Pretties

by Scott Westerfeld

  She pulled the fire-resistant gloves from her pocket and handed a pair to Zane.

  “Much better plan, Tally,” he said, looking at the idling burner. “A furnace that can fly. We’ll be at the edge of the city by the time we’re free.”

  She smiled at him, then said to the Hot-airs, “Okay, guys. You can get out now. Thanks for all your help, and remember not to mention this to anyone for at least an hour.”

  They nodded and jumped out of the gondola one by one, retreating a few meters to give it room as it gained buoyancy, bobbing impatiently in the breeze.

  “Ready?” she called to the pig-faced balloon. The Crims inside gave the thumbs-up. A third balloon was coming down not far away; they would be headed up soon. The more rogue balloons, the better. If they all left their interface rings in the gondolas when they jumped, the wardens would have a busy night.

  “We’re all set,” Zane said softly. “Let’s go.”

  Tally’s eyes swept the horizon—taking in Garbo Mansion, the party spires, the lights of New Pretty Town—the world she had looked forward to her whole ugly life. She wondered if she would ever see the city again.

  Of course, Tally had to return, if Shay still hadn’t gotten the word. Her cutting was really just a struggle to be cured. There was no way Tally could leave her behind for good, whether Shay hated her or not.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said, then whispered, “Sorry, Shay. I’ll come back for you.”

  She reached up and pulled the ascent chain. The burner burst into a full-throated roar, blistering heat washing over them, the envelope beginning to swell overhead. The balloon began to rise.

  “Whoa!” Peris cried. “We are out of here!”

  Fausto let out a whoop and pulled the release cord, the gondola bucking as the tether’s weight fell away.

  Tally locked eyes with Zane. They were rising fast now, passing the top of the party spire, a dozen pretties on its balcony drunkenly hailing them.

  “I’m really leaving,” Zane said softly. “Finally.”

  She grinned. There would be no backing out for Zane this time. She wouldn’t let him.

  The balloon quickly left the party spire below, rising higher than any building in New Pretty Town. Tally could see the silver band of river all around them, the darkness of Uglyville, and the dull lights of the burbs in every direction. Soon they would be high enough to glimpse the sea.

  She released the ascent chain, silencing the burner. They didn’t want to get too high. The balloons weren’t fast enough to escape the wardens’ hovercars; they would need their boards for that. Soon, they would have to jump, free-falling until their hoverboards could pick up the city’s magnetic grid and catch them.

  Not as simple as falling with a bungee jacket, but not too dangerous, she hoped. Looking down, Tally shook her head and sighed. Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.

  Tally could see that the wind was carrying them quickly now, pushing the balloon away from the sea, though, strangely, the air felt motionless around them. Of course, Tally realized, the balloon was moving along with the air currents, as if she were perfectly still, and the world sliding along beneath her.

  The Rusty Ruins were slipping away behind them, but there were lots of rivers around the city, their beds filled with mineral deposits that could support a hoverboard. The Crims had planned on heading out in lots of directions—everyone knew how to get back to the ruins no matter where the wind took them.

  Tally dropped her winter coat, crash bracelets, and gloves to the gondola’s floor. Warmth still radiated from the glowing burner, so she didn’t feel too cold. She pulled on her heat-resistant gloves, sliding the left one underneath the interface cuff, pulling it up past her elbow and almost to her armpit. Across from her, Zane was also getting ready.

  Now to bring their cuffs within reach of the flame.

  She looked up. The burner was held to the gondola by a frame with eight arms, stretching over them like a giant metal spider. She put one foot on the railing and held tightly to the burner frame, pulling herself up. From this precarious perch, Tally glanced down at the city passing below, hoping the balloon wasn’t going to start rocking in some sudden wind.

  She took a deep breath. “Fausto, the signal.”

  He nodded and lit his Roman candle, which began to hiss and to spit out green and purple flares. Tally watched the signal repeated by nearby Crims, and then spread across the island in a series of colored plumes. They were committed now.

  “Okay, Zane,” she said. “Let’s get these things off.”

  BURNER

  The four nozzles of the burner were barely a meter from her face, still glowing, radiating heat into the cold night air. Tally reached out and tapped one gingerly. The woman in the shop had been telling the truth. Tally could feel the burner’s ridges through the heat-resistant fabric, her fingertips sensing a few stray bumps where it had been welded together. But she had no sense of temperature at all; the burner wasn’t hot, or cold . . . nothing. The feeling was uncanny, as if her hand were immersed in body-temperature water.

  She looked across at Zane, who had pulled himself up on the other side of the burner. “These things really work, Zane. I can’t feel a thing.”

  He looked at his own gloved left hand, unconvinced. “Two thousand degrees, you said?”

  “That’s right.” As long as you believed every statistic tossed off by a middle-pretty artist blowing glass in the middle of the night. “I’ll go first,” she offered.

  “No way. We’ll do it together.”

  “Don’t be dramatic.” Tally looked down at Fausto, whose face was as pale as when Zane’s hand had been in the crusher. “Give the burner cord a little tug, as short as you can, on my signal.”

  “Hang on!” Peris said. “What are you guys doing?”

  Tally realized that no one had brought Peris up to speed on the plan. He stared at her with a look of total confusion. Well, there wasn’t time for explanations now. “Don’t worry, we have gloves on,” she said, and placed her left hand on the burner.

  “Gloves?” Peris said.

  “Yeah . . . special gloves. Hit it, Fausto!” Tally cried.

  A wave of heat struck, the pure blue flame of the burner blindingly bright. Tally slammed her eyes shut, the inferno like a desert wind on the skin of her face. She ducked her head below the burner frame, and heard the cry of horrified surprise that escaped from Peris’s lips.

  A half-second later, the burner stopped.

  Tally opened her eyes, yellow afterimages of the flame crowding her vision. But she saw her fingers flexing in front of her, still whole.

  “My hand didn’t feel a thing!” she shouted. She blinked away the dancing yellow spots, and saw that the metal of her cuff was glowing a bit. It didn’t look any bigger, though.

  “What are you doing?” Peris shouted. Fausto shushed him.

  “All right,” Zane said, thrusting his hand out over the burner. “Let’s do it fast. They must know we’re up to something by now.”

  Tally nodded—the cuff had to have felt the scorching burst of flame. Like the locket Dr. Cable had given Tally before her trip to the Smoke, it probably was designed to send some kind of signal if damaged. She took a deep breath of the cold night air, placing her hand over the burner again and ducking her head. “Okay, Fausto. Burn it until I say stop!”

  Another wash of blistering heat poured over Tally. Peris stared up at her, his terrified expression turned demonic by the intense fire, and she had to look away from him. Above them, the envelope began to swell, and the balloon was tugged upward by its load of superheated air. The gondola swayed, testing Tally’s grip on the burner frame.

  Her left shoulder, covered only by her T-shirt, was taking the worst of the inferno. Past the glove’s protection, her skin itched like a bad sunburn. Sweat trickled down her back in the relentless heat.

  Weirdly, the parts of Tally that felt the furnace the least were her gloved hands,
even her left, sitting in the inferno’s very center. She imagined the cuff hidden within that blaze, turning red, then white . . . gradually expanding.

  After what seemed like a solid minute, she yelled, “Okay, hold it!”

  The burner stopped, and the air was instantly cool around her, the night suddenly black. Tally stood up from her crouch, feet still on the gondola’s railing, and blinked, amazed at how still and silent it was with the raging flame extinguished.

  She pulled her hand from the burner, expecting it to be a blackened stump, no matter what her nerve endings told her. But all five fingers wiggled in front of her. The cuff glowed blazing white, mesmerizing blue flickers traveling around its edge. The smell of molten metal struck her nose.

  “Quick, Tally!” Zane yelled, jumping down into the gondola. He started tugging at his cuff. “Before they cool off.”

  She leaped down from the rail and started pulling—glad that she had brought two gloves for each of them. The cuff slid down her arm, but came to a halt as it always did, catching at the usual spot. She squinted at the glowing band, trying to see if it had grown. It seemed bigger, but maybe the heat-resistant glove was thicker than she’d thought, making up the difference.

  Tally squeezed the fingers of her left hand together and tugged again; the cuff crept another centimeter along. Heat still radiated from the ring of metal, but it was gradually turning a dull red, its light fading. . . . As it cooled, would it shrink around her hand now, crushing her wrist?

  She gritted her teeth and pulled once more, as hard as she could . . . and the cuff slipped off, dropping onto the floor of the gondola like a glowing coal.

  “Yes!” Finally, she was free.

  Tally looked up at the others. Zane was still struggling; Fausto and Peris were scrambling to avoid her glowing cuff as it rolled, steaming and hissing, across the gondola floor. “I did it,” she said softly. “It’s off.”

  “Well, mine’s not,” Zane grunted. His cuff was wedged around the thick of his wrist, its glow faded to a dull red. He swore and stepped back up onto the gondola’s railing. “Hit it again.”

  Fausto nodded, and gave another long blast on the burner.

  Tally turned away from the heat, looking down at the city, trying to clear the spots from her eyes. They were past the greenbelt now, over the burbs. She could see the factory belt coming up, dotted with industrial orange work lights, and past that the absolute blackness that marked the edge of the city.

  They had to jump soon. In a few more minutes they would pass beyond the metal grid that underlay the city. Without the grid, their hoverboards wouldn’t fly or even stop a fall, and they’d be forced to crash-land the balloon instead of bailing out.

  She looked up at the swollen envelope, wondering how long it would take the still rising balloon to settle back to earth. Maybe if they could rip the envelope open somehow to get themselves down faster . . . but how hard would a torn balloon crash-land? And without working hoverboards, the four of them would have to hike until they reached a river, giving the wardens plenty of time to find the crumpled balloon and track them down.

  “Come on, Zane!” Tally said. “We’ve got to hurry!”

  “I’m hurrying! Okay?”

  “What’s that smell?” Fausto said.

  “What?” Tally pulled back into the gondola, sniffing at the still, hot air.

  Something was burning.

  THE CITY’S EDGE

  “It’s us!” Fausto shouted. He jumped back, releasing the burner chain, staring down at the gondola floor.

  Tally smelled it then: burning cane, like the smell of brush thrown onto a campfire. Somewhere under their feet, her red-hot cuff had ignited the wicker gondola.

  She glanced up at Zane still perched on the railing—he ignored the others’ panicked cries, tugging fiercely at his glowing cuff. Peris and Fausto were hopping around, trying to find the source of the smell.

  “Relax!” she said. “We can always jump!”

  “I can’t! Not yet,” Zane shouted, still struggling with the cuff. Peris looked as if he was about to leap out of the balloon without bothering to take his hoverboard.

  Her vision was finally clearing from burner’s glare, and Tally looked down at her feet. A bottle lay there, left behind by the Hot-airs. She reached for it with her gloved hands; it was full.

  “Hold on, you guys,” she said, and with a practiced motion twisted off the foil and placed both thumbs beneath the cork. She popped it, watching the cork soar into the dark void. “Everything’s under control.”

  Froth bubbled out, and Tally put one thumb over the bottle’s mouth. Shaking the bottle, she sprayed champagne across the floor of the gondola. An angry sizzle came from the smoldering flames.

  “Got it!” Zane cried at that moment. His cuff fell off and rolled under her feet, and Tally calmly emptied the rest of the bottle onto it. The smell of molten metal rose up around her, tinged with an oddly sweet smell: boiled champagne.

  Zane was staring with amazement at his freed left hand. He pulled off the heat-resistant gloves and tossed them overboard. “It worked!” he said, and swept Tally into a hug.

  She laughed, letting the bottle drop to the floor and pulling off her own gloves. “Time for that later. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Okay.” He balanced his board on the gondola’s railing, looking down. “Damn, that’s a long fall.”

  Fausto tugged at a dangling cord. “I’ll vent some hot air—maybe we can get a little lower.”

  “No time,” Tally cried. “We’re almost at the end of town. If we get separated, meet at the tallest building in the ruins. And remember: Don’t let go of your board on the way down!”

  They all scrambled to put on their backpacks, bumping into one another in the small space, Zane and Tally struggling back into their winter coats and crash bracelets. Fausto pulled off his interface ring and threw it to the gondola floor, grabbed his board, and jumped out with a whoop. The balloon pitched upward as his weight left it behind.

  When Zane was ready, he turned and kissed her. “We did it, Tally. We’re free!”

  She looked into his eyes, dizzy with the thought that they were finally here, at the edge of the city, at the beginning of freedom. “Yeah. We made it.”

  “See you down there.” He looked over his shoulder at the distant earth, then turned back to her. “I love you.”

  “I’ll see you down . . . ,” she began, but the words sputtered out. It took a moment to replay in her mind what Zane had said. Finally she managed, “Oh. Me too.”

  He laughed, then let out a wordless cry as he tumbled over the rail, the gondola bucking again under its two remaining passengers.

  Tally blinked, dazzled for a moment by Zane’s unexpected words. But she shook her head to clear it. This was no time to get pretty-headed; she had to jump now.

  She pulled the straps of her backpack tight, wrestling her hover-board up onto the rail. “Hurry up!” she shouted at Peris.

  He was just standing there, staring over the side.

  “What are you waiting for?” she cried.

  He shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “You can do it. Your board will stop your fall—all you have to do is hang on!” she shouted. “Just jump! Gravity does the rest!”

  “It’s not the fall, Tally,” Peris said. He turned to face her. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to leave the city.”

  “But this is what we’ve been waiting for!”

  “Not me.” He shrugged. “I liked being a Crim, and being bubbly. But I never thought we’d get this far. I mean, like, leaving home forever?”

  “Peris . . .”

  “I know you’ve been out there before, you and Shay. And Zane and Fausto always talked about escaping. But I’m not like you guys.”

  “But you and me, we’re . . .” Tally’s voice caught. She was about to say “best friends forever,” but the old words wouldn’t come anymore. P
eris had never been to the Smoke, had never tangled with Special Circumstances, had never even been in trouble. Everything had always gone smoothly for him. Their lives had been so different for so long.

  “You’re sure you want to stay?”

  He nodded slowly. “I’m sure. But I can still help. I’ll keep them busy for you. I’ll stay airborne as long as I can, then push the pickup button. They’ll have to come out and get me.”

  Tally started to argue, but she couldn’t help remembering sneaking across the river right after Peris’s operation, visiting him in Garbo Mansion. He had adjusted so quickly, loving New Pretty Town right from the beginning. Maybe the whole Crim thing had just been a joke to him. . . .

  But she couldn’t leave him here in the city alone. “Peris, think. Without us around, you won’t be bubbly anymore. You’ll go back to being a pretty-head.”

  He smiled sadly. “I don’t mind, Tally. I don’t need to be bubbly.”

  “You don’t? But don’t you feel how much . . . better it is?”

  He shrugged. “It’s exciting. But you can’t keep fighting the way things are forever. At some point, you have to . . .”

  “Give up?”

  Peris nodded, the smile still on his face, as if giving up wasn’t really that bad, as if fighting was only worthwhile as long as it was amusing.

  “Okay. Stay, then.” She turned away, not trusting herself to say anything more. But when Tally looked down, all she saw was darkness. “Oh, crap,” she said softly.

  The city had run out. It was too late to jump.

  • • •

  Side by side, they stared into the darkness, the wind carrying them farther and farther away.

  Peris finally broke the silence. “We’ll come down eventually, right?”

  “Not soon enough.” She sighed. “The wardens probably already know that our cuffs are fried. They’ll come looking for us soon. We’re sitting ducks up here.”