1269_UgliesFreeBook

274 Scott Westerfeld
done to their brains, and only a few people in the world
knew exactly what.
“You see why I wanted you to meet my parents?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
Tally and David were in the darkness, climbing the
ridge back toward the Smoke, the sky full of stars now that
the moon had set.
“You might have gone back to the city not knowing.”
Tally shivered, realizing how close she had come so
many times. In the library, she’d actually opened the pendant,
almost holding it to her eye. And if she had, the
Specials would have arrived within hours.
“I couldn’t stand that,” David said.
“But some uglies must go back, right?”
“Sure. They get bored with camping out, and we can’t
make them stay.”
“You let them go? When they don’t even know what the
operation really means?”
David stopped and took hold of Tally’s shoulder,
anguish on his face. “Neither do we. And what if we told
everyone what we suspect? Most of them wouldn’t believe
us, but others would go charging back to the city to rescue
their friends. And eventually, the cities would find out what
we were saying, and would do everything in their power to
hunt us down.”
They already are, Tally said to herself. She wondered