Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"Look," Fisher said, "he's flobbing on his faceplate."

"I don't have to kill," Murdick said in a choked voice. "I can blind, I can deafen, I can sicken, I can burn — I can make you stupid!"

But Fisher had turned away from him, and facing the others, he cried, "Why isn't anyone sticking up for me!"

They were silenced by the tape. It began behindthem, with Hardy pointing the control pistol at the screen. The light isolated and seemed to quieten Willis Murdick — he appeared ashamed of what he had said: he looked limp and regretful in his expensive suit and mask. And Fisher seemed a little solitary and pathetic; after his squawk, no one had said a word. Then everyone was watching the screen, and video reflections streaked their faceplates and throatpieces. "There's Coldharbor," Holly said. "There's our block." New York — its deep walls, its battlements and shining towers — filled the screen and rolled past, like a cluster of castles; and the island's edge followed, the silver shimmer of the river full of daylight, and then New Jersey, and the sweep of empty streets — a Black town, a Troll town, a lightless city of aliens of some kind sinking into its own stain. Occasionally there was a flash — a dull orange smudged by smoky air. So many fires, of all kinds — random fires in the open, burning buildings, black ruins sending up trails of soot, cooking fires in settlements. For those poor people, someone said, fire was their only flamboyance.

The video was shown at a speed slower than their rapid trip, so they saw now what they had missed on their rotor's ground-screens. They saw simple features — the accumulation of snow and the icy lakes in the north; the pretty configuration of hills; the high fences and sentry posts around most farmers' fields. The pleasure of watching this videotape lay in their ability to slow it, or — using the faint grid on the screen — enlarge any part of it, any square, and bring it sharply into focus.

They asked Hardy to crank it up so they could examine the houses, and crank it again to see the people inside the windows, and their faces, their eyes, whatever they were holding in their hands. There were more plated or armored vehicles out here — and more jalopies, too. Hardy cranked them forward, and enlarged the pedestrians and the little dramas being played out beneath them as the trip progressed. They saw a human corpse on a roadside, and many dead dogs, and a house that had just caught fire, and wrecked vehicles.

They saw several mobs rippling down side streets, looking like marbles in a chute. The faces were expanded so that their expressions were readable, and their clothes, and their weapons.

"They're enjoying themselves," Hooper said.

Most of the people below were unfamiliar to them — they never saw them in New York: workers and low-grade Federals, and all the other tribal types who were known collectively as aliens. It was doubtful whether anyone down there had a valid ID, and there were certainly no Owners on the ground.

"There's a mob — that shadow in the corner."

"A Swarm—"

Murdick said that Swarm-crime was common out here: the mob surrounding and surging into a store or a house, or overwhelming a person, and then hurrying on, quarreling over its loot.

"Zoom them, Hardy. Look, they're Roaches."

"What's that in their—"

"Guns, bones — they're looters," Barry said.

"It's firewood," Hardy said, and moved even closer.

Moura said, "They're just poor people. Leave them alone, Hardy."

But he paused and gave them all a glimpse of the gaunt dusty faces and the torn clothes.

Fisher watched with his fingers on his faceplate and in his eyes a clear black light of pure horror.

There were few patches of dense population after that. Mottled woods crowded below, and then there was no one and nothing except hiding trees.

"I've hunted here," Murdick said. "It's good country."

"Good roads?" Hooper asked.

"Never went on the ground. We hunted from rotors."

In some towns there was no smoke, no lights. Perhaps they had been shut down? Or were they pretending, as some towns did, that there was no life in them, no valuables, no property at all — playing possum because of all the roaming thieves. But plowed fields showed farther on, private gardens, and towns with perimeter fences and fortress walls, and towns with main streets and white churches and ice rinks that looked as though they had never changed.

"That must be Pittsburgh," Hooper said. "See the rivers? See the walls?"

Murdick asked for the tape to be slowed in order for the others to see how there were no trees around the city. It was stark on its cliffs, as smooth and simple as a blister, with a margin of grassland around it.

"No hiding places," Murdick said. "They've got a terrific safety record here."

The tape quickened and the view tipped, the horizon rolling down below speeding clouds. They were like laundry that has twitched and blown in the sky since the beginning of time; the clouds were enormous — stretched thin and threadbare with all the beating, and now no more than gauze turning into vapor. Then it was all blue and the ground no longer visible.

"Turning south," Hardy said. "So we avoided all that traffic in the northeast corridor."

"I think it was smart going this roundabout way."

Fisher said, "It completely bent my calculations."

Holly was saying, "I know people who won't fly to Washington anymore, there's so much traffic."

They were quieted by the sight of grassland and fields and smudges of woods, and for the next fifteen minutes they watched the land pass by in an unbroken ribbon. Few vehicles were visible on the roads, and the tape was rolling too fast for them easily to identify the people. When a surface vehicle was spotted, someone shouted "Zoom!" and Hardy aimed his pistol and fired at that part of the grid; and then the vehicle rushed hugely into focus.

"There he goes, old Willy Shucker, in his four-wheel-drive toilet," Hooper said as the elderly driver of the plated car swelled on the screen. "Oh, he's been living out here for years — just him and his carcinoma."

Hearing the rotors droning, the old man looked back, in the wrong direction, not realizing they were overhead,

"No — over here!" Rinka said. "Look!"

The old man struggled with his steering wheel and his vehicle slewed left and then right.

"He's a Rocketman — a real Pilgrim. Look at those wild eyes. His ass is on the ground but his mind's in Mars. He's got his money in space vehicles, paying dues at the local space-cadet clubhouse. He definitely has room on some future launch — look at him, he's dying to leave. He's practically in orbit already. No low-level stuff, but the real whatsit—"

"Geosynchronous," Fisher said.

"You heard the boy."

"Leave him alone," Murdick said, and when Fisher looked up rattling his mask at him Murdick added, "Not you — that old guy, that Astronaut. Lay off him. Those people aren't hurting anybody. I think they're good for the program. It's the other bums I can't stand."

"What bums?"

"Aliens, blacks, prostitutes, polygamists, professional beggars, stowaways, lepers, and psychopaths." Murdick had not taken a breath. He gasped through his suckhole, then said, "Burn them down."

Moura said, "It all looks pretty normal to me," and everyone turned back to the screen.

"Foodplots," Fisher said.

Was that what they were, all these patchy right angles? Moura thought: Then I'm right. And the ground vehicles— the little beads and blobs — seemed to slip along the roadways unimpeded. A portion of the town was clearly shriveled or cut off, but other districts had a look of health — roofs and movement and the occasional flash of glass or metal. Heavy smoke was always a bad sign from below, but there was not much smoke here. Moura asked for a few close-ups and was rewarded by the sight of a dusty convoy trucking vegetables. But when she asked what could be more reassuring than a great hopper of cabbages — or were they beets? — Murdick stood up and began gabbling.