Uglies

"Well, mystery solved. Shay was all ready to travel to the Smoke with a bunch of that stuff."

"What else did she have?"

Tally shrugged. "A hoverboard. A special one, with solar."

"Of course a hoverboard. What is it about those things and miscreants? And what did Shay plan to eat, do you suppose?"

"She had food in packets. Dehydrated."

"Like this?" Dr. Cable produced a silvery food pack.

"Yeah. She had enough for four weeks." Tally took a deep breath. "Two weeks, if I'd gone along.

More than enough, she said."

"Two weeks? Not so very far." Dr. Cable pulled a black knapsack from beside her desk and started to pack the various objects into it. "You might just make it."

"Make it? Make what?"

"The trip. To the Smoke."

"Me?"

"Tally, only you can understand these directions."

"I told you: I don't know what they mean!"

"But you will, once you're on the journey. And if you're…properly motivated."

"But I already told you everything you wanted to know. I gave you the note. You promised!"

Dr. Cable shook her head. "My promise, Tally, was that you wouldn't be pretty until you helped us to the very best of your ability. I have every confidence that this is within your ability."

"But why me?"

"Listen carefully, Tally. Do you really think that this is the first time we've been told about David? Or the Smoke? Or found some scrawled directions about how to get there?"

Tally flinched at the razor-blade voice, turning away from the anger on the woman's cruel face. "I don't know."

"We've seen all this before. But whenever we go ourselves, we find nothing. Smoke, indeed."

The lump had return to Tally's throat. "So how am I supposed to find anything?"

Dr. Cable pulled the copy of Shay's note toward herself. "This last line, where it says to

'wait on the bald head,' clearly refers to a rendezvous point. You go there, you wait.

Sooner or later, they'll pick you up. If I send a hovercar full of Specials, your friends will probably be a bit suspicious."

"You mean, you want me to go alone?"

Dr. Cable took a deep breath, a disgusted look on her face. "This isn't very complicated, Tally. You have had a change of heart. You have decided to run away, following your friend Shay. Just another ugly escaping the tyra

Tally looked up at the cruel face through a prism of gathering tears. "And then what?"

Dr. Cable pulled another object from the briefcase, a necklace with a little heart pendant.

She pressed on its sides, and the heart clicked open. "Look inside."

Tally held the tiny heart up to her eye. "I can't see anything…ow!"

The pendant had flashed, blinding her for a moment. The heart made a little beep.

"The finder will only respond to your eye-print, Tally. Once it's activated, we'll be there within a few hours. We can travel very quickly." Cable dropped the necklace onto the desk. "But don't activate it until you're in the Smoke. This has taken us some time to set up. I want the real thing, Tally."

Tally blinked away the afterimage of the flash, trying to force her exhausted brain to think.

She realized now that this had never been simply a matter of answering questions. They had always wanted her as a spy, an infiltrator. She wondered just how long this had been pla

"You can, Tally. You must. Think of it as an adventure."

"Please. I've never even spent the whole night outside the city. Not alone."

Dr. Cable ignored the sob that had cut through Tally's words. "If you don't agree right now, I'll find someone else. And you'll be ugly forever."

Tally looked up, trying to see through the tears that were flowing freely now, to peer past Dr. Cable's cruel mask and find the truth. It was there in her dull, metal-gray eyes, a cold, terrible surety unlike anything a normal pretty could ever convey. Tally realized that the woman meant what she said.

Either Tally infiltrated the Smoke and betrayed Shay, or she'd be an ugly for life.

"I have to think."

"Your story will be that you ran away the night before your birthday," Dr. Cable said.

"That means you've already got to make up for four lost days. Any more delays, and they won't believe you. They'll guess what happened. So decide now."

"I can't. I'm too tired."

Dr. Cable pointed at the wallscreen, and an image appeared. Like a mirror, but in close-up, it showed Tally as she looked right now: puffy-eyed and disheveled, exhaustion and red scratches marking her face, her hair sticking out in all directions, and her expression turning horrified as she beheld her own appearance.

"That's you, Tally. Forever."

"Turn it off…"

"Decide."

"Okay, I'll do it. Turn it off."

The wallscreen went dark.  

Part II

The Smoke

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Leaving

Tally left at midnight.

Dr. Cable had demanded that no one be told about her mission, even the dorm minders. It was fine if Peris spread rumors-no one believed the gossip of new pretties, anyway. But not even her parents would be officially informed that Tally had been forced to run away.

Except for her little heart pendant, she was on her own.

She slipped out the usual way, out the window and down behind the recycler. Her interface ring remained on the bedside table, and Tally carried nothing but the survival knapsack and Shay's note.

She almost forgot her belly sensor, but clipped it on just before she left. The moon was about half-full and growing. At least she'd have some light as she traveled.

A special long-range hoverboard was waiting under the dam. It hardly moved when she stepped on.

Most boards gave a little as they adjusted to a rider's weight, bouncing like a diving board, but this one was absolutely firm. She snapped her fingers, and it rose under her, steady as concrete under her feet.

"Not bad," she said, then bit her lip. Since Shay had run away ten days ago, she'd started talking to herself. That wasn't a good sign. She was going to be completely alone for at least a few days now, and the last thing she needed was more imaginary conversations.

The board eased forward smoothly, climbing the embankment to the top of the dam. Once on the river, Tally pushed it faster, leaning forward until the river was a shining blur beneath her feet. The board didn't seem to have a speed governor-no safety warning sounded. Perhaps its only limits were the open space in front of her, metal in the ground below, and Tally's feet staying on board.

Speed was everything if she was going to make up for the last four days in limbo. If Tally showed up too long after her birthday, Shay might realize that her operation had been delayed. From there, she might guess that Tally wasn't an ordinary runaway.

The river passed beneath her faster and faster, and she reached the rapids in record time.

Drops of spray stung like hailstones when she hit the first falls, and Tally leaned back to slow herself a bit. Still, she was taking the rapids faster than she ever had before.