Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"It's him," Hooper said as Fisher entered the unit. Hooper was delighted to see the boy. When had this kid ever gone out alone?

"I've been trying to call you all day," Moura said.

"I was off the air," Fisher said. "I decided to tune out and do some exploring on the ground."

He said it carelessly but he believed he had just survived another hazardous mission — one not very different from the shoot in O-Zone. He waited for their reaction, and was annoyed that no one expressed surprise or asked him where he had been. He wanted to describe the blacks — how they had threatened him; he wanted to tell them about the Skell and the task force and how he had explained ropes and aliens to the cop. He felt he had been very reckless in switching off phone contact and staying off the air.

"Don't worry," he said, to encourage them — why weren't they saying anything? "I'm all right!"

Moura said, "You missed your study session."

"Theory of Subsequence," he said.

"You never know — it might come in handy someday," Holly said,

"I wasn't learning it, shit-wit. I was teaching it and going over proofs." He looked at Hooper. "What do you want?"

"Private," Hooper said. "Let's go into your room."

What was oddest about Fisher's odd feety-smelling room— a wilderness of screens and tubes and consoles — was that although it had a skylight, it had no windows. Hooper had never noticed this before; but he had never before taken Fisher seriously, nor had he ever needed him as he did now. Imagine, needing Fizzy!

"Blacks," the boy was saying. "It's all blacks out there."

"How do you know that? You don't have any windows."

"I was actually out there. I mean, on the ground. I saw them. Incredible number of blacks." Fisher was pleased with himself and snorting with satisfaction. "A few of them thought they could give me a hard time. They didn't get anywhere!"

“What was he talking about? Hooper said, "What do you do for windows?"

Without speaking, Fisher went to a console panel and threw a switch. A window image appeared on a larg;e square television screen on the wall where the outside window ought to have been. The boy manipulated a remote camera and panned the other towers, the skylights, rooftops, gunships, and a wall of blackness at the perimeter of the city. Fisher had not been looking at the image; he was looking at Hooper, and when Hooper nodded — his question had been answered — Fisher stabbed the switch and the image shook and vanished.

The boy was still snorting in a confident way. "You think from up here that there's all kinds of trouble down there. But most of that is just false alarms. Oh, sure — they pull Skells out of the river, but some of them don't even have weapons."

"They're tramps," Hooper said. "Where would they get weapons?"

"I'm just giving you an example. Like the blacks. You wouldn't think there are any blacks in the city from up here."

"New York is full of blacks," Hooper said. "Just because you're black it doesn't mean you don't get a residence permit or a work pass. Or an ID. Lots of Owners are blacks."

Fisher looked at Hooper with suspicion, as if he had not known this simple thing.

"I know," the boy said defiantly. "What's that?"

Hooper had taken the cartridge out of his pocket. He handed it to Fisher.

"Ever seen one of these before?"

"No," Fisher said, and held it under a desk lamp. "But I've studied those seals. They're used in intelligence work."

"There's film inside."

"I know," the boy said.

"The problem is opening it without destroying the film."

"I know," the boy said.

He made an ugly mocking face at Hooper, twisting his mouth, as if to say: You must be a fool if you think I can't open this!

"It's apparently a very sensitive mechanism."

"I know," the boy said. "What's on the film — those boonies?"

"Unlock it and we'll watch it," Hooper said. "But listen, this is secret."

Just the word, whispered in that way, was like an affirmation of friendship, because they were alone, and each suspected the other of being weak and needing a friend.

Hardy had filed his preliminary report on the longitudinal field study in O-Zone and submitted it with his tape of the trip two days after arriving back. Now, almost a week later, he had his reward: a coded message on his computer screen in his inner office. He unscrambled it and read: Budget approved for further topographical field study Project Q-Zone. Please update and verify. Scramble this immediately. Do not print. Do not use data base. Treat as classified.

If it was this secret, then they were serious.

He scrambled the message and then phoned Operations.

"Allbright here."

"This is Operations," the woman said. Why didn't she give her name? But he knew why — Asfalt bureaucracy made employees that way, and it was the reason he had no friends there.

"I want to discuss Project O-Zone."

The voice said, "Seems it was a good party."

"Excellent."

"No problems?"

"None." Hardy was glad that he was ignorant enough to be able to say that.

"Then there is nothing to discuss."

"I wanted to ask about Access Passes," Hardy said, persisting.

"These will be granted to authorized personnel, or anyone you nominate."

He wanted to say more. He was happy about the approval. He just wanted to talk about the project.

He said, "I was wondering who's supervising—"

The voice said, "Weathermaker—"

His company name came like a warning.

"— this subject is highly classified."

Nothing to be written, or spoken, or recorded: they were very serious. And it was a measure of O-Zone's reputation in the United States: the place was believed to be wild and inaccessible and poisoned and dangerous, and so the project had taken on these same attributes. It was the first time that had happened, though Hardy had carried out many similar projects.

Hardy Allbright made mountains. He had designed and built mountains in West Africa, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. So scientific, Moura always said about her husband. It was true, and it was the chief reason that Hardy had not inherited the family chain of department stores. "You're smart enough to stay out of business and look after yourself," the old man had said. "Perfesser!" he had always yelled in an admiring way at Hardy, and he had left him a large sum of money. "Perfesser!"

The family thinking was that Hardy had the brains, and Hooper the personality. In retail trade, personality mattered more than intelligence, especially as the business was long-established. And if it was a question of expansion or alteration, brains did not help much; then it was series of chess moves, which had more to do with being able to borrow money. And yet no one had ever expected that of Hooper. It surprised everyone when he restructured Allbright's and turned it into a mail-order business.

It also surprised everyone when Hardy, who was indeed a professor — a meteorological scientist specializing in weather modification — left his lab at Columbia and went to work in the downtown offices of Asfalt, which was part of the Pe-troland Oil Conglomerate. Hardy in business! But his work was classified — always Federal contracts or else contracts with foreign governments. Construction, people thought. What else could it possibly be? And because it was Asfalt, they suspected defense work, probably airstrips. Not even Moura knew. Few secrets were safe from Fizzy's restless intrusions and yet Hardy felt that even wonder boy did not know the exact nature of Asfalt's work. Rainmaking was always rumored, but no one knew how.

Hardy was mistaken. The boy had long ago hacked into Hardy's computer, and he copied everything that entered it. He knew all of it, but scorned it as obvious drudgery, and he could not understand why anyone would treat it as secret. It was no more complicated than roadbuilding. It was simpler than runways.