Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

Call Me Dumbo

The thoughts were strange, and they hurt.

My husband is called Carl—and that’s a nice name. My three little sons are called David, Aaron and John—and those are nice names. But I’m called Dumbo—and that sounds silly. It isn’t even like a real name. How did I get it in the first place?

Dumbo bustled around the cottage trying to quiet her mind with work. Morning sunlight streamed across the breakfast table, making it glow like an altar. She set out five dishes of hot porridge then went to fetch the children who were tumbling noisily in her flower garden. Once out in the peaceful, sun-filled air she felt a little better. Beyond the picket fence the grain fields which Carl tended so carefully rolled down to the river like unleashed bolts of yellow satin.

“Come for your breakfast,” she called. “And don’t trample my roses, David. You’d miss the pretty colours as much as anybody.”

“What roses?” David’s six-year-old face was flushed with exertion. “You mean these green things?” The younger boys tittered admiringly.

“Those roses,” Dumbo emphasised.

David pointed straight at the freshly opened, deep red blossoms. “You mean these green things?”

Dumbo hesitated uneasily. David was being naughty, showing off to his brothers, but he was full of confidence, compactly indomitable as only a healthy child can be. And he had said this sort of thing before. Dumbo stared at the roses, but her eyes had begun to hurt now.

“Into the house!” she commanded. “Your porridge will be cold.”

They went into the coolness of the whitewashed walls and the children scrambled up on their chairs. Carl came in from the outhouse where he kept his pets and nodded approvingly as he saw the children eat. The faded shirt stretched across his thick, powerfully sloping shoulders was already dappled with sweat.

“Have your breakfast now, darling,” Dumbo said concernedly. “You worry more about the animals than about yourself.”

“Daddy fixed the rabbit’s leg,” Aaron announced proudly.

Carl smiled at the child as he sat down and Dumbo felt a flash of jealousy. She decided to win a smile for herself, with a trick that never failed.

“Some day Daddy’s going to have a daughter to worry about—and then he’ll have no time for rabbits.”

Carl kept his head down, scooping porridge into his mouth.

“We have to have a baby girl,” Dumbo persisted, disappointed. “Isn’t that so, darling.”

Behind his rimless glasses Carl’s pale blue eyes shuttled briefly. He continued eating.

“Your Daddy,” Dumbo switched to the children, ‘just lives for the day when we’ll have our own little …’

“For Christ’s sake!” Carl’s spoon clattered into the dish and his shoulders worked beneath the straining shirt. “I’m sorry.” he said quietly. “Of course we’ve got to have a girl. Now will you please sit down and eat your own breakfast? Will you please?”

Dumbo smiled happily and took her seat. Carl had given her the reassurance she wanted. It was good to know she was loved, and yet the disturbing new thoughts thudded continuously in her head. Who ever heard of a name like Dumbo? She should be called something different. A nice womanly, motherly name. Something like … perhaps … Victor…. No, that’s a manname…. Victoria would be nice….

She finished her porridge and brought a plateful of smoking griddle cakes to the table. The children chirped excitedly. They ate in comparative silence for a while, then Dumbo felt the pressure build up again.

“Carl, darling. I don’t like being called Dumbo. It isn’t a nice name. I want to be called Victoria.”

Carl abruptly stopped chewing and looked at her with bleak, unfriendly eyes. “You didn’t take your medicine this week. Did you, Dumbo?”

“I did,” Dumbo answered quickly. “You know I never miss it.” She could not remember having seen Carl look at her like that ever before, and she was afraid.

“Don’t lie to me, Dumbo’

‘But I …’

“Into the bedroom, Dumbo.”

Carl stood up and told the boys to continue eating. He followed Dumbo into the bedroom, took the black hypodermic gun from its case and poured three drops into the chamber from Dumbo’s egg-shaped medicine bottle.

“I’m disappointed in you, Dumbo,” Carl said, his thick fingers husking audibly against each other as he primed the gun’s pressure cylinder.

For a moment Dumbo considered the almost blasphemous act of resisting her husband’s will, but Carl gave her no chance. He pinned her big soft body to the wall with his forearm and fired the hypodermic into her throat. The charge felt ice cold, stinging.

“Don’t forget it again,” Carl said, putting the gun away.

Dumbo blinked back tears. Why was Carl being so unkind? He knew she put her duty to him and the children above everything. And she never omitted her weekly shot.

Back at the table Carl ate in silence until his plate was clear. He got up, kissed the three boys and went to the door. Morning light caught his spectacles, turning the lenses into miniature suns.

“I’m going to the village after lunch,” he said to Dumbo, ‘so check the larder this morning.”

“All right, darling. We need coffee.”

“Don’t try to remember it—just check it.”

“All right, darling.”

When he had gone Dumbo began tidying the cottage, aware once more of the pain behind her eyes. The children played with the remains of the breakfast and Dumbo left well enough alone, thinking idly that she might like to go into the village in the afternoon with Carl. Finally the boys’ quiet absorption with the scraps degenerated into horseplay and Dumbo determinedly pushed them outside. It was a long time since she had been to the village, and if she got through her work early….

“Lend me your egg, Mum.” It was Aaron, the four-year-old. “I want to play with it.”

Dumbo laughed. “I have no egg, sweetie. We haven’t had eggs in the house for years.”

“That’s a big lie,” Aaron said accusingly. “You have an egg! In your bedroom. In there.”

Dumbo hardly heard. Why were there no eggs in the house? Eggs are so good for children. That settled it. She would go to the village with Carl and attend to the shopping herself. It was so long since she had been there she had almost forgotten…. Her thoughts returned to Aaron.

“That isn’t an egg, silly,” she said, ushering the child out. “That’s my medicine bottle. It just looks like an egg.”

Aaron refused to be ushered. “It is an egg. I know, ‘cause David told me. David boiled it last week, but he must have boiled it too much ‘cause it wouldn’t crack.”

“Well, that was very naughty of David,” Dumbo said, feeling faint heart-whispers of alarm. “That’s my medicine bottle and Daddy doesn’t like anyone to touch it.” She had no idea what was in the little bottle but she sensed that boiling it might do it harm. Carl stored the main supply in the coolest part of the outhouse.

Aaron looked gleefully over his shoulder. “Are you going to spank David?”

“Perhaps,” Dumbo said numbly. “I’m not sure.” She found it difficult to speak. The pain behind her eyes had grown worse and she had just realised that, although the family had lived at the cottage for many years, she had hardly ever set foot outside its neat white picket fence. And it was so long since she had been to the village she was no longer sure of the way.

Dumbo brooded over it during the morning.

The act of worrying was strange to her, but deep wells of comfort within her broad, heavy body seemed to be drying up. Under the ankle-length dress insistent perspiration swept her skin so that she walked with an unpleasant rubbery slither of thighs. Several times she was tempted to shorten a dress to a more comfortable length, but it would have made Carl angry and she already had annoyed him once that day. Her purpose in life was to give Carl love and happiness, not to annoy him.

Carl returned from the fields early carrying a scythe with a broken handle. He ate lunch quickly and, with only a perfunctory check on the pets, settled down on the back porch to repair the scythe. He worked in silence, massive shoulders bowed in what looked, to Dumbo, strangely like loneliness. In spite of the distraction of her headache she felt a pang of unhappiness. She went out and knelt beside him. Carl glanced up and his eyes were suddenly sick.

“See to the children,” he said.

“They’re asleep. The heat….”

“Then find something else to do.”

Dumbo walked away blindly and began cleaning the already clean kitchen. A few minutes later Carl came in. Dumbo turned to him hopefully.

“I’m going to the village now,” he said flatly. “Where’s the list?”

Dumbo gave him the paper and watched from the door as he went out through the front gate and walked down the path to the river. She wished things were better, that she was pregnant again, this time with the girl child Carl wanted so desperately. That would make things good again, perhaps even better than they had ever been before. Almost before she understood what was happening Dumbo found herself out through the gate, out into the unfamiliar world of brilliant yellows, and following Carl towards the village.

At first she was afraid, then her excitement became too strong. She could give the excuse that he always forgot to bring eggs and, anyway, it would be fun to go into the village and see other people again after all this time. Dumbo kept well behind Carl, now determined not to be seen too soon.

Carl turned right at the river, walked along the bank for ten minutes, crossed a ford of flat stones and climbed the steep grassy hill on the far side. Dumbo waited cautiously until Carl had vanished over the crest before she gathered up her skirts and crossed the river. Going up the hill she guessed the village must be visible from the top because Carl had often made the round trip in less than an hour. Heat and exertion in her heavy, shapeless garments made Dumbo’s head feel worse, but she was keyed up at the prospect of seeing the village, the stores, the people. She could walk round with Carl just a little while even if he was mad at her.

On the dusty crest she shielded her eyes from the sun and peered down the other side. She found herself looking at featureless grasslands which spread without interruption to the distant horizons.

There was no village.

Swaying slightly with the shock, Dumbo glimpsed the movement of Carl’s faded pink shirt as he scrambled down the hill below her. He was heading towards an object which Dumbo’s first brimming glance had missed. It was as large as five or six cottages in a line and the outlines were blurred with climbing grasses, but to Dumbo it looked like a huge cylinder of black metal lying on its side at the edge of the plain.

An inexplicable reaction made her look upwards at the sky, then she sank weakly to her knees.

Carl reached the cylinder, confidently pulled open a door and vanished into the interior. Dumbo waited for him to reappear, wondering numbly why the world had gone mad. Was she sick? Could that thing actually be a village? The heat of the blistering afternoon pressed in around her, making her head swim in a blur of marching colours. Unseen birds chittered continuously.

Some time later Carl emerged from the cylinder with a box in his arms and came up the hill towards her. An instinct warned Dumbo it was now imperative to keep out of sight. She backed through the dry grass on hands and knees then ran down the faint path to the ford. Across the river she realised there was no chance of making it to the bend before Carl reappeared on the skyline. She threw herself into a mass of orange-coloured scrub and crouched in the sudden privacy of tangled twigs and clattering leaves.

Carl came down to the ford but did not cross.

He upended the box, throwing a number of glittering objects into the water, then turned and went back over the hill towards the cylinder. The objects flashed sunlight as they bobbed away on the current. Dumbo got to her feet, thankful for the unexpected opportunity to get back to the cottage unseen, but she was curious about the contents of the box. It was, she decided, worth one further risk.

She ran downstream for a short distance for a closer look at the floating objects. They looked like little glass boxes, each of which contained a small ball of some whitish substance. Clinging to projecting roots and leaning dangerously over the bank, Dumbo managed to snatch one from the warm, sluggish water. She examined it closely. The box was oblong, about as big as her hand, and the two smaller faces were of black, opaque material. It Was too light to be glass and strangely cold to her touch.

Inside the box, floating languidly in clear fluid, was a human eye. The red cord of the optic nerve snaked around it, terminating in a tiny silver plug.

Dumbo hurled the box in the river and ran, doubled over, frantically whipping her head from side to side to fling thin nets of vomit clear of her huge, soft body.

In the grey light of morning Dumbo partially opened her eyes and smiled. This was the time she liked best, lying in the dark warmth of her bed, before the unwelcome and unstoppable invasion of identity filled the peaceful vacuum of her mind. She stirred contentedly and let her eyes open a little further.

The bedroom ceiling looked wrong.

Dumbo sat up in bed, knuckling her eyes fiercely. The ceiling was wrong. In place of the familiar white plaster was an expanse of riveted grey metal, more like part of a ship than a rural cottage. It was as though she had been moved into strange surroundings during the night but—she looked around—this was her room all all right. All the simple items of furniture were in their usual places.

She walked to the window and looked out at the front garden, but it too was wrong.

The fence was still there, but now it was made of crude stakes and wire, and inside it there were no flowers. Her roses had been replaced by formless clumps of dark green foliage. What was it David had said? You mean these green things?

Dumbo brushed tangled hair away from her face and hurried to the children’s room, fighting down a sudden dread, but they were there as always, stretched on their beds in extravagant postures of sleep. She listened at the door of Carl’s room and heard his regular breathing. Her family appeared to be safe but, as she glanced around the cottage’s central kitchen in the increasing daylight, she saw that the walls too had turned to grey metal. They had a patchy, slightly makeshift appearance.

Moving with quick, frightened steps in the crawling gloom, Dumbo went back to her own room, got into bed and pulled the sheets up to her chin. The first coherent thoughts came some time later, and with them the knowledge that the changes in her surroundings had been accompanied by changes inside her head. She found herself able to think, to remember.

I am not on Earth. I am on another world which I reached by star ship, with Carl.

I do not live in a whitewashed stone cottage. I live in a house which Carl must have built from bits of the ship.

There is no nearby community. There is only the hulk of the ship, and Carl goes there when we need supplies.

Dumbo’s mind had begun to work with a speed she found exhilarating. For years she had been trying to run in waist-high water, now she was reaching shallows, gaining speed, beginning to fly. Thought crowded upon thought, memory upon deduction.

Why did I not understand all this before? Easy—because Carl was giving me a drug.

Why do I understand it now? Easy—because David destroyed the current batch of the drug.

Why was Carl giving me the drug? I’m not sure. Could it be that… ?

Dumbo tried to pull back from the mental precipice, but she was too late.

Why the eyes in plastic boxes? In the river?

She dragged the bedclothes up over her face and lay without moving until the sun had risen and the boys were marauding noisily through the house, naked and shouting for breakfast. While she was cooking it she heard Carl begin to move around behind his door. Dumbo tensed up as he came into the kitchen but he, at least, had not changed. She watched him move about the new, drab world, half-expecting him to look right through her at any moment and reach for the hypo gun. But his pale blue eyes, behind their flakes of glass, remained disinterested and impersonal. Dumbo was relieved and somehow disappointed. After all, she was a woman—his wife. There ought to be more to it than this. They lived together and she had given him children. Mysteries and horrors did not cancel out that sort of relationship.

She set the table for breakfast, really seeing things for the first time, testing her new powers. The chairs were all of sleek weightless metal—that was because the star ship would have had chairs and they were easily portable; but the big kitchen table and cupboards were wooden and home-made. The range on which she cooked with a log fire had been fashioned from some kind of heavy machine casing, but the cups and dishes were beautifully styled in brilliant, glass-smooth plastic. In a way she did not mind the changes, except for the fact that outside the window was a garden full of dark green things. She was going to miss the roses.

“I’ve made your favourite this morning,” she said, carrying a smoking tray to the table. “Griddle cakes.”

Carl stared down at them, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead. “That’s great. That’s really great. My favourite breakfast every day—every God-damned day in life. You’re some cook, Dumbo.”

The older boys giggled appreciatively.

Dumbo opened her mouth to hit back, then realised it would have been a mistake. Carl always spoke to her like that and she never answered back. That’s why she was called Dumbo instead of … her memory baulked … could it be Victoria? Anyway, the point was that Carl acted as though he hated her, and this made the mystery of their past even deeper. Suppose the star ship had made a forced descent on an empty world, with no hope of ever being found. Further suppose she had been the only woman on board, perhaps married to one of the crew, and Carl had murdered all the others so that he could have her. It might account for the use of the memory-killing, euphoria-producing drug—but it explained nothing else.

The day was hot, sunny and uneventful.

Carl spent most of the time working in his fields. Surveying her surroundings from the front of the house Dumbo noted that the sloping grain fields had not been part of the fantasy world. She wondered if the crop was indigenous to the planet or if star ships normally carried seed as part of a survival kit. Assuming the ship had been lost, they had been lucky to alight on this perfect pastoral world—but perhaps it had not been that way at all. Carl might have abducted her and brought her here purposely, to escape from something.

Dumbo contented herself with the task of caring for the children and the house. It was, after all, woman’s work. She could lie low for another day or two and, provided the drug had had no permanent effect, simply wait for all answers to emerge from her memory. And perhaps the explanation would be sane and reasonable, and things would be wonderful again. Dumbo began to feel hopeful.

During the night she remembered her brother.

Crossing the river in daytime had been easy, but by starlight the flat stones of the ford were mere water-borne shadows of uncertain shape and position.

Dumbo slipped once and went knee-deep in water with a splash. The noise frightened her. She stared about her in the darkness, suddenly aware that this was an alien world where at night even the vegetation might be hostile. The tree’s not a tree, she remembered a stray line, when there’s nobody there on the heath.

Shivering unhappily, she stepped on to the bank and moved up the hill in the direction of the star ship.

The mental pictures of her brother had appeared abruptly. At first she had thought they might be of a husband—this tall, rangy, fair-haired youngster with the intelligent eyes—but the emotional response was wrong. She knew the way a woman felt about her man, the way she felt about Carl. There was an immediate affection and warmth here, but an indefinable sexual blankness, the drawing of a line which meant womb-sharing. The same flesh and blood. At that point the need to know more had become too urgent to resist.

From the crest of the hill the star ship was almost invisible in the darkness. As she walked down to it, dress slapping wetly on her shins, the ship’s outlines refused to be defined. It seemed to crawl on the ground, dissolve, shake like jelly, reach gleeful hands into the sky. Dumbo watched her own feet and kept walking until she was close enought for her eyes to map the hull’s contours. She had trouble finding the door but once the handle was in her hand instinct took over. The lever clicked sideways easily and the door opened towards her.

There was light inside.

Dumbo tensed to run but there was a cold stillness to the light which suggested that it always shone, even when there was nobody there to notice. She went up a narrow metal stair into a corridor which curved away for a short distance on each side, ending in featureless metal doors. The light came from a tube which ran the full length of the corridor ceiling. Two sections of it were fainter than the others, and a third had dulled to a cloudy amber.

Dumbo hesitated, then went to the right. Cold air puffed out around her as she opened the door. The large room beyond it was dimly lit and filled with rack after rack of transparent plastic boxes. Dumbo slammed the door shut but not before she had glimpsed the rows of nameless organs—glistening brown, pale blue, red-veined.

She pressed both hands to her lifting stomach and breathed deeply for a moment, snatching air.

The other door opened into a shorter transverse corridor which led to several doorways at her level and, by way of an open metal stair and catwalk, to a similar set of rooms above. Some of the doors were closed, others lay open. Dumbo looked into the nearest room—it was tiny and contained a number of long metallic objects on a stand. Rifles, she thought, feeling the vivid stains of memory flow into yet another compartment of her mind. She opened two lockers and found pistols and grenades. She touched the luminous dials of the grenades’ time fuses, frowning thoughtfully—it appeared that not all her regained memories would be pleasant.

The second room along the corridor was larger and much brighter lit than the others. In the centre of it was a long white table supported on a single, complicated pedestal. Around the walls were gleaming, incomprehensible machines and instruments, the sight of which failed to evoke any responsive wash of memory. I was a stranger here, she thought, even then. She closed the door.

None of the other rooms on the bottom level was of interest, except the one which had obviously been a combined galley and mess. The chairs were all gone—they were back at the house—but one of the cupboards still contained cups and dishes. The sight of the familiar glowing utensils in the alien surroundings gave Dumbo a vague emotional wrench.

On the upper level she chose the central room first.

Her reaction to the five massively cushioned chairs and curving instrument arrays was so strong that it caused a moment of nearly physical pain. She crossed the faintly lit room to touch the dusty seats and blank grey screens. I knew this place, she thought wonderingly, and yet it’s so … mechanical. Only a trained engineer could have been at home in this room. Could she have been a pilot? Dumbo turned her head to drink in more of the strange yet almost familiar environment, then she glanced over her shoulder.

In the shadows behind the door stood five helmeted figures.

She leapt back awkwardly, but the figures were only empty suits clipped to the wall. Their hoses and cables hung loose, and behind the faceplates was nothing but gaping blackness. Two of the suits had triangular flashes on the shoulders and name plates cemented to the chests. Dumbo went close enough to read.

The first said, SURG./CDR. CARL VAN BUYSEN. That would be Carl, Dumbo thought, moving to the next.

The second said, LT./CDR. ROBERT V. LUCAS.

Dumbo pressed both hands to her forehead. The name Lucas meant something to her—but what? This could be her brother’s suit, and if that were the case then one of the unmarked suits might have been hers. But there was something not quite right about the idea of brother and sister on the same military….

“You haven’t been taking your medicine—have you, Dumbo?”

The voice was Carl’s and it came from close behind.

Dumbo spun, arms over her face, but Carl had his hands in his pockets. He was smiling unpleasantly.

“I have been taking it,” Dumbo blurted instinctively. “You gave me a shot yourself.”

“Then you’ve been playing tricks with it. That’s bad, Dumbo, very bad.”

Dumbo experienced a new emotion—resentment. “Don’t speak to me like that. And my name isn’t Dumbo. It’s …’

“Go on,” Carl said interestedly, “I want to see how far you’ve got.”

“I don’t know. That part is harder than the rest … but it isn’t Dumbo. Don’t call me that any more.”

“Poor Dumbo!” Carl reached forward caressingly, grabbed a handful of Dumbo’s hair and twisted. His oval face was priestly with hatred. “Get back to the house,” he whispered.

Dumbo sobbed with pain. “What did you do with my brother? And the others? You killed them!”

Carl’s fingers relaxed their grip instantly. “You say that to me? You say that to … me!” He shuddered. “Carl is a giver of life. Understand that. Carl is a holy giver of life. He has never killed anything.”

“Then where’s my brother? And the others?”

“Why should I have killed anybody?”

‘Because,” Dumbo said triumphantly. “I was the only woman on the ship.”

“You!” Carl stepped back slowly, appalled.

“You wanted me to yourself.”

“You’ll pay for saying that, Dumbo.” Carl raised his fist, then relaxed it deliberately, one finger at a time. “Listen to me—you never had a brother. There was nobody on this ship but you and me. We were in the thick of a tactical emergency, so we tried to take the ship to Lark IV by ourselves. The suit you were looking at when I came in was your own.”

Dumbo looked at the stiffly leaning pressure skin with its black maw of a face and boldly stencilled nameplate.

“But …”

“That’s right.” Carl laughed softly. “Hello, Victor!”

Somehow, incredibly, Dumbo was not angry. Almost of their own accord her hands crept down the front of her heavy dress and cradled the sagging, scarred belly. Perhaps it was too soon for a reaction, perhaps when she had recovered all her past and was able to compare it with the present….

“There had been a surprise attack in the region of Lark IV,” Carl was saying. The losses were heavy and Sector Command was screaming for medical support, so you and I tried to get through with an organ bank. We almost made it but they hit us fair and square with a warp scrambler. You know what that means, Dumbo?”

She shook her head.

“I thought not, but you did then. For months after we limped down on to this world you sat up at nights with the ship’s ten-inch scope trying to catch a glimpse of our home galaxy. You should have known better. You and I were a setting on a billion-digit combination lock and somebody had spun the wheels. Somebody with a bad memory.”

Carl pulled off his glasses and began polishing the lenses, blue eyes peering myopically into another existence.

“There we were on a completely empty world. A clean, fresh world, ideally suited for life—and there was nothing for us to do but grow old and die.” Carl’s voice grew louder. “And Carl could not allow that. It would have been a terrible wrong—because the only obstacle standing in the way of life was a few ounces of redundant male flesh.

“I had everything that was needed—the organ bank was in good condition then. The individual power cells are failing now and I’m discarding more and more units every week, but at that time I was able to produce a usable set of basic female organs and glands for you. One hypno session after the operations and a weekly shot of an LSD derivative took care of the rest.

“That’s your illustrious background. How do you like it, mother?”

Dumbo twisted the signet ring she wore on the third finger, left hand. It turned easily on bearings of perspiration, but she felt strangely untouched, strong.

“I’m sorry, Carl—you can’t punish me like that. Don’t you see? The things you have just said might have destroyed Victor Lucas, but he can never hear them. He doesn’t exist any more. I’m … Victoria Lucas.”

Carl shivered in the cool stale air. “You’re right. My logical faculty must be getting rusty. The whole idea of punishment assumes continuity of personality, and you won’t have that—not after your next shot. Are you going to walk back to the house, or do I drag you?”

Dumbo took a deep breath. “Why bother with the shots when we don’t need them? There’s no point in pretending all this has made me feel deliriously happy, but I can take things as they are, without the illusions. I ought to hate you but you did too good a job on me with those glands. I really am a woman—and I’m prepared to go on being your wife.”

Carl hit her back-handed, thick fingers hanging loose like flails.

She dropped back against one of the control chairs and hung on to it, staring up at him in dismay.

“My wife!” White coronas glowed around Carl’s eyes. “You freak!! You nothing! You think I ever touched you?”

“I don’t remember … but what then? Our children?”

“Our children!” Carl spoke eagerly, suddenly seeing the potency of the new weapon. “Three nice kids, but what a family! You for a mother, and three unknown soldiers for fathers. You looked into the organ bank for a moment, didn’t you, Dumbo? Recognise anybody?”

The words took time to reach Dumbo. When they did she stood up and moved out on to the catwalk, past Carl.

“That’s right, mother,” he whispered in her ear as she went by. He followed her down the metal stair towards the lower level. ‘But don’t take it so personally, Dumbo. There are sound genetic reasons in favour of the children having different fathers—it’s all for the good of our future community. Think instead of how lucky you are. Yes, lucky! No man could ever touch you and still keep his food down, yet, thanks to the wonders of medical science, you’ve had three children to as many different men. And you’ll go on having them until you produce the girls we need.” Carl hung on to the stair rail so that he could watch Dumbo’s face while he spoke.

“Of course, I was lucky too. A ship like this doesn’t carry frozen semen, you know. If it wasn’t for the fact that the organ bank caters for even the most drastic type of injury there would only have been me—and that really would have been a fate worse than death.

“You hear me, Dumbo? Why don’t you say something?”

Dumbo reached the lower level and passed the door to the longitudinal corridor.

“Not that way, mother.” Carl caught her shoulder from behind.

She wrenched free and ran. Carl gave a startled grunt and came after her, his footfalls speeding up as he remembered the armoury. Dumbo burst through the door, throwing herself towards the rifle rack. Carl’s hand raked down her back. She snatched one of the weapons by the barrel and swung it blindly, hoping to find Carl’s belly. He had fallen forward on to his hands and knees, and the rifle butt opened his face like a purse. He rolled on to his back, unconscious, with a bright red bubble quivering at each nostril.

Dumbo placed the rifle butt on his upturned throat and bore down with all the weight of her big, soft body.

Morning sunlight streamed across the breakfast table, making it glow like an altar.

Dumbo set out five dishes of hot porridge and went to fetch the children who were tumbling noisily outside. She hummed quietly to herself as she watched the boys eat, taking pride in the very smell of the good, simple food. As soon as she was sure the children had everything they needed she loaded a wooden tray and carried it into Carl’s room.

“Come on, darling,” she said brightly. “I know you don’t feel like eating, but you must make the effort.”

Carl sat up in the bed and touched his bandaged face. “What is this?” The words came slowly through swollen lips.

“It’s your breakfast, of course. I’ve made your favourites today. Now eat up so you’ll get well quickly.”

He stared up at Dumbo for a moment, then his face relaxed.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said wonderingly. “I thought you were going to kill me, but you must have realised you couldn’t make out here on your own.”

“Eat up, darling. Don’t let your breakfast get cold.” Dumbo fluffed up the pillows to support Carl’s back.

Carl shook his head, chuckling with relief. “Well, I’ll be damned. And you even had sense enough to go back on the shots.”

Dumbo leaned down on the bed to get her face close to his.

“Correction,” she said coldly. “I haven’t taken a shot. Not yet. I took a fresh lot of the drug from the store and primed the gun with it, but I haven’t taken the shot yet. I wanted to wait.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist.

“Wait for what?” Carl pushed the tray away. “What are you doing with my watch?”

“I waited to see your face, of course. I could have taken the shot earlier, when you were still sleeping, but I would have become Dumbo again and wouldn’t have understood what was happening. Would I?”

“Get off my bed,” Carl said thickly. “I’m getting up. Where’s the hypo gun?”

“Don’t rush, darling,” Dumbo pushed him back on to the pillows. “Let me tell you what I’ve been doing while you were asleep. First of all, I brought you here from the ship, and that took ages because I had to drag you most of the way. Then I put you to bed and fixed your face and a little while ago, while the oven was warming up, I went back to the ship and …’ she glanced at the watch again,”… listen, darling.”

Carl pushed her away savagely, using his knees. He half-rose in the bed, spilling the tray of food, then froze as the sound reached the house.

It was a distant multiple explosion.

“What was that?” His shocked eyes hunted across her face.

“That, darling, was your organ bank. I had no idea the grenades would make such a noise. I hope they haven’t worried the children. I must see how they are.” She paused at the door and looked back.

Carl was kneeling naked on the bed.

“Oh, yes,” Dumbo said. “I musn’t forget this.”

She took the hypo gun from a pocket, fired the charge into her wrist and went out to the startled boys. By the time she had washed up the breakfast things and tidied the room the walls no longer seemed like metal. She went to the window and looked out. Her roses shone redly in the peaceful morning air. It was going to be yet another perfect day.

Dumbo smiled as she watched the boys at play. She hoped the next child would be a girl because that was what Carl wanted more than anything else in the world.

And all she wanted was to be his wife.