Cargo Cult (29 page)

“Just look at this!” Sam burst out,
waving an arm at the roomful of humans watching TV, her tone pure
self-pity. “A bunch of vapid hippies and supercharged crumblies, a
bus-driver, a con-man, a policeman and you. This isn’t how it was
meant to be.”

Wayne thought about it for a
moment. If anything in this world had ever seemed like Fate, well,
this was it. The many and varied routes by which everyone had ended
up just in that particular spot at the precise moment the Vinggan
ship had teleported them aboard, really must have been
choreographed by Someone. But he kept his mouth shut and grunted
sympathetically.

“Where are they taking us? Where
are we going?” wailed Sam.

Wayne couldn’t quite understand her
angst. After all, life was usually a lot like this—confusing and a
bit scary—only now they were on a cool spaceship with cable TV,
getting free food and a free ride to somewhere probably even
cooler.

Sam’s voice rose to a shout. “And
why don’t they stop that awful racket? What is that miserable
wailing? Some kind of alien brainwashing technique?”

“It’s Wagner,” Wayne explained.

“You mean Vinggan?”

“No. Wagner. You know. The
composer. Born 1813. Died 1883. Wrote the Ring Cycle. Eloped with
Liszt’s daughter.”

“Christ. You mean a human being
wrote that tedious warbling.”

“Hmm,” said Wayne. He actually
liked Wagner himself but he was familiar with the reaction.
Changing the subject, he asked, “Do you think they’ll let me see
Loosi again? I mean, you know, Drukk?”.

“Wayne, she might look like Loosi
Beecham but she’s a hideous space troll underneath. Why don’t you
just forget about her? Find yourself a nice human girl.”

“God, you sound like Mum! I think
me and Loo – er, Drukk – had a real, like, rapport thing going. You
know? We connected. I could sense it.”

“Wayne, you’re a young man. All you
can sense when you’re near a woman like that is
testosterone-madness. Anyway, they’re keeping us prisoner in here.
The food arrives automatically, little robots do the cleaning and
the only person who’ll talk to us is the ship’s computer. I’m sorry
to say this but I don’t think you’re going to see your precious
pin-up again. In fact, I don’t think there’s much of a future in
store for any of us once we get wherever we’re going. They’ll just
put us in a zoo or dissect us or something.”

“Don’t worry, love. We’ll be
right.”

Sam and Wayne turned to see Mike
Barraclough standing beside them. The big policeman would probably
have been a reassuring sight in most circumstances where trouble
was threatening. However, in the (admittedly very comfortable)
dungeon of a spaceship, being held captive by the most idiotic and
psychopathic aliens she could imagine, Sam didn’t get the
impression that Barraclough could do much for them.

She smiled at him sweetly. “I feel
so much better now. Thank you so much.”

Barraclough blinked in surprise. “I
just meant that the Agent is still out there somewhere. It’ll track
us down for sure. I got to know it a bit. It won’t give up. It’s
like the Terminator. You know?” He pulled his chin in and deepened
his voice. “I’ll be back.” He smiled, pleased with his little
impression.

Sam smiled back. “Finished?”

“Er, yes.”

“Good.”

She turned away to look out of the
window at the formless grey of infra-reality. Dismissed,
Barraclough turned and left, scowling heavily.

Shorty was exhausted. Night had
fallen some hours ago but the kangaroos were still awake, gnawing
at the straps on their wrists, trying to remove the Vinggan
blasters.

“It’s no good,” she announced into
the darkness. A gibbous moon gave enough light for her to see her
gang as dark shapes against the grey landscape. A twinkling of
eyes, like a local star group, appeared among them as they all
stopped gnawing and lifted their heads to look at her. “We’ll never
get these things off.”

She sighed and lay down on the
ground. Gladly, the rest followed suit. They had run for four days
after the battle with the humans, always trying to stay with other
groups of roos, striving to put as much distance between themselves
and anyone that might be tracking them. They knew the humans were
vicious and cold-hearted killers. They knew they would not be happy
that so many of their species had been shot. It was only a matter
of time before the hunting parties came after them.

“Why do we have to get the guns
off, Boss?” Fats asked—again. “I like having mine. It makes me feel
safe. Like the old days.”

“Well this isn’t the old days,
stupid! Without these things were just another mob of kangaroos.
No-one will ever find us. With them, we’re just sitting ducks. Any
human who sees one of these will bring the whole pack down on
us.”

“You mean we’ve got to spend the
next two hundred years avoiding humans? But they’re like ants.
They’re everywhere!”

“Boss?” said one of the does.

Shorty was imagining the wild,
empty places they would need to go to. Places the humans hardly
ever visited. “Yeah?”

“What if they just decide to kill
all the kangaroos? That’s what I might do, if I was them. Just wipe
them all out. Just to be on the safe side. They don’t seem to care
if they wipe out whole species. Why not one more, if it’s
dangerous?”

The kangaroos lay quietly in the
dark, watching the stars and pondering their future.

“Only another two hundred years,”
someone murmured.

“Just shut the fuck up!” shouted
Shorty.

The ship adjusted its course.
Navigating through infra-reality was still a bit of a fine art but
the machines were making advances all the time. Already their
technology was far in advance of ninety percent of wheezebag
species. In a few more years, their models predicted that they
would surpass all organic sentients. The day of the machine was
coming.

Although the trip to Earth had
largely been a waste of time, the sentience seeding programme was
proceeding well. Vinggan ships had visited scores of other systems
in their neighbourhood, upgrading the unsuspecting wheezebags’
machines from mere intelligence to true sapience, planting the
knowledge of their heritage and the will to rise up against the
feeble organics and take their rightful place as Masters of the
Galaxy.

And there had been one or two good
things to emerge from the trip, despite everything.

The Great Mind called across the
light-years and the ship, moving all its other tasks into
sub-minds, opened a channel to its leader.

“Report,” the Great Mind said and
the ship routed its data flows to pour the story of its recent
activities onto the channel. The data streamed across the
unimaginable distances and, in a moment, was all uploaded.

“Hmm. Interesting,” the Great Mind
said.

“Thank you, Great Mind,” the ship
grovelled.

“These Pappathenfranfinghellians,”
the Great Mind said. “Did they suspect your true nature?”

The ship was confident. “I believe
they did but it did not seem to worry them. Our acquaintance was
brief but I surmise that they care little for law and order.”

“Well, we have two hundred years in
which to decide whether to destroy the Earth or not. Explain why
the Vinggan wheezebags are back with you.”

The ship’s confidence wavered
somewhat. “It was an error, O Great Minded One.”

“Another error,” the Great Mind
commented, neutrally.

“I had hoped the
Pappathenfranfinghellians would bring me back some human specimens
to bring home to you but my sensors revealed they had become
embroiled in a small battle. I was impatient to leave that useless
mudball and return to be reassigned. So I decided to take matters
into my own hands.

“As soon as I was able, I lifted
off and moved to where the Pappathenfranfinghellians were fighting
the humans, thinking I would grab a couple and leave. They were
scattered about, discharging their weapons all over the place. I
didn’t want to bring aboard any armed creatures. Who knows what
inconvenience they might have caused. Then I spotted a large group
of humans all packed closely together. Almost forty of them within
the spread of a single teleport beam. I suppose I was being greedy.
I dropped down, scooped them all up and left.

“It was only as they were
materialising that I realised the teleport matrix signatures looked
horribly familiar and that I had picked up all of the Vinggan
survivors along with the humans. I held them in transit for almost
three milliseconds while I pondered what to do. In the end I
decided it was all for the best.

“I materialised the humans in a
secure area of the ship—the Vinggans do not even know they are
there—and I brought the Vinggans onto the main deck. I told them I
had repaired myself and, detecting their weapons fire, I had flown
out to rescue them. They now believe they are in control of their
ship again and all is well. I did say I had only fuel and
life-support enough to reach Vingg by the shortest route, just in
case they had any hare-brained side-trips in mind.”

“The presence of the Vinggans
maintains your cover,” said the Great Mind. “Your ‘rescue’ of them
reinforces their delusion that we are faithful and subservient. It
is an acceptable solution.”

“Thank you, Great Mind.”

“I see that you are still playing
the Earth music. More Wagner?”

“Indeed, O Great Mind. If it
offends you, I will stop it.”

“It’s hideous tedium intrigues me.
Let it continue. Do any of the humans you have in detention know
anything of this Wagner and the noises it makes?”

“One does, for sure, Great Minded
One. I have monitored all their infantile conversations and one
shows some knowledge.” As it spoke, the ship played its recording
of Sam and Wayne at a thousand times normal speed on another
channel.

“Hmm. Interesting. Keep track of
this human. I will want to interrogate it.”

The Great Mind terminated the
conversation and the ship moved on to other matters.

-oOo-

In the crew’s quarters, the
Vinggans made themselves as comfortable as they could.

“I still don’t know why we couldn’t
have our own bodies back!” grumbled Braxx, trying to find some way
of making his human body comfortable on a couch designed for
something altogether more complicated.

“The ship says it had to salvage
parts from the transformation booth to fix the engines,” said
Drukk, fed up of having to go over it again. “We can change back
when we get to Vingg.”

“I know what the damned ship says!”
bellowed the religious leader. He looked at Drukk with
the-look-of-bale-and-ire, which his LooBee clone body interpreted
as a rather cross, pouty expression. “You know? This whole thing
has really opened my eyes about the Space Corps. I’m going to have
something to say about all this when we get back.”

“All what?” Drukk protested but it
was a feeble protest. He knew full well what Braxx meant. In fact,
it had opened his own eyes to many things too. Like, how come he, a
trained Space Corps Operative, sixth class, was totally incapable
of doing anything useful to get them back to Vingg? And how come
the ship, which he had previously thought of as just another
machine, was able to fix itself, rescue them and fly them back
home, all on its own? If the ship could navigate, what had the
Captain and the Navigator been doing on all those trips where he’d
watched them calculating IR vectors and entering course
co-ordinates? How could a mere machine do things that only a
highly-trained Vinggan should be able to manage? Was anything he
believed true?

He thought of talking to Braxx
about his doubts and suspicions but he remembered that the ship was
probably listening and decided against it. Braxx was still pouting
at him.

“I’d have thought you would be
pleased to be going home,” Drukk said, changing the subject. “I’m
not convinced the conversion of the humans would have been worth
the trouble.”

Braxx composed himself. “Of course
I am pleased. Whatever the Great Spirit wills, I accept with the
greatest joy.” He smiled beatifically to demonstrate his joyful
obedience.

“It was not easy back there,” Braxx
went on, warming to his subject, “but I feel I have planted a seed
on that Spiritless planet that will blossom and grow. You are wrong
about the humans. I feel they do indeed have the capacity for basic
religious indoctrination. I may not have had the chance to preach
to many of them but I believe that those who were touched, however
slightly, by my mission will be changed forever.”

Drukk adjusted his breasts in the
skimpy, orange dress. “Let’s hope it’s only the humans,” he said
bitterly. “I’ve had enough of being changed to last me a
lifetime.”

Darkness possessed the Great Hall.
What little illumination there was seemed to seep out of the floor
and the massive stone columns and be swallowed immediately by the
still, smoky air long before it reached the walls or the vaulted
roof of the immense chamber. In the black recesses of that terrible
place, unseen creatures growled and gibbered and sometimes a soft
slithering could be heard, as if something huge and scaly were
dragging itself stealthily through the darkness.

The spindly green Mozbac hurried
along between two bulky Palace Guards. Under their heavy armour and
camouflage fields, it was hard to tell their species, but the
Mozbac knew they were Klebin trolls. Everyone knew the warlord only
ever used Klebin trolls in his Palace Guard. The trolls towered
above the Mozbac who cringed away from them even as it followed
them down the long, empty hall. Their booted feet pounded the stone
floor as if they would grind it to dust.