A couple of hours after dawn, they came and got her.
Tally saw them hiking through the orchids, four figurescarrying hoverboards and dressed all in white. Broad whitehats in a dappled pattern hid their heads, and she realizedthat if they ducked down into the flowers, they would practicallydisappear.
These people went to a lot of trouble to stay hidden.
As the party drew close, she recognized Shay’s pigtailsbobbing under one of the hats and waved frantically. Tallyhad planned to take the note literally and wait on the hilltop,but at the sight of her friend, she grabbed her boardand dashed down to meet them.
Infiltrator or not, Tally couldn’t wait to see Shay.
The tall, lanky form broke from the others and rantoward 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 thehelicopter last night, most people said it had to be anothergroup. They said you’d taken too long, and that I shouldgive up.”
Tally tried to smile back, wondering if she hadn’t madeup enough time. She could hardly admit starting four daysafter her sixteenth birthday.
“I kind of got turned around. Could your note havebeen any more obscure?”
“Oh.” Shay’s face fell. “I thought you’d understand it.”
Unable to bear Shay blaming herself, Tally shook herhead. “Actually, the note was okay. I’m just a moron. Andthe biggest problem was when I got to the flowers. Therangers didn’t see me at first, and I almost got roasted.”
Shay’s eyes widened as she took in Tally’s scratched andsunburned face, the blisters on her hands, and her patchy,scorched hair. “Oh, Tally! You look like you went through awar zone.”
“Just about.”
The other three uglies walked up. They stood back abit, one boy holding a device in the air. “She’s carryinga bug,” he said.
Tally’s heart froze. “A what?”
Shay gently took Tally’s board from her and handed itto the boy. He swept his device across it, nodded, andpulled one of the stabilizer fins off. “Here it is.”
“They sometimes put trackers on the long-rangeboards,” Shay said. “Trying to find the Smoke.”
188 Scott Westerfeld“Oh, I’m really . . . I didn’t know. I swear!”
“Relax, Tally,” the boy said. “It’s not your fault. Shay’sboard had one too. That’s why we meet you newbies downhere.” He held up the bug. “We’ll take it away in some randomdirection and stick it on a migrating bird. See how theSpecials like South America.” The Smokies all laughed.
He stepped closer and swept the device up and downher 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 activatedthe pendant yet, so his device couldn’t detect it. The otherbug was just Dr. Cable’s way of misleading the Smokies,getting them to drop their guard. Tally herself was the realdanger.
Shay stepped up next to the boy, taking his hand inhers. “Tally, this is David.”
The boy smiled again. He was an ugly, but he had a nicesmile. And his face held a kind of confidence that Tally hadnever seen in an ugly before. Maybe he was a few yearsolder than she was. Tally had never watched anyone maturenaturally past age sixteen. She wondered how much ofbeing ugly was just an awkward age.
Of course, David was hardly a pretty. His smile wascrooked, and his forehead too high. But, uglies or not, itwas good to see Shay, David—all of them. Except for acouple of stunned hours with the rangers, she hadn’t seenhuman faces in what seemed like years.
UGLIES 189F F F“So, what’ve you got?”
“Huh?”
Croy was one of the other uglies who’d come to meether. He also looked older than sixteen, but it didn’t suit himlike it did David. Some people needed the operation morethan others. He reached out a hand for her knapsack.
“Oh, thanks.” Her shoulders were sore from beingstrapped to the thing for the last week.
He pulled it open as they hiked, looking inside.
“Purifier. Position-finder.” Croy pulled out the waterproofbag and opened it. “SpagBol! Yum!”
Tally groaned. “You can have it.”
His eyes widened. “I can?”
Shay pulled the knapsack away from him. “No, you can’t.”
“Listen, I’ve eaten that stuff three times a day for thepast . . . what seems like forever,” Tally said.
“Yeah, but dehydrated food’s hard to get in the Smoke,”
Shay explained. “You should save it to trade.”
“Trade?” Tally frowned. “What do you mean?” In thecity, uglies might trade c............