Tally blinked. 'I didn't say you would, but…'
'But what?'
'But when you turn, you go over to New Pretty Town.'
'So? Pretties are allowed to come back over here, you know. Or write.'
Tally snorted. 'But they don't.'
'I would.' Shay looked out over the river at the spires of the party towers, placing a thumbnail firmly between her teeth.
'So would I, Shay. I'd come see you.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yeah. Really.'
Shay shrugged, and lay back down to stare up at the clouds. 'Okay. But you're not the first person to make that promise, you know.'
'Yeah, I do know.'
They were silent for a moment. Clouds rolled slowly across the sun, and the air grew cool.
Tally thought of Peris, and tried to remember the way he used to look back when he was Nose. Somehow, she couldn't recall his ugly face anymore. As if those few minutes of seeing him pretty had wiped out a lifetime of memories. All she could see now was pretty Peris, those eyes, that smile.
'I wonder why they never come back,' Shay said. 'Just to visit.'
Tally swallowed.
'Because we're so ugly, Skinny, that's why.'
'Here's option two.' Tally touched her interface ring, and the wallscreen changed.
This Tally was sleek, with ultrahigh cheekbones, deep green catlike eyes, and a wide mouth that curled into a knowing smile.
'That's, uh, pretty different.'
'Yeah. I doubt it's even legal.'
Tally tweaked the eye-shape parameters, pulling the arch of the eyebrows down almost to normal. Some cities allowed exotic operations-for new pretties only-but the authorities here were notoriously conservative. She doubted a doctor would give this morpho a second glance, but it was fun to push the software to its limits. 'You think I look too scary?'
'No. You look like a real pussycat.' Shay giggled. 'Unfortunately, I mean that in the literal, dead-mouse- eating sense.'
'Okay, moving right along.'
The next Tally was a much more standard morphological model, with almond-shaped brown eyes, straight black hair with long bangs, the dark lips set to maximum fullness.
'Pretty generic, Tally.'
'Oh, come on! I worked on this one for a long time. I think I'd look great this way.
There's a whole Cleopatra thing going on.'
'You know,' Shay said, 'I read that the real Cleopatra wasn't even that great-looking.
She seduced everyone with how clever she was.'
'Yeah, right. And you've seen a picture of her?'
'They didn't have cameras back then, Squint.'
'Duh. So how do you know she was ugly?'
'Because that's what historians wrote at the time.'
Tally shrugged. 'She was probably a classic pretty and they didn't even know it. Back then, they had weird ideas about beauty. They didn't know about biology.'
'Lucky them.' Shay stared out the window.
'So, if you think all my faces are so crappy, why don't you show me some of yours?'
Tally cleared the wallscreen and leaned back on the bed.
'I can't.'
'You can dish it out, but you can't take it, huh?'
'No, I mean I just can't. I never made one.'
Tally's jaw dropped. Everyone made morphos, even littlies, too young for their facial structure to have set. It was a great waste of a day, figuring out all the different ways you could look when you finally became pretty.
'Not even one?'
'Maybe when I was little. But my friends and I stopped doing that kind of stuff a long time ago.'
'Well.' Tally sat up. 'We should fix that right now.'
'I'd rather go hoverboarding.' Shay tugged anxiously under her shirt. Tally figured that Shay slept with her belly sensor on, hoverboarding in her dreams.
'Later, Shay. I can't believe you don't have a single morph. Please.'
'It's stupid. The doctors pretty much do what they want, no matter what you tell them.'
'I know, but it's fun.'
Shay made a big point of rolling her eyes, but finally nodded. She dragged herself off the bed and plopped down in front of the wallscreen, pulling her hair back from her face.
Tally snorted. 'So you have done this before.'
'Like I said, when I was a littlie.'
'Sure.' Tally turned her interface ring to bring up a menu on the wallscreen, and blinked her way through a set of eyemouse choices. The screen's camera flickered with laser light, and a green grid sprang up on Shay's face, a field of tiny squares imposed across the shape of her cheekbones, nose, lips, and forehead.
Seconds later, two faces appeared on the screen. Both of them were Shay, but there were obvious differences: One looked wild, slightly angry; the other had a slightly distant expression, like someone having a daydream.
'It's weird how that works, isn't it?' Tally said. 'Like two different people.'
Shay nodded. 'Creepy.'
Ugly faces were always asymmetrical; neither half looked exactly like the other. So the first thing the morpho software did was take each side of your face and double it, like holding a mirror right down the middle, creating two examples of perfect symmetry.
Already, both of the symmetrical Shays looked better than the original.
'So, Shay, which do you think is your good side?'
'Why do I have to be symmetrical? I'd rather have a face with two different sides.'
Tally groaned. 'That's a sign of childhood stress. No one wants to look at that.'
'Gee, I wouldn't want to look stressed,' Shay snorted, and pointed at the wilder-looking face. 'Okay, whatever. The right one's better, don't you think?'
'I hate my right side. I always start with the left.'
'Yeah, well, I happen to like my right side. Looks tougher.'
'Okay. You're the boss.'
Tally blinked, and the right-side face filled the screen.
'First, the basics.' The software took over: The eyes gradually grew, reducing the size of the nose between them, Shay's cheekbones moved upward, and her lips became a tiny bit fuller (they were already almost pretty- sized). Every blemish disappeared, her skin turning flawlessly smooth. The skull moved subtly under the features, the angle of her forehead tilting back, her chin becoming more defined, her jaw stronger.
When it was done, Tally whistled. 'Wow, that's pretty good already.'
'Great,' Shay groaned. 'I totally look like every other new pretty in the world.'
'Well, sure, we just got started. How about some hair on you?' Tally blinked through menus quickly, picking a style at random.
When the wallscreen changed, Shay fell over on the floor in a fit of giggles. The high hairdo towered over her thin face like dunce cap, the white-blond hair utterly incongruous with her olive skin.
Tally could hardly manage to speak through her own laughter. 'Okay, maybe not that.'
