparks out of his phosphor-dot eyes, and for the first time felt himself giving the show over to the gyroscope of his endocrine system and didn’t know what would happen next. And didn’t care.

Gelardi gave Howards a lower left-quadrant inquisition dock inset—Dolores Pulaski having finished her schtick—as Barron said: “Okay, we’re back on the air, Mr Howards, and we’re gonna talk about your favorite subject for a change. Let’s talk about money. How many… er, clients you figure you got in your Freezers?”

“There are over a million people already in Foundation Freezers,” Howards answered (and Barron could sense him fighting for purchase, trying to anticipate the line of the jugular thrust he knew was coming). “So you see, Freezing is not really just for the few at all. A million human beings with hope for eternal life someday is quite a large—”

“You ain’t just whistling Dixie,” Barron interrupted. “A million’s a nice round number. Let’s continue with our little arithmetic lesson, shall we? How much would you say it costs to maintain one body in a cryogenic Freezer for one year?”

“It’s impossible to come up with an average figure just like that,” said Howards. “You’ve got to figure in the cost of preparation for Freezing, the cost of the Freezing itself, amortization on the Freezer facilities, the cost of replacing evaporated coolant, power to run the pumps, salaries, taxes, insurance…”

“Yeah, we know you run a real complicated show,” Barron replied. “But let’s take a generous average figure no one can say is stingy…” Lay the trap right, he thought. True figure can’t be more than three thou per stiff per year, and he’s gotta know it, so give him more than enough rope… “Let’s say $5,000 will cover it, five thou per client per year. Sound reasonable?—or am I way too high? I don’t have much of a head for business, as my accountant keeps telling me every year around April fifteenth.”

“I suppose that’s about right,” Howards admitted grudgingly, and Barron could see the fear showing through his eyes. (Scared shitless, eh, Bennie? ’cause you don’t see where all this is going, ’cause you know there’s something happening and you don’t know what it is, do you Mr Jones?)

“And in order to be Frozen, you’ve gotta sign over a minimum of $50,000 in liquid assets to the Foundation in order to cover costs, right?”

“We’ve gone through all that,” Howards muttered, obviously uncertain as to what was going to happen next.

“All rightie…” Barron drawled, foot-signaling to Vince to kill Howards’ audio. He stared straight into the camera, tilted his head forward, picked up darkness-shadows reflected off the desk-arm of the chair from the kinesthop background in the hollows of his dead-end-kid innocent eyes, gave a little bemused inside-joke grin. “Okay, out there, we’ve got the figures, now let’s all do a little arithmetic. Check me, out there, will you? I’ve got a lousy head for figures—at least the numerical kind. Lessee… multiply how many bodies in the Freezers by $50,000 per body… . That comes to… ah… ten zeros and… why, that’s fifty billion dollars, isn’t that right folks? Foundation’s got at least fifty billion bucks in assets. Now there’s cigarette money! About half the defense budget of the United States, is all. Okay, students, now one more problem in multiplication—$5,000 for each body for a year times a million bodies in the freezers… in nice round numbers it comes to… five billion dollars. Now, let’s see—if I had fifty billion bucks to play around with I ought to be able to make—oh, say ten per cent a year on it. Couldn’t you, out there?—and wouldn’t you like to try? That comes to… why, it’s about five billion dollars, isn’t it? What a coincidence! Same as Foundation expenses—one tenth, count it folks, ten per cent of the Foundation’s total assets. Boy, numbers are fun!”

Visualizing the path to the punchline, Barron signaled Gelardi to give him a two-minute count to the next commercial and to cut in Howards’ audio.

“What the hell is this?” Howards snapped. “Who do you think you are, the Internal Revenue Service?”

Patience, Mr Howards, patience,” Barron drawled with purposefully irritating slowness. “Jack Barron, great swami—knows all, sees all, tells all. Now let’s try some simple subtraction. Subtract five billion in expenses from five billion a year in interest on your assets. That leaves a big fat zero, doesn’t it? That’s exactly how much maintaining those million bodies in the freezers cuts into that fifty billion bucks in assets you got squirreled away—zero! Not at all. How neat! And that’s how you hold on to your nonprofit, tax-exempt status, isn’t it? Expenses balance income. And that $50,000 each client chucks in—why, that’s not nasty old income at all, is it? Technically it’s not even yours, and that keeps the Income Tax boys’ hot little hands out of your till. Boy, I’d like to borrow your accountant!”

“What’re you gibbering about?” Howards said, with a totally unconvincing show of incomprehension.

“I’m gibbering about the small matter of fifty billion dollars,” Barron told him as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds.” “Fifty billion dollars free and clear that you’ve got to play around with above Freezer expenses, a fifty-billion-dollar slush fund. Who do you think you’re putting on, Howards? That’s enough bread to provide a free Freezer for every man, woman, and child who dies every year in the United States, and in Canada too, for that matter, isn’t it? Fifty billion bucks sitting there, while Harold Lopat and millions like him die and are gone forever while you poormouth us! What does happen to that fifty billion, Howards? You must have mighty big holes in your pockets or else—”

“Research!” Howards croaked frantically. “Without research—”

Gelardi, anticipating even as Barron foot-signaled, flashed “30 Seconds” on the promptboard and cut his audio off.

“Research!” Barron mimicked, his image now filling the entire monitor screen, a mask of righteous indignation scowling into Brackett Audience Count estimated hundred million pairs of eyes.

“Yeah, sure, research, but research in what? Research in how to buy votes in Congress to get this cozy little setup written into law? Research into how to own Governors and Senators and… who knows, maybe your very own Presidential candidate? I don’t like to speak ill of the dead—the conveniently permanent dead—but you were awfully tight with a certain late Senator who was putting on a rather well-financed campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, weren’t you? That come under ‘research’ too? Fifty billion bucks’ worth of research—with people like Harold Lopat dying all around you every day. Research. Yeah, let’s talk about research! And we’ll have plenty of time to discuss fifty billion dollars’ worth of scientific—or is it political—research after this word from our relatively impoverished sponsor.”

As they rolled the final commercial Barron felt a weird manic exhilaration, knowing that he had set up a focus of forces which in the next few minutes could squash the fifty-billion-dollar Foundation for Human Immortality like a bug if Bennie proved dumb enough to not holler “Uncle.” Fifty billion bucks! Never added it up before, Barron thought. What the fuck is he really doing with all that bread? Shit, he could buy the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court out of petty cash, if it came down to it. Talk about big-league action! Bennie Howards is bigger than the whole fucking country!

Yeah, but right here now no time-delay live, he’s nothing but a punk I can dribble like a basketball. And what’s that make me? Luke and Morris maybe not as crazy as they sound…?

He made the connection on the number two vidphone and Howards, his eyes now reptile-cold gimlets, stared up at him from the oh-so-tiny vidphone screen like a bug trapped in amber.

“All right, Barron,” Howards said in a dead-flat, money-talk voice, “you’ve made your point. We’ve been playing your game, and we both know I’m no match for you at it. You hurt me, and you hurt me bad. Maybe you can do more damage to me than I thought possible, but I warn you, you play ball and get me out of this mess or I’ll really finish you and quick. And don’t con me, you know damn well I can do it. You keep this up, and you’ll find out just how much muscle fifty billion dollars is—I’ll use every penny of it, if I have to, to pound you to a pulp. You’ll lose more than your show, I can have your tax returns for the last ten years investigated, sue you for libel and buy the judge, and that’s just off the top of my head. Play ball, remember what you’ve got to lose—and what you’ve got to gain.”

And it brought Barron down like a bucket of ice water smack in the face. Sure, I can finish the hatchet-job, he thought, but goodbye Bug Jack Barron, and goodbye free Freeze, and Christ knows what else the bastard can do to me—kamikaze’s the name of that game. An old Dylan lyric ran through his head:

Yeah, I can do him in and he can do me in if we both want to do that Samson schtick. Bluff’s the name of the real game.

And the promptboard told him he had sixty seconds to play his hands.

Look, Howards,” he said, “we can do each other in, or play ball and cool it. Your choice, Bennie-baby. You know what I want, the straight poop plus that other thing. I don’t change my mind—matter of principle. So maybe I’m bluffing, so call me on it, I dare you. But before you do, ask yourself what you’ve got to gain by calling me that’s worth the risk of losing what you’ve got to lose. I’m a dangerous lunatic, Howards, I’m not afraid of you. You that sure you’re not afraid of me?”

Howards was silent for a long moment, bit his lip, then said, “All right, you win. It’s all negotiable. You get me out of this, and we’ll talk turkey on your terms. Good enough?”

The promptboard flashed “30 Seconds” for instant decision on the course of the rest of the show and all that was riding on it. As close to “Uncle” as you’ll hear from Bennie, Barron knew. He’ll say anything now to get off the hook, thinks he can maybe welch later, those fifty-billion-bucks Foundation aces, but he doesn’t know all the aces I got—Luke and Morris’ fun and games up my sleeve, enough to bluff him out for good, comes nitty-gritty time, no matter what he’s holding. So okay Bennie, you get off the hook or anyway I don’t give the descabello, leave your bod bleeding but alive.

“All right, Howards, things don’t get any worse tonight, but don’t expect to make any big points in the next ten minutes either. All I’m gonna do is make things kinda fuzzy in all those heads out there.”

“But you’ve got me backed into a corner,” Howards whined. “How you gonna get me out of this with a whole skin?”

“That’s my line of evil, Bennie,” Barron said. He flashed Howards an ironic man-in-control smirk. “What’s the matter, Bennie, don’t you trust me?”

And the promptboard flashed “On the Air,” and Gelardi gave Howards the same lower left-quadrant inquisition seat as before.

“Now what were we talking about?” Barron said. (Gotta back off real gradual-like, and not too far.) “Ah, yes, research. Fifty billion dollars’ worth of research. Since by some fancy sleight of hand the Foundation is tax-exempt, I think that the American people have the right to know just what kind of… research that money is being spent on. Now, we can always check this with the tax boys, Mr Howards, so let’s have the straight poop—just what is your annual research budget?”

“Somewhere between three and four billion dollars,” Howards said. Barron foot-signaled Gelardi to give him a half-screen, ease him out of the hotseat.

“That’s a far cry from fifty billion dollars, isn’t it?” Barron said, but with the cutting edge eased out of his voice (come on schmuck, he telepathed, pick up on it, don’t expect me to make your points for you). “What’s the story on that fifty billion?”

Howards seemed to relax a bit, catching on that the lead was being passed over to him. “You’ve been tossing that figure around pretty freely,” he said, “but you obviously don’t understand what it represents. If you’d studied a Freeze Contract you’d know that the $50,000 per client is not a fee turned over free and clear to the Foundation. Upon clinical death, the total assets of the client go into a trust-fund administered by the Foundation for as long as the client is biologically and legally dead. But on revival all assets originally placed in the trust fund revert to the client, and only the interest and capital appreciation during the time the client is in the Freezer actually become the property of the Foundation. So you see, that fifty billion dollars is simply not ours to spend. It certainly is an enormous amount of money, but the fact is that we must maintain all of it as a reserve against the day when we can revive our clients and return it to them. The fund works essentially the way a bank works—a bank can’t go around spending its deposits, and we can’t spend that fifty billion dollars. It’s not really ours.”

Can’t make me look bad, Barron thought. Can’t make it too easy; gotta back off slow. “But a chunk of capital that big grows awfully fast unless you’re some kind of idiot or you’re blowing it on the horses,” he said. “And you’ve just admitted that all increases in the original capital do belong to the Foundation, so you’ve gotta have billions in assets that are yours free and clear. What about that?”

Howards pounced quickly. (Now he sees daylight! Barron thought.) “Quite true. But our expenses are enormous… something like five billion a year for maintenance, and that eats up all the interest on the original capital. So the four billion for research must come from profits on the investment of our own capital. After all, if we start spending capital on research we’d quickly go bankrupt.”

Suddenly, almost unwillingly, Barron realized that Howards had handed him a weapon that could make the rest of the show look like a love-pat. Shit, he thought, Bennie’s got a vested interest in keeping all those quick-Frozen stiffs dead! The day he can thaw ’em out and revive ’em he loses that fifty-billion-dollar trust fund. Hit him with that baby, and you’ll stomp him into the ground! Why—Cool it! Cool it! he reminded himself. You’re supposed to be pulling the lox out of the hole, not digging it deeper!

“So it all comes down to research,” Barron said, reluctantly leading away from the jugular. “Four billion bucks is still one hell of a research budget, more than enough to hide… all kinds of interesting things. Suppose you explain what kind of research you’re spending all that bread on?”

Howards shot him a dirty look.

Jeez, what you expect, Bennie? Barron thought. I still gotta look like kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron, don’t I?

“First off, you’ve got to understand that all those people in our Freezers are dead. Dead as anyone in a cemetery. All cryogenic freezing does is preserve the bodies from decay—those bodies are simply corpses. The problem of bringing a corpse back to life is enormous. I’m no scientist and neither are you, Barron, but you can imagine how much research and experimentation must be done before we can actually bring a dead man back to life—and it’s all very expensive. And even then, cures must be developed for whatever killed the clients in the first place—and most of the time, it’s old age. And that’s the toughest nut of all to crack, a cure for aging. I mean, so you revive a ninety-year-old client, but if you haven’t licked aging, he dies again almost immediately. See what we’re up against? All this will cost billions a year for decades, maybe centuries. Man in my position’s gotta take the long view, the real long view…” And for a moment, Howards’ eyes seemed to be staring off into some unimaginable future.

And Barron got a flash: Could it be that the whole Freezer schtick’s a shuck? Way to raise money for something else? Pie in the sky in the great bye and bye? The whole Freezer Program’s useless unless they lick aging. (And how much is that free Freeze really worth? Maybe I’m selling myself awfully cheap…) But the way Bennie babbled in my office about living forever, that was no shuck, he was really zonked on it! Yeah, it all adds up—he doesn’t want to lick the revival problem ’cause that’d cost him that fifty billion. But he’s sure hot to live forever. Five’ll get you ten the Foundation scientists are just pissing around with revival research, big bread’s gotta be behind immortality research. And if that gets out, how many more suckers gonna spring for that fifty thou? Bennie-baby, we gonna have a long long talk. Let’s see if we can hit a little nerve, he thought, what they call an exploratory operation, as the promptboard flashed “3 Minutes.”

“Someday all men will live forever through the Foundation for Human Immortality,” said Barron.

“What?” Howards grunted, his eyes snapping back into sharp focus like a man called back from a trance.

“Just quoting a Foundation slogan,” Barron said. “Isn’t that where it’s really at? I mean all that bread spent on Freezing is money down a rathole unless it really leads to immortality, right? Some old coot signs over fifty thou so you can revive him a hundred years later so he can die again of old age in a year or two, that doesn’t make much sense to me. The Freezer Program is a way to preserve a few people who die now so they can have immortality in the future, whenever you lick that one. I mean young cats like me, the country in general, main stake we’ve got in letting the Foundation do business is like that slogan of yours about all people living forever someday through the Foundation for Human Immortality, right? So either you’re going hot-and-heavy on immortality research, or the whole thing’s just a con. You follow me, Mr Howards?”

“Wh… wh… why, of course we are!” Howards stammered, and his eyes went reptile-uptight cold. “It’s called ‘The Foundation for Human Immortality,’ not ‘The Freezing Foundation,’ after all. Immortality is our goal and we’re spending billions on it, and in fact…”

Howards hesitated as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” That hit a nerve, all right, Barron thought, but which nerve? Seemed like he was on the edge of blowing something he didn’t want to… 120 seconds to try to find out what.

“Well, it seems to me,” said Barren, “that with you having tax-exempt status and by your own admission spending billions on immortality research and some of that bread being indirectly public money, you owe the American people a progress report. Just how is all this expensive research going?”

Howards shot him a look of pure poison. Lay off! his eyes screamed. “Foundation scientists are following many paths to immortality,” Howards said slowly. (He must be watching the clock too, Barron realized.) “Some, of course, are more promising than others… Nevertheless, we feel that all possibilities should be explored…”

Barron tapped his left foot-button three times, and Vince gave him three-quarters of the screen, with Howards in the inquisition slot again, as the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.” “How about some specifics?” he asked. “Tell us what the most promising line of research seems to be, and how far along you are.”

“I don’t think it would be right to raise any false hopes this early,” Howards said blandly, but Barren’s teeth sensed something tense?—fearful?—threatening?—behind it. “Discussing specifics would be a mistake at this time…” But false hopes are your stock in trade, Barron thought. Why don’t you want to give a nice sales spiel, Bennie…? Unless…

“You mean to tell me you’ve spent all those billions and you’re right back where you started?” Barron snapped in a tone of cynical disbelief. “That can only mean one of two things: the so-called scientists you’ve got working for you are all quacks or idiots, or… or the money you’ve got budgeted for immortality research is going for something else—like pushing your Freezer Bill through Congress, like backing political campaigns…”

“That’s a lie!” Howards shrieked, and suddenly he seemed back in that strange trance state. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! (The promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.”) Progress is being made. More progress than anyone drea—” Howards shuddered, as if he had suddenly found himself blowing his cool, caught himself short.

Barron foot-signaled Gelardi to give him the full screen wind-up. Something’s going on here, he thought. Something bigger than… bigger than…? Anyway, too big to thrash out on the air. Good timing, as usual.

“Well that’s about it, folks,” he said, “we’re out of time. Been quite an hour, eh? And if this whole thing’s still bugging you, then next Wednesday night you just pick up that vidphone and dial Area Code 212, 969-6969, and we’ll be off to the races again with another hour of Bug Jack Barron.”

And they were rolling the wrap-up commercial, and he was off the air.

“He wants to—”

“No!” Jack Barron said evenly as Gelardi’s voice spoke over the intercom circuit. “I don’t talk to Howards now for no reasons under no conditions.”

Gelardi made hair-pulling motions behind the glass wall of the control booth. “I’ve never heard any of your victims this pissed,” he said. “You’ve gotta get this fruitcake off the line before he melts every circuit in the joint. Such language!”

Barron felt the old talked-out satisfying fatigue come over him as he got up out of the hotseat and thought, as usual, about going somewhere and picking up a chick and fucking her brains—and then, like a new burst of energy, he remembered. Them days is gone forever! Home to Sara, and Sara there! Changes, changes, and good ones for a change this time round.

“Come on, Jack, for chrissakes, cool Howards already!” Gelardi whined.

Who the fuck wants him cooled? Barron thought. Something happened during those last few minutes, I hit something real tender, and he almost spilled some mighty important beans—and not because he kept his cool. Let him stew a while. I want him hot and raving when we get down to nitty-gritty—and no witnesses, Vince, baby.

“Give him my home phone number,” Barron said. “If that doesn’t cool him, tell him to fuck off. In fact why don’t you give him my number and tell him to fuck off anyway? Tell him… tell him Mohammed can damn well come to the mountain.”

“But man, all we need is Howards—”

“Let me do the worrying, Vince, Boy. Wonder Jack Barren’s still in the catbird-seat.”

As vip Bennie Howards will soon find out.