Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

by Bob Shaw

  Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

  Contents

  Call Me Dumbo

  Repeat Performance

  …And Isles Where Good Men Lie

  What Time Do You Call This?

  Communication

  The Cosmic Cocktail Party

  The Happiest Day of Your Life

  The Weapons of Isher II

  Pilot Plant

  Telemart Three

  Invasion of Privacy

  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 man
y 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 d
rug.

  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.