Bug Eyes

They pulled her to the shore and out of the water, hauling her to the flying machine.

Tally's lungs felt full of water and smoke. She could hardly take a breath without a wracking cough shaking her whole body.

"Put her down!"

"Where the hell did she come from?"

"Give her some oh-two."

They flopped Tally onto her back on the ground, which was thick with the white foam. The one who'd carried her pulled off his bug-eyed mask, and Tally blinked.

He was a pretty. A new pretty, every bit as beautiful as Peris.

The man plunged the mask over her face. Tally fought weakly for a moment, but then cold, pure air surged into her lungs. Her head grew light as she gratefully sucked it down.

He pulled the mask off. "Not too much. You'll hyper-ventilate."

She tried to speak but could only cough.

"It's getting bad," another figure said. "Jenks wants to take her back up."

"Jenks can wait."

Tally cleared her throat. "My board."

The man smiled beautifully and glanced up. "It's headed over. Hey! Somebody stick that thing to the chopper! What's your name, kid?"

"Tally." Cough.

"Well, Tally, are you ready to move? The fire won't wait."

She cleared her throat and coughed again. "I guess so."

"Okay, come on." The man helped her up and pulled her toward the machine. She found herself pushed inside, where the noise was much less, crowded into the back with three others in bug-eyed masks. A door slammed shut.

The machine rumbled, and then Tally felt it lift from the ground. "My board!"

"Relax, kid. We got it." The woman pulled her mask off. She was another young pretty.

Tally wondered if these were the people in the clue. The "fire-bug eyes." Was she supposed to be looking forthem ?

"Is she going to make it?" a voice popped through the cabin.

"She'll live, Jenks. Make the usual detour, and work the fire a little on the way home."

Tally looked down as the machine climbed. Their flight followed the course of the river, and she saw the fires spreading across to the other shore, driven by the wind of its passage. Occasionally, the craft would shoot out a gout of flame.

She looked at the faces of the crew. For new pretties, they seemed so determined, so focused on their task. But their actions were madness. "What are you guys doing?" she said.

"A little burning."

"I can see that. Butwhy ?"

"To save the world, kid. But hey, we're real sorry about your getting in the way."

They called themselves rangers.

The one who'd pulled her from the river was called Tonk. They all spoke with an accent, and came from a city Tally had never heard of.

"It's not too far from here," Tonk said. "But we rangers spend most of our time out in the wild. The fire helicopters are based in the mountains."

"The firewhats ?"

"Helicopters. That's what you're sitting in."

She looked around at the rattling machine, and shouted over the noise, "It's so Rusty!"

"Yeah. Vintage stuff, a few pieces of it are almost two hundred years old. We copy the parts as they wear out."

"But why?"

"You can fly it anywhere, with or without a magnetic grid. And it's the perfect thing for spreading fires.

The Rusties sure knew how to make a mess."

Tally shook her head. "And you spread fires because..."

He smiled and lifted one of her shoes, pulling a crushed but unburned flower from the sole. "Because of phragmipedium panthera, " he said.

"Excuse me?"

"This flower used to be one of the rarest plants in the world. A white tiger orchid. In Rusty days, a single bulb was worth more than a house."

"A house? But there's zillions of them."

"You noticed?" He held up the flower, staring into its delicate mouth. "About three hundred years ago, some Rusty figured a way to engineer the species to adapt to wider conditions. She messed with the genes to make them propagate more easily."

"Why?"

"The usual. To trade them for lots of stuff. But she succeeded a little too well. Look down."

Tally peered out the window. The machine had gained altitude and left the firestorm behind. Below were endless fields of white, interrupted only by a few barren patches. "Looks like she did a good job. So what? They're nice."

"One of the most beautiful plants in the world. But too successful. They turned into the ultimate weed.

What we call a monoculture. They crowd out every other species, choke trees and grass, and nothing eats them except one species of hummingbird, which feeds on their nectar. But the hummingbirds nest in trees."

"There aren't any trees down there," Tally said. "Just the orchids."

"Exactly. That's what monoculture means: Everything the same. After enough orchids build up in an area, there aren't enough hummingbirds to pollinate them. You know, to spread the seeds."

"Yeah," Tally said. "I know about the birds and the bees."

"Sure you do, kid. So the orchids eventually die out, victims of their own success, leaving a wasteland behind. Biological zero. We rangers try to keep them from spreading. We've tried poison, engineered diseases, predators to target the hummingbirds...but fire is the only thing that really works." He turned the orchid over in his hand and held up a firestarter, letting the flame lick into its mouth. "Have to be careful, you know?"

Tally noticed the other rangers were cleaning their boots and uniforms, searching for any trace of the flowers among the mud and foam. She looked down at the endless white. "And you've been doing this for..."

"Almost three hundred years. The Rusties started the job, after they figured out what they'd done. But we'll never win. All we can hope to do is contain the weed."

Tally sat back, shaking her head, coughing once more. The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked everything around them.

The ranger leaned forward, handing her his canteen. She took it and drank gratefully.

"You're headed to the Smoke, aren't you?"

Tally swallowed some water the wrong way and sputtered. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Come on. An ugly waiting around in the flowers with a hoverboard and a survival kit?"

"Oh, yeah." Tally remembered the clue: "Look in the flowers for fire-bug eyes." They must have seen uglies before.

"We help the Smokies out, and they help us out," Tonk said. "They're crazy, if you ask me - living rough and staying ugly. But they know more about the wild than most city pretties. It's kind of admirable, really."

"Yeah," she said. "I guess so."

He frowned. "You guess so? But you're headed there. Aren't you sure?"

Tally realized that this was where the lies started. She could hardly tell the rangers the truth: that she was a spy, an infiltrator. "Of course I'm sure."

"Well, we'll be setting you down soon."

"In the Smoke?"

He frowned again. "Don't you know? The location's a big secret. Smokies don't trust pretties. Not even us rangers. We'll take you to the usual spot, and you know the rest, right?"

She nodded. "Sure. Just testing you."

The helicopter landed in a swirl of dust, the white flowers bending in a wide circle around the touchdown spot.

"Thanks for the ride," Tally said.

"Good luck," Tonk said. "Hope you like the Smoke."

"Me too."

"But if you change your mind, Tally, we're always looking for volunteers in the rangers."

Tally frowned. "What's a volunteer?"

The ranger smiled. "That's when you pick your own job."

"Oh, right." Tally had heard you could do that in some cities. "Maybe. In the meantime, keep up the good work. Speaking of which, you're not setting any fires around here, are you?"

The rangers laughed, and Tonk said, "We just work the edges of the infestation, to keep the flowers from spreading. This spot is right smack in the middle. No hope left."

Tally looked around. There wasn't a glimpse of any color but white as far as she could see. The sun had set an hour ago, but the orchids glowed like ghosts in the moonlight. Now that she knew what they were, the sight chilled Tally. What had he called it? Biological zero.

"Great."

She jumped out of the helicopter and yanked her hoverboard from the magnetic rack next to the door.

She backed away, careful to crouch as the rangers had warned her to.

The machine whined back to life, and she peered upward into the shimmering disk. Tonk had explained that a pair of thin blades, spinning so quickly that you couldn't see them, carried the craft through the air.

She wondered if he'd been kidding. It just looked like a typical force field to her.

The wind grew crazed again as the machine reared up, and she held on to her board tightly, waving until the aircraft disappeared into the dark sky. She sighed.

Alone again.

Looking around, she wondered how she could find the Smokies in this featureless desert of orchids.

"Then wait on the bald head until it's light," was the last line of Shay's note. Tally scanned the horizon, and a relieved smile broke onto her face.

A tall, round hill rose up not far away. It must have been one of the places where the engineered flowers had first taken root. The top half of the hill was dying, nothing left but bare soil, ruined by the orchids.

The cleared area looked just like a bald head.

She reached the bald hilltop in a few hours.

Her hoverboard was useless there, but the hiking was easy in the new shoes the rangers had given her, her own so burned that they had fallen apart in the helicopter. Tonk had also filled her purifier with water.

The ride in the helicopter had begun to dry out Tally's clothing, and the hike had done the rest. Her knapsack had survived the dunking, even the SpagBol remaining dry in its waterproof bag. The only thing lost to the river was Shay's note, reduced to a soggy wad of paper in her pocket.

But she had almost made it. As she looked out from the hilltop, Tally realized that, except for the burn blisters on her hands and feet, some bruises on her knees, and a few locks of hair that had gone up in smoke, she had pretty much survived. As long as the Smokies knew where to find her, and believed her story that she was an ugly coming to join them, and didn't figure out that she was actually a spy, then everything was just great.

She waited on the hill, exhausted but unable to sleep, wondering if she could really do what Dr. Cable wanted. The pendant around her neck had also survived the ordeal. Tally doubted a little water would have ruined the device, but she wouldn't know until she reached the Smoke and activated it.

She hoped for a moment that the pendant wouldn't work. Maybe one of the bumps along the way had broken its little eye-reader and it would never send its message back to Dr. Cable. But that was hardly worth hoping for. Without the pendant, Tally was stuck out here in the wild forever. Ugly for life.

Her only way home was to betray her friend.