“Well… ah, doesn’t that answer your first question?” Howards said shrewdly, trying to tread water. “Congress just moves too slowly. Say… say we developed an immortality treatment; it could be years before Congress approved it, and in the meantime people would be dying who didn’t have to die. A commission could act at once. Sure, that’s a lot of power to entrust to appointed officials—and that’s why the President must be able to hire and fire commissioners at will, to keep the commission responsive to… public opinion. It may seem complicated, but it’s all very necessary.”
It sure as shit is, Barron thought. That’s where the whole schmear’s at—the bill’s a license for the Foundation to do anything, so long as the President plays ball. And Bennie figures on owning the next President, and he can do it too, and if not this time, then the next time round. One thing he’s got plenty of is time. Gets his bill through, and his flunky in the White House, he can have… killing children made legal somehow, or have his tame commission insist he’s not doing it. Time to show the fucker the razor inside.
“In other words, Howards, you and the President’ll run the whole show. The Foundation will control all freezing and… life extension, and only the President, comes nitty-gritty, can tell you what you can and can’t do.”
Howards’ image glared at him like a rat in a trap, and the paranoia within began to leak out through his eyes.
“The President…” Howards practically gibbered, “what’s wrong with that? Don’t you—”
“I wonder if it’s smart to trust all that to one man, even the President,” Barron said as the promptboard flashed “2 Minutes.” “I mean, one man, even a President, could be bought. With all your money, and maybe… something more?”
“You’re crazy, Barron!” Howards shrieked, blowing all cool, his eyes becoming really rabid. “You’re slandering the President of the United States!”
“Who, me?” said Barron, signaling Vince to cut Howards’ audio, and give Howards three-quarters screen. “Why, I’m a regular pussycat, I wouldn’t slander anyone. I’m talking about a hypothetical President in a hypothetical situation, so all I gotta worry about is a hypothetical lawsuit, right?” Howards’ face was a mute backdrop of paranoia surrounding his on the monitor screen.
“So let’s just take a farfetched blue-sky hypothetical situation,” he said, foot-signaling to Vince to give Howards full screen. “Let’s say the Foundation for Human Immortality finally develops an immortality treatment…”
A feral twitch of pure terror spasmed Howards’ face for the hundred-million Brackett Count audience to see, as Barron called for full screen for himself and the promptboard flashed “90 Seconds.”
“Let’s say our little story takes place after the next Presidential election, and let’s just say the President is the Foundation’s man, without naming names. That sound so impossible to you out there, I mean, the Foundation has only fifty billion bucks to work with, and if they have immortality to peddle… well, that’d make a mighty fancy bribe…”
His face on the screen burned dots of living-color phosphor into him in a feedback of power; he felt the direct satellite-network connection with the backs of a hundred million brains, all of them hanging on his words, sucking up image from that glass tit, and knowing that he was about to say something dangerously big. Yessiree, folks, step right up and see the Greatest Show on Earth, see the peep-show of history in the making, live, no time-delay, and how’s that for show biz?
“Let’s say… purely for the sake of argument, of course,” Barron said slowly as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds,” “that our hypothetical immortality treatment involves a little kicker, though. Let’s say… well, everyone knows what a dirty mind I have, so let’s just say it involves some kind of organ transplant technique which makes the recipient immortal, but, unfortunately, kills the donor. Very tricky and expensive, dig, because somehow they gotta get victims. In other words, to make one winner immortal, the Foundation’s gotta kill one loser. I believe the legal profession has a technical term for that… I think they call it murder.”
Just enough time to set Bennie up, Barron thought as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.” He let a ray of the hate he felt inside him play on his image, a flash to a hundred-million Brackett Count slobs that maybe it all wasn’t just hot air.
“Now see where that’s at? Just a hypothetical situation, folks,” he said, sneering his image-lips slightly, giving the word “hypothetical” a sardonic intonation. “But hypothetically, if the Freezer Bill is passed as it stands, if the Foundation for Human Immortality can elect itself a President, and if they had a hypothetical immortality treatment that involved murder, then hypothetically the Foundation for Human Immortality could damn well commit murder and get away with it…”
He paused, filled three full seconds of air time with dead silence, till he was damn sure all of ’em would know exactly what he was saying (and a special dig for Bennie Howards):
“Hypothetically . . .” he drawled, and the word was just a shade off being a bald accusation. “Of course, the Foundation’s so hot to get the bill passed, and that’s not hypothetical, and a lot of people who should know say there was hanky-panky between the Foundation and a certain potential Presidential candidate who died under… questionable circumstances, and that’s not hypothetical, and one and one have been known to add up to two. And we’ll see just how hypothetical the rest of it is—if Mr Benedict Howards has the guts to stay on the line—after this word from our unquestionably non-hypothetical sponsor.”
“What the fuck are you doing?” Vince Gelardi said over the intercom circuit the moment they had the commercial rolling, his face tense and drawn, but a kind of manic elation that Barron could sense peeked through it. “The phones are going crazy, and Howards is gibbering, I mean literally gibbering, man! Stuff about killing you, and eviscerated niggers, and black circles… makes no sense. He’s flipped, he’s all the way ’round the bend, Jack. Christ knows what he’ll say if we put him back on the air.”
Caught up in the smell of combat, Barron found himself saying, with the old Bug Jack Barron relish: “This is not Bug Jesus H., Vince, it’s Bug Jack Barron, and Christ doesn’t have to know what Howards is gonna say so long as I do, dig? Keep him on the line, and feed him right to me as soon as we’re back on the air.”
Vince winced through the control-booth glass as the promptboard flashed “60 Seconds,” said nervously: “You’re right on the edge as it is. You let a lunatic babble on the air, a lunatic like Bennie Howards, who knows where half the bodies in the country are buried, and we could have a lawsuit that—”
“It’s my show,” Barron said sharply. “But… maybe you got a point. (Can I keep Howards from doing me in, really pull it off?) Tell you what, when I’m talking, give me three-quarters screen and kill Howards’ audio. When I throw the ball to Bennie, give him three-quarters, let him rave for a couple seconds, then quick-cut back to me at three-quarters and kill his audio again. We play it back and forth like that, and he won’t be able to get more than a couple words in edgewise, dig?”
“Ah, that’s the dirty old Jack Barron we all know and love,” Gelardi said as the promptboard flashed “30 Seconds.”