The trip was much less pleasant than Tally1’s first ridethat day. The strange-looking man flew with an aggressiveimpatience, dropping like a rock to cut between flightlanes, banking2 as steeply as a hoverboard with every turn.
Tally had never been airsick before, but now she clutchedthe seat restraints, her knuckles3 white and eyes fixed4 on thesolid ground below. She caught one last glimpse of NewPretty Town receding5 behind them.
They headed downriver, across Uglyville, over thegreenbelt and farther out to the transport ring, where thefactories stuck their heads aboveground. Beside a huge,misshapen hill, the car descended6 into a complex of rectangularbuildings, as squat7 as ugly dorms and painted thecolor of dried grass.
They landed with a painful bump, and the man led herinto one of the buildings, and down into a murk of yellowbrownhallways. Tally had never seen so much spacepainted in such putrid8 colors, as if the building weredesigned to make its occupants vaguely9 nauseated10.
There were more people like the man.
They were all dressed in formals, raw silks in black andgray, and their faces had the same cold, hawkish11 look. Boththe men and women were taller than pretty standard, andmore powerfully built, their eyes as pale as an ugly’s. Therewere a few normal people as well, but they faded intoinsignificance next to the predatory forms moving gracefullythrough the halls.
Tally wondered if this was someplace where peoplewere taken when their operations went wrong, whenbeauty turned cruel. Then why was she here? She hadn’teven had the operation yet. Tally swallowed. What if theseterrible pretties had been made this way intentionally12?
When they had measured her yesterday, had they determinedthat she would never fit the vulnerable, doe-eyedpretty mold? Maybe she’d already been chosen to beremade for this strange, other world.
The man stopped outside a metal door, and Tallyhalted behind him. She felt like a littlie again, jerked alongby a minder on an invisible string. All her ugly senior’sconfidence had evaporated the moment she’d seen himback at the hospital. Four years of tricks and independencegone.
The door flashed his eye and opened, and he pointedfor her to go in. Tally realized he hadn’t said a word sincecollecting her at the hospital. She took a deep breath, whichUGLIES 103made the paralyzed muscles in her chest flinch13 with pain,and managed to croak14, “Say please.”
“Inside,” was his answer.
Tally smiled, silently declaring a small victory that shehad made him speak again, but she did as she was told.
“I’m Dr. Cable.”
“Tally Youngblood.”
Dr. Cable smiled. “Oh, I know who you are.”
The woman was a cruel pretty. Her nose was aquiline,her teeth sharp, her eyes a nonreflective gray. Her voice hadthe same slow, neutral cadence15 as a bedtime book. But ithardly made Tally sleepy. An edge was hidden in the voice,like a piece of metal slowly marking glass.
“You have a problem, Tally.”
“I had kind of guessed that, uh . . .” It was strange, notknowing the woman’s first name.
“Dr. Cable will do.”
Tally blinked. She’d never called anyone by their lastname in her life.
“Okay, Dr. Cable.” She cleared her throat and managedto say more, in a dry voice. “My problem right now is that Idon’t know what’s going on. So . . . why don’t you tell me?”
“What do you think’s going on, Tally?”
Tally closed her eyes, taking a rest from the sharp anglesof the woman’s face. “Well, that bungee jacket was a spare,you know, and we did put it back on the recharge pile.”
104 Scott Westerfeld“This isn’t about some ugly-trick.”
She sighed and opened her eyes. “No, I didn’t think so.”
“This is about a friend of yours. Someone missing.”
Of course. Shay’s disappearing trick had gone too far,leaving Tally to explain. “I don’t know where she is.”
Dr. Cable smiled. Only her top teeth showed when shedid. “But you do know something.”
“Who are you, anyway?” Tally blurted16. “Where am I?”
“I’m Dr. Cable,” the woman said. “And this is SpecialCircumstances.”
First Dr. Cable asked her a lot of questions. “You didn’tknow Shay long, did you?”
“No. Just this summer. We were in different dorms.”
“And you didn’t know any of her friends?”
“No. They were all older than her. They’d alreadyturned.”
“Like your friend Peris?”
Tally swallowed. How much did this woman knowabout her? “Yeah. Like Peris and me.”
“But Shay’s friends didn’t wind up pretty, did they?”
Tally took a slow breath, remembering her promise toShay. She didn’t want to lie, though. Dr. Cable would knowif she did, Tally was sure. She was in enough troublealready. “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Did she tell you about her friends?”
“We didn’t talk about stuff like that. We just hung out.
UGLIES 105Because . . . it hurt being alone. We were just into playingtricks.”
“Did you know she’d been in a gang?”
Tally looked up into Dr. Cable’s eyes. They were almostas big as a normal pretty’s, but they angled upward likea wolf’s.
“A gang? How do you mean?”
“Tally, did you and Shay ever go to the Rusty17 Ruins?”
“Everyone does.”
“But did you ever sneak18 out to the ruins?”
“Yeah. A lot of people do.”
“Did you ever meet anyone there?”
Tally bit her lip. “What’s Special Circumstances?”
“Tally.” The edge in her voice was suddenly sharp asa razor blade.
“If you tell me what Special Circumstances is, I’llanswer you.”
Dr. Cable sat back. She folded her hands and nodded.
“This city is a paradise, Tally. It feeds you, educates you,keeps you safe. It makes you pretty.”
Tally couldn’t help looking up hopefully at this.
“And our city can stand a great deal of freedom, Tally.
It gives youngsters room to play tricks, to develop their creativityand independence. But occasionally bad things comefrom outside the city.”
Dr. Cable narrowed her eyes, her face becoming evenmore like a predator’s. “We exist in equilibrium19 with our106 Scott Westerfeldenvironment, Tally, purifying the water that we put back inthe river, recycling the biomass, and using only powerdrawn from our own solar footprint. But sometimes wecan’t purify what we take in from the outside. Sometimesthere are threats from the environment that must be faced.”
She smiled. “Sometimes there are Special Circumstances.”
“So, you guys are like minders, but for the whole city.”
Dr. Cable nodded. “Other cities sometimes pose a challenge.
And sometimes those few people who live outsidethe cities can make trouble.”
Tally’s eyes widened. Outside the cities? Shay had beentelling the truth—places like the Smoke really existed.
“It’s your turn to answer my question, Tally. Did youever meet anyone in the ruins? Someone not from this city?
Not from any city?”
Tally grinned. “No. I never did.”
Dr. Cable frowned, her eyes darting20 downward for asecond, checking something. When they returned to Tally,they had grown even colder. Tally smiled again, certainnow that Dr. Cable knew when she was telling the truth.
The room must be reading her heartbeat, her sweat, herpupil dilation21. But Tally couldn’t tell what she didn’tknow.
The razor blade slid back into the woman’s voice.
“Don’t play games with me, Tally. Your friend Shay willnever thank you for it, because you’ll never see her again.”
UGLIES 107The thrill of her small victory disappeared, and Tallyfelt her smile fade.
“Six of her friends disappeared, Tally, all at once. Noneof them has ever been found. Another two who were meantto join them chose not to throw their lives away, however,and we discovered a little about what had happened to theothers. They didn’t run away on their own. They weretempted by someone from outside, someone who wantedto steal our cleverest little uglies. We realized that this wasa special circumstance.”
One word sent ice down Tally’s spine22. Had Shay reallybeen stolen? What did Shay or any ugly really know aboutthe Smoke?
“We’ve been watching Shay since then, hoping shemight lead us to her friends.”
“So why didn’t you . . . ,” Tally blurted out. “You know,stop her!”
“Because of you, Tally.”
“Me?”
Dr. Cable’s voice softened23. “We thought she had madea friend, a reason to stay here in the city. We thought she’dbe okay.”
Tally could only close her eyes and shake her head.
“But then Shay disappeared,” Dr. Cable continued. “Sheturned out to be trickier24 than her friends. You taught her well.”
“I did?” Tally cried. “I don’t know any more tricks thanmost uglies.”
108 Scott Westerfeld“You underestimate yourself,” Dr. Cable said.
Tally turned away from the vulpine eyes, shut out therazor-blade voice. This was not her fault. She had decidedto stay here in the city, after all. She wanted to becomepretty. She’d even tried to convince Shay.
But failed.
“It’s not my fault.”
“Help us, Tally.”
“Help you what?”
“Find her. Find them all.”
She took a deep breath. “What if they don’t want to befound?”
“What if they do? What if they were lied to?”
Tally tried to remember Shay’s face that last night, howhopeful she had been. She’d wanted to leave the city asmuch as Tally wanted to be pretty. However stupid thechoice seemed, Shay had made it with her eyes open, andhad respected Tally’s choice to stay.
Tally looked up at Dr. Cable’s cruel beauty, at the pukeyellow-brown of the walls. She remembered all the tricksSpecial Circumstances had played on her today—howthey’d kept her waiting for an hour in the hospital, waitingand thinking she would soon be pretty, the brutal26 flighthere, and all the cruel faces in the halls—and she decided25.
“I can’t help you,” Tally said. “I made a promise.”
Dr. Cable bared her teeth. This time, it wasn’t even amockery of a smile. The woman became nothing but aUGLIES 109monster, vengeful and inhuman27. “Then I’ll make you apromise too, Tally Youngblood. Until you do help us, to thevery best of your ability, you will never be pretty.”
Dr. Cable turned away.
“You can die ugly, for all I care.”
The door opened. The scary man was outside, wherehe’d been waiting all along.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
tally
|
|
| n.计数器，记分，一致，测量；vt.计算，记录，使一致；vi.计算，记分，一致 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
banking
|
|
| n.银行业，银行学，金融业 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
knuckles
|
|
| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
fixed
|
|
| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
receding
|
|
| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
descended
|
|
| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
squat
|
|
| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
putrid
|
|
| adj.腐臭的；有毒的；已腐烂的；卑劣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
vaguely
|
|
| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
nauseated
|
|
| adj.作呕的，厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
hawkish
|
|
| adj. 鹰派的, 强硬派的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
intentionally
|
|
| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
flinch
|
|
| v.畏缩，退缩 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
croak
|
|
| vi.嘎嘎叫，发牢骚 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
cadence
|
|
| n.（说话声调的）抑扬顿挫 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
blurted
|
|
| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
rusty
|
|
| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
sneak
|
|
| vt.潜行(隐藏,填石缝)；偷偷摸摸做；n.潜行；adj.暗中进行 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
equilibrium
|
|
| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
darting
|
|
| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
dilation
|
|
| n.膨胀，扩张，扩大 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
spine
|
|
| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
softened
|
|
| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
trickier
|
|
| adj.狡猾的( tricky的比较级 )；（形势、工作等）复杂的；机警的；微妙的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
decided
|
|
| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
brutal
|
|
| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
inhuman
|
|
| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |