Paul Theroux - O-Zone

"He's shooting at us," Murdick said. "The asshole's got a handgun. Bang-bang. He's going to tip over."

"I've got a profile on him," Flatty said. "We just scanned him. He's using an ordinary automatic, he's wearing a metal detector and a radio. We just monitored him calling his headquarters."

"What headquarters?" Murdick said.

"He's a security guard. He's legal."

"Aw shit," Murdick said, with feeling.

"Leave the bugger alone," Meesle said.

They were still tracking the man, but no longer so recklessly.

Hooper detected in their sympathy a certain kinship with security guards. He felt otherwise. When he realized that the man was a guard and not an alien, he hoped they would go on chasing him — not shoot but disable the man somehow and give him a taste of his own terror. Security guards were never Owners, and they seemed to take acute pleasure in giving Owners a hard time at checkpoints. Owners were absurdly tolerant with them and often even grateful, as if these big slow fools made the whole world safe.

"Don't burn him if he's a guard," Meesle said.

"Why not burn him for being a guard?" Hooper said.

"That would be a clam," Meesle said, and turned his skull face to the ground-screen.

Hooper had heard the word before. "What's a clam?"

"A mistake," Murdick said. "One you can't correct. Like someone you can't bring back from the dead."

But the incident had shown Hooper an important aspect of the hunt: a person chased by a gunship — no matter who— behaved like an alien: panicked, ran, shot back if he had a weapon, and tried to hide. And really, from this height, in a racing gunship, everyone below looked puny and furtive, like an alien.

There was more movement on the ground-screen — another man. Using lights and howlers, the Godseye troopers quickly pinned htm down. He crouched against a tower, and though his face was averted and his hands were over his ears, they knew they could hold him there as long as they wished, blinded and deafened, until they scanned him.

"I hate the ones that don't run," Meesle said. "He's got no fight in him. He's a stiff."

"If he makes a break for it, let's stun him," Murdick said, poking his weapon into the valve and aiming down.

"He's not going to make a break for it," Meesle said. "He's just sitting there, forcing us to do all the work."

Meesle sounded disgusted with the cowering man.

"I hope he's an African or a Hindu or something in Category F," Meesle said. "We won't need clearance. We can fry him in his own fat."

Murdick's unwavering weapon was pointed at the man below.

"They all have diseases."

"He's not carrying any metal," Flatty said, and then cutting down the howler and using a microphone, he demanded that the man produce his ID, so that it could be scanned and validated.

"I'm praying the monkey doesn't have one," Meesle said.

But the man fumbled in his jacket, and wincing at the skull and demon pressed against the portholes of the shuddering gunship, he held up his ID.

Sluter shone a beam on the disc and said, "We're getting a readout. He's local. Works here," and then called over the microphone, "Look up!"

The man turned his naked white face toward the gunship. His eyes were slits and his mouth was puckered in terror. It was as if he were facing a firing squad.

Sluter said, "We are looking at Vernon Morrisett, thirty-nine, a file clerk. He lives in a tower on Thirteenth and B. No offenses."

"I wouldn't live down here," Meesle said. "It's all legal Orientals and approved blacks."

Hooper looked at the frightened face of the crouching man. His clothes were blown by the rotor of the chattering engines. He moved on his hands and knees to keep his balance, and his face was full of the bewildered fear of a man having a nightmare.

"He's never going to be the same again," Murdick said. "The very least he's got is burst eardrums."

"So what? He's not an Owner," Meesle said. "Anyway, he shouldn't be out so late."

They kept talking about the man, and they were so frustrated in not having killed him that after very few minutes they were reproaching themselves for their hesitation and were fully convinced that the man was an outlaw — a Roach or a Skell who had stolen an identity disc.

"Next time we won't be so kind."

Hooper in anticipation pitied anything now that moved on the ground-screen.

There came a shadow, no more than a sliver of darkness, and they gave chase — Murdick poised at the firing valve with his new weapon. But they lost the fleeing thing before they had gone one block.

"Just as well we didn't shoot," Murdick said. But it was insincere consolation — his fury at not shooting was still burning in his voice. "It might have been someone's pet — maybe an expensive attack dog. They don't wake up from these."

"What exactly is that thing, Willis?"

"This is a Wardley Sonic Stunner," Murdick said, chucking the weapon up and sighting with it, and then jerking it in his mitts. "It's made under contract in France. It delivers sonic shock."

Hooper hated the man's silly helmet. The demon faceplate, made of bulletproof high-gloss Velmar, had red flames painted on the eyebrows, and red pointed ears — the concealed phones. And Murdick's monotonous chirp the pitch of a busy signal came out of the grillwork behind the blood-spattered fangs. Murdick was thirty-seven years old!

Still chucking the weapon and gloating, Murdick said, "It directs ultrasonics at the target. It's antipersonnel, so you've got absolutely no peripheral damage. But it has a devastating effect on muscle fibers — makes them go all floppy. You know anything about the principle of sound-chains? It's not on the market yet, on account of some negative data."

"I love those Fizzy phrases," Hooper said.

"It dropped a few animals in some labs," Murdick explained. "Heart attacks. I mean, their hearts just arrested— plop. But see, that's the great thing. When it's calibrated right it just melts the target. I'm talking jelly-effect. No more muscles, and your target's hardly ventilating. It wears off in a day or so, with no aftereffects at all. I know what you're thinking — heart attacks. But they were very small lab animals."

Through his skull teeth, Meesle said, "Murdick and his magic irons. Ever see anyone so well-equipped?"

"You've got to have the right tools for the job," Murdick said. "I just wish," he went on, thrusting the sonic stunner once more through the firing valve, "I just wish we had something to use them on."

Hooper believed they were more dangerous in that frame of mind than in the mood of pretend-outrage he had seen earlier — their reasonable tone on the ground. After three chases there were no trophies, no prisoners; not one shot had been fired. Their impatience was worse than anger, because it gave them a false sense of urgency and made them careless. The gunship seemed to swim amid taunting shadows. The more frustrated Murdick became, the more he hugged his weapon, making adjustments.

"It's important to experiment," Murdick said, knocking his mask against the window.

The gunship still hummed and bumbled between the towers, shaking the passengers and yanking them against their clamps when it changed direction.

Then it climbed steeply, seeming to swallow air.

"Going up," Meesle said in the voice of an elevator operator. "Top floor. Skells, Trolls. Roaches, Outlaws. Pimps—"

He is curing me of being a fool, Hooper thought.

No joke was possible by a man wearing a death's-head mask. Everything he said in that faceplate made him seem either cruel or foolish.

"We've taken a risk-benefit decision," Sluter said over the intercom. "We're crossing into Brooklyn. There's always action in Redhook. Watch the ground-screen and stay on alert."