Cargo Cult (4 page)

After two hours of walking like
this, their route crossed a narrow dirt track and Drukk called a
halt. He examined the map and checked the direction finder. Complex
graphics depicting intersecting spheres slowly rotated in its
projection space. Drukk cursed it silently. Why did everything have
to be so complicated? He tried to recall CorpsSchool basic
training, but he had slept and partied his way through most of it
and now it all seemed a bit hazy. He turned a knob marked "Azimuth'
and the graphic twirled and settled into a new cryptic
configuration. He was just deciding whether he should admit to
Braxx that he didn't have a clue, or whether to bluff it out and
hope for the best, when one of the Vinggans shouted, "Look!"

Bouncing towards them out of the
dark was a pair of lights.

"What are they?" Braxx asked in a
nervous whisper.

"How in the Commune would I know?"
Drukk snapped, also whispering. They could hear now a growling,
clanking noise coming from the same direction.

"Machines?" asked Braxx.

"Just one," Drukk said, noticing
how the lights bounced in perfect unison. "Coming along the
ground."

"Killer robots!" someone squealed
in alarm. "They've sent killer robots after us!"

"No, no!" Drukk shouted over the
rising clamour of panic. "The humans don't have that level of
technology… I think." He tried to smile reassuringly at his
ship-mates, not realising how hideous his human features made the
expression seem. "Don't forget, we look like them now. They won't
suspect us if we just act naturally." Mulling over what he had just
said, Drukk thought maybe hanging about nonchalantly, while a
potential killer robot approached them, might not be the very best
strategy after all. "Hmm," he said. "Why don't we all draw our
weapons, just in case."

Dave Horrocks was glad to be on his
way home. He’d been over at Jimbo’s place with a couple of other
blokes playing cards and he’d just about lost his shirt. It was
downright queer the way those blokes seemed to know just when to
bet and when to fold. He shouldn’t have lost his rag like that but
the more he lost, the more he thought about what he was going to
tell Angie. Jimbo should have known he was just letting off steam.
There was no need to go calling him a big galah and all that. And
then Jimbo’s missus had got all upset about the table being knocked
over and Dave had had to leave or he’d have knocked Jimbo’s block
off, most likely.

What a mess.

And now he had to drive ten
kilometres down this stupid track to get back to his own property,
listening to country music on the radio and wishing he had the
evening all over again.

When he first noticed what looked
like a mob of roos standing in the road in front of him, all he
thought was, “Good. I’ll show the buggers!” and put his foot down.
So, when the roos started to look more like a group of people, he
had to slam on the brakes and came sliding to a halt in a huge
cloud of dust just a couple of metres in front of the horrified
Vinggans.

As the dust swirled brightly in the
headlamps of the old ute, Dave peered through the grimy windscreen
at the vague shapes out on the road. What the hell was a crowd of
people doing out here at this time of night? Who were they anyway?
It looked like a bunch of women. Holy shit! It looked like naked
women! A dozen naked women all pointing sticks at him. Hang on.
That one there. She looked just like whatsername? You know that
film star woman. Nah! It couldn’t be. But, as the dust settled,
Dave had to admit that she looked just like her. And that other one
too. And that one. And that one! Bloody hell! They all looked like
her. Every, bloody one of them. And all of them stark, bloody
naked!

Shakily, he got out of the cab and
took a couple of tentative steps towards them. The naked women
stepped back, pointing their sticks at him as if trying to threaten
him with them. “G’day,” he said. “How’re y’doin’?” and they all
jumped back. “It’s all right ladies. I don’t bite.”

“What’s it saying?” Braxx demanded,
nervously.

“Look,” said Drukk, firmly.
“There’s no point in you asking me any questions. I don’t speak
human.”

“Well, activate the translation
field, in the name of Vingg! Then we can all hear what it’s
croaking about.”

Dave heard the strange chirruping
noise the women were making and wondered if it was some kind of
foreign language. Spanish perhaps.

Drukk had a number of useful
gadgets in a bag hanging from a bony projection near the top of his
body. He made a mental note to learn the names of his new body
parts. It was difficult to find what he wanted, fumbling around
with those stiff little extensions at the end of his arm. He really
missed having proper tentacles. Eventually, however, he pulled out
the translation field generator. It was a simple box with two
buttons on it: one marked 'on' and the other marked 'field
generator circuit interrupt'. He thought for a moment and pressed
'on'.

"Is it working?" asked Braxx.

"Is what working?" asked Dave.

The Vinggans gave a collective
start.

"Do – you – speak – English?" Dave
asked slowly and loudly.

"Well, do we?" Braxx asked
Drukk.

Drukk made the
patience-wears-thin-with-annoying-idiot gesture, which his new body
executed as a roll of his eyes and a bite of his tongue. He
addressed Dave. "Can you understand us, human?"

But Dave's mind was elsewhere.
"You're, like, escapees from some secret Government cloning
experiment. Am I right?"

"Does that mean it understood us,
or what?" Braxx wanted to know.

Drukk was genuinely confused. "I
don't know. Perhaps there are sub-species of human with unusually
low intelligence."

“Maybe your translation field
generator is broken,” suggested someone from the back. “I’ll turn
mine on too.”

“Yeah, me too,” said another and
then several more. Unfortunately, after that, no-one said anything,
so it was hard to tell whether it had made any difference.

Braxx stepped forward. "We are
peaceful, religious people, emissaries of the Great Spirit, and we
come to bring Her communion to the sapients of... wherever we
are."

Drukk grabbed one of Braxx’s limbs
and dragged him back. “Do you really think we should just come out
with it like that?” he hissed.

“Nonsense!” snapped Braxx, pulling
himself free. “How can we bring religion to these savages if we
don’t explain our mission? Anyway,” he smiled, “there are fourteen
of us and just one of them.” He turned back to the human, still
smiling. “As I said, peaceful, religious people.”

Dave smiled back. "Religious, eh?
That’s a bit of a worry. Still, glad to meet you, darl." He put out
his hand and stepped forward.

Braxx and the others shied back in
alarm. "Come no closer or you will be destroyed."

Dave tilted back his hat and
grinned. "Destroyed? You ladies gonna poke me to death with your
little sticks? Only joking love. But I've got to tell you, I reckon
you girls don't look like any nuns I've ever seen!"

Braxx, already contemptuous of the
ugly alien, was at a loss to understand what it was saying to them,
even though the translation field rendered every word into Vinggan.
"This is hopeless!” he complained. “Let's just blast this one and
go and find one a bit less... stupid."

Instantly, Dave saw red. He'd been
insulted enough for one night. "Hey! Who are you calling stupid?
Just 'cos you're a girl, and a film star, or a clone of a film
star, or something, you've got no reason to be so up yourself,
standing there naked in the middle of the night, I could have run
you over thinking you were a mob of roos, not that I object to you
girls being naked and such, I mean, I'm a red-blooded male and all
and, ladies, you really are something! Not that that gives you the
right to go blocking the road and insulting a bloke who's just
trying to be straight up and do the right thing..."

"I think you're right, Braxx" Drukk
sighed. "This one is useless. Nevertheless..."

Too late. A blaze of light lit up
the bush as thirteen weapons discharged at Dave. The man's eyes
barely had time to widen before he was blasted to atoms.

“... Nevertheless,” Drukk went on,
doggedly. “We should keep it alive so it can show us how to operate
its vehicle.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll work it out,”
said Braxx, striding past the smoking remains towards the ute.

Dave's ute was a sturdy but ageing
Holden, with manual gears, dodgy electrics and a dirty orange,
portable concrete mixer in the back. The Vinggans swarmed all over
it, trying to establish its mode of operation. Fortunately, Dave
had left the engine running, or they may never have got it started.
Yet, by trial and error over the next hour, they had learned enough
that Drukk, their designated driver, could make it go forwards in
first gear and stop it with the foot-brake and clutch without
making the engine stall every time. Grasping the steering wheel
with a grip powered by sheer terror, Drukk found he could even
steer the crazily bucking contraption along the winding darkness of
the dirt road.

"OK," he said to Braxx at last.
"Get everyone into the back. Hide them under that sheet of woven
material we found. There is no sense in taking chances."

"Shall we throw out the strange
orange machine?" They had discussed the concrete mixer at length
but could not begin to guess at its purpose.

Drukk shrugged. "Better leave it.
It may be essential in some way. I want you to stay in the control
room with me, Braxx," he indicated the truck's cabin, "to
navigate—and in case I need help."

"Navigate? But I..."

"Don't worry," said Drukk, handing
him the direction finder. "You'll soon get the hang of it." Then,
as an afterthought, "You'd probably best not adjust the
azimuth."

Prayer was OK. Jadie liked prayer.
It was restful, soothing, and, if you weren’t really into it at
that moment, no-one could really tell whether you were doing it or
not. He’d been in quite a few different religions over the past few
years and prayer was probably the bit he liked most about all of
them. So it was a shame that the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty didn’t
go in for it. In fact, if he’d known about the prayer thing when he
joined, he might have given the whole thing a miss.

He’d asked John, the guru guy,
straight out just last week, why the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty
didn’t pray. John had just looked at him and said, “There’s no
point, Jadie. The Sky People are all on Mercury so they couldn’t
hear us, could they now?” It had seemed so reasonable at the time,
with John’s steady, grey eyes looking straight into his and John’s
smooth, hypnotic voice, lapping around him. Everything John said
always seemed absolutely true. Yet, when he thought about it
afterwards, Jadie couldn’t see why the Sky People couldn’t be
telepathic or something. Still, he didn’t say anything about that
to John or the others, ’cos he didn’t want to look stupid or
anything. Theology wasn’t really Jadie’s department. He was more
the blind faith type. He left the deep issues to the guru types,
like John.

Still, at least they didn’t have
all those stupid restrictions on drinking and sex and all that.
According to John, the guru guy, all you had to do to get to Heaven
was be there when the Sky People came. Of course, since no-one knew
quite when they were coming, it meant you had to hang out at the
station a lot, which was pretty dull. The station was an old sugar
cane farm that had gone broke years ago and was half derelict
now—Saunders’ Station, named after the family that had owned it for
the past four generations. The disciples all jokingly called it the
Space Station but Jadie could see they all believed in it really.
John had everybody patching the place up all the time just for
something to do but Jadie wasn’t into all that home improvement
crap so he tended to hitch into Brisbane a lot to do what he liked
doing best—hanging around in pubs.

O’Shaunessey’s was definitely
Jadie’s kind of pub. No yuppies. No dress code. No frills. There
were live bands and the ceaseless racket of jangling poker
machines. What more could a bloke want? He walked in with a smile
on his face, anticipating his first cold drink of the day and an
evening of relaxed chat with his mates.

"That's him," Wayne said, too
loudly, as he spotted Jadie heading for the bar.

Sam looked up from her untouched
glass of Chardonnay and eyed Jadie with professional interest and a
certain dismay. Tall and skinny, with lank blonde hair and a wispy
blonde goatee, Jadie looked a lot like an unemployed youth about to
drink his dole money and very little like a pathetic brainwashing
victim desperately reaching out to the media for help.
Ah
well
, she thought,
no pictures
.

She turned to Wayne who was busily
chugging down the last of his beer and scowled. It was so typical
of him to have been blind drunk even before she arrived. And now
she had to sit in this awful dive, surrounded by the dregs of
Brisbane and interview his scrawny mate whilst worrying about how
to keep her brother sober enough to walk home afterwards. The
selfish little shit! “OK,” she said, giving Wayne an angry shove.
“Go and get him, then.”

Clutching the stubbie that Wayne
had surprisingly bought for him, Jadie wandered over with him to
where Sam sat waiting. He was always happy to meet people’s
sisters—you never know where that might lead—but his smile
broadened to a sloppy grin when he saw Sam. She had dressed down
for the occasion but still looked beautifully out of place in her
designer jeans and T-shirt, Estée Lauder make-up and expensive
hairdo. Jadie took a chair opposite her and grinned at her while
Wayne slurred his way through the introductions. Sam slipped her
hand into her handbag and switched on her tape recorder.