THE WORST MISTAKE

She was flying, skimming the ground with no track underher, not even a hoverboard, keeping herself aloft by sheerwillpower and the wind in her outspread jacket. She skirtedthe edge of a massive cliff that overlooked a huge, blackocean. A flock of seabirds pursued her, their wild screamsbeating at her ears like Dr. Cable’s razor-edged voice.
Suddenly, the stony cliffs beneath her cracked and fissured.
A huge rift opened up, the ocean rushing in with aroar that drowned the seabirds’ cries. She found herself tumblingthrough the air, falling down toward the black water.
The ocean swallowed her, filling her lungs, freezing herheart so that she couldn’t cry out. . . .
“No!” Tally shouted, sitting bolt upright.
A cold wind off the sea struck her face, clearing herhead. Tally looked around, realizing that she was up on thecliffs, tangled in her sleeping bag. Tired, hungry, and desperateto pee, but not falling into oblivion.
She took a deep breath. The seabirds still cried aroundher, but in the distance.
That last dream had been only one of many fallingnightmares.
Night was coming, the sun setting over the ocean, turningthe water bloodred. Tally pulled her shirt and jacket onbefore daring to emerge from the sleeping bag. The temperatureseemed to be dropping by the minute, the lightfading before her eyes. She hurried to get ready to go.
The hoverboard was the tricky part. Its unfolded surfacehad gotten wet, covered with a fine layer of oceanspray and dew. Tally tried to wipe it off with her jacketsleeve, but there was too much water and not enoughjacket. The wet board folded up easily enough, but it felttoo heavy when she was done, as if the water was stilltrapped between the layers. The board’s operation lightturned yellow, and Tally looked closely. The sides of theboard were gradually oozing the water away. “Fine. Givesme time to eat.”
Tally pulled out a packet of SpagBol, then realized thather purifier was empty. The only ready source of water wasat the bottom of the cliff, and there was no way down. Shewrung out her wet jacket, which produced a few goodsquooshes, then scraped off handfuls of the water oozingfrom the board until the purifier was half-full. The result wasa dense, overspiced SpagBol that required lots of chewing.
By the time she was done with the unhappy meal, theboard’s light had turned green.
“Okay, ready to go,” Tally said to herself. But where?
UGLIES 157She stood still, pondering, one foot on the board and oneon the ground.
Shay’s note read, “At the second make the worstmistake.”
Making a mistake shouldn’t be that hard. But what wasthe worst mistake? She’d almost killed herself once todayalready.
Tally remembered her dream. Falling into the gorgewould count as a pretty bad mistake. She stepped onto theboard and edged it to the crumbling end of the bridge,looking down to where the river met the sea far below.
If she climbed down, her only possible path would beto follow the river upstream. Maybe that’s what the cluemeant. But the steep cliff showed no obvious path, not evena handhold.
Of course, a vein of iron in the cliff might carry her downsafely. Her eyes scanned the walls of the gorge, searching forthe reddish color of iron. A few spots looked promising, butin the growing darkness, she couldn’t be certain.
“Great.” Tally realized that she’d slept too long. Waitingfor dawn would be twelve hours lost, and she didn’t haveany more water.
The only other option was to hike upriver atop the cliff.
But it might be days before she reached a place to climbdown. And how would she see it at night?
She had to make up time, not blunder around in the dark.
Tally swallowed, coming to a decision. There had to be158 Scott Westerfelda way down on her board. Maybe she was making a mistake,but that’s what the clue called for. She edged the boardoff the bridge until it began to lose purchase. It slippeddown the cliffside, descending faster as it left the metal ofthe track behind.
Tally’s eye searched desperately for any sign of iron inthe cliff. She eased the board forward, bringing it closer tothe wall of stone, but saw nothing. A few of the board’smetal-detector lights flickered out. Any lower, and she wasgoing to fall.
This wasn’t going to work. Tally snapped her fingers.
The board slowed for a second, trying to climb, but thenshivered and continued to descend.
Too late.
Tally spread her jacket, but the air in the gorge was still.
She spotted a rusty-looking streak in the wall of stone andcoaxed the board closer, but it turned out to be just a slimysmear of lichen. The board slipped downward faster andfaster, the metal-detector lights flickering out one by one.
Finally, the board went dead.
Tally realized that this mistake might be her last.
She fell like a rock, down toward the crashing waves.
Just like in the dream, her voice felt choked by a freezinghand, as if her lungs were already filled with water. Theboard tumbled below her, spinning like a falling leaf.
Tally closed her eyes, waiting for the shattering impactof cold water.
UGLIES 159Suddenly, something grabbed her by the wrists andyanked her up cruelly, spinning her in the air. Her shouldersscreamed with pain, and she spun once all the wayaround like a gymnast on the rings.
Tally opened her eyes and blinked. She was being loweredonto the hoverboard, which waited rock-steady justabove the water.
“What the . . . ?” she wondered aloud. Then, as her feetcame to rest, Tally realized what had happened.
The river had caught her. It had been dumping metaldeposits there for centuries, or however long rivers lasted,and the board’s magnets had found purchase just in time.
“Saved, more or less,” Tally muttered. She rubbed hershoulders, which ached from being caught by the crashbracelets, and wondered how far you had to fall before thebracelets would rip your arms out of their sockets.
But she’d made it down. The river stretched out in frontof her, winding its way into the snowcapped mountains.
Tally shivered in the ocean breeze and pulled her soggyjacket tighter around her.
“‘Four days later take the side you despise,’” she quotedShay’s note. “Four days. Might as well get started.”
After her first sunburn, Tally stuck a sunblock patch ontoher skin every morning at dawn. But even with only a fewhours in the sun each day, her already brown arms graduallydeepened in color.
160 Scott WesterfeldSpagBol never again tasted as good as it had that firsttime on the cliffs. Tally’s meals ranged from decent to odious.
The worst were SpagBol breakfasts, around sunset,when the mere thought of more noodles made her neverwant to eat again. She almost wished she would run out ofthe stuff and be forced to either catch a fish and cook it, orsimply starve, losing her ugly-fat the hard way.
What Tally really dreaded was running out of toiletpaper. Her only roll was already half-gone, and she rationedit strictly now, counting the sheets. And every day, shesmelled a little worse.
On the third day up the river, she decided to takea bath.
Tally awoke, an hour before sunset as usual, feelingsticky inside the sleeping bag. She’d washed her clothesthat morning and left them to dry on a rock. The thoughtof getting into clean clothes with dirty skin made her fleshcrawl.
The water in the river was fast-moving, and left almostnothing in the muck-trap of the purifier, which meant itwas clean. It was icy cold, though, probably fed by meltingsnow in the approaching mountains. Tally prayed it wouldbe slightly less freezing late in the day, after the sun had hada chance to warm it up.
The survival kit did have soap, it turned out—a fewdisposable packets tucked into a corner of the knapsack.
Tally clenched one in her hand as she stood at the edge ofUGLIES 161the river, wearing nothing but the sensor clipped to herbelly ring, shivering in the cool breeze.
“Here we go,” she said, trying to keep her teeth fromchattering.
She put one foot in and jumped back from the icystreak of agony that shot into her leg. Apparently, therewould be no easing slowly into the water. She had to take arunning jump.
Tally walked along the riverbank, searching for a goodplace to leap in, slowly gathering her courage. She realizedshe’d never been naked outside before. In the city, everywhereoutdoors was public, but she hadn’t seen anotherhuman face for days. The world seemed to belong to her.
Even in the cool air, the sun felt wonderful on her skin.
She clenched her teeth and faced the river. Standinghere pondering the wild wasn’t going to get her clean. Justa few steps and a leap, and gravity would do the rest.
She counted down from five, then counted down fromten, neither of which worked. Then she realized that shewas getting cold just standing there.
Finally, Tally jumped.
The freezing water closed like a fist around her. It paralyzedevery muscle, turning her hands into shivering claws.
For a moment, Tally wondered how she would make itback to shore. Maybe she would just expire here, slippingunder the icy water forever.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, reminding herself162 Scott Westerfeldthat the people before the Rusties must have taken baths infreezing streams all the time. Tally clenched her teeth tostop them chattering, and dipped her head under the waterand out, whipping wet hair onto her back.
A few moments later an unlikely kernel of warmthignited in her stomach, as if the icy water had activatedsome secret reserve of energy within her body. Her eyesopened wide, and she found herself whooping with excitement.
The mountains, towering above her after threenights’ travel inland, seemed suddenly crystal clear, theirsnowy peaks catching the last rays of the setting sun. Tally’sheart pounded fiercely, her blood spreading unexpectedwarmth throughout her body.
But the burst of energy was burning quickly. Shefumbled the soap packet open, squishing it between herfingers, across her skin, and into her hair. Another dunkingand she was ready to get out.
Looking back at the shore, Tally realized that she’dbeen carried away from her camp by the river’s current. Sheswam a few strokes upstream, then trudged toward therocky shore.
Waist-high in the water, already shivering from thebreeze on her wet body, Tally heard something that madeher heart freeze.
Something was coming. Something big.