Cargo Cult (36 page)

Sam seemed remarkably unfazed by
what the others secretly admitted were pretty crushing objections
to her plan. She confounded them further by allowing herself a
small smile of triumph. "I'd have to agree with you, Chewbacca,"
she told Barraclough, cheerfully, “but we have one little advantage
you seem to have overlooked." Clearly enjoying the irritation on
Barraclough's face, she reached out and grabbed Drukk by the arm,
pulling him forward. "Let me introduce Luke Skywalker, our very
own, certified, honest-to-goodness alien astronaut!"

-oOo-

Chuwar looked down from his dais at
the funny little aliens beneath him. The Vinggans were not what he
had expected. Werpot had told him they would be big, slimy,
tentacled things. Instead, they were small, fragile-looking
creatures that teetered alarmingly on just two legs. Their skin,
where he could see it, was pinkish and their limbs were stiff and
brittle-looking. Their slender bodies were coated in
brightly-coloured materials which he assumed was some kind of
advanced body-armour – but he could not explain why there would be
such differences in design. There were three of them. The leader –
standing slightly in front of the others – wore white and that was
just as well because he could not for the life of him tell one from
the other.

"I am Chuwar!" he declared,
pronouncing his name Chu-Waaagh as he usually did.

Werpot stepped forward hurriedly to
make the introductions. "Greetings, Vinggans on behalf of His
Magnificence the Mighty Chuwar, Lord of To'egh and absolute ruler
of the Meisos Dominions. I am Werpot Ka Thigrule, His Lordship's
vizier. We have already spoken when we made the arrangements for
your visit." He smiled ingratiatingly then turned to Chuwar who was
eyeing him impatiently. "Your Magnificence, this is the delegation
from Vingg. May I present Braxx, Corpuscular Manifestation, third
class, of the Great Spirit and his companions Trugg and Klakk."

Braxx regarded the vizier and his
master. Chuwar was an enormous, heavily-built reptilian, his green
and gold scaly body adorned with badges of office and ceremonial
weapons. Braxx had seen several species like it before but none
quite so large or vicious-looking. The vizier was quite different,
small, almost black, with thin, papery skin and multi-jointed limbs
which he kept folded away most of the time, he was almost insectoid
but of a breed Braxx had never encountered. "You are not of the
same species," he commented conversationally.

Again Werpot did the talking. "His
Magnificence is of the exalted Durak people. Mighty rulers all of
them. I am not so fortunate," he made a deprecating gesture. "I am
a N'oid."

"Annoyed about what?" Braxx
enquired politely.

“Pardon?" Werpot asked, confused by
the sudden shift in the conversation.

"What are you annoyed about?"

'Me? I'm not annoyed." He cast an
anxious glance at Chuwar. His master's tolerance for idiocy from
aliens was extremely low.

"You just said you were," Braxx
insisted.

There was an awkward silence.

It is surprisingly rare that a
translation device takes a word from one language and renders it
into another language with any degree of ambiguity. Yet it does
happen, especially with proper nouns, which such devices always
find difficult to manage. In fact, these accidental 'homophonically
anomalous transliterations' – as they are known in the world of
translation field engineering – are the subject of many a ribald
joke and most stand-up comics around the galaxy have a few of them
in their repertoire. Many of these are taken from the best-selling
booksim "The Bedside Homophonically Anomalous Transliteration
Companion” – which has broken several galactic sales records and
has translated itself into over four thousand of the galaxy's
leading languages.

It is ironic, therefore, that
no-one in the great hall was laughing.

“Perhaps," said Braxx, ever willing
to ignore the foibles of inferior species, and attempting to get
the conversation back on track, “you could tell me which planet you
are from."

"N'o," the N'oid replied with a
polite nod.

The Vinggan's smile vanished. He
turned to the warlord. "Is this some kind of joke? Or is it your
habit to have your lackeys insult your guests?"

Chuwar, who had been listening to
the exchange in amazement, was as confused as his vizier by the
whole thing. "Are these Vinggans mad?" he asked Werpot, who seeing
his plans for a better future rapidly slipping away hurriedly began
temporising.

"I'm sure it is all some kind of
misunderstanding, Your Magnificence. The Vinggan emissaries must
have misunderstood..."

"The impudence of the wizened
little creature!" Braxx was outraged that it could be suggested
that a Vinggan – especially one of his stature – could have
misunderstood anything. He fixed the puzzled warlord with an
imperious eye and pointed at the hapless vizier. "What is your
servant hiding? Tell me where this creature comes from?"

Chuwar gave a baffled shrug. "N'o,"
he said. "He already told you."

"No he didn't!" Braxx shouted.
"What's going on here? You people are as mad as humans!"

"What?" Chuwar roared.

The little Mozbac functionary, who
had been standing a few paces away, had been growing increasingly
anxious as the strange alien had grown more and more belligerent.
He had almost cried out in shock when the insane creature had
called Chuwar 'mad' but the sight of the great warlord rising to
his feet and bellowing was more than the Mozbac could bear. In
panic, he threw his arms out wide and rose up on his hind legs,
wailing – an instinctive fear reaction of his species.

Braxx and his two companions, with
Chuwar roaring in front of them and a Mozbac wailing behind them
did what any Vinggan would do in their situation. They drew their
weapons and began blasting away at everything that moved – and
quite a few things that just stood there gawping at them in
astonishment. The little Mozbac disappeared in a cloud of vapour
and Chuwar and his vizier might have been next had the Palace Guard
not lurched into action, surrounding their master and pulling huge
weapons from their back-packs. The Vinggans were quickly the focus
of a dozen streams of high-velocity metal pellets, fired from the
trolls' screaming rail guns at hypersonic speeds, each stream with
enough energy to slice through granite like a chainsaw through
balsa wood. Which was all a bit unfortunate, really, since the
Vinggans' personal force fields, coming on instantly to protect
their wearers, deflected the pellet-streams easily and in all
directions. The Palace Guard suddenly found itself facing a cloud
of its own hypersonic shrapnel, as if they had surrounded a very
large grenade that they had then triggered. The expanding cloud of
pellets tore through them, blasting them to pieces as it
passed.

Chuwar and Werpot would have been
ripped to shreds too except that they were both wearing inflatable
body armour. At the first sign of trouble, the tiny packets of
monomolecular fabric dotted around their bodies – each about the
size of a shirt-button – had explosively inflated like lots of
little air-bags. To the amazed Vinggans, still marvelling at the
way the Palace Guard had self-destructed, it looked as though
Chuwar and his vizier had sprouted big fat mushrooms all over their
bodies. For a moment, Braxx exchanged surprised glances with his
companions, then he stepped forward to look more closely at his
host's condition. The rail gun pellets seemed to have bounced
harmlessly off the tough monomolecular polymer but the armour was
so tightly inflated that neither the warlord nor his servant seemed
able to move.

Watching from inside his protective
armour, Chuwar could quite clearly see the Vinggans peering at him.
The peculiar aliens stood unharmed at the centre of a ring of dead
trolls and now advanced on him on their two, long, teetery legs,
their little heads tilting from side to side as they examined him.
He struggled in vain to move but he knew he could not. The
inflatable armour held him completely immobile, as it was intended
to, protecting him from even a major explosion. But the emergency
beacon had activated automatically. His guards would soon be
pouring into the hall. Yet it was clear to Chuwar that these
Vinggans could easily wipe out his entire army in this kind of
fighting. Their shields would protect them while they picked off
his soldiers one by one – or the stupid trolls destroyed themselves
in hopeless attacks.

As soon as this crisis was over,
Chuwar was going to have a word with his arms dealer. That lying
Frofrifrathalionion
slug had told him
inflatable armour was the last word in personal protection. Well
that was just crap. Chuwar wanted what the Vinggans had!

Braxx poked the rigid membrane that
surrounded Chuwar.

"Do you think he's all right in
there?" Trugg asked.

Braxx tapped on the armour. "Can
you hear me?" he called. It was all very odd. "Look, we're sorry
about your guards. It was an accident, what with all that shouting
and commotion. It's so easily done, don't you find?"

He tapped on the armour again. He
wasn't even sure which bit of Chuwar he was talking to any more.
Once inflated, the creature was almost twice the size it had been
before and its shape had become indistinct and puffy.

"Hello," he said again. "Look,
we'll happily compensate you for the loss of your, er,
whatever-they-were. I don't suppose they were worth much." With a
sigh, he turned to his companions. "Well this isn't what I
expected."

"It's that black thing's fault,"
Trugg said, pointing at Werpot's bubble. "I've never seen such a
belligerent species! It's like he just wanted to start an
argument."

Chuwar watched them carefully, only
half-listening to their idiotic chatter. He must have been right
about the brightly-coloured fabrics they were wrapped in. Those
must be the source of their protective fields. The one who was
speaking wore gold, the leader wore white, and the other wore red.
The fabrics were similarly smooth and light yet each had a subtly
different texture. Did the Vinggans signify rank by each wearing a
different kind of field-generating armour? When he spoke to his
arms dealer, he would need to see catalogues and specifications –
although he was fairly certain that it would be the leader's white
armour that was the highest spec. That's what he would get for
himself – however silly he might look in such a device, it would be
worth it!

"Does anyone have a pin?" Klakk
wondered. “Maybe we can pop a few of those bubbles and get through
to them."

The Vinggans searched their
shoulder bags for a moment but came up empty-handed. "Oh this is
just silly!" Braxx announced at last. "All we want is a stupid flow
control modulator doodad. I say we stop messing about with these
ridiculous creatures, go and find where they keep them, take one
and be off."

Chuwar watched them shrugging and
nodding. Their body language meant nothing to him but he could see
they were getting ready to leave. "Werpot," he said softly into his
communicator. "I don't believe there is any further danger from
them. Do you agree?"

"They seem to think it was all some
kind of misunderstanding, Sire.."

'Very well." The warlord uttered
the control sequence that switched off his armour and as quickly as
it had appeared, it was gone, sucked back into its little
buttons.

Startled by the sudden reappearance
of Chuwar, the Vinggans again raised their weapons.

"No, don't shoot!" shouted Werpot,
also reappearing. "There's no danger to you. Everything is fine. We
understand it was all just a little mistake." Encouraged by the
fact that the Vinggans were lowering their little weapons, he
ventured a friendly smile. "It could happen to anybody. I'm sure
we'll all have a good laugh about this later." He gave a short
laugh but stopped himself when he heard how tense and strained it
sounded.

At that moment, far away in the
gloom, the doors of the Great Hall burst open and dozens of
heavily-armed trolls began flooding into the room, their boots
thundering against the stone floor. Again the Vinggans raised their
weapons and turned to face this new tumult.

"Stop!" the mighty warlord bellowed
and, instantly, all movement ceased. As the echoes rattled around
the vaulted chamber, he turned to the Vinggans. “Now, my little
friends, why don't we get down to business?”

As much as Drukk denied any ability
to pilot spaceships and protested his ignorance of anything to do
with astrogation, none of the humans would believe him.

"She's so modest," Wayne kept
saying, full of admiration.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too
much," said John.

"All right," said Barraclough,
gruffly. "It might just work. He turned to Drukk for the third
time. "Are you sure you can pilot one of those things?"

"No!" the hapless Vinggan insisted.
"No, no, no! How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid
biped?"

"So modest," Wayne sighed.

"Let's just get you inside," Sam
said, reassuringly. "You'll feel more confident about it when you
see the controls."

"Slime and mucous!" Drukk moaned
and gave up arguing.

The little band of fugitives had
made its way through the buildings to a spot just a short distance
from one of the parked spaceships. From their hideout in the shadow
of a mud-coloured buttress, they surveyed the area. No-one was in
sight. The spaceport was virtually deserted. Once or twice they had
seen aliens in the distance – slender, green-skinned things that
looked like two-metre-long, tailless skinks with an extra pair of
arms at the front. They looked pretty harmless – quite cute and
friendly in fact – but the humans kept out of sight. They quizzed
Drukk about the green-skinned guys but he denied all knowledge of
them, saying only that they looked like they'd make poor
slaves.