“As if I see the world differently?”
“Yes,” he said softly, his intense expression deepening. Most likely, Tally thought, it had never occurred to him before now that people could see reality in completely different ways. Between surviving outsider attacks and getting enough food to live, villagers probably didn’t have a lot of time for philosophical disagreements.
“That’s the way it feels,” she said, “once you get off the reservation, I mean, once you go beyond the edge of the world. Speaking of which, do you know for sure that no matter what direction we walk in, we’ll run into these little guys?”
Andrew nodded. “My father taught that the world is a circle, seven days’ walk across. This is the nearest edge to our village. But my father once walked around the entire compass of the world.”
“Interesting. You think he was looking for a way out?”
Andrew frowned. “He never said.”
“Well, I guess he didn’t find one. So how am I going to escape this world of yours and get to the Rusty Ruins?”
Andrew was silent for a while, but Tally could tell he was thinking, taking one of his interminable delays to ponder her question. Finally, he said, “You must wait for the next holy day.”
“The next what?”
“The holy days mark when the gods visit. And they will come in hovercars.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tally sighed. “I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, Andrew, but I’m not supposed to be here. If any elder gods see me, I’m busted.”
He laughed. “Do you think I’m a fool, Tally Young Blood? I listened to your story about the tower. I understand that you have been cast out.”
“Cast out?”
“Yes, Young Blood. You bear this mark.” His fingers brushed her left brow.
“Mark? Oh, right . . .” For the first time since meeting the villagers, Tally remembered her flash tattoo. “So you think this means something?”
Andrew bit his lip, dropping his eyes from her brow. “I am not sure, of course. My father never taught me of such things. But in my village, we only mark those who have stolen.”
“Yeah, sure. But you thought I was . . . marked somehow?” He looked up sheepishly, and Tally rolled her eyes. No wonder the villagers had been so confused by her; they’d thought the flash tattoo was some kind of badge of shame. “Listen, it’s just a fashion statement. Or, um, let me put that another way. It’s just something me and my friends did to amuse ourselves. You notice how it moves sometimes?”
“Yes. When you are angry, or smiling, or thinking hard.”
“Right. Well, that’s called being ‘bubbly.’ Anyway, I ran away. I didn’t get cast out.”
“And they’ll want to take you home, I understand. You see, when the gods come, they leave their hovercars behind when they walk in the forest. . . .”
Tally blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “And you’d help me steal from the elder gods?”
He only shrugged.
“Won’t they get cranky with you?”
Andrew sighed, stroking his non-beard as he considered this. “We must be careful. But I have noticed that the gods are not . . . perfect. You escaped their tower, after all.”
“Well, well, imperfect gods.” Tally allowed herself a chuckle. “What would your father say, Andrew?”
He shook his head. “I am not sure. But he isn’t here. I am the holy man now.”
• • •
That night, they camped near the barrier. Andrew said that no one—outsiders or otherwise—would be likely to venture this close to the dolls at night. It was a place of superstitious dread, on top of which, no one wanted to get their brains fried when they woke up and stumbled off into the darkness to pee.
The next morning they began a roundabout journey back to Andrew’s village, taking their time, avoiding the outsiders’ hunting grounds. It took three days, during which Andrew displayed his knowledge of the forest, mixing villager lore with scientific knowledge he’d picked up from the gods. He understood the water cycle, and a little about the food chain, but after a day of arguing about gravity, Tally gave up.
When they neared the village, it was still almost a week before the next holy day. Tally told Andrew to find her a cave to hide in, one near the clearing where the gods parked their hovercars. She had decided to stay out of sight. If none of the villagers knew she had returned, they couldn’t give Tally away to the elder gods. And she didn’t want anyone getting blamed for harboring a runaway.
Andrew headed back home, where he planned to tell how the Young Blood had passed through the edge of the world and to the beyond. Apparently, the villagers knew how to lie after all—at least the holy men did.
And his story would be true, once Tally got her hands on a hovercar. She was no expert at driving, but she’d taken the same safety course that every ugly took at fifteen: learning how to fly straight and level and how to land in an emergency. She knew that some uglies went trick-riding all the time, and said it was easy. Of course, they’d only stolen idiotproof cars that flew on the city grid.
Still, how much harder could it be than hoverboarding?
As Tally waited out the days in the cave, she couldn’t stop wondering how the other Crims were. While her own survival had been an issue, it had been easy to forget them. But now that she had nothing to do all day but sit and watch the sky, Tally found herself slowly going crazy from worry. Had the Crims escaped the Specials’ pursuit? Had they found the New Smokies yet? And, most important, how was Zane? She could only hope that Maddy had been able to fix whatever was wrong with him.
She remembered their last minutes before he’d jumped from the balloon—the last words he’d said. In all of Tally’s tattered memories, she’d never experienced anything like that moment. It had felt beyond bubbly, beyond any trick, like the world would change forever.
And now she didn’t even know whether he was still alive.
It didn’t help Tally’s state of mind that Zane and the other Crims had to be just as worried about her, wondering if she’d been recaptured or had fallen to her death. They would have expected to see her at the Rusty Ruins at least a week ago, and had to be thinking the worst by now.
How long would it be before even Zane gave up, deciding she was dead? What if she never made it out of the reservation? No one’s faith could last forever.
When she wasn’t driving herself crazy, Tally also spent the time wondering about Andrew’s confined world. How had it come to exist? Why were the villagers allowed to live out here, when the Smoke had been ruthlessly destroyed? Maybe it was the fact that the villagers were trapped, believing old legends and stuck in ancient blood feuds, while the Smokies had known the truth about the cities and the operation. But why keep a brutal culture alive, when the whole point of civilization was to curb the violent, destructive tendencies of human beings?
Andrew visited her every day, bringing her nuts and a few root vegetables to go with her dehydrated god-food. He wouldn’t give up on bringing strips of dried meat until she tried it. It tasted like it looked—as salty as seaweed and harder than an old shoe—but she gratefully accepted his other offerings.
In return, Tally told him stories about home, especially those that showed how the city of the gods wasn’t all divine perfection. She explained about uglies and the operation, how the beauty of gods was just a technological trick. The difference between magic and technology was lost on Andrew, but he listened intently. He’d inherited a healthy skepticism from his father, whose experiences with the gods, it turned out, hadn’t always left the old holy man full of respect.
Andrew could be frustrating company, though. He made some brilliant leaps of insight, but other times he was just as thick as could be expected from someone who thought the world was flat—especially when it came to the boys-in-charge thing, which she found particularly annoying. Tally knew she should be more understanding, but was only willing to cut Andrew so much slack; being born into a culture that assumed women were servants d
idn’t make it okay to go along with the plan. After all, Tally had turned her back on everything she’d been raised to expect: an effortless life, perfect beauty, pretty-mindedness. It seemed like Andrew could learn to cook his own chickens.
Maybe the barriers around Tally’s pretty world weren’t as obvious as the little men hanging in the trees, but they were just as hard to escape. She remembered how Peris had chickened out as he’d looked down on the wild from the balloon, suddenly unwilling to jump and leave behind everything he’d known. Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.
• • •
They arrived at dawn, right on schedule.
From overhead came the roar of two cars—the kind that Specials used, each with four lifting fans to carry it through the air. It was a noisy way to travel, the wind roiling the trees like a storm. From the mouth of her cave, Tally saw a huge cloud of dust rising up from the landing area, and then the whine of their rotors cycled down into a riot of frightened birdcalls. After almost two weeks of natural sounds, the powerful machines sounded strange to Tally’s ears, like engines from another world.
She crept toward the clearing in the dawn light, moving in total silence. Rehearsing her approach every morning, Tally had become familiar with every tree along the way. For once, the elder gods were going to face someone who knew all their tricks, and a few of her own.
She watched from under cover at the clearing’s edge. Four middle pretties were unpacking the cars’ cargo holds, pulling out digging tools, hovercameras, and specimen cages, loading everything onto carts. The scientists looked like campers dressed in bulky winter gear, field glasses hanging around their necks, water bottles dangling from their belts. Andrew said they never stayed more than a day, but they looked ready for weeks in the wild. Tally wondered which one was the Doctor.
Andrew worked among the four pretties, lending a hand as they arranged their equipment, being a helpful holy man. When the carts were all packed with gear, he and the scientists pushed them into the forest, leaving Tally alone with the hovercars.
She hoisted her backpack and approached the clearing warily.
This was the trickiest part of the plan. Tally could only guess what sort of security the hovercars had on board. Hopefully the scientists hadn’t thought to use more than childproof minders, the simple codes that kept littlies from flying off with a car. Surely the scientists wouldn’t suspect the villagers of knowing the same tricks as a city kid like Tally.
Unless they’d been warned that there were runaways in the area . . .
That was nonsense, of course. No one knew Tally was stranded out here without a board, and she hadn’t seen a hovercar since the night she’d left the city. If the Specials were looking for her, they weren’t looking around here.
She reached one of the cars and peeked into its open cargo door, finding nothing but pieces of packing foam shifting in the soft breeze. A few more steps brought her to the window of the passenger cabin, also empty. She reached for the door handle.
A man’s voice called from behind her.
Tally froze. After two weeks of sleeping rough, her clothes torn and dirty, she might pass for a villager from a distance. But once she turned around, her pretty face would give her away.
The voice called out again in the villagers’ language, but it was inflected with a late pretty’s gravelly air of authority. Footsteps were coming closer. Should she dive into the hovercar and try to make it away?
The words faded as the man grew closer. He had noticed her city clothes under all the dirt.
Tally turned around.
He was equipped like the others, with field glasses and a water bottle, his crumbly face a picture of surprise. He must have been sitting inside the other hovercar, moving a little slower than the rest of them—that’s why he’d caught her.
“Good heavens!” he exclaimed, switching languages. “What are you doing out here?”
She blinked, pausing for a moment, a vacant look on her pretty face. “We were in a balloon.”
“A balloon?”
“There was some kind of accident. But I don’t remember exactly. . . .”
He took a step forward, then his nose wrinkled. Tally might look like a pretty, but she smelled like a savage. “I think I saw something on the feeds about balloons going wrong, but that was a couple of weeks ago! You couldn’t have been here that . . .” He looked at her torn clothes, his nose wrinkling again. “But I suppose you have.”
Tally shook her head. “I don’t know how long it’s been.”
“You poor dear.” Recovering from his surprise, he was now all late-pretty concern. “You’re okay now. I’m Dr. Valen.”
She smiled like a good pretty, realizing that this must be the Doctor. A bird-watcher probably wouldn’t know the villagers’ language, after all. This was the man in charge.
“It feels like I’ve been hiding out forever,” she said. “There are all these crazy people out here.”
“Yes, they can be quite dangerous.” He shook his head, as if still not believing that a young city pretty had survived out here for so long. “You’re lucky to have stayed clear of them.”
“Who are they?”
“They’re . . . part of a very important study.”
“A study? Of what?”
He chuckled. “Now, that’s all very complicated. Perhaps I should tell someone we’ve found you. I’m sure everyone’s very anxious to know if you’re okay. What’s your name?”
“What are you studying out here?”
He blinked, perplexed that a new pretty was asking questions instead of whining about getting home. “Well, we’re looking at certain fundamentals of . . . human nature.”
“Of course. Like violence? Revenge.”
He frowned. “Yes, in a manner of speaking. But how . . . ?”
“I thought so.” All at once, it was becoming clear. “You’re studying violence, so you’d need a violent, brutal group of people, wouldn’t you? You’re an anthropologist?”
Confusion still played across his face. “Yes, but I’m also a doctor. A medical doctor. Are you sure you’re all right?”
A realization hit Tally. “You’re a brain doctor.”
“We’re called neurologists, actually.” Dr. Valen warily turned to reach for the hovercar door. “But perhaps I should make that call. I didn’t get your name.”
“I didn’t give it.”
Her tone stopped him cold.
“Don’t touch that door,” she said.
He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. “But you’re . . .”
“Pretty? Think again.” She smiled. “I’m Tally Youngblood. My mind is very ugly. And I’m taking your car.”
• • •
The Doctor was quite afraid of savages, it seemed—even beautiful ones.
He meekly allowed himself be locked into the cargo container of one of the hovercars, and handed over the take-off codes to the other. The security was nothing Tally couldn’t have tricked herself, but it saved time. And the expression on Dr. Valen’s face as he gave her the codes was pretty indeed. He was used to dealing with villagers in awe of his godhood. But one look at Tally’s knife and he’d realized who was giving the orders.
The man answered a few more of Tally’s questions, until no doubt remained in her mind what this reservation was all about. This had been the place where the operation had been developed, from which the first test subjects had been drawn. The purpose of the brain lesions was to deter violence and conflict, so who better to experiment on than people caught up in an endless blood feud? Like rabid enemies in a locked room, the tribes trapped within the ring of little men would reveal anything you wanted to know about the very human origins of bloodshed.
She shook her head. Poor Andrew. His whole world was an experiment, and
his father had died in a conflict that meant precisely nothing.
• • •
Tally paused a moment in the hovercar before taking off, familiarizing herself with the controls. They seemed about the same as a city car, but she had to remember that this one wasn’t idiotproof—it would fly into a mountain if you told it to. She would have to be careful in the high spires of the ruins.
The first thing she did was put her boot through the communication system; she didn’t want the car telling the city authorities where it was.
“Tally!”
She started at the shout, peering out through the front windows. But it was only Andrew, and he was alone. She slid out of the driver’s door, waving for him to be silent and pointing at the other car. “I’ve got the Doctor locked up,” she hissed. “Don’t let him hear your voice. What are you doing back here?”
He looked at the other hovercar, eyes widening at the thought of a god imprisoned within, and whispered, “I was sent back to see where he was. He said he would be just behind us.”
“Well, he’s not coming. And I’m about to leave.”
He nodded. “Of course. Good-bye, Young Blood.”
“Good-bye.” She smiled. “I won’t forget all your help.”
Andrew was staring into her eyes, the familiar pretty-awed expression coming over his face. “I’ll not forget you, either.”
“Don’t look at me that way.”
“What way, Tally?”
“Like a . . . god. We’re just humans, Andrew.”
He looked at the ground, nodding slowly. “I know.”
“Not very perfect humans, some of us worse than you could imagine. We’ve done awful things to your people for a long time now. We’ve used you.”
He shrugged. “What can we do? You are so powerful.”
“Yeah, we are.” She took his hand. “But keep trying to get past the little men. The real world is huge. Maybe you can get far enough away that the Specials will stop looking for you. And I’ll try to . . .” She didn’t finish the promise. Try to do what?
A smile broke across Andrew’s face, and he reached out to touch her flash tattoo. “You are bubbly now.”