Paul Theroux: O-Zone

"Yes," she said — and thought: I'm safe too; and paused on the ladder.

The December sun in late afternoon blazed without much heat, and already the land had begun to cool in the lengthened shadows. She saw that this broken-off part of America, Landslip, had a beauty she had never imagined. It was beauty regained after some centuries of civilization; and now it was redeemed by the wilderness that had taken over, empty flats and harsh hills. There was space here again. Why was it so precious? Because it had been wrecked and regained. It was beauty lost and found. That was the beauty of O-Zone, too. The beautiful sort of sexual cracks that splitting seeds make when they burst through fresh earth. And to live you had to match it, like this man and become wilder; as Fizzy had — and Hooper was trying.

"Because I was lost," she said, "looking for someone called Boy, or Boyd."

"You're not lost."

She was startled by the note of loneliness in his voice, and yet strengthened by it, because she was no longer lonely.

It had all been Fizzy's doing. His vanishing had left her free to get out of New York. You should really find someone for yourself, Holly had said. Was there anything more pathetic than searching for someone to save you? And yet her search for a man had shown her that she did not need a man.

Don't throw me a bone, she thought. She had found a father for Fizzy long ago. She did not want a husband — not a man or a motive. She wanted a lover now. Apart from him, she could look after herself. I want more than a bone.

Fizzy had led her here. She saw him in a landscape like this. He was the new breed, an O-Zonian, a sort of indestructible alien — stronger than any Owner. He had been a hostage in Coldharbor; he had freed himself. He wore a dusty helmet and a patched suit — still he never smiled. He led packs of hunched-over aliens through black pine woods. Sometimes at night he walked under the moon. She could see him distinctly, the dull, thick moonlight on his shoulders and on the dome of his helmet. He was big and because he was not naturally brave he was alert to all the risks.

The memory of his voice always brought her down to earth.

You are such a tool, he was telling someone, and he was probably right. He was standing triumphant, talking out loud, mocking the question, because he knew the answer. And if you demanded to know what he was doing he would say, I'm on a mission.

Moura reasoned that he was safe, because she was. And the point was not that she had come so far, but rather that, like her son, she could find her own way back. That was all that mattered. She had discovered what Fizzy had always known. He was not afraid. She was free — still finding out.

All this time the man had been watching her like Fizzy.

No wind, no odor, no sound: in the strangeness of this new valley of bones was a kind of safety — the best kind, for it had the appearance of danger. Yet it was a vast empty room, and they were both children alone in it. Outside it, she knew, the future changed every second.

He touched her again, and took hold, and his grip was single-minded with desire. She was still in suspense and yet joyous — tender sentences teemed in her memory. He brought her gently back to the ground, and she thought: In a moment I will know everything.

PAUL THEROUX is the internationally acclaimed author of such travel books as THE KINGDOM BY THE SEA, THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS, and THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR, and over a dozen novels, among them THE MOSQUITO COAST. Theroux divides his time between London and Cape Cod.