Asimov's SF, July 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Meanwhile, what has been an unnaturally mild winter ends with a single heavy snow. Fifteen wet inches fall in less than a day. Cars wear white pillars. The warm earth melts the first several inches, but what remains is impressive. With my four-year-old daughter's help, I build a snowman in the front yard—my first snowman in forty years. And Roxie appreciates the snow, though she can't leap into those places that aren't plowed or shoveled. For several days, our walks are limited to the plowed streets, and it takes persistence and some coaxing before she finds a place worthy of her poop.

  I still run with her on the cool days. For several years, we haven't gone farther than a mile. There is one course she accepts without complaint, knowing the turnaround point to the inch. One blustery afternoon, when the last snow has melted, I take her into a stand of old pines growing beside the park's nine-hole golf course, and then I lure her past that point, tricking her into running a course that is slightly longer than normal.

  Together, we maintain a comfortable nine-minute gait. And at the one-mile mark, almost exactly, she begins to limp. She looks pained and pitiful, right up to the moment when we start to walk home, and then her limp vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

  A few days later, she wakes me at four-thirty in the morning. Our walk is uneventful, but I can't relax when I come home. Online, I jump to the NewScientist site, reading that somebody has uncovered photographic plates taken several decades ago. These old images show Shelby moping along near its perigee—a forgotten speck moving just outside Venus’ orbit. Astronomers now have fresh data to plug into their equations, refining their predictions. And more important, they don't see any evidence of a coma or tail. During its last fiery summer, this old comet didn't spill any significant volatiles.

  Worse still, between then and now our bolide has been moving along an exceptionally predictable line.

  Overnight, the odds of an impact with the Earth have shifted, jumping from a comforting one-in-three-hundred, at their very worst, to a one-miserable-chance-in-thirteen.

  * * * *

  I used to be a semi-fast runner, and except in summer, Roxie was good for a six-or eight-mile adventure. And in late fall and winter, when temperatures dipped to a bearable chill, we would run twelve miles at a shot, or farther. She adored the snow. I think she knew every course by heart, even when drifts obscured the trails. We ran with human friends, and she always worked harder around new people, trying to impress them. But the real fun was to get out and smell the smells, and she relished her chances to pee against fresh trees and important fences.

  Roxie often lifted one hind leg like a boy dog would; but better than that, she occasionally did the canine equivalent of a handstand, throwing her piss high to fool strange dogs into thinking, “What a big bad bitch was here!"

  And she was exceptionally competitive. When we saw another dog up ahead, or human runners, or even a slow cyclist, it was critically important to put on a sprint and pass your opponent. And not only pass them, but look back at them too, laughing happily, flashing the canine equivalent of a “Beat your ass” grin.

  * * * *

  People who know me—family and friends, and even passing acquaintances—start to ask, “What do you think the real odds are?"

  Of an impact, they mean.

  Sad to say, being a science fiction writer doesn't give a person special knowledge. It should, but it doesn't. All I can offer is the standard figure. One-in-thirteen. The most likely scenario is that Shelby will cross the Earth's orbit at a distance far closer to us than we are to the moon. If there is a collision, it will happen in a little less than two years: On March 11, at approximately 3:45 AM local time. And because of the orbital dynamics, if the object does strike, it will plunge down somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

  But like the talking heads on television, I remind my audience that these numbers are certain to change.

  In mid-April, I am a guest at a little SF convention held at one of our state colleges. Going in, I imagine an event where people talk openly about murderous asteroids and comets. But I keep forgetting that most fans today read nothing but fantasy and media tie-in books. They don't want to invest much breath in what is a very depressing subject. And the rest of us—including me, I discover—have convinced ourselves that in the end, nothing will come of this.

  I enjoy the convention. Best of all, I relish the change in routine: I don't have a dog to listen for in the wee hours. I can sleep all the way to a lazy seven-thirty, if I want. Though I can't manage that trick, since my body isn't geared for so much leisure.

  On Monday morning, I retrieve my dog from the kennel. As always, Roxie gives me a quick hello before heading for the car. Her poop has been fine, I learn, and she's eaten every pill and every bite of food that I brought for her.

  The week turns summery warm. On Thursday morning, at one o'clock, I jump awake when Roxie begins to lick herself. She isn't licking her privates, but instead she is obsessively wetting down her paws and legs, working hard until she has to stop to pant. Then she climbs to her feet and gets a drink from the toilet, then returns to the bedroom to lick her legs some more.

  I could push her into the hall and shut the door, but that would only make her whine. So I lie awake for two or three hours, thinking about work. I play with unfinished stories. I dance with a novel that still hasn't sold. And when I don't have anything else to consider, I think about Shelby. If this is the murderer of human civilization, doesn't the bastard deserve a better name?

  By four in the morning, I am exhausted and anxious.

  Shutting the windows, I turn on the air conditioning. The cool air doesn't seem to help my dog, but at least the noise covers up the sounds of licking. And by four-thirty, I manage to drift into sleep, fifteen minutes of dreamy slumber enjoyed before Roxie comes to the foot of the bed and starts to whine.

  * * * *

  One winter, my dog took an extraordinary interest in one portion of a local bike path. The path dove under a bridge. That bridge had three tunnels. The pedestrian tunnel was narrow and dark. Beside it was a wider tunnel where a peaceful stream flowed through. And on the far side was a second, equally wide tunnel meant for the overflow during high water. I usually gave Roxie a chance to drink, but suddenly she got it into her head that we needed to investigate the far tunnel. She would stand in the freezing creek, looking back at me with a questioning insistence. This was important; this mattered. We really need to cross over here, she was telling me. But there was no way to convince me to wade through shin-deep water, only to reach an empty tunnel floored with packed clay and trash.

  More than most humans, my dog is woven into her world. Drop a cardboard box anywhere near the bike path, and she will leap and woof until she is convinced that the new object isn't dangerous. The same can be true for a kid's bike left in a front yard, or a snowman that wasn't there yesterday.

  One evening, years ago, Leslie and I were walking the dog together. One of our neighbors had been enjoying too much partying that night, and his wife had refused to let him inside. So he lay down on the front walk and fell asleep. At a glance, Roxie knew this was unusual. Somebody needed to be alerted. She began to bark and whine, and then dance, very much troubled by the fact we were dragging her away from what was clearly somebody in distress.

  She often notices details that the observant writer beside her has completely missed.

  One calm, cool afternoon, Roxie and I were running on a bike path when she suddenly, inexplicably went mad, running circles around me while staring up at the sky, her blue eyes huge and terrified.

  I looked up, and ugly me, I laughed.

  Floating directly above our heads was an enormous white spiral. It looked ominous, yes. To Roxie, this apparition must have been ready to drop on us, which was why we broke into a hard sprint. Off in the distance, a little biplane was spitting out random letters; a skywriter was practicing his trade. I was breathless and laughing, my strides pulled long by the panicked tugs. But the wind happened to be out of the
north, and since we were racing south, the spiral hovered above us for another half mile before the trail mercifully bent westward, allowing us to escape. (Though I noticed that she never stopped watching the busy plane, having wisely decided that it must be to blame for this travesty of Nature.)

  Roxie often knew what I didn't know. But when she tried to coax me into the mysterious tunnel, I ignored her. “You're not the only stubborn creature in the family,” I warned. Then the weather grew warm, and a couple of local kids went exploring. In the tunnel was the body of a teenager, a young man who had been buried in a shallow grave. Police were summoned, and for a week the underpass was cordoned off. Piles of excavated earth were left in the streambed, and when we could run through again, Roxie would stop and shamelessly sniff at the dirt, burying her nose in the ripest parts, every breath telling her stories about what was still, judging by her interest, vividly real.

  As it happened, the dead boy had vanished months ago from a group home for troubled youth. His two best friends in the world were arrested. It came out that there had been a fight over cigarettes. One boy confessed to being present at the murder, but he swore the other fellow had bashed in their buddy's skull. With no other witnesses and only sketchy forensics, the state had to give a free pass in exchange for testimony. But then at trial, the boy recanted his story. In the end, a brutal crime was committed and nobody went to prison. And I occasionally have to ask myself, “What would have happened if I'd listened to my dog? If we'd crossed that stream, and if I let her unearth the grave, would the police, given a fresher trail, have been able to make their case?"

  * * * *

  By week's end, one spent comet has pushed everything else out of the news. Most of a dozen runners gather at the YMCA early Saturday morning, and Shelby is our first topic. I explain what I know about its delicate motion through the sky. I report that the venerable Hubble has spotted what looks like a tiny eruption of gas—probably carbon monoxide—from its equator. Will this make any difference? Maybe, I admit, and maybe not for the best. On the Torino scale, our enemy presently wears an ominous seven. Ten means doom, and the group wrings some comfort in the gulf between those seven and ten. But the Torino scale is misleading. Only rocks and tiny asteroids can earn eights or nines. And the fatal ten won't kick in until a massive object—Shelby, for instance—has a 99 percent chance of impacting on the Earth's face.

  For the last few days, the published odds of the horrific are hovering around one-in-eleven.

  “We're going to have to blow it up,” one runner announces. “Stuff a thousand nukes on a missile, and hit the bastard hard."

  “But that's not going to help,” I mention.

  “Why not?"

  I don't respond.

  But the other runners are listening, and our lone female—a little ex-gymnast—comes up beside me, asking, “Why won't bombs work?"

  Small bolides aren't brittle rocks ready to shatter to dust under a single hammer blow; they are usually soft, stubborn rubble piles filled with considerable empty space. “It'll be like kicking a snowdrift,” I mention. Besides, we don't have a fleet of rockets strong enough to fling hydrogen bombs across the solar system. Even with a crash program, no workable bomb could be launched for months. And without years of lead-time, we won't be able to carefully map Shelby's surface before putting down at the best possible location. What we'll have to do is attack it straight on, one or several tiny bullets battering one gigantic cannon ball. Sure, the rubble pile might break into pieces. But that might turn a near-collision into a shotgun blast, hill-sized chunks raining down on everybody. And even if we are very lucky—if Shelby holds together and we trigger the perfect outgassing—that won't happen until late next year. “Which won't leave us any time, if we make a mistake then,” I remind them.

  My lecture finished, I discover that I'm out of breath, my stomach aching and throat parched.

  For a long moment, the others say nothing. Then the CPA in our group points out, “Ten times out of eleven, Shelby misses us."

  That is a fair point.

  “And the odds can get better,” says an optimistic voice. My voice, as it happens. I don't want everyone left as miserable as I feel, which is why I promise, “One-in-eleven isn't the final word."

  * * * *

  My dog isn't comfortable. That afternoon, I'm sitting at my computer and reading about orbital dynamics, and Roxie lies nearby, licking at her paws and feet. I can't stand the sound of it, and when she finally quits, I breathe easier. But she only quits because she is exhausted, and after half an hour nap, she wakes and begins the process over again.

  My vet's office is closed until Monday. I call the emergency clinic, and the assistant says that it sounds like allergies, which isn't too unexpected with the warm spring weather. She suggests Benedryl, though I don't have any in the house. Or, if I want, I could bring my dog over for an examination.

  I lead Roxie outside and open the back of my CRV, and she leaps in, but with nothing to spare. It's a five-minute drive to the clinic. I'm the only customer. The veterinarian is a heavy middle-aged fellow with big hands and a matching voice. He asks if my dog has arthritis. “No,” I say, and immediately I'm remembering every slow trip up the stairs. Yet she managed to jump into my car, which is impressive for a thirteen-year-old lady. He tells me that her heart is strong. It shows that she gets plenty of exercise. Then he points out the redness in her eyes—a telltale sign of allergies. He recommends a cortisone shot and pills. The hypodermic needle is only a little smaller than a pool cue, and he injects a bucket of oily goo into her back and both hind legs, leaving her whining, trembling from the stress.

  Returning to the waiting room, we find a patient in genuine trouble—a little mutt who got into a one-sided fight with a pit bull. Seeing that dog's misery, I feel better. Roxie suddenly looks to be in pretty good shape. The prescription is for twenty tabs of prednisone, and the total bill is nearly one hundred and fifty dollars. But the licking stops immediately, and she sleeps hard until nearly seven that next morning, waking refreshed and ready to walk.

  Her pee comes in rivers, but I was warned about that side effect.

  The watery diarrhea that arrives later is a big surprise. By Monday morning, I call my own vet to ask questions and complain. The pred dosage is quite high, I learn. But I have to wean Roxie off the medication slowly or risk the catastrophic failure of her adrenal gland.

  For the rest of the week, my sleep is broken, full of dreams and abrupt moments of wakefulness. Someone in the house groans, and I find myself alert and exhausted. And if I can't hear my dog, I start to wonder if she has died. It astonishes me how I seem to want that to happen. In the middle of the night, when she whines and demands to go outside, I feel trapped. Nobody else is going to take care of this dog. Leslie claims that Roxie is just getting old, slowing down but generally happy, and I worry about her too much. But at three in the morning, shaking with fatigue, it isn't worry that I'm feeling. I am angry. I feel trapped. With nothing else to do, I can't help but imagine the days to come when I won't have to get up at all hours, when I won't have to tend to this animal; and it scares me when I realize just how much I am looking forward to this one inevitable end.

  * * * *

  When Leslie became pregnant, certain people in both of our families worried. We were sharing the house with a wolfish dog, and did we appreciate the risks? That summer, we went out of town on short notice and couldn't get Roxie into her usual kennel. But my mother-in-law offered to take her, promising us that our sled dog would live in air conditioning, safe from the July heat.

  When we returned to the farm, we discovered Roxie in the yard, chained to a tree and looking miserable. My father-in-law had us sit down in the kitchen, and with urgency, he asked if we knew that our dog was vicious. It seemed that everything had been fine until this morning, and then for no reason, Roxie attacked one of his dogs and killed a cat.

  This was ominous news, yes.

  We asked questions, both of us trying
to put these incidents into context. What I kept thinking was that Roxie had decided we weren't coming home, and she was trying to establish dominance. Leslie asked if the other dog was hurt.

  “Not too bad,” my father-in-law conceded. “She's a little stiff, is all."

  “Which cat?” I wanted to know.

  He described this sweet little calico that I'd noticed before.

  “Where's the body?"

  “Oh, she ran off to die,” he reported. Then in the next breath, he added, “I don't care about the cats. That's not the point. But they're little animals, and your baby is going to be a little animal too. Who knows what that dog might do?"

  Leslie and I were shaken. But when I went outside to rescue the forlorn, thoroughly pissed-off dog, I saw a familiar calico walking beside our car. Going back inside, I pointed out the window and asked, “Is that the dead cat?"

  “Huh,” he responded. “I guess she didn't die."

  And at that point my best defense was to say, “If my dog wanted that cat dead, believe me, she would have killed it."

  * * * *

  Roxie goes off the pred early, and for the next of couple days, she seems fine. She seems perfect. But then the licking resumes. I give her Benedryl, and not just a little taste. Six tablets go inside her—three times the usual dosage—but she continues moving from place to place, licking at her miserable legs. Late on Sunday night, I call the emergency clinic, explaining symptoms and mentioning that I still have half of the original prescription. Ten tabs. Their advice is to feed her one pred to help her through the night. But the effects aren't immediate. I can't sleep with Roxie in this mood, which is why I take refuge in the basement. If she follows me, I decide, at least the white noise of the aquariums will help mask any chaos.