Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Fisher had not been shouted at by any of these people until then, and when it happened he almost fainted. The sharp sound pierced him and gave him a pain in his heart. It rapped against his head, and when he saw the man's open mouth and his huge teeth and tongue his fear of being eaten came back. It was not a fear of death, but rather of teeth sinking into his flesh — of being eaten alive.

He could not speak, though an imploring voice within him was saying: Get me a printer or a frame and I'll key in anything you say and transmit it to my uncle! I'll do what you tell me! He knew he could not write well, nor use a pen with any skill. But he wanted to send the message and he was paralyzed by the fear that if he didn't they would tear off his arms and eat them — or simply start chewing his shoulders and biting his cheeks.

"He's saying something—"

Fisher himself did not know what he was saying. It was all a moaning in his ears.

"He wants a printer," Rooks said, as if translating.

Mr. Blue said, "He means some kind of cable rig. He thinks we have computers, frames, screens, phones, satellite links. He can't write."

Someone else was crumpling the paper. "This bullshit is no use to us."

"He's retarded — handicapped or something," Echols said. "Maybe he's got a motor problem. He seems a little dys-trophic, the way he moves, the way he was holding that pen — could hardly get his fingers around it."

"He acts like a cripple," Martlet said. "He'll cripple us."

There was a sudden chatter of opinion, everyone talking at once, but Mr. Blue made himself heard.

"Who wants him?" he said.

The question silenced them.

"Then we hand him back now, and no big negotiation. Come on, we're just wasting time."

"He's a drooly."

They pulled him up roughly and tried to trot him through the woods. But he resisted. He moved slowly. He was stiff and frightened. He had never run before in his life. His head felt small and fragile without the helmet. He could barely breathe.

''Can't run either!" Gumbie said. He was laughing at the way the boy stumbled.

Fisher knew why they were so rough and careless — because they would be rid of him soon and they had no regard for human life. He thought: Good, they don't want me. But he was also ashamed. He had tried to talk to them, he had tried to write a message to Hooper, he had tried to run. He had failed, and he had had to listen to someone say He's a drooly.

They carried him, four of them swinging him in a net, the way they had snatched him out of the rotor an hour ago.

The sun was higher — not above the trees yet but still striking brightly through the boughs — and the huge sky was one simple color that seemed to drown the eye. Fisher was watching it through the branches as he swung, his face upturned, hating these dusty woods and the men trotting beside him and gasping ump-ump-ump. He thought: Get me out of here.

Hooper would save him. Hooper was chief of ground operations, and Fisher was captain. He would demand that Hooper agree to the bargain, give them anything they wanted. And then when they saw Fisher ordering Hooper around, and Hooper saying Yes, sir, they would understand that Fisher was actually a very powerful person — not a drooly, not handicapped, not a cripple, but the captain and commander of a delicate mission to O-Zone.

And when he was safely aboard the rotor he would take the particle beam and destroy these monkeys.

Already, in his mind, he was burning them to dust. During this run to the sinkhole where they had put the rotor, this thought kept Fisher breathing. He would climb into the rotor and rise in it, and then just hover and pour fire on them and blow them all away. He saw them dancing in pain and then dying among the dead trees.

The swinging bag made him nauseous. There was something about nausea that always intensified his fear by weakening him still more.

"The hole's other side of that hollow."

"Just hand this pig back," someone was saying.

He did not recognize anything here. Hooper had landed in darkness, and it had been dark when they had manhandled him out of the rotor.

"It's gone."

"What did he do with Bligh?"

Fisher began yelling, "Where is he! Where's Hooper! Put out a Mayday call and raise him! Use my helmet phone!"

But no one responded, no one spoke to him. Perhaps they had not heard his voice? He knew he was hysterical. He was gagging on mucus. But was his voice merely a shrill noise in his head?

The men were discouraged that the hole was empty, and probably because they were so hungry they went suddenly limp from the effort of this run. They were saying, "He got Bligh" and "We're stuck with this fish," and cursing.

Fisher had begun to struggle again in the rope bag, trying to get free of it so that he could actually see into the sinkhole. They let him struggle and loosen the drawstring, they let him kick the bag until he realized that he could simply step out of it. It was as though they had just given him an intelligence test, but a simple one, to prove he was not a complete basket case.

Fisher pushed the ropes apart and ran to the edge of the wide hole. He saw four faint dents in the dust from the pads on the rotor's feet. The hole had an odd scoured look from the whirling rotor blades.

"You dong, you wang, you fucking tool!" he screamed. "You're responsible for my safety!"

He was on his knees.

The others did nothing but watch him in a vaguely irritated way. But he would stop his squawking soon-he would never be able to keep that up.

When the men came for him he said, "I'm still captain," and began to cry.

He could not walk. He had lost his voice. He could hardly see. The pains in his arms and stomach were a kind of gnawing, and a torment, telling him how it would feel when they held him — tearing his flesh, biting his toes — and ate him alive.

Back at the hidden camp he covered his face and became very still. His fear had distorted all his senses. His eyesight was poor and yet he heard everything as twice as loud. He had no sense of taste at all, but what he smelled was rotten, filling his nostrils with the furry stink of decay. His hands and fingers and all his hinges were numb, and yet the gnawing pains persisted in his body. He had never had such an awareness of his body, the frailty of it — its stupidity; of such a devastating sense that his intellect was useless. He could not seem to help himself from growing stupider.

The odor of food made him sick. They called it food! He could not eat. He could not distinguish between their feeding him and their torturing him. Wasn't it the same thing? They insisted that he eat, showing him a burned bone, and they kept up their punishing demand. But he refused. It was the odor, the sight of hanging meat — some dead animal that they wanted him to take into his twisted stomach.

"I saved that meat for him," Martlet said. "And he didn't eat it."

A black man offering him food! Probably flobbed on it!

"He's got to eat sooner or later."

Fisher was nauseous, but he was also very hungry. His hunger gave him a severe headache, and tired him; yet he could not sleep. He spent the rest of that long day and the first night shivering at the back of the cave in a mouse nest of dead grass, thinking: I am dead.

In the morning he saw a gray patch on the cave wall that was the size of the screen on Pap. He tried to calm himself by staring at it. He fastened his dim eyes to it and got some strength from this concentration. The sky, the sun, all the empty space — the smells, the noise — deranged him. He felt he could go mad in all this bad air. He had no helmet! His suit was torn! These people had no protection, but they were aliens, they were hardly human. They were probably mutants, or else sick, or crazy.