Paul Theroux - O-Zone

They were staring at him and he suspected they hated him, but in telling them what he privately craved he had made himself too sorrowful to care what they thought.

"At least drink your tea," Kylie said.

"Boiled bark!"

"It's good to have a bellyful of warm water inside you," Kylie said, and Fisher thought: She has never tasted Marvel Milk, or Sammy Syrup, or Guppy-Cola.

Later that day they found a shelter in a rockslide. Mr. Blue put down his pack and told them where to make a fire and prepare the sleeping places.

"We don't see the same things," Fisher said.

They ignored him. He had sensed that his listing the food he wanted had created a greater gulf between himself and them. It was as if he had blurted out a belief in a strange god, He wished he had not told them — not because it(made them suspicious but because it had made him homesick; and it had also reminded him again that he was a prisoner. The sense that he had been victimized made him antagonistic.

"You point to a pile of rocks and say, "This is camp.'"

He had slid his faceplate up. His face was squeezed between the cheekpieces of his helmet.

"You rake some leaves into a pile and say, "This is a bed.'"

He didn't care whether they were listening or not.

"You grab a bunch of weeds and say, 'This is our salad for tonight.'"

Valda was smiling at him, but for the moment he saw her too as an enemy.

"Hey, dimbos, I know the difference!"

That night — Fisher suspected they were taking revenge— Gumbie showed him a thick brush of green weeds. Gumbie was eager to talk, and he had the bright eyes and the wide grin of an explainer.

"There's eighty-seven million kinds of weeds," he said, shaking the bouquet. "If they have milky juice you don't touch them. If they have regular juice you rub some on your skin and wait eight hours. If there's no rash after that, you chew a little piece and spit it out. Wait eight hours more. If there's no stomach problem you chew another little piece, and swallow the juice and spit out the piece. Wait eight hours—"

"That's twenty-four hours," Fisher said. "No food, just flobbing."

"If your stomach's still okay, you chew the weed good, and eat.it. If it don't make you sick after that, you can eat a whole handful of it. Yump."

"That's how we discovered stinkweed salad," Rooks said.

Savages, Fisher thought, with fear and pity, and he sealed himself into his helmet so as not to hear them tearing the leaves in their teeth. But he also thought of what Gumbie had said: Why didn't I know that?

He clicked his faceplate up.

"You've got no right to steal my provisions," he said. But the thought of that pilfered food was displaced by a woeful thought, and he sobbed, "You've got no right to steal me!"

"One of your people stole Bligh," Mr. B said.

"I don't know why he bothered," Fisher said, and felt himself trembling. "Because you're savages."

"No more than you," Echols said. "Probably a lot less."

They were still sitting on the ground.

Fisher said, "You scream at planes!"

"You yell at insects," Echols said.

It was true, but so what? He howled at ants and flies when they came near him, and when he saw an insect on his suit he yelled "Cootie!"

"They're vectors in disease," he said. "Especially flies and lice. They're just like you aliens!"

But he was upset; he wanted them to plead with him and to promise to take him home. He was surprised that his screeching had not cowed them. He wandered away to where he planned to sleep and switched on his helmet light and saw Valda lying down and smiling at him. She raised her leg at him, offering him her boot.

"Get this thing off my dog," she said.

It was certainly safe to do that, away from her body cavities. Fisher worked it loose, liking the warmth of her bare leg and the heat of her foot.

"Have you changed your mind?" she said.

He was sniffing in mild alarm: he had forgotten to put on his gloves when he removed her boot.

"About sleeping with me?"

"I'm all right," he said, and his helmet rattled when he shook it. "My suit has coils in it, and I've still got a power pack. I'll be warm enough."

She made that noise again that was like a baby's burp. He could not determine whether it was another laugh. She seemed strange but at least she was on his side.

Never mind sleep with you, I'd like to squeeze your oinkers! That was what he wanted to say. He was afraid of disease— he looked at her and he imagined fungus in her crevices. And if she was twenty she must have plenty of both — funguses and crevices. But still his eyes ached with desire when he saw the pressure of her breasts against her shirt, and her delicious nipples like toggles.

He inflated his suit and warmed its coils, and he slept on his back like a toy bear on the ground, sighing slightly and fogging his faceplate, his arms clasped over his belly and his legs apart.

The next morning he remembered the raw tape clearly as they marched through the rising meadows and tree clumps to the last hill. He could have led them from here: he had studied the profile enough just before his mission with Hooper and Murdick. The repetition of that trip annoyed him. Why come back? He saw all repetition as useless and ignorant routine. Being back here was like failure.

But where was their camp? He had never found one. He had never located any huts, and if it was a cave, where was it? He only saw the valley — the great flat depression between two ranges of hills.

"The Frying Pan," Echols said.

"That's the center of our quarter," Valda said.

Mr. Blue did not descend the slope to the camp, but instead walked in a halting way — glancing, peering, moving on — like a man shuffling in a museum, possessed by concentration. He did not bend his knees. He nodded at the wide circular valley.

"It's a pan," Mr. Blue said. "It's all ours. No one else has been here for over fifteen years."

"Except me," Fisher said.

Mr. Blue turned to him, stiff-legged, and lifted his face in a question.

"I mean now," Fisher said.

But he had meant before, with Hooper and Murdick— another lie. He had this place in twenty-color overlay, all the elevations, even an infrared version. He had found the paths they had thought were hidden; the sinkhole where they had landed and secured the rotor. The Frying Pan, Rooks said.

"It's got a bottom and sides," the man said. "It's got a handle."

"Incredible geological qualities," Echols said.

"You mean geomorphic features," Fisher said.

They were still at the edge, Mr. Blue still gesturing at it.

"Remember when we used to call it Happy Valley, and mean it?" Mr. Blue said. "Because we thought we were safe here?" He had glanced back at Fisher. "And you wonder why we scream at planes."

"Because, geologically" — Fisher was quacking loudly— "this depression is a down-thrown massif of the eastern O-Zone platform."

"I like them cracks and ridges," Gumbie said. "Yump."

"Delimited on each side by conspicuous fault lines," Fisher said.

"We figure it's been here a long time, looking like this," Mr. Blue said. "That radiation leak certainly didn't affect it."

"At the end of the Tertiary, this platform was composed of an extensive uplifted massif, flanked by down-warping areas on both the north and south sides. During the Quaternary, these down-warping areas were folded and uplifted by neotectonic movements of the limestone plates. That produced caverns elsewhere in O-Zone and the depression here."

"I guess that's why we call it the Frying Pan," Rooks said. "Why are you laughing, Valda?"

She could not answer. She had started while Fisher was speaking, and she was still laughing. It was like frantic hiccuping.

"That was before the radioactive excursion," Fisher said. "Before the human intervention."