Cargo Cult (16 page)

Everyone was in a panic. The Mayor
and the State Premier had both already appeared on TV to reassure
the public. This operation was going to get a lot of attention from
on high. Probably that was why the Commissioner wasn’t very happy
when Barraclough suggested that the hijack was somehow connected to
a break-in at Steiner’s department store last night which also
seemed to involve a mob of Loosi Beecham lookalikes. The
Commissioner had passed him immediately to Chief Inspector Sullivan
who had apparently lost the toss and was now heading the
operation.

“What’s all this shit about Loosi
Beecham robbing a department store last night, Barraclough?” the
Chief Inspector growled. “And what the hell are you doing chasing
buses when you’re not even supposed to be on duty?” Barraclough
liked Sheila Sullivan but she didn’t sound like she would be much
fun to work with that day. So he explained as best he could as his
car bumped along through the dust at high speed and listened
patiently to the long string of profanity it evoked.

He noticed a Channel Nine
helicopter appear in the sky above him and, looking around, spotted
another chopper, probably Channel Seven coming in from the East.
Hopefully, the two other helicopters, far away, were the police and
not more reporters.

Sullivan informed him that a SWAT
team was on its way along with fire tenders and ambulances and a
team of negotiators. She also gave him the good news that it was
his job to keep everyone calm and to make sure no-one else got
shot.

“Has anyone spoken to the driver,
yet?” he asked.

“What? Shit! There’d have to be a
radio in the cab right enough.” He heard some shouting in the
background. “OK. Someone’s on it.” There was a pause. When the
Chief Inspector spoke again, her voice was a little gentler. “Look,
mate, when the siege starts, it could get messy and we don’t want
any heroes, right?”

“Too bloody true, Sheila,” he
agreed.

“Good on ya, mate. I’ll catch you
later.”

-oOo-

“Hello, Marcus. Can you hear
me?”

Marcus almost drove them off the
road in his surprise.
Bloody hell!
he thought.
It’s the
radio
.

“Mr Grogan, can you hear me. This
is Chief Inspector Sullivan.”

“Yes! Yes! Oh thank God! Get me out
of here! I’ve been kidnapped by a bloody madwoman in a wedding
dress and she’s going to shoot me with a ray gun!”

“Marcus. Marcus. Listen to me. Now
I want you to stay calm. Can you do that for me Marcus? Just stay
calm and answer a few questions? Are you able to talk, Marcus?”

“Who are you speaking to?” demanded
Braxx, moving forward to stand beside the driver.

“Marcus? Are you still there?” said
the radio. “Marcus, can you hear me?”

“Er, nobody,” said Marcus, trying
to act casual.

“Marcus,” said the radio. “We need
you to tell us what the situation is.”

“What was that?” demanded Braxx,
pointing at the speaker grille in the dashboard.

“Nothing,” said Marcus, shaking his
head and trying to smile in a relaxed and casual manner.

“Your vehicle is speaking,” Braxx
insisted. “Why is your vehicle speaking?”

Marcus cast about frantically for a
reason. “It... it’s the on-board computer. It needs a status report
so that it can, er, tune the engine appropriately for the length of
the journey.”

“I will speak to it,” said
Braxx.

“But... but...”

“Marcus? Come in, Marcus. Can you
hear me?”

“I am Braxx, what do you wish to
know?”

“Hang on,” said Marcus and moved
the microphone closer to his captor. “You have to press that button
when you want to speak.”

Braxx looked down at the control.
“So primitive,” he said with smug contempt. He pressed the button.
“Machine!”

“Now let go so the, er, computer
can speak.”

“Who’s this?” the radio asked.

“I am Braxx. What do you want?”

“Braxx? My name is Sheila. All I
want is for everybody to get off that bus safely. I’m sure you want
the same thing, too.”

Braxx smiled at Marcus. “It is
admirable that you have programmed your machine with such concern
for its occupants.” Marcus smiled back, weakly.

“Braxx?” said the radio. “Braxx,
how can I help you? I only want to help you and to make sure nobody
gets hurt. Tell me what it is you want, Braxx, and I’ll see what I
can do.”

Braxx leaned over and pushed the
button again. “You are doing just fine,” he told the Chief
Inspector. “Keep up the good work.”

He straightened up again, pleased
with his little conversation. Being in a good mood, he decided to
give the human what it had been wanting for so long. “Very well,
human, you may stop the vehicle and ask for directions to our
destination.”

Almost speechless with relief,
Marcus tentatively asked if it would be all right to ask the people
in those cars following them.

Braxx didn’t hesitate. “Of course,
you poor simple-minded creature. Who else could you ask in this
remote place?” And, with a rustle of silk, he went back to his
seat.

-oOo-

Barraclough settled down to the
non-trivial job of keeping his car on the road and immediately had
to slam on his brakes as the whole convoy ahead screeched to a
halt. Even before his car had stopped rocking, he threw open the
door and raced out into the dust, running towards the bus. He
reached the front police cars to find them slewed across the road
to create a barrier behind which police with rifles and handguns
had positioned themselves. More police were moving forward to take
up firing positions. The bus was sitting quietly on the road in
front of them. As the dust settled, he stood between the two front
cars and called for attention.

“I am Detective Sergeant
Barraclough and I’m in charge here. Right?” Silence. “Right?”
Mutters of
Yes, Sarge
. “All right. We have a very exciting
situation here and I know it’s traditional for the police to shoot
people when they get excited, but today we’re not going to do that.
Today, nobody is going to shoot anybody. Do you hear me? Anybody
who shoots anybody is going to get their arse kicked from here to
Hobart. Is that clear?”

“Can’t we even shoot the crims?”
someone asked.

“No. Nobody.” He glared around at
the sulky faces of the uniformed officers. Then he heard the
pneumatic hiss of the bus door opening and he spun around to face
it.

A scrawny young man in a bus
driver’s uniform climbed shakily down the steps followed by a
blonde woman in a white wedding dress and then two more blondes one
in a green bikini and one in a pink negligée. Barraclough heard the
various exclamations from the police ranks. “Steady!” he growled.
The four from the bus walked towards him. Although the man was
clearly wetting himself with fear, the women seemed completely
nonchalant. There was no sign of any weapons but, with a bus full
of hostages, the kidnappers probably felt they didn't need them.
Swallowing hard, Barraclough stepped forward to meet them.

As the women came closer, it was
clear that they were, all three of them, Loosi Beecham. Behind him,
Barraclough heard one of his men give a loud wolf-whistle. Grinding
his teeth, he kept walking forwards. Two metres from the women and
their hostage, Barraclough stopped. The kidnappers stopped too.

The Loosi Beecham in the wedding
dress spoke up. “I am Braxx. I wear the white clothes.”

Slightly taken aback, Barraclough
announced his own name and credentials. “What do you want with
these people?” he demanded. Around their heads the two helicopters
clattered, making it hard to hear what they were saying.

“Nothing,” shouted Braxx. “We
simply seek directions to this place.” He looked at Marcus and the
parish newsletter he was clutching in his trembling hands. “Show
this creature.”

Marcus came forward, holding out
the crumpled magazine.

“They’re mad!” he told Barraclough
in hushed tones as soon as he was close enough. “They think they’re
aliens from the planet Vingg and they want me to take them to this
farm to meet a UFO cult.”

Barraclough calmly took the
magazine and looked at the article. “How many of them are there?”
he asked,
sotto voce
. “What weapons do they have?”

Marcus came closer. “Don’t let them
take me back,” he pleaded. “I’m not really a bus driver. It’s just
something I do for money. I shouldn’t really be here.”

“Get a grip, mate,” Barraclough
hissed. Then he turned and pointed to a policeman. “You. I want a
map of this area right now.” He turned back to Marcus. “Listen,
Marcus, you’re going to get back on that bus and you’re going to
drive these bloody women wherever they want to go. There are more
lives than just yours at stake here. Now, how many of them are
there and what are their weapons?”

“I dunno. About a dozen I suppose.
I didn’t think to count the buggers!”

“Easy, mate, easy. And their
weapons?”

A policeman ran up with a map and
Barraclough took it off him, sending him back with a tilt of his
head. He studied the map.

“That’s the weird thing,” said
Marcus. “They’ve got ray guns. And they all look just the same!
What’s going on?”

“What do you mean they’ve got ray
guns?” He’d heard that hostages could go a bit crazy during sieges,
that they’d sympathise with their kidnappers, or even help them,
but he’d never heard of a hostage sharing his kidnappers’ delusions
before, especially only a couple of hours into the siege.

“I mean they’ve got bloody ray
guns! Phasers, blasters, lasers, particle weapons, disrupters,
disintegrators, you know, bloody ray guns! They blew up half of
bloody Elizabeth Street, for God’s sake. They didn’t do that with
their bare hands.”

The women had been conferring as
Marcus spoke and now stepped up behind him. “Can you direct us?”
asked Braxx. “We must be on our way.”

“Why don’t you let your hostages go
and I’ll give you an escort all the way,” suggested
Barraclough.

“Why can’t they just answer a
simple question?” complained the Loosi Beecham in the pink
negligée. “Why is it barking about hostages? What a planet!”

“Encourage it to answer us,” said
Braxx.

As the two Vinggans raised their
weapons, Marcus became apoplectic with terror. “No, no! Don’t shoot
them. He’ll tell you the way to go. Won’t you Sergeant?” He
clutched at Barraclough. “For God’s sake just tell me the route.
I’ll drive them. Just tell me. Tell me!”

“All right, all right!” Barraclough
was shaken by the man’s uncontrolled fear. “I’ll tell you. All
right?”

Braxx, hearing this, raised a hand
and his companions reluctantly lowered their weapons. Barraclough
pointed to a spot on the map not twenty kilometres from where they
were. “That’s the farm,” he said. “We’re here. Think you can find
it?”

“Yes, yes. Oh thank you,” blubbered
Marcus. He grabbed the map and turned to his captors. “I know the
way now. Come on. We can go now.” He scuttled a little way towards
the bus, looking for them to follow him instead of blowing
everybody up.

Totally bemused by the humans’ odd
behaviour, Braxx turned and followed. The other two did
likewise.

Barraclough watched them go,
noticing for the first time the row of wrinkled faces watching him
from the back window of the bus. One of the old ladies waved to him
and he reflexively waved back.

Ray guns? The bus driver
disappeared into the bus and the three identically gorgeous women
followed behind him. Was it plastic surgery?

He shook himself. Time to saddle up
and get on with it. Turning away, he stomped back to his car,
shouting orders at the police around him to get back in their cars
and not to lose that bus or he’d have their livers served up in the
staff canteen.

And why had they not made any
demands? He got in his car and started the engine. Nothing about
this whole thing was right. Nothing.\

The Agent was all patience.
Although it was impossible to know from up here what the Vinggan
machine was doing down on the surface, the Agent could wait. Sooner
or later the machine would ascend into space again and then the
Agent would take it. Meanwhile, it was scanning the surface around
the Vinggan ship for humans. There were plenty, scattered
everywhere throughout the region, their density increasing towards
the great teeming anthill of a city where the river met the coast.
Perhaps two million of them within a fifty kilometre radius of the
ship. It was like looking at bacteria under a microscope. How would
the Agent pick just one?

But wait. There, within a short
distance of where the ship lay, a group of vehicles racing along
the narrow roadway, other vehicles flying above them. What was
this? The Agent narrowed its focus. All the vehicles, including the
aircraft, had two or more humans in them. Only one, the ground
vehicle at the back of the group, had a single occupant. The Agent
smiled. Excellent. It set energies in motion with its mind and, by
processes unimaginable to anyone in all the seething millions of
humans below, the material of the lone human’s body was
dematerialised, reduced to its pure information content,
information that was imprinted on the beam of energy that bathed
him and which then was read by instruments which rematerialised it
as flesh and bone and blood in the teleport chamber of the Agent’s
starship. Down below, the car in which Detective Sergeant Michael
Barraclough had been sitting, now with a neat, perfectly circular
hole in its roof and another in its floor, swerved off the road and
into the ditch. None of the occupants of the other cars or
helicopters even noticed.

-oOo-

Between blinking his eyes shut and
opening them again, Barraclough found he had left his car and was
now in a small, dimly-lit room. His car seat, still anchored to a
perfectly circular piece of the car, fell fifteen centimetres to
the floor of the little room. A perfectly circular piece of the car
roof fell from above him, landing on his head and a piece of
dashboard fell on his legs. Shocked beyond rational thought, he
yelled incoherently, dropped the steering wheel he was holding, and
threw himself across the room, fell over something he couldn't see,
and fetched up against a smooth, damp wall. He huddled there
looking wildly around him.