City of Truth Read Online Free Page A

nervous, chattering clusters, trying to comfort each other, the boys engaged in mock gunfights around the potted palms, distracting themselves with pseudo violence, pretending not to be terrified of what the day would bring.
    Tucking the badly-wrapped skates under my arm, I ascended to the second floor. WARNING: THE MAINTAINANCE ON THIS ELEVATOR IS
    GENERALLY PERFORMED BY PEOPLE WHO HATE THEIR JOBS. RIDE
    AT YOUR OWN RISK.
    My niece was already in her glass cell, dressed in a green smock and bound to the chair via leather thongs, one electrode strapped to her left arm, another to her right leg. Black wires trailed from the copper terminals like threads spun by some vile and poisonous spider Toby would have adopted. She welcomed me with a brave smile, and I pointed to her gift, hoping to raise her spirits, however briefly. Clipboard in hand, a short, cherubic doctor with MERRICK affixed to his tunic entered the cell and snugged an aluminum helmet over my niece's cranium. I gave Connie a thumbs-up signal. Soon it will be over, kid — snow is hot, grass is purple, all of it.
    "Thanks for coming," said Gloria, taking my arm and guiding me into the observation booth.
    "How's the family?"
    "A rabbit attacked Toby."
    "A rabbit?"
    "And then it died."
    "I'm glad somebody besides me has problems," she admitted. My sister was a rather attractive woman — large eyes, pristine skin, a better chin than mine — but today she looked lousy: the anticipation, the fear. I was actually present when her marriage collapsed. The three of us were sitting in Booze Before Breakfast, and suddenly she said to Peter, "I sometimes worry that you copuluate with Ellen Lambert — do you?"
    And Peter said yes, he did. And Gloria said you fucker. And Peter said right. And Gloria asked how many others. And Peter said lots. And Gloria asked why —
    did he do it to strengthen the marriage? And Peter said no, he just liked to ejaculate inside other women.
    After patting Connie on her rust-colored bangs, Merrick joined us in the booth.
    "Morning, folks," he said, his cheer a precarious mix of the genuine and the forced.
    "How're we doing here?"
    "Do you care?" my sister asked.
    "Hard to say." The doctor fanned me with his clipboard. "Your husband?"
    "Brother," Gloria explained.
    "Jack Sperry," I said.
    "Glad you could make it, Sperry," said the doctor. "When there's only one family member out here, the kid'll sometimes go catatonic on us." Merrick shoved the clipboard toward Gloria. "Informed consent, right?"
    "They told me the possibilities." She studied the clipboard. "Cardiac—"
    "Cardiac arrest, cerebral hemorrhage, respiratory failure, kidney damage," Merrick recited.
    Gloria scrawled her signature. "When was the last time anything like that happened?"
    "They killed a little boy over at Mount Sinai on Tuesday," said Merrick, edging toward the control panel. "A freak thing, but now and then we really screw up. Everybody ready?"
    "Not really," said my sister.
    Merrick pushed a button on the control panel, and PIGS HAVE WINGS
    materialized before my niece on a lucite tachistoscope screen. "Can you hear me, lassie?" Merrick inquired into the microphone.
    Connie opened her mouth, and a feeble "Yes" dribbled out of the loudspeaker.
    "You see those words?" Merrick asked. The lurid red characters hovered in the air like weary butterflies.
    "Y-yes."
    "When I give the order, read them aloud."
    "Is it going to hurt?" my niece quavered.
    "It's going to hurt a lot. Will you read the words when I say so?"
    "I'm scared. Do I have to?"
    "You have to." Merrick rested a pudgy finger on the switch. "Now!"
    "'P-pigs have wings.'"
    And so it began, this brist of the human conscience, this electroconvulsive rite of passage. The volts ripped through Connie. She yelped like a despairing puppy.
    "But they don't," she moaned. "Pigs don't..." My own burn flooded back. The outrage, the agony.
    "You're right, lass — they don't." Merrick gave the voltage regulator a subtle twist,