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.