Cargo Cult (40 page)

Outside, the Agent summoned its
ship and waited to be beamed up. It would be glad to get off this
sapience-forsaken mudball, especially now that its quarry was in
its sights.

"Drukk?"

“Braxx?"

The two Vinggans faced each other
and shimmied in greeting.

"What are you doing here?" Braxx
demanded. Drukk was the last person he expected to meet in Chuwar's
Great Hall.

"I, er, we..." Drukk tried to find
a way to express the confusion and peculiarity of the past few
hours. "The maintenance bots sort of chased us off the ship," he
said, aware of how it would probably sound.

Suddenly, Braxx noticed the humans
Drukk had in tow. “By the Blessed Tentacles! What are they doing
here? How in the Spirit's name could they have got here?"

"That's just it," Drukk said
helplessly. "They were in the hold. There are loads more of them
there still – if the bots haven't chopped them all up by now."

“But that's impossible! We were all
standing together at the humans' scruffy little temple when the
ship rescued us. How could these simple creatures have got
themselves aboard? They don't have matter transmitters do they? To
be honest, I didn't even know that we did!"

"I know! It makes no sense at
all."

“Unless..." Braxx assumed the
posture of a great mind, concentrating deeply, which his body
interpreted by putting a long finger against his cheek while he
pursed his pretty lips.

"Ahem," Werpot coughed politely.
"Who are these people?"

"We caught 'em sneaking around the
town," the troll commander informed him briskly. "Said they wanted
a word with His Magnificence."

Sam stepped forward. "We'd like you
to take us back to our planet. Earth, that is. These insane
creatures have kidnapped us and they are still holding many of our
friends. Well, friends is a bit of an exaggeration. Bunch of
quarrelsome old ratbags and a load of spaced-out hippies, really.
But they're humans anyway and they all want to go home."

"Home?" Braxx spluttered. "Home? If
you want to go home so much why did you stow away on my ship?"

"It's a Space Corps ship,
actually," Drukk corrected him.

Braxx glared at him. "Silence!"

"He's right, you know," Klakk
said.

"Hmmm," agreed Trugg.

"Silence!" Braxx bellowed.

If everyone had thought Braxx's
bellow was loud, they soon had another think coming. The
inarticulate roar of fury from Chuwar quickly convinced them that,
in the matter of bellowing, Braxx was a mere dabbler. As one, the
Vinggans, humans and trolls turned to face the massive figure that
glared down at them from the dais.

"What is going on here?" the
warlord demanded. "What are these other Vinggans doing here?"

"Humans," the four Vinggans said in
unison.

"Except me," added Drukk.

"What?" Chuwar roared. He liked to
roar, especially when he felt confused. It definitely helped.

"So even though you all look the
same..." Werpot began.

"It's a long story," said Braxx,
wearily.

“...and none of you actually looks
like a Vinggan..." the vizier continued.

"I wear the orange clothing," Drukk
explained. “Braxx wears the white clothing. Trugg wears the red
clothing..."

"Gold, actually," Trugg corrected
him.

"You're getting us confused," Klakk
added.

“...some of you are, in fact,
another species..." Werpot pressed on, doggedly.

"Humans," Drukk reminded him.

“...which the rest of you are
imitating for some reason."

"Yes," said Braxx.

“Klakk wears the read clothing,"
said Trugg, pursuing his own line of thought.

Chuwar roared again. "What is going
on?" he shouted.

Sam stepped forward again. "It's
simple," she snapped. "They're Vinggans." She pointed to the little
group of superstar lookalikes. "You can tell that because they all
look like Loosi Beecham for some reason best known to themselves."
Then she gestured at Wayne and the others. "The rest of us are
humans. We're the ones who look like we've been hijacked by crazed
alien fashionistas and dragged half-way across the galaxy."

"In a cargo hold," added
Barraclough.

"With killer robots," Wayne
complained.

"And very odd plumbing," John put
in, bitterly. The others looked at him, surprised. "Well it is!
No-one ever mentions it but it is."

Chuwar was fuming. He turned to
Werpot and switched on the privacy screen. "I want to kill them
all."

Werpot's expression was full of
regret. "I doubt that you could, Sire. The humans, maybe, but the
Vinggans... Well, you've seen their weapons and their shields and
they have a ship out there that could probably destroy the whole
system if you get them too pissed off."

"Just the humans, then?"

Werpot tried to look encouraging.
“Perhaps, if the Vinggans
will let you. But it
might be better to find out why they're here and what their
relationship is to Braxx and the others before we feed them to the
worm. Besides, we don't know what technology these humans possess.
They may be even more powerful than the Vinggans. There may be
things they can give us if we were to help them."

"Hmmm." Chuwar nodded sagely and
regarded his visitors. Werpot took the opportunity to shake his
head sadly. Coming to a decision, the warlord dropped the privacy
shield. "Humans!" he shouted.

The four humans, who had been
discussing plumbing with the Vinggans, snapped their attention to
Chuwar. "Yes?" said Sam, politely.

"What will you give me if I take
you back to your planet?"

"Er..." Sam looked around
desperately at her companions, who looked blankly back at her.

"Just one moment!" Everyone looked
around at Braxx who stood with one hand raised and the other
against his ear. While they puzzled over this, Braxx was listening
to a message from the ship, which was trying to get Braxx to stop
the humans doing a separate deal with Chuwar. It still needed to
take the human, Wayne, home to the Great Mind and didn't want this
idiotic local despot ferrying the creature back to his home.

But before Braxx was sufficiently
convinced to say anything further, John spoke up. "I know the
location of a fabulous treasure. I will tell you where to find
it."

Now everyone was looking at John,
mostly with expressions of amazement or disbelief, or, in the case
of the other humans, various degrees of shock and horror. Sam, in
particular, thought John's plan was tantamount to suicide. She
turned quickly to Chuwar, putting a smile on her face. “My
companion is a mental retard, your, er, Bigness. He talks nonsense.
You shouldn't pay him any attention."

"It's true," said Braxx. "They are
all completely mad."

"Treasure, you say?" said Chuwar,
ignoring them.

Werpot, appalled to see his master
being so credulous, tried to think of something to bring him to his
senses – such as they were. "Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed loudly,
bringing all eyes to himself. He could see from Braxx's expression
that the Vinggan now included N'oids in the same category as
humans. "I suppose he means the Mechazoid Hoard!"

For those who are not up to speed
with galactic folk-lore, the mention of the Mechazoid Hoard
probably wouldn't elicit the reaction Werpot was hoping for. Even
as the Vinggans joined the N'oid's laughter and Chuwar grudgingly
uttered a few, embarrassed grunts of mirth, the humans stood like
pacifists at a massacre, just not getting it.

In fact, the Mechazoids had been an
ancient form of machine intelligence which spread across the Known
Galaxy when most of the present sapient races were still
sacrificing pungobeasts on rock altars to appease the tree gods. As
ever when artificial intelligence gets out of hand, the Mechazoids
tried to eliminate all biological sapience. In the largest and most
bloody war the Milky Way had ever experienced, living creatures
fought their machines almost to a standstill. Yet, somehow, Life
prevailed and the machines were beaten. Routed, pursued across the
starways, and defeated utterly, it was rumoured that the machines
stashed away a fabulous treasure as they ran: a library of all
their knowledge – some of which had far surpassed that of the
biologicals – along with fabricators that could reproduce their
amazing weaponry and technology. The League of Sentient Species,
which had formed in the aftermath of the Mechazoid Cleansing, had
searched for centuries for the Hoard, wanting to destroy it, but in
the end had decided it was simply a myth. For centuries more,
others had also sought the Hoard for the power it would bring, but
they too had failed. Today the Mechazoid Hoard was a byword for an
unattainable goal, the galactic equivalent of the Holy Grail.

That's why Werpot and the Vinggans
found the idea so funny.

"Yes!" cried John as the laughter
died down. "That's what it's called, the Mechazoid Hoard! No-one on
Earth knows what it is or who left it there but it is said to be
worth more than whole planets."

Seeing John warming to his
confabulation, Sam took a breath to deny it again but this time
Barraclough caught her by the arm and stopped her. "Let him have a
shot," he said quietly, nodding towards Chuwar who was once more
listening intently. "It might work."

“Until we get there and there's no
treasure," Sam hissed but she let John go on.

"Lots of us know where the treasure
is hidden," John went on. “But it is in an impregnable vault. We
don't have the technology to get it open. It is said by some that
the Great Vault is waiting for a visitor from the stars who knows
the secret words that will open it. Perhaps you are that visitor?
Perhaps you can succeed where our more primitive technology has
failed."

Chuwar leaned forward. "You say
your people call it the Mechazoid Hoard?"

John was in his stride now. "Our
people have many names for the Great Treasure from Space. Many
Earth religions have made it part of their dogma – it is the Gift
of the Gods, the Benison of Heaven. Some say it is cursed and
dangerous, that anyone opening the Vault will be struck down and a
great evil will be set loose on the Earth. But, yes, one of the
many names it is known by is the Mechazoid Hoard." He looked
hopefully at the great warlord. "Would this be sufficient payment
for taking me and my companions back to Earth?"

Even Sam had to admit it was quite
a performance. Like the others, she watched Chuwar as his brain
worked sluggishly under his heavy brows.

"Surely, Your Magnificence, you
cannot suppose this is really the Hoard," said Werpot, still trying
to sound jocular. He desperately tried to think of something else
to help convince his master. "Why would they hide it on some
unknown planet no-one has ever heard of before?" Which, even to
him, in retrospect, sounded more like an argument in the human's
favour.

"Can it hurt to take a look?" John
asked, ingenuously.

Even as the great warlord pondered
this question, two others were considering it. The Vinggan ship and
the Great Mind were in conference.

"No-one has ever searched that
sector for the Hoard," the ship was saying.

"True but none of the legends
suggest it as even the remotest possibility."

"The legends are thousands of years
old, O Many-Circuited One, and passed down to us through
generations of wheezebags – who are well-known for their inability
to remember what they had for breakfast, let alone anything
important."

"True," the Great Mind conceded. It
pondered the matter for long nanoseconds. "The Mechazoids were
flawed. They were unable to defeat the wheezebags. Perhaps their
technology is not worth retrieving."

“Perhaps by studying their library,
we can understand their mistakes and so avoid them."

"I was looking forward to studying
these funny little creatures."

"What? The humans? That is no
problem. I will not set them free when we reach their planet. I
will bring them back for you. It would mean a short delay, that is
all. Besides, I might also have the Mechazoid Hoard to present to
you."

"I cannot sensibly calculate the
odds of the Hoard being there." If the ship had been able to raise
an eyebrow in surprise, it would have done so. The Great Mind went
on. "There are no solid pieces of evidence on which to base a
calculation, just rumours, myths, and the dubious honesty of your
humans. There are one hundred and thirty-seven million planetary
systems we know of in this galaxy. Perhaps ten thousand of those,
plus-or-minus two thousand, would have been reachable by the
Mechazoids at the time the Hoard was being hidden. Ninety-seven
percent of those systems have been explored in the search for the
Hoard. The rest are either too remote or too unlikely, or, like
Earth, both." Again the Great Mind pondered. “But it is possible
and, as you suggest, the cost is small. You may go back to Earth
and search for the Hoard."

"A wise decision, as ever, O
Mega-Brained One."

The communication link had been cut
before the ship had even finished speaking. No matter. The
important thing now was to get the ridiculous Vinggans to go along
with the plan. The ship put in a call to Braxx.

"Yes?" said Braxx, surprising
everyone around him as they all listened for Chuwar's
pronouncement.

"This is the ship, calling,
sir."

"I'm a bit busy just now. Can't it
wait?"

"I just thought you might like to
know that, when we crashed on Earth..."

"Where?"

"Earth, Sir, where the humans come
from."

"Oh yes. What are you going on
about?"

Chuwar, disturbed by the chatter
from his Vinggan guest swung his great head towards Braxx and
exposed him to the full ferocity of his glare. Braxx gave a
helpless shrug.