Paul Theroux - O-Zone

There might have been another stimulus, every Owner's worry about his alien lover — that the alien was illegal and temporary and would never really belong to him, and it was because Hooper feared losing her that he behaved well toward her even though he monopolized her.

Nonetheless, Hooper was happy, and after this frightful year Moura wanted something for herself.

"I want happiness," she said.

"Why not ecstasy? It's the best drug." That was the new Hooper talking.

Now he was back from California, saying, "I'm a man of my word — I'm keeping my part of the bargain," and Moura had no idea what he meant.

She was smiling because he was — her smile an empty reflection of his huge illuminated grin.

"You've forgotten!" he yelled at her. All this energy in him made her tired. He was so pleased with himself. Did he still say that he had everything that he had ever wanted? That he was the luckiest man in the world?

Just his broad face was a boast, and the set of his teeth in his gaping mouth defeated her and made her feel weak. Hooper did not need to crow. He was somewhere and settled, that was obvious; she was nowhere, and for her it had been a year of losses and disappearances — Fizzy, Hardy, Hooper; and deaths too — stupid Willis Murdick up in smoke — and that had changed Holly.

Moura said, "Is it something about Fizzy?"

"No, the other man in your life."

She was not thinking: Hardy. Her mind was guiltily on Barry Eubank, who had stopped in to see Hardy; and she had detained him, simply asked for it by saying God, I'm horny or something equally awful. An hour of that, and now the word "man" confused her as much as any of the ambiguous code words. It was so easy to sleep with the husbands of her friends: her women friends always seemed to be pimping without being aware of it.

"Why are you blushing?"

She said, "Don't tease me, Hoop."

"That guy you were looking for in the New York area— remember 'Boy'?" Hooper said. "I think we found him."

At once she remembered more than she had ever dared, and he saw the eager questions in her eyes.

"In California, A week ago. Landslip. We had a network of warehouse facilities out there, before it cracked, and I'd been neglecting them—"

Get to the point, she thought. She was impatient now that she knew the subject. He was talking about Allbright's warehouses, his work, his travel, where "we" had gone — he wanted to be given credit for taking trouble. He was making Moura pay for the information by making her listen to the details of how he had discovered it.

"— those warehouses are scattered all over southern California, in the most godawful places. You should see the zone."

He talked about the crack itself, how it opened, how you could see it from the air, the fault that had tipped the cities over and brought ruin and divided the state and given the name to the precarious new zone of Landslip.

She said, "Where is he?"

"I'm coming to that," he said. He looked pleased by her impatience, because it proved that she was really listening,

"I know about the crack," she said. "Everyone does."

"But do you know what it did to communications? They were without power for over a year — some areas still don't have juice. They've got dead lines, no phones except yelling out the window, not that they have windows. The computers went down, just died or strangled, and some dropped completely out of the system. I'm talking about security. Some are still out and are linking up slowly. The crack not only split up houses and roads, but also—"

Lives, relationships, businesses, families — she knew what was coming, but Hooper went on at his own speed, keeping her swinging, making her work for what she wanted to find out.

"And security systems," he finally said. "They lost files! It was like being bombed! No records! No files, no wires, no information — the simplest data, like names and addresses. It's like O-Zone. It's unplugged."

All this while Moura thought how much easier Hooper had been when he was gloomy and womanless; and he had started to worry when he had stopped wanting anything — his imagination collapsed. It had been terrible for him. But he had been so simple then; so quiet. Now with this girl up in his tower he was so manic and spirited, ingenious and boring with his tiresome teasing. What an effort he was when things were going his way — so full of talk!

She could not separate his energetic good humor from his boasting. It seemed like the same thing.

She thought: I have no one.

He was still describing how parts of Landslip were not plugged in! She said, "But you plugged them in."

"Don't hurry me. I used my head, I know they're reconnecting the lines out there, so I kept hunting. I put out a query and let it float. Know what that means?"

"I can guess."

But he insisted on explaining.

She tuned out until he said, "I had this idea that if his name wasn't in any system, and the lines were down in Landslip, that's where he might be. His name just came up."

"He's in California?"

Hooper smiled, but it was not a smile — it was an expression she knew from the faces of all her wealthy friends, who hated to be hurried, or interrupted, or given advice. The rich went at their own speed and held to the view that they were always in charge.

"Landslip?" she said.

He shook his head to imply that she was being too impatient.

"Hooper, this is serious!"

He did not flinch at her cry. He stared at her and sized her up and made her feel weak again, and then he gave in.

"Just outside Landslip, apparently. A place called Forestdale."

"He's definitely there?"

"The fact sheet gave it as his last known address."

"He might have moved!"

"It was recent — he could be there," Hooper said, becoming stern under Moura's questioning. "He's not in regular touch."

"He's an Owner!"

Hooper relaxed, seeing that she was wrong. "That's the funny part," he said. "He's not down as an Owner. He's listed as unclassified."

"He must have lost his classification," Moura said, and remembered the ruined houses and towers around New York where she had searched for him. "I wonder how."

"There's only two ways: tax fraud, nonpayment, or criminality, and the Feds snatch it — or else you hand it over. He didn't have any convictions — a few noncriminal offenses, ID violations. I mean, he doesn't have a card."

"You're saying that he declassified himself! No one's that stupid!"

She knew at once she had said too much.

"It's been known to happen," Hooper said. His eyes were empty.

Like her, he must have been thinking of Fizzy. But she was grateful to him for not mentioning the boy's name. She did not want to be reminded of how completely he had gone. He had been untraceable from the day he had left, and she had thought: What freedom these aliens have! They could move, they could travel, they could adopt any identity they liked. But an Owner was fixed and measured — and an Owner was so easy to find. Yet the Owner was always safe, because he was always monitored. The alien was always in danger, because he had no legal existence. Fizzy had chosen that: he had vanished.

"Moura, I'm sure your man's there."

She remembered which man.

"A smile, at last," Hooper said.

This was the news she needed: that Fizzy's father had been found. It was not merely that he would help her understand Fizzy and give her access to his mind. She needed it more because over this past year she had accepted the passion she had felt when, in their masks, they had made love at the contact clinic. More than accepted it — valued it, counted on it, been vitalized by it, and wanted more. The mention of that name Boy aroused her as it had when Dr. Sanford had said it.