reached for the door handle.
A man's voice called from behind her.
Tally froze. After two weeks of sleeping rough, her clothes torn and dirty, she might pass for a villager from a distance. But once she turned around, her pretty face would give her away.
The voice called out again in the villagers' language, but it was inflected with a late pretty's gravelly air of authority. Footsteps were coming closer. Should she dive into the hovercar and try to make it away?
The words faded as the man grew closer. He had noticed her city clothes under all the dirt.
Tally turned around.
He was equipped like the others, with field glasses and a water bottle, his crumbly face a picture of surprise. He must have been sitting inside the other hovercar, moving a little slower than the rest of them — that's why he'd caught her.
'Good heavens!' he exclaimed, switching languages. 'What are you doing out here?'
She blinked, pausing for a moment, a vacant look on her pretty face. 'We were in a balloon.'
'A balloon?'
'There was some kind of accident. But I don't remember exactly. …'
He took a step forward, then his nose wrinkled. Tally might look like a pretty, but she smelled like a savage. 'I think I saw something on the feeds about balloons going wrong, but that was a couple of weeks ago! You couldn't have been here that…' He looked at her torn clothes, his nose wrinkling again. 'But I suppose you have.'
Tally shook her head. 'I don't know how long it's been.'
'You poor dear.' Recovering from his surprise, he was now all late-pretty concern. 'You're okay now. I'm Dr. Valen.'
She smiled like a good pretty, realizing that this must be the Doctor. A bird-watcher probably wouldn't know the villagers' language, after all. This was the man in charge.
'It feels like I've been hiding out forever,' she said. 'There are all these crazy people out here.'
'Yes, they can be quite dangerous.' He shook his head, as if still not believing that a young city pretty had survived out here for so long. 'You're lucky to have stayed clear of them.'
'Who are they?'
'They're…part of a very important study.'
'A study? Of what?'
He chuckled. 'Now, that's all very complicated. Perhaps I should tell someone we've found you. I'm sure everyone's very anxious to know if you're okay. What's your name?'
'What are you studying out here?'
He blinked, perplexed that a new pretty was asking questions instead of whining about getting home. 'Well, we're looking at certain fundamentals of… human nature.'
'Of course. Like violence? Revenge.'
He frowned. 'Yes, in a manner of speaking. But how …?'
'I thought so.' All at once, it was becoming clear. 'You're studying violence, so you'd need a violent, brutal group of people, wouldn't you? You're an anthropologist?'
Confusion still played across his face. 'Yes, but I'm also a doctor. A medical doctor. Are you sure you're all right?'
A realization hit Tally. 'You're a brain doctor.'
'We're called neurologists, actually.' Dr. Valen warily turned to reach for the hovercar door. 'But perhaps I should make that call. I didn't get your name.'
'I didn't give it.'
Her tone stopped him cold.
'Don't touch that door,' she said.
He turned to face her again, his late-pretty composure crumbling. 'But you're …'
'Pretty? Think again.' She smiled. 'I'm Tally Youngblood. My mind is very ugly. And I'm taking your car.'
The Doctor was quite afraid of savages, it seemed — even beautiful ones.
He meekly allowed himself be locked into the cargo container of one of the hovercars, and handed over the take-off codes to the other. The security was nothing Tally couldn't have tricked herself, but it saved time. And the expression on Dr. Valen's face as he gave her the codes was pretty indeed. He was used to dealing with villagers in awe of his godhood. But one look at Tally's knife and he'd realized who was giving the orders.
The man answered a few more of Tally's questions, until no doubt remained in her mind what this reservation was all about. This had been the place where the operation had been developed, from which the first test subjects had been drawn. The purpose of the brain lesions was to deter violence and conflict, so who better to experiment on than people caught up in an endless blood feud? Like rabid enemies in a locked room, the tribes trapped within the ring of little men would reveal anything you wanted to know about the very human origins of bloodshed.
She shook her head. Poor Andrew. His whole world was an experiment, and his father had died in a conflict that meant precisely nothing.
Tally paused a moment in the hovercar before taking off, familiarizing herself with the controls. They seemed about the same as a city car, but she had to remember that this one wasn't idiotproof — it would fly into a mountain if you told it to. She would have to be careful in the high spires of the ruins.
The first thing she did was put her boot through the communication system; she didn't want the car telling the city authorities where it was.
'Tally!'
She started at the shout, peering out through the front windows. But it was only Andrew, and he was alone. She slid out of the drivers door, waving for him to be silent and pointing at the other car. 'I've got the Doctor locked up,' she hissed. 'Don't let him hear your voice. What are you doing back here?'
He looked at the other hovercar, eyes widening at the thought of a god imprisoned within, and whispered, 'I was sent back to see where he was. He said he would be just behind us.'
'Well, he's not coming. And I'm about to leave.' He nodded. 'Of course. Good-bye, Young Blood.'
'Good-bye.' She smiled. 'I won't forget all your help.' Andrew was staring into her eyes, the familiar pretty- awed expression coming over his face. 'I'll not forget you, either.'
'Don't look at me that way.'
'What way, Tally?'
'Like a … god. We're just humans, Andrew.' He looked at the ground, nodding slowly. 'I know.'
'Not very perfect humans, some of us worse than you could imagine. We've done awful things to your people for a long time now. We've used you.' He shrugged. 'What can we do? You are so powerful.'
'Yeah, we are.' She took his hand. 'But keep trying to get past the little men. The real world is huge. Maybe you can get far enough away that the Specials will stop looking for you. And I'll try to…' She didn't finish the promise. Try to do what?
A smile broke across Andrew's face, and he reached out to touch her flash tattoo. 'You are bubbly now.'
She nodded, swallowing.
'We will wait for you, Young Blood.'
Tally blinked, then hugged him wordlessly. She slid back into the hovercar and started the rotors. As the whine of its engines built, she watched the birds scatter from the clearing, terrified by the roar of the gods' machine. Andrew backed away.
The car rose at her first touch on the controls, its power shuddering through her bones. The rotors whipped the treetops around her into a frenzy, but the car rose steadily, under control.
Tally looked down as the car cleared the trees, and saw Andrew waving up at her, his crooked, gap-toothed smile still hopeful. Tally knew that she would have to return, just like he'd said; she no longer had a choice. Someone had to help the people here escape the reservation, and they had no one else but Tally.
She sighed. At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.
