Swanwick, Michael - Moondogs

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Science Fiction

By Michael Swanwic

Moon Dogs

by Michael Swanwick

Fictionwise

www.fictionwise.com

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction

Magazine

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Moon Dogs

by Michael Swanwick

He went to a spa where, for a fee, they would drown you

as often as you liked. You wouldn't actually die, because they

put a shunt in your skull and kept the brain oxygenated, but

your body didn't know that and your survival reflexes would

kick in so that you'd choke and gag and fight for oxygen as

you experienced the desperation of approaching death. You

could thrash and struggle for hours. The water was ice-cold

and as dark as tea. If you panicked and did too much damage

to your body, there was a clinic nearby where you could rest

while solicitous friends in white coats cured it.

After they had emptied his lungs, removed the shunt, and

switched on a small fire, the counselors gave Nick a blanket

and withdrew, leaving him alone in the woods to contemplate

the experience in peace.

Shivering, Nick drew the blanket around him. He didn't feel

any better than he had before. He hadn't experienced any

kind of release at all. His mood was as bleak as ever. Life still

felt hopeless.

A while later, he put on the clothing they had left him,

folded up the blanket, switched off the fire, and stood. The

night was quiet and dark, lit only by a low moon. There was a

path over the hill that led to the lodge. He heard two of the

staff laughing quietly over something one had said, just

before their propane torches disappeared. But he didn't feel

like going back to the lodge and their hired warmth and

camaraderie. Not just yet.

Instead, he put the moon to his back and went the other

direction, deeper into the woods, and was quickly lost. He did

Moon Dogs

by Michael Swanwick

not care. The woods were tangled and random, a jumble of

tree trunks and deadfall, some lying broken on the ground,

others propped up by other trees. There was no pattern in

them, he reflected, nothing to fix the eye upon. It seemed a

perfect metaphor for everything.

It was then he saw the sycamores, pale in the moonlight.

The sycamores formed a ghostly ring around an empty

darkness. They looked like a Druidic temple. He thought at

first that they were former ornamentals—this had been a

populous suburb not a century ago—marking the perimeter of

a house long fallen to ruin. But then he saw how the ground

within sank downward and realized that the bowl-shaped

depression they marked was carved by the same small

stream that had fed his drowning pool. At its center would be

another ceremonial pool, perhaps, or else a minuscule

swamp.

He walked closer and as he did so a pale white flame

resolved itself into existence at the center of the darkness. He

squinted, unsure as to its reality, and continued walking.

Then he saw the white shape stoop, and heard a splash of

water.

“Hello?” he said.

The shape flinched, turned, and in a woman's voice said,

“Who are you?”

“My name's Nick. Do you want me to go away?”

“No, I'm about done here. You can dry me off.”

Nick walked to the edge of the water. The woman stood

knee-deep within it. In the gloom she was hard to see. Her

crotch was filled with shadow; her navel was the merest

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ScienceFictionByMichaelSwanwickMoonDogsMoonDogsbyMichaelSwanwick2Fictionwisewww.fictionwise.comCopyright©2000byMichaelSwanwickFirstpublishedinIsaacAsimov'sScienceFictionMagazineNOTICE:Thisebookislicensedtotheoriginalpurchaseronly.Duplicationordistributiontoanypersonviaemail,floppydisk,network,printo...

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