Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Though he had only crossed from his tower in a tube, staying inside Coldharbor the whole time, Fisher was dressed for the outdoors. He was dressed for contamination conditions. He was dressed for the moon. He wore leaded boots and mechanical hands and a high collar. He wore a radio helmet, and his mask hung loose around his neck on a strap. He wore a survival pack on his belt — Hooper knew there was a body bag and a week's rations in the bag. His suit was thick and air-conditioned, and his radio crackled as he talked.

Hooper was touched by the boy's seriousness, his belief in the expensive equipment. It was another example of his innocence — his thinking that because he wore this stuff he was safe. He did not yet know all the ways he could be harmed.

He had hardly looked up from the weapon. He seemed genuinely interested in its workings, unlike Murdick, for whom it was just another deadly boast. "I was out a week ago with Murdick."

"That porker."

"It's his. I took it off him."

"That porker," Fisher repeated, but he was still studying the weapon, scrutinizing its options panel.

"It's got something to do with stunning people, using vibrations. It makes their muscles seize up."

"Tell me about it," Fisher said — mocking in his clumsy way. He sighted with it, screwing up one eye. Then he placed it on the floor and knelt over it. "This thing's lethal."

"Murdick says it's safe,"

"Murdick's a porker," Fisher said. "It's got a design fault. The controls are housed under the sonic generator and they're not isolated. As soon as you start wailing away, the sound penetrates the panel. Look, it's on the highest setting. Plus, it's got a flare on the muzzle instead of a pipe fitting. There's a unit missing."

Hooper loved him for his jargon, and though Fizzy's tone was his terrible squawk, Hooper wanted him to continue.

"What should I tell Murdick?" he asked to encourage the boy.

"Murdick must know this! With a pipe fitting to squeeze the vibes, you have to aim, but with a flare you can't miss. It sprays a beam about a meter wide. Hey, did you see him use this thing?"

Hooper said yes.

Fizzy's lips were drawn tight, "He didn't miss."

"He stunned some people. I saw it."

"He probably melted them," Fisher said. "He certainly stiffed them. It's highly sophisticated but it's set on overload. It could be very useful. But it's dangerous at the moment. I want to take it apart. I want to fix it. I know how."

He probably did know how — he was usually right. But once again Hooper was on guard, feeling both admiration and uneasiness in the boy's presence. Sometimes Hooper wanted to laugh out loud; then he would pause and become thoughtful. Fizzy was such a strange boy. He noticed everything. He never smiled. His bad manners were his major fault, but it was his bad manners that reminded you that he was human, and that reminder made him bearable.

It was then, while Fizzy was describing how he would go about fixing the weapon, that Hooper remembered he had said yes to O-Zone.

"What's it all about?" he asked.

"Don't know," Fisher said. He had seen the earlier inquiry, the prospectus, and he was almost certain that Hardy was planning a thermal mountain. All this he had gathered by hacking into Hardy's computer, and he had known before the trip to O-Zone that it was not a New Year's party but an exploratory took for a longitudinal field study, for Asfalt.

"You didn't ask?"

"Don't care," Fisher said. It was just an excuse to sell surplus oil! Hardy imagined himself to be Jove, hurling thunderbolts, but he was just a tool of the oil people, telling them where to squirt it. He was an oil can! "Hardy's a dong. All he does is lie to me."

"That's very uncharacteristic of you, Fizz. I think of you as having an inquiring mind."

"I'm not too sure I want to go." There was a twang of timidity in his voice.

"You're not afraid, are you?"

Fisher said, "I'm not a field scientist," and his eyes went black in anger. His skin was very pale — almost chalky near the red eruptions of his pimples. He looked absurd in his spacesuit.

He's fifteen years old, Hooper thought. He said, "O-Zone — just the two of us. It could be a good trip. We could learn things. This time we could do it right."

There was nothing else on earth that he wanted. The young girl was now very clear and within reach. Hooper was on the verge of telling Fizzy exactly what he planned and how Hardy's offer could not have come at a better time.

But Fizzy had begun to bristle. He looked like a stuffed toy, and his inner trouser legs scraped as he stalked to the wall, where there was a full-length mirror.

He said, "They could have done a whole lot better. They didn't have to settle for this. I know I'm smart, but I could have been a lot taller. I could have been stronger. I could have had risk training when I was, say, four or five."

He was challenging himself in the mirror, and still sneering at what he saw, and seeming to glare past his reflection at his parents.

"But they were stupid," he said. "Especially Hardy. He ordered Moura to make her own choice. I'd like to know where she. went. She could have done better. She could have made me taller."

Hooper stared at him, and smiled, and licked the smile off his face. He realized that Fizzy was talking about fertilization — the clinic, the pedigree, the achievement and type number. The boy was facing himself and complaining.

"I could have been a lot bigger," Fisher said sourly. He opened his mouth and showed his teeth to the mirror. "They starved me."

"What's wrong?"

"I hate my teeth. And I'm too small."

"Your teeth are fine. You're a big boy. You're big enough."

"Hardy gave me an anxiety attack!"

Hooper didn't know what to say.

"Some people are really stupid!"

Fizzy seemed on the point of smashing the mirror, for the image he saw in it.

"Why bother getting a high type-number if you don't get the highest one?"

His voice had cracked in the middle, and the absurdly high note combined with the growl of his trying to recover his voice made him sound particularly pitiful.

Hooper said, "You're fine, Fizzy! You're a remote student. You've got university exemption. You get great scores. Look at me. I had to go to college. I wore a beanie! I failed my exams! I drank beer!"

"I'm not talking about you," Fisher said — merely moving his eyes to glance at Hooper. What was the connection between this rich foolish man and himself? Hooper had come out of another age — he was probably thirty-nine. When you asked him a question he grinned like a goon and showed you the big space between his two front teeth. But Fisher saw himself as a new man, and so he was maddened each time he had to contend with the evidence that he was imperfect. He knew it made him anxious, it made him overdress.

"They got me a brain, but they screwed up all the basic factors. I'm not big enough, not strong enough. I hate my face. I get nosebleeds. I have shallow breathing. I grind my teeth. I'm fear-oriented. I've got shitty reflexes. It's all her fault. I could have been a trooper!"

"Take it easy, kid." But with this plea the boy looked especially sad in his expensive suit and wired helmet and bulgy boots. And the survival bag flapping against his thigh made him seem pathetic. What was it about equipment that made people look weak and uncertain?

Perhaps Fizzy had seen the same pathos in the mirror. He turned away from it and said, "I wanted to go out the other night. I tried. I was afraid."

There were tears in his eyes.

"I hung around the checkpoint talking to that idiot Jennix about space travel. He's a Rocketman. He's lining up a place on a station, he said. He wants to migrate to a space platform. He's such a fucking wonka. He's afraid, too! He's worse than me!"