"Scott Westerfeld - Uglies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

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Part I
Turning Pretty
Is it not good to make society full
of beautiful people?

тАФYang Yuan, quoted inThe New York Times


New Pretty Town
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.

Of course, Tally thought, youтАЩd have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get
the pinks right. The scudding clouds did look a bit fishy, rippled into scales by a high-altitude wind. As
the light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold.

Any other summer, a sunset like this would have been beautiful. But nothing had been beautiful since
Peris turned pretty. Losing your best friend sucks, even if itтАЩs only for three months and two days.



Tally Youngblood was waiting for darkness.

She could see New Pretty Town through her open window. The party towers were already lit up, and
snakes of burning torches marked flickering pathways through the pleasure gardens. A few hot-air
balloons pulled at their tethers against the darkening pink sky, their passengers shooting safety fireworks
at other balloons and passing parasailers. Laughter and music skipped across the water like rocks thrown
with just the right spin, their edges just as sharp against TallyтАЩs nerves.

Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the black oval of the river, everything was in
darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now.
Tally took off her interface ring and said, тАЬGood night.тАЭ

тАЬSweet dreams, Tally,тАЭ said the room.

She chewed up a toothbrush pill, punched her pillows, and shoved an old portable heaterтАФone that
produced about as much warmth as a sleeping, Tally-size human beingтАФunder the covers.

Then she crawled out the window.

Outside, with the night finally turning coal black above her head, Tally instantly felt better. Maybe this
was a stupid plan, but anything was better than another night awake in bed feeling sorry for herself. On
the familiar leafy path down to the waterтАЩs edge, it was easy to imagine Peris stealing silently behind her,
stifling laughter, ready for a night of spying on the new pretties. Together. She and Peris had figured out
how to trick the house minder back when they were twelve, when the three-month difference in their