Paul Theroux - O-Zone

In this silence and ripening tight the man stood up and everything happened.

He ran forward and picked out Bligh. He flung himself at her. But as he did so, Hooper fired the stunner and the man dropped. He fell with a flop, like a heavy sack, and his grunt was the air thumped out of his mouth.

It took several seconds for Bligh to realize she was safe from the man.

"Don't run," Hooper said. "I'm over here."

The light was enough.

She seemed curious rather than afraid. Hooper could see the wonderment on her face, the thought: Who. .? She was thin now. She wore an old coat, and her hair was bright and chopped.

"Bligh," he said.

She looked closer and almost smiled at hearing her name— she seemed touched, as if she had just heard someone praying.

In his mind, Hooper had always pursued her and taken aim with Murdick's sonic stunner, which Fizzy had repaired — Fizzy had the new model with him in the rotor. (It was the boy's peculiar selfishness that he kept all the expensive and elaborate equipment with him, and never used it.) Hooper had imagined stunning her with one shot, and on waking she was his — he had never questioned how.

He was amazed by how very different all this was. He was improvising — it was new to him, and clumsy. He observed himself taking off his mask and dropping it, and throwing his stunner aside, and taking off his gloves. His hands were bare — he could see he was trembling.

She watched him very closely with alert eyes — they were big and pale; they missed nothing. Her head was erect on her long neck, and steady like a deer's in a breeze.

"I love you," he said, and felt liberated by saying the word.

It was only then that her face clouded and she backed away.

That morning Moura had said, "He's never been gone this long before." But Hardy was just as evasive as he had been at the beginning. He was evasive in an active hectoring way. He first went deaf and demanded that Moura repeat what she said — the worry; then he ridiculed her for worrying; then accused her of being suspicious, and finally of wasting time— it was too late, he said; didn't she know that simple thing?

It was probably the only thing that he had in common with Fizzy, that he was overbearing and abusive when he was nervous; at his most truculent when he was fearful. Then you poked him and he collapsed.

Now he was saying, "Hooper got him out of his room somehow — for almost a week so far! That's more than we ever managed to do!"

It was all blame. He meant: You failed him, you neglected him, you turned him into a robot, a tool, a supermoron — and you're his mother!

"I don't know whether you understand," Hardy said, "but Fizzy's childishness humiliates me. I feel as though I have to carry him — and I don't like it. I'm not his father. I'm not responsible. I don't know him — I used to, but I don't anymore. It's sometimes that way with children, isn't it?" But he did not wait for a reply. "You don't understand."

And then Hardy went about his business. He might be late, he said. He was working in the Asfalt Annex — more evasions: there was no Asfalt Annex, Hardy must have just invented it.

But he was not stupid. It had occurred to Moura many times that in creating these evasions Hardy had made himself a free man.

She wished she had some of that freedom. But she felt burdened by her past and had only lately realized how much of it was Fizzy — how this horrible-handsome boy disturbed her. Her conversation with Hardy had upset her. She had been worried, and it was related to Fizzy. But how could she tell Hardy that she was making another visit, this time alone, to the contact clinic? He would have said, "What are you trying to prove?" and she didn't have an answer to that.

It was her third visit to the clinic in less than a week — but "clinic" was the wrong word. It was a meat market, it was a doghouse, it was a stud farm. She hated its hidden exits and entrances, all its face-saving secrets, the rotor park on the rooftop, the blacked-out windows. Its pretense of being involved in medical research and technology was a shallow mockery, and all that talk about fertility and babies and programs! She hated the bad expensive decor and the subdued and cheating lights, and the oversized plants, and the tests and examinations. Most of all she hated the solemn medical manner of the staff, who were all pimps and whores.

"You can go up now, Moura" — she hated the way these so-called nurses had quickly gotten onto a first-name basis— "Dr. Sanford is expecting you."

And she hated the nurse's knowing face and her brisk bullying manner — standing watch over her until she started upstairs.

"To be perfectly honest, I didn't expect to see you again," Sanford said. "But here you are, so let's get down to business."

They were in the room with the checkerboard wall of video screens, and Sanford had begun switching monitors on and activating machines, tapping pressure pads and pushing chairs forward as soon as they had entered.

Moura was intimidated by the monitors'—by her memory of the glimpse Sanford had given her: that awful combination of high technology and poor frantic flesh. It went against her upbringing for her to feel ashamed — and she wasn't ashamed. Yet she wondered whether her anger and indignation were a mask for shame. The clinic was perniciously spic-and-span, and she was disgusted with herself for being there. But she held on to her doubts, because always in her life it was her doubts that saved her. She thought: This is what I was, but is this what I am now?

She knew the sad greedy women who came here and stuffed themselves full with sex. They acted out their fantasies. No one was shocked here, because everything had a price: some fantasies were merely more expensive than others. None were priceless. That was the logic of the meat market — every cut was for sale. She had never believed that she was one of those women, and that was why she was able to return here.

Sanford's fussing distracted her in these thoughts and brought her back to her immediate purpose.

"Shouldn't we be discussing terms?" she said, because she saw him slipping a video cartridge into a slot.

"We're very old-fashioned here—"

Why was it that crooks and liars always used that phrase?

"— we're in business to make money. And I've found that for people in certain moods, money is no object."

He had not turned to look at her as he spoke. It was a gauge of his contempt, not to turn. It was also a medical man's arrogance; and it was the arrogance of a pimp.

Now the largest screen was lighted. Sanford said, "All this was a long time ago, of course."

She guessed that his elaborate manner was a way of wrong-footing her, and she felt that he was behaving this way because he suspected that she was in a weak position — she had come with a request: she needed him — so he must have thought. Perhaps he also suspected that she despised him. Beneath his fluttering phrases and gestures there was mockery. She was convinced of his sadism, because he was so much worse when he smiled.

He was smiling at the screen. It was an old video; she could tell from its scratchy surface and occasional jumps, its rattled lines, its poor color quality — parched in some shots and garish in others.

But there was no mistaking the young man. She looked upon his beaked mask thinking: A mask is also a face.

"Is that him?"

She only watched; she said nothing. But she felt as if she were at the edge of a cliff that was breaking beneath her and bearing her down. The man had entered a room. He was naked except for the mask — and that looked a little fierce. There was no sound, but she knew the man was speaking.

"Tell me his name," Moura said at last.

"Just watch," Sanford said.