Paul Theroux - O-Zone

They had started to walk again. Fisher sensed that no one was listening to him, and stopped talking.

"I'm hungry," he said after a while.

Martlet said, "Now he wants to eat!"

There was not enough daylight left for them to get back to their previous night's camp, where they had buried their provisions. But they were eager to be as far away from Varnado as they could. They climbed to the ridge on the first range of hills and stayed there. It was too dangerous to make the descent on the narrow track in the dark. They ate pine nuts and hawthorn buds they had gathered on the way up, and they promised themselves a better meal tomorrow. It was a cool night, and there was drifting dust, but Fisher was comfortable enough in his insulated suit, in a nest of pine needles and leaves. The others slept together, huddled in a heap under some woven blankets.

In a groggy voice Fisher spoke to the darkness: "People in New York think O-Zone is peaceful."

He still marveled that he was alive — after his abduction, after the dirt, the bad food and no sleep, and the marching, after the frightening encounter in Varnado: those children, that Bagoon man, the Diggers. I am alive, he thought.

He had begun to relax, and as his panic left he discovered that he was very tired. He had loosened his grip on wakefulness and was already plunging fast into streaming fathoms of sleep. He was wakened from this slumber by a reply — one of the men.

"Ozark, not O-Zone."

"The Outer Zone," Fisher said, slipping under again.

He woke, shivering, and heard the crackle of a fire. It was daylight. He had noticed that they only made fires during the day, and often no fires at all. They lived lightly in a skimming way on the land, with no signs of their having passed through.

This morning they were all on their feet, standing in a circle, warming themselves. They were laughing — talking about thick soup and hot tea and fresh bread — what they would do to get some.

They were handsome in their headcloths, their scarves wound around their faces against the dust and the chill. And their shawls and their cloaks gave them the look of Arabs or Gypsies. They had the right clothes for this hot-cool place and its dryness. Fisher no longer noticed that they were wearing faded rags; they seemed camouflaged and well-equipped. "We could strain some water through Gumbie's socks."

"Would that give us soup or tea?"

"Oh, man," Gumbie said, and looked at his feet. Fisher stood up and staggered. He pushed at his hair and yawned and limped over to them. He chucked a large stick on their fire, scattering sparks and killing the flames for a moment. Warming his hands, he bumped the others and stumbled, stepping on someone's toes. Then, to be companionable — though no one had said anything — he laughed abruptly. He opened his mouth very wide and honked Ha! Ha! Ha!

The others looked at him slowly, with polite horror. They were startled and suspicious, and their silence silenced the boy's honks,

"Where do you brush your teeth around here?" Fisher did not see their apprehension or their mockery. "Where do you squirt?"

They laughed at this, and he was glad. He was so happy to have woken up among them. One of his nightmares last night concerned torture in Varnado. It was a stone or a stick pressing into his back, but his nightmare made it into a knife blade. And the odd burr of insects in the night had given him a glimpse of the filthy Bagoon, that Digger scratching his scalp.

But now he was drinking air in the clear morning light by the fire — you needed permission for fires in New York, and this kind was forbidden! Anyway, you'd never find the wood! This wasn't civilized but it wasn't too bad. He now saw Diggers as dangerous cannibals, and decided that he was safe. Mr. Blue was decent, for an alien. Fisher liked the way these people had risen early and made their fire. He had somehow thought that they would be snuffling under their blankets all day, and biting each other, or else waiting for it to rain. He couldn't imagine what you did if you didn't have a room.

They were outdoors all the time! But he was reassured by their human laughter, even if he didn't understand their jokes.

He wanted to please them. He had never tried to please anyone before in his life. He believed that his laughing very hard and very loud was one way; that asking dumb questions was another; and that being useful — repairing the signal and the beam — would make them grateful to him. It would surely please them to know that he was very powerful; but he regretted that they were not intelligent enough to understand his particle theory — Of Subsequence. He longed to impress them, but they did not have any math, so it was perhaps impossible — unless he was able to turn his learning into a trick. He kept laughing in odd stuttering shouts — he honked, he hee-hawed like a jackass.

He said, "Do you aliens notice the cold? You probably think I'm a herbert but if it's a couple of degrees down I can't move!"

They stared at him, scarcely believing.

He said, "I was just joking about brushing your teeth, by the way. Mine are sealed. But you've got to do something or else you'd get wicked bad breath."

They said nothing to him, and yet still stared.

He said, "I used to think you people were cannibals. Hey, you must have heard the stories!"

He spoke to Rooks.

"That you kept Owners for their meat!"

Rooks was a wheezy-faced black with blown-out cheeks and a flat head and a deeply pitted nose. He had made himself a thick collar with his scarf. His color frightened Fisher, even though Hooper had said there were legal blacks all over New York. Fisher had never spoken to one, and he could not imagine that this man understood English. He had not seemed to hear; he had not blinked.

But now he took his mouth out of his scarf and spoke back to Fisher.

"If I was a cannibal," Rooks said, "I certainly wouldn't eat you. I'd only eat you if I was a vegetarian."

Broop-broop, someone was laughing.

And so Fisher laughed — gave his sudden honk — and it was such a surprise to everyone that they laughed with him.

"Those Diggers!" he cried between honks. "I was scared! I thought I was going to brick myself!"

Mr. Blue interrupted him and said they had a long day ahead of them. He said, "And we could take those provisions home. We should go back to the valley."

"Which one?" Fisher asked. "This zone is full of down-thrown massifs and cave tectonics!"

"Happy Valley," Gumbie said.

"Sounds like a funny kind of depression," Fisher said. "Hey, get it?" He became very grave and added, "I don't blame you. I hate jokes mysetf. You always get them from porkers. 'What's four feet high and has three ears?' That kind of wonk. I don't even listen to it."

They boiled water and drank it,

"White tea," Valda said.

Fisher had some and complimented them. "It's pretty sensible to boil it, you know. You guys aren't doing too bad."

Then they kicked the fire into a hole and scattered the piles of leaves and dragged branches over their tracks. They walked along the ridge and down the hill to the place where they had buried their provisions.

"This isn't the place," Fisher said. "It was farther down the slope!"

No one said he was wrong. Mr. Blue moved a rock and dug out some soil and lifted a box of provisions.

"We could bury a bug or a sensor, and then afterward we'd know just where to dig," Fisher said.

"We could bury you, sonny," Martlet said. "And then you'd know."

Mr. Blue had knifed open the box. He said, "We'll split open one of these protein packs and rehydrate some of those vegetables. But that's just to get us started. We're going to spend the next few days finding our own food — as much as we can,"

"Like animals," Fisher said, showing his teeth and grinning, trying to please them. It was not a smile; it was merely a way of twisting his mouth.