“Open line to Rockies’ Freezer” flashed across the prompt board, then, “Greene on line, Teddy H?” then, “On Air,” and Barron saw his face and shoulders on the big monitor below the promptboard, saw image of Rufus W. Johnson gray on gray in the lower lefthand corner of the monitor and on the number one vidphone screen; hard, prim, good-looking, tough piece of ass-secretary on number two vidphone, and we’re off and running at Hialeah, thought Jack Barron.
“Okay, Mr Johnson (you silly fucker you),” Jack Barron said. “We’re back on the air. You’re plugged into me, plugged into the whole United States and all hundred million of us, plugged right into a direct vidphone line to the headquarters of the Foundation for Human Immortality, the Rocky Mountain Freezer Complex outside Boulder, Colorado. We’re gonna find out whether the Foundation’s pushing postmortem segregation, right here right now no time-delay live from the man himself, the President and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Human Immortality, the Barnum of the Bodysnatchers, your friend and mine, Mr Benedict Howards.”
Barron made the connection on his number two vidphone, saw the hard-looking (like to get into that) secretary chick’s image appear under him (ideal position) in lower right on the monitor, gave her a dangerous pussycat (claws behind velvet) smile and said, “This is Jack Barron calling Mr Benedict Howards. A hundred million Americans are digging that gorgeous face of yours right now, baby, but what they really want to see is Bennie Howards. So let’s have the bossman.” Barron shrugged, grinned. “Sorry about that. But don’t worry, baby, you can leave your very own private phone number with my boy Vince Gelardi.” (Who knows?)
The secretary stared through the smile like a lemur, her telephone-operator voice said, “Mr Howards is in his private plane flying to Canada for a hunting and fishing vacation and cannot be reached. May I connect you with our Financial Director, Mr De Silva. Or our—”
“This is Jack Barron calling Benedict Howards,” Barron interrupted (what goes here?). “Of Bug Jack Barron. You do own a television set, don’t you? I have on the line a Mr Rufus W. Johnson who’s mighty bugged at the Foundation, and I’m bugged, and so are a hundred million Americans, and we all want to talk to Bennie Howards, not some flunky. So I suggest you move that pretty thing of yours and get him on the line muy pronto, or I’ll just have to bat the breeze about Mr Johnson’s public charge that the Foundation refuses to freeze Negroes with some cats who see things a little differently from the way the Foundation sees ’em, dig?”
“I’m sorry. Mr Barron, Mr Howards is hundreds of miles from the nearest vidphone,” the secretary said. “Mr De Silva, or Dr Bruce, or Mr Yarborough are all inintimate contact with the details of Foundation operation and would be happy to answer any questions.”
Set spiel, thought Jack Barron. Chick doesn’t know which end’s up (like to demonstrate), parroting Howards’ bullshit, is all. Show the bastard what happens when he tries to hide from me. Horrible example, Mr Howards. In instantaneous gestalt the rest of the show spread itself out before him: grill Howards’ flunky (Yarborough is the biggest foot-in-mouth man), second commercial, riff with Luke, third commercial, then ten minutes with Teddy Hennering to ease up a bit, then go out and get laid.
“Okay,” Barron said, turning his smile into a vulpine leer. “If that’s the way Bennie wants to play it, that’s the way he’ll have it. Get me John Yarborough.” He crossed his legs, signaling Gelardi to cut the secretary’s image off the monitor, and the screen split evenly between Barron and Johnson as Barron tapped the button under his left foot twice. Barron smiled crookedly as he stared dead on at the camera, purposefully building himself up into the galloping nasties, and said, “I hope Bennie Howards catches himself a big one, eh? And I’m sure all hundred million of you out there, who Mr Benedict Howards is too busy to talk to, wish him loads of luck too—and don’t you know, out there, that he’s gonna need it.”
Barron saw the promptboard flash “Open Lines to Luke, Teddy.” Yessir, he thought, show that goddamned Howards it doesn’t pay to mickey mouse me—and really give ’em a show tonight.
“Well, Mr Johnson, we’re about to do a little hunting on our own,” he said. “Let Mr Howards shoot himself a moose, and we’ll shoot ourselves the truth.”
“Who’s this Yarborough?” asked Rufus W. Johnson.
“John Yarborough is Public Relations Director for the Foundation,” Barron answered. “We’re the public, and we’re gonna see what we can get him to like relate.” Barren’s number two vidphone showed a sallow balding man. Barron foot-signaled, and the left side of the monitor screen was shared by Johnson (top) Yarborough (bottom), Barron looming twice their size to the right, living-color Big Daddy. “And here’s Mr John Yarborough now.
“Mr Yarborough, this is Jack Barron calling, and I’d like you to meet Mr Rufus W. Johnson. Mr Johnson, to belabor the obvious, is a Negro. He claims that the Foundation refused him a Freeze Contract. (Play that non sequitur gambit, Jack, baby.) A hundred million Americans would like to know if that’s true. They’d like to know why the Foundation for Human Immortality, with a Public Charter as a tax-exempt foundation, refused an American citizen his chance at immortality just because that citizen happens to be a Negro.” (Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Mr Yarborough?)
“I’m sure there must be some misunderstanding that we can easily clear up,” Yarborough said smoothly. “As you know—”
“I don’t know anything, Mr Yarborough,” Barron cut in. “Nothing but what people tell me. I don’t even believe the baloney I see on television. I know what Mr Johnson told me, though, and a hundred million Americans know it too. Mr Johnson, did you apply for a Freeze Contract?”
“I did, Jack.”
“Did you agree to assign all your assets to the Foundation upon your clinical death?”
“You know I did.”
“Did those assets exceed $50,000?”
“Sixty or seventy grand, easy,” said Rufus W. Johnson.
“And were you refused a Freeze Contract, Mr Johnson?”
“I sure was.”
Barron paused, grimaced, lowered his head to catch reflected ominous flashes from the backdrop off the shiny desk-arm in his eyes. “And you are a Negro, I notice, aren’t you, Mr Johnson? Now, Mr Yarborough, you were saying something about a misunderstanding—something that can be easily cleared up? Suppose you explain the hard facts. Suppose you explain to the American people why Mr Johnson was refused a Freeze Contract.”
Start digging out from under, Dad, Barron thought as he tapped his right foot-button three times, calling for a commercial in three minutes (just a few shovelfuls so I can throw on more).
“But it is all quite simple, Mr Barron,” Yarborough said, voice and face dead earnest, put visually in the dock, as Gelardi cut out Johnson’s image, left Yarborough tiny black and white, surrounded on three sides, all but engulfed by close-up (backdrop darkness shadows swirling behind) of Jack Barron.
“The basic long-range goal of the Foundation is to support research that will lead to a time when all men will live forever. This requires money, a great deal of money. And the more money we have to spend on research, the sooner that day will arrive. The Foundation for Human Immortality has only one source of capitaclass="underline" its National Freezer Program. The bodies of a limited number of Americans are frozen and preserved in liquid helium upon clinical death so that they may be revived when research, Foundation research, provides the answers to—”