Paul Theroux - O-Zone

They were watching him.

"Just food-gathering! Using the whole day to grab food, and storing it up, and just thinking about eating! That's what wild animals do! Ha!"

Their silence overtook him and smothered the echo of his laugh.

In a challenging voice Martlet said, "What are you planning to do, Fish?"

"Fix the hardware!" Fisher said. "When you come back from your nut-gathering you're going to hear a radio going zip-de-zip. You might even have a particle beam. You've never had one of those before. You're going to like that!"

"Dippy-dip," Rooks said.

Mr. Blue broke open a tube of textured protein.

"It's made for the space program," Fisher said. "They've got all different flavors. The nozzle's for fitting on a suckhole, but you can eat it without a suckhole: I'm the only one here with a helmet, right!"

"It looks like shit," Tinia said; and the other woman, Kylie, said, "Sure does."

"It tastes like shit, too," Martlet said.

Fisher said, "You guys eat dead animals!"

Their stare was like a disapproving noise.

"Hey, I eat meat now and then," Fisher said. "Really!"

They were all chewing fragments of the protein mixture now, and this chewing was more intimidating to Fisher than their stares.

"Fart-food," Echols said.

Fisher said, "It goes good with glucose."

"No glucose, no sealed drinks," Mr. Blue said. "We can dig for water. Then we set off and collect some grub."

They filled a soup pot with some freeze-dried vegetable flakes from the sealed provisions, and boiled them in water, and let the flakes swell — the contents were thick and sludgy, they soaked up so much water. And the people ate them using wooden implements out of their packs. Mr. Blue ate sitting on the ground. His back was perfectly straight, like a classical musician in a chair — a man with a violin, except he had a wooden spoon and wet vegetable flakes. He ate without a sound, listening hard, as he scooped each flake neatly and raised it to his mouth.

When they were done, Mr. Blue gave them tasks. Most were to gather food, or else process it; one was to keep watch on the ridge. Fisher, Echols, and Valda were to stay in the camp.

"I don't need help from them," Fisher said. "They're ignorant about this stuff. It's very sophisticated circuitry — just slugs and chips. It doesn't have moving parts, you know!"

"How old are you, Fish — fifteen, right?"

"Sixteen in a couple of months. Hey, listen, a theoretical physicist is washed up at twenty-five or so, and a mathematician even earlier. Your brain turns to mush. Einstein did all his serious thinking in his twenties. So did Ravensdale, the particle man — he did this big thing on densities and speeds. I was working on the interrupted mode — beam-bending. You don't understand any of this stuff, do you? What I mean is, I'm old!"

"Sure," Mr. Blue said. "And that's why I want you to keep an eye on these people, Fish."

"I'll be captain," the boy said.

He fretted about finding the right place to work, but when he found a flat rock, he worried about dust getting into the works of the helmet. He whimpered about the light being bad and about not having the right tools. He had only the emergency kit from the lining of his suit. He seemed very young and very nervous, and he snapped at Echols and Valda, "These are caveman conditions! This is year zero! And you don't know the first thing about this category of helmet. You probably think it's some kind of hat!"

But when at last he opened the helmet and set to work on it he became calmer and conversational.

"This helmet's a Velmar Victor. It's got about a hundred functions, and that's just in the communication mode," he said. "You don't have the slightest idea." He removed the dome with his bony fingers. "This is where your energy cells are housed. This is how we test them—"

In a patient but doubtful way, Valda and Echols sat watching the boy. They were each knitting, moving two short spikes through some coarse yam. It was one of the habits of these people, Fisher had noticed, their routine of knitting whenever they were at rest. They made narrow lengths of woven ribbon that matched the patterns in their clothes. Every scarf they wore was sewn together from such woven strips. Their spikes clicked as they watched Fisher.

"I hate my head," Fisher said suddenly, looking up and making a face. "The shape of it, the way it bulges in the back." His gaze met Valda's, "I know what you're thinking. Too bad about his ears. They're way too big."

Valda said, "I hadn't noticed."

"Then there is something really wrong with your eyesight," the boy said. "Plus, my left ear is smaller and a fraction lower than the right. God, I hate being asymmetrical." Now his head was down, his nose against the helmet. "The cells are fully charged, from your wearing it, Mr. Echols. Though you had it on wrong. Probably thought it was a hat, right?"

Echols said, "How long are those cells good for?"

"Stymax — no upper limit!" Fisher said, poking inside the mask. "And my sinuses, too — they fill up. I get wicked sneezing fits and my nose drips. And I've got flat feet, practically no arches at all. If I took these boots off and walked through this dust — which I would never do, because there's probably hookworm here, but let's say I did — you'd see duck prints. I'm not kidding. Webbed feet."

He was still tinkering.

"This is such a beautiful thing. Look at the circuitry, all those chips. This was developed for high-risk areas. It's shockproof and sensitive. Look at the technology, the.bands, the slugs, the sniffer. This baby doesn't sneeze!" He handed Echols the dome. "Hold that — don't drop it."

"I'll try not to," Echols said.

"If you do," Fisher said, "you're wasting about two million bucks' worth of research technology."

"We'll try to remember that, won't we, Valda?"

"If my parents weren't such porkers I'd have a head like this" — he was gripping the temples of the helmet. "I wouldn't have these stupid ears. These duck feet. These spastic reflexes. My sinuses wouldn't be fouled up. It's their fault."

He glanced over and saw them staring, and for a moment their stares held him.

"My mother decides to go to a clinic. She gets a printout. The clinic's a meat market, staffed by wonks and weirdos. She doesn't run a check on the printout, so obviously there are negative factors. She just looks at a few items instead of the whole data profile. Then she goes for about two years. This is a contact clinic, I'm not kidding. She's up there playing Mrs. Sandwich and Hide-the-Sausage, and all the rest of it. She figures there's a problem. Two years — she's still wondering! She could have gone on to frozen angels, but no, she's got Mr. Sausage and his magic knob doing the job. Finally, she's positive, barf-barf, and she gets scanned and plunged, and here I am. And you're wondering why I'm so pissed off?"

He had returned to the helmet.

"That red bulge is the signal," he said. "See if we can get it talking to us."

His tongue was clamped between his teeth, and he looked like a small boy struggling with a toy. He twisted a cartridge and pressed his thumb on a bulb. A sound came out of its perforations like fingers snapping. "This is what I'm good at. What are you porkers good at?*'

"We know how to evaporate," Echols said.

"What does that mean?"

"We can evaporate. That's how we've survived. That's what we're good at."

"Half the time I don't even know what you're talking about," Fisher said. "Hey, hear that clicking? That's the synapse heating the inducer. These things are beautiful."

Valda leaned over to see.

"And I could mention my knob. It probably doesn't even work."

"What's a knob?" Valda asked.

"Hear that? She wants to know what a knob is!" Fisher said to Echols.