Paul Theroux - O-Zone

But he did not wake them. They knew now how smart he was. And why hurt them when he had gone to so much trouble to save them? The coordinates in his reading shocked him. He was still so far from New York! He put his helmet on to calm himself, and then he made a test transmission. He could not raise anyone at Coldharbor.

Then Hardy's voice, a recorded message: The Allbrights are presently traveling in Africa and are unobtainable. Please store your name and number on the following—

They had gone on vacation. They had known he had been abducted in O-Zone by aliens, and had packed their bags and gone tootling off to Africa, to sun themselves at some crummy garrison resort! The careless, lazy, irresponsible fuck-wits! Not only had they done nothing to help, they were not even in position when he needed them.

He began squawking. "Have completed clandestine ex-filtration O-Zone. The coordinates of my present position are—"

He felt his strength return as he spoke, and he was powerful again, sitting under the trees among the wildly growing plants — the long-necked flowers and the shrubby garden— talking calmly on his satellite link to Coldharbor, using the dish in the yard and the booster in his helmet. He saw himself in the most dramatic way, like a man on a lonely mission to another planet.

When he had finished he stood up and faced Mr. Blue, who had been sneakily waiting for him to finish and perhaps incriminate himself.

"Who were you talking to?"

"Nobody."

That was not odd: he spent most days talking to himself, usually in two voices, young and old, a challenging one and a reasonable one, and when he went to the bathroom — as he put it — he talked the whole time, murmuring and reasoning with himself, though he was only dimly aware of it.

"I heard you, Fish."

"There was no one at the other end."

And why was this so? He had been away, kidnapped in a Prohibited Area for over two months. They knew he had been stolen — Hooper knew, and of course he had told them. They had not found him! They weren't home! The answering machine didn't even say where in Africa they were. They didn't care that he was being held captive by aliens!

Fisher was angry that he could not tell Mr. Blue how he had been abandoned by the Allbrights.

He said, "Why don't you let me go?"

Mr. Blue wore a smile of strain, his lips drawn down and his eyes hollow. His voice was a whisper in a monotone. Fisher knew the man was angry, but he felt stronger now — he had shown them he could work wonders.

"We'll leave you here, if you want," Mr. Blue said.

All at once it seemed a terrible place — dangerous, worse than O-Zone, probably full of crooked police.

Fisher said, "If I hadn't pushed that beam up you'd never have slipped out of O-Zone."

Mr. Blue said, "You'd have starved without us. You'd be dead by now. There's bears and bobcats in the Territory. You didn't even know that."

"Who stole me in the first place!"

But even Fisher saw the absurdity in arguing outdoors— yelling hoarsely under the sun that dazzled the whole sky.

"Your uncle snatched Bligh," Mr. Blue said. "And when we get her back we'll hand you over. Why else do you think we're going to New York?"

"We'll never get there," Fisher said, suddenly despairing and seeing this vast landscape of grass as an inescapable trap.

"Any other way is dangerous for us. We'd be ambushed. If we stay in control we'll make it. But if you contact your people you'll weaken our position, and then we'll all be in danger."

The phrase your people sounded so cold. It reminded him that he was a prisoner.

"You need my brains!" Fisher said.

"You need us, too," Mr. Blue said. In his quiet anger there was a kindliness, something reasonable and gentle. It was why they followed him.

A bird started squawking, and Fisher thought how stupid all animals sounded when they cried out.

"Remember we're in this together," Mr. Blue said, and he glanced back at the aliens slumbering under the trees. "Don't betray those people."

More birds came down like scraps of paper in the field.

"If you weaken us you'll be weak too," Mr. Blue said. "You can still die."

His parting words silenced Fisher. And now he was waking the others. They had planned to stay another day here, but Mr. Blue had probably not believed him when he said he was talking to himself — probably suspected the message, because he changed his plans. At nightfall they set off through the fields under a horn of moon.

Mr. Blue had alarmed him by reminding him how he depended on them. He wondered whether he should risk another message — or should he simply trudge with them until it was over?

He had also come to see this trekking as a pleasure. It had been very hard, but he had survived the hard part, and now his pride helped him on. They were not in O-Zone any longer. This was middle America under a huge sky — balmy late-spring days, thickened with heat. And when he wasn't worried he felt himself part of this band of people — and not an alien but their secret leader. You need my brains. Mr. B had not denied it!

They continued into the night, past the eastern side of Winslow. They heard a chugging, like a motorboat. Fisher said it was probably an old rotor. But the sound merged into a pair of yellow lights coming toward them on the ground, and they saw they were near a road.

Mr. Blue said, "It takes guts to drive out here."

"It looks pretty damn safe to me," Echols said.

"No, no," Mr. Blue said softly. He was smiling in the dark — Fisher could tell. The man knew something. "There's hijackers around."

"Where?" Fisher said.

Mr. Blue showed Fisher his moon-white face.

"Right here, boy."

He told them to pile straw and grass on the road, a bar of it, from one side to the other. He had wanted to use branches, but there were none around — no big trees. Fisher complained that they were so backward out here they cut down trees for fuel. The willies burned trees to keep themselves warm!

"That's the idea," Mr. Blue said.

When the next vehicle approached they lit the straw and fanned it with their shirts.

The truck did not stop, but it slowed down, and Mr. Blue, Rooks, and Echols leapt aboard, catching hold of the ropes on the load — no shouts, no orders, just grunts and the movements of three men who looked magnetized.

They were carried by the roaring truck into the darkness, leaving four people standing by the scattered fire.

"Now we're completely ballistic," Fisher said, and his voice broke. "Those fuck-wits left us! They're gone!"

He felt the night close over him like a rising tide.

Before he gathered his strength to cry out again, the ten-wheeler returned, Mr. Blue in the driver's seat.

"I'm navigator," Fisher said. "I'm riding up front."

"We still get married out here—'course we do — and we take our weddings kind of seriously in Guthrie," the old man said slowly. He paused to let this sink in, so that what he was about to say would sound like an outrage.

But he was too slow, and while he fuddled with his pipe a red-faced woman behind him said, "They were animals. The one wearing the helmet was the worst."

"He told us to call him Batfish," someone else said.

The old man resumed. "We had a preacher and a church full of people. The whole entire town was there. And there was food in the Grange Hall, three tables of it — a real spread."

They were in the Guthrie courthouse: Hardy often heard of such buildings, and had seen some, but he had never been inside one. It was wood-paneled and smelled of dented varnish and leather cushions. It had an American flag, the state flag, and three paintings in gold frames. The big lollipop-shaped fan was dead. Hardy wondered whether they held trials here, but he feared that if he asked they might take it as a rude question — a suggestion that they were ridiculously old-fashioned. But they probably did have trials here, and church services down the street, and Future Farmers meetings in the Grange Hall. They had weddings!