Paul Theroux: O-Zone

THE FIRST THING these people always asked whenever they went out, was where were "they"?

But there was no one here in O-Zone — no aliens, and no Owners except themselves.

It had taken the travelers just under two hours to fly the fifteen hundred clicks from Coldharbor Tower in New York City to the large sealed-off territory in the midwest designated Outer Zone. They had decided to fly in a highballing style and to keep together; it was their party mood — New Year's. The four jet-rotors were bunched in the flight envelope like a swarm of insects. The eight travelers looked insectile themselves in the last low-altitude phase, with their masks on. These days it was seldom safe to travel in such a dense formation, making an easy buzzing target. Even aliens who had little else had weapons — Starkies had rockets, one of the travelers said. Yet they knew there was no one down below now, and no one else alive for the next three hundred clicks.

"No Starkies, no Skells, no Trolls," Hooper Allbright said over his radio to the rest of them. "No Shitters, no Diggers, no Roaches. Not even any Federals!"

He was photographing it all through the sting in his nose cone,

"And I don't see any Owners either."

The precise pattern of old highways, like wheel tracks, passed beneath.

Traveling high in rotors gave them a point of view. They watched the earth through ground-screens in the cockpit.

The land was small and scarred, and inhabited by people who looked like flightless ants. They could see the tops of their heads.

"We're the only taxpayers here, so let's enjoy ourselves," Hooper said. "It's better than home!"

There was a squawk on the mike, a shrill heep-heep, which he silenced by continuing.

"I like to think places like this are beyond criticism."

In another aircraft, his nephew Fisher said, "Keep flying, shit-wit."

Hardy Allbright glanced back at Fisher and frowned: the radio was open, the mike was live. Heep.

"Who said that?"

"This is the unthinkable," Hardy piped up. "But officially this place is not on the map. That's why it's not illegal."

"I thought you had an Access Pass," came a nagging voice from another rotor. It was Willis Murdick in his new Welly.

"The Access Pass is for the Red Zone," Hardy said. "O-Zone doesn't exist. Hasn't for fifteen years."

"You could grow old here!" Hooper was saying. "All you have to do is keep your clothes on."

"Ground temperature's twenty-two cents," Hardy said, from his cockpit. "Forty or fifty years ago you'd have worn winter clothes here at this time of year. Bare trees. Frost in the morning. It was cold all over. You'd have needed mittens."

"But you wouldn't have needed weapons fifty years ago," Moura said.

Murdick's voice exploded on the line: "Peace-keeping weapons! Hey, listen, they work! We're living in the longest period of peace known to the world!"

They were looking down from their rotors at the odd worn and grown patches that might have been city-stains and a discernible pattern of trees in some valleys that made them look like wild gardens. The roads were decayed, but their straight lines were still visible in the wilderness. Tipped-over light poles lay across them, and junked cars that might once have served as roadblocks during the emergency; and bridges — broken-backed.

War had not done that: people had, and weather, and time. This small abandoned part of America had come to resemble the rest of the world. One third of the state had been contaminated and closed off by an excursion of nuclear waste.

Hooper's mike was still going heep-heep whenever he opened it, but he fought the heeping to protest.

"You think just because there hasn't been a world war or a nuclear explosion the world's okay. But the planet's hotter and a whole lot messier, and that leak was worse than a bomb. And look at crime. Look at the alien problem. Look at money. Forget war — war's a dinosaur. The world is much worse off."

"I'm not worse off," Murdick said, from his rotor. "Neither are you."

"Willis, what kind of a world is it when there are some simple things you can't buy with money?" Hooper added, "I hate that."

Yet he knew that Murdick was right. As travelers they were exceptional. Who else had such freedom to range so far and see so much? It had all been a gradual slide into ruin, though they only noticed it when they left home — flew out of New York City and looked down.

It was a meaner, more desperate and worn-out world. It had been scavenged by crowds. Their hunger was apparent in the teethmarks they had left, in the slashes of their claws. There was some beauty in the world's new wildernesses, of which O-Zone was just one; but its cities were either madhouses or sepulchres. Fifty years ago was simply a loose expression that meant before any of them had been born. It meant another age. And yet sometimes they suspected that it had closely resembled this age — indeed, that it was this one, with dust on it, and cracks, and hiding aliens, and every window broken: smoke hung over it like poisoned clouds.

But whatever desperation and ruin these travelers saw in the United States they knew it was much worse elsewhere. They had seen that the chaos and despair of other places— the hideous inconvenience of poverty — had made America, even in this condition, seem majestic.

Hooper was leading them in his Flea, a double-seater, but he flew alone. He had worn his mask the whole way: bat ears, a snout, a chrome throatpiece, and a wide tinted faceplate. He had taken charge, keeping radio contact with everyone and chattering throughout the entire trip. The party in O-Zone was his idea.

"Who knows — this whole place will probably be reactivated in a few years."

"It's a relief to talk about the future for a change!"

"That's all anyone talks about!"

"Because the past is a mystery. At least the future's familiar."

"Stop wobbling, Hardy," Hooper said. "You'll make yourself sick."

The spiraling motion was for the camera's sake. In his rotor, Hardy was also shooting — making a tape of the trip through this prohibited area. It was for his own reasons and also because he did not really trust Hooper to complete his tape. Hooper might decide tonight that he hated the whole place, or that he was bored and was leaving immediately. "Nuke it!" he might say, and go back and take his tape with him. Or he might wipe it and say he had never really wanted it and why had Hardy given him this stupid job to do? It would be just like Hooper to say without warning, "I've seen enough of this desolation — I'm reversing engines."

Once, on a long flight to a cluster of his warehouses in California — this was somewhere near Landslip, at a time when he still made inspection visits — Hooper had simply vanished off the screen. He radioed to Hardy in California, "Don't expect me."

Later, Hardy asked why and said, "Were you on a shoot?"

Hooper said he had been fascinated by a particular valley and had seen a good place to land.

That grin of his! He had a space between his two front teeth that was as wide as a ten-dollar coin.

"I just wanted a piss and a scratch," he said.

Now Hooper was saying, "You're endangering the rest of us, banging your ship around like that."

"Sorry, Hoop." Hardy straightened his rotor and made an adjustment to his camera.

"Goddamned rotation — all elbows."

"I won't do it again."

The apologies came easy. There could be none of the misunderstandings of friendship. And it wasn't love or a lack of pride. They had had almost forty years of this, but that was not the point either. The two men were brothers: Hardy and Hooper Allbright were imperfect versions of each other.