Cargo Cult (24 page)

“Of course I will show you, human.
It is my Destiny to bring Her teachings to your poor, ignorant
planet. But I’m not sure why this means I can’t get rid of this
other human. After all, it is quite mad.”

John cast about desperately. “You
can’t kill Sam,” he said slowly, stalling, “because... because...
Yes! Because she’s seen the light too!”

Sam was outraged. “No I bloody have
not!”

John looked her straight in the
eye. “Yes you have, Sam.” His piercing, hypnotic gaze caught her
like a butterfly on a pin. He stepped up to her and looked deeply
into her wide, staring eyes. “You believe the Great Spirit is the
One True God. You are overcome with joy at the splendour of this
great revelation. You feel you must dedicate your life to
worshipping Her and loving Her and knowing Her better. And Braxx
and the Vinggans will be your guides, your spiritual masters.” He
lowered his eyes and stepped away.

Sam experienced a moment of
confusion. Her mind was a blank. For an instant she didn’t know
where she was. Then she remembered, Loosi Beecham, the siege, the
wonderful revelations about the Great Spirit. She looked across at
Braxx and felt a great warmth of affection for the beautiful alien.
“Of course,” she said. “I will follow the Great Spirit too! Oh
please, guide me, Braxx,” she looked pleadingly at the group of
Vinggans who were still aiming their blasters at her. “Please, all
of you. I only want to worship Her and love Her and know Her
better.”

Braxx blinked and smiled,
completely bemused but pleased at the way things were going.
“Excellent!” he said. Sam knelt down and kissed the hem of his
wedding dress and John quickly followed suit.

Smiling happily at his Vinggan
acolytes, Braxx calmly accepted the humans’ obeisances. “Most
excellent!” he said. “The Great Work has truly begun.”

-oOo-

Senior Sergeant Rick Fury, despite
the name, was a very even tempered man. In fact, Rick was only the
second generation of Furies in his family, his father having dumped
his long and unpronounceable Greek surname within two months of
arriving in Australia. He had always told Rick that he picked the
name from the title of a comic that he’d seen in a newsagent's the
first day he’d landed in Australia. Now, ever since Rick’s
promotion to Sergeant, fifteen years ago, his father couldn’t say
hello to him without bursting out laughing. That day, as he watched
his father collapse in hysterics, he knew he was in for a hard
time. A lot of other people spotted the joke too, so it was lucky
that the comic no longer enjoyed its post-war popularity and that,
slowly but surely, everyone who had ever read it was dying off.
Frankly, there were times when Rick didn’t think this was fast
enough.

So it was lucky that Sergeant Fury
was an even tempered man, since his ‘technical speciality’ in the
police force was arms and armaments.

However, despite a temperament so
even you could land a plane on it, at most other times, that night
saw him grind his teeth and stomp out of the command-and-control
vehicle muttering and cursing under his breath. It was a warm,
clear evening and he took several deep breaths of the fresh country
air to calm himself down. It was a peaceful night. An orange sliver
of moon was lying on its back above the black horizon and the Milky
Way was a clear, bright river of stars across the spangled sky. He
found the Southern Cross, the only constellation he knew, and let
its eternal stillness soothe him.

“Wassup, Sarge?” It was Jacko—Jack
Collins—a young constable from his unit.

“You’re supposed to be getting some
sleep,” Fury growled.

“Ah look, I tried, Sarge, but
sleeping in a car with two other blokes on a hot night like this
just isn’t on.”

“It’s the best you’re going to get,
lad. They’re sending some tents out tomorrow. I suppose they just
forgot about sleeping arrangements in all the excitement.”

The bitterness in his tone was
apparent even to the youngster. “You sound like they’ve been giving
you a hard time, Sarge,” Jacko said, fishing for something juicy to
tell the lads.

“They want us to go in hard in the
morning, first thing. Take ’em by surprise.”

The youngster was shocked. Even he
could see that lots of innocent people could get hurt that way. Not
to mention innocent policemen. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense,
Sarge,” he said carefully. “We don’t really have the numbers for a
start –”

But the sergeant cut him off. “It’s
a load of bollocks that’s what it is, lad. They’re letting
themselves be freaked out by the news reports. They want it wrapped
up quickly. They see it as a PR nightmare and they want it to go
away.” He stared up at the stars. “They’re right in a way. We’ll
have more newspaper and TV people out here than policemen by the
morning. They’re flying in from all over the bloody place. Forget
Channel 9. We’re all going to be on CN-bloody-N tomorrow.”

“We’ve been listening to it on the
radio. It’s non-stop on every channel.” Jacko pointed over to the
brightly-lit group of media trucks and vans. “You should hear some
of the things they’re saying over there. It’s weird. All these
chicks with microphones talking about bio-terrorists using killer
clones and stolen military laser technology.”

“It’s all a load of bollocks,”
Senior Sergeant Fury repeated. “Chief Inspector Sullivan is coming
out here to take charge of things herself. The Prime Minister has
asked the Premier if he would like the Federal Government to give
us any assistance. That means we’re all for the chop if we let
those bastards dig in for a long siege.”

They stood together in silence for
a long while, each contemplating the dangers ahead of them.

“What do you think it’s all about
Sarge?” the young man asked.

The sergeant snorted. “Well it’s
not killer clones with ray guns, that’s for sure.” He looked over
in the direction of the farmhouse which was more than half a
kilometre away, invisible in the solid darkness around them. “It’s
just a bunch of loonies. You’ll see. Someone with some stupid
grievance who thinks kidnapping a bunch of old folk is going to
make a scrap of difference to anything—except the old folk and
their families.”

“But what about their weapons,
Sarge? Some of the guys from the shoot out said their bullets
wouldn’t touch the kidnappers. They said the chicks didn’t have
bazookas or rocket launchers, just hand-guns. Yet they took out all
those squad cars.”

“That’s just hysteria talking, lad.
Someone was firing explosive shells at those cars. Those fellas
were just running too fast for cover to see who it was.”

“I never thought I might have to go
up against firepower like that, Sarge. I mean, you don’t expect
that kind of thing. Maybe we should call the army in, or
something?”

“They should have put you in
charge, Jacko,” said the sergeant with bitter sarcasm. “You think
the same way the top brass do. I’ve already been told that if our
little escapade tomorrow morning doesn’t come off they’re going to
send in the SAS. In fact, they’re planning their assault in a
hangar at Amberley Air Force base, even as we speak.”

Jacko looked hopeful. “So why don’t
we just let them get on with it Sarge? Shit! I mean the SAS! Those
blokes are good!”

The sergeant smiled ruefully.
“Because we’re going to sort it all out before they ever get here,
aren’t we? We wouldn’t want the Queensland Police Service looking
like we couldn’t handle our own problems, now, would we?”

Jacko was deflated. “No Sarge.”

“That’s right. Now, go on and get
some sleep, lad. I want you as fresh as possible for the morning.
Briefing at oh five hundred hours remember?”

“Yes Sarge.”

Jacko walked back to the police car
where he’d been trying to sleep, feeling a lot worse than when he’d
arrived. Senior Sergeant Fury watched him go, wondering how many of
his lads would make it safely through the next day.

In the final minutes before dawn,
the police deployed ready for the assault on the farmhouse.
Reinforcements had arrived at four o’clock along with the Chief
Inspector and a small army of advisers and senior staff. They had
set up a big, camouflaged tent with trestle tables, whiteboards and
coffee machines and they had finalised their plans as the sky
lightened in the East. Many more police officers were engaged
elsewhere, manning the roadblocks that held back the trickle of
sightseers that had begun yesterday and was building to a
flood.

To the sound of pigeons hooting and
kookaburras cackling, the police in their body armour had run,
crouching low, through the bush to take up their positions around
the small cluster of wooden buildings and burnt-out vehicles. Their
radios buzzed with call-signs and coded messages as the various
units found their way to their designated spots and hunkered down,
waiting for the action to begin.

On a small hill which afforded a
view of the farmhouse and its surrounds, five different TV
networks, eight radio stations and a dozen newspaper reporters
watched with telephoto lenses and powerful binoculars as events
unfolded. There was a constant babble of commentary already running
as earnest men and women murmured into their microphones,
reiterating for the hundredth time, the rumours and supposition
which was all they had to work with in the absence of any real
information. The police had grounded the networks’ helicopters for
the time being, so sitting on this hill or creeping through the
bush was the best they could do. Creeping through the bush was also
prohibited, of course, but one or two newshounds had opted for it
all the same, trying not to think about having their hides fried if
the killer clones came out shooting.

Shorty and the other kangaroos were
completely oblivious of all this covert activity as the rising sun
woke them to the usual morning ritual of stretching, yawning and
scratching.

“Nice day,” said Fats, trying to
get at an itch behind his left ear with an enormous hind leg.

“Yeah, right,” sneered Shorty,
which was, everybody knew, just her way.

They started to wander about,
eating whatever looked appetising among the sparse vegetation.

“Hey!” Shorty shouted, looking
around herself in amazement. “Have you morons already forgotten
we’ve got a job to do?”

“I was only getting a bit of
breakfast, Boss,” one complained.

“Yeah, what’s the rush? The humans
don’t usually start doing stuff for ages yet.”

There was a general hubbub of
agreement which Shorty silenced with a thump of her hind legs. “You
know, I’ve often thought that when the Sector Police stuck you in
those bodies, they left your brains in a jar back at headquarters.”
The others chewed slowly and watched her. “So it’s probably right
that I remind you that catching a human is without doubt the most
important thing that any of us has done in the past three hundred
years. So we don’t want to be sitting around here chewing green
crap like a bunch of sheep when we could be hanging out by the farm
in case one of them comes strolling by, do we?” She looked around
at the remarkably sheep-like expressions that surrounded her. “No,
we bloody don’t!” she shouted, jumping into the air in frustration.
“So get your shaggy arses in gear and lets get moving, you dozy
bunch of tossers, before I start using your scrawny hides for
target practice!”

Muttering and complaining, the
kangaroos began shuffling off in the direction of the
farmhouse.

-oOo-

“Wh...? Ugh… Arrh…?”

Detective Sergeant Mike Barraclough
struggled to make sense of what was happening. He seemed to be
lying in mid-air in the middle of a field with a hideous, black,
scaly giant poking him with a thick, taloned finger.

Then it all came back to him.

“It is morning,” the Agent
said.

Barraclough squinted at the
pinky-grey, pre-dawn sky and groaned. “Almost,” he said and flopped
back on his invisible bed.

The Agent poked him again. “We can
go to the house now. I am eager to confront the Vinggans.”

Barraclough made a huge effort and
roused himself. He felt as though he’d been wearing the same
clothes for 36 hours—which he had. He needed a shave and a shower
and a month off work. “Yeah, right,” he said, to keep the Agent
from poking him again and looked around at the dry and dismal
countryside.

To his surprise, a small mob of
roos appeared in the distance and hopped resolutely towards them.
Of course,
he thought.
They can’t see us.

“One of your local sapient species,
I presume,” said the Agent, watching them closely.

Barraclough snorted. “I don’t think
you’d call roos sapient if you knew the stupid buggers.”

The Agent kept its attention on the
kangaroos as they drew close but all it said was, “Curious.”

“What’s curious?”

“You say that roos are not sapient
and yet they are each carrying a weapon.”

The mob was passing close to the
Agent’s force bubble now and Barraclough could see that, indeed,
each animal had something strapped to its wrist.

“Do you employ non-sapients to use
weapons on your behalf?” the Agent wanted to know.

Barraclough had heard of strapping
mines to trained dolphins and sending them after enemy ships. He
even had a dim memory of people training pigeons to sit in the
nose-cones of guided missiles and direct them to their targets. But
roos, for Heaven’s sake! Roos with hand-guns? For a moment he felt
as if everything he had ever known had been turned on its head.
Somehow, he had slipped out of normal reality into an Alice in
Wonderland nightmare.

They watched the kangaroos hop past
the bubble and on in the direction of the farmhouse, their big
tails bobbing behind them. Then the bubble disappeared, as quickly
and silently as it had come, and Barraclough felt a light, warm
breeze touch his face.