eXistenZ Read Online Free PDF Page A

induced a galvanic convulsion of pain in the man, but he was not disabled. Struggling to get away from Pikul, he managed to bring his gun hand around.
    Pikul found himself staring into the open O of an animal’s snout, where smoke still lingered.
    He threw himself backward to escape, and Dichter managed at last to scramble to his knees.
    Wittold Levi and his assistants had by now run back onto the stage and were dashing across toward Dichter. The young attacker saw them coming and swung the cadaver-gun around.
    He caught Wittold Levi full in the chest. As the bullet struck him, the man fell backward and crashed painfully to the stage floor amongst the jumble of overturned chairs, fallen game-pods and writhing UmbyCords.
    The female assistant Pikul had noticed earlier pulled a conventional pistol from a shoulder harness beneath her jacket. She steadied her gun hand, took careful aim, then fired two calm and accurate shots into the side of Dichter’s head. He crumpled immediately, amid a spurting fountain of cranial blood.
    The chaos did not end here, because the game players were quickly reemerging from their participation in the game. Blasted by the psychic waves of pain from Allegra, they were in full panicky urge to escape.
    Everyone jostled, pushed, and screamed, trying to get away from the confusion, the dramatic slashes of spilled blood and the tangle of fallen bodies on the platform. Meanwhile, friends and relatives who had been watching from the audience were trying to climb up to the platform to help.
    As he clambered to his feet, Pikul was clouted from behind by a game-pod swinging on the end of its UmbyCord; the soft and surprisingly massy weight knocked him full-length. He sprawled across someone. Muttering automatic apologies, he tried to get to his feet.
    The man turned desperately to face him. It was Wittold Levi, his face contorted with agony.
    “Get her out of here, Pikul!” he said fiercely. His voice was a gasping parody of the smooth tones he had spoken in before. “Save her! That man’s not acting alone! There are probably more of them out there somewhere!”
    “Save who?” Pikul said stupidly.
    “Allegra Geller! Get her away from this place. Do it now!”
    “Me?” said Pikul.
    “Trust no one.” Levi’s eyes were glazing, and his voice was weaker. “Trust no one. There are enemies everywhere. Out there, in here . . . everywhere. Even in our own house! The corporation cannot protect—”
    Levi made an appalling belching, vomiting sound and his face turned darkly purple. His eyes closed and his body convulsed again.
    Pikul backed away, twisting around to find Allegra. As he did, he tripped again, and this time sprawled across Dichter’s body. Full of horror he levered himself up, pressing down on something hard and springy beneath his hand.
    When he finally regained his feet, he discovered he was holding Dichter’s cadaver-gun.
    Levi’s assistants were approaching him, both carrying weapons at the ready. Without thinking twice, Pikul shoved the cadaver-gun deep into his trouser pocket, forcing it in, feeling it bend and yield. Like supple muscle tissue.
    There was no sign of Allegra.
    Standing there, still foolishly clutching his electronic wand, Pikul looked around desperately for her.
    He saw the prosthetic junction pod where all the UmbyCords had met to join Allegra’s master pod. It was lying on the floor with an UmbyCord stretching out and over the edge of the stage. When he looked, Allegra was down there, twisted painfully in the angle between the main hall floor and the raised section of the platform.
    He leaped down to her.
    He established two things with great speed: that she was still alive, and that she was suffering considerable pain.
    Where the tautly stretched UmbyCord was connected to her, it was wrenching on the bioport on the lower part of her back. With great presence of mind, Pikul slipped his hand underneath the tight fabric of her T-shirt and managed to release the