Paul Theroux - O-Zone

It was a feeling of quiet power — something he had seen in Mr. Blue. It was not a show of strength: it was confidence. He had been tested. The test might have broken him — yet it had strengthened him. We are what we are because of our difficulties, he thought.

He needed a new flying suit and boots, but he decided not to buy them. He had begun to take pride in his ragged taped-up outfit. He liked the look. It showed what he had endured, and it was a kind of armor. He enjoyed being an Owner disguised as a trooper: a combination of cunning and technology, like an animal with indestructible circuits, an electronic wolf.

And of course people would know and be afraid. They would stare at him and say: He's been on a mission. Must have been some mission!

He frightened them, he knew, with his piercing look of having done something very dangerous. The man in Ray-Tech who sold him the accumulator seemed as fascinated by the scars on his helmet as by its many functions.

"A piece of equipment like this can be very important when you're in a Prohibited Area and you have to locate your ship," Fisher said. "And the place is crawling with aliens."

The salesman just stared, taking very small breaths, his tongue quivering behind his teeth.

"It can be the difference between life and death," the boy said. "Suppose you've been kidnapped, and there's contamination, and you have to locate the rest of your team?"

"You in the Pilgrims?" the man finally said.

"Shit-wit!" Fisher honked at him, suddenly angry. "Space is nothing — the moon and these orbital stations are for tourists and fanatics. Any dimbo can go up in a space vehicle. Just remember not to puke. They're not heroes, they're not explorers! Fucking Christopher Columbus had a much harder time than any Astronaut — the dimbo didn't even know this continent existed, and you can see these space stations on a clear night. What's so hard about walking on the moon? Hey, I'm talking about the earth. Nothing is stranger than being on the ground!"

He loved saying that. He believed it, too. And he could tell the salesman was impressed.

But he was maddened again trying to buy the antitetanus serum — three drugstores said no. And, angered, he remembered his other grievances, the stupidity of Moura and Hooper, the incompetent secrecy of Hardy. And he felt more kindly toward the aliens, because they had helped make him tough; but he still had not decided whether to go back to them. For the moment, he was satisfied being alone.

The drugstores were so foolishly stocked! He wondered whether they were like this in New York. Toilet paper, pens, candy, radios, hair spray, tobacco, rubber hoses, electric fans, approved explosives, magazines and books, gardening equipment, potted plants, bicycles, wristwatches, children's toys.

"We've been carrying these items for years," the pharmacist said. "Where have you been?"

And he refused to sell Fisher the serum.

"I'm on a mission," the boy said. He was wearing his helmet, his faceplate was up. "It's classified. I need this serum for one of my people."

In his white smock, the pharmacist looked less like a medical man than a mental patient, and when he apologized it seemed like a crude form of gloating.

"I'm afraid I'll have to report you," Fisher said, and tugged at the cuffs of his greasy gloves. "You're highly unprofessional, and you're a complete and utter tool."

Was that man smiling into his hand?

Because he had been turned down, he was determined to procure the serum. It did not matter whether he needed it for Valda. He simply wanted it. All this time he was tramping. He followed a sign saying "University" to another rising road. He saw some boys, students probably, loitering near a building, and he butted his helmet at them.

"Where's the hospital?"

What were these dimbos looking at?

"Over there," one boy said, making a face at him.

Fisher walked through the entrance, pushed a door — no security — pushed another, found a corridor, and scuffed to the end of it. The legs of his suit still rubbed with a loud scratching sound. He pushed his faceplate up in order to read the small print on a sign, something about visiting hours, but hated the smell of the place. He kept walking — his boots going Goom! Goom! on the tile floor, and his legs going Haust! when they rubbed. Another sign, another door, a new smell: was that food or disease? This corridor was lined with doors.

He stopped, too furious to go farther, and rattled a doorknob. He pushed the stinking thing open. He squawked when he saw the woman in the chair — her white thighs.

She was young and she was just rising from the chair, her skirt rucked up — she hadn't expected anyone. Her face swelled with surprise, and then all the air went out of her cheeks.

"Who are you?"

Fisher was making noises inside his helmet,

"I can't understand a word you're saying," She seemed at once both frightened of him and eager to calm him, and so her voice was false and ineffectual.

"Antitetanus," Fisher was saying. He told the woman it was an emergency. What was wrong with these drugstores? He needed the serum for one of his people. He spoke of his mission, mentioning its secrecy. He spoke in his squeezed squawky voice through the trapdoor of his amplifier.

The woman smiled sternly in fear and urged him to sit down in her chair.

"They sell bicycles and candy bars and sex magazines," he said. "And they won't sell me the serum! But if I wanted a radio or some spermicide, oh sure! Want to see my ID? I'm an Owner."

But the woman had gone to the door.

She was frightened and preachy. She said, "Any injury involving a rusty nail must be taken very seriously, no matter who you are."

"And they said they were going to put cowshit on it!"

Fisher was pleased with himself when the woman left. She understood the urgent nature of the mission. He felt safe in disclosing it to her. He no longer feared the aliens, and since leaving O-Zone he had stopped seeing himself as their prisoner.

He now regretted that panicky message he had sent from the dish near Winslow, particularly Very high exposure risk— send assistance immediately. He was ashamed of the fear he had felt among the aliens, and even more ashamed of the fears he had felt in his room in Coldharbor. He had felt weak and his weakness had shown him demons. It was all a memory of childhood.

"I don't need help from anyone," he said when the woman returned.

She held out a small pouch which contained a hypodermic syringe and a bottle of serum. Fisher snatched it am squeezed it in his dirty glove, and the woman looked frightened again.

"Don't be afraid," she said — her voice had gone hollow, "We get a lot of you people in here."

Fisher was having difficulty turning the doorknob — he couldn't grasp it in his oversize gloves, and the splits in the fingers loosened his grip.

"Wonky door doesn't even work!"

In the voice that seemed to come echoing out of her forehead with fear, the woman said, "Follow the exit signs and go straight out. But please be more careful in the future."

"It wasn't me! This complete tool stepped on the nail. I didn't tell her to! She probably wasn't even wearing any shoes!"

"I mean, telling people you're an Owner and your father's an Owner."

"I don't have a father!"

But the woman was still cautioning him in her fearful way.

"I knew as soon as you stepped in here that something was wrong. See, an Owner wouldn't have barged in like that. I could have set off my alarm — I'm glad I didn't, though. And an Owner would have said please and thank you. An Owner would have been wearing a clean suit — and that helmet is not convincing at all. These are all very simple things. But you should remember them. I'm not asking you who you are, or where you came from, or where you're going. It's none of my business to question anyone's legality—"