Truth Like the Sun Read Online Free PDF

Seattle, Mr. Sullivan?”
    Hunched and neckless, Sullivan glares at his martini. “Feels like Nevada to me.” He sucks the olive and spits it back into his glass.
    Roger fakes a chuckle, but the variety-show king remains hunkered down like a grumpy turtle. “Whole lot of gambling,” he finally mutters.
    Smiling and nodding, Roger leaves open the possibility that this is a crafty setup for some joke about Seattle or Nevada or gambling in general, but that’s all there is.
    Journalists are so much easier to read. He loads them into vans and hauls them around, exaggerating the city’s growth rate and insisting it’s on its way to being, in Teddy’s words,
big league
, with anexpanding economy and people eyeballing it for pro sports franchises and, well, everything else, really, nailing the expectant tone without crowing. It’s not all that different from selling the idea of the fair in the first place, a matter of weaving the urban history into a flattering narrative until lines like
Seattle is the ripest city for development in the most dynamic state in the West
are accepted as fact. He shows off all-American neighborhoods full of roomy homes with daylight basements and blooming rhododendrons. “Ten-thousand-dollar houses with ten-million-dollar views,” he says, knowing reporters can’t resist superlatives. He isn’t sure where he heard this one, though he spins it as gospel:
Seattle has gone from a wilderness to a big city faster than any place in the world
.
    Positive press begets more of the same and then gets recycled in local papers, the echo continuing with visiting celebrities feeling obliged to praise this “jewel box of a fair.” Walt Disney raved about it, and John Wayne called it fantastic. Sure, the theme is sanguine—Science is coming to the rescue!—but it’s not all happy talk, either, otherwise it wouldn’t indulge the specter of bomb shelters in every home, would it? And if it isn’t a serious venue, why is NASA brass and the vice president himself flying out here to chat about “the peaceful uses of space”?
    On the morning of the conference, John Glenn asks to see the World of Tomorrow. As Roger leads him into the Coliseum, Glenn smiles and waves at fans and cameras and carries himself like a patriotic superhero, as if recognizing that his role
—Spaceman
—has never been played before. He’s also the breathing, wholesome, square-jawed proof that America will get to the future first. Yet he rubs his nose, gets food caught in his teeth and loses his hair just like the rest of us, which makes us all potential spacemen, right?
    Glenn and Roger lay beside each other on the carpeted floor of the Bubbleator, a massive glass elevator rising through images of twenty-first-century life. Houses with push-button windows, disposable dishes and helicopter pads in cities shielded by weather domes. “Pretty nifty,” Glenn mumbled afterward, though nothing seems to have really registered.
    “What do you think of our city?” Roger asks, now escorting himto the NASA exhibit, matching his stride and posture so well that they look like
two
famous spacemen strolling the grounds.
    “It’s your city,” Glenn responds. “You tell me.”
    “What I want it to be, sir,” Roger explains, “is a different kind of city, a big city that still feels like it’s on the edge of the forest, yet a true cosmopolis with opera and clams and symphonies and deer and Major League Baseball, if you know what I mean.”
    Glenn stares through him with eyes as unresponsive as marbles.
    “Well, in your opinion, sir,” Roger prods awkwardly, “what do you think makes a city great?”
    Glenn offers him a clumsy wink. “I’d start with an honest police force.”
    Roger forces a laugh, but isn’t sure if Glenn’s joking.
    The astronaut beams for more cameras, muttering through his strangely even teeth. “Saw the headlines on my way in.”
    Roger nods with false understanding, then later rifles the papers, skipping