Скотт Вестерфельд - Specials

A flicker of infrared glow came through the trees, a human form ahead of her. She paused a moment to listen, but hardly a sound carried through the forest: Whoever it was could move as silently as David.

Tally crept forward slowly, eyes scanning the ground for the subtle markers of a trail. Seconds later she found it—an almost invisible channel through the dense trees, the path that the figure was following.

Shay had warned her to be careful, and whoever this person was—Smokie or not—they wouldn't be easy to sneak up on. But perhaps one ambush deserved another…

Tally veered off the trail, running deeper into the forest. She moved silent and light-footed through the soft undergrowth, sweeping around her quarry in a slow arc until she found the trail again. Then she crept forward, ahead of them now, until she spotted a high tree branch that stretched directly over the path.

The perfect spot.

As she climbed, her suit-scales sprouted the rough texture of bark, its colors shifting into a dappled moonlit pattern. She clung to an overhanging branch, invisible and waiting, her heartbeat quickening.

The glowing figure came through the trees in total silence. There were no synthetic smells among those of unwashed humanity: no sunblock patches, insect repellent, or even a trace of soap or shampoo. As Tally flipped through vision overlays, she detected no signs of electronics or a heated jacket, and her ears didn't catch the slight buzz of night-vision goggles.

Not that equipment would help her quarry. Absolutely motionless in her sneak suit, hardly breathing, Tally was undetectable even to the best technology…

And yet, just as the figure passed below her, it slowed, cocking its head as if listening for something.

Tally held her breath. She knew she was invisible, but her heart beat faster, her senses amplifying the sounds of the forest around her. Was there someone else out here? Someone who'd spotted her climbing the tree? Phantoms flickered at the corners of her vision. Her body longed to act, not hide up here among the leaves and branches.

For a long moment, the figure didn't move. Then, very slowly, its head tipped back to gaze upward.

Tally didn't hesitate—she dropped, flattening her scales to night black armored mode, wrapping both arms around the figure, pinning its arms as she dragged it to the ground. This close, the unwashed smell was almost choking.

"I don't want to hurt you," she hissed through the suit's mask. "But I will if I have to."

The young man struggled for a moment, and Tally saw the flash of a metal knife in his hand. She squeezed harder, pushing the breath from his lungs with a cracking of ribs until the knife slipped from his fingers.

"Sayshal," he hissed.

His accent sent a shudder of recognition through Tally. Sayshal? She remembered that strange word from somewhere. She flipped off her infrared, pulled him to his feet, and pushed him backward, taking in his face in a stray beam of moonlight.

He was bearded and dirty-faced, his clothing nothing but strips of animal skins sewn crudely together. "I know you…," she said softly. When he didn't answer, Tally pulled off her hood, letting him see her face.

"Young Blood," he said, smiling. "You have changed."

His name was Andrew Simpson Smith, and Tally had met him before.

When she'd escaped the city back in her pretty days, she'd stumbled across a sort of reservation, an experiment maintained by the city's scientists. The people inside the reservation lived like pre-Rusties, wearing skins and using only Stone Age tools—clubs and sticks and fire. They inhabited small villages that were constantly at war with each other, an endless cycle of revenge killings for the scientists to study, like a purified layer of human violence squeezed between the halves of a petri dish.

The villagers didn't know about the rest of the world, or that every problem they faced—illness and hunger and bloodshed—had been solved by humanity centuries before. That is, they hadn't known until Tally had stumbled into one of their hunting parties, been mistaken for a god, and told a holy man named Andrew Simpson Smith all about it.

"How did you get out?" she asked.

He smiled proudly. "I crossed the edge of the world, Young Blood."

Tally raised an eyebrow. The reservation was bounded by "little men," dolls strung from the trees and armed with neural scramblers that caused terrific pain to anyone who got too close. The villagers were far too dangerous to be let loose into the real wild, so the city had given their world impassable borders.

"How did you manage that?"

Andrew Simpson Smith chuckled as he bent to pick up his knife, and Tally fought an urge to kick it from his hand. He had called her a Sayshal, the villagers' word for hated Specials. Of course, now that he'd seen her face, he remembered Tally as a friend, an ally against the gods of the city. He had no idea what her new lace of flash tattoos meant, no understanding that she had become one of the gods' feared enforcers.

"After you told me how much lay beyond the edge of the world, Young Blood, I began to wonder if the little men were afraid of anything."

"Afraid?"

"Yes. I tried many ways to scare them. Songs, spells. The skulls of bears."

"Um, they're not really men, Andrew. Just machines. They don't exactly get afraid."

His expression grew more serious. "But fire, Young Blood. I learned they fear fire."

"Fire?" Tally swallowed. "Um, Andrew, was this a really big fire, by any chance?"

His smile returned. "It burned many trees. When it was done, the little men had run away."

She groaned. "I think the little men were burned away, Andrew. So you're saying you started a forest fire?"

"Forest fire." He considered this for a moment. "Those are good words for it."

"Actually, Andrew, those are bad words. You're just lucky it's not summer, or that fire could've taken out your whole…world."

He smiled. "My world is bigger now, Young Blood."

"Yeah, but still…that wasn't what I had in mind."

Tally sighed. Her attempt to explain the real world to Andrew had resulted in massive destruction instead of enlightenment, and his fire had probably released several villages full of dangerous barbarians into the wild. There were Smokies and runaways and even campers from the city out here. "How long ago did you do this?"

"Twenty-seven days." He shook his head. "But the little men came back. New ones, who are not afraid of fire. I have been outside my old world ever since."

"But you've made some new friends, haven't you? City friends."

He looked at Tally suspiciously for a moment. He must have realized that if she'd seen him with the Crims, she had been following them. "Young Blood," he said cautiously. "By what fortune do we meet?"

Tally didn't answer right away. The concept of lies had hardly seemed to exist in Andrew's village, at least until Tally had explained the big lie they were all living in. But surely by now he was more wary of city people. She decided to choose her words carefully. "Those gods you just met, some of them are friends of mine."

"They are not gods, Tally. You taught me that."

"Right. Good for you, Andrew." She wondered what else he understood these days. He had grown more comfortable with the city's language, as if he'd been practicing a lot. "But how did you know they were coming? You didn't just run into them accidentally, did you?"

He looked at her warily for a moment, then shook his head. "No. They're running from the Sayshal, and I offered help. They are your friends?"

She chewed her lip. "One of them was … I mean, is…my boyfriend."

Comprehension spread across Andrew's face, and he let out a low chuckle. Reaching out one hand, he patted her shoulder roughly. "I see now. That's why you follow, making yourself as invisible as a Sayshal. A boyfriend."