After the Collapse (16 page)

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

“I’m 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 ruined 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. They’ve all been bussed to their next station in life.”

I sat up on my cot. “What are you trying to tell me? Didn’t you see the city, Djamala? Didn’t you see it materialize where the children built it? Didn’t you see all the refugees flood in?”

Hannah Lawes’s cocoa skin drained of vitality as she sought to master what were evidently strong emotions in conflict.

“What I saw doesn’t matter, Mr. Hedges. It’s 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 won’t 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 he’d 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 don’t 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.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Di Filippo’s
fiction has been appearing in print for over thirty years now. He’s aiming to beat Jack Williamson’s career record, but is counting on medical science to help. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, amidst daily reminders of Lovecraft’s tenure in that town. His mate of nearly forty years is Deborah Newton, and their companions at the moment are Penny Century, a calico cat, and Brownie, a chocolate-colored cocker spaniel.

BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY PAUL DI FILIPPO

After the Collapse: Stories from Greenhouse Earth

Cosmocopia: A Science Fiction Novel