Cargo Cult (32 page)

"Time we gave these stupid
creatures a taste of their own medicine," Shorty snarled. "Just
this once, I want to see them running from us as we mow them
down."

"I don't know if that's such a
good..."

"Shut up! Everybody get behind me.
Anyone starts running away and I'll shoot you myself."

Grim-faced, the little doe waited
for the humans to arrive.

-oOo-

Chuwar listened happily as the last
of the screams died away, their echoes lingering in the dark
corners and hanging in the vaulted ceilings. He had had a good
morning dispensing justice to his people and he was in a mellow
mood.

But now there was work to be
done.

"Tell me about this Vinggan who
comes to plead for our help."

The great warlord's Vizier was a
dry, black-skinned, many-horned creature. A native of far-off N'o,
a planet at the heart of the civilized worlds, Werpot Ka Thigrule
was a cultured and well-travelled being. That he should end up
here, in the armpit of the known galaxy, serving the brutish thug
Chuwar, was a constant goad in his rustling, papery hide. Yet,
given the circumstances that had led him to flee N'o all those
years ago, to have landed even this demeaning job was something of
an achievement.

"It is unlikely that the Vinggan
will plead Sire. They are a haughty and arrogant species. Demand,
perhaps, but plead, never."

"Then I'll feed him to the swamp
dragon! He'll soon learn who is master on To'egh!"

Werpot rolled his eyes and sighed,
thinking,
here we go again
. “Sire, the Vinggans command huge
technical resources. They rule a mighty empire and have one of the
largest slave armies in the galaxy.”

Chuwar snorted and subsided into
thought. “How can we use this, Werpot? Would they make good allies?
Could we persuade them to crush Quilquox and her pestilent
Baragorms?”

Werpot didn't even bother to answer
such a patently ridiculous question. That the haughty Vinggans
would deign to become involved in a petty local squabble was
completely unthinkable. That was the trouble with working for a
brainless moron who did all his thinking with his muscles. “It
would be greatly to our advantage if we could establish trade
relations with these people, Sire. The economy here is a little...
er... shaky.”

Chuwar scowled at him. Werpot
swallowed hard. Had he transgressed that fine line between telling
the truth and telling an unpalatable truth? "What's wrong with the
economy?" the great warlord demanded. "I eat well. I have a
gigantic palace. My private yacht is twice the size of Quilquox's.
What's so bad about that?"

The vizier screwed up his papery
face in an attempt to find an answer that would mean he was still
breathing two minutes later. "All that is good, of course, Sire. I
was only thinking that, if the peasants in your empire had a little
more to eat, or didn't have to live in mud hovels and sell their
children into slavery, they could pay more taxes and you would be
able to buy an even bigger yacht."

Chuwar leaned back on his haunches,
thinking over what Werpot had said. Werpot watched him, surprised
that, for once, a reasonable idea hadn't been summarily dismissed.
As the seconds ticked past, Werpot's hopes began to rise. A trade
deal with the Vinggans could be just what this backward collection
of planets needed to pull itself out of the Dark Ages. There would
be the hope of decent technology, some chance of cultural exchange,
it could be the beginning of progress for these blighted worlds. At
last, the great warlord spoke.

"You say my peasants sell their
children into slavery so that they may eat?"

"Yes, Sire."

"And do we tax this
transaction?"

Werpot's stomach felt cold. "No,
Sire."

Chuwar smiled down at him. "Then
there's my new yacht! Make a proclamation. I want ten percent off
the top of every child sold in my empire. Great Slayer, Werpot!
There must be millions of the little rats! I'll be rich!"

Werpot slumped into himself. "Yes,
Sire. And the Vinggans? Might we still try to open trade
negotiations?"

"Only if they sell good yachts,
Werpot. Be sure to ask them. I'm only interested in big ones, mind
you. Big ones with lots of guns."

The two utes bounced wildly across
the rugged grasslands. Sandy Duggan, driving the one in front,
peered from under the big rim of his Akubra hat. "What the hell is
that?" he asked but the other three blokes in the cab didn't hear
him because of the loud country and western music blasting from
outsize speakers all around them. Angrily, Sandy stabbed at the off
button.

"What the hell is that?" asked his
mate Andy as soon as there was quiet.

Sandy slowed their pell-mell
advance. A couple of hundred metres ahead of them, sitting like
statues in the long grass was a mob of roos. Beyond them, several
dozen other roos were hopping into the distance, fanning out as
they took the straightest line to the nearest trees. But not this
mob. These fellas were standing there like stunned mullets,
watching the trucks approach. Sandy slowed down even further.

"What's up, mate?" came the voice
of the other driver over the ute's CB radio.

"You mean you haven't seen these
bloody roos, mate?" Sandy demanded, grabbing the handset.

"What roo... Ah, yeah. Right."

Sandy slowed to a halt. The roos
were just twenty metres ahead and still not moving, still staring
straight at him as if challenging him to come nearer. For a moment
Sandy stared back into their big, round eyes as his forehead
creased into a frown. Roos were supposed to run scared. Roos were
supposed to be crazy with fear. They weren't supposed to look all
determined and angry like these ones did. Something was very, very
wrong here but Sandy just couldn't work it out.

He switched off the engine and
climbed out of the cab. The three others in his ute did likewise,
as did the other three in the second ute.

"Get my gun, Andy," he said, not
taking his eyes off the strange roos.

Andy went to the back of the truck
and got Sandy's gun. Everyone else was getting their guns out as
well, sensing that the fun was about to start. He opened one of the
eskys too and started fishing out bottles of chilled beer from the
half-melted ice and handing them to the silent, puzzled blokes
around him. He took one for Sandy and opened it. As he handed Sandy
his gun, he said, "Here, mate, I got you a stubby."

Sandy took the beer and the gun and
then took a long, slow pull on the bottle. It was a hot day. The
sun beat down on the dry earth and the air was thick and full of
the buzzing of flies. Sandy took another swig of beer and then
suddenly lost his temper. He threw the half-empty bottle at the
roos shouting, "What are you looking at you dickheads?"

To the astonishment of the hunting
party, the small roo at which the bottle was flying, calmly moved
its head aside to let the missile pass by harmlessly.

"Crikey," someone exclaimed. "Did
youse see that?"

"This ain't right," someone else
complained. "This ain't natural."

Sandy felt a lick of fear curling
inside him. He swallowed hard, pushed his hat up from his eyes and
raised his gun, taking careful aim on the biggest buck in the
group. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. They all waited for Sandy to
take his shot.

When it came, it was like a crack
of thunder, rolling away across the dry, open bushland and up the
distant hills. Sandy lowered his gun a little to see the
effect.

"You missed the bugger," one of his
mates said. The anxiety in his voice was obvious. Not one of the
roos had so much as flinched and that was seriously scary.

Sandy quickly raised his gun and
fired again and again and again. The air was full of the stinking
smoke and their ears were ringing but the roos still stood there,
fixedly staring back at their would-be killers.

A kind of panic seized the seven
men and they all raised their weapons, several of them dropping
their beers, so shaken were they. The fusillade of shots that
followed would have been more at home in a war zone than a hunt.
Each of them blasted away at the unmoving roos until they had
emptied their weapons and, one by one they had to stop.

As the smoke cleared, the roos
looked across at one another as if waiting for a signal. Then the
small doe at the front raised her paw. All the others did the same.
Almost numb with fear now, Sandy saw that a small silver tube was
attached to the roo's forearm. A tube that was pointing straight at
him. He had only time to gasp out, “Bugger," before the little tube
flashed.

-oOo-

Police Constable
Jack Collins
sat on a rock contemplating his life.
The rock was on a low hill commanding a view of a large, shallow
valley. Gum trees and rocky outcroppings dotted the countryside and
small groups of roos and emus could be seen grazing in the
distance. The hot, Queensland sun beat down on the broad, dry land
and on PC Collins' shoulders as he went over that fateful interview
again and again in his mind. Each rehearsal of that painful memory
ended in the same place, the Captain's office, with Collins in an
agony of self-pity as the Captain explained that the only future he
had with the Queensland Police Service would be in the remotest,
most God-forsaken corner of the State, and even then the Captain
wished there were more remote and more God-forsaken places he could
be exiled to.

And here he was, in the middle of
nowhere, policing a load of rocks and peaceful animals, looking
forward to Saturday night when he might find some poor drunk and
disorderly in one of the half-derelict townships on his 'beat' to
lock up for the night. He knew he was wallowing but he couldn't
help it. He liked being a police officer and he loved working in
Brisbane. Like the vast majority of Australians, he was a city boy
born and bred. The bush, to him, was a romantic ideal of stockmen
and bush rangers, not this grim collection of drought-blighted
farms and clinically depressed farmers, squalid, dirt-poor
settlements full of surly aborigines who barely spoke English, and
endless bloody unmade roads going from nowhere to nowhere. He
hadn't had a decent cappuccino since the day he arrived in this
hell-hole! And as for going to the cinema or a night-club, forget
it!

This wasn't what he signed up for
and he didn't know how much more of it he could take. Well, that
would teach him to shoot his mouth off to the press.

A low line of dust, way across the
valley, revealed the presence of a ute. He squinted his eyes
against the sun and took a closer look. It was two utes, making
their way across country. Probably some farmers' boys out shooting
things. He had quickly come to see that shooting things was not
just the only form of entertainment on offer in the outback, it was
just about the only way to keep from shooting yourself and everyone
else around you!

He saw the dust trail stop but
couldn't make out what was going on. It looked like the boys had
stopped their utes. Intrigued, and having nothing better to do,
Collins got to his feet and went over to his police car to get the
binoculars out. When he got back, he saw that the boys had piled
out of their utes and were now standing in front of them, staring
at a bunch of rocks. No, not rocks, he realised as he focused the
binoculars, kangaroos! Now why would kangaroos...

He gasped as one of the boys raised
a rifle and fired at the roos. He saw the little puff of grey smoke
long before he heard the tiny pop of the shot. What made him gasp
wasn't the fact that a young man old enough to vote thought it was
a perfectly normal thing to do to shoot an animal for fun, it was
the fact that the roos didn't budge an inch when he fired at
them.

A cold shock of realisation went
through him then and he strained through the binoculars to see the
roos' forearms but, at that distance, he couldn't be sure. With a
chilling inevitability, the rest of the farm boys started blasting
away at the roos. There was smoke and the rattle of the distant
gunshots but still the roos didn't move. He began shouting without
even meaning to, yelling, “Run! Get out of there! Run you stupid
bastards!" But there was no possible way they could hear him.

He watched in an agony of helpless
frustration as one of the roos lifted a paw. Now he could see the
weapon! There was a flash and one of the boys fell to the ground.
Then the panic started, with young men running in all directions as
the roos opened fire on them. It struck Collins, even in that
moment of distress, that the roos were pretty lousy shots. It took
them several seconds to bring down all seven of their would-be
hunters, by which time they had also blasted both utes to
pieces.

Collins lowered the binoculars,
panting with shock. They were here! It was the roos from the siege.
He did a quick mental calculation. Yes, if they'd kept moving, they
could have reached here by now. A roo can cover a lot of ground
when it wants to – and fast. And these guys had had a lot of
incentive to put as much distance between themselves and Brisbane
as possible.

So there they were, invulnerable,
killer roos, armed with force shields and ray guns. And there he
was Police Constable
Jack Collins
, the
only man for a thousand kilometres who could stop them. But how?
How did he tackle these alien desperadoes with nothing but his
Glock pistol and kevlar vest?

Yet stop them he must. It was the
only way he would ever get his old job back in Brisbane!

-oOo-

You could have cut the atmosphere
in the cargo hold with a knife.

Sam sat with her arms folded,
facing away from the others. Nearby, Wayne, Barraclough and John
stood looking helplessly at one another. At one side of the hold,
the Kanaka Downs Garden Club murmured together in a huddle, glaring
at the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty. The Receivers stood at the other
side, glaring back at the old folk.