Cargo Cult

by Graham Storrs

  Wayne goggled. If the man had levitated two metres into the air, Wayne could not have been more astonished.

  "Why don't you just calm down and start thinking this through," Barraclough continued. Sam was frozen in a rather silly combative pose. Barraclough smiled down at her. "We're not getting out of this by running around like – oh, I dunno – like Rambo in a corporate motivational video."

  Sam put down her arm and stood up straight. Clearly the danger of fisticuffs had passed. She glared at Barraclough through narrowed eyes. "I hate you," she told him.

  "That's fine by me. We're all out here because of you, because we all tried to stop you getting yourself killed. Our only safe course of action was to wait on the ship until the Lalantran authorities caught up with it."

  "That's another thing," Drukk interjected, speaking to no-one in particular. "Why did that big black thing turn up saying it was a Lalantran Agent? And what business have they got bothering a Vinggan space ship?"

  Barraclough ignored him and went on talking to Sam. "Now, obviously, we can't get back into the ship. Equally obviously, whatever you think, we can't get another ship to take us back home. I think our only option is to find somewhere safe to hide out and then stay there until the Lalantrans arrive."

  "Are these Lalantrans really coming?" John asked, hoping Barraclough would have a convincing answer and Sam would stop glaring at him as if she meant to chew through his neck.

  "No they're not," Sam said. "It's all rubbish. Whatever that big black thing was, it couldn't stop the Vinggans last time and, even if it can find us here, there's no reason to think it could do anything for us except stand around looking ugly." She didn't look at John as she spoke. They'd all learnt not to do that.

  "All right then." For the first time, Barraclough was starting to sound angry. "You tell us what you think we should do, Rambo."

  Sam narrowed her eyes even further. "All right I will! See those spaceships over there?" She pointed to a clutch of small, boxy machines standing on the apron in the shadow of the mighty Vinggan craft.

  "If they are spaceships," said Barraclough, “and not just the local equivalent of helicopters."

  "Of course they're space ships! It's a spaceport, isn't it? What else would they be?"

  "They do look a bit small," ventured Wayne.

  "Shut up, Wayne," his sister snapped. "We go over to those. We get aboard one."

  "If it's not locked."

  "We get aboard one," Sam insisted. "We take off and we fly back to Earth. What's so hard about that?"

  "Oh, I dunno," Barraclough's tone was mocking. "I suppose it would be easy to check if they have enough fuel in them, or to read the alien instruction manual to switch on the life-support, so where could the problem lie? Oh yes, even if those things were actual human-style helicopters, what do you think the chances are of any of us learning how to fly one in ten seconds flat? And don't you think that maybe a spaceship might be just a tiny bit more complicated? And what about navigating our way home with alien star charts when we haven't got a clue where home is and we'll probably be dodging half this planet's police and military once they notice we've just stolen a billion-dollar spaceship?"

  Sam seemed remarkably unfazed by what the others secretly admitted were pretty crushing objections to her plan. She confounded them further by allowing herself a small smile of triumph. "I'd have to agree with you, Chewbacca," she told Barraclough, cheerfully, “but we have one little advantage you seem to have overlooked." Clearly enjoying the irritation on Barraclough's face, she reached out and grabbed Drukk by the arm, pulling him forward. "Let me introduce Luke Skywalker, our very own, certified, honest-to-goodness alien astronaut!"

  -oOo-

  Chuwar looked down from his dais at the funny little aliens beneath him. The Vinggans were not what he had expected. Werpot had told him they would be big, slimy, tentacled things. Instead, they were small, fragile-looking creatures that teetered alarmingly on just two legs. Their skin, where he could see it, was pinkish and their limbs were stiff and brittle-looking. Their slender bodies were coated in brightly-coloured materials which he assumed was some kind of advanced body-armour – but he could not explain why there would be such differences in design. There were three of them. The leader – standing slightly in front of the others – wore white and that was just as well because he could not for the life of him tell one from the other.

  "I am Chuwar!" he declared, pronouncing his name Chu-Waaagh as he usually did.

  Werpot stepped forward hurriedly to make the introductions. "Greetings, Vinggans on behalf of His Magnificence the Mighty Chuwar, Lord of To'egh and absolute ruler of the Meisos Dominions. I am Werpot Ka Thigrule, His Lordship's vizier. We have already spoken when we made the arrangements for your visit." He smiled ingratiatingly then turned to Chuwar who was eyeing him impatiently. "Your Magnificence, this is the delegation from Vingg. May I present Braxx, Corpuscular Manifestation, third class, of the Great Spirit and his companions Trugg and Klakk."

  Braxx regarded the vizier and his master. Chuwar was an enormous, heavily-built reptilian, his green and gold scaly body adorned with badges of office and ceremonial weapons. Braxx had seen several species like it before but none quite so large or vicious-looking. The vizier was quite different, small, almost black, with thin, papery skin and multi-jointed limbs which he kept folded away most of the time, he was almost insectoid but of a breed Braxx had never encountered. "You are not of the same species," he commented conversationally.

  Again Werpot did the talking. "His Magnificence is of the exalted Durak people. Mighty rulers all of them. I am not so fortunate," he made a deprecating gesture. "I am a N'oid."

  "Annoyed about what?" Braxx enquired politely.

  “Pardon?" Werpot asked, confused by the sudden shift in the conversation.

  "What are you annoyed about?"

  'Me? I'm not annoyed." He cast an anxious glance at Chuwar. His master's tolerance for idiocy from aliens was extremely low.

  "You just said you were," Braxx insisted.

  There was an awkward silence.

  It is surprisingly rare that a translation device takes a word from one language and renders it into another language with any degree of ambiguity. Yet it does happen, especially with proper nouns, which such devices always find difficult to manage. In fact, these accidental 'homophonically anomalous transliterations' – as they are known in the world of translation field engineering – are the subject of many a ribald joke and most stand-up comics around the galaxy have a few of them in their repertoire. Many of these are taken from the best-selling booksim "The Bedside Homophonically Anomalous Transliteration Companion” – which has broken several galactic sales records and has translated itself into over four thousand of the galaxy's leading languages.

  It is ironic, therefore, that no-one in the great hall was laughing.

  “Perhaps," said Braxx, ever willing to ignore the foibles of inferior species, and attempting to get the conversation back on track, “you could tell me which planet you are from."

  "N'o," the N'oid replied with a polite nod.

  The Vinggan's smile vanished. He turned to the warlord. "Is this some kind of joke? Or is it your habit to have your lackeys insult your guests?"

  Chuwar, who had been listening to the exchange in amazement, was as confused as his vizier by the whole thing. "Are these Vinggans mad?" he asked Werpot, who seeing his plans for a better future rapidly slipping away hurriedly began temporising.

  "I'm sure it is all some kind of misunderstanding, Your Magnificence. The Vinggan emissaries must have misunderstood..."

  "The impudence of the wizened little creature!" Braxx was outraged that it could be suggested that a Vinggan – especially one of his stature – could have misunderstood anything. He fixed the puzzled warlord with an imperious eye and pointed at the hapless vizier. "What is your servant hiding? Tell me where this creature comes from?"

  Chuwar gave a baffled shrug. "N'o," he said. "He already told you."<
br />
  "No he didn't!" Braxx shouted. "What's going on here? You people are as mad as humans!"

  "What?" Chuwar roared.

  The little Mozbac functionary, who had been standing a few paces away, had been growing increasingly anxious as the strange alien had grown more and more belligerent. He had almost cried out in shock when the insane creature had called Chuwar 'mad' but the sight of the great warlord rising to his feet and bellowing was more than the Mozbac could bear. In panic, he threw his arms out wide and rose up on his hind legs, wailing – an instinctive fear reaction of his species.

  Braxx and his two companions, with Chuwar roaring in front of them and a Mozbac wailing behind them did what any Vinggan would do in their situation. They drew their weapons and began blasting away at everything that moved – and quite a few things that just stood there gawping at them in astonishment. The little Mozbac disappeared in a cloud of vapour and Chuwar and his vizier might have been next had the Palace Guard not lurched into action, surrounding their master and pulling huge weapons from their back-packs. The Vinggans were quickly the focus of a dozen streams of high-velocity metal pellets, fired from the trolls' screaming rail guns at hypersonic speeds, each stream with enough energy to slice through granite like a chainsaw through balsa wood. Which was all a bit unfortunate, really, since the Vinggans' personal force fields, coming on instantly to protect their wearers, deflected the pellet-streams easily and in all directions. The Palace Guard suddenly found itself facing a cloud of its own hypersonic shrapnel, as if they had surrounded a very large grenade that they had then triggered. The expanding cloud of pellets tore through them, blasting them to pieces as it passed.

  Chuwar and Werpot would have been ripped to shreds too except that they were both wearing inflatable body armour. At the first sign of trouble, the tiny packets of monomolecular fabric dotted around their bodies – each about the size of a shirt-button – had explosively inflated like lots of little air-bags. To the amazed Vinggans, still marvelling at the way the Palace Guard had self-destructed, it looked as though Chuwar and his vizier had sprouted big fat mushrooms all over their bodies. For a moment, Braxx exchanged surprised glances with his companions, then he stepped forward to look more closely at his host's condition. The rail gun pellets seemed to have bounced harmlessly off the tough monomolecular polymer but the armour was so tightly inflated that neither the warlord nor his servant seemed able to move.

  Watching from inside his protective armour, Chuwar could quite clearly see the Vinggans peering at him. The peculiar aliens stood unharmed at the centre of a ring of dead trolls and now advanced on him on their two, long, teetery legs, their little heads tilting from side to side as they examined him. He struggled in vain to move but he knew he could not. The inflatable armour held him completely immobile, as it was intended to, protecting him from even a major explosion. But the emergency beacon had activated automatically. His guards would soon be pouring into the hall. Yet it was clear to Chuwar that these Vinggans could easily wipe out his entire army in this kind of fighting. Their shields would protect them while they picked off his soldiers one by one – or the stupid trolls destroyed themselves in hopeless attacks.

  As soon as this crisis was over, Chuwar was going to have a word with his arms dealer. That lying Frofrifrathalionion slug had told him inflatable armour was the last word in personal protection. Well that was just crap. Chuwar wanted what the Vinggans had!

  Braxx poked the rigid membrane that surrounded Chuwar.

  "Do you think he's all right in there?" Trugg asked.

  Braxx tapped on the armour. "Can you hear me?" he called. It was all very odd. "Look, we're sorry about your guards. It was an accident, what with all that shouting and commotion. It's so easily done, don't you find?"

  He tapped on the armour again. He wasn't even sure which bit of Chuwar he was talking to any more. Once inflated, the creature was almost twice the size it had been before and its shape had become indistinct and puffy.

  "Hello," he said again. "Look, we'll happily compensate you for the loss of your, er, whatever-they-were. I don't suppose they were worth much." With a sigh, he turned to his companions. "Well this isn't what I expected."

  "It's that black thing's fault," Trugg said, pointing at Werpot's bubble. "I've never seen such a belligerent species! It's like he just wanted to start an argument."

  Chuwar watched them carefully, only half-listening to their idiotic chatter. He must have been right about the brightly-coloured fabrics they were wrapped in. Those must be the source of their protective fields. The one who was speaking wore gold, the leader wore white, and the other wore red. The fabrics were similarly smooth and light yet each had a subtly different texture. Did the Vinggans signify rank by each wearing a different kind of field-generating armour? When he spoke to his arms dealer, he would need to see catalogues and specifications – although he was fairly certain that it would be the leader's white armour that was the highest spec. That's what he would get for himself – however silly he might look in such a device, it would be worth it!

  "Does anyone have a pin?" Klakk wondered. “Maybe we can pop a few of those bubbles and get through to them."

  The Vinggans searched their shoulder bags for a moment but came up empty-handed. "Oh this is just silly!" Braxx announced at last. "All we want is a stupid flow control modulator doodad. I say we stop messing about with these ridiculous creatures, go and find where they keep them, take one and be off."

  Chuwar watched them shrugging and nodding. Their body language meant nothing to him but he could see they were getting ready to leave. "Werpot," he said softly into his communicator. "I don't believe there is any further danger from them. Do you agree?"

  "They seem to think it was all some kind of misunderstanding, Sire.."

  'Very well." The warlord uttered the control sequence that switched off his armour and as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, sucked back into its little buttons.

  Startled by the sudden reappearance of Chuwar, the Vinggans again raised their weapons.

  "No, don't shoot!" shouted Werpot, also reappearing. "There's no danger to you. Everything is fine. We understand it was all just a little mistake." Encouraged by the fact that the Vinggans were lowering their little weapons, he ventured a friendly smile. "It could happen to anybody. I'm sure we'll all have a good laugh about this later." He gave a short laugh but stopped himself when he heard how tense and strained it sounded.

  At that moment, far away in the gloom, the doors of the Great Hall burst open and dozens of heavily-armed trolls began flooding into the room, their boots thundering against the stone floor. Again the Vinggans raised their weapons and turned to face this new tumult.

  "Stop!" the mighty warlord bellowed and, instantly, all movement ceased. As the echoes rattled around the vaulted chamber, he turned to the Vinggans. “Now, my little friends, why don't we get down to business?”

  Chapter 28: Stealing, Fighting, Haggling

  As much as Drukk denied any ability to pilot spaceships and protested his ignorance of anything to do with astrogation, none of the humans would believe him.

  "She's so modest," Wayne kept saying, full of admiration.

  “Methinks the lady doth protest too much," said John.

  "All right," said Barraclough, gruffly. "It might just work. He turned to Drukk for the third time. "Are you sure you can pilot one of those things?"

  "No!" the hapless Vinggan insisted. "No, no, no! How many times do I have to tell you, you stupid biped?"

  "So modest," Wayne sighed.

  "Let's just get you inside," Sam said, reassuringly. "You'll feel more confident about it when you see the controls."

  "Slime and mucous!" Drukk moaned and gave up arguing.

  The little band of fugitives had made its way through the buildings to a spot just a short distance from one of the parked spaceships. From their hideout in the shadow of a mud-coloured buttress, they surveyed the area. No-one was in sight. The spaceport was virtually dese
rted. Once or twice they had seen aliens in the distance – slender, green-skinned things that looked like two-metre-long, tailless skinks with an extra pair of arms at the front. They looked pretty harmless – quite cute and friendly in fact – but the humans kept out of sight. They quizzed Drukk about the green-skinned guys but he denied all knowledge of them, saying only that they looked like they'd make poor slaves.

  "How about that one?" Sam asked, pointing at the largest of a small group nearby.

  Drukk shrugged.

  "Is that even a spaceship?" Barraclough asked.

  "I suppose."

  "Well you must know what a spaceship looks like."

  "Not really."

  Sam was getting annoyed with Drukk's coyness about this and decided the best thing to do was to keep pushing forward. “Right. It's that one then."

  Even so, Sam didn't much like the look of their proposed escape vehicle. It was about the size of a double-decker bus with a couple of gigantic engines strapped to its sides. It was painted in gaudy orange and green stripes with bright purple splotches. Here and there were odd squiggles and marks, as if alien vandals had spray-painted their tags on it. There were no windows and no doors that she could see. If it wasn't for the fact that all the other vehicles nearby looked just as bad, or worse, she would never have chosen it.

  "Come on then. Let's do it!"

  Sam set off at a run across the hard-packed, sandy surface and, with various degrees of unwillingness, the others followed her. They gathered again under one of the enormous engines.

  "Now what?" Barraclough wanted to know.

  "Well duh, Chewy, we find the door and get inside."

  Barraclough eyed her angrily. "Will you stop that Star Wars stuff? We are not in a film and you are not Princess Leia!"

  Sam smiled sweetly at him. "I know I'm not Princess Leia, silly. I'm Han Solo. Now stop practising your social skills on me and start looking for the door."