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.