BUG EYES

They pulled her to the shore and out of the water, haulingher to the flying machine.
Tally’s lungs felt full of water and smoke. She couldhardly take a breath without a wracking cough shaking herwhole body.
“Put her down!”
“Where the hell did she come from?”
“Give her some oh-two.”
They flopped Tally onto her back on the ground, whichwas thick with the white foam. The one who’d carried herpulled off his bug-eyed mask, and Tally blinked.
He was a pretty. A new pretty, every bit as beautiful asPeris.
The man plunged the mask over her face. Tally foughtweakly for a moment, but then cold, pure air surged intoher lungs. Her head grew light as she gratefully sucked itdown.
He pulled the mask off. “Not too much. You’ll hyperventilate.”
She tried to speak but could only cough.
“It’s getting bad,” another figure said. “Jenks wants totake her back up.”
“Jenks can wait.”
Tally cleared her throat. “My board.”
The man smiled beautifully and glanced up. “It’sheaded over. Hey! Somebody stick that thing to the chopper!
What’s your name, kid?”
“Tally.” Cough.
“Well, Tally, are you ready to move? The fire won’t wait.”
She cleared her throat and coughed again. “I guess so.”
“Okay, come on.” The man helped her up and pulledher toward the machine. She found herself pushed inside,where the noise was much less, crowded into the back withthree others in bug-eyed masks. A door slammed shut.
The machine rumbled, and then Tally felt it lift fromthe ground. “My board!”
“Relax, kid. We got it.” The woman pulled her mask off.
She was another young pretty.
Tally wondered if these were the people in the clue.
The “fire-bug eyes.” Was she supposed to be looking forthem?
“Is she going to make it?” a voice popped through thecabin.
“She’ll live, Jenks. Make the usual detour, and work thefire a little on the way home.”
Tally looked down as the machine climbed. Their flightUGLIES 179followed the course of the river, and she saw the firesspreading across to the other shore, driven by the wind ofits passage. Occasionally, the craft would shoot out a goutof flame.
She looked at the faces of the crew. For new pretties,they seemed so determined, so focused on their task. Buttheir actions were madness. “What are you guys doing?”
she said.
“A little burning.”
“I can see that. But why?”
“To save the world, kid. But hey, we’re real sorry aboutyour getting in the way.”
They called themselves rangers.
The one who’d pulled her from the river was calledTonk. They all spoke with an accent, and came from a cityTally had never heard of.
“It’s not too far from here,” Tonk said. “But we rangersspend most of our time out in the wild. The fire helicoptersare based in the mountains.”
“The fire whats?”
“Helicopters. That’s what you’re sitting in.”
She looked around at the rattling machine, and shoutedover the noise, “It’s so Rusty!”
“Yeah. Vintage stuff, a few pieces of it are almost twohundred years old. We copy the parts as they wear out.”
“But why?”
180 Scott Westerfeld“You can fly it anywhere, with or without a magneticgrid. And it’s the perfect thing for spreading fires. TheRusties sure knew how to make a mess.”
Tally shook her head. “And you spread fires because . . .”
He smiled and lifted one of her shoes, pulling a crushedbut unburned flower from the sole. “Because of phragmipediumpanthera,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“This flower used to be one of the rarest plants in theworld. A white tiger orchid. In Rusty days, a single bulbwas worth more than a house.”
“A house? But there’s zillions of them.”
“You noticed?” He held up the flower, staring into itsdelicate mouth. “About three hundred years ago, someRusty figured a way to engineer the species to adapt towider conditions. She messed with the genes to make thempropagate more easily.”
“Why?”
“The usual. To trade them for lots of stuff. But she succeededa little too well. Look down.”
Tally peered out the window. The machine had gainedaltitude and left the firestorm behind. Below were endlessfields of white, interrupted only by a few barren patches.
“Looks like she did a good job. So what? They’re nice.”
“One of the most beautiful plants in the world. But toosuccessful. They turned into the ultimate weed. What wecall a monoculture. They crowd out every other species,UGLIES 181choke trees and grass, and nothing eats them except onespecies of hummingbird, which feeds on their nectar. Butthe hummingbirds nest in trees.”
“There aren’t any trees down there,” Tally said. “Just theorchids.”
“Exactly. That’s what monoculture means: Everythingthe same. After enough orchids build up in an area, therearen’t enough hummingbirds to pollinate them. You know,to spread the seeds.”
“Yeah,” Tally said. “I know about the birds and the bees.”
“Sure you do, kid. So the orchids eventually die out,victims of their own success, leaving a wasteland behind.
Biological zero. We rangers try to keep them from spreading.
We’ve tried poison, engineered diseases, predators totarget the hummingbirds . . . but fire is the only thing thatreally works.” He turned the orchid over in his hand andheld up a firestarter, letting the flame lick into its mouth.
“Have to be careful, you know?”
Tally noticed the other rangers were cleaning theirboots and uniforms, searching for any trace of the flowersamong the mud and foam. She looked down at the endlesswhite. “And you’ve been doing this for . . .”
“Almost three hundred years. The Rusties started thejob, after they figured out what they’d done. But we’ll neverwin. All we can hope to do is contain the weed.”
Tally sat back, shaking her head, coughing once more.
The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreaten-182 Scott Westerfelding, but they choked everything around them.
The ranger leaned forward, handing her his canteen.
She took it and drank gratefully.
“You’re headed to the Smoke, aren’t you?”
Tally swallowed some water the wrong way and sputtered.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Come on. An ugly waiting around in the flowers witha hoverboard and a survival kit?”
“Oh, yeah.” Tally remembered the clue: “Look in theflowers for fire-bug eyes.” They must have seen ugliesbefore.
“We help the Smokies out, and they help us out,” Tonksaid. “They’re crazy, if you ask me—living rough and stayingugly. But they know more about the wild than most citypretties. It’s kind of admirable, really.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess so.”
He frowned. “You guess so? But you’re headed there.
Aren’t you sure?”
Tally realized that this was where the lies started. Shecould hardly tell the rangers the truth: that she was a spy,an infiltrator. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Well, we’ll be setting you down soon.”
“In the Smoke?”
He frowned again. “Don’t you know? The location’s a bigsecret. Smokies don’t trust pretties. Not even us rangers. We’lltake you to the usual spot, and you know the rest, right?”
She nodded. “Sure. Just testing you.”
UGLIES 183F F FThe helicopter landed in a swirl of dust, the white flowersbending in a wide circle around the touchdown spot.
“Thanks for the ride,” Tally said.
“Good luck,” Tonk said. “Hope you like the Smoke.”
“Me too.”
“But if you change your mind, Tally, we’re always lookingfor volunteers in the rangers.”
Tally frowned. “What’s a volunteer?”
The ranger smiled. “That’s when you pick your own job.”
“Oh, right.” Tally had heard you could do that in somecities. “Maybe. In the meantime, keep up the good work.
Speaking of which, you’re not setting any fires around here,are you?”
The rangers laughed, and Tonk said, “We just work theedges of the infestation, to keep the flowers from spreading.
This spot is right smack in the middle. No hope left.”
Tally looked around. There wasn’t a glimpse of anycolor but white as far as she could see. The sun had set anhour ago, but the orchids glowed like ghosts in the moonlight.
Now that she knew what they were, the sight chilledTally. What had he called it? Biological zero.
“Great.”
She jumped out of the helicopter and yanked her hoverboardfrom the magnetic rack next to the door. She backedaway, careful to crouch as the rangers had warned her to.
The machine whined back to life, and she peered upward184 Scott Westerfeldinto the shimmering disk. Tonk had explained that a pair ofthin blades, spinning so quickly that you couldn’t see them,carried the craft through the air. She wondered if he’d beenkidding. It just looked like a typical force field to her.
The wind grew crazed again as the machine reared up,and she held on to her board tightly, waving until the aircraftdisappeared into the dark sky. She sighed.
Alone again.
Looking around, she wondered how she could find theSmokies in this featureless desert of orchids.
“Then wait on the bald head until it’s light,” was the lastline of Shay’s note. Tally scanned the horizon, and a relievedsmile broke onto her face.
A tall, round hill rose up not far away. It must havebeen one of the places where the engineered flowers hadfirst taken root. The top half of the hill was dying, nothingleft but bare soil, ruined by the orchids.
The cleared area looked just like a bald head.
She reached the bald hilltop in a few hours.
Her hoverboard was useless there, but the hiking waseasy in the new shoes the rangers had given her, her own soburned that they had fallen apart in the helicopter. Tonkhad also filled her purifier with water.
The ride in the helicopter had begun to dry out Tally’sclothing, and the hike had done the rest. Her knapsack hadsurvived the dunking, even the SpagBol remaining dry inUGLIES 185its waterproof bag. The only thing lost to the river wasShay’s note, reduced to a soggy wad of paper in her pocket.
But she had almost made it. As she looked out from thehilltop, Tally realized that, except for the burn blisters onher hands and feet, some bruises on her knees, and a fewlocks of hair that had gone up in smoke, she had prettymuch survived. As long as the Smokies knew where to findher, and believed her story that she was an ugly coming tojoin them, and didn’t figure out that she was actually a spy,then everything was just great.
She waited on the hill, exhausted but unable to sleep,wondering if she could really do what Dr. Cable wanted. Thependant around her neck had also survived the ordeal. Tallydoubted a little water would have ruined the device, but shewouldn’t know until she reached the Smoke and activated it.
She hoped for a moment that the pendant wouldn’twork. Maybe one of the bumps along the way had brokenits little eye-reader and it would never send its messageback to Dr. Cable. But that was hardly worth hoping for.
Without the pendant, Tally was stuck out here in the wildforever. Ugly for life.
Her only way home was to betray her friend.