Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Afterward Moura said, "What the hell was that all about?"

Hardy said, "Nothing."

But she knew — she only wanted Hardy to deny it so that they would both remember the moment.

She said, "'Nothing' always means 'something.'"

Hardy shrugged, refusing her the courtesy of an explanation, and as always keeping his work secret and separate. Yet she wanted him to realize that she was no ignorant bystander and that she knew that something serious had happened on the shoot; that she knew that it was more convenient for everyone if it remained a secret.

He could be a cold and humorless man, but she admired his fairness. He would not have lied, even about his brother. He would have filed a report, and Hooper might have faced an investigation. They would have wired him and plugged him in to see whether he lit up. His money would not have been much help to him.

And he probably would have lit up, hot with guilt, she guessed. It was undoubtedly serious, because Fizzy's behavior was more unusual than ever. What had the boy swallowed to make him so strange? He had said nothing on the return to Coldharbor — he who had done nothing but talk and criticize all the way to O-Zone! And Hardy, normally very silent, became talkative, as if to avoid thinking about what terrible things had happened on the mission that Hooper, Murdick, and Fizzy had mounted. How could three such thorough misfits have failed to bungle badly?

She saw each one of them as disturbed and divided. So they might have taken a risk. But disturbed people were also accident-prone. So something unexpected had probably happened, which "burned them all down" only hinted at. She was surprised and relieved — everyone was — that they had returned safety.

But would she now have to live with Fizzy's silences as she had once lived with his know-it-all nagging? She tried to talk to him, merely to hear his voice and perhaps detect in it whether he was angry or upset. He looked shocked, he was a bit pale, his eyes drifted in and out of focus. But he was thoughtful: she could almost hear the buzz and whir of his mind, the odd flutter of his calculations.

His silence made her talkative. She remarked to Hardy on the clear sky here and the cap of haze that lay over the cities outside O-Zone; the squarish, furred prints of houses and blocks, the miles of creeping green, the pleasure of having spent New Year's in that place. The secrets, too, were an oblique pleasure — another surprise, for she had so many secrets. How could the wife of such an unresponsive man not have secrets?

During the flight back, Moura glanced at the specimen Fizzy was bringing back — the monstrous misshapen squirrel. How had it got that way? Was it plutonium, as everyone had said — and if so, had they been in any danger? "It's a low-level mutagen," Fisher said in a dull voice. "Want to talk about it?"

"I can't talk to you," he said. "You don't have enough math." Wasn't there something simpler to discuss — something she knew about? What about food, music, the latest movies, radio programs, money, the rest of the world, or next year's presidential election? What about his acne? Pimples had broken through on his nose and his cheeks. He usually ate badly — he sat at Pap during long study sessions, eating junk, Guppy-Cola, and jelly sandwiches.

"Your acne's improving," she said, being tactful.

"Antibiotics," he said, and yawned at her. "I'm doing two capsules a day."

Back in Coldharbor he kept to his room, muttering to his machines and yawning without covering his mouth: she watched him on the monitor.

The day after, he appeared at his door.

"Just tested the squirrel," he said. He was afraid; he needed to talk to someone; but he was so bad at the simplest things. "I did a brain scan and an autopsy. It's not a mutant."

"That's good news," Moura said.

"No, it's not," he said. "Because it was dead before it hit the beam."

He was talking in his growly uncertain voice.

"Someone threw it," he said, and put on his helmet and clicked his mask into place, and slipped on his gloves. He was dressed as he had been in O-Zone — the same boots, the same armored-fiber suit, the same radio helmet. He was prepared for a zone of deep contagion: it was a high-risk outfit.

He said no more about the specimen. Instead, he did an extraordinary thing. He went out alone. He gave no explanation; he simply left the unit, dressed as if for a danger zone: clump, clump, clump.

The phone was ringing — not Fizzy; it was Holly Murdick's face on the screen. It was an eager face: she photographed well, because she was so used to mirrors.

"Can I come up?"

Then Moura was glad that Fizzy was gone, because Holly had things on her mind.

Holly said she was desperately bored, and she laughed in a convincingly desperate way as she said so, sounding reckless, as if she was ready to try anything. She was a pretty woman in her mid-thirties, and as obsessive about style in a garish way as Willis was about the latest equipment. They were both faddists — he was gadget-conscious, she was mirror-mad. Moura saw something childish in this, something touching and monotonous at the same time. Holly's face and hair were striped, she wore trucker's boots and carried a Skell bag; her short skirt was slashed into a fringe of ribbons, and underneath she wore skintight trousers. Moura was glad that Holly was not wearing one of her embarrassing aprons — the apron and nothing else that showed her big pale bottom and her knuckly spine and made her seem so silly and defiant.

Today Holly was intense, trying a little too hard — her trying showed.

"I haven't been able to pull myself together since I came back" — she was still talking about being bored. "Willis just mopes." She paused and looked sharply into Moura's eyes and said, "You're so lucky to have a child."

"Fizzy's not a child anymore."

"You know what I mean."

"And he's been moping too."

"Their big so-called mission. 'Let's go on a shoot!' Willis is so secretive." She seemed to be poking fun at him because he could not possibly have anything to withhold — he was too dull to have any secrets. She found Moura's eyes again and said, "I never knew how to go about it — having a child. I mean, doing it right, having one worth raising."

Moura could see that it was not necessary to reply to this. Holly had just begun to unburden herself. But Moura dreaded such conversations and she felt sure that Holly was leading up to something painful — probably going to divulge an awkward secret. Maybe she had tried to buy a child on one of her trips — so many people did, and the kids turned out so badly sometimes: feebleminded, diseased, crazy, the wrong color, with faked IDs and misleading medical histories. Years later the awful truth came out; and then they were taken away to be injected and burned.

"So many theories, so many methods," Holly was saying. "Every year it seemed there was something new-implanting, freezing, womb-leasing. I couldn't decide."

"Or just buying one in some other country," Moura said, to test Holly's reaction.

"Willis would never have stood for that. He hates people who buy kids."

Seeing that Holly had become reflective, Moura softened toward her and said, "Having children is pretty straightforward nowadays. The labs start a dozen for you and then implant the best one."

"Wasn't it straightforward when you had Fizzy?"

There was a sudden blankness, a whitening in Holly's face, between the stripes of makeup. The expectancy in her demeanor put Moura on guard.

"You didn't try anything fancy," Holly said. "Or did you?"

She knew something. She was not very intelligent, but that made her all the more tenacious. She was asking all the right questions, because she knew all the answers. Moura smiled to mask her look of caution.