Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"This one's kind of cute," Meesle always said of the cruelest ones, and of the most violent he said, "This one has an important message but it's in an easy-to-digest form."

Then Meesle usually smiled.

"It's full of geechees getting burned down."

He screened Intruder, Alienation, Time Travel, Godseye-Worldwide, and Reclaiming the States. Hardy watched them. How else to pass the time? But he hated them, and he hated Meesle for always sitting directly behind him, with his face against his neck.

Asians, Africans, Hispanics: they were shown committing dreadful crimes, and their faces were intercut with images of rats and roaches. Then they were chased and rounded up and killed in peculiarly horrible ways, often very slowly, in close-up.

"Omnifelons," Meesle said. "Lepers. Skells. Coke-whores."

Hardy sat stony-faced, with his helmet on and his faceplate locked into position, and his collar up, and even his gloves on. He went on watching because he wanted to go on hating these so-called troopers.

"You're as bad as your brother," they said.

At night, after scanning an area, they put the gunship down in darkness and kept a beam on for protection. They slept on board. Hardy was the first to begin wearing his mask every day and night, and he stopped taking his boots off. He used a breathing apparatus and assisted air.

"Worried about omnifelons?" Sluter said. "Meesle telling you about violent predators? That why you've got your armor on?"

"No, it's your feet," Hardy said. "And all the garbage we're carrying. This bug stinks."

Within a few days they were all wearing masks and air cylinders. But the Godseye troopers denied that they were doing it because of the smell in the gunship. It was preparation against aliens, they said. How did they know this kid Fizzy was alone? He might have fifty aliens guarding him. Some of them had technology! They might have rockets or land mines! They were desperate little geechees!

"This kid we're looking for," Murdick said one night. "He won't thank us. He won't like us. And we'll hate him,"

The others looked to Hardy to refute this. But Hardy did not reply. He was ashamed of himself for having lived in New York his whole life and not known how vicious these people were. He had always assumed that Godseye was just another of the many security strike forces. But no—

"He's going to say, 'Make me captain or else I won't fly," Murdick had tried to imitate Fizzy's quacking voice, but he had overdone the wah-wah. It was a mistake. Now no one believed him.

"I don't understand how he got out of O-Zone," Sluter said. His incomprehension had made him grumpy. "You can't do that!"

"Not to mention the Red Zone Perimeter," Meesle said. "You can't get through the beam."

"He got through the beam," Hardy said. "He got out of O-Zone."

"You can't," Sluter said,

"He can," Hardy said. "Fizzy's area is particle physics."

The three men turned their masks on him. He could not see their faces, but he knew they were frowning at him.

"And fiber optics,"

He felt pompous just saying the words — even the simplest. description of Fizzy's research sounded boastful, and Hardy sensed the hostility coming at him through the painted faceplates. He had some sympathy for Fizzy then: the poor kid had to put up with this crap from everyone.

Sluter said, "Lots of people in this country know about particle physics and fiber optics. But there's no record of them having busted through a Red Zone. And no one has ever entered or left O-Zone without written permission."

That objection made Hardy proud of Fizzy: it was like a testimony to the boy's uniqueness.

"He's a smart boy," Hardy said. His assertive tone said Smarter than you.

"Years of research went into securing those zones," Sluter said, and pushed past Hardy on the way to the cockpit.

"He's barking mad," Murdick said. "Hates the idea of someone breaking through a zone."

"So do I," Hardy said. "Except this is my own kid."

"We always considered those places safe," Meesle said.

"No one ever considered them safe!" Hardy said.

"By safe I mean dangerous," Meesle said. He had unlocked his faceplate so that Sluter wouldn't hear him arguing on the phones. He was whispering under his uplifted mask. "Dangerous for aliens. When we had to dispose of them."

Hardy said, "So you're the ones who populated O-Zone with all those stinking aliens."

"It was before we switched to ocean drops. We booted them out of cargo planes. But we didn't always give them parachutes. Anyway, even if they survived the fall and managed to live with the radioactivity, they couldn't get out of the zone. If they didn't get cancer, they'd get nosebleeds. They'd start staggering. And they'd never get out of the zone. That's what I mean by safe — I mean very dangerous."

"Fizzy got out," Hardy said.

"Maybe."

"He was on the outside when he sent the message!"

"Then why wasn't he in Winslow like he said?"

The message was: Have completed clandestine exfiltration O-Zone. The coordinates of my present position are 89°.58.027 and 37°.91.284, an unfortified farm near Winslow. Health okay except for feet. Very high exposure risk. Assistance required immediately, but do not alert Red Zone Rescue. Await instructions.

It was unsigned but unmistakably Fizzy. A number of details interested Hardy. There was the astonishing news that the boy had escaped from O-Zone and broken through the Red Zone Perimeter — no one had ever managed that on the ground. There was except for feet, a very Fizzy touch. And there was the baffling Await instructions: this statement seemed more ambiguous as Hardy repeated it. Did it mean that Fizzy awaited instructions, or was it an order for Hardy to await instructions?

But unambiguous was Fizzy's order not to alert Red Zone Rescue, which would have been the normal procedure. It was the reason for their existing, to patrol the perimeter, and if Hardy had reported Fizzy's present position the boy would have been picked up within hours and spirited back to New York. But Hardy had a better reason than Fizzy's forbidding it. Alerting Red Zone Rescue to Fizzy's so-called clandestine exfiltration (no one was better at playing the trooper-hero than an irritating brat with no experience!) might also make the O-Zone project impossible. It would certainly endanger its secrecy.

So Hardy had accepted Murdick's offer of the Godseye gunship and crew, and now he was stuck with them. They had agreed to the mission in the hope of catching a band of aliens.

"We'll burn some cars. Shoot some dogs."

Hardy had expected that.

"Nuke some aliens," Meesle said.

"Wait a minute," Hardy said.

"Neutralize them," Murdick said. "Snatch the kid back."

But now, over a week later, they had found nothing — no one. It had made them bad-tempered and uneasy, and they were often frightened by the open spaces and the stands of trees. They imagined Diggers tunneling underground — thousands of them underneath the gunship as they flew low over southern Illinois. They saw what looked like bulges and breathing holes on the surface. They hovered and pumped gas inside and plugged the holes. They did not see Diggers. That scared them. It meant that the Diggers had outsmarted them: the beasts were clever.

They had flown toward Winslow on that first day worrying out loud. Hardy had imagined that they would be volatile and aggressive — their huge clacking gunship, with armor plate and mocking insignia; their arsenal of weapons; their helmets and wild-looking masks. Well, that was how they looked— like those space warriors that Pilgrims and Rocketmen fantasized about — but underneath it all they were worrying. Was the boy alone? Was he armed? Was he sane? Was he alive — or had he been killed and was the whole mission about to be lured into a trap? Was anything known about these aliens? Did they have technology — any irons, any firepower?