After a few more minutes the vehicle rose slightly and they crossed a smoother stretch of road. Girders flashed by on both sides, and they saw a glimpse of a broad river silver in the night. Then they were back on the regular highway surface, lurching on the ill-maintained blacktop. There had been a turnoff just past the bridge. Pikul slowed the vehicle to walking speed, then wheeled it around in a U-turn in the dark. He headed back. Moments later they saw the bridge again, and Pikul turned the Land Rover through the small intersection. Driving slowly again, running alongside the river, he followed the narrow road through a swathe of overhanging trees. Insects hovered brightly in the beams of their headlights. Soon the road turned toward the north, climbing through wilder country. When they came out from the trees there was no more sign of the river. The mountains were ahead of them, much closer now.
“Have you any idea where we are?” he said to her.
“Not now. Keep going. This must lead somewhere into the mountains. That’s okay, because I know places we could go.”
The Land Rovers movements were suddenly much easier to live with.
Several minutes later, Pikul said reflectively, “I normally like the countryside, don’t you? It’s usually relaxing and calm.”
“That’s only if you don’t know what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“There is great stress and anger and violence in the countryside,” Allegra said, with unexpected vehemence. She’d swiveled in her seat to stare across at him. For a moment he thought she was going to do something inexplicable and violent against him; there was a sense of darkness and mystery in her that was not wholly explained by the wound she had suffered. He glanced back at the road, then at her. “There are thousands of life-forms everywhere in the countryside,” she went on. “All screaming me! me! me! and trying to kill and dominate and devour the other life-forms. It’s a terrifying and exhausting place!”
She fell silent, looking out into the dark night.
“Well, I like the countryside,” Pikul said lamely.
“That’s good. Because I reckon you might end up spending a lot of time out here.”
“I might?”
“Sure. If you go back home to the city, they’ll be waiting for you.”
“They?”
“Yeah. My assassins. The ones you thwarted. They’ll probably want to have a little talk with you about where I am.”
Pikul thought about that for a moment. “Don’t you think,” he said, “that might have been just one crazy guy acting alone?”
“Didn’t you hear the way he screamed at me? He wasn’t alone. He had been sent.”
“Sent,” Pikul said. “Out to a rural town, on the chance you might be there.”
“You don’t know anything about this business I’m in.”
“I’m learning fast. You mean all that? That there’s a group of people out for your head?”
“How would you explain what happened back there?”
“Everybody likes a conspiracy,” Pikul said. “It’s more satisfying than just one crazy guy doing one crazy thing.”
“Suit yourself.”
She turned away again. He sneaked another look at her and saw, in the light from the dash, that she was biting her lower lip. She still gripped her injured shoulder.
They drove into the deepening night. The only sign of habitation was the occasional glimpse of a light from a house or a window, flickering beyond trees. Every now and again Allegra would turn stiffly in her seat to look back, to see if anything might be following them. Nothing ever was. Just the road ahead in the headlight beams, the road behind in the dark, the trees and the undulating hill country.
“Well, what’s next?” Pikul said in a while. “What are we going to do out here? Do you know your way around? Do you know any country people?”
“Not country people,” she said. “But I know games people, and most of them are out here. The countryside’s scattered with games development people, project coordinators, little assembly factories . . . you name it.”
“That’s weird. I never knew that.”
She gave him a look that he caught by chance, turning toward her briefly as he drove. The look told him he never knew anything.
“Cities are full of bad microwaves, bad thermals, bad electrooptics, digital networks, FM transmitters, bleepers, radar alarm devices. There’s so much of that shit you can’t shield it out anymore. Readings aren’t true. The whole industry moved out of the city years ago.”
“Silicon Valley, and all that?”
“No. That’s still the city. I’m talking about farms, small holdings, houses in valleys, places where crowds and traffic don’t go. That’s the future, you know. The industrial revolution brought people into the cities, and the electronics revolution, the systems revolution, is taking them out again.”
“So you can find your way around.”
“Some.”
“Where are we heading at the moment?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need somewhere to stay tonight. That’s a start.”
“Do you have somewhere in mind?”
“Not immediately. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“But there are places you know where we can hide out?” he said.
“Maybe . . . but I’m discovering I have some enemies I didn’t know I had. ‘Death to Allegra Geller!’ How’d you like to hear somebody coming at you with a gun screaming your name at you?”
“Wow,” Pikul said, thinking about that.
“ ‘Death to Ted Pickle’ . . . pretty scary, huh?”
“It’s Pikul, not Pickle. Anyway, how’d you—”
“It says ‘Pickle’ on your name badge.”
“I don’t pronounce it that way.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. You can drop the Allegra and call me Geller. Almost everyone else does, the ones who know me. I like that, never been comfortable with my given name.”
“All right . . . Geller.”
“That’s fine, Pikul. Now we’re friends.”
He thought about that too, and decided he liked it. He just wished she’d act like a friend. She seemed to have an attractive personality, what little he’d seen of it in the church, but toward him she exuded suspicion, fear, belief that he was part of the conspiracy against her.
“That gun the guy brought with him,” he said. “How did you know how to fire it? I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“It has a trigger,” she replied casually. “I guessed it was meant to be pulled, so I pulled it.”
“May I see it?”
“Later. You know, I’m thinking I might use it in my next game.”
A pothole appeared unexpectedly, and the Land Rover lurched and bounced. He heard Geller gasping, and saw that the stain of blood had spread further while they’d been talking.
“You’re bleeding again,” he said. “I keep forgetting you got hit. You don’t talk like someone dying of gunshot wounds.”
“I might start dying of gunshot wounds if we don’t do something about it soon.”
Something large and insectlike buzzed against Pikul’s chest, and he reflexively jerked a flapping hand at it. Then he remembered what it was. While steering with one hand he pulled the pink-fone out of his shirt pocket.
“What’s that?” Geller said.
“My pink-fone. Head office. I’m not sure I should answer it.”
“Answer it,” she said.
He squelched the soft sides, and the diffused pink internal light swelled up once more.
“Yeah . . . Pikul.” He heard the hiss of digital zoning. Then somewhere in the distance, like a pop of compressed air, the line cleared. The voice that spoke was deep and close, as if it were coming from the rear of the vehicle they were in.
“Pikul, what in hell’s happened?”
“Some fan went crazy, sir. He started shooting up the place. No one knows why. Maybe he was just nuts.”
“Maybe he was out for the bounty,” said the voic
e. “There’s five million dollars on Allegra Geller’s head. A fringe group calling themselves the ‘Anti-eXistenZialists’ have put up the price. It’s been on TV tonight, and it’ll be on every newspaper front page tomorrow morning. That’s the kind of crazy nut he was. Anyway, what happened to Geller? The information I have is that she survived, but is she safe?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s with me now. I’m taking care of her.”
“What do you mean she’s with you? Where exactly are you?”
“Well, we still can’t be too far from where the meeting was. We’re in the car heading north, and we’ve been driving fast for maybe half an hour, so I guess by now we must be—”
Pikul never completed the sentence, because without warning Geller reached across and grabbed the pink-fone from him. She fumbled around with it a moment, trying to find a way of turning it off. She must have pressed some other key, because the instrument suddenly screeched and a curl of printout paper shot through a slot in the top. Geller ripped this off then stared at it in the glow from the dash.
She looked up sharply at Pikul.
The voice of the man Pikul had been speaking to continued to sound from the headset.
“Geller, let me have my pink-fone back.”
“Shit to that, Pikul!”
She fiddled with it again, this time managing to turn the power off. The pink light faded.
She put her arm out through the open window and tossed the fone as far away from the Rover as she could.
“Hey, what the hell did you do that for?” Pikul said, shocked by the suddenness of her action. “That was our lifeline to civilization.”
“That was civilization’s lifeline to us, Pikul. It contains a satellite-sensitive rangefinder. So long as we carry the pink-fone, they’ll know where we are to within about five yards.”
“They? You mean at Antenna, at the head office?”
“I mean anybody with the right technology. Look, I heard what Wittold Levi said to you, back there at the meeting. He said we have enemies in our own house. He said it as he was dying.”
The vehicle swerved as Pikul took in the significance of this unwelcome reminder.
“I don’t think Levi died,” he said, disturbed by the idea. “You know, I mean . . . really dead. Do you? I think maybe he fainted, went unconscious. Quite a lot unconscious, if you like, but not really, totally dead.”
She gestured impatiently. “Who was that on the phone, Pikul? What was he saying to you?”
“It was Mr. Kindred.”
“Alex Kindred? Head of PR and marketing?”
“Right. Alex Kindred, on that highly expensive pink-fone you threw away.”
“What was he saying?”
“He said there was a group who’ve put up a bounty. Five million dollars—”
“Yeah, the Anti-eXistenZialists. I heard about them on the car radio when we were driving over this evening. The games world is full of crazy people.”
“These sound like dangerous crazy people. If that guy Dichter is anything to go on—”
“I guess he was one of them.”
“But what do they have against you?”
She shuddered. “Maybe you’d have to ask them. They’ve never exactly sat down with me and argued it out. But I don’t think it’s personal. You know, against me in person. I created eXistenZ and they’re pretty unhappy about that. They say it’s a game system that will finally destroy reality.”
“Will it?”
“It’s just a game, Pikul.”
“But will it?”
“No, of course not.”
He stared straight ahead, seeing the dark road leading them on through the anonymous countryside. He wished they would come to a town or a signpost so he could find out where they were. Ahead there was only darkness, without even a hint of habitation.
“This all makes sense to you?” he asked her. “You don’t seem surprised about any of it.”
“I hear things. It’s hard to surprise me with anything. People in the game world are mostly okay, but there are a few crazies. You always get crazies, no matter what you do. What else did Kindred say?”
“Not a lot more. If you remember, you took away the pink-fone before we could finish. I think he sees me as your bodyguard, and that the Antenna Corporation is holding me responsible for your safety.”
“A bodyguard, you say?”
“I do what I can,” Pikul said modestly.
“Where do you keep your gun, bodyguard?”
“What?”
“Your gun. Bodyguards carry guns.”
“I’m one of the new generation of bodyguards. We have secret techniques.”
“You’re bullshitting. I know you aren’t armed. You didn’t even know what to do with the dead rat. How can you protect me without weapons?”
“I’ve got an electronic wand.”
“You mean your Boy Scout cattle prod? More like a calf prod for geeks! Get serious, Pikul.”
Bristling, he said, “Look, Geller, I’ll do what I can to save your life, but you ought to know I’m only a marketing trainee. My clinic master said I had to know how the whole company worked, so tonight he got me to moonlight as a security guard on your test preview.”
“That’s great, isn’t it?” Geller said. “Fucking great. I’m marked for death and they send me out on the road with a PR nerd.”
She stared angrily out of her side window. He reached out a hand to try to reassure her, but the moment his fingers brushed against her arm, she snatched it away from him. Then she let out a yell as the motion jerked her injured shoulder. Still she stared away from him, out into the night.
Pikul felt himself rising defensively to respond, but then thought better of it. He subsided mentally and for a few minutes concentrated on driving, but the larger implications of all this were starting to crowd in on him.
“You really are marked for death, aren’t you?” he said after a while. “Do you know what you did?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t you think I have a right to know too?”
“Don’t sweat about it, Pikul. I can handle it. All we have to do is disappear for a while, and I reckon even you can do that without bungling it.”
“Thanks.”
“Meanwhile, we have to stop.”
“What, here?”
“Right now. Stop the car, please. Over there on the side.”
“Why?”
Geller said, through gritted teeth, “It’s time you and I had an intimate moment alone together.”
[ 5 ]
The intimate moment alone together occurred in the middle of the narrow road, between the trees. Insects stridulated in the warm summer night around them. Overhead, the leaves and branches were still and silent, casting the road into moonless shadows. They left the Land Rover with its engine idling, and went around to the front, into the frill glare of the headlights. Geller kneeled down on the hard tarmac, removed her jacket, and pulled the loose neck of her T-shirt down to bare her injured shoulder.
Pikul, frill of squeamishness and painfully aware of his total lack of experience, went about digging out the bullet with his Swiss Army knife. He tried to do it slowly, he tried to do it gently. But what he actually did was do it slowly.
Her eyes bright with tears, Geller said, “C’mon, Pikul, c’mon! If you’re gonna do it, do it!”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You failed. You’re hurting me. Just get the goddamn bullet out of me before I pass out.”
“Don’t faint,” he pleaded.
“All right, I’m not about to faint. But I am likely to kill if you don’t finish up soon.”
“Okay, okay. I’m doing my best.”
Sweat was bursting from his brow. He clenched his teeth and dug into the wound more recklessly than before. He could feel something hard and rounded inside, something that resisted the sharp point of the knife blade. If he could get the point a little deep
er, to the side . . .
Something yellow and white flipped out of the wound and shot in a glistening arc through the brilliant beams from the headlights.
Geller gasped with agony and ducked away from him, once more clamping her hand over the aching, bleeding injury. She hung her head with her hair hiding her face, her breath rasping in and out.
Pikul dropped the knife and shuffled across to where he’d seen the object fall. He soon found it, lying on the tarmac surface of the road. It was hard and slippery, and eluded his grasp the first time he tried to pick it up. He wiped it with his fingers, then took it back to her, holding it up in the light.
“I got it. Look at that!”
“You found the bullet. Big deal.”
“No, look! Did someone bite you?”
“What do you mean?” Geller said, turning toward him. Her face was drawn and pale with pain.
“What I just dug out of you. It’s a tooth. A human tooth.”
He held it out for her to see, but after a quick glance. Geller turned away. She leaned back into the dark, found her MetaFlesh game-pod bag and rummaged around inside it.
“Let’s take another look at that weirdo pistol,” she said.
She quickly located the cadaver-gun and held it in both hands, examining it from different angles. After a moment of expert study she found the magazine, and popped it out of the grip. She examined it in the harsh light of the headlights, then passed it to Pikul.
The magazine, made of sheets of bone and fragments of gristle, was packed with teeth.
“What in hell . . . ?” Pikul said.
“As you said, the bullets are human teeth.” She held them close to her eyes and looked intently at them. “Look, this one’s got a cavity.”
“Filled with amalgam?” Pikul said, trying to make the gun normal in some horrid way.
“No, there’s no amalgam,” she said seriously. “That’s a metal compound, isn’t it? An alloy of mercury and silver?”
“I got it!” Pikul said, trying to grab the cadaver-gun from her. She kept it away from him. “No metal anywhere in the whole damn thing,” he said. “That gun is designed to go through metal or synthetics detectors. The whole thing is made of flesh and bone. Dichter got past me with that! I screened him with my wand, and there was no metal anywhere on him.”