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.