Paul Theroux - O-Zone

If there was a difference it was that now the place had more airs of being a medical facility: the white uniforms and gauze masks, the many reception areas, the solicitous instructions and needless clipboards; and all the staff so kindly and courtly, as if they were dealing with problem people. It was that atmosphere that depressed Moura and made her feel like a problem person.

"The director will see you now, Mrs. Allbright."

His name was Varley Sanford. He had founded the original clinic, but Moura had never met him before. He could have been a man of sixty, but he was probably much more than that. He was healthy, old-handsome in the way men sometimes were, rather slim, with a lined, sun-browned face and soft white hair. He had perfect teeth — capped and probably sealed, but a good job. All his gestures suggested a man used to calming women and gaining their confidence, and he had an unhesitating vanity.

His eyes were the giveaway — they were cold and colorless and bulged slightly. He hardly blinked. And his hands were those of a very old man — twisted and a bit shrunken in the slack skin. But it was not the age or that look that frightened her. There was also something reptilian about them — the thin digits with sharp narrow nails, the yellowing cuticle, the slippery skin that had a dry sheen on it. He had a lizard's unwavering gaze, and a limp reptile's handshake — he merely presented his hand and let Moura weigh it in her own. And her attention was drawn to the hands again, because just as Moura sat down Sanford clawed a piece of paper from his desk and held it rattling near his face — those fingers, those eyes.

"You don't have to introduce yourself," he said. It disconcerted Moura that Sanford still clutched the paper printout. "We know you. How is your son?"

"He is the reason I'm here," Moura said.

How could the man stare like that without blinking?

"I want to ask you about his father," Moura said, and she decided to be careful. Sanford had the sort of stare that made you talkative.

"We don't use that word. I'm sure you mean the donor. What do you want to ask?"

"His name."

Sanford's hands became very still. There was a pause on his face, and his features tensed and swelled slightly, as if the man were resisting an expression trying to surface. Moura was impressed by his control, but she was also impatient for him to speak.

"I'm willing to pay you for the information."

His hands were hairless and slender, with knobby joints, and the skin was covered with crescent wrinkles, as if cut with scales. The paper was pressed between his fingertips.

"Please say something."

He slowly drew his lips apart and said, "I've had stranger requests than that."

"I am only interested in my request," Moura said.

"Of course." Now he seemed to be smiling, and this was worse than his other frozen face. "Strange requests are always considered, and if they are granted there is always a surcharge of some kind. But we have strict regulations. As a contact clinic, we are working in a very sensitive area."

Moura said, "Don't make needless explanations. I know what business you are in now."

"Our business has always been family planning."

"How many of your clients want babies?"

"Not wanting them is also family planning."

Moura said, "Nowadays, women come here to be fucked."

He had put the printout down, but now, using only his nails, he scratched it from the desktop and took it into his hand, and he rattled it as he spoke.

"You sound indignant," he said. "But you were a steady client of ours for almost two years. We have no record of any complaint from you."

"That was sixteen years ago."

Sanford stood up. He did not speak. He locked the printout into his desk and beckoned Moura into the next room.

It was the sort of security room she had seen at Captain Jennix's checkpoint at Coldharbor — monitors, a bank of them, covered one wall. There were fifty or more, and their square screens made a chessboard pattern on the wall. Jennix's were always lighted, showing parts of Coldharbor— corridors and sidewalks — and parts of the city. But these screens in Sanford's room were cold and like his eyes had a surface gleam that was colorless and impenetrable. That's what it was about his eyes — he could see out but you couldn't see in.

Still he had not said anything. She hated his silences most of all. He reached and activated a dozen pressure pads, cutting the light and glare, and then he shook his control pistol at the monitors and in a drizzle of light blobs eight or ten of the screens came on.

The images were green-tinted orange at first, and then the flesh tones of naked bodies — so frail-looking and plain on these small screens. A hooded man lay with his head between the scissors of a woman's legs on one. On another a woman knelt over a man's face. They seemed feeble and a little frantic — that woman on all fours impaled by the man behind her — their close embrace like that of a pair of copulating frogs. In two others the woman sat on men, in another a woman was tied to the bedposts. The sound was turned off, but in one a woman was obviously shrieking with pleasure: Holly—

"Don't turn away," Sanford said. "Look."

But she had looked — she had seen everything. She tried to complete a thought: Sex is always solitary and selfish, and—

"We had those screens sixteen years ago," Sanford said, switching them off. "We were years ahead of our time." He had moved to the door. His voice was almost without emphasis. He seemed very sure of himself. "Go home, Mrs. Allbright, and think about those screens." He might have been giving directions to a small child. "They are the answer to everything. Think carefully, and come back if you like. But please be warned. They are also the answer to questions that you haven't yet asked."

It was dark enough now, Hooper thought — late on their fifth day at Firehills. He played a small light on Fisher's closed eyes.

The expression on the boy's face when he was asleep made Hooper love him more. He was so young! And he was innocent, his face unmarked, no scars — only a scatter of pimples — and so pale. With his eyes shut he seemed very fragile. He had a temporary, suspended look in sleep, his lips just parted, as if he were about to fall and break. The awful word "genius" was perfect, because there was something useless and unearthly about a genius.

The boy stirred in the light, then blinked — compressed his cheeks and squinted, giving himself a mole's squeezed face.

"You fucking herbert!" he said. Now he was awake.

He tried to say more but he choked on his fear, and he had stiffened in his sleep capsule. He did not move — he was deader than he had seemed asleep.

"It's me, Fizz — don't yell," Hooper said. "We're shooting."

Fisher just managed to groan, "I'm staying here."

"You're safer with me."

"Negative!"

There was no alternative: tonight, Fizzy could not refuse. It was to be Hooper's final push. But he had not said so.

Each night he had slipped out alone and muffled the rotor and flown to the forward base he had established. He had then trekked ten clicks, to where the aliens had moved. He waited; he watched; he filmed, returning at dawn to Firehills. There, Fisher scanned and interpreted the videotape.

These shoots were possible and productive because the aliens were also hunting at night, and they had put themselves at a disadvantage. They had moved their camp — obviously because of the New Year's Day ambush and those killings. So this was for them new territory: they were truly aliens here. They had no gardens, no huts, no defenses. Their dogs were gone — had they eaten them? They seemed to have little food. They went in search of small animals, which they trapped. They gathered wood. They grazed their animals — a skinny cow, a pair of goats. All this in the darkness of the woods, when the moon was down. They had survived so far, but they were having a difficult time, Hooper could tell. They were divided and desperate; they were blind.