eXistenZ (7 page)

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
ass
holes 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: A
LLEGRA
G
ELLER
—G
ENIUS IN A
G
AME
-P
OD.

Gas flashed this dismissively at Pikul, like it was a police ID tab, then turned to Geller and in an unexpected blur of moment threw himself at her feet. He stared up at her.

“Allegra Geller,” he said in a tone of genuine reverence. “You have changed my life.”

He reached over and took her hand in his, then raised it and gently brushed his lips across her knuckles.

Smiling broadly, Geller essayed a little curtsy. They both burst out laughing.

“I’m Ted Pikul,” Pikul said, holding out his hand, but the other two were already walking offside by side toward the garage building.

Into the dark.

Pikul followed them inside to a murky confusion of half-repaired cars, drums of oil, muffler pipes stacked against the wall, piles of tires, racks of tools, lift ramps, chain hoists, hydraulic jacks, tire pressure charts . . . all inefficiently lit by a low-wattage bulb hanging high in the wooden ceiling. Geller glanced around inside.

“I guess I’ll go breathe some fresh air,” she said to Gas. “While you get Pikul fitted out.”

“Yeah, you fit me out,” Pikul said.

Gas gave another fond wave to Geller, who went back out to the yard. He then threw a couple of wall switches by the chain-lift hoist and more lights came on in the dingy workshop.

“Are you sure you know how to fit bioports?” Pikul asked.

“Wouldn’t admit it to anyone else,” Gas said cheerfully. “But I sure do.”

“And you fit them in this place?”

“You bet. New tires, new clutches, new batteries, new brake pads, new spark plugs, new bioports—you name it. Wait here, Pikul, and I’ll get ready.”

He wandered over to the other side of the workshop, where another pair of overalls was hanging on a hook. He stripped off the set he’d been wearing, then stepped into the others. They didn’t look much cleaner than the first pair but at least they didn’t have so many holes.

“What was your life like before?” Pikul asked.

“Before what?”

“Before it was changed by Allegra Geller.”

“Oh yeah. Well, I operated a gas station and car repair workshop.”

“But you still operate a gas station and car repair workshop.”

Gas’s shoulders tensed, and he turned toward Pikul with a menacing stare. Then he grinned, affability returning like a light switching on.

“Sure I do,” he said. “At least, that’s what it looks like on the exterior. You can’t see beyond that because you’re trapped by the most pathetic level of literal reality. Deeper down, on the levels you can’t appreciate, Allegra Geller’s work liberated me.”

“Liberated?”

“Did you ever play her game called ArtGod? One word, capital A, capital G?”

“I don’t have a bioport,” Pikul said. “Remember?”

“ ‘Thou, the player of the game, thou art God.’ ” Gas looked wistful at the memory. “Very spiritual. Funny too. God the artist, God the mechanic. They don’t write them like that anymore.”

He zipped up his fresh pair of overalls.

“Those are sterile, aren’t they?” Pikul said.

Gas glanced down briefly at himself, and brushed his oil-grimed hands over his chest.

“Pretty much,” he said. “But you needn’t worry. The way they set things up, you could fire in a bioport in a slaughterhouse and still not generate an infection.”

“Then why do you need to go through the whole damn thing and change into clean overalls?”

Gas was crossing to the rack of car tools, but Pikul’s comment made him pause. It was as if the thought had never occurred to him before. Again Pikul sensed a sudden rising of hostility from the young man, quickly suppressed.

“You know, it’s a mental thing,” Gas said. “Helps me focus on the task. It psychs me up into hydrogun mode. The one thing you can’t afford to do is miss with the stud-finder.”

“Oh, God,” Pikul said.

“God the artist, God the mechanic,” Gas replied, and gave Pikul a big, disingenuous smile.

He rattled around on the rack for a while, lifting things away to see if what he was looking for was underneath. Then he moved to a long workbench cluttered with tools and spare parts, finally finding his red metal rolling toolbox. He pulled open one of its large slide-out drawers.