Paul Theroux - O-Zone

That decision gave him patience. He stopped kicking. He waited another hour and woke Murdick. He knew that Murdick was an irritable man, but he was necessary: he had the best equipment and the most versatile rotor.

Murdick was ready. He too had decided a scouting party would be a good idea. He only needed encouragement, someone to share his nervous anger, someone to take charge.

He said, "Who else?"

Hooper told him.

"I don't want that brat along!"

"He knows the way," Hooper said. "We won't find the aliens without him. He's already got them programmed."

Murdick said, "Let's just take the program. I've got a mainframe on board. We don't need him."

But Hooper knew how to convince Murdick.

He said, "We won't have a chance without him."

Murdick sulked — not by saying anything but by stumbling obstinately and bumping the walls as they proceeded to the Operations Room, Then he spoke. "That kid better behave himself."

Fisher refused to accompany them. His pleasure lay in solving problems at his computer, and he sat with one knee jumping — flinging his leg up and down. He was still working at the terminal with long stabbing fingers and making faces at the screen — he said he had decided not to sleep after all. He was surrounded by empty Guppy-Cola bottles. He had discovered more about the group; he had coded the individuals according to speed and size; analyzed their old-fashioned weapons — nets and noise-makers and snares. But where were their shelters?

Hooper said, "I know how you can find out."

"Not if it means going there and landing," Fisher said. He had not looked at Hooper. He was still twisting his face at the screen, where the calculations glowed. "I don't want to be on the ground with them."

"Don't you want more data?"

Fisher said, "I can find out what they have for breakfast using algebra."

"But you don't know where they live."

"Hooper, some of them look crazy. There's four big ones."

Even Fisher's science and precise data were sometimes overwhelmed by his instinctive fear. He hated this in himself, but he could not rid his mind of these visions of beasts — their smells, their wet hair and wild eyes. Mathematics didn't help.

Hooper said, "But you know all about their weapons."

Fisher could not speak. There was something so stupid about admitting you were afraid.

Hooper said, "We need you, Fizz. We can't find them without you."

"Murdick, you porker, turn your radio off," Fisher said, and he waited while the furious little man moved a switch at the side of his helmet. "I don't want him listening."

"He can't hear anything now."

Fisher said, "Did you tell him that you can't find those aliens without me?"

"I sure did — and he screamed his head off."

Fisher turned back to the screen. He said, "If I go, I'm in command of the whole flight. I give all orders. I can abort the mission at any time. Otherwise, forget it."

"Yes, sir," Hooper said — glad of his mask, glad the boy was turned away from him. "This mission is all yours. You're captain."

"And what are you?"

"You can just call me uncle."

"Aliens, blacks, prostitutes, potygamists, professional beggars, stowaways, lepers, and psychopaths," Murdick said as the huge rotor jumped and hovered.

Hooper said, "I was trying to remember."

"Accelerate," Fisher said.

As he moved the throttle, Murdick said, "All of them. All aliens. All illegals. Burn them all down."

Murdick's violent talk fascinated Hooper. It was a complex belief in hostility that made his aggression seem as systematic as a religion. But the same talk only bored Fisher with its lack of logic. Its arguments were dangerous and messy, and it was based purely on power-seeking. And it was arbitrary, too. He had asked, "What does 'black' mean?" and Murdick had raged at him.

Now Fisher said, "Are you watching the direction? Correct it one-half degree east."

Fisher sat in the rear seat of Murdick's Wellington, as captain — he had insisted on that. His forearms rested on the computer terminal and he watched the tube and the ground-screen. He had demanded to be navigator as well, but the program was written and there were as yet only trivial decisions to make. Those he dealt with in his nervous pedantic way and always in a voice of complaint.

Without telling anyone of their departure time, they had hurried away from Firehills, making their vertical takeoff in the dark, the Welly rising before anyone could react. The idea was to locate the aliens, to hover and land in darkness, and at dawn go on a shoot — observe and tape them.

"Just like we did in Africa," Murdick said. "Holly and me, at that Earthworks place on the coast."

"Watching aliens?"

"Buffaloes."

Hooper snorted.

"We had to catch them in the early morning," Murdick said. "Antelopes, zebras — everything. Sometimes you'd see a croc making a kill. But it can be dangerous."

"The crocs?"

"Blacks," Murdick said. "Jigs." He became thoughtful. "Some of the worst aliens on the planet. People hunt them. I could tell you stories, except this kid is here, which is kind of frustrating."

Fisher said, "The point about these O-Zone aliens is that they probably live here. And we're visiting. So 'alien' is a funny word for them."

"I don't call them aliens. They're Skells, they're Shitters, they're Roaches," Murdick said. "And that's not funny. These savages might have hit the coast last Monday from the islands — Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti. Or in an unmarked plane from Canada. A lot of them come in by plane — it's the new racket. From India! From Brazil! They're smuggled in like dope. They land in fields and then scatter. Hey, wouldn't you try to come here if you were a jig? This is America! They burned some just outside New York last month that came from the middle of Africa — by plane. They were barefoot!"

"These aliens are wearing boots,"

"They could very easily have sneaked into the U.S. a few days ago."

"If that's the kind of shit-data you need, there's no point in going."

"I want to smell them," Murdick said.

"Then stay on course and do what I say. Deck of clouds ahead."

Fisher maddened Murdick by staring at the screen when he spoke to him.

"Because I've smelled lots of others," Murdick said. "Know why?"

He had begun to shout against the wail of the slipstream and the clicking of the rotor, and he didn't wait for a reply.

"Because I'm in Godseye," he said. "I can say that now we're on this mission. Yeah, Godseye."

"I figured that," Hooper said. But he wondered whether Murdick was just boasting, as he had about his bubble shelter and his tubes of food and his chain-sword for bushwhacking. Those boasts had meant nothing.

Fisher said, "What does that mean, Godseye?"

"I guess it means you don't know everything, wonder boy."

"If you want to get on the ground with your ass intact, don't talk to me like that."

Hooper had been expecting this friction. Two of the biggest fatheads in the party! In order to divert them he said lightly, "How are we going to land in the dark, Fizzy?"

It didn't work. Fisher began to complain. "It won't be easy, because this well-equipped Welly doesn't have infrared sensors on its landing gear."

"I've got high-definition thermal imaging!" Murdick said, almost choking. "I've got beams! I've got—"

"Never mind," Fisher said. "I know a place."

He guided them over the sinkhole he had found on the chart he had made. He spoke sharply, then grunted. His manner was severe and, from a boy of fifteen, nearly unbearable to the two men on board. He could navigate, but he could not pilot the rotor, nor could he operate any of the controls. He knew the commands, and that was an even greater irritant, because he always gave them with his head down, in a cross, contemptuous slur, speaking through his lips like an imbecile.