Paul Theroux - O-Zone

He said, "It might be poison."

Sometimes they drop poison and wipe out whole settlements.

"Won't you get the biker for me?"

"If you promise not to hurt me."

She did not hear him until the last moment. She had climbed up the hill to get a better look, but had not reached the top when she heard the clatter of his machine shaking on the stony ground. He was behind her, and when she turned back he was above her, staring down, with the sun crackling next to his head. She crouched below the brow of the hill, unprotected among the dead thorns and dusty cactus.

"That your rotor?"

At once she said to herself that it was not him, and felt fooled, so far away, clinging to this dusty hill in the heat.

He came toward her, kicking stones with his heavy boots, examined her with his face, and kept going past her, down to the rotor. She followed, because there was nothing else she could think of doing.

He was tall and slender, with hard stringy muscles and thinning hair. What distracted her was that so often in the past, and especially lately, she had seen a man and thought It's him. And now she was sure this man was not him— definitely not, and precisely because there was a slight whisper of similarity. She felt she was in danger of being misled by something very small — a hint of Fizzy in his posture, in his physique, in his attitude; but it was too elusive to pin down, and she had been wrong before.

Perhaps that was it, that he looked more like Fizzy than the man she had loved, and she was not looking for Fizzy anymore.

"It's rented," she said. "The rotor."

His eyes were perfect — a person's memory and intelligence and humor always showed in his eyes: all his life was there. His face was not battered but wounded, as if something within him had been hurt. Once he had been harmless and hopeful, and then disappointed or worse; and now he was beyond all that — yet his experience showed faintly on his face. She could see a very young boy in him, but not a young man. He had the sort of sensitive face that registers pain and holds it, so that in a certain light like the glare of this sun, his face was complicated by his history. And it was a memory within it, showing at his eyes; unlike Holly's — Holly was all surfaces.

Moura was disconcerted by this man, who was wrecked and interesting, because she suspected that she might like him more than the man she was looking for. But another of her new superstitions was that a sudden change of mind would be very unlucky for her.

The man said very little, and so she found it hard to study his face. His face took on a meaning only when he was speaking. It seemed to her that he could be wearing a mask — one which distorted his face but in which his face was still familiar. Was it his age — the sun, adversity, lost hope, searching? Anyhow, it was a traveler's face. She thought: Age is a mask.

"I had engine failure.n

He said nothing.

"It's a new Hornet — do you know anything about them?"

It maddened her that he did not reply to her simple question.

"I need it fixed," she said, "so I can get to Ida."

"You don't need it fixed," he said.

He had no smile at all.

"Because this is Ida."

This hill? She did not want to see its rocks, its thorns, its hot sand. She thought: If I don't get help I could die.

"Then I need it fixed so I can get out of here."

"Right," he said, and it sounded like a farewell.

"I think it's the fuel line. When I switched tanks I stalled. The light came on, the readout clicked back to zero. Probably a valve, don't you think?"

He said, "I won't know until I look."

It was just what Fizzy would have said. She was reassured by it — by the man saying it, by the thought that Fizzy might learn to survive by being this strong and self-possessed. She felt a pang for the boy and saw his long white face surrounded by O-Zone. But she knew that the pang was also a sense of her own shame. What had she ever done except secretly sneer at Fizzy crowding his computer, and hope that someone stronger than she would get the better of him? But he was gone — for good, she felt now, and she was vaguely proud of him for going. She was awkward with the lame assertion my son, because he had dared to leave her.

"Probably a valve," the man said in her voice. He was mocking her with her own words. Then he turned — no smile — and took his slender hand out of the engine cavity and showed her his greasy fingers.

He said, "I bet you know a lot about pressure-alert multi-circuited linear hydrostatic valves."

Moura frowned and all her irritation with Fizzy came back. And who was this man who had ridden out of a gulch in the desolate zone of Landslip to mock her for something she didn't know?

He was tall like Fizzy, he had Fizzy's fleshy lips and narrow bones — and even this wilderness had not coarsened his hands. He was slim, he didn't smile, and like Fizzy — one of the oddest of Fizzy's features — he had patches and streaks of prematurely gray hair. It was whiter than the boy's but it was just as strange and stripy.

In contrast to his faded shirt and patched trousers and burst-and-sewn boots his dirt bike was beautiful, with chrome brush guards and highly polished paint — green lacquer — and bright shields protecting the heavy engine. The front fender was like an eyebrow raised high over the wheel. The wheels were its outstanding feature: silver spokes and hubs and rims fitted with bristling tires with treads like toes. The whole underside of the machine was lightly dusted the color of Landslip.

"They don't look after these rented rotors" — he had gone back to work, he was not talking to her, he was thinking out loud. "They just beat the hell out of them and buy new ones. They should be ashamed to use this for rental — it's full of loose connections. It's not even clean."

It seemed such a strange judgment for an alien to make. Talking about dirt and dents and loose connections on a hill of crumbled sand and rocks in Landslip.

But he was supremely confident. He looked out of place but contented here. It gave her hope. He was a severe man, but he was not a brute. It was hard here, she knew. But he was proud — like Fizzy. He had perhaps found greater courage in this wilderness. He would not give up. She suspected that without her ever guessing it, Fizzy had that obstinacy. Each insight into Fizzy taught her something that she needed herself.

"What does someone like you want in Ida?" the man said.

She objected to someone like you, but she was uncomfortably aware of the stylish way she was dressed — her perfect suit, her expensive goggles — and her food, her fuel, her rotor. He had nothing but his bike.

"Have you got something against Owners?" she said.

It made him pause and she was glad. She sensed his brain spinning behind his eyes. And still he had no reply.

"I'm just looking," she said, to fill the moment.

He recovered and said, "We eat people like you. Didn't they tell you that at the security check?"

"How do you know I'm not security?"

"Because you're on the ground."

"Couldn't help it," she said. "I stalled. Equipment failure."

"You would have signaled for help if you were in the squads. You would have bleeped your unit. You would have used the voice alarm." He was still standing under the engine, plucking parts from beneath the manifold. He turned and said, "I'm wondering why you didn't."

"I'm not afraid," she said.

"That's good."

She could see he meant it, and that instant she wanted him. She wondered whether she knew htm. It amazed her to think that she might have had him — if so, she wanted him again.

She was sure that he regarded her as eccentric — a fool who had found her way over the wire because she had money or hunger.