Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Two days later (though it could easily have been more — after that night they abandoned their routine, and their exhausting nights turned the days inside-out; Hooper had stopped watching Bligh on the monitor, stopped recording her, and they went back and forth freely between her suite and his apartment, and bathed together, and shared one bed, and praised themselves — it could have been a week later) there was a message from Moura. She had arranged for it to appear as a priority printout, because he had gone off the air, he had closed his phone.

I must speak to you, the message said.

Hooper did not want her to visit him here. He took a different view of his apartment now that he shared it with Bligh, and he wanted to keep this second life, this real life, secret. He phoned her, and as soon as she identified herself he said, "I'll be right over."

On the way it struck him that she might have bad news of Fizzy. We've just found his body. Why hadn't he thought of that before? Willis Murdick found teethmarks on the corpse. No, not that. We want you to be completely truthful and tell us everything you know about those aliens. How could he begin to tell the strange story? He vowed to be cold and to let her do the talking. He was glad that the quarrel with Hardy was a thing of the past: it all seemed pointless nagging now. He wanted to see Hardy again and say, No hard feelings!

"Where's Hardy?" he said, stepping into the empty apartment.

"On a mission," Moura said very quickly, dismissing his question. "Will you help me?"

He was happy. He promised to do what she wanted — he felt he could do anything now — though what he longed for was very simple, to return to Bligh and take her downtown and urge her to choose something for him to buy.

"Let me talk," Moura said. She was edgy and trembling and her breathing was shallow. "If you're looking for someone who's lost, is there a central registry where they keep the names of people who pass through checkpoints? I'm not talking specifically about Owners. I mean anyone — can you locate them or pin them down to a particular area?"

"The Federal Census keeps track of everyone who passes through the Federal checkpoints. There's some sort of Health and Safety Department that stores the figures," Hooper said. "Some people slip under the wire, but not many."

"What if the person deregistered?"

"He'd still be in the computer," Hooper said. "Every time he's scanned his file's reactivated. We can't have unidentified people running wild in this country. Remember all those Mexicans during that border war?"

He saw the absurdity of it. Bligh had a false ID! There were probably millions of people like her — aliens living like Owners, and no one noticing.

"Where do I begin looking?" Moura said.

"This is the age of the ID," Hooper said. "In theory we know the identity of every single person in the United States. Everyone's got a number."

"What if he's an alien?"

"In theory, aliens don't exist — except for aliens wanted for crimes. But when they're caught, they stop existing." Hooper was disturbed by a sudden tension in her face. He said, "You don't have to worry. Fizzy's tough — he'll turn up."

"I'm not looking for Fizzy," Moura said.

Hooper laughed, feeling relieved.

"I'm looking for his father."

"I didn't think that was possible with frozen angels."

She made a face at the euphemism.

"Fizzy wasn't a test-tube baby," she said. "I went to a contact clinic. It was a man — a young man. I want to find him."

Hooper felt very close to her then and recognized the desperation in her voice: a panic of love.

"He shouldn't be hard to find. He had to have been an Owner or else fully registered, and even if he's cut himself loose, he can be chased. I'll help you." And then he felt it was safe to ask the question he bad been pondering since he received her message. "What about Fizzy?"

"Hardy heard from him a few days ago."

"From O-Zone?" Hooper could not understand how the boy had managed it.

"No, but it wasn't far from there," Moura said.

"So you must know the coordinates," Hooper said.

Moura made a face and then said, "Hardy's gone looking for him."

"Alone?"

"With Murdick."

"In the Godseye gunship," Hooper said, seeing the big dark thing with the death's-head on its nose and its Snake-Eaters insignia, streaking across the treetops, with its searchlights bleaching everything under it; and its urgent murmuring crew.

"I suppose so," she said. "What's wrong?"

Hooper saw the deadly thing against a clear sky at sundown, and the aliens below, with Fizzy.

"Give me the coordinates," Hooper said. "What did Fizzy's message say?"

"Hardy said he doesn't want you to interfere," Moura said. "He doesn't need your help — I do!"

Hooper said, "If you want me to help you find that donor, give me all the information you have on Fizzy. That's how we begin — we find him first. Then we find his father."

Moura began to cry, and it seemed odd to him that she knew so little about how terrible the situation had become and yet could still shed tears. She knew nothing of the aliens in O-Zone, nothing about Bligh, nothing much about the two abductions, and very little of the terror of Godseye. And she was not crying because her son was gone — she was crying for her lost love.

He saw the gunship again and the troopers peering out. It was a big wobbling wasp-shaped rotor, looking for someone to sting.

From where he stood, Hardy could see thin high veils of cloud ghosting in the blue sky of southern Indiana, and all around him the watery mirages and double images of the flat green fields — another hot day, another fuel depot. He had never known a rotor to use so much fuel. Even the depot engineer had remarked on it.

"Your ship's armor-plated!"

"We're security."

"What's it got — titanium shields? You carrying bulk weight? I guess it guzzles fuel!"

"That's all classified," Sluter said. Although he was outside the rotor, and just a cornfield nearby, he was wearing his mask.

"We don't have any trouble here," the engineer said. "Half the time the roadblocks are wide open — no guards or nothing."

The fuel was humming in the hose-pipe as they spoke.

"No roadblocks is just plain stupid," Meesle said through his propped-up faceplate. He had the thick upholstered look of an Astronaut. "You're going to pay the price for that. The price is aliens, robbery, rape, drugs, bad money, and disease."

"This ain't Florida or Texas," the engineer said. "This ain't Landslip."

He was smiling. He seemed friendly and unsuspicious in an old-fashioned way. And although this fuel depot was fortified, and most of it buried in the hillside, it seemed very peaceful: it was like the past. The engineer had planted geraniums in the dry soil, in flowerbeds around the rotor pad, and morning glories had leapt up the spiked fence.

Hardy had come to like these refueling stops and was glad the gunship was such a guzzler. He looked forward to seeing the star shape of the depot from the air, the glint of sun on the rotating radar dish, and then being on the ground — the easy conversation with the engineer, and a chance to hoist his helmet for ten minutes or to use a proper toilet — the Godseye troopers insisted that on-ground toilets were security risks; they used the inflatable shit-eater on the gunship.

The very desolation of these midwest depots was a relief after the confinement of the gunship. The big bug had seemed roomy and luxurious a week ago, but now Hardy regarded it as poky and rather noisy. He had been airsick on three occasions — clear-air turbulence. He found Sluter bossy and Murdick stupid and he had taken a particular dislike to Meesle, who had insisted on showing him videos.