Paul Theroux - O-Zone

Not long ago, in a kind of despair, the Feds had spoken of making O-Zone a dumping ground for unclassified pass-abusers, crazies, and petty criminals!

Hardy appeared on the roof early, impatient to talk. Just at two-thirty the rotor settled — it was a four-seater, one window, no markings; and Hardy saw that it was pilotless— command-controlled — someone was working it from below. The rotor blades stuttered but did not stop. Hardy fought the buffeting draft and climbed in.

There was only one person inside. He was strapped to a seat, he wore gloves and a mask (coated faceplate, monkey-mouthed breathing apparatus) and a green Asfalt suit with white piping. What flesh Hardy could see was sallow — perhaps elderly — and Hardy was annoyed that in his small breathing mask and headphones he himself was so easily identifiable.

"I don't know you," Hardy said.

"Good. I don't know you either."

They were now off the roof, the city beneath them — the spires and turrets, the guarded parapets of garrisons and heliports, the black streets, the castellated heights and smoky distances. It was a warm hazy afternoon.

"We are waiting for your numbers," Control shouted.

Yes, there was definitely a little old man inside all that equipment: the voice became breathy when he tried to shout.

"I'm waiting for data," Hardy said, and thought: I am waiting for Fizzy.

"It's been almost three months!"

"I understood there was no time limit in this scheme," Hardy said. "And the budget has been approved for the project. I've got funding."

"We are a commercial enterprise," Control said.

Nothing was more insulting than being forced to listen in silence to the obvious, Hardy thought. There was something so aggressive about a deliberate show of stupidity.

"We have to make long-term plans—"

Hardy wanted to pinch the old man's breathing tube.

"We need to know whether your site is definite and viable."

Hardy began to screech: "It could be the largest thermal—"

But the man's plodding voice had not stopped: "And we need to know how many barrels to commit to this project."

So that was it. They had a glut of oil, they couldn't store it and didn't want to dump it. They needed an early answer.

Hardy had given them a probable figure — an enormous one — and now he could not confirm it.

"This is a weather project," Hardy said. "It's not just an oil-burner."

"We are in the oil business—"

Again, that tone: the obvious — to insult him.

"— and we wonder whether you're taking this seriously enough."

There was another implication here. Hardy, because he was wealthy — the famous Allbright fortune — was sometimes thought to be a dilettante, passing the time at Asfalt and attaching himself to prestigious schemes. He knew what they said about him — he was an Allbright, didn't need a job, playing at being a scientist, and he was also a very large stockholder in Asfalt. But that stock didn't give him a right to waste company time. The family money was always held against him; he was suspected of being unserious. And it was felt, he knew, that he was prepared to take absurd chances— a rich man's risks.

That was why they had sent this faceless man to interrogate him. Hardy was on the verge of losing his temper. But it was no use. If you lost your temper in a rotor, the aircraft simply went on spinning noisily until your anger was wrung out of you,

Hardy said, "I'm dealing with a Prohibited Area, I need time. Don't worry — it'll pay off,"

"We need a backup or you'll lose your funding."

They must really be stuck with an ocean of oil, Hardy thought. They weren't interested in the weathermaking prospects; they just wanted a project, any project, that would allow them to dump the oil — and the best way was to turn it into hot-top asphalt for a thermal mountain.

"Your Project O-Zone might fail."

It seemed so odd to hear the man saying these forbidden words, but of course no one could overhear him in a chattering pilot less rotor high over New York.

"If Project O-Zone isn't viable, we'll need another project just as big."

Hardy hated this man — hiding behind rotor noise and a coated mask and his company code name: "Control." He was a budget man, an oil-dumper. Finding wind, pouring a mountain, building clouds and steering them, making rain, reclaiming land, filling reservoirs, growing food — none of this mattered to him. He thought only in terms of disposing of as many barrels of oil as possible.

"I'll be thinking of one," Hardy said coldly.

"Think fast — we're making our descent."

The man adjusted his mask and Hardy saw that his face was without any expression at all, and that seemed to him a merciless form of gloating.

He could not help thinking of Fizzy — what the boy would say to this man. "Porker!" he'd cry. "Dong-face! Dimbo! Fuck-wit!"

"I'd go with China or India," Hardy said, loathing the silly hiding mask.

"Too much bureaucracy. We have to be in charge, for the maximum benefit. That's why we liked O-Zone. It would have been all ours."

"You keep saying 'we,'" Hardy said. "Is there someone in that suit with you?"

"A backup, Weathermaker," the man said. "A big one, and no strings."

"Africa," Hardy said, because he wanted the man to ask why.

Because my wife needs a vacation, he would reply: she cries easily these days. Because our friend Willis Murdick has been trying to organize a party there. Because I need time for my son to make his way out of the wilderness of O-Zone, and for the boy to find me.

But the man didn't ask.

"Okay, Africa. But go soon, and cover yourself. We have competitors, you know."

"Fine," Hardy said. "My wife needs a vacation."

Moura thought: I have nothing else to do but this, and yet I can't do it. She was still looking for the man, Fizzy's father. The problem was in the nature of the search itself. Men would not help a woman look for another man. They just stood in the way and obstructed her and said, "Why look further — what's wrong with me?"

It proved to her that men who foolishly believed that women were all the same, also believed that men were all the same. Hardy would have known what to do, but he was the only person she could not go to. He would be blunt: Do you want to find this man for Fizzy's sake, or your own?

"I want to prove that I'm not alone," would have been her answer.

Then Hardy would probably shout, "That's just sentimental!"

If you know someone well, she thought, you don't hold conversations — you each have your own monologues. She seldom had intimate talks with Hardy — she did not need to. She always knew what his side of the conversation would be.

But searching for the man in a luckless way made her feel weak and silly and exposed. She had now known the donor's name for a month, and his ID number, and his most recent address. She had gone back to the clinic with Holly, who still used it — still called it a clinic, still used the jargon. She was making progress in broad areas, she said, expanding the range of her responses, and developing new and subtle patterns of sensitivity.

It was sex. It was probably nonstop. It was probably movies, too. They were urging Holly to fantasize, giving her an appetite for something bizarre, and charging her more. The roasted look on Holly's face said it all: it was rosier and greedier in an eager way — now she knew everything. Her face was flesh; there was no thought on it, but there was a sleepy look of pleasure — her eyes were restless. She usually looked very hot. She is cooking in sex, Moura thought. She is going to catch fire.

Holly said that she had not realized how much she had been missing.

"Now I know why men are so demanding," she said. "I never knew that I could have whatever I wanted."