“we were doctors,” az began.
“cosmetic surgeons, to be precise,” maddy said. “we’veboth performed the operation hundreds of times. andwhen we met, i had just been named to the committee formorphological standards.”
tally’s eyes widened. “the pretty committee?”
maddy smiled at the nickname. “we were preparing fora morphological congress. that’s when all the cities sharedata on the operation.”
tally nodded. cities worked very hard to stay independentof one another, but the pretty committee was aglobal institution that made sure pretties were all more orless the same. it would ruin the whole point of the operationif the people from one city wound up prettier thaneveryone else.
like most uglies, tally had often indulged the fantasythat one day she might be on the committee, and helpdecide what the next generation would look like. in school,of course, they always managed to make it sound reallyboring, all graphs and averages and measuring people’spupils when they looked at different faces.
“at the same time, i was doing some independentresearch on anesthesia,” az said. “trying to make the operationsafer.”
“safer?” tally asked.
“a few people still die each year, as with any surgery,”
he said. “from being unconscious so long, more than anythingelse.”
tally bit her lip. she’d never heard that. “oh.”
“i found that there were complications from the anestheticused in the operation. tiny lesions in the brain.
barely visible, even with the best machines.”
tally decided to risk sounding stupid. “what’s alesion?”
“basically it’s a bunch of cells that don’t look right,” azsaid. “like a wound, or a cancer, or just something thatdoesn’t belong there.”
“but you couldn’t just say that,” david said. he rolledhis eyes toward tally. “doctors.”
maddy ignored her son. “when az showed me hisresults, i started investigating. the local committee hadmillions of scans in its database. not the stuff they put inmedical textbooks, but raw data from pretties all over theworld. the lesions turned up everywhere.”
tally frowned. “you mean, people were sick?”
“they didn’t seem to be. and the lesions weren’tuglies 263cancerous, because they didn’t spread. almost everyonehad them, and they were always in exactly the same place.”
she pointed to a spot on the top of her head.
“a bit to the left, dear,” az said, dropping a white cubeinto his tea.
maddy obliged him, then continued. “most importantly,almost everyone all over the world had these lesions.
if they were a health hazard, ninety-nine percent of thepopulation would show some kind of symptoms.”
“but they weren’t natural?” tally asked.
“no. only post-ops—pretties, i mean—had them,” azsaid. “no uglies did. they were definitely a result of theoperation.”
tally shifted in her chair. the thought of a weird littlemystery in everyone’s brain made her queasy. “did you findout what caused them?”
maddy sighed. “in one sense, we did. az and i lookedvery closely at all the negatives—that is, the few prettieswho didn’t have the lesions—and tried to figure out whythey were different. what made them immune to thelesions? we ruled out blood type, gender, physical size,intelligence factors, genetic markers—nothing seemed toaccount for the negatives. they weren’t any different fromeveryone else.”
“until we discovered an odd coincidence,” az said.
“their jobs,” maddy said.
“jobs?”
264 scott westerfeld“every negative worked in the same sort of profession,”
az said. “firefighters, wardens, doctors, politicians, andanyone who worked for special circumstances. everyonewith those jobs didn’t have the lesions; all the other prettiesdid.”
“so you guys were okay?”
az nodded. “we tested ourselves, and we were negative.”
“otherwise, we wouldn’t be sitting here,” maddy saidquietly.
“what do you mean?”
david spoke up. “the lesions aren’t an accident, tally.
they’re part of the operation, just like all the bone sculptingand skin scraping. it’s part of the way being prettychanges you.”
“but you said not everyone has them.”
maddy nodded. “in some pretties, they disappear, orare intentionally cured—in those whose professionsrequire them to react quickly, like working in an emergencyroom, or putting out a fire. those who deal withconflict and danger.”
“people who face challenges,” david said.
tally let out a slow breath, remembering her trip to thesmoke. “what about rangers?”
az nodded. “i believe i had a few rangers in my database.
all negatives.”
tally remembered the look on the faces of the rangerswho had saved her. they had an unfamiliar confidence anduglies 265surety, like david’s, completely different from the new prettiesshe and peris had always made fun of.
peris . . .
tally swallowed, tasting something more bitter thantea in the back of her throat. she tried to remember howperis had acted when she’d crashed the garbo mansionparty. she’d been so ashamed of her own face, it was hardto remember anything specific about peris. he’d lookedso different and, if anything, he seemed older, moremature.
but in some way, they hadn’t connected . . . it was as ifhe’d become a different person. was it only because sincehis operation they had lived in different worlds? or had itbeen something more? she tried to imagine peris copingout here in the smoke, working with his hands and makinghis own clothes. the old, ugly peris would have enjoyed thechallenge. but what about pretty peris?
her head felt light, as if the house were in an elevatorheading swiftly downward.
“what do the lesions do?” she asked.
“we don’t know exactly,” az said.
“but we’ve got some pretty good ideas,” david said.
“just suspicions,” maddy said. az looked uncomfortablydown into his tea.
“you were suspicious enough to run away,” tally said.
“we had no choice,” maddy said. “not long after ourdiscovery, special circumstances paid a visit. they took our266 scott westerfelddata and told us not to look any further or we’d lose ourlicenses. it was either run away, or forget everything we’dfound.”
“and it wasn’t something we could forget,” az said.
tally turned to david. he sat beside his mother, grimfaced,his cup of tea untouched before him. his parentswere still reluctant to say everything they suspected. butshe could tell that david saw no need for caution. “what doyou think?” she asked him.
“well, you know all about how the rusties lived, right?”
he said. “war and crime and all that?”
“of course. they were crazy. they almost destroyed theworld.”
“and that convinced people to pull the cities backfrom the wild, to leave nature alone,” david recited. “andnow everybody is happy, because everyone looks thesame: they’re all pretty. no more rusties, no more war.
right?”
“yeah. in school, they say it’s all really complicated, butthat’s basically the story.”
he smiled grimly. “maybe it’s not so complicated.
maybe the reason war and all that other stuff went away isthat there are no more controversies, no disagreements, nopeople demanding change. just masses of smiling pretties,and a few people left to run things.”
tally remembered crossing the river to new prettytown, watching them have their endless fun. she and perisuglies 267used to boast they’d never wind up so idiotic, so shallow.
but when she’d seen him . . . “becoming pretty doesn’t justchange the way you look,” she said.
“no,” david said. “it changes the way you think.”
