Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Heep.

It was like being woken by a disruptive dream: a sudden shock that made him remember the dream — like the killer clowns.

Heep.

Was the printer jammed? Maybe choked on one of those vast reports? Strangled by Allbright input, overheated by the length of the profit sheet?

Heep. Heep.

Machines were either works of art or else dumb animals. They were never human. This was an animal sounding an alarm. But it was not the computer. He had shut it down and diverted the messages in order to concentrate on the girl's face. It was not his telephone: that too was re-routed.

Hee—

Across the room, on the floor, was the helmet-mask he had worn in O-Zone — the one with phones — ridiculous thing with bat ears and a chrome throatpiece. He was being signaled on that frequency. It was a summons, but so unexpected it was like a rapping in a stance.

Hooper put the helmet on, feeling foolish.

"Hooper—"

It was Fizzy, snarling, squawking — would he ever have a normal voice?

"Hardy asked me to go to O-Zone, and you too" — and yawned: it was a long growling in Hooper's ears. "You probably don't want to, right?"

Hardy worked underground, in an enclosed office complex under the Asfalt tower. He had no windows, no glimpse of the sky; the one external monitor showed the security desk at the entrance — people having their passes checked. The secrecy demanded of him in his weather work meant that he seldom knew what the weather was outside, whether it was rainy or sunny or, this month, snowing. He did not mind that. It would only have exasperated him to see unplanned precipitation or unanticipated sun, and he hated weather jokes. People were stupid and complacent about the weather; they behaved like the most primitive aliens and believed themselves to be ridiculous victims, constantly fooled by its changes of mood. They knew practically nothing of the secrets of weather management.

Hardy's own research had always been classified. He had never been tempted to discuss it with anyone. Even if he had had the intention, where would he begin? Should he start by saying he had once drowned an entire valley of Mexican peasants in a weather effort? But, no, he had gone too far now in his work for it to be easily explainable — its simple beginning was so long ago, and he was past the point of anyone outside Asfalt understanding it. Today was typical. He was preparing a report on the subject "Weather as a Weapon" — proposing a Subdepartment of Storm Creation in the Department of Defense. What did it matter what anyone thought of it? And anyway, Hardy hated discussing anything until he had come to his own conclusions. People gave you ignorant opinions, not informed judgments — they told you how they felt! Fizzy was one of the few people Hardy knew who could take an idea and consider it with intelligence.

Hardy became distracted wondering whether Fizzy had put the plan to Hooper.

Moura had said, "Fizzy's so strange. I hardly know him now. I'm starting to dislike him."

"We should have been more careful," Hardy said. "You should have."

He felt sure he could have managed the birth better. He had seldom had a problem with his work, and that was a similar sort of calculation. He had always been successful himself in managing nature.

He had grown excited about the idea of a thermal mountain in O-Zone. He paced; he reflected; he had done most of the calculations — billions of liters of oil would be used for the black patch. The patch would cover — and seal-the radioactive hot spots in O-Zone, and if it worked, the same process could be used in other Prohibited Areas in the world, making them very valuable. The precipitation in the adjacent space would probably increase tenfold, and rivers and lakes would be created, and the configuration of the landscape changed, like clay molded by a gigantic hand.

He saw the immensity of black asphalt, and the clouds massing over it — chutes of them, darkening and swelling until they became a great Gothic cathedral of vaults and spires made of the storm. And between gaps of silence, the groans of thunder like breaking hammer-beams released shafts of blinding light — fiery cracks in the stirring clouds, and finally a slow hiss growing to a roar of water, as the rain fell hard on the land, slapping it and giving it life.

The vision brought him back to the theory in his report. A bomb was an isolated convulsion: it was a matter of technique and simple explosives. But to take control of the sky. to manage the insubstantial air — that took genius. To Hardy, there was more beauty in a well-made cloud than in any tower or bridge or city wall; and more use. Those drowned peasants in Mexico: the point was that after that sacrifice there was plenty of water. Those people had not died for nothing. Yet the thought of so many people dying at once in his own flood and mudslide had given Hardy a thrill that shamed him and made him even more secretive, as he dreamed of that black sky over O-Zone or making war with weather.

His report was a sober reasoned thing, but he thought: What a wonderful weapon. What a triumph it would be to drown your enemies, to rain on them and watch them dissolve, to make their country uninhabitable. To parch them and kill them with the slow fire of a drought. To choke them on dust, batter them with hailstones, or bury them in snow. Flood them! Freeze them! Starve them!

And people say to me: What do you really do? — and expect me to give them an answer that will please them.

Storms that could be made to rage day and night for months, beating mountains down in their fury!

That was the substance of his report to Asfalt: Bad Weather. He argued for controlled periods of severe weather as a useful thing. There were disputed areas of Africa and Asia which could be held in check and perhaps settled with storms. He had made videos of the possibilities — mock disasters. The crackle of rain, the whisk of snow; successive spasms of flood, or a prolonged dry spell. No Owner could truly be hurt by bad weather, but for everyone else the lash of weather was splendid and impartial; and the land would always remain.

Here he ended his proposal, but he went on thinking — of storms, and secrecy, and his thermal mountain. His project in O-Zone could prepare the way for other large-scale storm projects. His success would mean a promotion in Asfalt, but that mattered less to him than the fulfillment of his vision of the world: sitting in the windowless concourse under the Asfalt tower and — somewhere in the world — making it rain, making it snow, allowing the sun to shine; making the desert bloom.

He would have promised anything to Fizzy to get him to go to O-Zone for the raw data. Then he saw that the boy really wanted to go, but was afraid. Hardy knew he had no influence on Fizzy — he was not a father but a foster parent, a silly flunkying figure. He was counting on Hooper's boredom and bullying to carry it off and help the boy make up his mind— Hooper's impulsiveness. And he knew, without knowing why, that Hooper badly wanted to go back to O-Zone.

Fisher had explained what hardy wanted, and Hooper said "Yes" before he asked what it was all about. The boy took this eagerness to be pure stupidity.

He had crossed over from his unit to Hooper's, in an adjoining tower at Coldharbor. "Hard copy," he said, looking at the Allbright profit printout scattered in the room. "I'd suffocate on all that junk. What kind of a fuck-wit is it that doesn't store it?"

It was an accusation, not a question. He was not interested in a reply. He saw the Wardley stunner and snatched it.

"That looks like one of those crazy sound-forgers. It works on animal tissue. You can do anything with it. You can bruise, you can disable, you can maim — you can melt!"