Paul Theroux - O-Zone

He first radioed the Access Code — their permission to use Red Zone and O-Zone airspace — and then he gave the name on Bligh's ID.

Moments later, the clearance came, and "That was your last reentry, Allbright. Your Access Pass is now invalid. You may proceed."

It was another reminder that he had failed to find Fizzy. How easily he forgot the boy when he was with Bligh, and he thought: What now?

"I wish I knew who this person was," Bligh said, holding the ID disc and glancing up. She had misunderstood Hooper's questioning look. "It's certainly not me."

"It doesn't matter," he said. How could he begin to tell her of the hunt in New York with Godseye and those miserable troopers, and how Murdick had burned that Owner? "But you need an ID."

"We know all about IDs," she said. Her harsh laughter said, Watch out. "If you don't have an ID in this country you're a zombie. That's another reason we didn't live in the States."

"O-Zone is the States."

"Then why do you call it O-Zone?"

He smiled because she had challenged him. It pleased him to see her in a defiant mood.

"Because it's an island," he said.

She was still studying the ground-screen.

"Where are we?" she asked after a while.

"Pennsylvania," he said. "I haven't been down there for years."

Bligh was still looking, but by the time Hooper had finished speaking they were over New York.

Out of her element, Bligh noticed everything. And she was illiterate. It was not a handicap: it made her especially alert and sharpened all her senses.

She was thrilled, as before on their return to New York, by the lights rising in the city — so much brighter than the low cooling sun settling into the depths of gray dust in the slip-stream aft of the jet-rotor. The slender glass-and-silver towers and turrets of the city glittered, and the lights on their steep galleries outshone the dying sun. The dark spaces at the margin of the narrow island only served to make the city seem greater, more imperial and unearthly. It was a city of light.

"It's like a beautiful castle — a gigantic one, with a moat around it," she said,

"How do you know about castles and moats?"

She laughed in her warning way, to put him in his place: How dare you accuse me of being ignorant of simple things? the laugh said. But it was only a laugh, a sound with the merest echo. A moment later it was gone for good.

Everyone Hooper had ever known believed that aliens were naive and that they hated and feared technology. And at the beginning — three weeks ago — he had been apprehensive about Bligh in the jet-rotor, Bligh in New York, Bligh in Coldharbor, Bligh carrying a dead girl's ID. He knew his apprehension was childish, but it was understandable. In his whole busy life Hooper had never known an alien — never been alone with one, never spoken to one. Bligh was human, and Hooper was deeply ashamed that he had ever doubted that in her or any other alien.

And the city was well-planned: Bligh was quick to appreciate it. Wasn't the technology of the city meant to allay anxiety? Surely that was the point of the castle and the moat— not the island's incomprehensible size, but its beauty? Technology was either aesthetically pleasing or else it was worthless and awful. Fizzy's preoccupations had shown him that technology was an art, not a science.

Hooper was glad that Bligh was not intimidated by New York, but after all, it was an easy place to live. Sleeping in the open and hunting in O-Zone took guts; but not this, not flying in a speeding rotor, and not the rich tower-life in the garrison at Coldharbor. If Bligh was silent it was not terror but bewilderment. It had not taken long for her to understand that Hooper was wealthy. She clearly knew what an Owner was, but Owner did not quite describe him.

Now as the rotor slowed down and turned, the twanging sound of the rotor blade reached them through the portholes, and the jets subsided. The slower this aircraft went, the noisier it was. But Hooper was circling around the island to impress her. The lights dazzled her and made her sigh.

Watching them — this pleased him — she seemed to become a very small girl. She was overcome by the sight, and did not speak but only uttered soft gasps of amazement. The towering city shone on the curvature of her faceplate.

"I think I love you even more now," Hooper said. "And—"

She had gone very quiet and was holding tight, as her thick helmet vibrated. They were hovering over the rotor pad at Coldharbor; they lowered and settled on the tower roof.

"And I like myself a little better," he said.

He cut the engines. Bligh lifted off her helmet and shook her hair into place — it was streaked light and dark and it jumped in thick hanks around her face.

"That's a strange thing to say." She had a way of staring at him that made him think he could never conceal anything from her.

He wanted to tell her that his desire, his sex instinct, was roused. He felt younger and more powerful. He wanted to say: Sex is magic.

He said, "I was getting very bored with myself. I'm much happier now — thanks to you. What's wrong?"

"I'm happy when you look after me" — but she said this in a solemn voice. "You're very kind. But when you talk about love, I get worried. I don't really know what you mean — it makes you seem unpredictable. And it makes me feel somehow unfair to you."

He was smiling — glad that they were able to talk, glad that they were alone and safely back at Coldharbor.

"Because I don't love you," she said — not apologizing but stating a fact.

"You don't have to," he said. And then he became solemn himself and said, "You're right. Let's not use that word."

"You haven't eaten much today," he said as they went down in the elevator.

She shrugged; she smiled. "I've never been so well-fed!"

"Please eat something."

"All right," she said softly. It was the small surrendering voice of a child.

He saw that she had agreed to eat, not out of hunger, but purely to please him, and that made him happy. Her willingness meant everything to him.

"And then I'll take you out. We'll buy something."

"You keep buying me things!"

"You can have anything you want."

"You'll make me greedy."

"I want you to be greedy," he said, because she had never shown the slightest sign of greed. "Promise me you will be," She laughed — her cautioning laugh: another warning.

In the unit at Coldharbor, Bligh went directly to the suite Hooper had given her. It was five rooms on the south-facing side of the tower, where she could look downtown, ninety blocks under the skylights. "I'll be right over," she said, using her helmet phones. She had been very quick to master the phones and the signaling devices, and Hooper could not help wondering whether Fizzy had adapted to the rigors of O-Zone. If he hadn't, he was probably already dead. This thought made Hooper feel fatalistic and made the whole matter of rescue somehow less urgent.

"Dinner," he said to himself, and put two sealed meals into the oven. That was another favor to her. She had been fascinated by the sealed meal trays. Hooper had stacks of them in the freezer, but was much prouder of the fact that as an Owner he had chests of fresh vegetables and fruit, milk and eggs, real meat, real fish.

"I don't eat meat fabric or textured protein," he had said at their first meal. "None of these pastes or formulas, except when I'm on a mission of some kind, and that's pretty rare. I mean, I don't run around rehydrating stuff to heat."

She stared at him: What was he shouting about?

"We actually peel potatoes around here," he said. "We chop our own spinach. Sometimes it has dirt on it! I've got asparagus in that refrigerated drawer."

"Good for you," she said.