Cargo Cult (18 page)

“What’s all this got to do with
Doug McKinnock?” he asked eventually, in despair.

The Agent frowned. “I am willing to
answer any question you have. You may ask about the nature of
galactic civilisation, the origin of life in the universe, the
physical basis of consciousness. Anything.”

So, the big fella was hiding
something! “Never mind all that bollocks!” Barraclough snarled.
“Just tell me what Douggie and his mate were doing in Steiner’s
department store last night.”

The Agent sighed, sadly. His
Lalantran creators had built into his genetic memory the knowledge
that there was no hope for the lesser species but it was still sad
to see it for himself.

“From what I can piece together
from memories that are in your mind and from evidence I myself
possess, it seems the humans of whom you speak were innocently
caught up in events.”

“I don’t believe it. Douggie never
did an innocent thing in his life. He probably mugged his mother to
get her milk. So how about telling me the truth? Why are you
protecting a nasty little tosser like Douggie?”

The Agent was perplexed. “You are
not being rational, human. I have no connection with any of your
species except yourself. It is most likely a group of Vinggans that
invaded this ‘department store’ and who hijacked the vehicle your
were pursuing.”

“Vinggans? What the bloody hell is
a Vinggan when its at home?” Barraclough was indeed becoming
irrational, for all kinds of very rational reasons. Just now, his
irrationality was manifesting itself as a growing anger at this
oversized troll. Who the hell did it think it was? What right did
it have to go around kidnapping people—policemen!—going about their
lawful business? “Don’t give me that crap, you gargoyle. I want the
full story. Just what are you doing here and why the fuck are you
doing it on my patch?”

“You are very single-minded,” the
Agent told him. “I admire your persistence. I too am a hunter,
created by the galaxy’s most noble species to track down and
destroy the machines which are plotting against all life. They have
been using the Vinggans as cover for their insidious schemes for
galactic domination and now they seek to use your planet in some
way to further their heinous plans. I must uncover their intent and
prevent them from spreading their unnatural sapience any
further.”

Barraclough struggled against the
forces holding him for a moment, not really listening to his captor
but then, as the words sank in, he had a sudden realisation. “You
mean you’re like some sort of alien monster cop thing?” he
asked.

“If you wish. I am an Agent of the
Lalantrans.”

“Yeah right but that means you’re
like a cop, yeah? You’re one of the good guys and you hunt down the
bad guys, right?”

“The terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ only
have meaning within the framework of an absolute morality based on
theistic revelation. The more advanced species use relativistic
ethical frameworks based, typically, on the avoidance of suffering.
Of course, some members of the Council of Elite Species have
created ethical systems based on a duty to increase pleasure. I am
thinking particularly of the Growagan Collective who have increased
their pleasure so much that they just sit around in Council
meetings giggling inanely and tickling each other. Even that’s not
as bad as the Acc of Icc who decided to do away with morality
altogether. They had to be expelled from the Council of Elite
Species for lying about everything and farting in the Council
Chamber. Then there were the...”

“Oi! Are you a cop or not?”

With a snort of exasperation, the
Agent agreed. “Yes, if you wish to look at it that way, I am a
cop.”

“Good on ya! Look, mate, what do
you say we help each other out here, eh?”

-oOo-

“Oh come off it Wayne!” Sam was
losing patience with her little brother. “Even you can’t be dumb
enough to swallow all this alien rubbish.” She turned to Drukk who
had sat impassively while Wayne had explained to John and Sam that,
as he put it, Loosi Beecham was really an alien from the planet
Vingg. “With all due respect to Ms Beecham, here, the woman has had
a bad knock to the head and she’s two prawns short of a barbie.”
She turned to John, who had sat riveted throughout Wayne’s
impassioned presentation. “And with all due respect to Mr Saunders,
here, you’d have to be even more of a nutcase than he is to believe
anything she says.”

Wayne was peeved. This was so like
Sam. Every single thing he ever said was rubbish in her almighty
opinion. Well he believed Loosi, and Sam was going to believe it
too. He took Drukk by the shoulders. “Loosi, you’ve got to show
them, convince them somehow. Do something alien for them. Pull your
face off or something.”

“Pull my face off? What in the name
of the Spirit do you mean?”

“He means give us a sign,” said
John. “If you are one of the Sky People, you will know the
signs.”

Drukk knew about signs all right.
The Great Spirit was always giving signs to the religious lot back
on Vingg. Statues oozed pus, the sick were encysted, water was
turned into hydrogen disulphide, the usual stuff. But Drukk was not
the Great Spirit and what would a sign from him mean to these
primitive people? Was it ethical to dazzle them with technical
party-tricks just so that they would take him seriously?

He wished Braxx were there. Braxx
would know with the certainty of dogma what was appropriate in the
circumstances. The Space Corps never really went in much for
ethical training. Obedience is good. Disobedience is bad. They
taught them that all right. They even had big posters with it
written in metre-high characters all over the dormitories. But that
had been as far as it went. He tried to remember his religious
education at school and in various compulsory indoctrination camps
he’d attended over the years but, come to think of it, none of what
he’d learnt about ethics had amounted to much more than that.
Obedience is good. Disobedience is bad. Not much use in his present
situation.

For inspiration, he looked into his
bag to see if there was anything that might be of any use in
raising the dead or getting spots out of carpets or something. He
picked out a small, black pyramid. He hadn’t a clue what it was for
and had only put it in his bag because it was one of the few
objects lying around the ship that had been small enough and light
enough to carry. He supposed there wasn’t much point in carrying it
around with him. “Here,” he said, handing it to John. “You can have
that if you like.”

John leaped back out of his chair
as if the object had stung him. His eyes were wide with terror and
his face was white. “No! It can’t be!” He looked frantically at
Sam. “It’s all a load of rubbish. there aren’t really supposed to
be any Sky People! I just made it all up to get those stupid kids
to come around and fix up the farmhouse.”

Wayne was shocked. “What? This
whole thing is just a big fraud?”

“Well, of course it’s a fraud,
stupid,” said Sam in exasperation. “Only he’s not supposed to come
right out and admit it.”

“No, you don’t understand.” John
was still staring at the pyramid. “The first Gift is the Pyramid of
Power. That’s how we will know them. It’s all there in the book I’m
writing, only no-one has seen it yet. And, anyway, it’s all a load
of crap. It’s not supposed to be real.”

“What is this, anyway?” asked Sam,
picking up the little pyramid. “It’s some kind of plastic toy or
something?” She poked at a few protrusions and looked for an ‘on’
switch on the base. Suddenly it pulsed with a pale light and made a
small thrumming sound. She dropped it onto the table as if it had
bitten her. Then laughed at herself. “John, you’re giving me the
creeps with all this... holy shit!”

They all leaped out of their seats
and scrabbled to put some distance between themselves and the
pyramid as a bright blue light blazed out of it. Even Drukk was
alarmed, fearing for an instant that he’d picked up a land-mine or
some other munition. Then he adopted the
normally-sensible-being-now-amused-at-its-own-folly posture, which
his body interpreted as a nervous giggle.

“Fear not, humans,” he said and
went over to the pyramid and pushed the button labelled ‘review’. A
small, full-colour, three-dimensional image appeared in the air
above the device showing John, Sam, Wayne and Drukk leaping up from
a table in various postures of alarm. “It’s only a camera. It will
not hurt you.”

Feeling a little silly, or, in
Sam’s case, feeling rather cross and a little silly, they all moved
closer to examine the image. Intriguingly, both front and back of
every object within two metres of the pyramid was rendered in full
detail. “How does it do that?” Wayne wanted to know.

“Yes, I’ve often wondered myself,”
said Drukk.

“This is amazing,” said John in a
hushed voice, circling the image, awed by its implications. “I... I
thought it was all made up but I must have known, somehow. I must
have been inspired with the knowledge. I am a true prophet after
all!”

Sam was just getting crosser and
crosser. “OK you.” She faced Drukk squarely and took a pace closer
to him. “What’s going on here? If this is some kind of hare-brained
publicity stunt after all, I’m going to stick that bouffant,
marshmallow-filled cavity you call a head up the nearest cow’s
backside and beat your over-developed arse with a fence-post until
my arms ache.”

Both Wayne and John scurried to
juxtapose themselves between Drukk and the advancing Sam. “Stop!”
said John, giving her a blast of the hypnotic eyes.

While she was momentarily stunned
and confused, Wayne spoke up. “Sam, don’t you see? It’s real. Loosi
really is an alien. She’s come here from another world.”

“Bollocks! She’s a low-life,
publicity-hungry, self-serving, Hollywood...” —she searched briefly
for the ultimate insult— “... actress!”

“Sam, what do you think that is on
the table?” he waved at the pyramid and its bright little
tableau.

“It’s... it’s some kind of
trick.”

“Sam, listen.” He took her by the
shoulders and looked her in the eye, something he had now done
twice in one day. “This is the biggest story of your life. This is
the biggest story of all time. Sam, this is the biggest news the
world has ever had. Ever! And it’s your story Sam. No-one else even
knows. Loosi Beecham is an alien from the planet Vingg and you are
the only reporter on the spot.”

Her brother’s appeal to her
self-interest began to work its magic on Sam. If this was true...
She looked past Wayne at Loosi Beecham the alien, Loosi Beecham her
ticket to overnight mega-stardom, only to find that the fraud,
Saunders, was leading her through the door with an arm around her
shoulder.

“Hey!” she shouted but John looked
over his shoulder at her and said, “Wait there, Sam. There’s no
need to follow us.” She had to agree. What had she been thinking?
She calmly stood and watched them walk down the hallway and out
onto the porch before her temper flared and prodded her into action
again. “Hey!”

She ran after them, bursting
through the screen door only to pull herself up short again as she
saw the crowd of devotees in a half-moon outside the house, staring
silently up at John and Drukk.

“I have performed the tests,” John
announced in a loud voice. His followers seemed to strain forward
in their eagerness to know the outcome. “This is Drukk of the
planet Vingg. She has come to us from the sky and has brought
Gifts.”

“He, actually,” muttered Drukk but
didn’t press the point.

“We...” — and here John was
overcome with a wild euphoria and laughed aloud in an excess of
pure joy — “We are the Receivers of the Cosmic Bounty. Soon we will
be Taken. Soon the Ship will come. I have foreseen it all! And even
as I told you, so shall it come to pass! Let us give praise to the
Sky People! Let us honour their emissary, the beautiful Drukk!”

Then, as one, the followers dropped
to their knees and raised their arms to Drukk, making little gimme,
gimme grasping motions with their outstretched hands.

“Look, mate, if you could just try
and stay calm that would really help us all out a lot, all right?”
The Chief Inspector’s tone, even over the tinny little speaker in
the bus dashboard, was beginning to reveal just a touch of
tetchiness.

“Calm?” Marcus hissed back on the
verge of hysteria. “Stay bloody calm? That’s your expert advice for
dealing with this bloody crisis is it? That’s it? Stay calm?”
I
shouldn’t even be here
, he thought.
I’m not a bus driver. I
shouldn’t even be here
.

“Excuse me,” said Braxx, leaning
over his shoulder from behind.

“Waaaghhhh!” screamed Marcus,
leaping sideways in terror. The bus, finding no-one’s hands on the
wheel, made a dash for the nearest ditch. “Waaaghhhh!” screamed
Marcus, leaping back into his seat and wrestling the wayward
vehicle back onto the road. “What do you want?” he shouted. “You
scared the shit out of me!”

Braxx was as alarmed as ever by the
strange behaviour of the human. How could such an insane race
survive? They could not seem to perform the simplest tasks, or even
hold a conversation, without wild mood swings. He offered a small
prayer of thanks to the Great Spirit. After all, the fact that
these humans were such a challenge must reflect the Great Spirit’s
confidence in Braxx’s ability to bring them into the fold.
Nevertheless, a part of him wished that his abilities were not
quite so well-regarded.

“I noticed that you were talking to
your vehicle again,” Braxx tried to keep his own manner calm and
steady. Perhaps the humans would benefit greatly from his example?
Perhaps by guiding them towards a more serene and well-balanced way
of life, he could raise them above the primitive state he had found
them in? For an instant he saw his face on the cover of
The
Communality
with the headline “Braxx Leads Primitives to
Enlightenment”. Of course, that was not a reason to bring salvation
to these poor creatures, but it would not hurt his career in the
Church at all.