The wind grew crazed again as the machine reared up, and she held on to her board tightly, waving until the aircraft disappeared into the dark sky. She sighed.
Alone again.
Looking around, she wondered how she could find the Smokies in this featureless desert of orchids.
"Then wait on the bald head until it's light," was the last line of Shay's note. Tally scanned the horizon, and a relieved smile broke onto her face.
A tall, round hill rose up not far away. It must have been one of the places where the engineered flowers had first taken root. The top half of the hill was dying, nothing left 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 was easy in the new shoes the rangers had given her, her own so burned that they had fallen apart in the helicopter. Tonk had also filled her purifier with water.
The ride in the helicopter had begun to dry out Tally's clothing, and the hike had done the rest. Her knapsack had survived the dunking, even the SpagBol remaining dry in its waterproof bag. The only thing lost to the river was Shay's note, reduced to a soggy wad of paper in her pocket.
But she had almost made it. As she looked out from the hilltop, Tally realized that, except for the burn blisters on her hands and feet, some bruises on her knees, and a few locks of hair that had gone up in smoke, she had pretty much survived. As long as the Smokies knew where to find her, and believed her story that she was an ugly coming to join 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. The pendant around her neck had also survived the ordeal. Tally doubted a little water would have ruined the device, but she wouldn't know until she reached the Smoke and activated it.
She hoped for a moment that the pendant wouldn't work. Maybe one of the bumps along the way had broken its little eye-reader and it would never send its message back to Dr.
Cable. But that was hardly worth hoping for. Without the pendant, Tally was stuck out here in the wild forever. Ugly for life.
Her only way home was to betray her friend.
A couple of hours after dawn, they came and got her.
Tally saw them hiking through the orchids, four figures carrying hoverboards and dressed all in white.
Broad white hats in a dappled pattern hid their heads, and she realized that if they ducked down into the flowers, they would practically disappear.
These people went to a lot of trouble to stay hidden.
As the party drew close, she recognized Shay's pigtails bobbing under one of the hats and waved frantically. Tally had planned to take the note literally and wait on the hilltop, but at the sight of her friend, she grabbed her board and dashed down to meet them.
Infiltrator or not, Tally couldn't wait to see Shay.
The tall, lanky form broke from the others and ran toward her, and the two embraced, laughing.
"It is you! I knew it was!"
"Of course it is, Shay. I couldn't stand missing you." Which was pretty much true.
Shay couldn't stop smiling. "When we spotted the helicopter last night, most people said it had to be another group. They said you'd taken too long, and that I should give up."
Tally tried to smile back, wondering if she hadn't made up enough time. She could hardly admit starting four days after her sixteenth birthday.
"I kind of got turned around. Could your note have been any more obscure?"
"Oh." Shay's face fell. "I thought you'd understand it."
Unable to bear Shay blaming herself, Tally shook her head. "Actually, the note was okay.
I'm just a moron. And the biggest problem was when I got to the flowers. The rangers didn't see me at first, and I almost got roasted."
Shay's eyes widened as she took in Tally's scratched and sunburned face, the blisters on her hands, and her patchy, scorched hair. "Oh, Tally! You look like you went through a war zone."
"Just about."
The other three uglies walked up. They stood back a bit, one boy holding a device in the air. "She's carrying a bug," he said.
Tally's heart froze. "A what?"
Shay gently took Tally's board from her and handed it to the boy. He swept his device across it, nodded, and pulled one of the stabilizer fins off. "Here it is."
"They sometimes put trackers on the long-range boards," Shay said. "Trying to find the Smoke."
"Oh, I'm really…I didn't know. I swear!"
"Relax, Tally," the boy said. "It's not your fault. Shay's board had one too. That's why we meet you newbies down here." He held up the bug. "We'll take it away in some random direction and stick it on a migrating bird. See how the Specials like South America." The Smokies all laughed.
He stepped closer and swept the device up and down her body. Tally flinched when it passed close to the pendant. But he smiled. "It's okay. You're clean."
Tally sighed with relief. Of course, she hadn't activated the pendant yet, so his device couldn't detect it.
The other bug was just Dr. Cable's way of misleading the Smokies, getting them to drop their guard.
Tally herself was the real danger.
Shay stepped up next to the boy, taking his hand in hers. "Tally, this is David."
The boy smiled again. He was an ugly, but he had a nice smile. And his face held a kind of confidence that Tally had never seen in an ugly before. Maybe he was a few years older than she was. Tally had never watched anyone mature naturally past age sixteen. She wondered how much of being ugly was just an awkward age.
Of course, David was hardly a pretty. His smile was crooked, and his forehead too high.
But, uglies or not, it was good to see Shay, David-all of them. Except for a couple of stunned hours with the rangers, she hadn't seen human faces in what seemed like years.
"So, what've you got?"
"Huh?"
Croy was one of the other uglies who'd come to meet her. He also looked older than sixteen, but it didn't suit him like it did David. Some people needed the operation more than others. He reached out a hand for her knapsack.
"Oh, thanks." Her shoulders were sore from being strapped to the thing for the last week.