Pikul, thrown into this unexplained activity, was thinking instead about Allegra Geller’s lissome and naked body, joined excitingly to his, melting into his arms, her lips and breath hot on his face. Because it was so recent, so immediate and personal, it was in many ways as if she were still there with him. He knew, though, that by some inexplicable means he was again fully dressed, and that she was apparently no longer anywhere around him.
He looked back at the endlessly moving conveyor belt, its steady sideways flow and its grisly load.
The pieces of organism were sections of reptiles’ or amphibians’ bodies: limbs, heads, chests, spines, hearts . . . sometimes the pieces were as small as single eyes, claws, or nails. The parts had been mutilated, or sectioned, so that each body piece came with some of the nervous system attached; at least, that’s what the tangles of neural tissue looked uncomfortably like to Pikul.
There were other workers on each side of him, and in other stalls beyond, stretching way up the length of the hut. By glancing surreptitiously at what they were doing, Pikul figured they must be selecting various pieces of the gruesome remains and reassembling them in some new way: overhead there was a menacing selection of small, surgical tools—scalpels, clamps, vices, and so on.
A similar range of equipment hung before him too, over his alcove. At first glance everything seemed shiny and new; only when you looked more closely did you see the tiny telltale streaks of blood.
Pikul discovered he was wearing surgical gloves and clean white clothes. A photo ID card was clipped to his shirt pocket, swinging down.
He lifted it and turned it around, so he could read what was inscribed on it.
Larry Ashen, it said. His name was Larry Ashen.
The worker in the next alcove, a long-haired man with a morose look, saw Pikul trying to read his badge. He snickered at him. Mocking Pikul, he made a play of turning his own ID card around to read it. As he did so, Pikul caught a glimpse of the man’s name: it was Yevgeny Nourish.
“Hey, these cards are a pretty damn good thing!” the man said in a deeply accented voice, the sort Pikul was starting to associate with the strangers he kept meeting. “I’m still cold Yevgeny Nourish!”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Nourish,” Pikul said politely, remembering what Geller had said about letting the game take over. He and Nourish shook hands, their gloves squeaking as they pressed against each other.
“What is it you are doing here with us, Mr. Ashen?”
“Just finding my way, I guess.”
“You haff been sent here?”
“No . . . well, maybe yes.”
“Ah. I thought so. They would not tell me when I ask. I say, what is next, what should I be looking for? Give me the clue I need. Do they tell me? No, they send you and let me find out the rules all on my own.”
“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Pikul said. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you here alone?”
“Yes. Well, at present I’m on my own, but I’m supposed—”
“And you are new here on the line?” Nourish said.
“I guess so.”
“Well, let me welcome you to the Trout Farm, Mr. Ashen.”
“Did you say to the Trout Farm?”
“Trout. You know, we are raising the baby trouts from fertilized eggs and then stock the rivers with them.” He waved his hand expansively, taking in the whole building and, presumably, much of the area beyond. Then he laughed sardonically and glanced over his shoulder as if someone might be listening. He leaned toward Pikul confidentially, his long hair hanging forward so his face was partly concealed. “Don’t ask any more than this, Mr. Ashen; it’s still called the Trout Farm. The entire place was being that until two, maybe three years ago. You know, these days it seems like almost every last thing used to be something else, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. I guess you could say that. Nothing stands still, does it? Excuse me for a moment.”
Pikul pushed his seat back and leaned over to have another look at the inside of the large hut. He was desperate to locate Geller but couldn’t see her. He assumed she would still look like she used to. The photo of Larry Ashen he’d glimpsed on his ID card confirmed that his appearance hadn’t changed in the transition to this new level of the game. It was a fair bet, then, that Allegra Geller would still look like Allegra Geller.
Even so, no one remotely like her was in view: everyone working in the components building looked like small-town locals, of both sexes and all ages and apparently from many different backgrounds. Tall, thin, short, stout, male, female: all the combinations except the one he sought. Fair-haired and beautiful, uniquely sexy. Allegra Geller.
Pikul slid his chair back to the bench. At once, his hands went to work.
He watched them with surprise and real interest. They were moving deftly across his workbench.
First his right hand reached down into a straw-filled box resting on the floor beside him. From this it withdrew a translucent object, premanufactured, about the size of a pita bread, made of some animal-sourced gristly matter. His hands then slit the pita thing open with a utility knife, exposing its slimy innards. While these bulged slightly, swelling out from the constraint of the gristle, his free hand selected a piece of organism from the conveyor belt: the first one Pikul saw himself picking up was a lizard-type leg, with a knee, green scales, and a horny five-fingered claw. This piece of organism was then inserted roughly into the shuddering mass, his fingers pressing it into place as if they were trying to shove a live sardine into a hard-boiled egg. When the section of the amphibian was located in position, still sticking out, his hands found a surgical needle already threaded with a coarse black yarn and they quickly sewed up the slit.
With the first one completed, his right hand started the next, reaching down for another pitalike container. This one was accomplished faster than before, with a great deal of dexterity and competence.
Yevgeny Nourish was watching suspiciously.
“You might be new at the job, Mr. Ashen,” he said, “but you sure seem to know what you’re doing.”
“It surprises me more than it surprises you,” Pikul replied with complete sincerity.
Nourish moved back to the slit-open pita case on which he himself had been working and made a couple of fumbling stitches. He was rocking back and forth in a way that reminded Pikul of the memory-save behavior of D’Arcy Nader. After a few moments Nourish looked back at him.
“You might be new at the job, Mr. Ashen,” he said, “but you sure seem to know what you’re doing.”
Pikul was about to repeat his earlier answer, except to put more emphasis on his own sense of surprise, but then realized that this could not be the right response within the terms of the game. If he said those words again, or anything like them, Nourish would no doubt start humming the company theme.
He tried to blank his mind of his own thoughts and let himself say the first thing that occurred to him.
“I, er . . . I’ve been trained by the very best,” he said tentatively.
“Is what I thought.”
Nourish came completely out of memory-save mode and glanced around with a delicate furtiveness. He looked first along the whole length of the assembly line, then raised himself from his seat and looked across the large area behind them. He seemed satisfied no one was taking any notice of their conversation.
He leaned more closely toward Pikul.
“I was trained that way too, Larry,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Listen, where is it do you plan to be eating lunch today?”
“What? I hadn’t planned that far ahead yet.”
The glistening gobbets of reptilian cadavers had been no inducement to hunger.
Nourish rocked back and forth. Then he glanced around with a delicate furtiveness. He looked first along the whole length of the assembly line, then raised himself from his seat and looked across the large area behind them. He seemed satisfied no one was taking any notice of their conversation.
 
; “I was trained that way too, Larry,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Listen, where is it do you plan to be eating lunch today?”
The image of food came at Pikul again. Fighting down an impulse to gag, he let the game role run within him, and from this he said, “I’m new here, as you know. I haven’t made any plans for lunch yet.”
“Okay, Larry. I want you to know I am recommending the Chinese restaurant in the forest here. Everybody here knows where it is. The best people in this facility always go there. All you haff to do is ask someone.”
“Well, if you’re thinking of going there too, maybe you and I could—”
“No, I haff other plans for lunch today,” Nourish said. “It is not possible for me to be there.” He looked at Pikul expectantly, clearly assuming that his meaning was clear. It was not; it merely added to Pikul’s feelings of disorientation. “But you’ll manage on your own. Everybody here knows where it is. The best people in this facility always go there. All you haff to do is ask someone.”
“I’ll do it,” Pikul said earnestly. “That’s where I’ll eat lunch today. Chinese restaurant in the forest. Right.”
“That is good,” Nourish said. “Now, here is the next of what you haff to do. When you get in there, I suggest you order the special.”
“I order the special,” Pikul said, thinking he must have woken up in someone else’s dream.
“And don’t take no for an answer.”
“Okay, I’ll do that. The special, and don’t take no for an answer. Thanks for the recommendation, Yevgeny.”
“You’re welcome.”
Nourish returned to his tasks. He was soon working away as if Pikul did not exist.
Pikul turned back to his own bench. To his surprise, he discovered that while he and Nourish had been speaking, a long UmbyCord had uncoiled itself from some inner recess of the table and was now lying suggestively with its end close to the last pita he’d made.
What it was there for, or what he was supposed to do with it, was not at all clear. It did not appear to be doing anything at present, so he ignored it and allowed his hands to get on with their expert but mystifying tasks.
He had not been assembling long when he was interrupted by the arrival of a tall, well-built man pushing a crudely made handcart. The cart was large and square, built of canvas and metal, and was mounted on bicycle wheels with long steel spokes. A light coating of rust was working its inexorable way along the spokes and around the rims of the wheels.
The man parked the cart behind Pikul and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Larry?” he said. “Are you Larry Ashen, sir?”
“Er . . . yes!”
“They need this cart in the back room, Larry. They asked if you’d take it round to them.”
“Me?”
“Larry Ashen, they said. Are you Larry Ashen, sir?”
“Yeah. I told you.”
“They need this cart in the back room, Larry. They asked if you’d take it round to them.”
“Okay,” Pikul said. “Leave it to me.”
“Special instructions. When you get there, don’t take no for an answer.”
“When I get where don’t I take no for an answer?” Pikul said. “The back room or the restaurant?”
He was aware that next to him Nourish had stiffened in his seat and was looking across at him with a nervous expression. The tall man said, “I only work here. I get orders like everyone else.”
“Okay, okay.” Pikul saw that Nourish was apparently satisfied with this response. He was nodding. “I’ll do it now.”
The man shuffled off, leaving the cart behind him.
Pikul turned to Nourish.
“Any idea what all that means?” he asked. “The back room. Where’s that?”
“Out back of the assembly area,” Nourish replied. “You’ll find it okay. They mean they’d like you to take the cart out to them. They obviously need more motherboards for the pod assembly bays. I thought that might haff to happen. After the changes last week.”
“Motherboards? Is that what these are?” Pikul glanced down and saw that a large number of the pitas, wrapped in brown wax paper, had already been stacked inside the cart. Because they hadn’t been wrapped efficiently, he could glimpse dozens of scaly legs, slimy thoraxes, and disembodied eyes glistening inside. “Yes, I think they are. Motherboards. You can always tell a motherboard when you see a few of them. What do I do? Just get up and go to the back room?”
“That’s it. You needn’t worry about keeping up with your quota here. I haff capacity to take care of your incoming. There’s no pressure on us at the moment. I can keep up. No sweat.”
“Right. Thanks a lot, Yevgeny.”
“You’re welcome.”
Pikul got up from his bench and took the handles of the cart in both hands.
Nourish leaned back and grabbed him by the arm.
“Remember, Larry,” he said in a fierce, urgent whisper. “Lunch in the Chinese restaurant.”
“In the forest,” Pikul whispered back. “And I order the special.”
“Don’t take no for an answer.”
“You bet I won’t.”
[ 15 ]
At the back of the components building there was an entrance to the pod assembly area. Pikul walked slowly down a shallow access ramp, the cart pressing its weight gently against his hands from behind. The pod assembly area was much larger than the Quonset hut he’d just left, apparently part of an older building.
The bays themselves looked like old horse stalls, hastily made over to their present use. So hastily, in fact, that piles of filthy straw were still spread on most of the dirt door. There was a stench of horses, dung, and general animal presence. Pikul felt his nostrils tingling at the smell. It did not hang easy with the more pervasive background smell of eviscerated reptiliana: a slimy, insistent stench of river water, decaying vegetation, and cold-blooded denizens.
Each pod bay was occupied by a team of assembly workers clad in sterile protective wear, with long rubber boots and gloves, their faces swaddled in surgical masks and protective eye guards. They bent intently over their work, like teams in an operating theater.
There were obvious differences, though. Whereas an operating theater would be fanatically clean and sterile, the pod assembly bays were rancid and squalid. The workers’ boots sloshed endlessly in the mud- and dung-smeared straw below the workbenches. Their every movement seemed to send up a whole new swarm of tiny flies, and their gloves and overalls were streaked with brown smears and traces of blood.
They were working on the final assembly of game-pods, clearly not dissimilar in use from the ones Pikul had seen Geller using, but a universe away in terms of quality of manufacture.
The workers here were taking the crudely made pitas that he and Yevgeny Nourish and the others had put together from the conveyor belt, and were stuffing them into fleshy, corpselike pod housings. When the new pod was full, two of the team quickly sewed it together and tossed it into a bin standing at the far side of the stall. Some of these inevitably missed, and were piling up roughly on the ground beside the bases of the bins. Some of these pitas on the floor had split open on impact. The gristly contents were spewing out in a slimy outfall of green and dark red. One of the reptilian legs appeared still to have nervous energy: it was twitching, making the electronic pita to which it had been sewn swivel endlessly in a hopeless circle.
Each pod was like a nightmare version of the real thing. Pikul was forcibly reminded by them that this was not real, this was not the world he knew. This was still a playing level of the game.
He slowly wheeled his cart past the bays, pausing at each one to deliver a number of the pitalike motherboards. In most of the bays someone accepted them from him with a dismissive grunt, or did not respond at all.
In the last bay, though, one of the masked surgeons reacted the moment he appeared at the entrance. The surgeon led Pikul to one of the farther corners of the bay, away from the mounds of split and
broken pitas.
The surgeon’s ID card said her name was Barb Brecken, but the photo was unmistakably that of Allegra Geller.
She slipped off her face mask.
“Hi!” she said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m real well,” Pikul said, realizing as he did so that this was an exchange written into the game script.
“I saw you making contact, Larry Ashen,” Geller said. “What did that guy on the assembly line say to you?”
“Can you believe any of this?” Pikul asked, forcing himself away from the droning sense of script that was in his mind. He was pleased and relieved to have located her again. “This game version of our pod? It’s sick! And so unconvincing! It doesn’t even look like it would work. I mean, using animal nervous systems for the electronic circuits is certainly feasible, but sewing them into those . . . those warped pita things with black thread. And they just jam the pieces in. You’d think they’d connect them up in some way first. What do you think?”
His questions ended lamely because he suddenly realized that Geller was rocking gently back and forth, humming the now familiar company theme.
When she knew he’d finished speaking, her eyes looked directly at him again.
“I saw you making contact, Larry Ashen,” Geller said. “What did that guy on the assembly line say to you?”
“Sorry, Allegra!” Pikul said, then again realized he was still outside the game script. He forced himself to relax, and in a moment he felt the next line forming inescapably in his mind. Barb Brecken continued to rock back and forth while he found the words.
He resisted it, fought it, but in the end there was no more putting it off.
“He told me where to have lunch,” Pikul said.
[ 16 ]
Geller and Pikul followed a ragged stream of other workers as they moved through the forest. They were walking along a gravel path that wound gently between the trees, running roughly parallel with the curving course of a small, smooth-flowing river. The sun glinted down through the high tops of the trees, throwing fitful shadows across the faces of everyone passing below. From time to time the surface was broken by a fish leaping to claim a fly hovering above the water. It was warm and peaceful. Pikul thought it would have presented an idyllic scene if not for the known purpose of the buildings they had just left, and the unknown purpose of the building toward which they were now going.