“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.”