“… 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—”