Cargo Cult (39 page)

Shorty was all sweet patience. "No,
Fats, it won't. You see, we're all going to stand at the opposite
end, by that wall there, so that when the earth falls in, we won't
be underneath it."

There was a murmur of appreciation
of this stroke of genius and Shorty let it work its way through the
group. "Any more questions?" she asked affably.

"Er, yes Boss."

"Gimpy! What would you like to
know?"

"I, er, just wondered..."

"Come on Gimpy don't be shy. You're
among friends here."

"I just wondered what if those
humans are waiting out there for us when they see we've found a way
out?"

"Excellent question, Gimpy. I
expect that's exactly where they will be, don't you?"

Gimpy looked pleased with herself.
"Well, yes Boss."

"Yes, Boss." There was something
about the way shorty said this that sent a shiver of alarm through
everyone present. Suddenly the sweetness was gone and the steel was
back in the boss's voice. "Now then, are there any more
staggeringly stupid questions? Because I've got to tell you that,
the next person who asks one, I will personally rip his fucking
ears off! Now get over there and start shooting at the wall like I
told you!"

Everyone scurried over to the end
of the trench except for Gimpy who found Shorty blocking her way.
"Oh, and Gimpy, if you do see any of those pesky little humans when
we get to the surface, just shoot the fucking things!"

Gimpy sidled past with a muttered,
"Yes Boss," and joined the others at the far wall, Shorty close
behind her.

Shorty's eyes narrowed with
determination. "OK, guys, start firing!"

-oOo-

Police Constable Jack Collins was
the hero of the hour. His plan had worked flawlessly. The whole
community had got behind it and now they gathered around the pit
they had dug and slapped the young policeman's back. Several
dragged eskys full of cold beer out of their utes. A few blokes
were putting a fire together, thinking this could turn into quite a
party with the right encouragement.

"Good on ya, Jacko!" the sergeant
yelled over the general hubbub and excitement. "I reckon that's
that mob taken care of, all right." He beamed at what he liked to
think of as his young protégé, his heavy jowls and ample gut wobbly
with mirth as he thrust a stubbie into the young officer's
hand.

But Collins wasn't joining in the
general celebration. "I dunno, Sarge. We should call the Army or
something now, to take those roos somewhere safe."

"Safe? Where could be safer than at
the bottom of a bloody big hole, Jack?"

"I dunno, Sarge. I'd just feel
better if we had some serious firepower out here keeping an eye on
them."

The sergeant roared with laughter
and called out to one of the blokes by the fire. "Hey, Dave, Jack
here thinks the roos are gonna climb out of that hole you dug."

Dave grinned back. "No fear, Maury.
The sides are as steep as a lawyer's fees, mate."

Everyone laughed and even Collins
allowed himself a small smile. "I still think we should call in the
Army, Sarge. We don't know what they might try."

The sergeant smiled indulgently.
"If it'll make you feel better, young fella, then you get on the
radio and call up Jacqui back at headquarters. She'll patch you
through on that newfangled emergency response network thing. It'll
be good practice for her."

Patronising tone or not, Collins
took his opportunity to run over to where the big Police Range
Rover was parked and put through the call. Which was why he was
nowhere near the pit when the kangaroos inside blasted down one of
the walls.

Digging holes is a skilled
business. The steeper and deeper you make the walls, the more prone
they are to collapse suddenly and catastrophically. It was a
miracle that the walls of Constable Collins' pit had stayed up at
all, so it was hardly surprising that when the kangaroos inside
began blowing big holes in one of them, not just that wall but the
whole lot of them slumped into a more stable configuration. A
configuration which buried every last kangaroo and tumbled at least
twenty celebrating humans into the pit with them.

"Corporal Estafan, Defence Force
Emergency Network Liaison," the radio had just announced as Collins
spun around to see half his party disappear screaming into a great
roaring cauldron of dust. Corporal Estafan had to repeat herself
several times before Collins was recovered enough to speak again.
"I think you'd better get somebody out here real quick. Yeah. Make
that a lot of people. With spades."

-oOo-

The negotiations had gone well.
Braxx had secured agreement for system-wide missionary access and
Chuwar had received promises of technologies beyond his wildest
dreams. To the Vinggans, the prospect of bringing millions more
souls into the fold had turned the arguably disastrous trip into a
magnificent triumph. For Braxx personally, it would mean elevation.
Corpuscular Manifestation Second Class was sure to be his – perhaps
even First Class in the fullness of time. To the warlord, the ships
and weapons Braxx promised him meant the whole region would be his
to conquer or destroy as he pleased. He would become the most
powerful ruler for twenty light-years in any direction. His name
would be feared in hundreds of star systems. This day his true
destiny had been revealed to him.

For Werpot, watching happily as
Chuwar and Braxx congratulated themselves, the deal meant that
Vinggan levels of culture, comfort and sophistication would soon be
arriving on this dungheap of a planet. He could lead the life of
luxury and pleasure he had always craved and the over-zealous
pursuit of which had landed him here in this mud-hole.

Even the Vinggan ship, monitoring
everything through the bugs it had placed on its wheezebag pawns,
was feeling pleased. Giving technology to Chuwar and his dominions
was in fact an expansion of machine minds into the worlds of the
Meisos Dominions – and any other worlds these idiots chose to
oppress. An unexpected expansion of the Vinggan empire, in effect,
on a new front and with new wheezebags to act as willing slaves.
Gleefully, the machine began preparing its report to the Great
Mind.

It seemed as if nothing could spoil
the all-round pleasure of that perfect moment when suddenly the
doors to the Great Hall were flung open. Everyone turned and peered
into the gloom as the bulky shapes of a dozen Klebin trolls marched
towards them, led, it eventually became clear, by five human forms,
the one in front wearing a tight, orange dress.

-oOo-

The first off-world explorers on
Arabis Five – a race of space-faring octopods from far beyond the
Arm – described the giant moon in their dispatches to base as "A
home from home. A veritable Paradise, peopled only by stupid and
easily-subjugated sapients who will make excellent servants." A
colony was established and settlers began pouring in. The slug-like
natives – used to living a hard and unhappy life – accepted this
new indignity with slug-like stoicism. They worked in the fields
and fetched and carried for their eight-limbed masters with barely
an audible sigh, watching and waiting as crops failed and diseases
struck and the brash new colony slowly, painfully, withered and
died. Then, with slug-like patience, they moved out of the shiny
new portabuildings and back to their huts and caves.

That was over twenty-thousand years
ago and things had changed on Arabis Five. Now the natives lived in
proper houses – dilapidated and infested though they may be. They
grew their own diseased and festering crops and had their own
faltering, global economy. They even had a scattering of cities. To
an outsider, the people there looked miserable and
poverty-stricken, the cities little more than sprawling
shanty-towns. Yet the natives of Arabis Five could boast what few
other races in the galaxy could; since first contact with aliens,
they had never had an occupying force on their planet for more than
a couple of generations. The recent conquest by Chuwar and his
trolls had lasted just a handful of years and already there were
signs of decay and despair in the ranks of the warlord's
mercenaries. Desertion rates from the troll army were doubling each
year, a strange and persistent mildew had appeared in the warlord's
portafortress, and tax collectors – at first so vigorous in their
efforts – were now rarely seen in the more remote and
disease-ridden regions.

The Agent strode through the
stinking streets of Arabis Five's largest city. The locals eyed the
giant with slug-like surliness, assuming it was another of Chuwar's
henchmen. The Agent stopped one, then another, asking the same
questions, seeking a clue as to where the Vinggans had gone. It had
traced the ship to this region but the Vinggan vessel had suddenly
left infraspace and must have landed in one of the nearby systems.
Was this part of the machine's plan, or had the Vinggans done it on
a whim? If the machine was trying to hide from it, the Agent was
determined that it would not succeed. While its ship scanned the
moon from orbit, the Agent gathered what intelligence it could on
the ground.

"Go to
Sluggie's
," one of
the natives told it – the third so far. "That's where people go to
talk."

Sluggie's
was a big,
low-ceilinged room with a pile of boxes at one end and a strong and
unpleasant smell everywhere else. About forty of the locals were
gathered there in small groups, licking at blocks of a pungent
narcotic which lay on the floor between them. It wouldn't attract
many customers – or even get a license – on any civilised planet in
the Agent's extensive knowledge-base but
Sluggie's
was
clearly what passed here for a popular bar. The Agent made straight
for the pile of boxes, ignoring the many intoxicated natives along
the way – even the one lying on its back, eyeing the Agent with
slug-like malevolence, that shouted 'Freak!" at it in a slurred
voice.

A local, perhaps the only sober one
in the whole bar, stood beside the pile of boxes, watching the
Agent approach. "You wanna block?" it asked, nodding towards an
open box containing blocks of the narcotic. The Agent declined.
"Suit yourself," the bartender sneered.

"I'm looking for some
Vinggans."

"We don't sell it."

“Vinggans are sapients, about so
high, slimy, tentacles, eye-stalks, tendency to shoot things."

"No-one like that in here."

'Maybe you've heard about where
they are?"

A voice from behind made the Agent
turn. 'Vinggans? Vinggans? I know abou' th' Vinggans."

"Tell me." The newcomer was one of
the customers, clearly having been at
Sluggie's
for some
time already.

The customer eyed the Agent with
slug-like cunning. "I talk better if people buy me a block," it
said.

"Get my friend a block," the Agent
told the barman.

“Fifty Chuwars," the barman said,
without moving.

The Agent pulled out its credit
card – accepted in all the major republics and kingdoms of the
Known Galaxy and held it out, letting the barman see it was a
plutonium card, which anybody would know carried a credit limit big
enough to buy half this world.

"Cash only," the barman said.

The Agent eyed him levelly. “My
credit is good."

"Not here, pal."

Fighting its rising irritation, the
Agent asked, politely, "What do you use for cash, here? Gold?
Diamonds?" The Agent carried with it a small molecular transmuter
that could synthesise small amounts of precious metals and
minerals.

"This." The bartender reached into
a pouch and brought out a collection of small, grey balls of
different sizes.

The Agent inspected it. "It looks
like animal dung."

"Well, duh!" the barman
sneered.

The Agent's patience finally
snapped. With a speed quite unexpected for a creature of its great
size, it pulled out its largest, most threatening weapon and pushed
the muzzle in the barman's face.

"Give my friend a block. Right
now!"

With slug-like fatalism, the barman
grabbed a block from one of the boxes and tossed it over to the
customer, who, being drunk as a slug, fumbled it and had to grope
around on the floor to retrieve it. When it had finally secured its
intoxicant, it looked up to find the Agent and a very large weapon
glaring down at it.

"Now talk."

The would-be informant swallowed
hard. "It was on tha' show. You know, tha' Mozbac station from
To'egh." The creature giggled drunkenly. 'Ver' funny show. Always
taking the piss out of Chuwar an' his stupid trolls. Haven't seen
it for th' las' couple o' days. Wonner wha' happened to it. Stupid
networks. Always pulling th' best shows. There's never an'thing
good on."

"Tell me about the Vinggans," the
Agent said, stonily.

"Oh yeah. Funny tha'." Again it
giggled. "There's this Vinggan ship. Big as th' Town Hall, they
said, with these funny bipeds in it all teeterin' abou' on their
li'l stick legs an' waving their li'l stick arms." It made some
strange body-movements in supposed imitation of the Vinggans and
several of its fellows, even the barman, snickered. Suddenly
realising that the Agent was also a biped, the informant stopped
itself in mid-impression and said, as soberly as it could, "Not
tha' there's anything wrong with bipeds." This got a big laugh from
the rest of the bar, which the comic acknowledged bashfully.

Scowling around at its drunken
audience, the Agent waited for the laughter to die down. "Just tell
me where they are," it growled.

"What? Oh. They're on To'egh. At
th' Palace."

“Bipeds!" said someone in the bar
and the laughter started up again. Scowling furiously, the Agent
pushed its way through the laughing drunks and made for the door.
Behind it, the barman snatched the block out of its informant's
hands and placed it back in its box.