“Struggling? With what?”
“Being here in the Smoke. You’re not sure about it all.”
Tally’s skin tingled again, but not from the thought of snakes or bats or long-dead Rusties. She wondered if David had somehow already figured out she was a spy. “No, I guess I’m not sure,” she said evenly.
She caught a glimmer of reflected light from David’s eyes as he nodded. “That’s good. You take this seriously. A lot of kids come out here and think it’s all fun and games.”
“I don’t think that for a minute,” she said softly.
“I can tell. It’s not just a trick to you, like it is to most runaways. Even Shay, who really believes the operation is wrong, doesn’t get how deadly serious the Smoke is.”
Tally didn’t say anything.
After a long moment of silence in the dark, David continued. “It’s dangerous out here. The cities are like these boulders. They may seem solid, but if you start messing with them, the whole pile could crumble.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Tally said. Since the day she’d gone to get her operation, she’d felt the massive weight of the city looming over her, and had learned firsthand how much places like the Smoke threatened people like Dr. Cable. “But I don’t really understand why they care so much about you guys.”
“It’s a long story. But part of it is…”
She waited for a moment before saying, “Is what?”
“Well, this is a secret. I don’t usually tell people until they’ve been here for a while. Years. But you seem…serious enough to handle it.”
“You can trust me,” Tally said, then immediately wondered why. She was a spy, an infiltrator. She was the last person David should trust.
“I hope I can, Tally,” he said, reaching out to her. “Feel the palm of my hand.”
She took it, running her fingers over the flesh. It was as rough as the wood grain of the table in the dining hall, the skin along his thumb as hard and dry as leather cracking with age. No wonder he could work all day and not complain. “Wow. How long does it take to get calluses like that?”
“About eighteen years.”
“About…?” She stopped in disbelief, then compared the horn of his palm with her own tender, blistered flesh. Tally could feel it there, the grueling afternoon of real work she’d put in today, but stretched across a lifetime. “But how?”
“I’m not a runaway, Tally.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My parents were runaways, not me.”
“Oh.” She felt stupid now, but it had never once occurred to her. If you could live in the Smoke, you could raise children here too. But she hadn’t seen any littlies. And the whole place seemed so tenuous, so temporary. It would be like having a child on a camping trip. “How did they manage? Without any doctors, I mean.”
“They are doctors.”
“Huh. But…hang on. Doctors? How old were they when they ran away?”
“Old enough. They weren’t uglies anymore. I think it’s called being a middle pretty?”
“Yeah, at least.” New pretties worked or studied, if they wanted to, but few people got serious about a profession until their middle years. “Wait. What do you mean they weren’t uglies?”
“They weren’t. But they are now.”
Tally tried to get her mind to process his words. “You mean, they never did the third operation? They still look middle, even though they’re crumblies?”
“No, Tally. I told you: They’re doctors.”
A shock ran through her. This was more stunning than the felled trees or the cruel pretties; as overwhelming as anything she’d felt since Peris had gone away. “They reversed the operation?”
“Yes.”
“They cut each other? Out here in the wild? To make themselves…” Her throat closed on the word, as if she was going to gag.
“No. They didn’t use surgery.”
Suddenly the dark cave seemed to be crushing her, squeezing the air from her chest. Tally forced herself to breathe.
David pulled his hand away, and with a corner of her panicked mind Tally realized she’d held on to it all that time.
“I shouldn’t have told you all this.”
“No, David, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all hyperventilated.”
“It’s my fault. You just got here, and I dumped all this on you.”
“But I do want you to…”—she fought saying it, but lost—“to trust me. To tell me this stuff. I do take it seriously.” That much was true.
“Sure, Tally. But maybe that’s enough for now. We should get back.” He turned and crawled toward the sunlight.
As she followed, Tally thought of what David had said about the boulders. However massive, they were ready to topple if you pushed them the wrong way. Ready to crush you.
She felt the pendant swinging from her neck, a tiny but insistent pull. Dr. Cable would be impatient by now, waiting for the signal. But David’s revelation had suddenly made everything much more complicated. The Smoke wasn’t just a hideout for assorted runaways, she realized now. It was a real town, a city in its own right. If Tally activated the tracker, it wouldn’t just mean the end of Shay’s big adventure. It would be David’s home taken from him, his whole life stripped away.
Tally felt the weight of the mountain pressing down upon her, and found that she was still struggling to breathe as she pulled herself out into the sunlight.
Heartthrob
Around the fire at dinner that night, Tally told the story of how she’d hidden in the river when the rangers’ helicopter first appeared. She had everyone wide-eyed again. Apparently, she’d had one of the more exciting journeys to the Smoke.
“Can you imagine? I’m naked and crouching down in the water, and this Rusty machine is destroying my camp!”
“Why didn’t they land?” Astrix asked. “Didn’t they see your stuff?”
“I thought they did.”
“The rangers only pick up uglies in the white flowers,” David explained. “That’s the rendezvous spot we tell runaways to use. They can’t just pick up anyone, or they might accidentally bring a spy here.”
“I guess you wouldn’t want that,” Tally said softly.