eXistenZ

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Sure I’m right. It’s incredible they’d go to so much trouble.”

  Geller was looking giddy with disbelief about their bizarre discovery. “If they made smaller-caliber weapons,” she said, “they’d have to fill them with baby teeth! The tooth fairy could go into the arms business!”

  “Dichter really did intend to kill you tonight.”

  Geller looked at him long and hard, until Pikul found her gaze unnerving and had to look away. She remained silent. When he looked back, she was still staring at him, deep in thought.

  “Yeah, I think he did,” Geller said soberly, returning from her brief flight of fantasy.

  [ 6 ]

  They stopped off at a Perky Pat to buy some takeout burgers, then rented a room at a place called the Salmon Falls Motel. The ill-lit room was furnished with old, dark wallpaper, a grimy carpet that once had been colored orange, and two large double beds. They each sat on one of the beds, putting the paper bags and food containers on the floor between them. They ate hungrily, dropping pieces of salad and gobbets of relish on the floor.

  Neither of them said anything. Pikul was thinking about the rest of the night and having to share a bedroom with a woman who looked and acted the way Allegra Geller did. Even tired, injured, and frightened as she undoubtedly was, she acted casual, often affording him quick little smiles he found tantalizing and enthralling. He couldn’t figure her out, though. She wasn’t leading him on: nothing in anything she said or did gave that impression. She was just . . . good to be with. She seemed relaxed and familiar in his company, taking him for granted. At the motel office he’d asked for two separate rooms, but Geller intervened and told the clerk they wanted only one room.

  “You bodyguard,” she’d said by way of explanation, as they headed down to find the room. “Me potential victim. Like it or not, you don’t leave my side tonight.”

  Pikul had come to the conclusion he could put up with the situation.

  As soon as she was through eating, Geller went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She pushed the door behind her, but neither locked nor closed it properly. The sound of rushing and splashing water drifted sensuously into the room. Pikul sat quietly on his bed, picking at his teeth with a fingernail and thinking about the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, naked and wet only a few feet away from him. Practically in the same room with him.

  Then, a few minutes later, she was in the same room with him, her legs and shoulders still glistening with droplets. Allegra had wound a damp, inadequate motel towel around her body, and wrapped an even smaller one about her hair. She paced restlessly around the room for a while, dabbing the water off herself. Her thoughts were obviously miles away.

  The towel was thin and threadbare from years of use, and clung to her body revealingly. To Pikul, she was a vision of naked arms and legs, and temptingly hinted at curves, at which he hardly dare glance.

  The wound in her shoulder was still exposed, but it had stopped bleeding and the hot water had helped clean it up a little. At her suggestion, Pikul went out to the Land Rover and found the small onboard first-aid kit. He helped her place a dressing on the wound: an antiseptic lint pad held in place by two large plasters.

  The physical nearness of her dazzled him; she smelled wonderfully of soap and shampoo. Water dripped from her hair onto his knee. As he placed the dressing on her shoulder she inclined her face, and he almost went mad at the shapes she made: the cool angles of collarbone, neck, throat, cheek, lips, soft skin, fair hair, gentle womanhood.

  Afterward, he cleaned up the mess they had made with the food, while Geller sat across from him in the middle of the other bed. She had placed her game-pod on the towel covering her lap and jacked the UmbyCord into the bioport in her back. Her eyes were closed and her fingers twitched delicately over the sensitive surface of the game-pod. She seemed to be in a kind of trance, her body moving voluptuously in time to some unheard rhythm.

  Pikul stared, entranced by the stresses her movements were causing on the too-small towel that so inadequately covered her body. The knot she’d tied in the towel under her armpit was working loose, as he’d secretly hoped all along it might. He watched with close interest as the edge of the piece of cloth slipped with maddening slowness, millimeter by millimeter, down the curve of her left breast. He was torn with indecision: Should he be the perfect gentleman and look away? Should he gently cover her? Or should he instead pretend not to notice, and let gravity and nature take their course?

  Before he had to decide, Geller suddenly came out of her trance. She opened her eyes, saw him there and leaned over her pod to make some final adjustment. As she did, two things happened at once: the towel finally worked completely loose and her hand came up and grabbed it just in time.

  She stared hard at the game-pod while she retied the knot under her arm.

  When she spoke, it was in vague terms, not directly addressing him.

  “The whole game world is in a kind of trance,” she said.

  “I remember you said something like that, back at the meeting.” He realized his voice sounded a tone or two higher than usual.

  “People are willing to accept so little,” she said. “They habitually sell themselves short. They’re trapped in a cage formed out of their own limited expectations. They think that what they see is everything they know, or everything they can ever know. They won’t imagine or dream or fantasize. To most people the limit of their horizon is a vacation every year, a trip away from home. Some people don’t even do as much as that. Yet the whole world is out there, waiting to be discovered. But now there’s more than just the world: virtual reality adds an extra dimension. You can explore the whole world, more than the whole world, simply by using your mind. The problem is a kind of courage. You need courage to throw off everything that’s familiar, to experiment. Very few people can conceive the amazing experiences that could be theirs were they only more daring.”

  She stared reflectively at the dark wallpaper opposite the beds. Part of it was peeling, to reveal dark plaster beneath. She seemed untroubled by their dingy surroundings, wrapped up in her own thoughts.

  Pikul said, “Just now with your game-pod . . . where were you? What were you doing?”

  “I was wandering through eXistenZ . . . the new system, I mean.”

  “Yeah. I could see that. But what were you actually doing?”

  She looked directly at him, and for a moment he could have sworn he saw her tongue flick with quick relish across her lips. Then she smiled shyly and glanced away from him.

  “Wandering,” she said. “I told you. That’s about all I can do on my own, all anyone can do. It’s kind of interesting, but only in the way a foreign country is interesting to a tourist. I was trapped in the cage of my own making. To get really involved you have to react to another player. It’s the old saying: it takes two. It can get pretty frustrating on your own.”

  As she finished saying this she looked directly into his eyes, and the invitation was unmistakable.

  “Would you like to play with me?” she asked. She turned toward him, her hand indicating the game-pod.

  “Me?” he said. “But I’ve never . . .” Pikul felt panic inexplicably rising in him. Everything in him urged him to keep her at a distance. “Let’s get this problem sorted out!” he said, allowing the words to run out of him uncontrollably. “Why won’t you let me contact Antenna? They’ll be going crazy wondering what’s happened to you. I mean, it’s not like we’ve done anything wrong. We just ran because we didn’t know how many of them there were. Right? I think we owe it to Antenna to let them know you’re all right, to get them to send somebody to help you who knows what he’s doing . . .”

  As he said all this Geller was unbuttoning his shirt, while continuing to stare invitingly into his eyes. When the last button was undone, she gently pulled the flaps out from his trousers and ran her arms around his waist. The tips of her breasts pressed softly through her thin towel
against his bare chest, and he could smell her still-damp hair.

  He stopped speaking, and waited for heaven to erupt around him.

  Then she said, stepping back from him, “Where’s your bioport?”

  “My bioport?” he said stupidly.

  “Don’t tell me you were never fitted!”

  “I was never fitted. Who cares?”

  “You work for Antenna Research and you don’t have a bioport? It’s incredible. You’ve never played one of my games because you’ve never played any game.”

  “Look, Allegra—I mean Geller—I’m on this management training program, and my clinic master—”

  “Fuck your clinic master! This is about me, not some goddamn careerist at Antenna. It means you’ve no idea what a genius I am.”

  “A genius, huh?” Pikul wanted her to put her arms around him again, but she had backed right off. “I don’t need to play a game to know how to sell it.”

  “That’s Antenna talking. It’s bullshit, posturing bullshit. If you don’t play my games, you aren’t going to work for Antenna. I can make sure of that.”

  “Look, I’ve been dying to play your games,” Pikul said, not entirely truthfully. “But I have this . . . phobia. A phobia about having my body penetrated.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Penetrated surgically, I mean. You understand, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure I do. Getting penetrated is the dream of most of the girls I know.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not a girl.” Pikul realized this relationship was grinding to a halt even before it had begun. He knew he’d fallen into a hole and was busy digging it deeper. He decided to try shifting ground, giving way a little. “Maybe a bioport would be different, though?”

  “It’s different.”

  “I dunno . . . I need to be talked into it. I can’t do it. It’s too freaky. Makes my skin crawl.”

  “For God’s sake, Pikul. Come on . . . they just pop something against your spine with a little hydrogun. Shoot the port plug into it. They do it at malls, like getting your ears pierced.”

  Pikul winced. Ear piercing was something else he had a phobia about.

  “You saw those people at the meeting,” Geller went on. “They’ve all had ports fitted. Farmers, delivery drivers, kids at college, senior citizens, cops, you name it. Millions of people have fitted bioports. It’s just a quick jab.”

  “Yeah, sure. With only an infinitesimal chance of permanent spine paralysis. I read about that in the National Enquirer.”

  “You chose this profession, geek.”

  “Can’t you talk me into it?” Pikul said, thinking she hadn’t really tried that hard yet.

  “You mean other than logically?”

  “Yeah . . . what’s the best thing about it? Illogically?”

  That obviously touched something in her. “You like intimacy with someone else?” she said. “You like to get real close? You like to feel and hold and have someone?”

  “Sure I do.”

  “There’s nothing closer than two people together in eXistenZ.” She stepped back to him again, tipping her appealing face up toward his. She came up close; not touching, but so near he could feel her breath moving lightly across the skin of his chest. “When you play eXistenZ with someone else, you feel there’s an intimacy that is beyond expression. You’ll never have experienced anything like it in your real life, because you can’t get that close in real life. Wouldn’t you like to try? You can play all sorts of games with me if you like.”

  He was swirling with emotions and confusion. When she said games, did she mean . . . ? He’d like to play with her, of course, but were they thinking about the same thing?

  “That’s what I thought you—” he started. “When you . . . you know, when you undid my shirt—”

  “I was looking for your bioport.”

  “Yes, I know that now, but at the time.”

  “You thought I wanted something else. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Listen, once we’ve ported together there are no limits on what we can play. No rules, no inhibitions. I’m asking you if you’ll play eXistenZ with me.”

  “You want to do it now?”

  “Sure. But you know why not?”

  “Because . . . because I don’t have a bioport.”

  “That’s right. You don’t have a bioport.”

  Now he backed away from her. She was making him sweat, and he didn’t want her to see how much. He made a play of needing to get his shirt back on, then got the buttons mixed up and had to turn his back on her while he sorted that out. He deliberately didn’t think about what she seemed to be offering him: she was so available, yet he could not have her.

  When he looked back at her, she’d sat down on the edge of the bed once more, cradling her pod on her lap.

  “You going to go back into the game now?” Pikul asked.

  “No. Come and see this.” He moved across to her. “My baby took a huge hit back there, at the meeting. You see how she’s quivering?”

  He peered down at the pod. It was indeed shivering, with tight peristaltic convulsions rippling through the body.

  He said, “Yes, it . . . I mean she is quivering.”

  “I’m not just being sentimental, Pikul. This baby is the most highly developed piece of organware in the world. When those UmbyCords were ripped out of her, back at the church, it was at the most vulnerable time for her. The game architecture was being downloaded from her to the slave pods. The software protocols that achieve that are some of the most sophisticated that game architecture has ever seen. God knows what damage that might have caused. Do you see the problem?”

  “Well, I—”

  “The only way I can tell if everything’s okay, can be sure the game hasn’t been contaminated, is for me to play eXistenZ with someone I trust. Someone friendly.” She looked up at him again. Her lips were glistening and her eyes had a gleam of danger in them. “You say I can trust you, but are you friendly?”

  “Yeah, I’m friendly. Look at me. Completely friendly.”

  “But you don’t have a bioport.”

  “I’ll get one,” Pikul said. “It can’t be too difficult if all those delivery boys, farmers, those people you said, if they’ve got them. Okay, were miles out in the country someplace, and we’d have to find somewhere to do it without registering, so it’d be illegal. Probably dangerous too, when they come to slam that old hydrogun against the spine . . . but, hey, I’m friendly, so what the hell?”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You won’t be sorry.”

  She twisted around to put the pod on the bed beside her, then leaned forward to stand up. As she did so he saw that the towel had been working loose again, because for an instant he glimpsed the soft pointed mound of her breast. Once again she clutched the towel against her. She headed for the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?” Pikul asked.

  “To get dressed. I can’t go out half naked.”

  “So where are we going after that?”

  “To get you a bioport.”

  “What, now? Right away?”

  “No time like the present,” Geller said.

  “What do we do? Just drive up to your local country gas station in the middle of the night?”

  “Something like that,” she said, and closed the bathroom door. This time she locked it behind her.

  [ 7 ]

  There was a gas station two miles up the highway, and it was open. At least, there was a sign that said it was open. There were three gas pumps outside with lights on, but the building itself was dark.

  Pikul stopped the Land Rover by the pumps and held his hand down on the horn for a few seconds.

  After a long pause a wooden door in the old building opened and a gangly pump attendant ambled slowly over.

  “Fill her up,” Pikul said. “Unleaded.”

  “You got it.”

  In the light from the pumps Pikul read the young
man’s name, embroidered on his overalls. He appeared to be called Gas. Gas leaned over the filler cap while the tank filled. He was staring away into the darkness, a low whistling noise sifting through his lips. Pikul and Geller hovered nervously.

  When the tank was full, the attendant said, “Anything else I can get for you folks?”

  “Well,” Geller said, “Gas—is that your name . . . Gas?”

  “That’s what they call me.” He had a halting, country accent; he seemed nervous, but there was an intangible sense of menace arising from him. Pikul found that he was tensing himself.

  “Would you check our bioport plugs?” Allegra asked.

  “Check your what? You mean check your spark plugs?”

  “No . . . you heard me right. My friend here has a bioport problem.”

  The young man straightened and stared steadily at her. It was the first time they had been able to get a clear look at his face. He had regular, well-chiseled features, but there was a vacancy behind his eyes, a reserve. The way he looked at them now seemed to imply a judgment, but the sheer blankness of the expression in his eyes gave them no chance to sense what it might be.

  “A bioport,” he said slowly. “Now, that’s a kind of hole in your spine, isn’t it? There’s a lot of assholes around here, but that’s generally it. I don’t know why you’d be talking to me about that kind of thing, lady.”

  “Sure you do,” Geller said. “I think you might already know who I am.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” the attendant said automatically, “but if you were the First Lady and you came in here looking for an unlicensed bioport I wouldn’t be able to fit one for you.”

  “I’m not the First Lady,” Geller said. “But I might be the last.”

  She moved around so the light from the nearest pump fell on her face. She looked at the young attendant with a level, neutral expression, clearly awaiting his reaction.

  He stared back, and as he did so Pikul saw his eyes widen with recognition and disbelief.

  Gas pulled a greasy wallet from his overalls and flipped out the card holders. He riffled through them: Pikul glimpsed shots of a family, a fishing photo with three men in waders, a couple of highly polished hot rods with young men standing in front of them. Gas stopped at one particular picture: it was a color photograph of Geller clipped from a glossy magazine. The caption read: ALLEGRA GELLER—GENIUS IN A GAME-POD.