City of Truth by James Morrow Page B

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