Cargo Cult

by Graham Storrs

  Drukk had been standing on the edge of the Vinggan group, finding it hard to concentrate on the confrontation between Braxx and the Lalantran Agent because of all the shouting and squabbling the humans were doing. They really were a most peculiar species. They seemed fundamentally irrational in some strange way. Maybe, he thought, they would seem more sane when you got to know them? The one called Wayne, for example, had seemed quite coherent at times. Maybe it just needed more work to get to know them than it did with other species?

  He had looked down at one human who was tearing its own shirt off and shouting; “I’m not too old to give you a good hiding sonny!” when he noticed a movement in the trees beyond. Suddenly, four things happened in rapid succession.

  The first thing was that a group of about twenty, armed and armoured police officers came rushing up to the farmhouse. The human in the lead pointed up at the Agent and shouted, “There it is! Take cover!” The newcomers then started to spread out and find things to hide behind. Given the litter of old bits of machinery, troughs, old baths, piles of timber, mouldering bales of hay, broken down utes, blown-up police cars and so on, around the farm, they soon found themselves suitable spots.

  The second thing was that a mob of kangaroos came bounding out of the trees, not far from where the police officers had appeared. They too were heading for the farmhouse but they quickly skidded to a halt on seeing the crowd assembled there. Of course, Drukk didn’t know they were kangaroos, just that they were the weirdest creatures he had ever seen. It was at this point that he had shouted “Look!”

  “What the fuck is going on around here!” asked the lead roo, a small doe with an agitated demeanour. The other roos looked around wildly, taking in the fact that there were armed police all around them crouching behind things.

  “It’s a trap!” shouted another, bouncing with rage. “I told you it was a trap! Didn’t I tell her it was a stupid trap!”

  “Shut up or I’ll fill your pouch with sand you big, stupid rabbit! Go back. Get out of here!”

  They turned to flee but just then, the third thing happened. A small army of police officers appeared at the tree-line, advancing slowly toward the kangaroos. Unlike the first group of police officers, this lot were dirty and dishevelled. Many of them showed signs of injury and had torn clothes and missing bits of body armour. All of them looked grim and determined. Dozens of weapons were levelled at the mob of roos who kicked and jumped and shouted “Shit!” a lot.

  One of these grim policemen spoke into his radio. “Unit three to Mike Charlie one,” he said and Drukk wondered what in the galaxy the creature could mean.

  “Mike Charlie one,” said the radio.

  “We’ve got the roos trapped Sarge,” said the policemen.

  “Then shoot the fucking things!” shouted the radio.

  “Er, right Sarge,” said the policeman, embarrassed that everyone had heard.

  “Ready!” he shouted. None of his men did anything, unless you count looking at him expectantly.

  “Aim!” he bellowed. He wasn’t quite sure of the protocol in such matters but he’d seen enough war movies to give him a clue. Luckily, the police officers around him got the idea of it and raised their guns and pointed them at the kangaroos.

  “Holy Mother of God!” he screamed—because the fourth thing had just happened.

  A spaceship the size of the Sydney Olympic Stadium had come plummeting vertically down from a clear blue sky at a breathtaking speed to stop dead a hundred metres above the farmhouse. Its shadow covered everyone, police, roos and all, as though night had fallen in an eyeblink.

  Everybody looked up.

  Then a blinding white shaft of light shot down from the spaceship, wide enough to encompass the entire crowd of humans and Vinggans around the Agent, bright enough to turn them into pallid, washed-out wraiths. So bright was it that, when it suddenly stopped, it took the dazzled and confused policemen and the kangaroos they were about to do battle with, several seconds of blinking and rubbing their eyes to realise that the crowd by the farmhouse had gone. So too had the spaceship. Shooting up into space as fast as it had plummeted to Earth.

  Only one creature remained on the veranda of the old farmhouse. The Lalantran Agent.

  “Tails and whiskers!” said Shorty. “It was that bloody ship!” She looked around at the stunned and disoriented humans and then at the Agent. “Hey,” she shouted to the silent black giant. “Can you get us off this god-forsaken mudball?”

  The Agent, who had been looking up at the receding spaceship, looked across at the kangaroo. “No,” it said. It cast its grey eyes over the confused humans and said, “You had better leave while they are still in shock.”

  Shorty wanted to argue, to insist on a ride home, but something in the creature’s stony expression persuaded her otherwise. “Yeah, right,” she said, grudgingly and hopped off at full speed towards a gap in the human ranks. Her mob followed close behind.

  “Hey!” shouted a nearby human and fired a shot at a roo as it passed him. The bullet clunked harmlessly off the creature’s shield and the roo kept right on bouncing. He set off after the disappearing mob and several others joined him but the majority of his fellow police officers just stood in the farm precincts staring up at the empty sky.

  The Agent, only there because its equipment had detected the Vinggan teleport beam and had given him protection from it, cursed its own stupidity. It was the ship. The ship, with its artificial sentience, that had rescued the Vinggans, stolen the humans and escaped. It should have gone for the ship, not the Vinggans. It should not have let the human, Barraclough, distract it.

  It would know better next time.

  With a hunter’s iron patience, the Agent clamped down on its boiling fury and signalled its own ship, still waiting in orbit. Another teleport beam stabbed down, thin and fast and the Agent was gone too.

  The whine of an over-revved engine insinuated into the stillness left behind. It mounted to a roar and a police car slewed to a halt on the dirt farm road. Senior Sergeant Rick Fury jumped out and ran a few steps towards his men before the atmosphere of the place overcame him. “What’s going on?” he asked. Almost a hundred police officers were standing or sitting, in groups or alone, all over the farmyard. Some were staring at the house. Some were staring at the sky. None of them spoke.

  It was spooky.

  Chapter 20: Aftermath

  Earth

  "Hello, I'm Gina Spacek and welcome to a specially-extended edition of the Seven O"Clock News.

  "Queensland Commissioner of Police, Mr. Barry Skingle, is still refusing to comment on the incredible events which appear to have taken place in and around the city of Brisbane over a forty-eight hour period last week.

  "Police are now refusing to confirm or deny their own initial reports of a terrorist attack in Brisbane's central business district, early on the morning of the Sixteenth, in which eighteen people may have been kidnapped. Three passers-by are known to have died in the incident while, at the subsequent shoot-out at Saunders’ Station, a remote farmhouse North-West of the city, a further seventeen police officers were killed and twenty-nine injured.

  "Despite this being the largest police operation ever undertaken in Australia, the Police, the State Government and the Federal Government have closed ranks and are refusing to release any further information, claiming that the incident is a matter of national security.

  "More peculiarly, reporters who were at the scene have alleged they saw a gigantic space-ship descend from the clouds above an area where the police had been engaged in a prolonged gunfight and then fly off again shortly afterwards. Police are alleged to have confiscated video recordings of the incident and, in simultaneous raids on the evening of the Seventeenth, Federal police entered the offices of every leading news agency in Australia and confiscated other materials including more video recordings.

  “The farm where the incident happened belongs to a Mr John Saunders. Locals allege that Saunders ran a space cult from the fa
rm and held late-night orgies in which young girls were forced to engage in sexual acts with men wearing alien costumes. Earlier I interviewed Dr. Hilary Gore, Emeritus Professor of Cult Studies at the Australian National University who told me this.”

  “I have been aware of this particular cult for more than a year now. One of my PhD students did her thesis on it last year after having spent several weeks with them. They are what we classify as a ‘cargo cult’. The term comes from cults which arose particularly in the South Sea Islands during periods of first contact with modern Western civilisation. The cargo cultists were overawed by the amazing items in the newcomers’ cargoes and believed the white men to be bringing magical and powerful objects to the islands. Cults arose which worshipped the gifts of the strange invaders and prayed for the giving of these gifts to the cultists.

  “What we find with the Saunders’ Station cult—the Receivers of Cosmic Bounty, as they call themselves—is exactly parallel. Only, here, the cargoes are being brought by aliens, not white men. Frankly, I am amazed that there was trouble with the police as cults of this kind tend to be extremely passive and never violent.”

  “That was Professor Hilary Gore.

  “Adding to the mystery of the whole affair, several eye witnesses in Brisbane, including the Verger at St Stephen’s Cathedral, have reported encountering groups of up to twenty women looking exactly like the actress Loosi Beecham, star of the blockbuster films, P.I. Girls and Love is Harder. It is not certain just how many ‘LooBee clones’ as they are being called, were involved in the incident but it is alleged that it was they who hijacked the Kanaka Downs Garden Club outing and caused the three deaths in Brisbane CBD.

  “Police are still refusing to comment on the whereabouts of the Kanaka Downs Garden Club members who, friends and relatives say, are still missing and did not return home after the incident. There is also no sign of the LooBee clones although it is rumoured that, like the gardening club members, they are being held for questioning by the police.

  “In Los Angeles, a woman claiming to be the real Loosi Beecham, issued a statement through her lawyer today saying that she was not in Australia at the time of the incident. The statement goes on to say that Ms Beecham has not been cloned and does not intend ever to be cloned. Ms Beecham’s lawyers further stated that, if any cloning of Ms Beecham has taken place without her knowledge or consent, legal remedies would be sought against the perpetrators who would clearly be in violation of Ms Beecham’s rights as an individual.

  “Meanwhile, we have had reports that the police officer in charge of the siege of Saunders’ Station, Chief Inspector Sheila Sullivan, is under sedation in Royal Brisbane Hospital after having suffered what doctors are calling an acute traumatic stress episode. Reporters have so far been unable to talk to Chief Inspector Sullivan about what happened to her and what she saw out at Saunders’ Station that led to her breakdown. However, we hope to bring you an interview later in the program with Emily Sullivan, the Chief Inspector’s mother.

  “We will also be bringing you an interview with Mr. and Mrs. Zammit, the couple who claim that their daughter, Samantha, and son, Wayne, were among the people who disappeared during these fateful two days. Samantha Zammit is better known to readers of Fast Lane magazine as ZamZam, the writer of a popular outdoor lifestyle column. Her editor, Mr Derek Gleebe, told our reporter this afternoon that Ms Zammit and her brother had discovered a woman they believed to be Loosi Beecham stoned and naked and shouting nonsense in the street and had then gone to the farm with her, having uncovered some connection between the actress and the cult living there.

  “More of that later.

  “In breaking news, one of the policemen involved in the shoot-out at Saunders’ Station, has come forward and has been speaking to reporters about his experiences during the incident. The policeman, Constable Jack Collins, claims to have been in the thick of the fighting at Saunders’ Station and has made some very disturbing allegations.

  “We go live now to our Ipswich Studio, where we join Mark Jones and Constable Collins. Mark?”

  “G’day, Gina. Constable, what can you tell me about Loosi Beecham’s involvement in the affair at Saunders’ Station?”

  “I didn’t get a real good look at the LooBee clones myself but I knew a couple of the blokes who’d been in the gunfight with them. They told me there were maybe a dozen of them, all dressed to kill... Ah, look, sorry mate, I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s all right. Go on.”

  “Right. All dressed in, like, bikinis and lingerie and weird stuff. Anyway, they just opened fire without any provocation with their ray guns and mowed down loads of my fellow officers.”

  “You say they had ray guns?”

  “Too right, mate. Like the kangaroos.”

  “Tell us about the kangaroos, Constable Collins.”

  “We were staking out the farmhouse, waiting for our orders to go in when we were attacked by a mob of roos. They went for me and another bloke, like they just wanted to bash us, or something. Then more blokes arrived and the roos started shooting at us.”

  “The kangaroos started shooting at you.”

  “Yeah. That’s right. I know it sounds stupid. Nobody believes me but there were a hundred-odd police officers out there. They all saw it. The roos had ray guns too and, like, protective shield things—you know? like the Borg on Star Trek? Nothing could touch them. We were shooting at them for a long time and they just took everything we threw at them. Thousands of rounds! When they started shooting back, we had to run for cover. Their ray guns killed you straight out if they hit you. One shot could blast a tree to splinters.

  “Then they made a run for it. I don’t know why. We were definitely losing. No doubt about that. They ran for the farmhouse and we followed them. When they got through the trees and into the clearing around the farmhouse, they stopped. We stopped too. No-one wanted to get too close. There were other police officers there already and a big crowd of people around the black monster on the veranda.”

  “Black monster?”

  “Yeah. I’d heard some stuff on the radio. Guys were fighting a gigantic black monster, then it disappeared and they tracked it to the farmhouse. I wasn’t really concentrating at the time, what with the roos and all. But it was bloody big, right enough. It had the LooBee clones with it and a load of other people.

  “It looked like we were going to have another go at the roos when, suddenly, a spaceship the size of a footy oval dropped out of the sky. Then there was a flash of light and all the people round the farmhouse disappeared. Then the spaceship shot off into the sky and it was gone too.”

  “The people disappeared?”

  “Yeah. Just like that. They were there one minute, gone the next. Probably the spaceship took them. All except the monster. Then the roos and the monster talked to each other.”

  “You’re saying the kangaroos could talk?”

  “I hadn’t heard them until then but they talked all right. Ask anybody. Then they ran off and there was another flash and the monster disappeared too.”

  “You understand, don’t you Constable Collins, that your story sounds pretty far-fetched. Talking kangaroos, spaceships, giant monsters. Many people are not going to believe you.”

  “Mate, I don’t believe it myself sometimes. Sometimes I think I should be in the loony bin with the Chief Inspector and all those other blokes.”

  “What other blokes?”

  “Ah look, they bussed in a load of, you know, counsellors and stuff. And, I’ve got to say, there were a lot of blokes who were acting a bit queer. Not crook or anything, just, you know, laughing a lot, or crying, or shouting at people who weren’t there. Stuff like that.”

  “You know, don’t you, that the Government and the Police have clamped down on all information about the incident. They won’t speak to the press and they won’t allow any of the police officers involved to speak to us either. What made you come forward against the wishes of the Commissioner of Police, the State Prem
ier and the Prime Minister?”

  “What? You’re joking? You mean I’m not supposed to be talking to you? Oh shit! Oh man, the Prime Minister? Oh shit! Ah, look, mate, you can’t let this go out. Oh fuck, they’re going to crucify me, if this goes out.”

  “I, er, I’m sorry, but this is a live broadcast. Everyone has already seen it.”

  “Oh you’re joking! Oh God. Oh God. I feel sick.”

  “Well, yes, thank you Constable Jack Collins. Now back to you Gina.”

  “Thank you Mark. Look, maybe you could get the Constable a bucket or something, Mark, I think he’s... Yep. Thought so.”

  Space

  “Oh for God’s sake! Turn it off!”

  Sam stood up and stomped over to the window. Outside, the grey haze of infra-reality roiled around them.

  “I can’t believe space is so bloody boring!” she shouted but the others stayed glued to the screen, watching the news of their own disappearance unfold.

  Wayne joined her at the window. “Drukk said it would be.”

  “You and your bloody Drukk,” muttered Sam. “If you hadn’t been sitting in that ute, unconscious with bloody Drukk that day, none of this would have happened!”

  “It wouldn’t have happened to you, you mean.”

  “What?”

  “It would still have happened to everyone else,” Wayne explained. “Just not to you.”

  “Yes? And your point is?”

  Wayne gave an apologetic grimace, acknowledging his stupidity. “Yeah. Right. I see.” He was happy to leave the subject anyway. He didn’t want to explain to Sam just why he was in a stolen ute with Loosi Beecham that night. Better by far that she didn’t know.

  “Just look at this!” Sam burst out, waving an arm at the roomful of humans watching TV, her tone pure self-pity. “A bunch of vapid hippies and supercharged crumblies, a bus-driver, a con-man, a policeman and you. This isn’t how it was meant to be.”

  Wayne thought about it for a moment. If anything in this world had ever seemed like Fate, well, this was it. The many and varied routes by which everyone had ended up just in that particular spot at the precise moment the Vinggan ship had teleported them aboard, really must have been choreographed by Someone. But he kept his mouth shut and grunted sympathetically.