Скотт Вестерфельд - Uglies

Tally cleared the wallscreen and leaned back on the bed.

"I can't."

"You can dish it out, but you can't take it, huh?"

"No, I mean I just can't. I never made one."

Tally's jaw dropped. Everyone made morphos, even littlies, too young for their facial structure to have set. It was a great waste of a day, figuring out all the different ways you could look when you finally became pretty.

"Not even one?"

"Maybe when I was little. But my friends and I stopped doing that kind of stuff a long time ago."

"Well." Tally sat up. "We should fix that right now."

"I'd rather go hoverboarding." Shay tugged anxiously under her shirt. Tally figured that Shay slept with her belly sensor on, hoverboarding in her dreams.

"Later, Shay. I can't believe you don't have a single morph. Please."

"It's stupid. The doctors pretty much do what they want, no matter what you tell them."

"I know, but it's fun."

Shay made a big point of rolling her eyes, but finally nodded. She dragged herself off the bed and plopped down in front of the wallscreen, pulling her hair back from her face.

Tally snorted. "So you have done this before."

"Like I said, when I was a littlie."

"Sure." Tally turned her interface ring to bring up a menu on the wallscreen, and blinked her way through a set of eyemouse choices. The screen's camera flickered with laser light, and a green grid sprang up on Shay's face, a field of tiny squares imposed across the shape of her cheekbones, nose, lips, and forehead.

Seconds later, two faces appeared on the screen. Both of them were Shay, but there were obvious differences: One looked wild, slightly angry; the other had a slightly distant expression, like someone having a daydream.

"It's weird how that works, isn't it?" Tally said. "Like two different people."

Shay nodded. "Creepy."

Ugly faces were always asymmetrical; neither half looked exactly like the other. So the first thing the morpho software did was take each side of your face and double it, like holding a mirror right down the middle, creating two examples of perfect symmetry.

Already, both of the symmetrical Shays looked better than the original.

"So, Shay, which do you think is your good side?"

"Why do I have to be symmetrical? I'd rather have a face with two different sides."

Tally groaned. "That's a sign of childhood stress. No one wants to look at that."

"Gee, I wouldn't want to look stressed," Shay snorted, and pointed at the wilder-looking face. "Okay, whatever. The right one's better, don't you think?"

"I hate my right side. I always start with the left."

"Yeah, well, I happen to like my right side. Looks tougher."

"Okay. You're the boss."

Tally blinked, and the right-side face filled the screen.

"First, the basics." The software took over: The eyes gradually grew, reducing the size of the nose between them, Shay's cheekbones moved upward, and her lips became a tiny bit fuller (they were already almost pretty-sized). Every blemish disappeared, her skin turning flawlessly smooth. The skull moved subtly under the features, the angle of her forehead tilting back, her chin becoming more defined, her jaw stronger.

When it was done, Tally whistled. "Wow, that's pretty good already."

"Great," Shay groaned. "I totally look like every other new pretty in the world."

"Well, sure, we just got started. How about some hair on you?" Tally blinked through menus quickly, picking a style at random.

When the wallscreen changed, Shay fell over on the floor in a fit of giggles. The high hairdo towered over her thin face like dunce cap, the white-blond hair utterly incongruous with her olive skin.

Tally could hardly manage to speak through her own laughter. "Okay, maybe not that."

She flipped through more styles, settling on basic hair, dark and short. "Let's get the face right first."

She tweaked the eyebrows, making their arch more dramatic, and added roundness to the cheeks. Shay was still too skinny, even after the morpho software had pulled her toward the average.

"And maybe a bit lighter?" Tally took the shade of the skin closer to baseline.

"Hey, Squint," Shay said. "Whose face is this, anyway?"

"Just playing," Tally said. "You want to take a shot?"

"No, I want to go hoverboarding."

"Sure, great. But first let's get this right."

"What do you mean 'get it right,' Tally? Maybe I think my face is already right!"

"Yeah, it's great." Tally rolled her eyes. "For an ugly."

Shay scowled. "What, can't you stand me? Do you need to get some picture into your head so you can imagine it instead of my face?"

"Shay! Come on. It's just for fun."

"Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun."

"We are ugly!"

"This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves."

Tally groaned and flopped back onto her bed, glaring up at the ceiling. Shay could be so weird sometimes. She always had a chip on her shoulder about the operation, like someone was making her turn sixteen.

"Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Shay recited. "Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance.

People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren't quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah."

"Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color." Tally shook her head.

No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she'd never really quite believed that one. "So what if people look more alike now? It's the only way to make people equal."

"How about making them smarter?"

Tally laughed. "Fat chance. Anyway, it's just to see what you and I will look like in only…two months and fifteen days."

"Can't we just wait until then?"

Tally closed her eyes, sighing. "Sometimes I don't think I can."

"Well, tough luck." She felt Shay's weight on the bed and a light punch on her arm. "Hey, might as well make the best of it. Can we go hoverboarding now? Please?"

Tally opened her eyes and saw that her friend was smiling. "Okay: hoverboard." She sat up and glanced at the screen. Even without much work, Shay's face was already welcoming, vulnerable, healthy…pretty.

"Don't you think you're beautiful?"

Shay didn't look, just shrugged. "That's not me. It's some committee's idea of me."

Tally smiled and hugged her.

"It will be you, though. Really you. Soon."

"I think you're ready."

Tally cruised to a stop-right foot down, left foot up, bend the knees.

"Ready for what?"

Shay drifted slowly past, letting the breeze tug her along. They were as high up and far out as hoverboards would go, just above treetop level, at the edge of town. It was amazing how quickly Tally had gotten used to being up high, with nothing but a board and bracelets between her and a long fall.

The view from up here was fantastic. Behind them the spires of New Pretty Town rose from the center of town, and around them was the greenbelt, a swath of forest that separated the middle and the late pretties from the youngsters. Older generations of pretties lived out in the suburbs, hidden by the hills, in rows of big houses separated by strips of private garden for their littlies to play in.

Shay smiled. "Ready for a night ride."

"Oh. Look, I don't know if I want to cross the river again," Tally said, remembering her promise to Peris. She and Shay had shown each other a lot of tricks over the last three weeks, but they hadn't been back into New Pretty Town since the night they'd met. "Until we get turned, of course. After last time, the wardens are probably all-" "I wasn't talking about New Pretty Town," Shay interrupted. "That place is boring, anyway. We'd have to sneak around all night."