eXistenZ by Christopher Priest Read Free Book Online Page A

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 deeper, 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.”
    “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.

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