Cargo Cult (2 page)

“Like what?”

“I’ll think of something.
Meanwhile, I think you’re right. We should all take on human form.
To the metamorphosis booth everybody!”

-oOo-

Now consider this. Even as the
Vinggans are queuing up outside the metamorphosis booth, a slim,
black starship is sliding out of real-space into infra-reality,
far, far away along the Bellarno-Hengh Arm of the Galaxy, making a
complete mess of Einstein’s tortuous legacy of messed-up
simultaneity. For, although it was thousands of light-years closer
to the Galactic Centre than Earth, it would be arriving here soon,
very soon, thousands of years ahead of the light reflected from its
sleek, black hull.

From one perspective, the ship was
slicing forward through time and the fabric of space-time responded
with intense causality shock waves which pummelled onlookers all
along its flight-path with causality so intense that almost
anything could cause anything. Even on Earth, far from the main
shipping lanes, the effect can be observed when an accused spouse
looks up at the uncleaned gutters and wails, “It's all the dog's
fault.” Or when a train pulls into the station half-an-hour behind
schedule and the announcer blames its lateness on “leaves on the
line”.

From another perspective, the ship
had merely slipped into a reality underlying our own in which
distance hardly means anything, where entangled sub-atomic
particles are still virtually right next to one another, and where
a creature in a hurry, a creature with a mission, a creature with
cold, steely eyes and a hide of black, armoured scales, could
ignore General Relativity and really get its foot down.

Albert Street in Brisbane is half
coffee shops and half ‘outdoor lifestyle’ shops. As with other
streets like this the world over, the coffee shops compete fiercely
to look welcoming and relaxing, invading the pavement to such an
extent that the casual passer-by is constantly falling over potted
bay trees and colliding with fast-moving waitresses.

Thanks to the climate, Brisbanites
can sit out on the pavement night and day, all year round,
chattering about the new coffee shop they tried last week, or the
great outdoor lifestyle gear they bought that day. Sometimes,
you’ll see a couple of business types among the chatterers, iPad
and brochures cluttering the little round table between them, as
one tries to sell something to the other. Far less often would you
see a well-dressed young woman scowling at a dishevelled young man,
saying things like, “Well? Can you get me in or not?” and “No, I’m
not going to pay you, you greedy little shit!” Yet that was the
scene that day.

The young woman was Samantha
Zammit, Sam to her friends, but well-known to readers of the local
daily’s weekend magazine as ZamZam, the writer of a moderately
popular outdoor lifestyle column. At 21, when she got the job, Sam
had thought that she’d really made the big-time. Now, at 24, she
was beginning to realise that there were further heights of
journalistic accomplishment still to be scaled. In addition, after
three years of writing about what you could do on foot, on two,
three, four, or eight wheels (with or without engines), on things
that flew or floated (with or without engines), or on one or two
short, or long planks (on snow, water, or on wheels — with or
without engines) she was beginning to feel a terrible desperation
creeping over her.

Salvation, she thought, would be to
move into “real” journalism. She wanted to be a reporter, an
investigative reporter. That’s what she should have been doing all
these wasted years. That was where she could make a real
contribution instead of mindlessly feeding the popular urge to move
your body around on planks, or wheels, with or without engines.

That was why she was sitting among
the potted bay trees and wrought-iron menu stands in a street of
skate-board and bicycle shops, trying to get some sense out of her
idiot brother, Wayne.

Sam Zammit was a neat and pretty
woman who affected severe business suits as befitted her perceived
status as a rising young star in the media firmament. Her tiny
shoulder bag held little besides a tape recorder, a notebook, and a
smartphone. Like most rising young stars in today's competitive
talent market, she worried about her 'personal brand equity', her
social life had been replaced with 'networking', and her grasp of
normal English — and on reality itself to some extent — had been
seriously eroded by the increasingly bizarre business jargon that
everyone around her spoke. As a front-line, customer-facing
contributor, she shared her team's commitment to creating
shareholder value and to personal growth targets and was ready to
eat her babies if that's what the market demanded.

Wayne, on the other hand, was
another kind of animal. Slumped in his chair in baggy shorts,
baseball cap and an old T-shirt bearing the faded slogan “Who needs
educashun?”, Wayne was the black sheep of his industrious,
social-climbing, second-generation, Hungarian-immigrant family.
Inheritor of a prodigious musical talent that had gone unused in
his family for generations, he’d decided that he was going to be
the first of his line to yield to his sensitive nature and to live
for his art. So, after many, bitter rows with his father — a solid,
middle-manager in the Department of Transport — Wayne had gone to
University to study music and then, after many dismal interviews
with his Head of Department, had dropped out, to show them all.

His father, in a desperate final
attempt to save his son, had found Wayne a job with a jeweller
friend of his. Wayne had shown a rare talent for the work and, at
first, his father received glowing reports of his son’s skills as a
jeweller but, in the end, the novelty wore off for Wayne. After
that, even his father’s friend couldn’t put up with Wayne’s
persistent lack of enthusiasm and had asked him to leave. Since
then, Wayne had struggled on the edge of starvation, stubbornly
refusing handouts from his distressed but slightly smug family.

Wayne looked down at his ‘energy
drink’, a fizzy concoction of sugar, caffeine and artificial
flavours that the ads said would boost his mental focus and make
him feel great. He thought maybe he should have another one, since
it didn’t seem to be working. He’d never been really comfortable
with this whole younger brother thing, especially since his sister
was this, like, really successful corporate media type and he was,
like, you know, into other, more meaningful things. Sam had always
been the brains in the family and it was, like, ironic that she’d
turned into such a soulless cow, ’cause, he had to admit, she’d
always sort of looked after him when they were young. Anyway, what
did she think he could do? He wasn’t, like, James Bond or
something. He couldn’t just infiltrate secret organisations and
then ski off down the slope, machine gunning them over his shoulder
or something.

“Are you listening to me, Wayne? Or
are you off with the fairies again?”

Wayne roused himself with a surly
“What?”

Sam looked at her brother with a
sudden, irrational affection. “How old are you, Wayne?”

“You know how old I am.”

“You’re 21. You’re a university
drop-out with no job and no prospects.”

Wayne bristled. “I’ve got a
job.”

“No. You’ve got a couple of gigs in
pubs. That’s not a job.” She’d been to see him once, playing his
guitar so sweetly on a tiny little stage while half-drunken louts
shouted and laughed and ignored him.

Wayne sulked. “I’m building up a
following. It takes time.”

“I worry about you. You need a
regular income.”

“Look, has this got anything to do
with the Receivers?” Just a moment ago, he’d decided that the whole
idea of helping Sam get a story on the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty
had been a really bad idea but, if the alternative was having her
lecture him about his job prospects, he’d rather get back to the
subject. In fact, he’d rather have his head boiled.

Sam saw the shutters come down and
pursed her lips. “OK. You said you have a friend on the inside. You
said that someone was trying to recruit you. All I want is for you
to take me to see them and introduce me. I’ll do the rest.”

“Well, it’s not a friend exactly.
It’s just, like, a bloke I met in the pub.”

“But he is one of these Recipients
of Lots of Whatever it is?”

“Receivers of Cosmic Bounty.”

“And he did try to recruit
you?”

“He said I should come to one of
their prayer meetings or something.”

“And you can get in touch with him
again?”

“He’s in O’Shaunessey’s
sometimes.”

“And he said they’ve got
weapons?”

“Sort of.”

“Pardon?”

“Well, he said that no-one better
try and stop them leaving and went like...” He mimed firing a
gun.

“Jesus!” Sam whispered. She could
see the headline; “Outback Cult Declares War!” This was front-page
stuff in a city where “Wallaby Singed in Brisbane Fire” could push
a Middle-Eastern war onto page five. Better still, she could see
the by-line, “from our investigative reporter Samantha Zammit”. Sam
just had to get in there and find out what was going on. Her whole
future depended on it.

“It’s just so hard to believe,” she
said, almost to herself. “A real, loony religious cult, right here
in Queensland.”

Wayne squirmed. “I don’t know if
they’re all that loony. The bloke I know seems OK.”

Sam smiled blissfully. “Of course
they’re loony. They’re probably holding mass weddings and
kidnapping teenagers and all those wonderful things. I bet we’ll
find an arsenal big enough to start a war and five-year-old kids
with glazed eyes carrying automatic weapons. I’ve got to get an
interview with the cult leader. He probably believes God speaks to
him through a radio planted in his nasal cavity by his dentist and
that the Australian Labor Party is part of a plot masterminded by
the CIA to bring down the world economy so that the Antichrist can
take over and start Armageddon.”

Wayne shook his head, sadly.
Clearly the only loony around here was sitting opposite him with a
mad gleam in her eyes but he wasn’t going to argue. He’d learnt
many years ago just to let Sam have her way.

“We’ll meet in O’Shaunessey’s
tonight,” Sam went on. “God, I can hardly wait! Do you think he’ll
be there? Your contact? We’ve got to get in there before some other
journalist gets wind of it.”

“Tonight?” Wayne whined. “I was
supposed to -”

“What? Don’t tell me you can’t fit
this into your busy social schedule? O’Shaunessey’s, tonight, seven
thirty. No, no, six thirty. Do they do food? We don’t want to risk
missing him.”

Wayne whined again, “Sam...” He’d
have to go ’round and see Doug and Nick and tell them he couldn’t
make the gig. They weren’t going to like it.

The transformation process was not
going well. Drukk and Braxx had found how to make the ship search
the planet’s primitive ‘Internet’ for pictures of humans so they
could pick one. On Vingg, there were many different body forms and
infinite variety within forms. For humans, it was clearly
different. After an hour of searching, Braxx threw up his lateral
tentacle in exasperation.

“It’s incredible! They all look
exactly the same! What are we wasting our time for? Just pick one
at random.”

Drukk peered into the screen. Braxx
seemed to be right. They had looked at hundreds, possibly thousands
of pictures of these hideous creatures and he still couldn’t tell
one from another. The humans obviously could though, since each one
seemed to have a name and there were even several categories — such
as, “celebrities”, “hot teens”, “lesbians” and “babes”.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter?” he said.
“The ones we have seen all seem to be highly revered. If we just
pick one of the most frequently-occurring forms, we will almost
certainly have selected a high-status type.”

“Then do it,” snapped Braxx. “If I
have to look at one more picture I will shed my dermis!”

“Should I pick a different form for
each of us? Or just one form for all?”

Braxx was past caring. “Can it
possibly matter? Just do what you suggested. Tell the ship to pick
the most common form and we’ll use that.”

So Drukk left it to the ship and,
one by one, they filed into the metamorphosis booth and, one by
one, they came out again, each and every one of them looking like
Loosi Beecham. (Joss, of course, looked like a pregnant Loosi
Beecham, the booth having moved her bud into her abdominal cavity
so that it would mimic the analogous human gestatative condition.)
All fourteen of them stood around, naked, examining their strange
new bodies and poking tentatively at bits of themselves and their
companions.

“Oh, this is absolutely awful!” one
of them cried. “I look disgusting. I feel disgusting. These humans
are monsters. The kind of thing our progenitors used to scare us
with when we were budlets.”

“That’s enough of that!” One of the
Loosi Beechams strode forward, scowling. “The Great Spirit requires
this sacrifice of us. We must accept this… this… degrading
condition in the knowledge that we do Her will.”

“Yeah, well you accept it if you
like. Personally, I would rather look like a Karbassian swamp dog
than like this!”

There was a general murmur of
assent from the other Loosies. “Enough, I say!” shouted the
scowling one.

“Oh shut up,” said the first.

“How dare you? Do you know who
you’re talking to?”

“No.”

The scowler, momentarily taken
aback, blinked in confusion. “Er, right. Hmm. Well, I’m Braxx,
that’s who. Corpuscular Manifestation, third class, of the Great
Spirit. So just watch it!”

“This is ridiculous,” complained
another of the Loosies. “How are we ever going to know who’s
who?”