Pretties

by Scott Westerfeld

  Tally blinked. It hadn’t crossed her mind to wonder about the jackets; everything was always ultra-safe in New Pretty Town, otherwise new pretties would kill themselves left and right. She shrugged. “In case the lifters failed? Like in a power blackout?”

  Cable let out a razor-sharp laugh that lasted less than a second. “There hasn’t been a blackout in a hundred and fifty years.” She shook her head at the thought and continued. “Knock down anything you want, Tally. I don’t care about your little tricks . . . except for what they reveal about you.”

  The woman’s gaze focused on her once more, and Tally again had to fight the urge to run. She wondered if this was simply a way to get her to admit what the Crims had done. Probably she’d said too much already. But something about Dr. Cable’s cold stare—her razor voice, her predatory movements, her very existence in the world—made it impossible for Tally to act pretty-minded. By now, any real new pretty would have fled screaming or dissolved into a puddle on the spot.

  Besides, if Special Circumstances really wanted Tally to confess her tricks, they wouldn’t have bothered with a conversation.

  “So why are you here?” Tally said in her normal voice, trying hard to keep it steady.

  “I’ve always admired your survival instinct, Tally. You were a good little traitor when you had to be.”

  “Uh, thanks . . . I guess.”

  Cable nodded. “And now it turns out you have more of a brain than I gave you credit for. You resist conditioning very well.”

  “Conditioning. That’s what you call it?” Tally swore. “Like it’s a hair treatment or something?”

  “Amazing.” Dr. Cable leaned close again, her eyes focusing on Tally’s as if trying to bore through to her brain. “Somewhere in there, you’re still a tricky little ugly, aren’t you? Most impressive. I could use you, I think.”

  Tally felt a flush of anger, a fire inside her head. “Um, like, didn’t you already use me?”

  “So, you do remember. Superb.” The woman’s cruel-pretty eyes, flat and lusterless and cold, somehow showed pleasure. “I know that was an unpleasant experience, Tally. But it was necessary. We needed to take our children back from the Smoke, and only you could help us. But I do apologize.”

  “Apologize?” Tally said. “For blackmailing me into betraying my friends, for destroying the Smoke, for killing David’s father?” She felt an expression of disgust on her face. “I don’t think you’ll be using me, Dr. Cable. I’ve already done you enough favors.”

  The woman only smiled again. “I agree. So it’s time I did you a favor. What I am offering is something quite . . . bubbly.”

  The word on Cable’s thin, cruel lips made Tally laugh dryly. “What would you know about being bubbly?”

  “You’d be surprised. We at Special Circumstances know all about sensations, especially the ones you and your so-called Crims are always searching for. I can give it to you, Tally. All day, every day, bubblier than you can imagine. The real thing. Not just an escape from the haze of being pretty—something better.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Remember flying on a hoverboard, Tally?” Cable said, her dull eyes igniting with cold fire. “That feeling of being alive? Yes, we can make people pretty inside—empty and lazy and vapid—but we can also make them bubbly, as you call it. More intense than you ever felt as an ugly, more alive than a wolf taking its prey, even bubblier than ancient Rusty soldiers killing one another over some plot of oil-rich desert. Your senses sharper, your body faster than any athlete’s in history, your muscles as strong as any human’s in the world.”

  The woman’s razor voice fell silent, and Tally could suddenly hear the night around them perfectly—icicles dripping against hard ground, trees creaking in the wind, the bonfire below spitting out random showers of sparks. She could hear the party perfectly: Crims shouting about the exploits of the day, arguing about who had bounced highest or landed hardest. Cable’s words had left the world as sharp as broken crystal.

  “You should see the world as I see it, Tally.”

  “You’re offering me a . . . job? As a Special?”

  “Not a job. A whole new being.” Dr. Cable said each word with deliberate care. “You can be one of us.”

  Tally was breathing hard, her pulse pounding through her entire body, as if the very idea was already changing her. She bared her teeth at Dr. Cable. “You think I’d work for you?”

  “Consider your other choice, Tally. Spending your life looking for cheap thrills, managing a few moments at a time truly awake. Never clearing your head completely. But you’d make a fine Special. Traveling to the Smoke on your own was impressive; I always had hopes for you. But now that I see you’re still tricky even after the operation”—Dr. Cable shook her head—“I realize that you’re a natural. Join us.”

  A ping went through Tally as she understood something at last. “Tell me something. What were you like as an ugly?”

  “Outstanding, Tally.” The woman barked her one-second laugh. “You already know the answer, don’t you?”

  “You were tricky.”

  Cable nodded. “I was just like you. All of us were. We went to the ruins, tried to run farther, had to be brought back. That’s why we let uglies play their little tricks—to see who’s cleverest. To see which of you fights your way out of the cage. That’s what your rebellion is all about, Tally—graduating to Special Circumstances.”

  Tally closed her eyes, and knew the woman was telling the truth. She remembered being an ugly, how easy it had always been to fool the dorm minders, how everyone always found ways around the rules. She took a deep breath. “But why?”

  “Because someone has to keep things under control, Tally.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What I want to know is, why do you do it to pretties? Why change their brains?”

  “Goodness, Tally, isn’t that obvious?” Dr. Cable shook her head in disappointment. “What do they teach in school these days?”

  “That the Rusties almost destroyed the world,” Tally recited.

  “There’s your answer.”

  “But we’re better than them, we leave the wild alone, we don’t strip-mine or burn oil. We don’t have wars. . . .” Tally’s voice sputtered out as she began to see.

  Dr. Cable nodded. “We are under control, Tally, because of the operation. Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch. Without the operation, human beings always become Rusties.”

  “Not in the Smoke.”

  “Think back, Tally. The Smokies clear-cut the land, they killed animals for food. When we landed, they were burning trees.”

  “Not that many.” Tally heard her voice break.

  “What if there had been millions of Smokies? Billions of them, soon enough? Outside of our self-contained cities, humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world. But we . . .” She reached out and stroked Tally’s cheek, her fingers strangely hot in the winter air. “Special Circumstances . . . we are the cure.”

  Tally shook her head, stumbling back from Dr. Cable. “Forget it.”

  “This is what you’ve always wanted.”

  “You’re wrong!” Tally shouted. “All I ever wanted was to be pretty. You’re the one who keeps getting in my way!”

  Her cry left them both in surprised silence, the last words echoing through the park. A hush settled over the party below, everyone probably wondering who was screaming her head off up in the trees.

  Dr. Cable recovered first, sighing softly. “Goodness, Tally. Relax. There’s no need to shout. If you don’t want what I’m offering, I’ll leave you to your party. Feel free to age into a smug middle pretty. Soon enough, being bubbly won’t matter so much; you’ll forget this little conversation.”

  Tally held the doctor’s cruel-pretty stare, almost wanting to tell her about the cure, to spit it back in her face. Tally’s mind wasn’t going to fade away, not tomorrow, not in fif
ty years; she wasn’t going to forget who she was. And she didn’t need Special Circumstances to feel alive.

  Her throat still stung from yelling, but Tally said hoarsely, “Never.”

  “All I ask is that you think about it. Take your time deciding—it’s all the same to me. Just remember the way it felt falling through that ice. You can have that feeling every second.” Dr. Cable waved a hand casually. “And if it makes a difference, I may even find space for your friend Zane. I’ve had my eye on him for some time. He was once of help to me.”

  A chill went through Tally, and she shook her head. “No.”

  Dr. Cable nodded. “Yes. Zane was very forthcoming about David and the Smoke, that time he didn’t run away.”

  She turned and disappeared into the trees.

  BREAKUP

  Tally stumbled back to the party.

  The bonfire had grown bigger, its heat pushing back the revelers into a wide circle. Someone had requisitioned industrial-size logs of peat, big enough to burn through the Crims’ collective carbon allowance for a month. The fire was topped off with fallen branches gathered from the park, and the hiss of still-green wood reminded Tally of cook-fires in the Smoke, when the water inside fresh-cut trees would boil, steam spitting out as if giving voice to the angry spirits of the forest.

  She looked up at the column of smoke rising, ominously dark against the sky. That’s how the Smoke had gotten its name. As Dr. Cable had said, the Smokies burned trees ripped alive from the ground. Human beings had been pulling that particular trick for thousands of years; a few centuries before, they’d almost put enough carbon in the air to screw up the climate for good. Only when someone had released an oil-transforming bacteria into the air had Rusty civilization been brought to a halt, and the planet saved.

  And now, at their bubbliest, the Crims were instinctively headed in the same direction. Suddenly, the warm, cheery fire just made Tally feel worse.

  She listened to the voices around her—bragging about how far they’d hoverbounced on the soccer field, debating who’d done the best interview for the feeds. Her unhappy conversation with Dr. Cable had left Tally’s senses sharpened; she could separate every sound, tease apart every strand of conversation. Suddenly the Crims all sounded foolish, repeating the stories of their petty victories to one another again and again. Just like pretties.

  “Skinny?”

  She turned from the fire to find Shay next to her.

  “Is Zane okay?” Shay peered closer, and her eyes widened. “Tally-wa, you look . . .”

  Tally didn’t need her to finish, she could see it in Shay’s eyes: She looked terrible. Tally smiled tiredly at this news. That was part of the cure, of course. She might still be gorgeous—her bone structure perfect, her skin flawless—but Tally’s face revealed the turmoil inside. Now that she could think unpretty thoughts, she would no longer be beautiful every minute of the day. Anger, fear, and anxiety were not pretty-making.

  “Zane’s all right. It’s just me.”

  Shay leaned her weight against Tally, putting an arm around her. “Why so sad, Skinny? Tell me.”

  “It’s just”—she glanced around at the boasting Crims—“it’s everything, kind of.”

  Shay lowered her voice. “I thought today went perfectly.”

  “Sure. Perfect.”

  “Until Zane went and drank too much, of course. That’s all it was, right?”

  Tally made a noncommittal sound. She didn’t want to lie to Shay. Eventually, she would tell her all about the cure, which would mean explaining Zane’s headaches.

  Shay sighed, squeezing Tally harder. There was a moment of silence, and then she asked, “Skinny, what happened to you guys up there?”

  “Up where?”

  “You know—when you climbed the transmission tower. It changed you, somehow.”

  Tally played with the scarf around her wrist, wishing she could tell her friend everything. But it was too risky to share news of the cure until they were safely outside the city. “I don’t know what to say, Squint. It was really bubbly-making up there. You can see the whole island, and you can fall at any moment. Die, even. That makes a difference.”

  “I know,” Shay whispered.

  “You know what?”

  “How it feels. I climbed the tower. Fausto and I figured out how to hack the minders, and last night I decided to go for it. To make myself bubbly for the breakthrough.”

  “Really?” Tally stared at her. Shay’s face glowed with pride in the firelight, her implanted eye-jewels glittering. All the Crims were changing, but if Shay was hacking minders and scaling the Valentino tower, she was way ahead of the rest of them. “That’s great. And you climbed up at night?”

  “Only way to get away with it, since you and Zane got so totally busted. Fausto said I should wear a bungee jacket, but I wanted to do it like you did. I could have fallen—died, like you said. I even cut myself on a cable.” With a smile, she showed a red mark that stretched across her palm, but then paused a moment, unpretty lines appearing on her forehead. “But it was kind of disappointing.”

  “How?”

  “It didn’t change me as much as I thought it would.”

  Tally shrugged. “Well, everyone’s different. . . .”

  “I suppose so,” Shay said softly. “But it made me wonder . . . It wasn’t just you guys climbing the tower, was it? There was something else that happened that day, Skinny. You’d never even hung out alone with Zane before, but since then you two have your own secret club, smiling at your own jokes and whispering all the time. You never go anywhere without each other.”

  “Squint . . . ,” Tally said, and sighed. “Sorry if we’ve been all coupley. But, you know, it’s my first crush as a pretty.”

  Shay stared at the fire. “That’s what I thought, at first. But it’s gone way past that, Tally. You’re so different from the rest of us—both of you.” Her voice rose above a whisper. “Zane gets those weird headaches that he tries to hide, and that was you screaming a minute ago, wasn’t it?”

  Tally swallowed.

  “What changed you guys that day?”

  Tally pointed at her wrist. “Shhh.”

  “Don’t shush me! Tell me.”

  Tally looked around them nervously. The fire consumed more fallen branches, hissing loudly, and most of the Crims were singing drinking songs. No one had heard Shay’s outburst, but Tally could feel the hard metal of the cuff around her wrist, always listening. “I can’t tell you, Squint.”

  “Yes, you can.” Shay’s face seemed to change in the firelight, the pretty softness burning away as her anger grew. “You see, Tally, I remembered some things when I was up in that tower, staring down at the ground and wondering if I was going to die. And then I remembered a few more while I was falling through the ice and bouncing on the soccer field. A lot of things came back from ugly days. Isn’t that great?”

  Tally turned away from the harsh expression on Shay’s face. “Yeah, sure it is.”

  “Glad you agree. So here’s what I remembered: It’s because of you that I’m here in the city, Tally. All those stories I used to tell? They were bogus. What really happened is that you followed me out to the Smoke to betray me, right?”

  Tally felt it again, the same gut-punch as when she’d seen Dr. Cable in the trees: caught. From the moment she’d felt the pills working on her, Tally had known somewhere inside her that this moment would come, that Shay would eventually remember what had really happened back when they were uglies. But Tally hadn’t expected it so soon. “Yeah, I followed you to bring you back here. It’s my fault, what happened to the Smoke. The Specials tracked me there.”

  “Right, you betrayed us. After you stole David from me, of course.” Shay laughed bitterly. “I hate to bring the whole David thing up, but who knows if I’ll remember it tomorrow, you know? So I thought I’d mention it while I’m bubbly.”

  Tally turned to her. “You’ll remember it.”

  Shay only shrugged. “Maybe. But
tricks like today’s don’t come around that often. So you might be off the hook again by tomorrow.”

  Tally took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of wood smoke, burning peat, pine needles, and spilled champagne. The firelight revealed everything as bright as day, even the whorls of her fingerprints. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Look at me,” Shay said. Her flash tattoo was spinning hard, its halo of snakes blurring together like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. “Tell me what happened to you that day. Keep me bubbly. You owe me.”

  Tally swallowed. She and Zane had promised each other not to tell anyone—not yet. But neither of them had realized how far Shay had come—bubbly enough to climb the tower on her own, to finally remember what had really happened back in ugly days. Probably she could keep a secret, and telling her about the cure would give her hope, at least. It was the only way Tally could begin to make up for what she’d done.

  And Shay was right: Tally owed her.

  “Okay. Something else happened that day.”

  Shay nodded slowly. “I thought so. What was it?”

  Tally pointed at Shay’s scarf, and together they pulled it off and wrapped it tightly around Tally’s wrist, another layer over the cuff. After another breath, she said in the softest whisper she could manage, “We found a cure.”

  Shay’s eyes narrowed. “It’s about starving yourself, isn’t it?”

  “No. Well, that helps. Hunger, coffee, playing tricks—all that stuff Zane’s been doing for months. But the real cure is . . . simpler than that.”

  “What is it? I’ll do it.”

  “You can’t.”

  “The hell with you, Tally!” Shay’s eyes flashed. “If you can do it, I can!”

  Tally shook her head. “It’s a pill.”

  “A pill? Like vitamins?”

  “No, a special pill. Croy brought it to me, the night of the Valentino bash. Try to remember, Shay. Before you and I came back to the city, Maddy had figured out how to reverse the operation. You helped me write a letter, remember?”

  Shay’s face went blank for a moment, then she frowned. “That’s when I was pretty.”