eXistenZ Page 7

  “Shit, Pikul!” she said furiously. “I can’t believe this. I trusted you, and in return you blew my pod! You must have neurosurged.”

  “I must have—what? What do you mean? Neurosurged . . . what’s that?”

  “I jacked you into my pod,” she said, in a tone of despair. “You panicked and you neurosurged. Now the pod is totally fucked! You’ve no idea what a disaster this is going to be for me!”

  “I was nervous . . . that’s right. I was real nervous. But I didn’t panic.”

  “You blew my pod!”

  “Your pod blew. Okay, I’m not arguing. But why blame me for it?”

  “You were there,” Geller said, with cold reason. “It was jacked into you, and then it blew.”

  “Couldn’t you get a new one?”

  She looked at him with disbelief, and for a moment he thought she was going to burst out in some way: tears, hysterical laughter, great rage. Then she lowered her eyes and sadness briefly dwelled in her face.

  She crouched before him, cradling the pod.

  “Pikul, in this pod is the only, the original, version of eXistenZ. It’s an entire game system, and it cost thirty-eight million dollars to develop, not including prerelease marketing costs. Now I’m locked outside my own game! I can’t get it out, or me in!”

  “Are you serious?” he said. “This is the only version of the software there is?”

  “eXistenZ isn’t software. You can back up software. eXistenZ is a whole, living system! You can’t make copies of living systems. Security is everything these days. It’s the only version, and it’s stuck inside and it’s your fault.” Geller used her sleeve to clean the drool off the pod. She moved with tragic gentleness, as if treating an injured child. “I’ve given my five most passionate years to this strange little creature,” she went on. “I’ve never regretted it, Pikul, because I knew it was the only thing that could give my life any meaning.”

  “But why is it my fault? I’m telling you I didn’t, I did not, definitely did not neurosurge. I didn’t feel any neurosurging.”

  Gas now strolled back into the workshop. He was holding, almost casually, a long shotgun. It was leveled at Geller.

  “You can relax, Pikul,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

  Pikul’s instincts to act in protection of Geller swarmed over him, but he was still physically paralyzed. He writhed in a futile way in the chair. Geller backed away from Gas, clutching her game-pod protectively.

  “Oh no, Gas!” she cried. “Not you!”

  “Yeah, I guess it was.” For a moment he looked uncertain of what he intended. With his free hand he swept back the hair that had fallen loosely down across his sweating face. “I wouldn’t try using that bioport again. Except maybe as a toaster or something.”

  “What’s going on, Gas?” Geller asked.

  “You’re worth a lot of money if you’re dead.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pikul said.

  “You know what I’m talking about. It’s all over the country, on every TV show and news bulletin. Five million for your dead body. No questions asked.”

  “But she changed your life!” Pikul said, trapped in his chair.

  “Yup . . . and now I think I’m gonna change hers.”

  “But wait, Gas! Why did you install that faulty bioport into me?”

  “It seems that as well as the five mil, there’s an extra bonus for killing Allegra Geller’s latest game system. I think I just did that too, didn’t I?”

  Geller had stopped backing away. Pikul saw a new, hard expression in her face. She walked slowly, carefully, toward Gas, desperate not to provoke a sudden reaction.

  “But can you actually kill a person in cold blood, Gas?” Geller asked. “Can you really do that? Can you kill me?”

  “Sure I can,” he said.

  “Okay, let’s say you do it.” For a moment her voice faltered, but then she went on. “You hide my body someplace out back. You contact the crazies who put up the ransom. You trust them to pay up. You give them my now-decaying, fucking grotesque corpse. Do you really expect them to hand over the five mil cash? Without the feds getting interested? Without some kind of cheesy double cross? Don’t you ever go to the fucking movies?”

  “I like your script, Geller,” Gas said. “I’ve always liked the story lines in your games. Yeah, they’re life-changing, like I said. I want that one you just ran by me, I want to be in on it.”

  He cocked the shotgun, tightened his finger on the trigger.

  At the same time, there was the sound of a deep-seated ratchet. Gas’s face twitched in recognition. He paused, started to turn around.

  Too long! Pikul fired the bioport insertion gun, shooting Gas in the mastoid bone behind his right ear. The back of Gas’s skull shattered messily and car repair tools dislodged by the spasmic swinging of his arm crashed to the floor. The shotgun flew away from him and wheeled and clattered across the dirty workshop.

  Pikul threw down the gun and thrust himself out of the chair. Once again his legs could not take his weight and he fell to the ground beside Gas’s body. Blood was pouring out of the man’s head wound, spreading darkly across the greasy concrete floor.

  “Oh God, I think he’s dead!” Pikul said unnecessarily. “I only meant to distract him.”

  “He’s distracted all right,” Geller said. She looked down contemptuously at the body of the dead mechanic. “Plug your goddamn toaster into that hole, corpse!”

  [ 9 ]

  They drove through the night. More accurately, Geller drove and Pikul hung on. He was starting to feel the return of sensation in his below-the-belt region, the most agonizing and widespread attack of pins and needles he’d ever known.

  Propped up in the passenger seat of the Land Rover, he said, “Gas was going to kill you.”

  “You noticed!” She afforded him a sardonic glance.

  “That’s two people in one day who seriously wanted to kill you.”

  “I’ve never been more popular.”

  “Don’t mess with this,” Pikul said. “People who want to kill you don’t seem to care if I’m caught in the cross fire.”

  “You’re a trained bodyguard. The new generation, you told me.”

  “I guess I meant I was a trainee. I’m not used to so much violence. I live a quiet life.”

  “So do I,” said Geller. “You want to know how I normally live when I’m not been chased about the country by a bunch of crazies?”

  “Tell me.”

  She said nothing for what seemed like several minutes. Pikul said nothing more to prompt her, already knowing her well enough to realize that at least half the time he was misreading her intentions. When he looked across at her, she was staring ahead at the road as she drove, biting thoughtfully on her bottom lip.

  “Okay, I live in a community out on Highway 11,” she said eventually. “Where the lake country begins. You know it? Well, it’s real pretty and it’s real lonely. The community has about fifteen people. They come and go, but that’s about the average. We do a few things as a group: buy groceries, for instance. But that’s about it. I have a studio at the back end of the area: I’m completely surrounded by trees, and I’m cut off from the other buildings by a small river. Out back of my studio is the lake. I can go a week, two weeks, and never see anyone, if I don’t want.”

  “No TV?”

  “I don’t watch TV. Just videos. But I don’t even watch them too often. What I mostly do is work. I love work. I eat and sleep and drink work. It’s my life. I have in my studio the most advanced games simulator in the country, and out back, in a special building, I have all the organ development matrices I need, where the pod can be nurtured. That’s my life, Pikul: I just descend every day into the virtual world and write my game and pander to the needs of the pod.”

  “Doesn’t sound real to me.”

  “Well, I get a paycheck once a month. Does that help you understand a bit better?”

  “Only from Antenna Rese
arch,” Pikul intoned.

  “Right. But the point is, I don’t live in a world where people issue death threats and come at you with a gun made out of a dead animal. I live with nature, and the people around me are artists, craftsmen, designers, thinkers. We feel we are part of a global movement away from crime and violence, developing into a higher state of being.”

  “Sounds great,” Pikul said sardonically. “So long as you’re not poor, not living in a deprived area of a big city, not ill, not mentally unfit, not—”

  “Okay, okay, I take your point. I’m not saying we’re living a life everyone should lead. I know I’m privileged. But my work brings a lot of pleasure to millions of people, and what I do is essentially harmless. We can’t all live in a cabin by a lake. But some of us do, and I’m one of them . . . and it’s no preparation for exposure to a wider world, where people scream your name and come at you with hate in their eye.”

  “I keep thinking about that,” Pikul said.

  “I know. So do I.”

  Pikul, in a melancholy mood, considered the situation as the countryside raced past the car windows. Was this to be the rest of his life, fleeing across the highways and back roads of rural areas?

  “Allegra, we need help,” he said eventually.

  “Now you’re talking. I’ve got to get this pod fixed.”

  The pins and needles had set in with total commitment as Pikul stared dimly through the windshield at the lightening sky. Geller still drove at high speed as the sun came up, when Pikul, exhausted by the events of the long night, at last began to snooze.

  He drifted in a state of half sleep for a long time, the engine droning on, its steady rhythm broken intermittently by an occasional lurch for a corner or a junction or a hole in the road. But he could relax like this, in this big comfortable machine designed for the wide roads and the rough country.

  When the Land Rover started lurching violently, its engine working hard, he opened his eyes and saw they were climbing a narrow dirt track. Great mountains rose around them. Tall firs blotted out the closer views, but the smell of pine and resin and flowers hit Pikul like a restorative shot. The air was colder, fresher, and the sky bluer. He sat up in the seat, suddenly alert. Whether there was feeling in his legs was a debatable point, but he realized he could make some movements again.

  They reached a pair of stone gateposts, which bore a coy, rustic sign: CALEDON SKI CLUB—PRIVATE ROAD.

  “Are you taking me skiing?” he asked her in disbelief.

  “Hi. Welcome back to planet Earth. You’ve been out for a couple of hours.”

  He struggled around in his seat, looking at the skyline, the bare slopes high above them.

  “I’m maybe fit for living,” he ventured, “but not for skiing.”

  “Relax,” Geller said. “Nothing in the countryside is what it seems. It’s all appearance versus reality. The reality here is something unique.”

  After another mile of climbing they reached a large A-frame chalet, standing back from the track and surrounded by tall firs. Geller turned off the engine and climbed down.

  With more of a struggle, Pikul managed to get his legs dangling vertically from the seat toward the ground. When he lowered his weight onto them, he discovered he was able to stand, after a fashion. He held on to the large side mirror sticking out from the door.

  A movement caught his eye, and he noticed something black and slithery fingering its way across the convex glass of the mirror.

  “Hey, look at this huge bug!” he called to Geller, who was already walking up toward the chalet. She turned back and came to see. “The goddamn thing’s got two heads.”

  “It’s not a bug,” she said, bending down to look closely at it. “I saw one of those last night. Might even be the same one, coming along for the ride. It’s a mutated amphibian, a frog-salamander-lizard thing.”

  “I can tell you’ve checked it out in a reference book. It still looks like a bug to me.”

  “It’s a sign of the times,” Geller said, shrugging.

  Pikul closed the door gingerly, not wanting to shake the little amphibian off its perch, then followed Geller as she walked up the path toward the chalet. His legs felt weird, but he kept upright and managed not to fall.

  She slowed, to let him catch up with her.

  Glancing around at the magnificent mountain scenery, he said, “What if somebody comes up here and really wants to ski?”

  “They can ski.”

  “I thought you said it was appearance and not reality.”

  “Right. Nobody actually skis anymore. You know, sliding down a snow-covered mountain on polished slats of wood? You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You haven’t realized that,” she said.

  “I’ve watched some ski shows on TV. Downhill racing, Austrian Alps, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and all that.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What the hell’s wrong with that?” Pikul asked, aggravated by the tone of contempt in her voice.

  “There’s reality, there’s what you see on TV, and there’s virtual reality. Guess which one is going to win the day?”

  She pushed open the unlocked door and they both entered the chalet.

  To Pikul’s eye, most of the interior did at least look the way he expected a ski-repair workshop might: there were skis everywhere in various states of repair and repainting, as well as vices, lathes, saw benches, and dozens of long wooden racks holding new pairs of skis.

  In the center, though, were three worktables, not at all the kind of thing you expected would be used to make or repair skis. The large slabs with porcelain work surfaces seemed more suited to a mortuary. Gleaming surgical instruments were laid out neatly, held in special racks. Huge overhead angle-lights with diffusers added to the impression of an operating theater.

  Their arrival must have been overheard, Pikul thought, as the door to a back room opened. The man who appeared looked to be in his early sixties. He seemed distinguished, authoritarian in manner, and his bright blue eyes were crinkly and alert.

  He recognized Geller immediately and his face creased with pleasure at seeing her.

  “My darling Allegra!” He spoke in a pronounced East European accent. He held out his arms in welcome, and she went to him. They kissed cheeks, then embraced warmly. “I am so pleased to see you! And astonished!”

  “Kiri, I want you to meet my bodyguard, Ted Pikul. Ted, this is Kiri Vinokur, one of my oldest and closest friends.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Ted.”

  “You too, sir. I guess you should just call me Pikul.”

  “A bodyguard, you are saying?” Kiri Vinokur frowned. “This sounds serious. Maybe more serious than I had been thinking. I hear the ridiculous story about a fatwa issuing against you. The company is trying desperately to be finding you. Is it really as serious as this? Are you in danger?”

  Pikul said, “She seems to think that since I’ve become her bodyguard she’s in more danger.”

  “There have been a couple of attempts on my life already.”

  “No! That’s unbearable. The company must be stopping this. They are owing you every kind of protection.”

  “I don’t know what they can do about it. These people are crazy. It seems to be open season on me.”

  “My dear, safe here you will be.” Vinokur waved his hands expansively, taking in the interior of the chalet and the surrounding mountainous valley. “I can assure you of that. I shall be contacting Antenna straight away and be having them send some people to come and collect you.”

  Geller looked agitated.

  “No, Kiri,” she said. “Don’t do that, however good your intentions. You mustn’t let anybody know we’re here. I can’t be sure anymore that Antenna is completely safe for me.”

  Vinokur shook his head with great sadness.

  “It has come to this, then. Finally. I understand, I suppose. The company has always been having the bad habit of drawing brilliant and eccentri
c people into its fold. You and your, er, bodyguard can of course be hiding out here for as long as you like. Several of the guest chalets are free at present. I will make sure you are having fresh towels.”

  “Thanks, Kiri!” Geller said. She patted her game-pod case. “But, you know, I’ve really come so you can make sure I don’t lose everything I have in here.”

  [ 10 ]

  Later, when they’d settled in, Kiri Vinokur got to work on Geller’s game-pod. He laid it out systematically on the porcelain work surface, using in the first instance a number of dexterous manual handling techniques Pikul could not quite follow. The man’s hands moved swiftly and expertly, like those of a professional masseur. He finally opened the organism up, so it lay spread before him.

  Next, the operation itself began. In this, Vinokur was assisted by a technician called Landry, a cherubic-faced middle-aged man. Using his special electronic diagnostic tools, which had the approximate appearance of scalpels that apparently did not make actual physical contact with the pod, Vinokur began the painstaking work of determining what might have happened to the cybernetic brain inside.

  “What on earth did you port into, Allegra?” he said, glancing up at Geller over his special clip-on magnifying spectacle lenses.

  “Pikul’s bioport,” she replied.

  “Really? And could it be that’s what is causing all this damage, you are thinking?”

  “The installation was flawed,” Pikul hastily explained. “It was my first time. The port . . . well, it neurosurged. That’s a phenomenon you’re familiar with, of course. We’re pretty sure of it, anyway. But it did it all on its own, without me. Allegra says you can fix it.”

  “Whatever happened,” Vinokur said, “it fried some expensive neural webbing. You are seeing?” He was indicating a red/pink pulsing node of cybersynapses. He circled the area with the tip of his electronic scalpel. “Here . . . and here. This cord of response tissue. All this is kaput.”

  Pikul said, “It looks like an animal lying down there. To me it feels like you’re operating on somebody’s pet dog.”