Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"They're great sketches."

The boy shrugged. "There's a lot we don't know." He stared at Hardy and said, "Microscopic data. Subterranean temperatures. Soil analysis. Take those birds you were raving about."

"The quail — beautiful bobwhites." And Hardy saw their round tufted shapes, pecking and making for a thicket at Firehills.

"We haven't got anything on their bone marrow." Saying these things awakened Fisher's interest, and he became curious about the answers.

"I never expected you to go with Hooper and Murdick. You were in unknown territory!"

The boy was encouraged. He said, "A Prohibited Area. Evidence of high-level mutagens," and licked his lips. "Exactly," Hardy said.

"No one's been on the ground there for fifteen years," Fisher said. A wordless anxiety trembled in his mind — some-thing small darkening within him like an infection. "We were the first."

"There were aliens there. You could have been in serious danger."

"We were in serious danger," Fisher said. "You burned them."

"Yeah, we burned them all down." And he thought: Murdick, that total dong!

The boy was frightened again. He saw clawing aliens, the other man, the running girl. The burning of the two men had bewildered him, and viewing the tape with Hooper had only given him nightmares. He still had horrible dreams of being trapped there, of ragged aliens wrenching him through the smashed window of the stranded Welly.

"And then you went out in New York!"

This new reminder weakened Fisher further. That small dark thing trembling within him was terror curling like a dead leaf. He wanted Hardy to stop talking about what he had done.

"Wait," Hardy said as Fisher turned away. "That's pretty impressive for a kid of fifteen."

The boy had already crossed the room.

"I'm a theoretical physicist, not a trooper."

"You proved that you can be both. It's the most valuable human on earth — the field scientist."

The boy did not react except to say blandly, "I'm not a spaceman."

Hardy walked across the room toward him, and waited until the boy acknowledged him before saying, "You can help me."

It didn't work. Fisher was unmoved. Of course he could help him!

"Are you interested in going back to O-Zone?"

The boy thought Yes and became afraid once more. He could only calm himself by thinking No.

He said, "I have work to do here."

"I could get you a couple of Access Passes."

Fisher stared. Hardy was always so evasive, but Fisher was never surprised where Hardy's work was concerned. Since he had hacked into Hardy's computer, he knew this longitudinal field study concerned weather modification in O-Zone, probably a thermal mountain. It was old-fashioned stuff, just a way of using surplus oil and inflating its value. He saw something savage in Hardy's naive trust in the benefit of rain.

"Imagine being the only human in O-Zone!"

If that were possible, Fisher thought, I would go. But that thought was crowded with the sight of jumping aliens — monsters! beasts! net-men! He saw their hungry faces, their teeth, their big filthy hands.

He said, "No one really knows what's there. Hooper calls it a desert island."

"You can find out what's on it."

"Why not you?"

"I don't have your skills, your insights, your resources. I don't have your pedigree. I'm not a Type A." Hardy had found it difficult to begin, but then he spoke with conviction, fascinated to know what Fizzy's response would be. Again he mentioned how Fizzy had taken them there, and led the shoot, and brought them back to New York.

"That's obvious," the boy said.

Hardy was staring — feeling doglike.

The boy went on, "I've been listening to that for years, people saying, 'We could work with you,' 'We could use your talents,' 'We could find room for someone like you.' Of course! It doesn't flatter me. I know what I can do. I know myself better than any of these dongs. I'm even better than they think I am! They never say how badly they need me. No, they put it in a patronizing way, how much I need them." He had started to clench and unclench his hands, reddening them and leaving bright white marks from the pressure of his fingers, and he was blinking with fury when he said, "I don't need them at all!"

"I'm saying I do need you, Fizz."

"And they tell me what they want, but they never" — the boy's voice had become a squawk—"they never ask the really crucial question."

Hardy was about to speak when Fisher interrupted.

"I'm going to be burned out at twenty!" the boy cried.

"Fizzy—"

"And they never ask what I want!"

"I'm asking," Hardy said.

Fisher said nothing. His fear had come back. But he did not think: I want more courage. He believed his intellectual strength made him unusually powerful. But in a small awful way his irrational fear of darkness and of imaginary terrors crippled him badly. He knew that. It was not a large handicap — that was the worst of it. It did not really limit him, and yet it would not go away. It was absurd and maddening, like having a stone in your shoe.

"I'll let you know," the boy said.

"What are you doing?"

He was pulling his helmet on, the one with the faceplate and phones; and the suit, and gloves, and the big boots. Survival gear.

"Going out," the boy said, and shoved his nose and mouth against the faceplate, and squashed them, making himself ugly. "Going out!"

Moura had come back sometime after that, and now they lay side by side in the darkened unit, she and Hardy. They were relieved that Fizzy had at last gone out. Into New York wearing survival gear! They imagined the boy roaming the city, being watchful, seeing blacks and Japanese and weirdly dressed Owners, and believing he was in great danger.

But it was a start, like his friendship with Hooper. The two had nothing in common, so it had to be true friendship, perhaps the beginning of maturity.

"We're losing him," Hardy had said as he administered the gas to Moura.

"When was he ever ours?"

To Moura, Fisher seemed completely out of reach. She had left the building intending to visit the clinic. But her nerve had failed her; she had not even gotten past the gate. I'm as bad as Captain Jennix, she thought, dreaming of empty planets and the serenity of space stations.

"He thinks I should be in something called White Girls."

Hardy did not hear her. She was murmuring, going under. And she wondered what had become of the clinic after all these years.

The same thought continued in her coma — the clinic, the cubicle, the underwater noise. She was received, she was examined; smears and scans were carried out. She was injected. Then she realized that she was not alone. In the soft semidarkness a beaked man rose up beside her. She recognized him, in spite of his mask; and what was more, he knew her. He held her and she was struggling, thrashing, and worrying that it was going to stop too soon.

In his own capsule, watching across an expanse of black, Hardy saw full piles of thunderheads rising and gathering.

Fisher had clumped past Captain Jennix. He thought the man was an idiot. The credulous Rocketman had a question for him, something simple about vertical shear. Fisher refused to answer — he called him a tool. Jennix squinted; he was taken by the boy's helmet and boots. He said that he had just seen Moura. Fisher said, "You are such a total herbert!"

It was another bright night; but the rush of rotors and ground traffic, the rattle of trams, and the yowl of punctured alarms kept him back. The sounds weakened him physically, the noise making his muscles go loose. When he tuned out, the unnatural silence spooked him.

In front of Coldharbor was a lighted park — a plaza of dense yew hedges and bare trees. Beyond it, the street led downtown. There was a station of the Tram Rail and the coaches flying along it. He could get in and go. He could take the subway. There were taxis. But he did not move: that stone in his shoe was making him afraid.