Paul Theroux - O-Zone

She hated being noticed that way, especially as she knew that something had changed within her. Until the O-Zone trip, she had spent most Sundays at Coldharbor off the air and sealed in her room, sometimes with Hardy, in a deep deliberate sleep. A coma, most people called it; and not beds or sleep capsules, but "coma couches."

It had started as a fad and turned into a pastime. When it became very popular it was associated with good health — not physical strength, but a sense of sanity and well-being. But it is the fate of some pastimes to become obsessions.

I've done fifteen hours, people said; I've done twenty; I've done a day. When Barry Eubank said, "I've done two dozen," the Murdicks replied, "We're working on thirty." It had attracted them to O-Zone — it was so empty it must be very safe. That was what everyone had thought. What a place to sleep! But in the end no one had slept at all in O-Zone.

"You were away about a week ago," Captain Jennix said, stating it as a fact.

How surprised he would have been if she had told him where they had gone. He might not have believed her. He expected her to believe that at some point in the future he was going to take his place in a lunar mission, make a moon landing or else live for a time in a space station with other Pilgrims, or Starlings — Rocketmen, anyway — and yet he would find it inconceivable that she had spent two days in the Prohibited Area of O-Zone.

"New Year's party," she said, enjoying the preposterous sound of the truth.

"You can pass, Mrs. Allbright," Captain Jennix said.

He sat at a bank of monitors on which various parts of Coldharbor and even districts in New York were visible. On one a space vehicle was shown. Was this why Captain Jennix was in such a thoughtful mood? Perhaps he was anticipating a space launch — always an emotional moment for a Pilgrim. Their hope lay in being transported into space by just such a rocket. Captain Jennix wore two stripes on his sleeve, which meant that he had paid a certain amount toward a place on one of the vehicles. He had not said so; it was talk — but it was probably true. All the Pilgrims paid, and all hoped, but very few of them actually went up. Still, they were great supporters of the Federal Space Program, and there were so many of them it was sometimes said — Hardy often said it— that highly placed Pilgrims boosted the budget for space travel, and the Federal government encouraged this zeal.

Now Captain Jennix pushed his chair away from the monitors and said, "I don't blame you for hesitating, Mrs. All-bright. New York—"

But it was not New York. It was that Moura did not want to spend another Sunday in a coma. That wasn't rest — it was active sleep: not forgetting but remembering. She and Hardy used gas. It could have been the gas as much as the motion of the couch that tired her. Other people used injections or capsules. The longest period she had managed was eighteen hours, and she had regretted it. She had thought that the silence and the emptiness in O-Zone might change her manner of sleeping, somehow alter the experience. She had always woken exhausted.

Captain Jennix was saying, "Take this book, for example" — she saw it was The Settlers of Planck. "It shows you the importance of pushing on. There's no sense going unless you keep going. Out of the house, past the wall, off the earth, until you're weightless. Learn to fly and you solve the problem of time. You never just go out and come back. Know why?"

She must have glanced at him, because he spoke as if in reply.

"Because once you've gone out you can never come all the way back."

What was he talking about? She was thinking of O-Zone, how it had stirred her, shown her the land and the sky. Because she thought they had been alone, the place had frightened her with its emptiness; but it had frightened her more when Fizzy's suspicion had passed through Firehills that there were aliens nearby.

"There is no recorded crime. There is no disorder. No instances Of madness. The training program is foolproof, so its success is due to the caliber of the troopers who go — good caliber, the best people."

Moura listened to him, but behind his small head she saw the old world of O-Zone. It seemed remote, and as separate, as isolated and hard-to-find as an island. Never mind that it was in Missouri, because America had become an ocean.

"The great complaint is that not enough people go on these missions," Captain Jennix said. "But all the good people go. Isn't that everyone?"

She had been exposed to danger — reminded of it, even if it had not existed. Fear was fear, whatever the cause. And fear had made her feel solitary. She had begun to think intensely about her life — more intensely than any coma had made her remember. Fully awake and afraid, in the clear light of the O-Zone trip, she had seen Fizzy changing into whoever his father was — the masked man at the contact clinic. He had spoken to her!

"I'll give you an example," Captain Jennix said.

An example of what? What was Jennix trying to prove? She stared past his head and on the bank of monitors she saw street grids and various corners of New York — the river, the perimeter, the bridges — and she wondered. .

But Captain Jennix said, "We have a unit in the Starlings' divisional ship code-named 'White Girls.' This is basically an intelligence unit, but it won't move until the day comes for transporting personnel. In other words, they're basically on standby alert until just before countdown."

"I'm sorry," Moura said, but it didn't seem to matter that she had not been listening. Captain Jennix had stood up and become rigid when he had said standby alert.

"White Girls," he said. "Basically they could be on standby alert their whole lives. They move when they get the signal" — now he moved, but it was only to slap another book for emphasis. It was Mission to Fertility. "Mrs. Allbright, you could qualify for White Girls. The point is, you don't go out until the last day, and then you go out and you don't stop until you're locked into space."

He sat down and frowned at the video screens on the bank of monitors. He was clutching Mission to Fertility.

"It's all in here," he said, flexing the book.

What a bore he was, waiting his turn for the rocket. And it probably would never come. Moura knew she wanted something else. Since returning to New York she had felt dissatisfied. She had a vague feeling of imprisonment. Holly's visit had stirred her, too, and given her a direction. Holly could be foolish, but she was funny and uncritical and a good prop. Moura had known her too long to be able to find fault with her. After that length of time you accepted everything in a person or else ended the friendship. And Holly was useful because she dared to say things out loud to Moura that Moura only whispered to herself. Moura sometimes wished that Holly were more subtle, but she also thought: Maybe I need her to be unsubtle in order to flatter myself.

"This is an awful city," Captain Jennix was saying.

In her mind, Moura had gone into New York and found the clinic. She had entered and registered and made her request. Was it still such a hive of rooms and cubicles? And all the scanners and sound equipment; and the air knifed with disinfectant. In her mind she waited there, crouched at the cliff edge of her willpower, listening hard but hearing nothing but the white noise which hissed in her ears during those sessions; and his beaked mask hard against hers. You love it You—

He could not have been an ordinary person, because Fizzy wasn't.

She had rehearsed the trip, tried out her questions, and imagined what the answers might be. But she did not want to go out alone.

"It's a much worse place than anyone admits."

Was Captain Jennix reading her mind? Pilgrims — Starlings, Rocketmen, Astronauts — often claimed to be telepathic.