Paul Theroux - O-Zone

And if it was true that this alien had been taken by Hooper, then it proved that he had sacrificed Fisher for a monkey-woman. He had hurried away with her and left him to the mercy of these aliens. I'll burn him, too, Fisher thought, but of course if Hooper had gotten what he wanted, then he might never be back. He swapped me for that monkey.

"You'll get her back," Fisher said with his usual bravado, but his quack took all the menace out of it. "My uncle's got a jet-rotor that's so fast it's practically invisible. He'll come whistling in and burn you all down."

"Tip him over," someone said.

"Leave him alone," Valda said — more and more he noticed that Valda defended him, probably more because she disliked them than liked him; but he was grateful nonetheless. "Bligh might not even want to come back. She certainly wasn't very happy when she was here."

"She was a kid," Echols said.

Fisher was reminded that this monkey-woman wasn't a woman — she was a fifteen-year-old, probably diseased little creature with no ID that his rich uncle just whisked off, the disgusting porker.

"This discussion is closed for the moment," Mr. Blue said.

Fisher found himself giving thanks that nothing was going to change. Whenever he felt safe, as he did here and as he had at certain places on the march, he wanted everything to freeze: no change, no alteration, nothing. Let everything continue just as it was. Packing, burying their fire, hoisting their packs, all the activities of setting out filled him with apprehension. And it was only in the course of the day, in the evidence that nothing bad was happening to him, that he became convinced that this move was sensible. But two weeks in this cave on the bluff had calmed him. He wanted things to change, he wanted to be found — rescued — and for the aliens to be burned. But not right now — not while he was feeling safe. He had come to depend on these aliens, and he knew their moods, and so far they hadn't killed him. He did not really believe they would, and he felt that any change implied risk.

The food was a great help. Eating familiar provisions from the stock he had selected and packed gave him a feeling of well-being. Perhaps the aliens were trying to make him complacent by feeding him this way. But he did not think they were that devious. Much of his confidence arose from his suspicion that the aliens were very stupid and gullible. In a sense, Mr. Blue's spiriting him away from the Diggers was proof of that. Mr. B was sentimental. Fisher was glad of it— he knew he would have been eaten alive by those apes — but he also believed that it gave him power over Mr. Blue.

He had none of their superstitions. They had no idea of change, none of time. Their whole effort was toward survival. And so they had not separated themselves from the land — they saw themselves as part of O-Zone, which would have amused any New Yorker: O-Zone was a contaminated wilderness. And they seemed to see themselves as existing in a place that was not attached to America.

Fisher said, "You aliens are out of this world."

They had heard him say "aliens" so often they had stopped objecting to it.

"This is the world," Echols said.

"Bullshuck."

"The rest of it doesn't count, because it doesn't matter to us."

"You pretend this is some kind of island," Fisher said.

Valda said, "I like that. It's true."

"We don't have to pretend," Mr. Blue said. "We live in our quarter. We have everything we want. And all the perimeters are dangerous. It is an island."

Fisher said, "I'd like to leave it, somehow. Not today or tomorrow. But pretty soon."

He meant he wanted to be scooped up by a battling gunship and to wake up in his room in Coldharbor.

Rooks said, "Why are you listening to this dip? He's nothing, he's nobody!"

Still, they fed him — they fed him like a cat. And he congratulated himself that he had lasted with them. He had been out of Coldharbor alone once in his life; had wandered in New York one day. And the rest of the time had either been in his room or else shepherded by Hardy and Moura ("Look at the lights, Fizzy"), But for weeks he had lived in O-Zone, and not simply survived but had brought technology to this wilderness — it really was an island — and had repaired his helmet and his beam. He knew the aliens did not like him, but he felt sure they respected him. He was their prisoner, but he had not broken down. He did not think that any of them except Mr. B had seen him cry, and he drew strength from that, even though he was aware that he had wept several times. Often he had felt stupid here, as if O-Zone was not the world.

Mr. Blue had protected him from the Diggers, Echols had enough math to know he was a brilliant boy, Gumbie had not really regained his confidence after the business about the so-called centrifugal force; though Gumbie was too stupid to be consistent. Rooks hated him, but Rooks was only one alien. Kylie hardly existed, and after the death of Tinia she had seemed greatly diminished — just a small-faced woman who worked without speaking.

And there was Valda. Whenever he had felt particularly stupid she had propped him up. He was grateful to her. He knew that the other aliens thought he was infantile and selfish, but what did they know of the world? O-Zone was the one place on earth where even a Type A would have difficulty, and where an alien had the advantage. What they took to be his brilliance was actually a considerable handicap, but only Valda seemed to understand this paradox.

Valda entered his chamber early one morning in the third week. It was that hour when his fear of the dark subsided into the impatience and uncertainty he felt in daylight, though both paralyzed him with a numbing sense of imprisonment. There was either no light at his window or else too much — he was blinded by darkness or its opposite. This was the brief in-between phase, and he was startled to see Valda standing over him.

She knelt next to his low bed, where he lay in his inflated suit, his helmet and boots on. He felt very small beneath her, like an infant, and very passive — he was intimidated by her eagerness. She quickly unbuttoned her shirt, and then parted it and held her breasts to him, one in each of her hands, offering them to him.

Fisher looked at the soft crushed nipples and despised himself for liking these imperfect things.

"Don't be afraid," she said. She was smiling at him, her face shining with excitement.

He had not known how tender any breasts could be unti! she touched them and they were plumped in her hands. Their fragility kept him away, and yet he wanted them. The morning light at the window whitened her skin and showed its tiny veins crazing its tissue, and its dusting of pale hairs, its moles scattered like flakes, and the soft contours of breasts lying like full pouches of milk against her fingers and thumbs.

Facing her, Fisher felt as if he were made of wood and wet clay, sort of stuck together. And though something was struggling within him it felt like an ineffectual rattle — less like a sign of life than a reminder that he was dying. He groaned and a patch of steam clouded his faceplate. He lifted off his helmet, not sure what was expected of him.

"Shall I stick my finger into your bum?" he asked.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"To get you hot," he said, and looked for a reaction on her face.

Valda thought a moment, and smiled at him pityingly and then said, "Let me tell you what I like."

Now the eagerness was in his eyes, too, and still her hands gently lifted her breasts.

"Touch them, suck them, lick them," she said. "Take them."

He thought: They're all she has — they are everything.

She said, "Baby," as his hands went to them; and there was a clap and a roar — a jet-rotor, he knew at once. Fisher sat up but it was too late to run out.