eXistenZ by Christopher Priest Page B

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