SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES

This hovercar was larger, but not as comfortable.
The trip was much less pleasant than Tally’s first ridethat day. The strange-looking man flew with an aggressiveimpatience, dropping like a rock to cut between flightlanes, banking as steeply as a hoverboard with every turn.
Tally had never been airsick before, but now she clutchedthe seat restraints, her knuckles white and eyes fixed on thesolid ground below. She caught one last glimpse of NewPretty Town receding behind them.
They headed downriver, across Uglyville, over thegreenbelt and farther out to the transport ring, where thefactories stuck their heads aboveground. Beside a huge,misshapen hill, the car descended into a complex of rectangularbuildings, as squat as ugly dorms and painted thecolor of dried grass.
They landed with a painful bump, and the man led herinto one of the buildings, and down into a murk of yellowbrownhallways. Tally had never seen so much spacepainted in such putrid colors, as if the building weredesigned to make its occupants vaguely nauseated.
There were more people like the man.
They were all dressed in formals, raw silks in black andgray, and their faces had the same cold, hawkish look. Boththe men and women were taller than pretty standard, andmore powerfully built, their eyes as pale as an ugly’s. Therewere a few normal people as well, but they faded intoinsignificance next to the predatory forms moving gracefullythrough the halls.
Tally wondered if this was someplace where peoplewere taken when their operations went wrong, whenbeauty turned cruel. Then why was she here? She hadn’teven had the operation yet. Tally swallowed. What if theseterrible pretties had been made this way intentionally?
When they had measured her yesterday, had they determinedthat she would never fit the vulnerable, doe-eyedpretty mold? Maybe she’d already been chosen to beremade for this strange, other world.
The man stopped outside a metal door, and Tallyhalted behind him. She felt like a littlie again, jerked alongby a minder on an invisible string. All her ugly senior’sconfidence had evaporated the moment she’d seen himback at the hospital. Four years of tricks and independencegone.
The door flashed his eye and opened, and he pointedfor her to go in. Tally realized he hadn’t said a word sincecollecting her at the hospital. She took a deep breath, whichUGLIES 103made the paralyzed muscles in her chest flinch with pain,and managed to croak, “Say please.”
“Inside,” was his answer.
Tally smiled, silently declaring a small victory that shehad made him speak again, but she did as she was told.
“I’m Dr. Cable.”
“Tally Youngblood.”
Dr. Cable smiled. “Oh, I know who you are.”
The woman was a cruel pretty. Her nose was aquiline,her teeth sharp, her eyes a nonreflective gray. Her voice hadthe same slow, neutral cadence as a bedtime book. But ithardly made Tally sleepy. An edge was hidden in the voice,like a piece of metal slowly marking glass.
“You have a problem, Tally.”
“I had kind of guessed that, uh . . .” It was strange, notknowing the woman’s first name.
“Dr. Cable will do.”
Tally blinked. She’d never called anyone by their lastname in her life.
“Okay, Dr. Cable.” She cleared her throat and managedto say more, in a dry voice. “My problem right now is that Idon’t know what’s going on. So . . . why don’t you tell me?”
“What do you think’s going on, Tally?”
Tally closed her eyes, taking a rest from the sharp anglesof the woman’s face. “Well, that bungee jacket was a spare,you know, and we did put it back on the recharge pile.”
104 Scott Westerfeld“This isn’t about some ugly-trick.”
She sighed and opened her eyes. “No, I didn’t think so.”
“This is about a friend of yours. Someone missing.”
Of course. Shay’s disappearing trick had gone too far,leaving Tally to explain. “I don’t know where she is.”
Dr. Cable smiled. Only her top teeth showed when shedid. “But you do know something.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Tally blurted. “Where am I?”
“I’m Dr. Cable,” the woman said. “And this is SpecialCircumstances.”
First Dr. Cable asked her a lot of questions. “You didn’tknow Shay long, did you?”
“No. Just this summer. We were in different dorms.”
“And you didn’t know any of her friends?”
“No. They were all older than her. They’d alreadyturned.”
“Like your friend Peris?”
Tally swallowed. How much did this woman knowabout her? “Yeah. Like Peris and me.”
“But Shay’s friends didn’t wind up pretty, did they?”
Tally took a slow breath, remembering her promise toShay. She didn’t want to lie, though. Dr. Cable would knowif she did, Tally was sure. She was in enough troublealready. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Did she tell you about her friends?”
“We didn’t talk about stuff like that. We just hung out.
UGLIES 105Because . . . it hurt being alone. We were just into playingtricks.”
“Did you know she’d been in a gang?”
Tally looked up into Dr. Cable’s eyes. They were almostas big as a normal pretty’s, but they angled upward likea wolf’s.
“A gang? How do you mean?”
“Tally, did you and Shay ever go to the Rusty Ruins?”
“Everyone does.”
“But did you ever sneak out to the ruins?”
“Yeah. A lot of people do.”
“Did you ever meet anyone there?”
Tally bit her lip. “What’s Special Circumstances?”
“Tally.” The edge in her voice was suddenly sharp asa razor blade.
“If you tell me what Special Circumstances is, I’llanswer you.”
Dr. Cable sat back. She folded her hands and nodded.
“This city is a paradise, Tally. It feeds you, educates you,keeps you safe. It makes you pretty.”
Tally couldn’t help looking up hopefully at this.
“And our city can stand a great deal of freedom, Tally.
It gives youngsters room to play tricks, to develop their creativityand independence. But occasionally bad things comefrom outside the city.”
Dr. Cable narrowed her eyes, her face becoming evenmore like a predator’s. “We exist in equilibrium with our106 Scott Westerfeldenvironment, Tally, purifying the water that we put back inthe river, recycling the biomass, and using only powerdrawn from our own solar footprint. But sometimes wecan’t purify what we take in from the outside. Sometimesthere are threats from the environment that must be faced.”
She smiled. “Sometimes there are Special Circumstances.”
“So, you guys are like minders, but for the whole city.”
Dr. Cable nodded. “Other cities sometimes pose a challenge.
And sometimes those few people who live outsidethe cities can make trouble.”
Tally’s eyes widened. Outside the cities? Shay had beentelling the truth—places like the Smoke really existed.
“It’s your turn to answer my question, Tally. Did youever meet anyone in the ruins? Someone not from this city?
Not from any city?”
Tally grinned. “No. I never did.”
Dr. Cable frowned, her eyes darting downward for asecond, checking something. When they returned to Tally,they had grown even colder. Tally smiled again, certainnow that Dr. Cable knew when she was telling the truth.
The room must be reading her heartbeat, her sweat, herpupil dilation. But Tally couldn’t tell what she didn’tknow.
The razor blade slid back into the woman’s voice.
“Don’t play games with me, Tally. Your friend Shay willnever thank you for it, because you’ll never see her again.”
UGLIES 107The thrill of her small victory disappeared, and Tallyfelt her smile fade.
“Six of her friends disappeared, Tally, all at once. Noneof them has ever been found. Another two who were meantto join them chose not to throw their lives away, however,and we discovered a little about what had happened to theothers. They didn’t run away on their own. They weretempted by someone from outside, someone who wantedto steal our cleverest little uglies. We realized that this wasa special circumstance.”
One word sent ice down Tally’s spine. Had Shay reallybeen stolen? What did Shay or any ugly really know aboutthe Smoke?
“We’ve been watching Shay since then, hoping shemight lead us to her friends.”
“So why didn’t you . . . ,” Tally blurted out. “You know,stop her!”
“Because of you, Tally.”
“Me?”
Dr. Cable’s voice softened. “We thought she had madea friend, a reason to stay here in the city. We thought she’dbe okay.”
Tally could only close her eyes and shake her head.
“But then Shay disappeared,” Dr. Cable continued. “Sheturned out to be trickier than her friends. You taught her well.”
“I did?” Tally cried. “I don’t know any more tricks thanmost uglies.”
108 Scott Westerfeld“You underestimate yourself,” Dr. Cable said.
Tally turned away from the vulpine eyes, shut out therazor-blade voice. This was not her fault. She had decidedto stay here in the city, after all. She wanted to becomepretty. She’d even tried to convince Shay.
But failed.
“It’s not my fault.”
“Help us, Tally.”
“Help you what?”
“Find her. Find them all.”
She took a deep breath. “What if they don’t want to befound?”
“What if they do? What if they were lied to?”
Tally tried to remember Shay’s face that last night, howhopeful she had been. She’d wanted to leave the city asmuch as Tally wanted to be pretty. However stupid thechoice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, andhad respected Tally’s choice to stay.
Tally looked up at Dr. Cable’s cruel beauty, at the pukeyellow-brown of the walls. She remembered all the tricksSpecial Circumstances had played on her today—howthey’d kept her waiting for an hour in the hospital, waitingand thinking she would soon be pretty, the brutal flighthere, and all the cruel faces in the halls—and she decided.
“I can’t help you,” Tally said. “I made a promise.”
Dr. Cable bared her teeth. This time, it wasn’t even amockery of a smile. The woman became nothing but aUGLIES 109monster, vengeful and inhuman. “Then I’ll make you apromise too, Tally Youngblood. Until you do help us, to thevery best of your ability, you will never be pretty.”
Dr. Cable turned away.
“You can die ugly, for all I care.”
The door opened. The scary man was outside, wherehe’d been waiting all along.