Cargo Cult (30 page)

At last, they reached the throne.
The Mozbac, overcome with dread, threw itself prostrate at the base
of the dais.

“Bring it closer,” the warlord
commanded. His voice was soft, almost a whisper, yet cruel, like
the hiss of a giant lizard. The Mozbac dare not look up. It kept
its eye-stalks pointed at the stone steps before it, even as the
two trolls lifted it by the forelimbs and thrust it towards their
master.

“Look at me, Mozbac,” the
serpent-voice commanded and, the delicate green creature forced its
eyes to turn upward towards the mighty warlord. “I am Chuwar!” the
tyrant declared. He said his name as if it was a curse –
Chu-waaaghhh! – and the Mozbac tried to sink its body into the
stone steps.

“Well?” Chuwar asked, his tone a
menacing mixture of boredom and irritation.

"Your Most High and Magnificent
Lordship," the right-hand troll began, flipping a small virtual
display up in front of herself. “The prisoner is accused of
behaving disrespectfully towards Your Magnificence.”

“Is it true, little worm?”

The Mozbac cringed just a little
more. “N-no Your Magnificence. I – I am merely a humorist. I
performed a little political satire, My Lord, nothing
disrespectful, just – funny.”

The warlord sat back on his
haunches, his mighty head rising above the trembling Mozbac. “A
satire?” His fleshless lips stretched thinly into a wicked smirk.
“You thought that, in the worst period of oppression and terror
this planet has ever known, under the most terrible and feared
dictator who has ever ruled your puny, worthless people, it would
be a good idea to perform a political satire?”

The Mozbac's several eyes blinked
nervously. “Well, when you say it like that, it does sound pretty,
um, stupid.”

“Hmmm,” the warlord agreed. “And
you seem to have broadcast your little error of judgement...” He
consulted the charge sheet. “...across fifteen inhabited
worlds.”

“Probably only fourteen, really. I
doubt the transmitter could actually reach Arabis Five. And as for
Theredon, well the inhabitants are hardly what you'd call
sentient.”

“Silence!”

The Mozbac clung to the steps
again, eye-stalks down.

“So, perform some of it for
me.”

“W-what?”

A guard whacked the poor creature
across the head. “W-what, Your Magnificence!” she barked. The
Mozbac whimpered and tried not to bleed on the royal steps.

“I'm waiting,” Chuwar hissed.

“Ah. Oh. Er, right. Yes.” The
Mozbac struggled to its feet and swayed woozily, desperately trying
to remember a joke, any joke. “Er, oh yes! What do you call a five
hundred kilo, scaly monster that has the charm of a carcass weevil,
an army of trolls, and all of your family locked up in a dungeon
somewhere?”

Chuwar's unblinking eyes stared
coldly at the would-be comedian. “I don't know, what do you call a
five hundred kilo, scaly monster that has the charm of a carcass
weevil, an army of trolls, and all of your family locked up in a
dungeon somewhere?”

The Mozbac, coming to its senses,
began back-pedalling. “Ah, not a great choice that one. I should
probably start with something a little less... er...”

“Lethal?”

“Yes! I mean, no! I mean...” The
creature sank to the floor again. “Oh Mighty Chuwar, spare my life!
I didn't mean it. I mean, I can see now that my vocation is clearly
not stand-up comedy. It's more like, well, pig-farming or
something. Brick-laying maybe. I'll never do it again. I promise. I
swear I'll never ever try to be funny again. Ever!”

The warlord smiled and the Mozbac's
blood ran colder. “Let it go,” he told the trolls with a wave of
his great, taloned hand.

The guards stepped away from their
charge and the Mozbac rose unsteadily to its feet. “Er,” it said,
looking anxiously around the room.

“Off you go,” the warlord
encouraged it, playfully, flicking at it with his talons.

The Mozbac glanced nervously around
the gloomy hall, wondering – not for the first time – what the
slithering, gibbering noises were in all that smoky darkness. “I...
er... I think I'd rather stay, if it's all the same to you, Your
Magnificence.”

“Go!” Chuwar bellowed and the
Mozbac recoiled half-a-dozen paces from the throne.

Finding itself, smoky darkness
apart, at a greater distance from immediate danger than it had been
for several days now, the Mozbac impulsively decided to take its
chances and run for its life. The path to the door was vaguely
discernible in the gloom, so it ran as fast as its many legs would
carry it.

Watching from the throne, Chuwar's
eyes slitted with pleasure. The slithering from the darkness
snapped into rapid action. Moments later the Mozbac's footsteps
stopped dead, the hapless creature cried out in horror at whatever
had confronted it in the half-lit hall. Then it screamed and
screamed until its screams were permanently silenced.

“Ahhh.” The warlord sighed with
contentment, savouring the Mozbac's death with eyes closed. When he
finally opened them again, he said to the trolls, “Do we really
have his family in the dungeons?”

A troll consulted its display.
“Yes, Your Magnificence.”

“Good. Have them brought here. One
by one. Then send for the Vinggan delegation.”

"What do you think is going on,
Sam?"

Samantha Zammit glared at her
younger brother. "If you ask me that one more time, Wayne, I'm
going to poke you in the eye."

Glaring back at her, Wayne
nevertheless moved a step backwards, just in case. "We landed days
ago," he whined. "Why won't they let us out?"

Sam clenched her fist and her
teeth. "Why don't you go and ask your friend Loosi Beecham?"

"It's not really Loosi," Wayne
muttered glumly.

"Oh, you think not?"

"No need to be like that."

That was it. It was all Sam could
take. She advanced on her brother who retreated before her. "How
did a cretin like you ever emerge from the same gene pool as me?
Why was I cursed with a millstone for a sibling? How could any
relative of mine be so dim even a bloody Vinggan seems bright by
comparison?"

"What?" Wayne whined. As usual, he
had no idea why his sister was getting so worked up, nor why, as
usual, he was the butt of her bad humour. He bumped into a bulkhead
and had to stop retreating. Sam came up to him, her pretty features
sharp with anger, her big eyes narrowed to slits.

"This whole damned mess is your
fault, you moron!"

Wayne squirmed. Sam wasn't
especially big. In fact, she was what you might call petite. But
her fists, although small, were remarkably hard and bony as he knew
from long experience. And it wasn't as if Wayne was exactly manly.
More the scrawny teenager type, really – even at twenty-one. He saw
himself as an artist, a musician, and therefore exempt from the
usual manly requirements to be big, strong and dependable. The
trouble was that no-one else in his family saw it that way. To his
father and mother he was a bitter disappointment. Giving up his
classical music training to start a career as a singer/songwriter
was as bad to them as if he had decided to take up mugging old
ladies for a living. As for Sam, she just thought he was an idiot
and a complete waste of space. Well, he'd show them!

"Are you listening to me, moron?"
Sam demanded, punching him in the ribs.

"Ow!"

"Wimp!"

"Thug!"

"Oh for God's sake, you two!" This
was Detective Sergeant Michael Barraclough, who was slowly learning
it was best not to get involved with Sam in any way whatsoever,
cute as she was. But this had gone on for weeks now and his temper
was as frayed as everyone else's.

Sam, turned to the big policeman
and smiled sweetly. "I was just explaining to this little piece of
navel lint that some of us would be back home pursuing a brilliant
journalistic career – " At this point her head swivelled back to
face Wayne, smile vanishing. " – if he hadn't dragged us into this
alien abduction fiasco!"

The sergeant wasn't sympathetic.
"Just think of the story you can write when we get back."

Sam pursed her lips angrily and
turned her baleful glare on the policeman. "Oh yeah. Day fifteen
and we're still stuck in the hold of a bloody stupid alien
spaceship. Our captors – fourteen scantily-clad clones of screen
actress Loosi Beecham – have not shown themselves yet again today.
Even Drukk – who wears the orange clothing – didn't appear, yet
again, to chat to her doting boyfriend, my idiot brother. Oh, and
did I mention we've been in this overgrown storeroom for fifteen
days now, with a bunch of hippies and their charlatan guru, the
remains of a busload of geriatrics from the Kanaka Downs Garden
Club, and a morose and, might I say, extremely ugly Detective
Sergeant from the Queensland Police Service who, unfortunately for
us all, failed to apprehend the aliens even though he and a whole
army of Keystone Cops had every bloody opportunity and, instead,
let himself and all the rest of us get abducted and carried off to
God knows where. But, not to worry, it's all part of said morose
sergeant's master plan because a hideous great black monster from
the far end of the galaxy is secretly following us and will make
its move any month now and set us all free – hopefully before the
Garden Club has died of extreme old age!"

Detective Sergeant Barraclough
waited patiently until the tirade was over then asked, "Is that how
brilliant journalists write these days?"

Wayne couldn't help sniggering,
even though he immediately regretted it. Sam stood there
open-mouthed, fists clenched in rage. Wayne flinched, already
feeling sorry for the hapless policeman. But then something
astonishing happened. His sister started crying.

Wayne looked on helplessly as his
big sister blubbered. He exchanged glances with the big bluff
policeman, who seemed to be as helpless and confused as Wayne.

"Er..." Wayne said, looking for
words of comfort that were just, somehow, out of reach.

"Er..." said Barraclough,
apparently suffering the same problem.

To their relief, and with a brisk,
angry shudder, Sam stopped crying and visibly pulled herself
together. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose and then glared
aggressively at Wayne and Barraclough. "Well? What are you two
gawking at?"

"Are you all right?" Barraclough
asked.

"All right? Now there's an
interesting question. What do you think, Barraclough? Does it count
as all right to be kidnapped and flown to the arse end of the
galaxy for God-knows-what reason? Does it count as all right when
the only people who might possibly help you escape are crazy
geriatrics, or crazy New Age cultists? Does it count as all right
that the long arm of the law is represented by a fantasist whose
idea of a good plan is waiting for the cavalry to appear? Or what
about having a lazy, half-wit brother hanging like an albatross
around your neck, who not only can't do anything to help me, he
can't even drag himself to his feet for more than ten minutes a
day?"

Wayne's expression grew surly. "I
don't see what good running around like a headless chicken would
do. Anyway, I'm more comfortable like this. Upright isn't a natural
posture for me."

Sam's eyes flared wide at this and
Wayne really believed for a moment that she was going to attack him
but, instead, she abruptly leapt onto a packing box and shouted for
attention. Across the wide expanse of the cargo hold, faces turned
towards her. She shouted again, more loudly and with more
invective. Now everyone was looking her way.

"Listen you bunch of useless
misfits, we're sitting on a planet. I don't know why we're here, or
where we are, or how long we'll be here, but I know this, if we
don't get off this damned ship before they take off again, we might
never get another chance."

"Nyaa, there's no way off," one of
the old folk sneered, a balding man with a big nose. "Sit down and
stop wasting your breath."

"How do we know there's no way off?
Have we tried? Have we looked? No, we've just sat here like sheep.
No! Like lambs to the slaughter!" There was a ripple of distressed
sounds from the audience. "What do you think the Vinggans want us
for? What do you think they'll do to us when we get to wherever
they're going?"

The old bloke stood up and faced
her. "Now you stop talking like that young lady, or do you want to
give all these poor ladies nightmares?" He waved a hand to indicate
the cluster of old ladies watching her with round, anxious
eyes.

This appeal to her compassion just
incensed Sam further.

"Nightmares? Nightmares? What do
you think this is except one big bloody nightmare? When are we
going to wake up, that's what I want to know? When are we going to
stop sitting around waiting to die and start doing something to
save ourselves? Even you lot –" She pointed at a group of
youngsters who blinked back at her in surprise. "– must have
realised that the Vinggans aren't going to give us their cosmic
bounty! Look around, people. This is a cargo hold. We are the
cargo!"

-oOo-

The
Vessel of the Spirit
watched the humans plotting their escape with only half a mind. It
was too busy gnashing its mental teeth to pay mush attention to its
prisoners pathetic attempts to thwart it. If only the humans
realised what mental pygmies they were compared to even the
lowliest of Vinggan machines, they would not waste their breath
plotting to escape. On the other hand, the existence of such puny
creatures was so completely pointless, it didn't really matter what
they did.

More important at that moment was
the question of how the ship was going to get hold of a new field
modulator coil for the infra-reality drive phase regulator. Despite
the ship's careful efforts to ensure that nothing irreparable was
destroyed, the coil had been very slightly damaged during the fake
crash-landing on Earth, so slightly that the sensors had not
detected it, yet badly enough that, once in flight again, the coil
had slowly burnt out. The
Vessel
had barely had time to
locate a suitable planet and land there before the stupid thing had
failed completely, leaving the ship stranded.