Bug Jack Barron

9

Jack… Jack, maybe I never understood, Sara Westerfeld thought as she stood on the breakfast deck overlooking the penthouse living room, listening to the May shower rattle against the skylight facets and to the faint hum of the elevator rising to the entrance foyer. How long’s it been like this! she wondered. This sure wasn’t what he was doing with Bug Jack Barron when he threw me out… or when I left him. Maybe he’s been right all along, maybe I did leave him by copping-out, refusing to dig where his head was really at?

As she heard the elevator door open, his footsteps down the hall, the pressure of his being moving like a shock wave down the narrow passage, impinging on unknown kinesthetic senses, Sara felt on the edge of a new-style awareness of man-woman contrast that cut far deeper than what was revealed when pants came down.

Power’s a man’s bag, she realized. Any chick that digs power, really feels where it’s at, almost always turns out to be some kind of dyke in the end. Power’s somehow cock-connected; woman’s hung-up on power, she’s hungup on not having a cock, understands power only if she’s thinking like someone who does. Power’s even got its own man-style time-sense: man can wait, scheme, plan years-ahead-guile-waiting games, accumulate power on the sly, then use it for good—if the man’s good deep inside like Jack—like a good fuck good cat can bring a frigid chick along, cooling himself, holding back when he has to, until he’s finally got her ready to come. Man kind of love, man kind of delayed-timing thinking, calculated quanta of emotion and only when the time’s right, and not like woman needs to feel everything totally the moment it happens—good, evil, love, hate, prick inside her. Like a man digs fucking a woman, woman digs being fucked. Is that all that came between us, Jack? Me thinking like an always-now woman, you thinking future time man-thoughts?

And then he was standing before her, wet curls framing eyes glistening with afterglow-fatigue of a hundred remembered battles in Berkeley, Los Angeles, now at last New York, the lines in his face like timelines from past dreams to present-planned reality, mosaic of love in four-dimensional space-time manflesh, she saw the boy still living behind the face of the man, saw in memory’s eye the man that had grown behind the soft-flesh shining armor of the boy she had tasted in action-swirling streets and bedrooms, loved the boy and his dream, and the man and his past, and the JACK BARRON (in flaming capital letters) of past-present-future mortal lovers-against-the-night combats—oh, this is a man.

She kissed him quick but deep with her tongue; bubbling over, she pulled away from his mouth, still in an arm-on-shoulders mutual embrace, said: “Jack, Jack I watched you on television, I mean really watched you, really saw for the very first time what you were doing. You were magnificent, you were everything I always knew you would be the first day I met you in Berkeley, but better—better than anything I could’ve imagined—because then I was a girl, and you were a boy, and today you were a man, and I… Well, maybe at the advanced age of thirty-five I’m leaving adolescence and I’m ready to try loving you the way a woman should love a man.”

“That’s… uh… groovy,” he said, and now she thrilled even at the way he was preoccupied, the old Berkeley distant-focus preoccupation, thinking through her, above her, warm exciting man-thoughts enveloping her in him were the moments she had always loved him most.

“Groovy, and I dig what you’re saying—I mean about us. But the show… look, Sara, there are things I’ve got to tell you. I mean, don’t think I’m back in the silly old Baby Bolshevik bag. I suppose it looked that way to a lot of people, and there were moments when I… but I don’t do things without a reason, and there are things going on that—”

“I know, Jack,” she said. “You don’t even have to tell me. It stands out all over you. You’re involved in something big, something important, the kind of thing you were always meant to do. Something real like you used to—”

“It’s not what you think, not what anyone thinks,” he muttered, brows furrowed at some hidden contrapuntal train of thought. “I don’t even know the whole story myself. But I feel something, can smell it… something so big, so… I’m afraid to even think about it until I—”

The vidphone chime interrupted. “Already… ?” Jack muttered, and he bolted down the stairs, across the carpet to the wall consoles, made the vidphone connection, and sprawled on the floor, as she followed a few steps behind.

“What’s shaking with you, Rastus?” he was saying as she sat down beside him, saw that the face on the vidphone screen was good old Luke Greene, and remembered good days screwing around with Luke before she met Jack.

“Never mind me, Huey,” Luke said. “What’s shaking with you, lot of people are asking?”

Jack picked up the vidphone, pointed the camera at Sara. Hello, Luke,” she said, “it’s been a long time.”

He smiled back at her, long-gone no-hang-ups ancient-history-love pure friendship smile. “Well hello, Sara,” he said “you and Jack…?”

“You know it, Kingfish,” Jack said, turning the vidphone camera back on himself. “We’re back together, and this time it’s for keeps.”

The thrill of being owned by her fated man went through Sara as he goosed her off-camera.

“Well, congratulations, mah chillun,” Luke said. “Sara, maybe you can keep this schmuck off the streets, give him some of dat ole time religion, good for old Jack Barron, and good for the SJC.”

Sara saw a flicker of annoyance cross Jack’s face, wondered why as Jack said, “I get the ugly feeling that that plug for Baby Bolsheviks, Inc is what the nitty-gritty of this call’s about, Luke. Or are you just using the tax money of the good people of Mississippi to make long-distance vidphone calls strictly for kicks? What’s going on in that twisted excuse for a mind of yours?”

“It’s your head that seems to be going through changes,” said Luke. “You’re back with Sara… and after tonight it looks mighty like you’re back with us. Welcome back to the human race, Jack.”

“Uh… what race you say that was?” Jack said archly. “Rat race, you say, Lothar? Race from nowhere straight to oblivion? Race, shit—you don’t even catch me near that track.”

“Cut the crap, you shade mother you,” Luke said, “you’re not bullshitting with Bennie Howards now. You got the bug, Claude, knew you would. Could taste it, couldn’t you, and when you got on the air with Bennie, you just couldn’t help it… Well, you made your point, Jack. You made it with me, and with a whole lot of others, including those fat-cat Republican dinosaurs.”

“What in hell are you babbling about?” Jack asked and Sara sensed he meant it, was as confused about what Luke was saying as she was about Jack, and wondered if he too felt the shadow of something big and important about to come on.

“I’m talking about the show you just did, what else?” Luke said. “I never saw any vip that cut up; Bennie must be leaving a trail of blood from here to his digs in Colorado. Shit, man, you know what I’m talking about, you said it all, and you said it perfect. Something for everyone. Morris flipped over the economic angle; it’s a tie-in to their whole damn Adam Smith Platform—fat cats who want a piece of the Freezer action for themselves are ready to shell out big. Oh, man, like I always said, a man that’s got the instinct for politics just can’t shake it! You let Bennie off a little too easy at the end maybe, but you know, I begin to think that was the right come-on too. Like Morris says, we gotta develop your position slow and easy before you come out into the open next year.”

“In words of one syllable for us ignorant shades, please,” Sara heard Jack say, still feigning confusion. But, you are faking it now, aren’t you, Jack? she thought. Putting on Luke… Wow, what’s going on? And she felt as she did when she was eleven, peeking in between wooden shack slits and watching naked boy-flesh shapes doing exciting dirty-little-boy things. Like the old Jack in bed beside her, talking big-world phone-talk over her quiet listening-flesh with Luke, and how good, oh how good to be Sara Barron again, watching my man doing his man-things…

“How’s yes for a word of one syllable?” Luke said. “I just got off the phone with Morris, and, baby, the word is yes. You pulled it off, you made up all the points with the Republican vips you lost by bad-mouthing Morris. After the way you stomped Howards tonight—and they loved the way you linked him with Hennering—they are like hot for your living-color bod. You know what a tight little cabal that bunch is, so when Greg Morris says he can personally guarantee you the nomination if I can deliver the SJC, you know that means that all their vips have spoken. And with that word in old Luke’s hip pocket, don’t you worry, we’re home free with the SJC Council.

“You know what this means, Clive? You dig? We’re gonna do it! We’re really gonna do it, not another Berkeley pipe dream, not a little piece of the action like I have here, but the whole schmear, Jack, all the way, an SJC National Administration, just like you told us in that dirty old attic. It took one hell of a long time for you to remember who you were, but, Claude, it was worth the wait ’cause when you returned to the fold, prodigal baby, you brought more than the bacon back, you brought the whole fucking hog.”

“For crissakes, Jack, tell me!” Sara said excitedly. “What’s this all about?”

Jack grimaced, handed her the vidphone. “Go ahead, Machiavelli,” he said with a peculiar weariness. “You do it, at least you’ll be able to keep a straight face. Tell the little lady what it’s all about.”

“You mean you haven’t told…?” Luke said incredulously. “Sara, us movers and shapers gonna make this cretin you’re balling the next President of the United States, is all.”

Jack snatched back the vidphone before she could answer, before she could do anything but gape at him as if he were some mystical avatar suddenly revealed in his full glory by a flash of psychedelic light. Yes! Yes! she thought, where in the world is there a bigger man than Jack, and who can stand against him if he stands naked, the whole total Berkeley-knight-in-soft-flesh-armor JACK BARRON in front of those hundred million people? They’ve got to want him; all he’s gotta do is show the world Jack.

“I got a one-syllable word for you too, Luke, and it’s even shorter,” Jack said. “The word is no. If nominated, I shall not run, if elected, I shall not serve, and all that Sherman jazz. Okay, let’s say you can get me a Republican and SJC nomination. Let’s say the Pretender gets himself killed, like Hennering, and I end up running against some obvious Howards’ stooge and everyone is stoned on Election Day, so I win. What then? I don’t know shit from shinola about being President and what’s more I’ve got no eyes to learn. It’s just not my bag.”

No sweat,” Luke said smoothly. “You’ll have plenty of political geniuses like yours truly to run things for—”

“Look Svengali, I’m nobody’s front-man, not even yours, and I never will be, and don’t you forget it! Think I’m so stupid I don’t know where it’s at? You and Morris want an image-candidate, an Eisenhower, a Reagan, a fucking-mindless-celebrity mouthpiece, is all, someone you can package and sell like soap. And the answer is no. You so buddy-buddy with Morris, why don’t you run yourself?”

“This is a vidphone, isn’t it?” Luke said bitterly. “Take a good look at the color of my face and say that again, shade.”

“Sorry, Luke, I’m really sorry,” Jack said with that instant belly-radar reflex-reaction that always seemed to tell him when he had drawn blood, intentional or otherwise, with that inner vulnerable little-boy empathy Sara had always loved behind the kick-’em-in-the-ass exterior, drawing immediately back.

“You know me, man,” Jack said earnestly. “I really don’t notice your color until it smacks me in the face. I’m not giving you some bullshit come-on. Anyway, I really meant it—you’re the man should be President, not me. It’s your bag, not mine. You’ve worked all these years in that direction even though you knew… what you were up against, and I’ve been off in an entirely different bag, the show biz scene… Which is yet another good reason for my saying no. Who am I to waltz on to your turf and make like top dog? You try and get yourself a phone-in show, and I’ll be out to stomp you dead. Let’s be friends, but let’s each of us stick to his own line of evil.”

Sara caught a glimpse of poor wounded Luke (hung up over it even in Berkeley days, she thought. Number one type cat always number two, being black and too hip not to know it was where it would always be at), smiling it away (how brave to be black and still be a man she remembered how contained, hard-edged he had been, even in bed), and saying real cool like Luke-cool:

“You know you’re right, Clyde. I always knowed I was a better man than you, never thought you’d finally up and admit it. (And Sara, through body-remembered senses knew the triple-level—reality-put-onreality—of Luke’s sarcasm.) But the hard fact is that you can do it and I can’t, because you’re a shade and I’m a nigger—it’s as simple as that, and I don’t hold it against you. But that’s why I have to do it through you, why we all have to do it through you. What’s the SJC but a collection of coons, Flower People, Baby Bolsheviks, and just plain losers, think I kid myself? You’re the only big-league shade we got going, only cat that can ring in that Republican bread and support. You could be a fucking chimpanzee and we’d have to go with—’cause you’re the only ape can win.”

Sara felt a pang of the old remembered thing for Luke with the balls to say the truth and the brains to say it right, and though, anyone paled beside Jack, for her, she felt a warm snug satisfaction at the memory of how once she had been able to give Lukas Greene some small balm for that ever-open black wound.

“Sorry Luke,” Jack said. “The answer’s still no. And you can tell Morris to forget it too. There’s no point in even thinking about it any more. N.O. No!”

“Okay, B’rer Rabbit, I won’t throw you into the briar patch,” said Luke. “Not today. But I’m telling you right now, I’m gonna stall Morris as long as I can till I can get you to change your mind.”

“You won’t,” Jack said flatly.

“Sara,” Luke said, “you tell this prick where it’s at. Maybe you can get through that concrete skull of his. I’m tired, chillun, gonna go lynch me a brace of rednecks or something, y’know, relax. You listen to that chick of yours, Jack. She knows you better than you know yourself, knows the best part of you, part you still seem to be stranger to. Listen to her, will you, stupid? Later.”

And he broke the connection, and Jack put away the vidphone, and they were staring at each other—the old contest of silence game; who would yell first?

“Jack I—”

“Do I have to hear it from you too, Sara? Does everyone have to tell me what a fucking cop-out I am? Goddamned broken record! You and Luke… you think Luke really knows what’s coming off? You so sure you do?”

“But, Jack, President. . .” The word was an enormity in her mouth, choking off the impossible thoughts of what it implied.

“President, horseshit! A fucking pipe dream! You saw the show. Howards got a fifty-billion-dollar slush fund, and whether he can legally spend it or not the muscle’s still there. Bennie Howards is gonna pick the next President, and you better believe it. I let them talk me into that crap, and I have the privilege of losing—not only the Presidency, but the show too… and maybe a whole lot more. For what, a chance to shoot my mouth off? They pay me to do that every week as it is.”

“But, Jack (Can’t he see himself as I see him?), you could do it. You’re—”

“It’s groovy to know your chick thinks you’re a little tin god. That, and fifteen hundred bucks’ll pay the rent for a month on this pad. What’ll we do if I blow everything by kamikazeing into Howards, open a cathouse, with you as door prize?”

“But—”

Again the vidphone chime interrupted. “If this is Morris, I’m gonna tell him to go—”

She saw his face change abruptly to a mask of cold calculation, and a cold chill came over her as she looked at the vidphone screen over his shoulder and found herself staring at the gray lizardman deathmask, fear-mask of life-and-death power of the man who had brought them together again for reasons of his own, the terrible windowless white face of Benedict Howards.

“You imbecile! You double-crossing smart ass—” Howards was screaming; Sara could feel hot-leather reptile-stench emotions of fear, rage, hate, carrion teeth all but reaching out of the screen, windowless white teeth around a forked rattlesnake tongue spitting venom at Jack’s throat. The sight of a man of such hideous power, a man who held the secret that could destroy her, destroy Jack and Sara Barron again and forever, in such a black mindless rage, terrified her and she felt like a bird before a cobra indeed.

But the moment Jack spoke, the spell was broken. “Look Bennie,” he said in what Sara recognized as his put-on lazy-indifferent style, calculated to infuriate and intimidate those with actual power by an illusion of cooler-than-thou calm, “I’ve had a rough day and I’m in no mood to listen to you gibber. This is an unlisted number for obvious reasons, and I didn’t let Vince give it to you so you could scream at me like a red-assed baboon with bleeding piles. You got something to say to me, you take a deep breath, count to ten, light up an Acapulco Gold, and come on real cool-like, or I’m gonna hang right up on you and put my vidphone on ‘reject,’ dig?”

And in the long moment of silence that followed Sara felt the weight of it heavy upon her. Bennie? Jack called him Bennie! Double-cross? Howards had said “double-cross”! She sensed the electric conflict of wills humming in the silence between Jack and Benedict Howards across the vidphone circuit; sensed that silence operating on multiple levels of power-guile combat; could read from the tiny image of Howards—reptile rage seeming to contract in on itself into a patchwork facade of iron-control—that Jack was somehow the stronger, and that both of them knew it.

“All right, Barron,” Howards finally said in a voice like steel, “I’ll assume that I’m talking to a rational human being and not a raving lunatic. A rational human being should know what happens when you double-cross Benedict Howards. I thought we had reached an understanding. You were going to get me off the hook, and then you turn around and—”

“Hey, what’s all this double-cross scam?” Jack said (And Sara sensed this was no put-on. But what’s going on between Jack and Howards?). “I wasn’t gonna get you off anything. I just wasn’t gonna ram the knife home in the last segment, way I could’ve. I gave you the chance to talk about research and make points, didn’t I? Not my fault if you’re not a pro like me. I gave you the perfect lead-in to tell the world how great your immortality research is going, and you blew your big chance to make good in show biz. Come to think of it, you acted pretty funny—almost as if you had something to hide…”

“Never mind all that,” Howards said coldly. “We’ve got some business to transact, remember? You’ve already cost me Christ knows how many votes in Congress with this last disaster, and it’s about time—”

“Not on the phone,” Jack broke in. “My office. Two o’clock tomorrow.”

“Look, Barron, you’ve mickey moused me long enough. No one plays games with Benedict How—”

Jack laughed what Sara recognized as a calculated laugh. “If you insist, Bennie. Of course I better tell you I’m not alone.”

Jack stared at her; she could sense worlds behind those eyes, alien worlds of guile and power, Jack-Howards clandestine-combat worlds. And with a pang of fear she wondered if Jack saw the worlds behind her eyes—Howards working on her, twisting her, sending her to him for reasons of his own (Was that the business they were talking about? Sell-out to Benedict Howards? Am I just a piece of lizardman sure-thing insurance?), and her own plan within Howards’ plan…

“What?” Howards shouted. “Are you crazy? You want to screw us both? Who—”

“Relax, Bennie,” Jack said. “Just my once-and-future wife, Sara… Sara Westerfeld nee Barron nee Westerfeld. You don’t keep secrets from your chick for very long.” He laughed falsely. “Not as long as your chick can keep secrets from you anyway,” he said.

Sara felt a moment of pure panic. Does Jack know? About me and Howards? Has the lizardman told him? Or will Howards tell him now, use me against Jack? Should I tell Jack everything now, is it time? Too soon! Too soon!

But Howards laughed a cold-reptile laugh she knew was for her, knew he was as good as reading her mind. “Far be it from me to interfere in your love life, Barron,” Howards said, and Sara could feel daggers of sarcasm nibble at her as Howards toyed with her, reminded her of his power to destroy her through Jack—and Jack through her.

“Okay, tomorrow at your office. I’ll fly tonight. And… and give my regards to Sara Westerfeld.” And Howards broke the connection.

Jack turned to her, and she felt the hesitation in his eyes matched by her own. Building within her, she felt the tension of subterfuge, a bubble demanding to be burst. Tell him! Tell him everything! But… but is this the time? Will he play our game if…? Or will it be the end of everything that ever was between us forever? Forever, a huge word—and a bigger stake.

She decided that the decision would be Jack’s, not hers. If he would tell her, tell her all, tell her that Howards was offering him a place in the Freezers, she would know he was as ready as he’d ever be, and she’d tell him what Howards really was, and together they’d destroy him…

“What was that all about?” she asked blandly, felt the moment, the shadow of his next words, hanging like a dagger above their lives, above all that had been, all that might be… forever.

Jack hesitated, and she felt the decision-turmoil behind his eyes too, but when he spoke, she felt the pregnant moment shoved aside, a trip to the dentist postponed as she saw the shield go up behind his eyes, universes of danger sheering off from the mutual moment of mortal truth they both individually knew must soon come.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “But tomorrow I’m going to find out. And… trust me till then, Sara. I just can’t tell you now.”

Deep within her, she sighed in relief, felt the pattern of lies, cop-outs, evasions as a kind of ironic bond between them. But she knew that that bond of falsehood would not last past tomorrow—that after Jack met with Howards there would either be truth between them… or nothing.

“Yessir, Mr Barron, no sir, Mr Barron, you stink, sir, Mr Barron,” Jack Barron muttered toying with the pack of Acapulco Golds, a sardonic invitation amid the clutter of his desk, his day, his head. Goddamn Carrie, he thought. Could understand if she quit her job or got the network to transfer her, who could blame her? Not my fault, not hers. But, no, the bitch’s gotta go on with the show, baby, sit out there with that yes, sir no, sir crap, and that big eat-shit-you-bastard office-smile. Still hung-up on me or just being a sadist…? Or maybe it’s fun-and-games time, I gotta fire her before she passes “go” or she don’t collect two hundred dollars. Well, screw you, Carrie, you can stew in your own bile till your tushy’s mushy before I play your game and can you.

Barron pawed out a cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, lit it, then played tease-games with the potsmoke, sucking it in to the back of his throat, dribbling it out without inhaling it, wondering whether it would be smart to have the big showdown with Howards loaded.

The sweet smoke promised an out from the Lukes and Saras and Carries, all playing their dumb little games for dumb little stakes and expecting Jack Barron to lay his whole bod on the line to back their dumb little action.

But something held him back, and the fact that he could only sniff a faint aroma (like a week-dead codfish across the street) of that something really uptighted him. What’s bigger than the Presidency of the United States? he wondered. What’s bigger than fifty billion dollars? What the fuck could be that big? Something is, I can smell it, feel it, like a junkie feels heat coming at him in a squad car fifty blocks away. Man, it’s out there, whatever it is, else Bennie Howards is just plain flipped acting the way he is. And come to think of it, that might be interesting right there, with the cards I’m holding.

But he wondered if the cards he held were really as unbeatable as they looked, too damn good for the league I’m playing in, is Bennie really that bad? Am I really that good? Goddamn, Bennie knows something I don’t, is what I’m playing this game for in the first place, and you know that whatever that something is it’s the ace in the hole for somebody, and how the fuck can I know whose ace it is until I know what it is?

And whatever it is, baby, it’s big, big enough to make Howards blow bubbles with his tongue when he had the opening to make points on the show I gave him; big enough to scare him shitless when he caught himself almost blowing it—and big enough to make him blow his cool in the first place, and with a reptile like Howards, that is like big.

Barron snubbed out the joint in an ashtray. No grass today, he told himself. Today Riverboat Jack’s in the big game for the big pot, and you better be sure your head’s all here when Bennie—

“Mr Barron, Mr Benedict Howards is here to see you,” Carrie’s tinny voice said, dry-icewise, over the intercom.

“Send Howards in, Miss Donaldson. Thank you, Miss Donaldson, go fuck yourself, Miss Donaldson,” Barron said, the last without breaking rhythm but after he had snapped off the intercom.

As Howards half-stormed half-slunk in through the door, slamming a prop-attaché case stuffed no doubt with prop-documents down on the desk top and sitting down immediately without speaking like a Russian diplomat arriving at the umpteenhundredth session of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, Barron felt a flash go through him as he looked at a Benedict Howards he had never seen before—a stone-seat-grim efficient Texas speculator, who had come from the Panhandle with holes in his pockets and who had fought and connived his way to the fifty-billion-dollar point where he held life versus death power over two hundred and thirty million people, would own the next President of the United States like a deaf

Smith County judge. It was the big leagues, all right, and Barron knew it.

But Bennie knows it too, he thought as Howards stared at him like a stone basilisk, waiting for the man whose turf he was on to make the first move. Seeing Howards, Mr Big League Action himself looking at him with not anger, not quite fear in his eyes but cold and, for the first time, shrewdly-calculating appraisal, Jack Barron dug the image of power mirroring genuine near-fear of the living-color image of himself—and, in Howards’ cold eyes granting him the ultimate compliment of emotionless scrutiny, got a heady muskwhiff of his own power.

“All right, Howards,” Barron said, in a cold voice he saw caught Howards half off-balance, “no bullshit, no pyrotechnics. You’re here to do business, I’m here to do business, and we both know it. Give. Make your pitch, and in words of one syllable.”

Howards opened his attaché case, placed three copies of a contract on the desk. “There it is, Barron. A standard Freeze Contract, in triplicate, signed by me, the assets clause marked ‘Assigned by Anonymous Donor’ and made out to Jack Barron, effective immediately. That’s what you throw away if you don’t play ball, a Freeze, free and clear, and no one can take it away from you.”

“And of course, that ‘anonymous donor’ would reveal himself as Benedict Howards, along with a copy of the contract to the press, if I sign it and then don’t play ball,” Barron said, feeling the calculus of power filling the air with the gold-stench of necromancy.

Howards smiled professionally. “I’ve got to have some insurance. All right, Barron, just sign on the dotted line, and we can get down to the business of repairing the damage your big mouth has done to the Freezer Utility Bill.”

“That wasn’t the deal we made, and you know it,” Barron told him. “You’re not hiring a flunky, you’re leasing my specific services as, shall we say, a public relations counselor? That’s freelance work, and it means I gotta know everything about the product I’m supposed to peddle. Everything, Howards. And, for openers, I gotta know exactly why you’re so hot for my body.”

“After last night, you ask me that?” Howards snarled. (But Barron saw that the snarl was calculated.) “Thanks to you, the Freezer Bill’s in real trouble. I need that bill, which means I need votes in Congress, which means I need public pressure on my side, which means I need your pipeline to a hundred million votes, which means, unfortunately, that I need you. But don’t misunderstand me, you say ‘no’ to me, then I need your scalp nailed to the barn door—and I’ll get it. You’re in too deep, Barron. You either play my game, or you don’t play any game at all.”

“You’re lying,” Barron said neutrally. “Your Freezer Bill was a shoo-in till I started making waves, and I didn’t make waves till you started playing footsie with me. So it couldn’t have been to save the Freezer Bill that you were after my ass in the first place. Had to be something else, something bigger, and I don’t screw around with anything that big till I know exactly what it is.”

“I’ve had enough of you!” Howards snapped and now Barron was sure he had finally pierced Bennie’s cool. “You spend so much time trying to convince me how dangerous you are, all right, all right, I’m convinced. You know what that gets you? It gets you pounded to a pulp same as I’d smash a scorpion, unless you play ball. Scorpion’s deadly, could kill me if I gave it a chance, but that doesn’t mean that the moment I see it’s really become dangerous I can’t squash it like a bug. ’cause it is a bug, and so are you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Barron said, half-calculatedly, half-responding to adrenalin-signals. “Don’t give me the idea I’ve got my back to the wall. ’cause if I get to having an itchy back, I’ll do a show on the Foundation that’ll make the last one seem like a Foundation commercial. And the next will be worse than that, and worse, and worse every week till you can get me off the air. And by then, Bennie, it’ll be way too late.”

“You’re bluffing, Barron,” said Howards. “You don’t have the guts to blow your whole career just to get me. And you’re not stupid enough either to throw yourself out in the cold, a ruined nobody, with no place to go.”

Jack Barron smiled. Bennie, he thought, you’ve walked right into it. You’re out of your league after all, bigshot, here comes them four aces in the hole. “Funny you should say that, Bennie,” he drawled, ’cause the fact is I got all kind of people telling me there’s someplace I ought to go.”

“That I can believe,” Howards said dryly,

“Good to see you’ve still got a sense of humor, ’cause you’re gonna need it. Because if you force me to blow the show by knifing the Foundation, it won’t just be crazy revenge. Y’know, I got people asking me to do just that, powerful people like Gregory Morris and Lukas Greene begging me to play their game, and do you in, and to hell with Bug Jack Barron. And they’re offering me something bigger than anything you’ve laid on the table so far to do it, too,” Barron said and waited for the straight line.

“You’re bluffing again,” said Howards, “and this time it’s really obvious. What could anyone offer you that’s bigger than a place in a Freezer, a chance at living forever?”

You’re beautiful, Bennie, show biz all the way, Barron thought as he made with the tailor-made punchline:

“Would you believe the Presidency of the United States?”

“Would I believe what?” Howards goggled, seemed about to say something cute, then Barron sensed him backing off, putting one and one and one together in his head and getting only two and a half, not knowing how to react, whether it was a gag or pure bluff or some weird new equation of power. He sensed that Howards was waiting for him to speak—and sensed status-relationships in a state of uncertain flux.

“Well, would you believe a Presidential nomination?” Barron said, still not quite able to bring himself to use the whole silly schtick seriously. “You know how tight I’ve always been with the SJC, Founding Father and all that crap; well, when Luke Greene saw me dig my spurs into you he figured I could use the show to build myself up as The Hero of the People at your expense, and run for President on the SJC ticket next year. And without my giving him the go-ahead he nosed around, and now he tells me he really can deliver the Social Justice nomination.” Hold the last ace for the showdown, he told himself. Let Bennie walk into it with his jaw.

“So that’s what you mean by a Presidential nomination,” Howards said, smiling easily. “The SJC nomination and a first-class plane ticket just might get you to Washington with a good tail-wind, and you know it. I don’t get it, Barron, you’re not dumb enough to throw away a free Freezer over a chance to lose your show and make a public joke of yourself. That’s not even a decent bluff. You’re slipping, Barron, you’re slipping.”

Barron smiled. This is it, he thought. Now I knock you right on your ass, Howards. “You know, Bennie,” he said, “that’s just about what I told Luke at the time. (He saw Howards relax some more and plunged straight through the hole in the line.) Yeah, I told him kamikaze’s not the name of my game… but, of course, that was before Greg Morris offered me the Republican nomination.”

Howards started, went a trifle pale. “That’s a lie,” he said, but without too much conviction. “You a Republican? With your background? Who they supposed to run on the ticket with you, Joe Stalin? You’ve gotta be stoned to think I’d believe that.”

Barron pushed his vidphone across the desk. “You don’t have to believe anything,” he said. “Call Greene. Call Morris. You’re a big boy, Bennie; I’m surprised no one’s told you the facts of life yet. Add it up. The Republicans have been sliding down the drain since Herbert Hoover, they’re desperate, they’ve gotta win, and, as Morris so flatteringly indicated, they’d run on Adolph Hitler if that’s what a victory would take. The only Chinaman’s chance they have of winning is on a fusion ticket with the SJC, and the only man they can run who could get the SJC nomination is yours truly, Jack Barron.”

“Ridiculous,” Howards said, his voice thin and unconvincing. “The Republicans and the SJC hate each other worse than either of ’em hate the Democrats. They don’t agree on anything. They could never get in bed together.”

“Ah, but they do agree on one thing,” Barron said. “They agree on you. They’re both against the Freezer Utility Bill and the Foundation for Human Immortality—and there’s your fusion platform. They don’t run me against the Pretender or any stooge you may still be able to ram down the Democrats’ throat. I run against you, Howards. I use Bug Jack Barron to hang you around the Democratic candidate’s neck like a rotten albatross stinking from coast to coast, and I run against that. Get the picture? Win or lose, the Foundation gets cut to pieces in the process. And win or lose, it’d mean you couldn’t muscle me off the air because even though the Republicans can’t deliver votes anymore, most of the fat cats in the country are still behind ’em. Pressure my sponsors, and the GOP can line up ten others. Republican-type bread still controls two out of four networks, still has as much leverage with the FCC as you do.”

“It’s… it’s absurd,” Howards said weakly. “You could never win. The Democrats can’t lose, and you know it.”

“You’re probably right,” Barron agreed. “But that’s not the point; I’ve got no eyes to be President. Point is, in a campaign like that you lose no matter who wins. By the time I’m finished working on you, you’ll stink so bad the Democratic candidate—even if he is your stooge—will have to jump up and down on your bleeding bod to win. And who really knows…? Tom Dewey was a sure winner in ’48…”

“You’re turning my stomach,” said Howards. “A Commie cretin like you even thinking about being President…”

Barron shrugged it off. “So do your patriotic duty, and save your own skin while you’re at it. I don’t have eyes for the White House. Buy me. I’m sitting here, waiting to be bought. My cards are all on the table. Let’s see what your hole card is. And it better be good, ’cause if you don’t come clean now you won’t have another chance.”

Barron felt the moment hanging high and cool in thin air between them like the Continental Divide; like being high on Big Stuff, he thought as he studied the gears meshing, tumblers falling into place behind Howards’ cold rodent eyes. He’s bought it, he thought, or anyway he’s not laughing it off, shit the whole schtick’s real. Look at the cat measuring me, measuring himself against me, measuring fifty billion bucks life-and-death power against nothing but a fancy pyramid of bullshit, and, baby, you got him going, got your hot little hands around his throat. How’s it feel, Bennie, to finally meet a cat who looks like he’s your size?

What the fuck, Barron suddenly realized, it’s no shuck, I am his size—smarter, trickier, thinking circles around him. Jack Barren’s anyone’s size. Who’s a better man—Luke, Morris, Teddy, Howards…? Just bigger muscles, is all, you really be afraid of any of ’em in a fair fight? Just men like you, is all, and probably not even as well hung. Crazy to imagine myself as President. Know damn well the job’s too big… but maybe it’s too big for anyone, and deep inside anyone who’s ever looked across that Rubicon’s gotta think he’s getting flippy. It’s all a game of bluff, money, power, President—life is all—and who wrote that book but good old Jack Barren? Anybody’s got the openers can play to win in any game. Is that what Sara sees?

He almost half-hoped that Howards would call him, tell him to get stuffed, push him off the cliff into unknown waters; felt like a power-junkie sitting on top the Mother Lode, the Last Big High sitting in his spike, and who knows how it would come out, who really knows? Whee, he thought, brat-wise, that hole card of yours had better be good, Bennie!

“Look at me, Barren,” Howards finally said. “What do you see?”

“Let’s not get into…” Barren began to snap back, then stopped when he saw the strange, strange manic-junkie look creeping like a plague into Howards’ glistening eyes.

“Yeah, Barren,” Howards said, smiling a mirthless reptile smile. “Take a good look. You see a man in his fifties, in pretty good shape, right? Take another look ten years from now, twenty, a century, a million years from now, and you know what you’ll see? You’ll see a man in his fifties, in pretty good shape is what you’ll see. A decade from now, a century from now, a thousand years from now—forever, Barren, forever.

“I’m not just a man now, I’m something more. You said it yourself, four billion dollars a year is a lot of money to spend on immortality research without getting results. Well, my boys finally got results, and you’re looking right at ’em. I’m immortal, Barren, immortal!. You know what that means? I’ll never get older. I’ll never die. Can you feel it? Can you taste it? To wake up every morning and smell the air and know you’ll be smelling it every morning for the next million years… maybe forever. Dumb joke the doctors made—they won’t know if I’ll live forever till I’ve lived forever. No data, see? But Benedict Howards is gonna give ’em their data, gonna live forever, forever… You see what you’re up against, Barren? An immortal—like a god! Think I’d let anything stand between me and that? Would you?”

“No…” Barren whispered, for the look on Howards’ face told him in flaming letters a mile high that it was true. True!

Immortality he thought. Even the word doesn’t sound real. Forever! To really live forever. Never to die, to be young, and strong, and healthy for a million years. Explains where Bennie’s head’s at, shit for that a man would do just about anything. Just about…? And to think this perambulating pile of shit’s got it! Immortality! This motherfucker lives for the next million years, he’ll stink like the pile of shit he is, laughing for a million years while I rot in the ground we all rot and shit-eating Bennie goes on and on and on…

“I’m gonna buy you, Barren,” Howards said, reaching into his attache case. “Down to the soles of your feet, right now.” He pushed another Freeze Contract in triplicate across the desk at Barren. “That’s a very special contract,” he said, “first one of its kind. Just like the other one, but with one important difference—there’s a clause in there entitling you to any immortality treatment the Foundation shall develop at your own discretion. And we’ve got an immortality treatment now. Forever, Barron, forever. You give me a couple lousy years out of your life to put over my bill, elect me a President, and… sew things up, and I give you the next million years. Take it from the only man in the world who really knows, eight years ain’t even worth thinking about; it’s less than the blinking of an eye from where I stand. From where you stand…”

“Who do you think you are, Howards, the Devil?” And even as he said them, the words filled him with mortal dread he had never believed would ever be possible for him to feel. Funny word, he thought, devil. Cat with a long spiked tail knows the secret, the secret, everybody’s secret, everybody’s price, and got the bread to meet it too no matter what it is, and what you give him in return is a thing called a soul, immortal soul, ain’t it, supposed to be the biggest thing a man’s got to give. Immortal soul means like young and healthy and alive in paradise forever—price the Devil gets is the fee Howards gives. Devil, shit he’s just a busher; Bennie can outbid him anytime. Satan, watch out the Foundation don’t foreclose the mortgage!

“I take it back, Howards,” he said. “Beside you, the Devil’s on welfare. Just my name in ink on the dotted line? I don’t have to sign it in blood? Copies for me that I can keep in a very safe place? Not subject to cancellation, or exorcism?”

“A thousand copies if you want ’em, Barron, an ironclad contract even I couldn’t break. Yours, forever. All you gotta do is sign.”

Sara! Barron suddenly thought. “Sara?” he said. “My wife… same deal in her name too?”

Benedict Howards smiled a sulphur smile. “Why not? I can afford to be generous, in fact I can afford just about anything. Secret of my success, Barron: I can afford to destroy an enemy, and I can afford to give any man I want to buy anything he wants, including—if he comes that high and he’s worth it—eternal life. Come on, Barron, we both know you’re gonna do it. Sign on the dotted line.”

Barron fingered the contracts; his eyes fell on the pen sitting on his desk. He’s right, he thought. Immortality with Sara, forever, I’d be an idiot not to sign. He picked up the pen, and his eyes met the eyes of Benedict Howards. And saw Howards staring greedily at him like some monstrous mad toad. But behind the egomaniacal madness, he saw fear—fear as naked as Howards’ megalomania, an unguessable feral fear feeding his madness, giving it strength; he realized that Howards’ whole crazy power-drive was fueled on fear. And Benedict Howards was afraid of him.

Something’s rotten in Colorado, Barron knew for certain. With this in his pocket and fifty billion dollars, Bennie can buy anyone and everyone he needs. So why’s he need me so bad to pass some lousy bill when he can buy Congress, the President, and the fucking Supreme Court? And he does think he needs me, look at that hunger in those eyes? He’s after my bod because somehow he really needs it to fight whatever he’s afraid of. And if he’s afraid of it, and I’m supposed to be some kind of sacrificial front man, where’s that leave me?

“Before I sign,” Barron said (conceding to himself that he would), “would you mind telling me why, with this kind of action going, you think you need me?”

“I need public support,” Howards said, frantically earnest. “It’s the one thing I can’t buy directly. That’s why I need you, to sell immortality to that goddamned public of yours.”

“To sell immortality? You crazy? You need a salesman for immortality like you need a salesman for money.”

“That’s the point,” Howards said. “You see, we do have an immortality treatment, but it’s… it’s… very expensive. Maybe we can treat a thousand people a year at about a quarter million a throw, but that’s it, and it’ll be it for years, decades, maybe always. That’s what you’ve gotta sell, Barron—not immortality for everyone but immortality for a few, a select few—a few I select.”

Barron’s instant reaction was disgust, at Howards, at himself, even as he felt his second reaction—all questions now answered and the game was worth the candle. But his third reaction was caution—this was the biggest thing there ever was, and more dangerous than the H-bomb, get involved in that?

“This treatment,” he asked, “what is it?”

“That’s none of your business, and that’s final. It’s a Foundation secret, and it stays a Foundation secret no matter what,” Howards told him, and Barron was sure he had hit bottom, pushed Howards as far as he would ever go. “If… if that got out…” Howards mumbled, then caught Barron catching him and clamped his mouth tight shut.

But you don’t put one over on Jack Barron, Bennie! Shit, he’s willing to let out that immortality’s gonna be only for a few fat cats, and he thinks I can shove that down people’s throats, but he’s afraid to let anyone know what the treatment is. Must be some treatment! That’s what he’s scared of, and if it scares him… . What the hell could it be… his immortals all end up as Transylvanian vampires? Hell… maybe that’s not so funny. Immortality, sure, but what the hell’s he getting me into? But… but is there anything so rank it isn’t worth doing if you have to do it to live forever?

“I need time, Howards,” he said. “You can see that…”

“Jack Barron turning chicken?” Howards sneered. “I’ll give you time, I’ll give you twenty-four hours, not a minute more. I’m tired of talking; the only words I’ll listen to from you from here on in are ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

And Jack Barron knew that the game was played out, the time for negotiation was over. And he had no idea of what his answer could possibly be.