Jadie just kept on grinning at Sam as if he hadn’t heard a word of it. “So,” said Sam, fighting down her irritation. “Tell me how you came to be involved with the Receivers of... whatever.”
Jadie blinked, slowly registering that a question had been asked. “Oh. Oh them. I just sort of met one of them one day and they invited me in. They seemed OK.” He put on a serious expression. “You know? Genuine.”
Sam nodded. “Genuine. Right. That’s what I’m looking for in my life. Something genuine. Something, er,” she sought for an appropriately banal adjective, “something real.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jadie and continued to nod and stare at her for some time.
Eventually, Sam said, “I don’t mean to be rude, Jadie, but are you on some kind of medication?”
Wayne rolled his eyes to Heaven and took a long drink. Jadie grinned happily and nodded some more, appreciating Sam’s wry humour.
Barely concealing her frustration, Sam changed tack. “So, tell me Jadie. What is it exactly that these Receivers of Cosmic Thingy believe in?”
Jadie leaned a little closer. “Now you’ve got me,” he confided. “They’re really into something, you know, but it’s pretty weird. I’ve never really managed to, like, get it straight, you know?”
Sam’s smile faltered a little. “But I thought you were a member of this cul… I mean I thought you were a follower.”
“Oh I’m a believer all right. The Sky People are coming and I’m going to be there, don’t you worry.” Jadie raised his stubbie in salute to the Sky People and downed half the bottle in one swallow. Sam took the opportunity to shoot a quick scowl at her brother. Wayne got up to get another round in. Sam was shouting the drinks so he was going to make the most of it.
“Sky People?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, John says they’re living on Mercury in, like, refrigerated domes or something and they’re going to come and take us off to Paradise in their interstellar space buggies, or, you know, that kind of stuff.”
Sam struggled to make sense of it. “So Paradise is on Mercury, then?”
Jadie scoffed. “Shit, no! Mercury’s a shit-hole! They’re just waiting there until the time’s right.”
“Right for what?”
“Dunno. The end of the world or something.” He took another bottle from the returning Wayne and drank deeply. “Bit of a worry, eh?”
It certainly is, thought Sam. “So this John guy is the leader then?”
“Yeah, the guru guy. He knows all about it. You should be asking him, really, not me.”
“But how can I meet him? Does he hold services here in town that I could go to?”
Jadie laughed. “No way! He never leaves the Space Station.” He looked at her slyly and said casually; “Why don’t you come out there with me tomorrow. I could show you around?”
“To the Space Station?” Sam asked, nervously. Maybe this guy was more cracked than he looked.
“Yeah. No-one’ll mind.” He waved his beer around in a gesture of open-mindedness. “It’s only the cops that get them worked up.” He leaned forward again. “They don’t like cops sniffing around out there at all—or the media, of course.”
-oOo-
Although it seemed like a lifetime, it was just over three hours later that Sam and Wayne left the pub. By then an Irish folk band had come onto the little stage in the corner and a shaggy-looking creature dressed in black had mumbled something about the Republic and begun to warble out "Kevin Barry". That was Sam's cue to grab Wayne firmly by the shoulder of his jacket and drag him to his feet saying, "Oh gosh, is that the time?"
Jadie, by then half smashed on beers that Wayne had kept supplying at Sam’s expense, had waved his arms about and shouted that they should all go to a club he knew and score some ‘E’. Wayne, considerably more drunk than Jadie, had seemed to think this was a great idea, judging from the excited, semi-articulate noises he had made in response. Sam, smiling politely, had thanked Jadie for his time and, keeping a firm grip on Wayne’s jacket, had dragged him through the now-crowded pub to the street.
In the warm, still, evening air, Sam tried to take stock of what she'd achieved. Unfortunately, Wayne was mumbling his way through some long, rambling story about gangsters or something. With the deep self-absorption of the seriously drunk, he absolutely insisted that she pay attention to him but, what with his mumbling and her own self-absorption, Sam regarded his incoherent saga as nothing more than an irritating distraction. Anyway, this was no time to be listening to drunks retelling the plot of some awful B movie. So she hailed a taxi, stuck Wayne in the back and sent him home. He'd done his bit. Now it was all up to her.
It bothered Sam that Jadie had turned out to be such a drongo but he was going to take her to the cult's base and that's all that mattered in the end. As she walked back to the car park, she began composing opening paragraphs in her head. Maybe there was enough material here for a three-part feature? Maybe even a book? She stopped walking and took a deep, steadying breath. No sense getting too excited. Just stay cool until she met the 'guru guy'. Then she'd know what she had. Until then she would just need to keep her excitement under control and her head clear for the important interview that was coming up.
Unfortunately for Sam, she was too wrapped in thought to notice a beat up old ute pull up at the back of Steiner's department store two blocks away. Nor did she see the fourteen, identical, naked women climb out – mostly from under a tarpaulin at the back – and head into the shadow of the building.
Chapter 6: Steiner’s
Drukk was in shock. The drive through the city streets had been a nightmare. The stolen ute, its engine screaming in first gear, had swerved and dodged among the other vehicles as Braxx shouted directions, probably at random. They had come so close to hitting buildings, metal poles, other vehicles—some of them gigantic—and startled humans, who gawped at him and Braxx with bulging eyes and open mouths even as he veered around them, that Drukk could not believe they had survived the ordeal, let alone arrived at their intended destination. Could Braxx really have known what he was doing? Or had the Great Spirit guided him, as he claimed? Either way, the important thing was that he was no longer in that metal death-machine and that he would never, never try to drive one again.
The images of impending destruction kept running through his mind as his glazed eyes watched his fellow survivors scrambling through the freshly-blasted hole into the dark building. He saw their backs, hideously smooth and pallid, their lower limbs, jerky and stiff, with round wobbling masses of flesh above them. It was all so endlessly awful, he was not sure that he could go on. He shuddered, closing his eyes against the nightmare of his continuing existence.
“Drukk!”
It was Braxx, hissing at him from the dark hole.
“Drukk! What’s the matter with you? Get in here at once! Do you want something to see you?”
With a mighty sigh, Drukk clenched his teeth (horrible, horrible feeling), squared the bony protrusions below his neck, thrust out the wobbling mounds of flesh in front of him and held his head up high. Bravely, he forced his shaky, lower limbs to move and followed the others into the building.
Inside, the 'department store' stretched away in all directions, a single huge slab of space. The low ceiling suggested other, similar slabs above them. The strangeness of the scene, patchily lit by the Vinggans' personal photon projectors, was overwhelming. A sudden bright flash was followed by a crash as someone blasted a mannequin to pieces. "Oops. Sorry," a voice said. "I thought the stupid thing was a human. Gave me the fright of my life."
"It must be some kind of museum," said someone else out of the semi-darkness. "It's full of statues."
"Let's just find some clothes and get out of here," said another, who could have been Braxx.
"Why, they're everywhere!" said someone. "All this stuff hanging everywhere. It's all clothing!"
There was an excited murmuring as the Vinggans examined the racks around them, grabbing the garments, smel
ling them, tasting them. Another flash lit up the room and another mannequin exploded. "Sorry, that was me," an abashed voice called.
Braxx called his people to order. Arms filled with assorted clothing, the Vinggans gathered around him. "All right," he said firmly. "The important thing about clothes is that they are different from each other." The Vinggans, who had found rank after rank of identical garments hanging on the rails, looked at each other, puzzled. But Braxx went on. "So everybody watch what the others pick and make sure you choose something else." He reached over and grabbed two items at random from the armloads that his followers had gathered. "Here," he said, throwing a bright orange, Lycra mini-dress to Drukk. "You wear that and I," he held up a white satin wedding dress, "will wear this."
Suddenly energised by their leader's example, the others began hunting through their finds and among the racks. Before three more mannequins had been shot, the Vinggans had all found outfits and were busy dressing.
Drukk, standing idle among the frenzied activity, was slowly coming back to his senses. He noticed the dress in his hand and slipped it on. It's comfortable, he thought, vaguely. The colour seemed a little bright but Braxx had chosen it so it was probably OK. He began to notice his surroundings. Maybe this was a museum. A museum of clothes, perhaps. He realised that the unfortunate mannequins existed to display particular garments and it occurred to him that they would be a good guide to whatever social conventions surrounded clothes-wearing. There were also gigantic pictures on the walls depicting humans in exotic-looking outfits. He wandered over to stare at a couple but each was so different to the next that he could find no pattern. The ship had obviously been right about why humans wore clothes.
He passed beyond the rails of clothes to an area filled with display cases containing small objects constructed from metals and crystals. Again the emphasis seemed to be on difference as no two were the same. The idea that these objects might be jewellery and that their purpose was, almost precisely as he had surmised, to decorate people so that they each looked a little different, suddenly seemed incredibly far-fetched. Drukk smiled at his own over-active imagination. No, these objects must have some more sensible use. Perhaps they were computers or communicators? Would human photonic devices be so large and crude? He remembered the gigantic, brutal engine in that awful vehicle and, shuddering again, forced his mind away from the whole, horrible experience.
If these were photonic devices, then maybe there would be useful tools and apparatus in this building. Maybe even something they could use to help them call home. The prospect cheered him and he looked around, spraying photons ahead of him from his personal projector.
A narrow ramp led up from where he stood into the darkness above. It had slotted metal ledges at regular intervals along its entire length. He went to it and began to climb, realising that the ledges were perfectly placed for his lower limbs to step onto as he ascended. At the top there was indeed another slab of space and, to his right, another ramp, presumably leading to the next slab. All around him were more rails of clothes stretching off into the dark distance, so he turned and went up the second ramp.
At the top of this ramp, he found the space filled with all manner of completely inexplicable objects. Many were made of glass or ceramics although there were plastics and metals too. Again the idea that he was in a strange alien museum came to him and he imagined crowds of stiff-limbed humans teetering and balancing their way between the displays, admiring these peculiar artefacts and barking and croaking their appreciation to one another. It was a strangely touching thought that these simple, sub-Vinggans could create and admire these objects just like more advanced sapients. He felt almost sorry for them that Braxx and his disciples were about to bring them into the light and they would most likely lose their primitive ways and their crude but evocative arts—if, indeed, that is what he was looking at.
Many of the objects were smooth discs of decorated ceramic. Others, also of decorated ceramic, were simple concave forms. Two or three basic shapes were repeated over and over endlessly. It was strange, unfathomable, unutterably alien. It occurred to him that to devote their efforts to making such numbers of similar, simple objects and then to display them with such care and reverence might mean these objects had religious significance to these creatures. Perhaps this whole building was actually a place of worship, that these shiny discs, the crystal objects and the clothes might, in fact, be worshipped by the humans. What strange unvinggan rituals might take place inside these walls? What incomprehensible ecstasies might the humans experience as they contemplated these cryptic icons? Oh no! Perhaps the statues they had destroyed were the gods these creatures worshipped. He felt the need to discuss his ideas with Braxx, to question whether a species so strange in its ways could ever be brought to an understanding of the Great Spirit and Her wisdom.
Before he could even complete the thought, the silence of the huge department store was shattered by a small explosion, followed immediately by a terrible ringing clamour.
Chapter 7: Wayne
Twenty minutes into his taxi ride home, Wayne began to feel resentful at how Sam had treated him. His resentment built gradually into anger and from there into rebellion. He told the taxi driver to take him to another address, one back towards the town centre.
“Are you sure, mate? The lady said I was to get you home.”
“I know where I want to go!” Wayne shouted, still too drunk to realise it. “She’s not the boss of the world! Turn this taxi around! She can’t make me do anything!”
The taxi driver gave in with a shrug. He’d done his best. “All right mate. Settle down. We’re on our way.”
Wayne settled back into the seat and sulked to himself. He’d missed his gig for her. “And it was important!” he said aloud.
“Wossat mate?”
“Missed my gig,” Wayne grumbled. “’Simportant.”
“You’re not gonna chuck up in my cab are you mate?”
“She wants to go to the Space Station, you know.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“She’s going to esspose them. She’s gonna be a big, bigger, big-shot.”
“Hmm.”
“Bunch of drongos.”
For a moment Wayne lost the thread of what he was trying to say. In fact, he seemed to have lost the plot entirely. He was going somewhere for something. Jeez he must have drunk a lot. “I could do with another one,” he told the driver.
“Nearly there, mate.”
“Good. I’m fed up of this.”
The cab pulled up to the kerb outside a small fibro house in a dim, run-down suburb. “Mind how you go, mate,” said the cabbie. This, and the fact that they were no longer moving, woke Wayne up enough for him to throw open the door and stagger onto the pavement. He started fumbling through his clothes for money he knew he didn’t have, to pay the fare but the driver said, “Don’t worry about it, mate. The lady paid.”
“Oh right. Thank you,” said Wayne, infinitely relieved, and pushed the door closed.
The taxi slithered off into the night and Wayne looked around him. He suddenly realised he was at Doug’s place. Of course! Doug’s place. He had missed the gig. The lights were all on. Douggie must be in. He hurried up the path to the front door and rang the bell. Good old Douggie.
He saw a dark shape in the hallway and heard a nervous voice asking “Who’s there?”
“’S’me, Douggie! How’re y’goin’ mate?”
“Wayne?”
“Yeah! Look, I’m sorry I missed the gig, man.”
The door opened suddenly and Doug’s arm shot out, grabbed Wayne by the T-shirt front and dragged him inside.
“What the fuck are you doing, man? Standing out in the street shouting our business! And why weren’t you here like we arranged, you dickhead? They got a shipment today. We’re ready to go, man. We’re ready to do it. Are you ready? Are you?”
It’s fair to say that, whatever kind of greeting Wayne was expecting, this was not it. He’d never reall
y noticed before what a big, ugly sort of bloke Doug was and all this shouting and shoving was just a bit unnerving.
“Well?”
“Er, yeah. I’m ready,” Wayne said, feebly, his voice a little high.
“What’s going on out here?” It was Nick, barging into the hallway like he was ready to beat them both up. Another big ugly bloke, Wayne realised.
"It's little Wayne here. He's finally decided to show up."
Nick was not pleased. "Where the fuck have you been, you stupid little tosser?" He joined Doug in pushing Wayne against the wall.
Wayne held up his hands in a gesture of calm. "Gentlemen," he said. "I can explain everything to your complete satisfaction." Only it came out of his mouth as, "Gen'lmun, I c'n 'splain ev'thing yo' c'mplee sfacshun," which didn't have the effect he wanted at all.
Nick pushed him hard against the wall again and turned to Doug. "Jesus bloody Christ. He's pissed as a fucking newt!"
"It'll be all right," said Doug, thinking fast. "We'll take him anyway."
"What!"
"No. Listen. He's only got to pick out the good stuff." He turned back to Wayne. "You can still do that can't you?"
"I'm your man!" declared Wayne.
Doug immediately grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up the wall. "I'm not fucking joking, shit-head. Can you still do the job or not?"
Wayne, wisely, composed his features and said, "No worries. I won't let you down, Doug."
Doug dropped him and turned to face Nick. "See? He'll be right."
"I dunno," said Nick.
"I said he'll be right. All right?"
The two big men glowered at each other for a moment before Nick backed down.
"All right," said Doug. "We're on. Get the stuff. We're going now."
"Shouldn't we rehearse a bit more?" Wayne asked but Doug's fist in his stomach changed his mind. "Quite right," he groaned from the floor. "We've done enough rehearsing."
Cargo Cult Page 4
