Published by arrangement with St. Martin's Press. For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology in the United States of America only. CITY OF TRUTH by James Morrow ONE I no longer live in the City of Truth. I have exiled myself from Veritas, from all cities — from the world. The room in which I'm writing is cramped as a county jail and moist as the inside of a lung, but I'm learning to call it home. My only light is a candle, a fat, butter-colored stalk from which nets of melted wax hang like cobwebs. I wonder what it would be like to live in that candle — in the translucent crannies that surround the flame: a fine abode, warm, safe, and snug. I imagine spending my days wandering waxen passages and sitting in paraffin parlors, my nights lying in bed listening to the steady drip-drip-drip of my home consuming itself. My name is Jack Sperry, and I am thirty-six years old. I was born in truth's own city, Veritas, on the last day of its bicentennial year.
