Full MoonCity by Holly Black, Gene Wolfe, Mike Resnick, Ian Watson, Peter S. Beagle, Ron Goulart, Tanith Lee, Lisa Tuttle, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Esther M. Friesner, Carrie Vaughn, P. D. Cacek, Gregory Frost, Darrell Schweitzer, Martin Harry Greenberg, Holly Phillips Page A

little pieces and large slabs, and the promenade, where sea-siders had strolled not more than thirty years ago, rotted and grew rank. Even the
danger
notices had faded and in the dark were only pale splashes, daubed with words that might have been printed in Russian.
    But the sea-influencing moon would rise in a while.
    Almost full tonight.
    Under the pier the water twitched. Something moved through it. Perhaps a late swimmer who was indifferent to the cold evening or the warning
danger-keep out.
Or nothing at all maybe, just some rogue current, for the currents were temperamental all along this stretch of coast.
    A small rock fell from above and clove the water, copying the sound of a rising fish.
    The sun had been squashed from view. Half a mile westward the lights of hotels and restaurants shone upward, like the rays of another world, another planet.
    When the man had stabbed him in the groin, Johnson had not really believed it. Hadn’t
understood
the fountain of blood. When the next moment two security guards burst in and threw the weeping man onto the fitted carpet, Johnson simply sat there. “Are you okay?
Fuck
. You’re not,” said the first security guard. “Oh. I’m-” said Johnson. The next thing he recalled, subsequently, was the hospital.
    The compensation had been generous. And a partial pension, too, until in eighteen years’ time he came of age to draw it in full. The matter was hushed up otherwise, obliterated. Office bullying by the venomous Mr. Haine had driven a single employee-not to the usual nervous breakdown or mere resignation-but to stab reliable Mr. Johnson, leaving him with a permanent limp and some slight but ineradicable impairments both of a digestive and a sexual nature. “I hope you won’t think of us too badly,” said old Mr. Birch, gentle as an Alzheimer’s lamb. “Not at all, sir,” replied Johnson in his normal, quiet, pragmatic way.
    Sandbourne was his choice for the bungalow with the view of the sea-what his own dead father had always wanted, and never achieved.
    Johnson wasn’t quite certain why he fitted himself, so seamlessly, into that redundant role.
    Probably the run-down nature of the seaside town provided inducement. House prices were much lower than elsewhere in the south-east. And he had always liked the sea. Besides, there were endless opportunities in Sandbourne for the long, tough walks he must now take, every day of his life if possible, to keep the spoilt muscles in his left leg in working order.
    But he didn’t mind walking. It gave extra scope for the other thing he liked, which had originally furnished his job in staff liaison at Haine and Birch. Johnson was fascinated by people. He never tired of the study he gave them. A literate and practiced reader, he found they provided him with
animated
books. His perceptions had, he was aware, cost him his five-year marriage: he had seen too well what Susan, clever though she had been, was up to. But then, Susan wouldn’t have wanted him now anyway, with his limp and the bungalow, forty-two years of age, and two months into the town-city and walking everywhere, staring at the wet wilderness of waters.
    “I see that dog again, up by the old pier.”
    “Yeah?” asked the man behind the counter. “What dog’s that, then?”
    “I tol’ yer. Didn’ I? I was up there shrimping. An’ I looks an’ it’s swimming aroun’ out there, great big fucker, too. Don’ like the looks of it, mate. I can tell yer.”
    “Right.”
    “Think I oughta call the RSPCee like?”
    “What, the Animal Rights people?” chipped in the other man.
    “Nah. He means the RSPCA, don’t ya, Benny?”
    “ ’S right. RSPCee. Only it shouldn’ be out there like that on its own. No one about. Just druggies and pushers.”
    The man behind the counter filled Benny’s mug with a brown foam of coffee and slapped a bacon sandwich down before the other man at the counter. Johnson, sitting back by the café wall, his breakfast finished,