City of Truth (7 page)

I raised my open palms. "Listen! I want to join you!" The liars rushed toward me like the hordes in the most impressive Renaissance oil I'd deconstructed during my apprenticeship, Altdorfer's
Battle of Issus
. "I want to become a dissembler!" A leathery hand curled around my mouth. I bit into it, tasting the liar's salty blood. A boot jabbed my side, snapping a middle rib like a dry twig. Groaning, reeling with fear, I dropped to my knees. I'd never before felt so much of that ultimate truth, that quintessential fact, pain.

The last thing I saw before losing consciousness was my tax advisor's fist moving swiftly toward my jaw.

* * *

I woke up alive. Alive — and no better. My lips felt like two fat snails grafted onto my mouth. My torso, it seemed, had recently been employed as the ball in some nameless and aggressive contact sport. Pain chewed at my side. Gradually the gooey film slid from my eyes. I took stock. Foam mattress, eiderdown pillow, the adamant odor of rubbing alcohol. Adhesive tape encircled my chest, as if it were the gripping end of a baseball bat.

A middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat fidgeted beside me, stethoscope dangling from her neck. "Good morning," she said, apparently meaning it. A thin, vivid face — hawkish nose, sharp chin, high cheeks: a face that, while not beautiful, would probably always retain a certain appeal for anybody obliged to behold it regularly.

"Morning? Is it Friday already?"

"Very good," the doctor answered merrily. Her smile was as crisp and bright as a gibbous moon. "I'm Felicia Krakower, and I truly, sincerely hope you're feeling better."

Across the room, an old man with skin the color of oolong tea sat upright on his mattress, his head wrapped in a turban of brilliant white bandages.

"My rib hurts," I said.

"I'm terribly sorry to hear that," said Dr. Krakower. "Don't fret. You're in Satirev now, the place where all wishes find fulfillment."

"Satirev?"

"Off the map." Dr. Krakower waved a thermometer around as if conducting an orchestra.

"Spell it backwards," my roommate suggested. "I'm Louie, by the way. Brain cancer. No big deal. It just grows and grows up there, like moss, and then one day

— pfttt — I'm gone. Death is an extraordinary adventure." I slid the thermometer between my lips. Satirev ... Veritas ... Satirev ... Veritas

...

My accomodations were coated with lurid yellow paint and equally lurid lies — a poster-sized edition of Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn," a reproduction of Van Gogh's
Sunflowers
, a print of Salvador Dali's notorious landscape of trees fruited with pocket watches. I glanced through a rose-tinted window. Outside, a rank of Corinthian columns supported a carved lintel reading CENTER FOR CREATIVE

WELLNESS.

As Krakower removed the thermometer, I pressed my staved-in side and said,

"Doctor, you've heard of psychoneuroimmunology, haven't you?"

"The mind-body connection?"

"Right. The patient adopts such a cheerful outlook that his sickness never takes hold. Does that ever happen?"

"Of
course
it happens," the doctor replied, sliding her index finger along the bright yellow tubing of her stethoscope. "Miracles happen every day — the sun comes up, a baby gets born — and don't you ever forget it, Jack." How marvelous to be among people who weren't afraid of hope. "Bless you, doctor — am I running a fever?"

"Maybe a tiny one. Not to worry. In Satirev, one never stays ill for long."

"I should call my wife."

Against all odds, the doctor's smile grew even larger. "You have a
wife
?

Wonderful. Lovely. I'll relay your request to Internal Security immediately. Open your mouth, would you?"

"Why?"

"Something for your own good."

I moved my wounded lips apart. The doctor deposited a sugary, kidney-shaped capsule on my tongue, handed me a glass of water. "How do I
know
it's for my own good?" I asked.

"Trust me," said Dr. Krakower.

"In Satirev people trust each other," said Louie.

"Sleeping pill?" I asked, swallowing.

"Could be," said the doctor.

Sleeping pill...

* * *

When I returned to consciousness, Martina Coventry was leaning over me, still packaged in her lascivious gold dress. Beside her stood a tall, lanky, coarse-skinned man in a green dinner jacket fitted over a sweatshirt that said, WHEN LIFE GIVES

YOU LEMONS, MAKE LEMONADE. He looked like a cactus.

"Martina!"

She laid a plump hand on my forehead. "Say hello to Franz Beauchamp."

"Hello," I said to the cactoid man.

"I'm in charge of making sure you don't wander off," Franz explained in a voice that seemed to enter the room after first traveling through a gallon of honey. "It's no big deal. Just give me your Veritasian word you won't wander off."

"I won't wander off."

"Good for you." My guardian's smile was as spectacular as Felicia Krakower's; I'd fallen in with a population of smilers. "I have a feeling we're going to be great friends," he said.

Martina was gaudier than ever. She'd worked her long terra-cotta hair into a sculpted object, a thick braid that lay on her shoulder like a loaf of challah. Her eyes had become cartoons of themselves, boldly outlined and richly shaded. "Even though this is Satirev," she said, "I am Veritasian enough to speak frankly. I saved your ass, Jack. You're alive because good old Martina Coventry spoke up for you back at the roundhouse."

"I'm grateful," I said.

"You should be."

"You told them about Toby?"

She nodded. "Yes, and I must say, the story was an instant hit. A Xavier's child with a shot at remission — you have no idea what appeal that sort of situation holds down here."

"It's all so amazingly touching," said Franz. "A father fighting for his son's life

— my
goodness
, that's touching."

"Can you teach me to lie?" I asked.

"It depends," said Martina.

"On what?"

"On whether you're accepted into the program — on whether the treatment takes. Not everyone has the stuff to become a dissembler."

"If it were up to me, I'd let you in" — Franz snapped his fingers — "like
that
."

"Unfortunately, it's not up to us," said Martina. "You're going to need some luck." She reached into her madras bag and took out, of all things, a horseshoe. She opened the drawer in my nightstand and dropped it in,
thud
. "Horses have six legs," she said, matter-of-factly.

I gritted my teeth. "Good luck charms are lies," I countered.

"Perhaps," said Martina.

"I understand you wish to make a phone call," rumbled Franz. "Speaking on behalf of Internal Security, I must tell you we're
delighted
to grant your request." Franz and Martina helped me to my feet, inch by painful inch. I'd never realized I owned so many vulnerable muscles, so many assaultable bones. At last I stood, the cold floor nipping at my bare feet, my baggy and absurdly short hospital gown brushing my rump.

The Center for Creative Wellness was a modest affair. A dozen paces down a hall hung with photographs of ecstatic children, a dozen more across a lobby loaded with Monet's paintings of water lillies, and suddenly we were moving through the main entrance and into a small private park. Graffiti coated the smooth brick walls: JESUS LOVES YOU ... EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL IN ITS OWN WAY ... TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I looked up. No sun, no clouds — no sky. The whole park was covered by a concrete arch suggesting the vaulted dome of a cathedral; two enormous mercury-vapor searchlights lay suspended from the roof, technological suns.

"We're under the ground," Martina explained, noting the confusion on my face.

"We're under Veritas," she said, launching her index finger upward; her nails were a fluorescent green. "So far we've colonized only a hundred acres, but we're expanding all the time."

Compact, enclosed — and yet the park was not claustrophobic. Indeed, I had never before stood in such a soothing and airy space. It smelled of pine sap. The omnipresent birdsong boasted the exhilarating intricacy of a fugue. Butterflies representing a dozen species, each more colorful than the next, fluttered about like patches attempting to fuse themselves into a crazy quilt. A flagstone footpath sinuated amid neat little gardens planted with zinnias, gladioli, tulips, and peonies. Martina said, "We'll never grow as big as Veritas, of course. But that's not the point."

I studied the roof, its curving face crisscrossed with Veritas's innards — her concrete intestines, gushing lead veins, buzzing nerves of steel and gutta-percha. Something peculiar glided over my head.

"The point is that Satirev is here," Martina continued, "and that it works." A pig. A
pig
? Yes, there it was, sailing through the air like a miniature dirigible, flapping its little cherub-wings. A machine of some kind, a child's bizarre toy? No, its squeal was disconcertingly organic.

"Pigs have wings," said Franz. His lie sent a chill through my flesh. A scrawny yellow cat sidled out from behind a forsythia bush, its hairs erect with feline anxiety. It shaped itself into an oblong of fur and shot toward the Center for Creative Wellness. An instant later, its pursuer appeared. A dog, I assumed at first. But no. Wrong shape. And that tail, long and ropelike.

The shudder began in my lower spine and expanded. A rat. A rat the size of a pregnant badger.

Chasing a cat.

"This is a very strange place," I said, staring into Martina's exotically adorned eyes. "Wouldn't you say?"

"Strangeness is relative," she replied.

"I'm bewildered," I said.

"It's not hard to make a lie, Jack. Avant-garde microbiology will give you a flying pig, an outsized rat — anything you want."

"I'm
still
bewildered."

"Satirev takes some getting used to," said Franz, smiling prolifically. "I'm sure you'll be able to master it. You look like a champ to me, Jack." The telephone booth sat on a knoll smothered in purple grass and five-leaf clovers. Slowly I limped through the odd flora — my body felt like a single gigantic bruise — and pushed the sliding door against the jamb. Martina and Franz stood beside me, well within earshot.

"Do you understand how you must conduct yourself?" my guardian asked.

"I think so."

"Drop the slightest hint and, bang, you're back in Veritas, awash in scopolamine

— you'll never remember you've been here, not one detail. That would be most unfortunate, wouldn't it?"

The phone was a deceitful affair, secretly wired into the Veritas system, blatantly looting its services. I extended my index finger, pressed the appropriate buttons. Helen didn't answer till the seventh ring. Obviously I'd awakened her. "Hello?" she said groggily.

"Did I wake you?"

"Of
course
you woke me," she mumbled, "whoever you are."

"Listen," I told her abuptly. "Don't ask me anything."

"
Jack
? Is that
you
?"

"It's me. Don't ask me where I am, Helen. Everything depends on it." My wife exhaled in frustration. "I ... er, it's good to hear your voice, Jack."

"I'm among them. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"I think so."

"They're considering my case, Helen. They might let me in. I hope you're not still against me on this."

"I'm against you," she grunted.

I looped the phone cord around my arm, forcing it tight against my skin like a phylactery strap. "Have you heard anything from Toby?"

"Postcard came today."

"Did he mention his health — headaches or anything?"

"He said he was in a canoe race. I'm supposed to pick him up at the bus station on the twenty-seventh. I wish he weren't sick."

I kissed the plastic mouthpiece. "I'll call you back as soon as I can. Good-bye, Helen. I'm terribly fond of you."

"I'm terribly fond of you too, Jack — but please get out of there.
Please
." I hung up and turned toward Martina and Franz. Behind them, a shaggy black rat pinned a Siamese cat to the ground and began tearing out its throat.

"You did fine," said my guardian.

FIVE

The weather engineers had just turned up their rheostats, flooding the Saturday morning sky with a dazzling emerald sunrise, when Martina came bouncing into my hospital room. She opened the drawer of my nightstand and removed her ludicrous metaphysical horseshoe. "It worked," she insisted, holding out the shoe as if it were a wishbone we'd agreed to split.

"Oh?" I said sneeringly, skeptically: I refused to descend into mysticism —

psychoneuroimmunology was for real.

She dropped the horseshoe into her handbag. I was lucky, she told me. The typical supplicant was commonly sequestered for a full month in the Hotel Paradise while the government decided his fate. Instead, assuming Dr. Krakower agreed to release me, I would meet that very afternoon with Manny Ginsburg himself.

"Imagine, Jack — you've been granted an audience with the Pope!" Twenty minutes later Krakower appeared, accompanied by the eternally unctuous Franz. As Martina looked on with seemingly genuine concern, Franz with a kind of smarmy pity, the doctor inspected my infirmities. She removed the bandage from my head wound, palpated my broken rib through the adhesive tape —

"This might hurt a bit," she warned before sending me into paroxysms of pain —

and cheerily pronounced me fit to travel, though she wanted me back by sundown for another checkup.

I got into the denim overalls I'd worn to work on Thursday: how far away that Thursday seemed, how remote and unreal. Martina and Franz guided me through the hospital lobby and across the park to the banks of a wide canal labeled
Jordan
River
, its waters clean, clear, and redolent of some happy mixture of root beer and maple syrup. Golden trout flashed beneath the surface like reflected moonbeams. Sparkling with fresh paint, a red gondola lay moored to the wharf. We got on board. As my guardian poled us forward, pushing his oar into the sweet waters, Martina briefed me on the intricacies of dealing with Manny Ginsburg.