Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Hooper said, "You didn't answer my question."

"Mr. Allbright," Meesle said, "an alien, or a cat, or anyone, commits a crime for one reason only — because he thinks he can get away with it."

Meesle and Murdick smiled in pity at Hooper, the simple soul who had to be told that.

"And most of them are feebs," Murdick said. He then chirped at Meesle, "Who's on board?"

"Sluter's forward," Meesle said. "Flatty ought to be here any minute. We're going hot at oh-four-hundred."

Murdick said, "Flatty's the navigator. He's a damned sight better than your nephew, wonder boy. Flatty knows all the best locations. He's found us some great specimens."

There were four sudden thumps. The gunship pitched each time. Hooper looked around in alarm. "That's just Cleary, loading shells." The man named Flatty arrived soon after. He explained that he too had been detained at several checkpoints, and like Murdick he was not angry with the guards, but rather with the aliens who made the checkpoints necessary. He was somewhat undersized even by what Hooper had taken to be Godseye standards, and in his heavy uniform — big helmet, big boots — he had a funny little strut, like a self-important cripple, as he made his way through the gunship. He was fluent and easygoing and good-humored in ways that reminded Hooper of liars he had known.

"Hooper Allbright," Flatty said, "Any relation to Allbright, that billionaire with the cable catalog?"

"I was going to ask him that," Meesle said.

"I used to be him," Hooper said.

"Very funny," Flatty said. "But that's good, because everyone's treated equal here."

"Flatty's pretty famous, too — for some roundups he made in Florida a few years ago."

"When you lose sovereignty over your borders, you're finished," the little man said. "That's why the world's jiggered. We can't let that happen in America."

The trouble with these particular fanatics was that one or two of the things they said made sense, and it was their rare flashes of rational thought rather than their usual craziness that worried Hooper. He was facing little Flatty, thinking of what Murdick had said about roundups.

"I remember those raids," Hooper said. "You loaded transport planes with people — with aliens — and dumped them in Africa."

"Or on the way," Flatty said.

"There's nothing on the way."

"The Atlantic."

"You dropped them in the ocean?"

"Very gently."

"I never thought of that."

But now that he had been told, he saw them spilling out of planes, tumbling through the air into the open sea and sinking.

Flatty said, "It's better than dumping them in Prohibited Areas. That's what some units used to do, years ago."

"You mean, tossing aliens into places like O-Zone?"

"Sure. So they could catch cold," Flatty said. "But you know all about that, don't you? You and Willis burned a couple, didn't you?"

"Murdick did," Hooper said.

And Murdick, who had been irritable from the moment he boarded, smiled and looked very pleased.

"What's O-Zone really like?" Meesle asked in the tones of someone speaking of a fabled land.

"Incredible," Murdick said. "Dangerous. Full of ghost towns and contamination. Oh, sure, we're talking high-level mutagens. You're looking at an animal population that's maybe fifty percent droolies and limpers, and a high proportion of outright deformos. I'm not counting extra toes and cleft palates. I'm talking heavy mutation, I'm talking monsters."

Meesle and Flatty had turned from Murdick to stare at Hooper in scrutiny, because only he could verify what Murdick was saying. O-Zone was well-known as a wilderness, but was this true?

"O-Zone is an island," Hooper said. He was going to say more, but checked himself: that seemed to explain everything.

Sluter's voice came over the intercom. It was sharp, snappy and commanding — all business.

"This mission is code-named 'Streetsweeper.' Strap yourselves in for takeoff. And mask the passenger until we clear the tower. We're going hot in zero minus sixty."

The others began counting, chanting the numbers.

Murdick blindfolded Hooper with what looked like a hangman's hood, and as the gunship surged and tipped, his voice chirped at Hooper's ear.

"We're cooking ass," he said.

So far, the Godseye unit had made Hooper feel like an outsider himself — him an alien! The troopers' crass antagonizing opinions made him defensive, and he was fearful of making hostile jokes, afraid they would turn on him and say, "You too!" He hated their seriousness, he was insulted by their bad logic.

Murder is always easy, murder is for bunglers, Hooper murmured in the darkness behind his blindfold. When he put it into words it sounded true. These murderers did not want him to know the location of their rotor pad. As if it mattered. And all the rest of it, the talk about anger and aliens, the videotapes, the whispers, the insignia, the expensive weapons, the jargon, the silences, the silly helmets — it all reminded Hooper that he had no business there. It was not just that Godseye hunted aliens; it was rather that Godseye was suspicious of anyone who was not in Godseye. These so-called troopers were suspicious of him!

"Murdick, where the hell are you?"

"Up front here," Murdick said; and nervously, "We'll take your blindfold off as soon as we clear these buildings."

The man was uneasy now with the secret of his incompetence in O-Zone. It was hard enough for him to conceal his cowardice, but so much harder to pretend to be brave. He badly needed Hooper.

Hooper said, "I'm an Owner!"

This rattled Murdick, who had no idea why Hooper was protesting. If they know so little about me, Hooper thought, what can they possibly know about aliens?

"We're going to work a few areas in Lower East," Flatty said.

The croaky voice helped Hooper remember what the little man had said about dumping aliens into the ocean: It's better than dumping them in Prohibited Areas. That's what some units used to do, years ago.

They had populated O-Zone! A self-important unit of Godseye troopers had abducted some pathetic aliens. Instead of killing them quickly, they threw them into O-Zone and wished on them a slow death — cancer and skin diseases and softened bones from the contamination, the whole colony turned into a colony of lepers and zombies. Godseye, with its loathing for litterers, tossed aliens into America's only real wilderness.

This revelation had two effects on Hooper. It made him loathe Godseye — the Snake-Eaters, as this unit was called; he hated their ignorance and their presumption as much as he feared their casual murders and their hypocrisy. But it also intensified his feelings for those others — the victims, the aliens he had seen in O-Zone. Somehow, these people had survived. And they had looked healthy enough, racing through the woods.

Every time the Snake-Eaters had used the word "alien," he had a flash of that running girl he had isolated on the tape. And when Meesle had said, "We don't call them people," he had seen her very clearly — pale eyes and straight sundrenched hair and brown legs — hopping over a log, her dancer's way of jumping and pausing. Women were to him first physical and animal: she was that, fleeing, and it excited Hooper to see her running away.

Hooper's blindfold was taken off, and two different faceplates gloated at him in the gunship — Meesle and Murdick in new helmets, a skull and a demon face. Murdick was the demon, because he was talking to Hooper breathlessly about his new weapon — a stunner — and his chirping was the giveaway. It was the tiny voice of a violent sparrow.

But skull and demon faces? They were probably intended to scare aliens, yet they were like Halloween masks — oversized and ridiculous. And their voices were eager and definitely birdlike and boyish.