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

and whispered, тАЬBest friends forever,тАЭ and took a step forward into the light.

An explosion of sound came from her right, and she leaped back into the darkness, stumbling among the
vines, coming down hard on her knees in the soft earth, certain for a few seconds that sheтАЩd been caught.

But the cacophony organized itself into a throbbing rhythm. It was a drum machine making its lumbering
way down the street. Wide as a house, it shimmered with the movement of its dozens of mechanical
arms, bashing away at every size of drum. Behind it trailed a growing bunch of revelers, dancing along
with the beat, drinking and throwing their empty bottles to shatter against the huge, impervious machine.

Tally smiled. The revelers were wearing masks.

The machine was lobbing the masks out the back, trying to coax more followers into the impromptu
parade: devil faces and horrible clowns, green monsters and gray aliens with big oval eyes, cats and dogs
and cows, faces with crooked smiles or huge noses.

The procession passed slowly, and Tally pulled herself back into the vegetation. A few of the revelers
passed close enough that the sickly sweetness from their bottles filled her nose. A minute later, when the
machine had trundled half a block farther, Tally jumped out and snatched up a discarded mask from the
street. The plastic was soft in her hand, still warm from having been stamped into shape inside the
machine a few seconds before.

Before she pressed it against her face, Tally realized that it was the same color as the cat-vomit pink of
the sunset, with a long snout and two pink little ears. Smart adhesive flexed against her skin as the mask
settled onto her face.

Tally pushed her way through the drunken dancers, out the other side of the procession, and ran down a
side street toward Garbo Mansion, wearing the face of a pig.


Best Friends Forever
Garbo Mansion was fat, bright, and loud.

It filled the space between a pair of party towers, a squat teapot between two slender glasses of
champagne. Each of the towers rested on a single column no wider than an elevator. Higher up they
swelled to five stories of circular balconies, crowded with new pretties. Tally climbed the hill toward the
trio of buildings, trying to take in the view through the eyeholes of her mask.

Someone jumped, or was thrown, from one of the towers, screaming and flailing his arms. Tally gulped,
forcing herself to watch all the way down, until the guy was caught by his bungee jacket a few seconds
before splatting. He hover-bounced in the harness a few times, laughing, before being deposited softly on
the ground, close enough to Tally that she could hear nervous hiccups breaking up his giggles. HeтАЩd been
as scared as Tally.

She shivered, though jumping was hardly any more dangerous than standing here beneath the looming
towers. The bungee jacket used the same lifters as the hoverstruts that held the spindly structures up. If
all the pretty toys somehow stopped working, just about everything in New Pretty Town would come
tumbling down.