“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.