Pretties

  Whatever the answers to these questions, Tally realized that she couldn’t face the latrine ditch—she was too much of a city girl for that. She wandered farther back into the forest. Although she knew this had been frowned on in the Smoke, she hoped young gods got special dispensations here.

  When Tally waved to a pair of watchmen on duty at the edge of town, they nodded back a bit nervously, averting their eyes and clumsily hiding their clubs behind them. The hunters were still wary of her, as if wondering why they hadn’t gotten in trouble yet for trying to cave her head in.

  Only a few meters into the trees, the village disappeared from view, but Tally wasn’t worried about getting lost. Gusts of wind still brought smells of staggering intensity from the latrine trench, and she was still close enough to yell to the watchmen if she wound up hopelessly turned around.

  In the bright sun, the night frost was melting, falling in a steady mist. The forest made soft shifting sounds, like her parents’ old house when no one else was home. The shadows of leaves broke the outlines of the trees, making every shape indistinct, creating movement in the corner of her eye with every gust of wind. The feeling of being watched that she’d experienced the day before returned, and she found a spot and peed quickly.

  But she didn’t head straight back. It was pointless to let her imagination run away with her. A few moments of privacy were a luxury here. She wondered what lovers did when they wanted to be alone, and if anyone kept secrets for long in the village.

  Over the last month, she’d gotten used to spending almost every minute with Zane. She could feel his absence right now; her body missed having his warmth next to her. But sharing sleeping quarters with a couple of dozen strangers was a strange and unexpected substitute.

  Suddenly, Tally felt her nerves twitch, and she froze. Somewhere in her peripheral vision, something had shifted, not part of the natural play of sunlight and leaves and wind. Her eyes scanned the trees.

  A laugh rolled from the forest.

  It was Andrew Simpson Smith, crunching through the undergrowth with a big smile on his face.

  “Were you spying on me?” she asked.

  “Spying?” He said it as if he’d never heard the word, and Tally wondered if, with so little privacy, anyone here had even invented the concept of spying. “I woke when you left us, Young Blood. I thought maybe I would get to see you . . .”

  She raised an eyebrow. “See me what?”

  “Fly,” he said sheepishly.

  Tally had to laugh. The night before, no matter how she’d tried to explain it, Andrew Simpson Smith had never quite grasped the concept of hoverboarding. She had explained that younger gods didn’t use hovercars very much, but the idea that there were different kinds of flying vehicles seemed to befuddle him.

  He looked hurt by her amusement. Perhaps he thought Tally was hiding her special powers just to vex him.

  “Sorry, Andrew. But like I kept saying last night, I can’t fly.”

  “But in your story, you said you were going to join your friends.”

  “Yeah. But like I told you, my board’s busted. And underwater. I’m afraid I’m stuck walking.”

  He seemed confused for a moment, perhaps amazed that divine contraptions could get broken. Then suddenly he beamed, revealing a missing tooth that made him look like a littlie. “Then I’ll help you. We will walk there together.”

  “Uh, really?”

  He nodded. “The Smiths are holy men. I am a servant of the gods, like my father was.”

  His voice fell flat on the last few words. Tally was amazed again at how easy it was to read Andrew’s face. All the villagers’ emotions seemed to live right on the surface, as if they had no more invented privacy in their thoughts than they had in their sleeping arrangements. She wondered if they ever lied to one another.

  Of course, some pretties had lied to them at some point. Gods, indeed.

  “When did your father die, Andrew? Not long ago, right?”

  He looked up at her in wonder, as if she’d magically read his thoughts. “It was only a month ago, just before the longest night.”

  Tally wondered what the longest night was, but didn’t interrupt.

  “He and I were searching for ruins. The elder gods like us to find old and Rusty places for them, for study. We came upon outsiders.”

  “Outsiders? Like you mistook me for?”

  “Yes. But this was no young god we found. It was a raiding party looking for a kill. We spotted them first, but their dogs had our scent. And my father was old. Forty years, he had lived,” he said proudly.

  Tally let out a slow breath. All eight of her great-crumblies were still alive, and all in their hundred-teens.

  “His bones had grown weak.” Andrew’s voice fell almost to a whisper. “Running in a stream, he turned his ankle. I had to leave him behind.”

  Tally swallowed, dizzy at the thought of someone dying from a sprained ankle. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “He gave me his knife before I left him.” Andrew pulled it from his belt, and Tally got a closer look than the night before. It was a disposable kitchen knife with a notched, ragged blade. “Now I am the holy man.”

  She nodded slowly. The sight of the cheap knife in his hand reminded Tally of how her first encounter with these people had almost ended. She had almost met the same fate as Andrew’s father. “But why?”

  “Why, Young Blood? Because I was his son.”

  “No, not that,” she said. “Why would the outsiders want to kill your father? Or anyone?”

  Andrew frowned, as if this was an odd question. “It was their turn.”

  “Their what?”

  He shrugged. “We had killed in the summer. The revenge was on them.”

  “You had killed . . . one of them?”

  “Our revenge, for a killing in the early spring.” He smiled coldly. “I was in that raiding party.”

  “So this is like payback? But when did the whole thing start?”

  “Start?” He stared into the flat of the knife’s blade, as if trying to read something in the mirror of its dull metal. “It has always been. They are outsiders.” He smiled. “I was glad to see that it was you they brought home, and not a kill. So that it is still our turn, and I may still be there for my father’s revenge.”

  Tally found herself speechless. In seconds, Andrew Simpson Smith had changed from a grieving son into some kind of . . . savage. His fingers had turned even paler, wrapped around the knife so tightly that the blood was forced from them.

  She took her eyes from the weapon and shook her head. It wasn’t fair to think of him as uncivilized. What Andrew was describing was as old as civilization itself. In school, they’d talked about this sort of blood feud. And the Rusties had only been worse, inventing mass warfare, creating more and more deadly technologies until they’d almost destroyed the world.

  Still, Tally couldn’t afford to forget how different these people were from anyone she’d ever known. She forced herself to stare at Andrew’s grim expression, his weird delight in the heft of the knife in his hand.

  Then she remembered Dr. Cable’s words. Humanity is a cancer, and we are the cure. Violence was what the cities had been built to end, and part of what the operation switched off in pretties’ brains. The whole world that Tally had grown up in was a firebreak against this awful cycle. But here was the natural state of the species, right in front of her. In running from the city, perhaps this was what Tally was running toward.

  Unless Dr. Cable was wrong, and there was another way.

  Andrew looked up from his knife and sheathed it, spreading his empty hands. “But not today. Today I will help you find your friends.” He laughed, suddenly beaming again.

  Tally breathed out slowly, for a moment wanting to reject his help. But she had no one else to turn to, and the forests between her and the Rusty Ruins were filled with hidden paths and natural dangers, and probably more than a few people who might think of her as an “outsider.” Even if she wasn’t b
eing chased by a bloodthirsty raiding party, a sprained ankle alone in the freezing wilderness could prove fatal.

  She needed Andrew Simpson Smith, it was that simple. And he had spent his life training to help people like her. Gods.

  “Okay, Andrew. But let’s leave today. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Of course. Today.” He stroked the place where his slight beard was beginning to grow. “These ruins where your friends are waiting? Where are they?”

  Tally glanced up at the sun, still low enough to indicate the eastern horizon. After a moment’s calculation, she pointed off to the northwest, back toward the city and, beyond that, the Rusty Ruins. “About a week’s walk that way.”

  “A week?”

  “That means seven days.”

  “Yes, I know the gods’ calendar,” he said huffily. “But a whole week?”

  “Yeah. That’s not so far, is it?” The hunters had been tireless on their march the night before.

  He shook his head, an awed expression on his face. “But that is beyond the edge of the world.”

  FOOD OF THE GODS

  They left at noon.

  The whole village turned out to see them off, bringing offerings for the trip. Most of the gifts were too heavy to carry, and Tally and Andrew politely turned them down. He did fill his pack, however, with the scary-looking strips of dried meat that were offered them. When Tally realized that the grisly stuff was meant to be eaten, she tried to hide her horror, but didn’t do a very good job. The only gift she accepted was a wooden and leather slingshot offered by one of the older members of her littlie fan club. Tally remembered being pretty handy with slingshots back in her own littlie days.

  The headman publicly bestowed his blessing on the journey, adding one last apology—translated by Andrew—for almost cracking open the head of such a young and pretty god. Tally assured him that her elders would never be told about the misunderstanding, and the headman seemed guardedly relieved. He then presented Andrew with a beaten copper bracelet, a mark of gratitude to the young holy man for helping to make up for the hunters’ error.

  Andrew flushed with pride at the gift, and the crowd cheered as he held it aloft. Tally realized that she had caused trouble here. Like wearing semiformal dress to a costume bash, her unexpected visit had thrown things out of whack, but Andrew’s helping her was making everyone relax a little. Apparently, placating the gods was a holy man’s most important job, which made Tally wonder how much city pretties interfered with the villagers.

  Once she and Andrew were past the town limits, and their entourage of littlies had been called back home by anxious mothers, she decided to ask some serious questions. “So, Andrew, how many gods do you know . . . uh, personally?”

  He stroked his non-beard, looking thoughtful. “Since my father’s death no gods have come but you. None knows me as holy man.”

  Tally nodded. As she’d guessed, he was still trying to fill his father’s shoes. “Right. But your accent’s so good. You didn’t learn to speak my language only from your father, did you?”

  His crooked grin was sly. “I was never supposed to speak to the gods, only listen as my father attended them. But sometimes when guiding a god to a ruin or the nest of some strange new bird, I would speak.”

  “Good for you. So . . . what did you guys talk about?”

  He was quiet for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully. “We talked about animals. When they mate and what they eat.”

  “That makes sense.” Any city zoologist would love a private army of pre-Rusties to help them with fieldwork. “Anything else?”

  “Some gods wanted to know about ruins, as I told you. I would take them there.”

  Ditto for archeologists. “Sure.”

  “And there is the Doctor.”

  “Who? The Doctor?” Tally froze in her tracks. “Tell me, Andrew, is this Doctor really . . . scary-looking?”

  Andrew frowned, then laughed. “Scary? No. Like you, he’s beautiful, almost hard to look upon.”

  She shuddered with relief, then smiled and raised an eyebrow. “You don’t seem to find it too hard to look upon me.”

  His eyes fell to the ground. “I am sorry, Young Blood.”

  “Come on, Andrew, I didn’t mean it.” She took his shoulder lightly. “I was only kidding. Look upon me all you . . . um, whatever. And call me Tally, okay?”

  “Tally,” he said, trying out the name in his mouth. She dropped her hand from his shoulder, and Andrew looked at the place where she had touched him. “You are different from the other gods.”

  “I certainly hope so,” she said. “So this Doctor guy looks normal? Or pretty, I mean? Or, anyway . . . godlike?”

  “Yes. He is here more often than the others. But he does not care for animals or ruins. He asks only about the ways of the village. Who is courting, who is heavy with child. Which hunter might challenge the headman to a duel.”

  “Right.” Tally tried to remember the word. “An anthro—”

  “Anthropologist, they call him,” Andrew said.

  Tally raised an eyebrow.

  He grinned. “I have good ears, my father always said. The other gods sometimes mock the Doctor.”

  “Huh.” The villagers knew more about their divine visitors than the gods realized, it seemed. “So you’ve never met any gods who were really . . . scary-looking, have you?”

  Andrew’s eyes narrowed, and he started hiking again. Sometimes he took a long time to answer questions, as if being in a hurry was another thing the villagers hadn’t bothered to invent. “No, I haven’t. But my father’s grandfather told stories about creatures with strange weapons and faces like hawks, who did the will of the gods. They took human form, but moved strangely.”

  “Kind of like insects? Fast and jerky?”

  Andrew’s eyes widened. “They are real, then? The Sayshal?”

  “Sayshal? Oh. We call them Specials.”

  “They destroy any who challenge the gods.”

  She nodded. “That’s them, all right.”

  “And when people disappear, they sometimes say it was the Sayshal who have taken them.”

  “Taken them?” Where? Tally wondered.

  She fell silent, staring down at the forest path in front of her. If Andrew’s great-grandfather had run into Special Circumstances, then the city had known about the village for decades, probably longer. The scientists who exploited these people had been doing so for a long time, and weren’t above bringing in Specials to shore up their authority.

  It seemed that challenging the gods was a risky business.

  • • •

  They hiked for a day, making good time across the hills. Tally was beginning to spot the trails of the villagers without Andrew’s help, as if her eyes were learning how to see the forest better.

  As night fell, they found a cave to make camp in. Tally started to collect firewood, but stopped when she noticed Andrew watching her with a mystified expression. “What’s up?”

  “A fire? Outsiders will see!”

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” She sighed, rubbing her hands together to drive the chill from her fingers. “So this revenge thing makes for some cold nights on the trail, doesn’t it?”

  “Being cold is better than being dead, Tally,” he said, then shrugged. “And perhaps our journey will not last so long. We will reach the edge of the world tomorrow.”

  “Right, sure.” During the day’s hike, Andrew hadn’t been convinced by Tally’s description of the world: a planet 40,000 kilometers around, hanging in an airless void, with gravity making everyone stick to it. Of course, from his perspective it probably did sound pretty nutty. People used to get arrested for believing in a round world, they said in school—and it had usually been holy men doing the arresting.

  Tally picked out two packages of SwedeBalls. “At least we don’t have to build a fire to have hot food.”

  Andrew drew closer, watching her fill the purifier. He’d been chewing on dried meat all day, and was pretty exc
ited about trying some “food of the gods.” When the purifier pinged and Tally lifted the cover, his jaw dropped at the sight of steam rising from the reconstituted SwedeBalls. She handed it to him. “Go ahead. You first.”

  She didn’t have to insist. Back in the village the men always ate first, and the women and littlies got leftovers. Tally was a god, of course, and in some ways they had treated her as an honorary man, but some habits died hard. Andrew took the purifier from her and stuck his hand in to grab a meatball. He yanked it out with a yelp.

  “Hey, don’t burn yourself,” she said.

  “But where is the fire?” he asked softly, sucking on his fingers as he held up the purifier to look for a flame underneath.

  “It’s electronic . . . a very small fire. Are you sure you don’t want to try chopsticks?”

  He experimented with the sticks hopelessly for a while, which allowed the SwedeBalls to cool, then finally dug in with his hands. A slightly disappointed expression crossed his face as he chewed. “Hmm.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought that food of the gods would be . . . better, somehow.”

  “Hey, this is dehydrated food of the gods, okay?”

  Tally ate after he was done, but her CurryNoods were underwhelming after the feast of the night before. She remembered from her days in the Smoke how much better food could taste in the wild. Even fresh produce was never spectacular when it had been harvested from hydroponic tanks. And she had to agree with Andrew—dehydrated food was resolutely not divine.

  The young holy man was surprised when Tally didn’t want to sleep curled up with him—it was winter, after all. She explained that privacy was a god thing—he wouldn’t understand—but he still moped at her as she chewed her toothpaste pill and found her own corner of the cave to sleep in.

  It was the middle of the night when Tally awoke half-frozen, regretting her rudeness. After a long, silent session of self-recrimination, she sighed and crawled over to nestle against Andrew’s back. He wasn’t Zane, but the warmth of another person was better than lying on the stone floor shivering, miserable and alone.