Cargo Cult Read Online Free PDF

have known he was just letting off steam.
There was no need to go calling him a big galah and all that. And
then Jimbo’s missus had got all upset about the table being knocked
over and Dave had had to leave or he’d have knocked Jimbo’s block
off, most likely.
    What a mess.
    And now he had to drive ten
kilometres down this stupid track to get back to his own property,
listening to country music on the radio and wishing he had the
evening all over again.
    When he first noticed what looked
like a mob of roos standing in the road in front of him, all he
thought was, “Good. I’ll show the buggers!” and put his foot down.
So, when the roos started to look more like a group of people, he
had to slam on the brakes and came sliding to a halt in a huge
cloud of dust just a couple of metres in front of the horrified
Vinggans.
    As the dust swirled brightly in the
headlamps of the old ute, Dave peered through the grimy windscreen
at the vague shapes out on the road. What the hell was a crowd of
people doing out here at this time of night? Who were they anyway?
It looked like a bunch of women. Holy shit! It looked like naked
women! A dozen naked women all pointing sticks at him. Hang on.
That one there. She looked just like whatsername? You know that
film star woman. Nah! It couldn’t be. But, as the dust settled,
Dave had to admit that she looked just like her. And that other one
too. And that one. And that one! Bloody hell! They all looked like
her. Every, bloody one of them. And all of them stark, bloody
naked!
    Shakily, he got out of the cab and
took a couple of tentative steps towards them. The naked women
stepped back, pointing their sticks at him as if trying to threaten
him with them. “G’day,” he said. “How’re y’doin’?” and they all
jumped back. “It’s all right ladies. I don’t bite.”
    “What’s it saying?” Braxx demanded,
nervously.
    “Look,” said Drukk, firmly.
“There’s no point in you asking me any questions. I don’t speak
human.”
    “Well, activate the translation
field, in the name of Vingg! Then we can all hear what it’s
croaking about.”
    Dave heard the strange chirruping
noise the women were making and wondered if it was some kind of
foreign language. Spanish perhaps.
    Drukk had a number of useful
gadgets in a bag hanging from a bony projection near the top of his
body. He made a mental note to learn the names of his new body
parts. It was difficult to find what he wanted, fumbling around
with those stiff little extensions at the end of his arm. He really
missed having proper tentacles. Eventually, however, he pulled out
the translation field generator. It was a simple box with two
buttons on it: one marked 'on' and the other marked 'field
generator circuit interrupt'. He thought for a moment and pressed
'on'.
    "Is it working?" asked Braxx.
    "Is what working?" asked Dave.
    The Vinggans gave a collective
start.
    "Do – you – speak – English?" Dave
asked slowly and loudly.
    "Well, do we?" Braxx asked
Drukk.
    Drukk made the
patience-wears-thin-with-annoying-idiot gesture, which his new body
executed as a roll of his eyes and a bite of his tongue. He
addressed Dave. "Can you understand us, human?"
    But Dave's mind was elsewhere.
"You're, like, escapees from some secret Government cloning
experiment. Am I right?"
    "Does that mean it understood us,
or what?" Braxx wanted to know.
    Drukk was genuinely confused. "I
don't know. Perhaps there are sub-species of human with unusually
low intelligence."
    “Maybe your translation field
generator is broken,” suggested someone from the back. “I’ll turn
mine on too.”
    “Yeah, me too,” said another and
then several more. Unfortunately, after that, no-one said anything,
so it was hard to tell whether it had made any difference.
    Braxx stepped forward. "We are
peaceful, religious people, emissaries of the Great Spirit, and we
come to bring Her communion to the sapients of... wherever we
are."
    Drukk grabbed one of Braxx’s