Jesus H. Christ! Been staring me in the face all along! Only thing that scared Bennie was me finding out what his immortality treatment was… That’s gotta be what Hennering found out, what they killed him for! And that cocksucker Howards is practically twisting my arm to make me take the treatment!
Barren flopped down on the floor again, took another drag. There it is, he thought, Rome to which all roads lead. Howards’s willing to risk killing a goddamned Senator over it, he’s so scared someone will find out. But… but then, why does he want me to take the treatment? Don’t make sense, if he’s so uptight about keeping it secret. Why? Why? What the fuck’s going on?
“What’s wrong Jack?” Sara asked. “You look like you’re about to turn purple… and that kiss was about as sexy as a bowl of raw chicken livers.”
“I don’t know, baby (can’t tell her Howards is going around murdering people, just uptight her), I just smell something bad in the air, nothing personal intended.”
“Couldn’t be that you’re pissed at yourself for just screwing around tonight when you really wanted to go after Howards again?” she asked, half-knowingly, half-hopefully.
“That too,” Barron muttered. “But not for your gung-ho Baby Bolshevik reasons. Cutting up Bennie was good television, last week’s rating was the best in three years, goddamn hard act to follow. And Woody Kaplan’s insanity and some gibbering drunk’s the kind of crap that went out with old Joe Swyne. Boring is all, when you’ve played in the big leagues there’s not much kick in being a hero in the bushes. Yeah, that’s all it is, a letdown from two real winners…”
“You’re sure you really mean that?” she asked, and he saw what she was fishing for; shit, all I need is another round of that cop-out crap on top of—
The vidphone began to chime.
Barron got up slowly, letting it chime—a nasty premonition that it was Luke with more bullshit, more Jack-you-fucking-cop-out-you, more waving of the Baby Bolshevik let’s-you-and-him-fight-bloody shirt—finally reached the vidphone, made the connection and felt a weird adrenalin-thrill punch pulsing into his brain as the old familiar black and white image of Benedict Howards looked out of the vidphone screen at him with crackling paranoid eyes.
“Kill it, Barron. Sit on it, I warn you!” Howards said, his voice shrill-edged and threatening.
“Sit on—(what?, Barron was about to say, stopped himself, realizing something was really uptighting Bennie, best way to find out what is to make like you know, he seems to think I know, let him know I don’t, maybe he’ll clam)—it? Why, whatever do you mean? Far as I know, there’s nothing to sit on.” And the last with a number one dirty smile.
“No more games,” said Howards. “No more screwing around, you’re working for me now, and you jump when I say frog, and don’t you forget it. Or else—”
“Or else what, Bennie?” Barron drawled, knowing on one level that in the game Bennie was playing it’s the Big Or Else, is all; on another level unable to take seriously the whole cops-and-wops hit-man scene. “What do you think you can do? I got your name on paper too, remember? I got Greene and Morris anxious to jump into my corner in case you get too feisty with me. I got Bug Jack Barron—and I got immortality legally free and clear any time I want it. You couldn’t afford to have me sue you for breach of that contract, and we both know it. Time you got it through your fat little head you can’t own Jack Barron… or you’re gonna get hurt, Howards, hurt real bad.”
And Barron saw Benedict (fifty-billion-dollar power of life-over-death Senatorial-assassin immortal) Howards fighting for self-control, forcing a sickening rictus that was almost a smile, actually eating crow.
“Look Barron, so we don’t like each other. Know why? ’cause we’re too much alike, that’s why. Two strong men, and neither of us has ever been number two to anyone. We both want it all, and we both want it on our own terms—and that’s the only way to fly. Well, we just can’t both be number one, and isn’t that what we’re really fighting about? But it’s stupid, Barron, pig-headed stupid. In the long run we’re both on the same side, right? I mean the real long run, million-year long run, we both got the same thing to lose.
“Let me show you, you and your wife fly out to Colorado, let me make you immortal like me. Then you’ll taste how much we both got to lose every time you breathe. Make a different man of you, Barron, make you more than a man, take it from the only man who knows firsthand. Jack Barron immortal’d have to see he’s on the same side as Benedict Howards immortal—us against them, life eternal against the fading black circle, and, believe me, that’s all that counts, everything else is shit for the birds.”
He really means it, Barron realized, and maybe he’s right. But you know he’s sure he’d be numero uno in that set-up for some reason… and Ted Hennering died because he found out what the immortality treatment was. Found out and had his choice of being Bennie’s flunky and maybe President, or risking his life—and a phony cop-out like Hennering told Howards to get stuffed. And Bennie killed him. And he wants me in that position, thinks he can somehow get me there by making me immortal…
“I’m still passing,” Barron said. “I just don’t trust you.” And he felt the adrenalin-surge of the smell of danger, took a quick drag of pot on top of it, picking up on the kick of being back in the big league again, playing for life-and-death stakes, and said: “And I know a few things you don’t know I know, Howards, and I’m not gonna tell you what they are, gonna let you sweat a little, it’s good for the soul.”
He saw fear and anger fight each other in Howards’ eyes, knew he was biting flesh, turned and saw Sara’s eyes shining with that berserker Berkeley fire drinking him in, found himself digging the pure my-man my-hero heat she was giving off for him, felt ten years younger than tonight’s lousy-turkey of a show, full of piss and vinegar and good pot and an old line from a childhood book (The Dying Earth, wasn’t it?) drummed like a chord inside him: “Danger goes with me.”
“I’m warning you, Barron,” Howards said, his eyes now crocodile-cold, “you put that Franklin lunatic on the air again, and you’ve had it—you’ve really had it. Benedict Howards plays for all the marbles, and he plays for keeps.”
Franklin? That crazy sot? That’s what’s uptighting him? Don’t make sense, what’s that kook got to do with Howards?
“Don’t tell me how to run my show,” Barron said. “Maybe I’ll do another show on Franklin or a piece of a show, depends on the next Brackett Count ( if I got the stomach to look at it after this week’s fiasco).”
“I’m telling you, and I won’t tell you again, don’t put Franklin on the air again!” Howards shouted.
Just what I said! Barron thought. Maybe I was wrong? Maybe hottest Foundation show of all’s tied into raving nut Henry George Franklin? Bennie sure thinks so. But how?
Barron smiled nastily. “You know, the more you tell me not to, the more I think it’d make a good show. You and me and Franklin and a hundred million people, nice and cozy. How’s it grab you, Bennie?” (Hey, why in hell am I doing this? he wondered, feeling his unknown belly calling his shots.)
“You can push me too far,” Howards said. “Push me too far, and no matter who you are you get fed to the fishes. Even—”