Paul Theroux: O-Zone

"Where's your program?" He was fussing, he was afraid— fear made him bossy. "Don't tell me you're flying without one."

"It's VFR again today," Moura said. She had hoped to avoid another argument by not telling him that she was flying manually, but he knew and he hated knowing.

She had to wait for permission to take off — La Plata was a busy rotorport, probably because the roads here were so dangerous. Then she continued on her way southeast, using the coordinates Pratchett had given her.

He's living rough near a place called Ida, Pratchett had said, and didn't ask her to explain what she wanted; though she realized that out of gratitude she might have told him anything. She had needed help. It had never been a matter of following clues, but only of persisting and being lucky. There were no clues. There were only facts you had to be told. If you didn't know the facts you were lost. She resented her life spent having to be shown the way. He hasn't been there all that long.

Did that matter?

The longer they stay, the worse they get.

Down below she saw brown bumpy hills and swatches of weed. There were town-stains and there were smears where smaller settlements had been. There were blobs where cars had sunk into the sand and showed their rusty roofs. She saw no people. Whoever lived here, lived hidden. It was another hot day. The stark sun had burned all the colors away. The rocks were split and white like broken skulls, and where it was thickest the weed was black. The old high-banked road into La Plata, the favorite of the weekend travelers before the quake, she mistook for an empty riverbed. It was strewn with stones.

Hardy would have laughed if he had known how much trouble she had taken to get here. But that was another reason she was here.

Gusts and downdrafts shouldered the rotor: it was the high temperatures in these valleys and the canyons farther on with their sheer walls. The rotor was punching along and she had begun to enjoy working it by hand. She was now used to the occasional hesitation in the wind, the tiltings and leaps.

She wondered: Was this lonely journey strengthening her, so that at the end of it she would not need the man she had searched for?

Her wondering stopped when, a moment later, switching fuel tanks, she saw the fuel indicator stutter back to zero and sensed the rotor losing power. It was first a rapping that was immeasurable, and then a stall for seconds that unconsciously she counted — two, three, four — and then a discharge and a hollering in the pipes as she restarted: cones of black exhaust fumes seemed to prop the rotor up. This happened three times. The bursts of energy seemed to weaken the engine, and she lost altitude each time the engine cut out. The fuel line was blocked or air-locked: the panel light flashed.

Then she was swaying like a basket on a line; and restarting aligned the rotor but did not keep it from dropping to the ground. The undercarriage tilted — probably broke — and a side piece shattered. Moura climbed out quickly, congratulating herself that she was alive. But her knees were tremulous and hardly supported her.

She decided not to use her radio, yet despised herself for testing it and for verifying that she had fuel and emergency rations — that ridiculous junk that Murdick had peddled. She turned her back on the leaning rotor.

This is where I wanted to be. I'll track him on foot — and laughed at the brave, wilderness word, because what did she know about tracking?

There was not much water, and she was wearing soft-soled flying boots.

I don't belong here. And then: Does anyone?

They attack you, they rape you, they take your machines, they kidnap your children, they steal your food, they rob you, they strip you, they bite you, they piss and shit on you, and at last when you're dead they insult your corpse by using your bones — that was what everyone said.

Besides the radio, Moura had a bleeper. If she called security they would come thundering down, the Black Cars streaking out of La Plata and plucking her back to Los Angeles, where she could sit by a swimming pool and drink mango juice, trying to forget the number of aliens they would shoot as a lesson. And if they didn't reprimand her, Pratchett would. They'd say: You knew it was forbidden and What sort of a woman wants anything to do with people like that?

She sat down to demonstrate to herself that she was going to wait calmly. She had not crashed, she hadn't even ditched, she hadn't been off course. She had stalled and somehow come to rest on her claws. There had been no explosion, no one had seen her. It was as good as a landing.

This could be a picnic! She had a radio, she had water and food — too bulky to carry but enough to last her for ten days.

She methodically made herself a picnic meal and ate it in the shade of the rotor; and afterward, drugged by the heat, she slept, perspiring, her hands clasped at her throat.

The shade slipped from her like a black sheet tugged away, and the sun blazed against her eyelids and gave her a painfully lighted dream. In this dream she met him in a pink room that had walls like flesh. She walked up to him. He smiled— that smile might mean anything, she thought: a smile could be so sinister and so hard to put into words. But he took her hand — his touch said something that reassured her. He was gentler, he took her deeper into this pink room, where she wanted to go, and thought: Imagination is clairvoyance. It was not a room; they were enclosed by the pink flesh of a mouth. He had Fizzy's face, and even in this dream she was conscious of the question, Am I looking for Fizzy?

"Who's there?"

She had woken knowing that someone was watching her. She stood up and listened. Excited by the early-afternoon heat, the insects made a ringing din like continuous sleighbells.

She saw just beyond the rotor a neat bundle of sticks tied with two fiber ropes — a small but obvious symmetry in all this natural disorder. She went over to the bundle and lifted it. It was hardwood — heavier than it looked.

"Please, officer," a small voice said.

A child — a boy of about ten — emerged from behind the rotor. He came out of the shade and she almost lost him, so well did he match the sun-bleached soil and burned rock. His hair was whitish and streaked with pale yellow, his skin tanned cinnamon, and his nose peeling pink and freckled. He wore faded denim shorts and rough sandals that were made of rope and rubber. What was it that Pratchett had said about these people being prehistoric? This boy had an overwashed look, as if he had been soaked and dried too many times— rained on and worn, like a small tired flag. But it was probably the sun.

Moura was cautious. These kids could be like little animals, some were dangerous: they were biters, and their instinct was to attack and run. They had weapons, they hunted in packs. There might be ten others hiding on their stomachs nearby waiting to leap up and jump her.

She had no choice but to stare him down and swallow her fear.

"Is this your wood?"

He nodded and she saw that he might be afraid.

She said, "I'm in trouble."

This bewildered him.

She said, "My rotor's broken."

He looked at the rotor: his lashes, his eyebrows, were bleached white and gave him a look of innocence she found alarming. But now she was sure he was alone.

"Who's going to fix it?"

The boy didn't hesitate.

"The biker," he said.

Moura said, "Where's the biker?"

The boy protected himself with his skinny hands, and she realized that she had come too close.

"If you find him I'll give you something to eat."

Keeping his hands up, the boy moved slightly, his body becoming tense. She wondered if in panic he might spring on her.

"Nice food — and a drink."