"James Morrow - Veritas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrow James)

Two hundred and thirty-nine words of it, to be precise. A story, a yarn,
a legend. Something made up.

ART IS A LIE, the electric posters in Washington Park reminded us.
Truth was beauty, but it simply didnтАЩt work the other wav around.

I left the shower, which instantly shut itself down, and padded naked
into my bedroom. Clothes per se were deceitful, of course, but this was the
middle of winter, so I threw on some underwear and a grav suit with the
lapels cut off - no integrity in freezing to death. My apartment was peeled to
a core of rectitude. Most of my friends had curtains, wall hangings, and
rugs, but not I. Why take chances with oneтАЩs own sanity?

The odor of stale urine hit me as I rushed down the hall toward the
lobby. How unfortunate that some people translated the ban on sexually
segregated restrooms - PRIVACY IS A LIE, the posters reminded us - into
a general fear of toilets. HadnтАЩt they heard of public health? Public health
was guileless.

Wrapped in dew, my Plymouth Adequate glistened on the far side of
Probity Street. In the old days, IтАЩd heard, you never knew for sure that your
car would be unmolested, or even there, when you left it overnight.
Twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit, yet the thing started smoothly. I took off,
zooming past the wonderfully functional cinderblocks that constituted city
hall and heading toward the shopping district. My interview? with Sherry
Urquist was scheduled for ten, so I still had time to buy a gift for my
nephewтАЩs brainburn party, which would happen around two-thirty that
afternoon, right after he recovered. тАЬYes, I did take quite a few bribes
during the Wheatstone Tariff affair,тАЭ a thin-voiced senatorial candidate
squeaked from out of my radio, тАЬbut you have to understandтАжтАЭ His voice
faded, pushed aside by the pressure of my thoughts. Today my nephew
would learn to hate a lie. Today we would rescue him from deceitтАЩs
boundless sea, tossing out our lifelines and hauling him aboard the ark
called Veritas. So to speak.

Money grows on treesтАж

Horses have six legsтАж

And suddenly youтАЩre a citizen.

What could life have been like before the cure? How did the mind
tolerate a world where politicians misled, advertisers overstated, women
wore makeup, and people professed love for each other at the nonliteral
drop of a hat? I shivered. Did the Dissemblers know what they were playing
with? How I relished the thought of advancing their doom, how badly I
wanted Sherry UrquistтАЩs bulky ass hanging figuratively over the mantel of
my fireplace.

I was armed for the fight. Two days earlier, the clever doctors down at