Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"'Put him on the ground,' Sluter says, only too happy for him to draw the Skell out, so we can burn him down.

"But no. This first-timer rushes forward and tears the Skell out of the doorway with his hands. It's not a Skell — it's a Roach. He doesn't know the difference! He begins bashing him on the head with an iron pipe. There's blood everywhere — the Roach's head is smashed into a bag. Hey, this was getting strange! We had to pull him off. It wasn't that he killed the guy, which he did, by the way — no, it's all that anger coming out. I hadn't seen blood for years. With these new weapons you never get that kind of open wound. I never expected a Roach to have that much blood. The wet mess! The raw meat! I had forgotten that you could kill someone with an old iron pipe. But he had more than an iron pipe."

Meesle had stopped tracing out the murder on the ground-screen with his fingertips.

"That's why we need you guys," he said, raising his eyes to Hooper. "We need your anger."

Hooper said, "I wonder what happened to make that man so angry,"

"I asked him. Screaming Skells. Years ago, he was trapped by some in New Jersey — Screamers. They cornered him and just howled at him. Then they took his car. You never forget a thing like that. The thing about aliens—"

But Meesle stopped in the middle of the sentence: the outside hatchway had opened, the rubber seal making a plump satisfying punch as it shut a moment later.

It was Mur'dick, feetfirst, his new boots and short legs and fat knees descending the ladder into the body of the aircraft. Then his bubble-head showed — another helmet! This one was blue-black, with antenna plugs, a chin mike, and a faceplate that looked to be an inch thick — perhaps a combat model. It made Murdick's white face seem trapped in a fish-eye monitor.

"The thing about aliens," Murdick said, finishing Meesle's sentence and pinching his face at Hooper, "is that they're responsible for everything in this city that's inconvenient. Forget their crimes, forget that they're illegal. I was just stopped three times on my way here — that's why I'm late. Two checkpoints and one Federal patrol. What am I doing out at three o'clock in the morning? Where am I going? I'm an Owner! Sure, they were apologetic after they saw my ID, but do you think we'd have to put up with this if there were no aliens?"

In addition to the helmet, which Hooper now saw was onion-shaped, Murdick was wearing a green padded jacket and gauntletlike gloves and yellow knee boots. He was obviously bullet-proof and completely wired, and though he was only two meters away from Hooper he had spoken over his phones, probably unaware that the phones made him sound like a cricket.

"The fact that there are aliens around means that we're under suspicion," Murdick said. "Owners!"

When he said "Owners" he lifted his arms and Hooper saw that in his right hand he held a weapon. It was riflelike, but obviously very light — Murdick easily swung it in one hand. It had a short barrel but was not bored, and its shape was that of a slender lamp rather than a gun. Yet more of Murdick's paraphernalia, another fancy weapon.

"It's not fair," Meesle said. "We're not fanatics. We've got a right to be out anytime of the day — anywhere we like. We shouldn't have to carry IDs. This would be a freer society without them."

Hooper had heard the issue of aliens discussed many times before — there were few other issues that roused such passion. But he was struck by Meesle's tone: it was reasonable and just a touch annoyed. There was nothing obviously brutish about it; and even Murdick's argument seemed to have merit. It was true that the aliens and illegals were the reason for the endless barriers and security checks.

"In a way, it's not their fault," Meesle went on, smiling softly and adjusting his helmet. He shook the helmet and something inside rattled; it was such a beautifully made helmet Hooper imagined that the odd rattling sound came from inside Meesle's own head. "They're foreign. They don't understand our society. They don't know American rules. A lot of people will tell you, 'They're animals.' But they're not animals. Unfortunately. Their big problem is that they're human. Their curse is that they somewhat resemble us. And because they can never fit in, they'll always be predatory. They can only do harm, to us and themselves."

There was patience in Meesle's voice, and a mildness that Hooper found maddening.

Then Murdick said in a quietly amused way, "Some of them don't even wear clothes."

And seeing nothing on Hooper's face — no anger, no agreement, no objection, because he was suppressing everything— he turned to Meesle and said, "He doesn't believe me!"

Hooper said, much too loudly — it all came out at once—"I saw a naked woman two weeks ago at the Midtown Mall!"

"An Owner," Murdick said. "She was naked!"

"A naked Owner has clothes at home," Meesle said. "A naked alien doesn't have any at all — not a stitch. That's why they get burned."

"Right," Hooper said, still fuming. "And that's just the way they talk about you. Godseye is a secret organization that burns people for throwing paper in the street." Murdick said, "He called them people." But Meesle didn't quibble.

"We sometimes do," Meesle said. "We have to. Your paper-thrower is your rapist."

"And vice versa," Murdick said, his voice chirping out of his helmet. "The same ones commit all the crime."

Meesle sighed and seemed to relax, and he gazed at Hooper in a comfortable upturned way through the faceplate of his mask.

"That's a very important point to remember, Mr. Allbright," he said. "At the simplest level it is throwing paper in the street. At the highest level it is killing or raping, or stealing something valuable. But you see we are dealing with the same offender. Your alien is not a person with clean habits. Your rapist or your thief is also someone who will throw paper, just as your murderer or your mugger is also someone who will commit petty crimes — spitting, shouting, defacing property."

"So if you arrest people for spitting, and maybe kill them, you've solved the problem?"

"You don't have to take my word for it, Mr, Allbright," Meesle said, seeming to agree with him. "There have been scientific studies, carried out by teams of experts. We have documentation. In some places, your spitters were actually apprehended and burned — and your crime rate went down. Or your noisemakers were apprehended and burned — and your crime rate went down."

"The crime rate should have gone up," Hooper said, "because isn't burning people a crime?"

Meesle looked pained at Hooper's ignorance. "But we don't always burn them," he said. "And we never call them people."

Murdick went cheep-cheep on his phones, trying to protest and put Hooper straight. "Polygamists, professional beggars, stowaways, lepers," he was saying. But Meesle interrupted softly.

"We pick Skelly up and we put Skelly down."

Hooper said, "Aren't you curious to know why aliens commit these crimes?"

"Skelly doesn't actually have a choice in the matter," Meesle said, raising a debating finger at Hooper. "A cat that kills a bird is merely following his nature. You either accept a cat's nature as a bird killer, or else you eliminate all cats. That's why we're against putting Skelly on trial. He won't have any defense — it's not fair to him. Skelly is acting instinctively. He can't help himself. It's his nature. See, Skelly is not really committing a crime — Skelly is a crime. A walking, breathing, living crime. And of course we're also talking about your career criminal, who sees himself as doing a job. We want to put him out of work."

After saying this — still in his friendly reasonable tone— Meesle went to the microphone at the console and tapped it and said, "Load the shells, Cleary." Then he returned to where Hooper still stood, trying to find logic in the cat analogy.