Uglies

by Scott Westerfeld

Part II The Smoke Chapter 17

 

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

  - Francis Bacon,Essays, Civil and Moral, "Of Beauty"

  Chapter 17

  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.

  Tally realized that this hoverboard was no ugly toy. It was the real thing. On its front end a half circle of lights glowed, giving feedback from the board's metal detector, which constantly searched ahead to see if there was enough iron in the ground to stay aloft. The lights stayed on solidly as she climbed the rapids, and Tally hoped that Shay was right about metal deposits being found in every river. Otherwise, this could be a very long trip.

  Of course, at this speed she wouldn't have time to stop if the lights suddenly went out. Which would make it a very short trip.

  But the lights stayed on, and Tally's nerves were soothed by the roar of white water, the cold slap of spray in her face, the thrill of bending her body through curve after curve in the moon-speckled darkness.

  The board was smarter than her old one, learning her moves in a matter of minutes. It was like graduating from a tricycle to a motorbike: scary, but thrilling.

  Tally wondered if the route to the Smoke had a lot of rapids to ride. Maybe this really would be an adventure. Of course, at the end of the journey there would only be betrayal. Or worse, she would discover that Shay's trust in David had been misplaced, which could mean. . . anything. Probably something horrible.

  She shivered, deciding not to think about that possibility again.

  When Tally reached the turnoff, she slowed and turned the board around, taking a last look at the city. It shone brilliantly in the dark valley, so distant that she could blot it out with one hand. In the clear night air, Tally could make out individual fireworks unfolding like bright flowers, everything in perfect miniature.

  The wild around her seemed so much larger, the churning river full of power, the forest huge with the secrets hidden in its black depths.

  She allowed herself a long stare at the city lights before she stepped onto shore, wondering when she would see her home again.

  On the trail, Tally wondered how often she'd have to walk. The trip up the rapids had been the fastest she had ever flown, even quicker than the Special Circumstances hovercar dodging through city traffic.

  After that rush of speed, carrying the knapsack and board felt like being turned into a slug.

  But soon enough the Rusty Ruins appeared below, and the board's metal detector guided Tally to the natural vein of iron. She rode it down toward the crumbling towers, her nerves growing jumpy as the ruins rose up to blot out the half-moon. The broken buildings surrounded her, the scorched and silent cars passing below. Peering through the empty windows made her feel how alone she was, a solitary wanderer in an empty city.

  "Take the coaster straight past the gap," she said aloud, an incantation to keep away any Rusty ghosts.

  At least that much of the note was crystal clear: The "coaster" had to be the roller coaster.

  When the towering ruins gave way to flatter ground, Tally opened up the hoverboard. Reaching the roller coaster, she took the entire circuit at full speed. Maybe "straight past the gap" was the only important part of the clue, but Tally had decided to treat the note like a magic spell. Leaving out any part might make the whole thing meaningless.

  And it felt good to ride fast and hard again, leaving the ghosts of the Rusty Ruins behind. As she whipped around tight turns and down steep descents, the world whirling around her, Tally felt like something caught in the wind, not knowing which direction the journey would ultimately take her.

  A few seconds before she took the jump across the gap, the metal-detector lights winked out. The board dropped away, and her stomach seemed to go with it, leaving a hollow feeling inside. Her suspicion had proved right - at top speed, there hadn't been much warning.

  Tally flew through the air in the silent darkness, the rush of her passage the only sound. She remembered her first time across the gap, how angry she'd been. A few days later it had turned into a joke between them, typical ugly stuff. But now Shay had done it again, disappearing like the track below, leaving Tally in free fall.

  A count of five later, the lights flickered on, and the crash bracelets steadied her as the board reactivated, rising smoothly up under her feet with reassuring solidness. At the bottom of the hill the track turned, climbing into a steep corkscrew of turns. But Tally slowed and kept going ahead, murmuring,

  "straight past the gap. "

  The ruins continued under her feet. Out here they were almost completely submerged, only a few shapeless masses rising through the grasp of vegetation. But the Rusties had built solidly, in love with their wasteful skeletons of metal. The lights on the front of her board stayed bright.

  "Until you find one that's long and flat," Tally said to herself. She had memorized the note backward and forward, but repeating the words hadn't made their meaning any clearer.

  "Onewhat ?" was the question. A roller coaster? A gap? The first would be silly. Where would be the point of a long, flat roller coaster? A long, flat gap? Maybe that would describe a canyon, complete with a handy river at the bottom. But how could a canyon be flat?

  Maybe "one" meant a one, like the number. Should she be looking for something that looked like a one?

  But a one was just a straight line, anyway, kind of long and flat already. So wasI, the Roman numeral for one, except for the crossbars on top and bottom. Or the dot on the top if it was a smalli.

  "Thanks for the great clue, Shay," Tally said aloud. Talking to herself didn't seem like such a bad idea there in the outer ruins, where the relics of the Rusties struggled against the grip of creeping plants.

  Anything was better than ghostly silence. She passed concrete plains, vast expanses cracked by thrusting
grasses. The windows of fallen walls stared up at her, sprouting weeds as if the earth had grown eyes.

  She scanned the horizon, looking for clues. There was nothing long and flat that she could see. Peering down at the ground passing below, Tally could hardly make out anything in the weed-choked darkness.

  She might zoom right past whatever the clue referred to and not even know it, and have to retrace her path in daylight. But how would she know when she'd gone too far? "Thanks, Shay," she repeated.

  Then she spotted something on the ground, and stopped.

  Through the shroud of weeds and rubble, geometrical shapes had appeared - a series of rectangles in a line. She lowered the board and saw that below her was a track with metal rails and wooden crossbars - like the roller coaster, but much bigger. And it went in a straight line, as far as she could see.

  "Take the coaster straight past the gap, until you find one that's long and flat. "

  This thing was a roller coaster, but long and flat.

  "But what's itfor ?" she wondered aloud. What fun was a roller coaster without any turns or climbs?

  She shrugged. However the Rusties got their kicks, this was perfect for a hoverboard. The track stretched off in two directions, but it was easy enough to tell which one to take. One led back the way she'd come, toward the center of the ruins. The other headed outward, northward and angling toward the sea.

  "Cold is the sea," she quoted from the next line of Shay's note, and wondered how far north she was going.

  Tally brought the hoverboard up to speed, pleased that she'd found the answer. If all of Shay's little riddles were this easy to solve, this whole trip was going to a breeze.