Pretties

by Scott Westerfeld

  He didn’t answer, and they flew the rest of the way without looking at each other once.

  DAMAGE CONTROL

  The path to the New Smokies’ hiding place wound along streams and ancient railway beds, wherever there was enough metal to keep the hoverboard aloft. Finally, they climbed a small mountain far outside the Rusty Ruins, the board’s lifters clinging to the fallen remains of an old cable car track, up to where a huge concrete dome, cracked open by the centuries, stood against the sky.

  “What was this place?” Tally asked, her voice dry after three hours in silence.

  “An observatory. There used to be a big telescope in that dome. But the Rusties took it out once the pollution from the city got too bad.”

  Tally had seen pictures of the sky filled with dirt and smoke—they showed those a lot in school—but it was hard to imagine that the Rusties had really managed to change the color of the air itself. She shook her head. Everything that she thought her teachers had exaggerated about the Rusties always turned out to be true. The temperature had dropped steadily as they’d climbed the mountain, and the afternoon sky looked crystal clear to her.

  “After the scientists couldn’t see the stars anymore, the dome was just for tourists,” David said. “That’s what all these cable cars were for. Lots of ways down by hoverboard, if we ever need to get out of here fast, and we can see for miles in every direction.”

  “Fort Smokey, huh?”

  “I guess. If the Specials ever find us, at least we’ve got a chance.”

  A lookout had evidently spotted them on the way up—people were spilling from the broken observatory as the hoverboard settled to the earth. Tally spotted the New Smokies—Croy, Ryde, and Maddy, along with a few uglies she didn’t recognize—and the two dozen or so Crims who’d come along on the escape.

  Tally searched for Zane’s face among the crowd, but he wasn’t there.

  She jumped from the board, running to hug Fausto. He grinned at her, and she could see from his sharpened expression that he’d taken the pills. He wasn’t just bubbly anymore; he was cured.

  “Tally, you smell,” he said, still grinning.

  “Oh, yeah. Long trip. Long story.”

  “I knew you’d make it. But where’s Peris?”

  She took a deep breath of the cold mountain air.

  “Chickened out, huh?” Fausto said before she could answer. When she nodded, he added, “Always thought he would.”

  “Take me to Zane.”

  Fausto turned, gesturing toward the observatory. The others were hovering close, but looked a little put off by her bedraggled appearance and ripe smell. The Crims called out hellos, and she could see the uglies reacting to a new pretty face, their eyes widening even though she was a mess. Worked every time, even when they didn’t think you were a god.

  Tally paused to nod at Croy. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you yet.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t thank me. You did it yourself.”

  She frowned, noticing that Maddy was staring strangely at her. Tally ignored the look, not interested in what David’s mother thought, and followed Fausto into the broken dome.

  • • •

  It was dark inside—a few lanterns were strung up around the edge of the huge, open hemisphere, and a narrow shaft of blinding sunlight streamed through the dome’s great fissure. An open fire cast jittering shadows through the space, its smoke climbing lazily up through the crack overhead.

  Zane lay on a pile of blankets by the fire, his eyes closed. He looked even thinner than when they’d been trying to starve the cuffs off, his eyes sunken into his head. The covers rose and fell softly with his breathing.

  Tally swallowed. “But David said he was okay. . . .”

  “He’s stable,” Fausto said, “which is good, considering.”

  “Considering what?”

  Fausto spread his hands helplessly. “His brain.”

  A chill moved through Tally, the shadows in the corners of her eyes rippling for a moment. “What about it?” she said softly.

  “You had to experiment, didn’t you, Tally?” came a voice from the darkness. Maddy stepped into the light, David at her side.

  Tally held her steely glare. “What are you talking about?”

  “The pills I gave you were meant to be taken together.”

  “I know. But there were two of us . . .” Tally trailed off at David’s expression. And I was too scared to do it alone, she added to herself, remembering the panic of those moments in Valentino 317.

  “I suppose I should have known,” Maddy said, shaking her head. “This was always a risk, letting a pretty-head treat herself.”

  “What was?”

  “I never explained how the cure worked, did I?” Maddy said. “How the nanos remove the lesions from your brain? They break them down, like the pills that cure cancer.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “The nanos didn’t stop. They went on reproducing, breaking down Zane’s brain.”

  Tally turned to look at the form on the bed. His breathing seemed so shallow, the movement of his chest at the edge of perception.

  She faced David. “But you said the cure worked perfectly.”

  He nodded. “It does. Your other friends are fine. But the two pills were different. The second pill, the one you took, is the cure for the cure. It makes the nanos self-destruct after they finish with the lesions. Without it, Zane’s nanos kept reproducing, kept eating away at him. Mom said they stopped at some point, but not before they did a . . . certain amount of damage.”

  The sickening feeling in Tally’s stomach redoubled as the realization sunk home: This was her fault. She had swallowed the pill that would have kept Zane from this, the cure for the cure. “How much damage?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Maddy said. “I had enough stem tissue to regenerate the destroyed areas of his brain, but the connections that Zane had built up among those cells are gone. Those connections are where memories and motor skills are stored, and where cognition happens. Some parts of his mind are almost a blank slate.”

  “A blank slate? You mean . . . he’s gone?”

  “No, just a few places are damaged,” Fausto spoke up. “And his brain can rewire itself, Tally. His neurons are making new connections. That’s what he’s doing right now. Zane had been doing it all along; he hoverboarded all the way here on his own before he collapsed.”

  “Rather amazing that he lasted so long,” Maddy said, shaking her head slowly. “I think not eating is what saved him. By starving himself, he eventually starved the nanos. They appear to be gone.”

  “He can still talk and everything,” Fausto said. He looked down at Zane. “He’s just a little . . . tired right now.”

  “It could have been you in that bed, Tally.” Maddy shook her head. “A fifty-fifty chance. You just got lucky.”

  “That’s me. Little Miss Lucky,” Tally said softly.

  Of course, she had to admit to herself that it was true. They’d split the two pills randomly, assuming they were the same. The nanos could have been eating away at Tally’s brain all this time instead of Zane’s. Lucky her.

  She let her eyes close, realizing at last how hard Zane must have worked to hide what was happening to him. All those long silences when they’d been wearing the cuffs, he’d been fighting, struggling to keep his mind together, unsure of exactly what was happening, but risking everything to escape becoming pretty-minded again.

  Tally gazed down at him, wishing for a moment it had been the other way around. Anything was better than seeing him like this. If only she’d taken the nano pill, and he had taken the one that . . . had done what? “Wait a second. If Zane got the nanos, how did my pill cure me?”

  “It didn’t,” Maddy said. “Without the other pill, the anti-nanos you took would have no effect whatsoever.”

  “But . . .”

  “It was you, Tally,” came a soft voice from the bed. Zane’s eyes had opened a slit, catching the sunligh
t like the edges of gold coins. He gave her a weary smile. “You got bubbly on your own.”

  “But I felt so different after we . . .” She fell silent, remembering that day—their kiss, sneaking into Valentino Mansion, climbing the tower. But, of course, all those things had happened before they’d taken the pills. Being with Zane had changed her from the beginning, from that first kiss.

  Tally remembered how her “cure” always seemed to come and go. She’d had to work to stay bubbly, more like the other Crims than Zane.

  “He’s right, Tally,” Maddy said. “Somehow, you cured yourself.”

  COLD WATER

  Tally stayed at Zane’s bedside. He was awake and talking now, and it was easier to be here than dealing with everything that she and David still had to work out. The others left them alone.

  “Did you know what was happening to you?”

  Zane took a moment before answering. His speech was full of long silences now, almost like Andrew’s epic pauses. “I knew that everything was getting harder. Sometimes I had to concentrate just to walk. But I hadn’t felt so alive since I’d turned pretty; it was worth it, being bubbly with you. I figured once we found the New Smoke, they could help me.”

  “They are helping. Maddy said that she put in some new . . .” Tally swallowed.

  “Brain tissue?” he supplied, and smiled. “Sure, blank neurons fresh out of the oven. Just got to fill them up now.”

  “We will. We’ll do bubbly-making things,” Tally said, but the promise felt strange in her mouth—“we” meant she and Zane, as if David didn’t exist.

  “If there’s enough left of me to be bubbly,” he said tiredly. “It’s not like all my memories are gone. It was mostly my cognition centers that were affected, and some motor skills.”

  “Cognition? You mean like thinking?” Tally said.

  “Yeah, and motor skills, like walking.” He shrugged. “But the brain’s built to take damage, Tally. It’s wired so that everything is stored everywhere, sort of. When a part of it gets damaged, things don’t get lost, just fuzzier. Like a hangover.” He laughed. “A really bad one. On top of which, I’m sore from lying in bed all day. And it feels like I’ve got a toothache from all this Smokey food. It’s just phantom pains from brain damage, Maddy says.” He rubbed one cheek with a scowl.

  She took his hand. “I can’t believe you’re so brave about this. It’s incredible.”

  “You should talk, Tally.” He struggled to sit up, his movements shaky and infirm. “You managed to cure yourself without getting your brain chewed up. That’s what I’d call incredible.”

  Tally looked down at their clasped hands. She didn’t feel very incredible. She felt smelly and dirty, and horrible that she hadn’t had the guts to take both pills, which would have prevented all of this from happening. She didn’t even have the guts to talk to Zane about David, or vice versa. Which was just pathetic.

  “Is it strange, seeing him?” he asked.

  She looked at Zane, and he chuckled at her surprise. “Come on, Tally. It’s not like I’m reading your mind. I had plenty of warning about this. You told me about the guy the first time we kissed, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” So Zane had been expecting this all along. Tally should have foreseen it herself. Maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to face the obvious. “Yeah, it is strange seeing him. I definitely didn’t expect to find him waiting for me in the ruins. Just me and him alone.”

  Zane nodded. “It was interesting, waiting for you. His mother said you wouldn’t come at all. That you must have chickened out, because you hadn’t really been cured. Like you were just playing along with me, imitating my bubbliness.”

  Tally rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t much like me.”

  “You don’t say?” He grinned. “But David and me figured you’d show up sooner or later. We figured that—”

  Tally groaned. “So are you guys like friends now?”

  Zane took one of his excruciatingly long pauses. “I guess so. He asked me a lot about you when we first got here. I think he wanted to know how being pretty has changed you.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. He was the one who met us when we arrived in the ruins. Him and Croy, camping out and watching for flares. It turns out that those two left the magazines for the city uglies to find, so they’d know the ruins were being visited again.” Zane’s voice had gotten dreamy, as if he was falling asleep. “At least I finally got to see him again, after chickening out all those months ago.” He turned to her. “David really missed you, you know.”

  “I ruined his life,” Tally said softly.

  “You didn’t do anything on purpose; David understands that now. I told him how when you’d planned to betray the Smoke, it was because the Specials threatened to keep you ugly for life.”

  “You told him that?” Tally let out a slow breath. “Thanks. I never really had a chance to explain why I’d come to the Smoke, how they’d forced me. Maddy made me leave the same night I confessed everything.”

  “Yeah. David wasn’t happy with her about that. He wanted to talk to you again.”

  “Oh,” she said. There was so much that she and David hadn’t gotten straight between them. Of course, the thought of Zane and him discussing her history in great detail didn’t exactly thrill Tally, but at least David knew the whole story now. She sighed. “Thanks for telling me all this. It must be weird.”

  “A little. But you shouldn’t feel so bad. About what happened back then.”

  “Why not? I destroyed the Smoke, and David’s father died because of me.”

  “Tally, everyone in the city is manipulated. The purpose of everything we’re taught is to make us afraid of change. I’ve been trying to explain it to David, how from the day we’re born, the whole place is a machine for keeping us under control.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t make it right to betray your friends.”

  “Yeah, well, I did, long before you even met Shay. When it comes to the Smoke, I’m just as much at fault as you.”

  She looked at him in disbelief. “You? How?”

  “Did I ever tell you how I met Dr. Cable?”

  Tally looked at him, realizing that this was one conversation they’d never had a chance to finish. “No. You didn’t.”

  “After the night that Shay and I chickened out, most of my friends were gone away to the Smoke. The dorm minders knew I was the leader, so they asked me where everyone had run off to. I played tough, and didn’t say a word. So Special Circumstances came for me.” His voice grew softer, as if the cuff were still around his wrist. “They took me to that headquarters of theirs out in the factory belt, same as you. I tried to be strong, but they threatened me. Said they’d make me into one of them.”

  “One of them? A Special?” Tally swallowed.

  “Yeah. After that, being a pretty-head didn’t seem so bad anymore. So I told them everything I knew. I told them that Shay had planned to run away, but also chickened out, and that’s why they knew about her. And that’s probably why they started watching . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Tally blinked. “Watching me, when she and I became friends.”

  He nodded tiredly. “So, you see? I started the whole thing, by not leaving when I was supposed to. I’ll never judge you for what happened to the Smoke, Tally. It was my fault as much as yours.”

  She took his hand, shaking her head. He couldn’t accept blame, not after everything he’d gone through. “Zane, no. It can’t be your fault. That was a long time ago.” She sighed. “Maybe neither of us is to blame.”

  They were silent for a while, Tally’s own words echoing in her head. With Zane lying here in front of her, his mind half-missing, what was the point of wallowing in old guilt—his, or hers, or anyone’s? Maybe the bad blood between her and Maddy was as meaningless as the feud between Andrew’s village and the outsiders. If they were all going to live together here in the New Smoke, they would have to let the past go.

  Of course, things w
ere still complicated.

  Tally took a slow breath, then said, “So what do you think of David?”

  Zane looked at the arched ceiling dreamily. “He’s very intense. Really serious. Not as bubbly as us. You know?”

  Tally smiled, and squeezed his hand. “Yeah, I do.”

  “And kind of . . . ugly.”

  She nodded, remembering how back in the Smoke, David had always looked at her as if she was pretty. And at times, looking at him had felt the same as looking into a pretty’s face. Maybe when she’d had the real cure, those feelings would come back. Or maybe they were really gone for good, not because of any operation, but just because time had passed, and because of what she’d had with Zane.

  • • •

  When Zane had finally fallen asleep, Tally decided to take a bath. Fausto told her how to get to a spring on the far side of the mountain, choked with icicles at this time of year, but deep enough to submerge your whole body. “Just take a heated jacket,” he said. “Or you’ll freeze to death before you make it back.”

  Tally figured death was better than being this filthy, and she needed more than a rubdown with a wet cloth to feel clean again. She also wanted to be alone for a while, and maybe the shock from some freezing water would help her get up the nerve to talk to David.

  Hoverboarding down the mountain in the crisp, late afternoon air, Tally was amazed at how clear and bright everything looked. She still found it hard to believe that she hadn’t really taken the cure; she felt as bubbly as ever. Maddy had muttered something about a “placebo effect,” as if believing you were cured would be enough to fix your brain. But Tally knew it was more than that.

  Zane had changed her. From their very first kiss, even before he’d had the cure himself, being with him had made her bubbly. Tally wondered if she even needed the cure now, or if she could stay this way forever on her own. The thought of swallowing the same pill that had eaten away Zane’s brain didn’t thrill her, even with the anti-nanos as a chaser. Maybe she could skip it altogether, and rely on Zane’s magic. They could help each other now, rewiring his brain at the same time Tally fought becoming pretty-minded.