Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"I'll buy the Feds," Hooper said.

Was he laughing? He was certainly happier and more animated than Hardy had seen him for a long time. He had been whistling ever since they had landed here.

"I already own some Feds!" Hooper said. "Threw some money at them."

While they had been talking the guests had arrived and taken seats with their backs to the glaring lights. The travelers were used to brighter, safer-seeming rooms — this was a temporary shelter, a camping trip! — and so they glanced sharply whenever a shadow jumped on the wall.

This play of broken silhouettes and crow patterns distracted them and made them nervous and talkative. It reminded the Eubanks of a landing they had once made in Africa, when the lights had failed in the Earthworks colony on the coast. And the Murdicks said they had passed a night like this in a town in California, years ago — they'd never forget it. "I thought we were goners."

"It reminds me of being small," Moura said. "This is how I felt when I was about five. I was always looking at the walls of my room and thinking: What's going to happen next?"

"I wish you hadn't said that," Rinka said.

"It doesn't remind me of anything," Hooper said. "That's what I like about it."

Holly said the lights were awful but at least the sputter of the quartz core drowned some of the nighttime cackle—"All them birds," she said, meaning the insects.

Each person had brought a cushion, and most of them had changed into a different suit — they were one-piece flight suits, which were so closely fitted the air-conditioning tubes stuck out like veins along the legs and arms. No part of the body was exposed: they wore gloves and soft boots and masks — each mask had been adapted for eating with one of Murdick's suckholes.

"I'm running the whole commissary," he had explained. The Murdicks had matching helmet-masks, and Holly's large faceplate showed that she was wearing makeup — stripes on her cheeks and around her eyes and the fashionable stripes that continued over her ears and hair. Moura wore a custom-made mask that had been modeled on her pretty face — she thought the suckhole (why had Murdick been so insistent on them?) rather spoiled the effect. Hardy's mask had been issued to him by Asfalt; it had a company bleeper and was equipped with signaling and dust-sensitive devices. Fisher wore a video mask, and he was engaged in watching some-

thing on it, which was why he had not said a word. Most of the radio apparatus was in the dome of Hooper's helmet; but all the masks had radios — the party guests communicated by radio on an open circuit that allowed them to hear what everyone was saying, much as if they were sitting in a room and not wearing masks.

They kept their masks on. It was not because of the radiation level — the counter in this sealed unit was registering less than fifty rems — but rather so that they could see and hear better. Their breathing was improved, their Assisted Air was better than whatever stuff was trapped in this room; and if the roof fell in — Murdick said that it had happened before in places like this — they stood a good chance of surviving it.

"I'd love to get these clothes off," Holly said. She squirmed in her suit and wagged her helmet. "Next time let's choose somewhere safe. Then we could walk around naked."

"Barry saw a naked woman shopping in New York the other day," Rinka said. "It's supposed to be very fashionable."

"She was obviously an Owner," Barry said.

"Sure," Hooper said. "You could tell by her tail."

"By her mask," Barry said. "And she wasn't really naked. She was sort of painted. Body makeup, that kind of thing. The idea is to look like a Starkie."

"That could be dangerous — that's what I tell Holly," Willis Murdick said. "Someone might take her for a Starkie. She could get burned."

Holly was insulted, but kept her temper and said sourly, "As if anyone would take me for a Starkie."

"Some of them are pretty nice-looking," Hooper said.

"I know Willis hunts them," Holly said. "And I can understand why people burn them. But if you find them 'pretty nice-looking' I think you're sick and perverted."

Hooper's big mocking face came up against his faceplate— his white stumpy teeth with the wide space between the two front ones, and the bat ears trembling on his helmet.

"Sex with a different person is different sex," he said. "It stimulates a different part of your brain and gives you slightly different desires. You make discoveries. When I say 'you' I mean me."

"But an alien?" Willis Murdick said. "You're risking diseases!"

"Don't believe that propaganda. They blame everything on aliens. Hey, some of them are pretty nice-looking! Better than flesh-pups. I've had flesh-pups!"

Holly had started to smile. "What do you do with a flesh-pup?"

"You butter her and fuck her. Or him. With a flesh-pup you can hardly tell the difference." He turned from Holly and looked around the room. "You're all shocked, because I just reminded you that you're like me. It's like the song — I'm saying what you're thinking! You women are thinking: Let's get disgusting. . let's have a splash party. And—"

Barry Eubank and Willis were whinnying inside their masks, as Hooper caught them with the flash of his faceplate.

"— and you men are thinking: I like the way your tits jiggle — let me stuff them into my mouth. If only I could tip you onto your back and receive the gift of your young body!"

"When the conversation takes this sort of turn," Moura said, "I always figure it must be time to eat."

The travelers had arranged their cushions in a circle; in the center was a low wooden table that the Eubanks had found in their unit. Murdick said that a table — especially this one— was not required for the dinner; but it was a solid old-fashioned oak table, and everyone else said that it added to the old-time atmosphere of the New Year's party. They were alone, in a place that was prohibited and remote, and the thick lovely tabletop with its dents and dark scratches seemed somehow appropriate.

Willis Murdick had broken the seal on a crate stenciled "Provisions," and unzipped the inner bag, where there were tubes lying in small bundles. The tubes were narrow, the size of soft air bottles. He had passed them around and urged the others to eat.

"Your wife doesn't like my food," he was saying now to Hardy.

Before Hardy could reply, Moura said, "I like it. I just wish I didn't have to squirt it into my mask in order to eat it."

"You don't squirt it, you squeeze it — pressure means everything with space food. And use your suckhole — didn't I give you one?"

"This food was designed for the space program," Hooper said. "Years of research went into this meal. That tube of protein cream you're holding probably cost a million bucks to develop — and you just strangle it and sneer at it."

Moura could not tell whether Hooper was joking — often, at his most obsessed, when he harangued them, the effect was comic. But she said nothing. He was dangerous when he was angry — not physically dangerous, but abusive and growly. Just a moment ago Holly, who had obviously been thrilled by his talk of sex, whispered, "Hooper, sometimes I like your insane notions," and his face had darkened and he had made a dog noise at her.

And he could sound self-mocking when he was being serious.

"I'd like to take something of this away with me," he had said.

"This toothpasty food?"

"No," he roared. "O-Zone!"

Murdick was sorting out more tubes — of pulverized fruit, of nonalcoholic wine, of noodle gluten. "This one's called 'Celebration Seafood,'" and he read the contents on the label and showed how to fit the nozzle over the suckhole.

"Hollandaise whitefish! Shrimp paste! Crab strings!" Hooper said, passing the tubes around. "Here's some oyster pellets and textured lobster — just squeeze this little bottle and pretend you've got your face in a lobster claw. Here's some rice fiber, here's some meat fabric."