Norman Spinrad by Bug Jack Barron

Author:Bug Jack Barron [Barron, Bug Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-27T14:22:55+00:00

11

Better be it, or I feed you right to the fishes, enough crapping around Barron, and I gotta come to this crazy joint too? Benedict Howards thought as he sat down on some screwy iron-and-leather kite of a chair, stared across at Jack Barron perched like some oily Arab trader on a silly-ass camel saddle, framed by the open terrace behind him palm trees or whatever you call the dumb things look like cheaphotel phony rubberplants hot and cold running whores in Tulsa or San Jose or some other nowhere boom town with plenty of money and no class — yeah, it figures Jack Barron would go for that kind of California horseshit.

Howards opened his attaché case, took out two contracts in triplicate, handed them across to Barron along with his old-fashioned 14-carat-gold felt-tip pen. ‘There they are, Barron,’ he said. ‘Contract for you, contract for Sara Westerfeld or Barron or whatever her last name is—made out to Sara Westerfeld, since that’s her legal name at the moment. All signed by me, paid up by “anonymous donor,” and standard Freeze Contracts except for the immortality option clause. Just sign all the copies, and we can get down to your end of the bargain.’

Barron leafed through one of the copies, looked up, measured Howards with those goddamned smirking eyes of his, said: ‘Let’s get this straight, Bennie, once I sign these contracts, you can’t welch, I send one of my copies to a very safe place, with instructions to release it to the press with the whole scam on your having an immortality treatment, in case anything should happen to me, dig?’

Howards smiled. You’re so smart, Barron, think you’re two steps ahead of Benedict Howards, think I don’t know what you’re thinking — Jack Barren’s got his insurance, where’s yours, Howards, smells too easy? Chase your own tail, Barron, never figure out your insurance is really my insurance till it’s way too late and I own you down to the soles of your feet, and you’re too far in to ever back out till it’s your immortal life million years strong young cool-skinned women, air-conditioned arenas of power forever to lose same as mine, and then you’re my man all the way, like Senators, Governors, and goddamn it, President too, Mr Howards, despite goddamn idiot Hennering.

‘You don’t even have to trust me that far,’ Howards said with carefully-guarded casualness. ‘You and your wife can exercise the immortality option the moment you sign, if you want to. In fact you can fly back to Colorado with me tonight, have the treatment, and be back better than new in time for your next show. With Deep Sleep recovery, it’s all over in two days. You don’t have to trust me at all; you can collect your payoff before you have to deliver anything.’

Barron’s eyes narrowed even as Howards anticipated his suspicion. ‘That smells like a dead flounder to me. I don’t figure you for the trusting type, Bennie, and it looks like you’re trusting me, and that, baby, I don’t trust at all.

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