Скотт Вестерфельд - Pretties

Still, how much harder could it be than hoverboarding?

As Tally waited out the days in the cave, she couldn't stop wondering how the other Crims were. While her own survival had been an issue, it had been easy to forget them. But now that she had nothing to do all day but sit and watch the sky, Tally found herself slowly going crazy from worry. Had the Crims escaped the Specials' pursuit? Had they found the New Smokies yet? And, most important, how was Zane? She could only hope that Maddy had been able to fix whatever was wrong with him.

She remembered their last minutes before he'd jumped from the balloon — the last words he'd said. In all of Tally's tattered memories, she'd never experienced anything like that moment. It had felt beyond bubbly, beyond any trick, like the world would change forever.

And now she didn't even know whether he was still alive.

It didn't help Tally's state of mind that Zane and the other Crims had to be just as worried about her, wondering if she'd been recaptured or had fallen to her death. They would have expected to see her at the Rusty Ruins at least a week ago, and had to be thinking the worst by now.

How long would it be before even Zane gave up, deciding she was dead? What if she never made it out of the reservation? No one's faith could last forever.

When she wasn't driving herself crazy Tally also spent the time wondering about Andrew's confined world. How had it come to exist? Why were the villagers allowed to live out here, when the Smoke had been ruthlessly destroyed? Maybe it was the fact that the villagers were trapped, believing old legends and stuck in ancient blood feuds, while the Smokies had known the truth about the cities and the operation. But why keep a brutal culture alive, when the whole point of civilization was to curb the violent, destructive tendencies of human beings?

Andrew visited her every day, bringing her nuts and a few root vegetables to go with her dehydrated god-food. He wouldn't give up on bringing strips of dried meat until she tried it. It tasted like it looked — as salty as seaweed and harder than an old shoe — but she gratefully accepted his other offerings.

In return, Tally told him stories about home, especially those that showed how the city of the gods wasn't all divine perfection. She explained about uglies and the operation, how the beauty of gods was just a technological trick. The difference between magic and technology was lost on Andrew, but he listened intently. He'd inherited a healthy skepticism from his father, whose experiences with the gods, it turned out, hadn't always left the old holy man full of respect.

Andrew could be frustrating company, though. He made some brilliant leaps of insight, but other times he was just as thick as could be expected from someone who thought the world was flat — especially when it came to the boys-in-charge thing, which she found particularly annoying. Tally knew she should be more understanding, but was only willing to cut Andrew so much slack; being born into a culture that assumed women were servants didn't make it okay to go along with the plan. After all, Tally had turned her back on everything she'd been raised to expect: an effortless life, perfect beauty, pretty-mindedness. It seemed like Andrew could learn to cook his own chickens.

Maybe the barriers around Tally's pretty world weren't as obvious as the little men hanging in the trees, but they were just as hard to escape. She remembered how Peris had chickened out as he'd looked down on the wild from the balloon, suddenly unwilling to jump and leave behind everything he'd known. Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.

They arrived at dawn, right on schedule.

From overhead came the roar of two cars — the kind that Specials used, each with four lifting fans to carry it through the air. It was a noisy way to travel, the wind roiling the trees like a storm. From the mouth of her cave, Tally saw a huge cloud of dust rising up from the landing area, and then the whine of their rotors cycled down into a riot of frightened birdcalls. After almost two weeks of natural sounds, the powerful machines sounded strange to Tally's ears, like engines from another world.

She crept toward the clearing in the dawn light, moving in total silence. Rehearsing her approach every morning, Tally had become familiar with every tree along the way. For once, the elder gods were going to face someone who knew all their tricks, and a few of her own.

She watched from under cover at the clearing's edge. Four middle pretties were unpacking the cars' cargo holds, pulling out digging tools, hovercameras, and specimen cages, loading everything onto carts. The scientists looked like campers dressed in bulky winter gear, field glasses hanging around their necks, water bottles dangling from their belts. Andrew said they never stayed more than a day, but they looked ready for weeks in the wild. Tally wondered which one was the Doctor.

Andrew worked among the four pretties, lending a hand as they arranged their equipment, being a helpful holy man. When the carts were all packed with gear, he and the scientists pushed them into the forest, leaving Tally alone with the hovercars.

She hoisted her backpack and approached the clearing warily.

This was the trickiest part of the plan. Tally could only guess what sort of security the hovercars had on board. Hopefully the scientists hadn't thought to use more than childproof minders, the simple codes that kept littlies from flying off with a car. Surely the scientists wouldn't suspect the villagers of knowing the same tricks as a city kid like Tally.

Unless they'd been warned that there were runaways in the area…

That was nonsense, of course. No one knew Tally was stranded out here without a board, and she hadn't seen a hovercar since the night she'd left the city. If the Specials were looking for her, they weren't looking around here.

She reached one of the cars and peeked into its open cargo door, finding nothing but pieces of packing foam shifting in the soft breeze. A few more steps brought her to the window of the passenger cabin, also empty. She reached for the door handle.

A man's voice called from behind her.

Tally froze. After two weeks of sleeping rough, her clothes torn and dirty, she might pass for a villager from a distance. But once she turned around, her pretty face would give her away.

The voice called out again in the villagers' language, but it was inflected with a late pretty's gravelly air of authority. Footsteps were coming closer. Should she dive into the hovercar and try to make it away?

The words faded as the man grew closer. He had noticed her city clothes under all the dirt.

Tally turned around.

He was equipped like the others, with field glasses and a water bottle, his crumbly face a picture of surprise. He must have been sitting inside the other hovercar, moving a little slower than the rest of them — that's why he'd caught her.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, switching languages. "What are you doing out here?"

She blinked, pausing for a moment, a vacant look on her pretty face. "We were in a balloon."

"A balloon?"

"There was some kind of accident. But I don't remember exactly. …"

He took a step forward, then his nose wrinkled. Tally might look like a pretty, but she smelled like a savage. "I think I saw something on the feeds about balloons going wrong, but that was a couple of weeks ago! You couldn't have been here that…" He looked at her torn clothes, his nose wrinkling again. "But I suppose you have."

Tally shook her head. "I don't know how long it's been."