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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 voice. “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