"Ms. Lawes, can I talk to you?"

A small hard smile quirked one corner of her lips. "Mr. Hedges. Have you had a sudden revelation about your future?"

"Yes, in a way. Those buses-"

"Are not scheduled for immediate use. FEMA believes in proper advance staging of resources."

"But when-"

"Who can say? I assure you that I dont personally make such command decisions. But I will pass along any new directives as soon as I am permitted."

Unsatisfied, I left her tallying creamed com and green beans.

Everyone in the camp, of course, had seen the buses, and speculation about the fate of Femaville 29 was rampant Were we to be dispersed to public housing in various host cities? Was the camp to be merged with others into a larger concentration of refugees for economy of scale? Maybe wed all be put to work restoring our mortally wounded drowned city. Every possibility looked equally likely.

I expected Nias anxiety to be keyed up by the threat of dissolution of our hard-won small share of stability, this island of improvised family life we had forged. But instead, she surprised me by expressing complete confidence in the future.

"I cant worry about whats coming, Parrish. Were together now, with a roof over our heads, and thats all that counts. Besides, just lately Ive gotten a good feeling about the days ahead."

"Based on what?"

Nia shrugged with a smile. "Who knows?"

The children, however, Izzy included, were not quite as sanguine as Nia. The coming of the buses had goaded them to greater activity. No longer did they divide the day into periods of conventional playtime and construction of their city of dreams. Instead, they labored at the construction full-time.

The ant-like trains of bearers ferried vaster quantities of sticks and leaves, practically denuding the nearby copse. The grubbers-up of pebbles broke their nails uncomplainingly in the soil. The scribers of lines ploughed empty square footage into new districts like the most rapacious of suburban developers. The ornamentation crew thatched and laid mosaics furiously. And the elite squad overseeing all the activity wore themselves out like military strategists overseeing an invasion.

"What do we build today?"

"The docks at Kannuckaden."

"But we havent even put down the Mocambo River yet!"

"Then do the river first! But we have to fill in the Great Northeastern Range before tomorrow!"

"What about Gopher Gulch?"

"Thatll be next."

Befriending some kitchen help secured me access to surplus cartons of pre-packaged treats. I took to bringing the snacks to the hard-working children, and they seemed to appreciate it. Although truthfully, they spared little enough attention for me or any other adult, lost in their make-believe, laboring blank-eyed or with feverish intensity.

The increased activity naturally attracted the notice of the adults. Many heretofore-oblivious parents showed up at last to see what their kids were doing. The consensus was that such behavior, while a little weird, was generally harmless enough, and actually positive, insofar as it kept the children from boredom and any concomitant pestering of parents. After a few days of intermittent parental visits, the site was generally clear of adults once more.

One exception to this rule was Ethan Duplessix.

At first, I believed, he began hanging around Djamala solely because he saw me there. Peeved by how I had escaped his taunts, he looked for some new angle from which to attack me, relishing the helplessness of his old nemesis.

But as I continued to ignore the slobby criminal slacker, failing to give him any satisfaction, his frustrated focus turned naturally to what the children were actually doing. My lack of standing as any kind of legal guardian to anyone except, at even the widest stretch of the term, Izzy, meant that I could not prevent the children from talking to him.

They answered Ethans questions respectfully and completely at first, and I could see interest building in his self-serving brain, as he rotated the facts this way and that, seeking some advantage for himself. But then the children grew tired of his gawking and cut him off.

"We have too much work to do. Youve got to go now."

"Please, Mr. Duplessix, just leave us alone."

I watched Ethans expression change from greedy curiosity to anger. He actually threatened the children.

"You damn kids! You need to share! Or else someonell just take what youve got!"

I was surprised at the fervor of Ethans interest in Djamala. Maybe something about the dream project had actually touched a decent, imaginative part of his soul. But whatever the case, his threats gave me a valid excuse to hustle him off.

"You cant keep me away, Hedges! Ill be back!"

Izzy stood by my side, watching Ethans retreat.

"Dont worry about him," I said.

"Im not worried, Parrish. Djamala can protect itself."

The sleeping arrangements in the tent Nia, Izzy and I shared involved a hanging blanket down the middle of the tent, to give both Izzy and us adults some privacy. Nia and I had pushed two cots together on our side and lashed them together to make a double bed. But even with a folded blanket atop the wooden bar down the middle of the makeshift bed, I woke up several times a night, as I instinctively tried to snuggle Nia and encountered the hard obstacle. Nia, smaller, slept fine on her side of the double cots.

The night after the incident with Ethan, I woke up as usual in the small hours of the morning. Something urged me to get up. I left the cot and stepped around the hanging barrier to check on Izzy.

Her cot was empty, only blankets holding a ghostly imprint of her small form.

I was just on the point of mounting a general alarm when she slipped back into the tent, clad in pajamas and dew-wet sneakers.

My presence startled her, but she quickly recovered, and smiled guiltlessly.

"Bathroom call?" I whispered.

Izzy never lied. "No. Just checking on Djamala. Its safe now. Today we finished the Iron Grotto. Just in time."

"Thats good. Back to sleep now."

Ethan Duplessix had never missed a meal in his life. But the morning after Izzys nocturnal inspection of Djamala, he was nowhere to be seen at any of the three breakfast shifts. Likewise for lunch. When he failed to show at supper, I went to D-30.

Ethans sparse possessions remained behind, but the man himself was not there. I reported his absence to Hannah Lawes.

"Please dont concern yourself unnecessarily, Mr. Hedges. Im sure Mr. Duplessix will turn up soon. He probably spent the night in intimate circumstances with someone."

"Ethan? I didnt realize the camp boasted any female trolls."

"Now, now, Mr. Hedges, thats most ungenerous of you."

Ethan did not surface the next day, or the day after that, and was eventually marked a runaway.

The third week of October brought the dreaded announcement. Lulled by the gentle autumnal weather, the unvarying routines of the camp, and by the lack of any foreshadowings, the citizens of Femaville 29 were completely unprepared for the impact.

A general order to assemble outside by the buses greeted every diner at breakfast Shortly before noon, a thousand refugees, clad in their donated coats and sweaters and jackets, shuffled their feet on the field that doubled as parking lot, breath pluming in the October chill. The ranks of buses remained as before, save for one unwelcome difference.

The motors of the buses were all idling, drivers behind their steering wheels.

The bureaucrats had assembled on a small raised platform. I saw Hannah Lawes in the front, holding a loud-hailer. Her booming voice assailed us.

"Its time now for your relocation. Youve had a fair and lawful amount of time to choose your destination, but have failed to take advantage of this opportunity. Now your government has done so for you. Please board the buses in an orderly fashion. Your possessions will follow later."

"Where are we going?" someone called out Imperious, Hannah Lawes answered, "Youll find out when you arrive."

Indignation and confusion bloomed in the crowd. A contradictory babble began to mount heavenward. Hannah Lawes said nothing more immediately. I assumed she was waiting for the chaotic reaction to bum itself out, leaving the refugees sheepishly ready to obey.

But she hadnt counted on the children intervening.

A massed juvenile shriek brought silence in its wake. There was nothing wrong with the children gathered on the edges of the crowd, as evidenced by their nervous smiles. But their tactic had certainly succeeded in drawing everyones attention.

Izzy was up front of her peers, and she shouted now, her young voice proud and confident.

"Follow us! Weve made a new home for everyone!"

The children turned as one and began trotting away toward Djamala.

For a frozen moment, none of the adults made a move. Then, a man and woman-Voniques parents-set out after the children.

Their departure catalyzed a mad general desperate rush, toward a great impossible unknown that could only be better than the certainty offered by FEMA.

Nia had been standing by my side, but she was swept away. I caught a last glimpse of her smiling, shining face as she looked back for a moment over her shoulder. Then the crowd carried her off.

I found myself hesitating. How could I face the inevitable crushing disappointment of the children, myself, and everyone else when their desperate hopes were met by a metropolis of sticks and stones and pebbles? Being there when it happened, seeing all the hurt, crestfallen faces at the instant they were forced to acknowledge defeat, would be sheer torture. Why not just wait here for their predestined return, when we could pretend the mass insanity had never happened, mount the buses and roll off, chastised and broken, to whatever average future was being offered to us?

Hannah Lawes had sidled up to me, loud-hailer held by her side.

"Im glad to see at least one sensible person here, Mr. Hedges. Congratulations for being a realist."

Her words, her barely concealed glee and schadenfreude, instantly flipped a switch inside me from off to on, and I sped after my fellow refugees.

Halfway through the encampment, I glanced up to see Djamala looming ahead.

The splendors I had seen in ghostly fashion weeks ago were now magnified and recomplicated across acres of space. A city woven of childish imagination stretched impossibly to the horizon and beyond, its towers and monuments sparkling in the sun.

I left the last tents behind me in time to see the final stragglers entering the streets of Djamala. I heard water splash from fountains, shoes tapping on shale sidewalks, laughter echoing down wide boulevards.

But at the same time, I could see only a memory of myself in a mined building, gun in hand, confronting a shadow assassin.

Which was reality?

I faltered to a stop.

Djamala vanished in a blink.

And I fell insensible to the ground.

I awoke in the tent that served as the infirmary for Femaville 29. Hannah Lawes was sitting by my bedside.

"Feeling better, Mr. Hedges? You nearly disrupted the exodus."

"What-what do you mean?"

"Your fellow refugees. Theyve all been bussed to their next station in life."

I sat up on my cot. "What are you trying to tell me? Didnt you see the city, Djamala? Didnt you see it materialize where the children built it? Didnt you see all the refugees flood in?"

Hannah Lawess cocoa skin drained of vitality as she sought to master what were evidently strong emotions in conflict "What I saw doesnt matter, Mr. Hedges. Its what the government has determined to have happened that matters. And the government has marked all your fellow refugees from Femaville 29 as settled elsewhere in the normal fashion. Case closed. Only you remain behind to be dealt with. Your fate is separate from theirs now. You certainly wont be seeing any of your temporary neighbors again for some time-if ever."

I recalled the spires and lakes, the pavilions and theaters of Djamala. I pictured Ethan Duplessix rattling the bars of the Iron Grotto. I was sure hed reform, and be set free eventually. I pictured Nia and Izzy, swanning about in festive apartments, happy and safe, with Izzy enjoying the fruits of her labors.

And myself the lame child left behind by the Pied Piper.

"No," I replied, "I dont suppose I will see them again soon."

Hannah Lawes smiled at my acceptance of her dictates, but only for a moment, until I spoke again.

"But then, you can never be sure."

The short-short tale, once a flourishing subtype of SF in the hands of such men as Frederic Brown, but generally neglected these days (and oddly enough, given our famous postmodern short attention spans), found a new home and patron recently in Nature magazine, under the kindly hands of editor Henry Gee. And what a prestigious place to be. Im very honored to have made the grade.

Its a challenge to tell a complete narrative in a thousand words or less, and I found the writing of this piece most stimulating.

But I managed to tell another good story, I think, in an even more compressed framework. Here, as a bonus tale, is my six-word saga from the pages of Wired magazine (November 2006): "Husband, transgenic mistress; wife: 'You cow!"

I borrowed my title from the well-known Christopher Priest novel. When I contacted Chris about this, he replied, "Dont worry-that was never my original title anyhow!"

THE PERFECT LOVER.

Neurosciences Institute, La Jolla February 10, 2036 The substrate for the cultured human-mouse brain cells was a highly reticulated wodge of aerogel contained in a homeostatic capsule big as a humans thumb. At this moment the naked capsule sat in a dock, tethered by a GliaWire connection to a Brooksweil 5000 running at 100 petaflops. The parent machine was the size of a credit card, its "monitor" and "keyboard" hologrammatic projections.

Two people stood by the setup. One, a genially abstracted man approximately thirty years old, wore intelligent otakuwear, full of membraneous pockets, organic sensors, interface patches and invisible circuitry. The other, a hard-eyed woman with some grey threading her bronze hair, wore the dress uniform of a Marine major, including ribbons from the Caracas campaign.

"I dont understand," said the woman, "why the drone cant be governed directly by the Brooksweil. Surely theres enough Turingosity there."

"Plenty," replied the man. "Near-human levels. But theres no love."

"Love? Whats love got to do with it?"

Filtering the conversation in realtime, the mans clothing prompted him through an earbud with a cultural referent to a pop song over fifty years old. But he chose not to utter it. Didnt seem likely this hardcase would appreciate any such trivial allusion. Intelligence amplification still required human discretion.

"Love is the driver for the mission. Love will supplement the drones heuristics in instances where lesser imperatives would collapse. Without that emotion, the failure rate goes up an order of magnitude. And we cant simulate love yet in the purely moletronic minds."

The major looked suspiciously at the little pod full of wetware, as if it might suddenly start spouting poetry through its as-yet-unattached peripherals.