Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad

Author:Norman Spinrad [Spinrad, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction
Published: 2011-01-13T06:00:00+00:00

'I wish to hell I knew,' Barron said. 'I just got the feeling I'm in over my head, is why I don't want to take that treatment now, got the feeling it'd get me in too deep in something I don't dig. Everything that's happened since I got involved in this daisy-chain with Howards seems unreal — this President bullshit . . . immortality . . . they're just words, Sara, words out of some comic book or science fiction magazine, can't taste 'em, feel 'em, smell 'em, make 'em add up to anything that feels real. But that fucker Howards, he's real, no doubt about it, he smells real. And there's something oozing out of him that's real too, something big and scary, and I'm in it up to the eyeballs and I just don't know what it is . . .'

'I think I understand,' Sara said, and her hand tightened on his thigh; she inched closer to him on the bed and he began, almost against his will, to pick up on the warmth of her beside him.

'But isn't it just because you're letting things happen, not making them happen? You're looking at it backwards — you should say to yourself, I've gotta stop Benedict Howards, and I've gotta keep immortality, and I've gotta do whatever I have to to do it. You can't wait for Howards to give you an opening, and you can't wait for someone else to do it, and you shouldn't worry about what Howards can do to us. Believe in yourself, Jack. Believe you can beat Howards no matter what he does; I believe it, and it's my life too. Oh, Jack, it's just too big . . . immortality for the whole world, or that lizard Howards going on and on and on ... You can't cop-out now!'

'Cop-out?' Barron snarled in an instant lash-out defensive reaction.

'Who the fuck are you to give me lectures about copping out, after what you've done, after the game you played with my head and Benedict Howards?' And immediately he was sorry.

'Cause she's right, in her own dumb way, he thought. That cocksucker Howards! Sara never was in his league, who is, he uses people, and then tosses 'em away like a snotty Kleenex; did it to Sara, do it to me I give him the chance, do it to the whole fucking country. That's where it's at, all right, Howards dealing a bummer to the whole dumb country, and old Jack Barron dealing his power-junk for him on living-color junior high school street corners. That's exactly where it's at, Barron, and you can't con yourself otherwise.

'I deserved —'

'No you didn't Sara,' Barron said, and drew her asexually to him, hugged her tight, sucking up her plain human warmth, hoping she was getting the same off him 'cause God knows she needs it I need it we all need it, need a little human warmth, little flesh-reality, with a freak-out monster like Benedict Howards running amok, shooting up the world with his lousy paranoid junk.

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