Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"Baby food," Hardy said. "I'd rather be fed intravenously than eat this goop."

"Fizzy hasn't eaten anything," Moura said.

"Fizzy's watching a video in his mask."

"If I can't have a jelly sandwich I'm not eating!" Fisher said — but he had not moved, he was still watching something on his video mask, his voice had come out of his ears.

"Wonder boy needs a swift kick," Barry Eubank said, and looked straight at Moura, as if defying her to respond.

Moura was not ashamed of herself for keeping silent. She felt a certain exhilaration when she heard the boy criticized; it was so much worse when he was praised. Praise angered him, in any case, and criticism merely made him laugh — that terrible braying that upset her more than tears.

"This is a memorable meal," Murdick said. He compressed his lips in gratitude and peered through his faceplate, looking delighted in a pious way. "We've got our vitamins, we've got our bulk, our fiber, and our taste. The product is easy to digest and no problem with contamination. This product is not going to repeat on us. And no impurities."

More out of loyalty than conviction, Holly said, "I agree. We ought to eat like this back in New York — we'd be a whole lot happier and we'd live longer."

"I think I could be happy without forcing this parrot shit down my gullet," Hooper said.

"It's a great product — I know the wholesaler," Murdick was saying. "A friend of mine" — and he brought a tube of crab strings to his mask, screwed the nozzle into his suckhole with a half-turn, then squeezed and swallowed—"good friend of mine, would be mighty pleased to be eating this. That man has been in space for years, rehydrating his food."

Murdick saw that he was being stared at.

"When I heard we were getting permission to come to O-Zone I said, 'We're not having any rehydration! This is going to be deep-space conditions! Forget New Year's — this is a real mission!'"

"Try the meat butter, Barry," Holly said, passing a tube to him.

"'Fortified,'" Hooper said, reading a label, and feeling the words themselves were satire enough. "'Spinach sauce in a matrix of emulsified yeast portions.'" When no one responded, he said softly, "Mother of Christ. This food is a nightmare."

"And it's all got weaving in it," Murdick was saying. "It's great for the guts. Aren't you having a good time?"

They said they were — even Hooper said so, and Moura agreed. It seemed petty to spoil Murdick's surprise treat. This party was very unusual, they knew. They were the first travelers to come here since the sealing and naming of O-Zone — and so they felt like explorers and pretended to be roughing it in the harshly lighted room of this empty building. The food was silly, but it did not alter their mood, which was one of celebration and discovery. They felt brave, being here. It was as if they had come to a distant and inhospitable planet — they would not have felt stranger or more exuberant in space. Talking about it was one thing, and the food. . well, the food was cranky; but the meal was the important thing, all of them seated and eating it together in this place, all the travelers enacting this old ritual.

Moura tried to put this into words. But she could see that it was unnecessary to say it — they shared the feeling, they were moved.

"Say something, Fizzy."

Hooper tried to get the boy's attention.

Fisher did not reply. He had been sitting cross-legged, but he had tipped himself onto his back, and he lay there with his knees up and nodding inside his mask and muttering barely audible sounds — the murmurs that crept out of the ears of his mask.

"He's still watching his loop," Moura said. She tapped on his mask, but he did not respond.

Barry said, "I used to watch porno with those things. I just locked myself in my helmet and drooled. Drove my parents crazy!"

"It's probably theoretical physics," Hardy said. "With Fizzy it usually is."

"Bremstrahlung!" Fisher's sudden quack — that odd word — startled them.

"I think he's telling us something."

"Give him air, brother," Hooper said. "I think your son's fading on us."

The quack came again. "Electromagnetic radiation!" the boy said. "Decelerating subatomic particles in an electrical field of an atomic nucleus. Lining up the equation!" He un-clamped his video mask, but left his faceplate in place.

They stared at his pink puzzled face — he was still damp from concentration.

"Go shit in your suit," he said to no one in particular.

They ignored this. He was freaky. He was only fifteen! Why should they let him worry them? He was so strange he screamed at insects, and he had mistaken a very ordinary skunk for a mutant — so Hooper had wheezily whispered to them.

Fizzy's abuse was no more than a childish nuisance. Murdick told him to grow up, "Wonder boy," Barry said. Hooper smiled and said, "Supermoron." And they went on congratulating themselves at their success in having made camp in this prohibited place. We're actually in O-Zone, they kept saying.

"Who got you here?" Fisher said. "Who's navigator?"

Now they were submerged in darkness — they could see it packed against the windows, like fathoms of dangerous water, a wild ocean in which they lay buried. The night outside was still noisy, and their lights seemed crude to them. But they felt bold — they were pioneers.

"This is paradise," Hooper said.

That was just about right, Moura thought, because paradise was difficult — not a settled area, but something wild and empty. Beautiful, yes, but paradise was also a place where you had to figure things out for yourself, and where you might also fail.

"This friend of yours," Barry said to Willis. "You say he's been in space for years?"

"Right. But I agree with Hooper. I wouldn't trade this for anything."

"There are more risks here," Fisher said. He had not put his video mask back on. He sat holding it and regarding them contemptuously through his faceplate. "Those space stations are controlled environments, and there's no Roaches on the moon. But a place like O-Zone hasn't been properly studied — or if it has, that data's all classified. There's no documentation that I could find — only a few weather reports and some soil samples. I think it's full of freaks and mutations. Listen, we found one! And there's probably seepage. Half of O-Zone is underground anyway — caves and burrows, and those Federal caverns where they stored that nuclear garbage. How do we know there isn't more of that slush leaking into these collapsed roads that look like riverbeds? There's no maps! You'd get nowhere in a ground vehicle! This is more dangerous than space!"

"Tell the Pilgrims that," Barry said.

"If you set one of those amateur astronauts down here, he'd think he'd made it into the program," Fisher said. "He'd think he was on a hot planet."

"I am so sick of those people and their rocket talk," Holly said.

Moura said, "The security guard in our tower is a Pilgrim. Only he calls himself a Starling. Captain Jennix. He's very secretive."

"He's a complete porker," Fisher said. "He reads those stupid science-fiction books that all of them read. He believes them! You can see him throbbing!"

"Have you actually talked to him?" Rinka asked.

"Yes," Moura said. "I think he confided in me because he wanted to get some information from Hardy. I wanted to laugh! How can they actually believe they'll be able to settle on the moon — or is it Mars?"

"It's platforms in geostationary orbit," Fisher said. "The porkers."

"They're welcome to all of them," Hooper said. "And the Roaches can have New York, and the Trolls have my permission to infest California, and the Starkies can squat wherever they want. O-Zone is for me."

Barry said, "I know what you mean. I've felt less secure in New York. That night we had that power failure on the bridges. That was worse than this."