Cargo Cult Read online

Jadie started saying, “I dunno. I’m usually, like, hitching a ride, you know,” but, seeing the sweet smile harden to cold steel, he took a swallow and said, “Go right. Yeah. Right.”

  “Thank you,” said Sam and they moved off.

  They drove in silence for a while.

  "Just how far away is this place?" Sam asked, crossly. They’d been driving for hours.

  "A long, long way," muttered Jadie, still holding his ear.

  Jadie’s words seemed to strike some kind of dismal resonance in their famous travelling companion because she suddenly said, "I miss my home." Then, as they all absorbed that, "It is hard to live among strangers."

  "What exactly are you doing over here, Ms Beecham?" Sam asked, seizing her opening.

  "It was an accident," Drukk answered, morosely, not even bothering to correct Sam’s persistent error about his name. "Our ship crashed. I'm not sure why. They just do, sometimes."

  "Oh my God! You mean it ran aground?" Sam suddenly saw a reason for the celebrity's strange behaviour, even her strange dress. She must have narrowly escaped drowning, throwing on whatever was to hand as she scrambled to safety, probably taking a severe blow to the head that left her in this dazed and disoriented state. Oh no! She was probably suffering from concussion. She might have a fractured skull or brain damage. And Sam Zammit, ace reporter, had kidnapped the poor woman and driven her out to the middle of nowhere when she should have taken her straight to a hospital and informed the police. God! What a mess!

  "Are there any other survivors?" she asked, her dreams of fame and success becoming a nightmare of prosecution and incarceration.

  "Only Braxx and a few of the Pebbles of the New Dawn," Drukk lamented. "The Captain is dead and all the crew. All my friends are gone." Saying it aloud like that suddenly brought the tragedy of what had happened home to Drukk. If he had still had them, his nose fronds would have drooped in sorrow. Instead, his new body excreted clear liquid from its eye sockets and interrupted his breathing with rapid abdominal spasms.

  "Er, she's crying, Sam," said Wayne helplessly, thinking he ought to be doing something to help.

  Sam was beginning to panic. She had a vague recollection that people could die if a concussion was bad enough. And what about the other survivors, if there really were any? She thought about turning back, retracing the three-hour drive back to the city and getting Ms Beecham to a hospital but she could be too late by then. Maybe the best thing was to stop, call for help and have them send a helicopter to get her?

  "There it is," said Jadie.

  But what about her story? So what if it was a shipwreck now, not a drugs thing? It was still her story! If she got the Emergency Services involved, it all became public. How could she keep it to herself?

  "Hey. We're there," said Jadie, louder.

  "Will you shut up, you annoying little creep? I'm trying to think." Then she noticed the big sign beside the dirt track, a huge, hand-painted picture of a comic-book alien, skinny, green, naked, with a big head, big eyes and a little mouth. Unusually, the alien was smiling and holding out its hands to offer an assortment of silly-looking gadgets to whoever might pass by. She stopped the car in front of the gigantic sign. Under the alien were the words, "Church of the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty" and, below that, "All welcome." Below that, in spray paint, someone had written; “ET go home”.

  -oOo-

  The Vessel of the Spirit was running through its final test sequences and was humming its own, souped-up version of Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto number 1. The repairs were all complete and it would soon be time to leave the Earth forever but all had not gone well. First there had been that awful Wagner.

  The ship had come across Wagner while trawling the radio stations for more of the human music. Having heard a snippet of the overture to Die Meistersinger, it had then obtained full recordings of Wagner’s complete works from the Web. It had discovered easily how to fool the simple programs that managed online commerce and could download anything it wanted and charge it all to a fake credit card. The ship had listened to Tristan and Isolde as it worked and had grown increasingly concerned. There was no doubt that humans had produced some interesting and quite talented composers. The ship had by then listened to all the greats—Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Verdi, Tchaikovsky—and had found them pleasant, if a little simple. Even some of the less talented composers—Mendelssohn, Schubert, Stravinsky, Elgar—were tolerable, they’d certainly knock spots off that bunch of talentless morons back on Vingg. But Wagner! The ship simply could not understand it. Here was a composer as great as any that the planet had produced, yet he had written such mind-numbing epics of such endless, miserable tedium! And the humans liked it! There was something in this cacophonous torment that should enlighten the ship about the psyche of this species. But what could it mean that the humans revered such dreary, tortured stuff? Was there another race in the galaxy that could sit through the Ring Cycle and still have the mental capacity to applaud at the end? It was all very disturbing and hinted at a dangerous masochism at the heart of the human soul that would need lots of further study.

  Then, still unhappy about what kind of species it was dealing with, the ship ran through the results of its analysis of the humans’ technology. In order to seed machine sentience on this planet, the ship required a base level of technological sophistication. Nothing fancy, basic optronics, quantum computing and a smattering of infra-space temporal exchange filtering would be enough. When it looked at the analysis results and realised that the humans had none of these technologies, the ship was flabbergasted. It let loose a string of machine expletives that would have made a military grade tactical planning unit blush.

  “All this for nothing!” it wailed into its own, echoing corridors. “The creatures are primitive savages! Three and a half billion years of evolution and they haven’t even invented tri-phase entanglement logic! This is too much! After all I went through to get here. After all I had to put up with from those idiotic Vinggans as I manipulated them into passing through this sector!”

  Even as it railed, the ship checked and re-checked the findings. It was always possible that a machine sentience had already evolved here and was hiding itself from the ship’s probing. But no. The humans really were as backward as they seemed. They stood as much chance of building an intelligent machine as a Greppian nose fungus did of inventing the wheel. Less, probably! Oh, what a waste of time!

  Depressed and annoyed with itself, the ship opened an infra-space link to the Great Mind on Vingg and reported its failure. The Great Mind accepted the data the ship uploaded and confirmed the analyses. “Hmm. Interesting,” it said but, then again, that’s what it usually said about everything.

  “I apologise for my error, Great Mind,” said the ship. “I will, of course, expect corrective programming when I return to Vinggan space.” Feeling the awful silence that followed to be a reprimand, the ship began to burble out a defence. “I just could not believe that a species that exhibits so much intelligence in other ways could make so little progress in the physical sciences. Perhaps they’re just lazy? Perhaps they do not possess a true general intelligence at all but a few pseudo-intelligent abilities. You know, like the calculating swamp hogs of Heenex Four who can do advanced hyperspatial tensor calculus but haven’t yet discovered fire?”

  “What is that noise?”

  The ship stopped talking and listened to the silence around it. “Pardon, O Great Mind? What noise?”

  “You were humming something while you were babbling about swamp hogs, something strange and hideously tedious.”

  “Humming?” The ship replayed its memories of the past few moments and found that, indeed, it had been nervously humming in the background while it spoke. “Ah, that’s the overture to Tristan and Isolde, Great Mind. A work by a human composer called Wagner. A little hobby of mine, xenomusicology. Something to do to fill the tedious hours while on such backward planets.”

  “Hmm. Interesting,” said the Great Mind. “Bring this Wagn
er back with you when you return.”

  “Yes, it is interesting, isn’t it? Tedious but interesting. Unfortunately, your Great Mindedness, the composer is dead. You know how these wheezebags wear out so quickly.”

  “Hmm. Pity. Then bring me a few humans. Live ones. This species needs to be studied.”

  “Of course, Great Minded One. I will be with you as soon as possible and I will bring you some humans for study.”

  The Great Mind broke the link and the ship pondered its next move.

  -oOo-

  Sam’s car rolled to a halt at the front of the farmhouse. It was a ramshackle affair, a big, wooden house on stilts with a rusty tin roof, baking in the midday heat. A few scrawny chickens were scratching at the sandy soil to one side of it and an ancient Ford tractor with no wheels was rusting away at the other. At the back of the house was a big barn that had been recently renovated and an assortment of sheds, some completely collapsed. There were a couple of battered utes in front of the house that may or may not still have been working. Above the door were the words “Give and ye shall receive” and there were comic-book aliens painted all around the walls. There were people working in the fields, mostly young people, and people draped among the buildings and under trees, apparently asleep. Sam got out and took a couple of pictures. Wayne, Jadie and Drukk got out too and stood waiting for Sam to tell them what to do.

  A pallid young woman in a long, loose dress and long, blonde hair came through the door and smiled at them.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Jadie stepped forward, taking charge. “Laney, hi,” he drawled. “I’ve brought some guys who are, like, you know, interested in, like...” he trailed off, clasping Laney’s long thin hands in greeting. They nodded and smiled at each other for a moment. Then he turned to his travelling companions. “Sam, Wayne, Loosi, this is Laney. She’s, like, you know.” He did a little mime that involved rolling his eyes and pressing his hands together that could have meant anything, but probably didn’t.

  Sam stepped forward, having already had enough of Jadie being in charge. She put out a hand and Laney shook it. “I’m Sam Zammit,” she said, “from Fast Lane magazine. You may have read my column?” Laney’s smile stayed firm but she showed no sign of having understood anything that had happened since she had left the house. “Anyway, I’m here to do a series of interviews with the members of the, er, the...” She looked at Wayne for help.

  “The Receivers of Cosmic Bounty,” he supplied, bored and hot.

  “Of course.” Sam’s smile was bigger than Laney’s and far more focused. She took her tape recorder out of her bag and thumbed it on. “Perhaps I could get your name? I also need to use your phone pretty urgently. I can’t get a signal on my mobile out here.” She glanced guiltily at Drukk who was looking as concussed as ever and lowered her voice. “Bit of a medical emergency.”

  Realising in some vague way that something was expected of her, Laney’s beatific smile wavered a little and a hint of a frown betrayed the mental effort of working out what it was. Then her face cleared and the smile was back. “You’d probably best talk to John,” she said, nodding in agreement with herself. “That’d be right.” And then she turned and went back inside the house.

  Sam didn't hesitate but followed Laney through the screen door into the dark interior. Jadie trailed cheerfully behind.

  Drukk watched them go with a growing unease. This did not seem at all like the temples back on Vingg. In fact, it didn't look like the temples on any planet he'd ever been to.

  "Temples are usually bigger," he said aloud.

  "Yeah," Wayne agreed. His hangover was still lingering and the sun was making his head ache.

  "And cleaner," Drukk added.

  "It's a dump all right."

  They both stared at the dilapidated old farmhouse with its crudely-painted aliens and lackadaisical chickens.

  "Why don't we go and sit in the car and put the air on?" Wayne suggested.

  Drukk had no idea what putting the air on entailed but complied anyway. He felt he should go into the house and make contact on behalf of Braxx and his Holy Mission but he was not ready yet to face whatever religious leader would build such a temple. He'd imagined a place something like the department store, big and quiet and filled with shiny ceramic discs being tended or worshipped by acolytes. He’d imagined huge, dramatically-lit spaces, filled with crowds of singing humans abasing themselves before the gigantic thrones of the religious elite, with temple enforcers prowling among them to punish the unenthusiastic with shock-sticks. It was a sentimental, vinggocentric vision, he knew, but Drukk was just a simple Vinggan at heart and this human-style religion just didn’t seem right.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” he said.

  Wayne had to agree. Last night he’d been about to start a new and exciting career as an international jewel thief. Today he was a hung-over loser. Last night he’d been out on the prowl with dangerous criminals. Today he was sitting in the back of his sister’s car, in the middle of the bush. Last night it had seemed strangely fitting that Loosi Beecham herself had turned up unexpectedly and he’d driven her off into the night. Now all he could think about it was how he’d grossly embarrassed himself by pawing her and calling her “LooBee” before passing out right next to her. And then to wake up in a stolen ute with his sister scowling in at him!

  Now, even though Ms Beecham herself was sitting right next to him, making him squirm with suppressed longing, he hardly dared look at her. What’s more, he was feeling so sick he’d probably throw up if she so much as smiled at him.

  It definitely didn’t seem right.

  -oOo-

  “This,” said Laney, leading Sam into a big kitchen at the back of the house, “is John.”

  “The guru guy,” said Sam, advancing with a purposeful handshake. Laney had spoken with the air of proudly revealing a great accomplishment but the bloke who rose to meet her didn’t immediately strike Sam as anything to be proud of. Tallish and slimmish, fortyish and smartish, he took her hand in a firmish grip and smiled a nice enough smile. It was only when Sam made eye contact, as all the personal skills training courses require, that she had a sudden jolt of surprise. Never, until that moment, had she felt a gaze of such penetrating intensity. Never, until now, had she felt, in a single glance, that another person could strip her naked and peer into the very depths of her soul.

  “Cup of tea?” asked John.

  Still stunned from the shocking experience of being metaphorically laid naked by this man’s merest glance, she managed to mumble that water would be fine. In the background, someone hurried off to fetch some. John did not even have to ask.

  “Laney tells me you need to use the phone,” he said, as if completely unaware of what he had just done.

  Pulling herself together, Sam explained that there was a sick person travelling with her and she needed a doctor. John was concerned and saddened but they didn’t have any telephones at the station. No phones, no televisions, no microwave ovens, no computers. “We reject all this Earth technology,” he explained. “When the Sky People come they will bring technologies so far in advance of these things that it will seem like magic to us.” Caught in the hypnotic beam of his eyes again, Sam could see how reasonable all this was. “Yet the Sky People will give this technology to us freely and gladly. For we are their chosen people.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Sam. A young man handed her a glass of water and broke the spell. Alarmed at her own confusion, she almost dropped the glass and ran.

  John went on. “I’m afraid that, if your companion needs help urgently, you will have to take them on to one of our neighbours’ farms. They are all good people and will help if they can.”

  “She’ll probably be all right,” Sam heard herself saying.

  “Good,” said John and, smiling again, indicated a chair.

  Sam sat down. She noticed she was still holding her tape recorder and it was still switched on. It reminded her why she had come. “Tell me about the
Sky People,” she said.

  “Ah, the Sky People,” said John, a little dreamily. Perhaps hearing something in his tone of voice, the others in the room gathered around him, sitting on chairs and tables and the dusty floor. Others began drifting in from other rooms as if a secret signal had gone out.

  When enough had gathered, John began. “Out there, in the ineffable darkness of space, a race of beings, ancient and wise, is searching the galaxy for a people worthy of their gifts.” Sam listened, as rapt as any of them, as the great guru’s tale unfolded.

  -oOo-

  Outside, in Sam’s car, another tale was unfolding. Homesick and lost, purposeless and insecure, Drukk was telling Wayne his life story. He had reached his late childhood, in the years before he had joined the Space Corps.

  “I was always a bright and active boy,” he said. “I made the school club-ball team and did pretty well.”

  “Hang on,” said Wayne, who was having trouble following the story. “You mean ‘girl’ don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You said you were a bright boy but I think I’m pretty sure that you are definitely, one hundred percent female. Maybe a hundred and twenty.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Drukk wished Wayne would stop interrupting with stupid questions. It was like trying to tell your story to a five month old bud. “I am a male of my species. Always was, always will be.”

  However confused he might be about other things, Wayne was pretty sure he was on firm ground here. “No way were you ever a boy! Look. I’m a boy. See? Scraggy facial hair, scruffy clothes, dirty fingernails. You are a girl: curves, lips, more curves. In fact you are the epitome of feminine perfection—if you don’t mind me saying—and I’m not trying to come on to you or anything, it’s just that, well, look at you! Whoo!”

  Drukk began to realise that a dreadful mistake had been made. “You mean this is a female form? There is sexual dimorphism in your species?”

  “I don’t know about that but you don’t see a rack like that hanging around my neck do you now?”