The Fifth Civilization: A Novel (3 page)

Roan’s breakfast consisted of half a bottle of Swerdlow ’59
and a packet of salty crackers. Most mornings his body agreed it was a
nicely-balanced meal. This time it told him to spit out the crackers in the
kitchen sink. Sodium and alcohol so early in the morning left his mouth feeling
like a dried swamp, though he was sure the aftertaste had as much to do with
what happened the previous day. Roan lapped from the faucet to wash the taste
away.

Orion wasn’t exactly a colony just off the cosmic
interstate, a place where you could hop to for a quick vacation. Kel was going
to be gone at least two months. Roan wandered over to a paper map of the known
galaxy tacked on his living room wall, just adjacent the kitchen. It was from
his childhood, a memento from his father’s home he’d managed to keep all the
years, and the creased-lines of many foldings proved it. Viewing the galaxy
slightly on its ecliptic, the map was a close-up of the Milky Way’s Orion Arm,
with the Sun at its center.

Roan stuck his finger on the bullseye of Earth. From there Roan
traced the arc of stars “south” toward the colony world called Orion, some six
hundred light years away. A helluva distance. Pinpointed around Earth were the
major colonies and outposts of humanity, the result of three centuries of
exploration. Cresting “north” toward the galactic center were the worlds of the
rest of the Four Civilizations: Nydaya, Kotara, Bauxa.

The galaxy was just too goddamn big.

Roan sank into his plush recliner. At best his apartment
could be described as modest, with a tiny kitchen complementing his living room
and a bedroom tucked off to the side. For a single Euro like himself it wasn’t
too bad, but Roan wanted to move to north Japan for years now. With someone.
Preferably Kel. He figured that now he would be spending most of his time in
the living room, hanging out with his friend Lethargy.

For a moment he soaked in the sunlight coming in from the
window, enjoying the view of one of the only places on the Surface where you
could still witness an orange sunrise give way to a brilliant deep blue.

Happy New Year.

He flicked on the broadcast viewer hanging on the wall. It
took him five months to save up for a thirty-four-inch monitor, and here he was
watching inanity. The morning BV shows were full of New Year’s greetings and
happy commentators predicting a bright pentury. Apparently that word had become
official now. Roan thought about calling Masao and seeing what he was up to, though
he’d probably ducked into Club Apex once setting foot on solid ground. What was
it, nine o’clock? In all likelihood, Masao wasn’t even awake. Returning to
sleep didn’t seem like a bad idea, and Roan’s eyelids drooped as one show’s
hosts gushed over grainy five-hundred-year-old footage of the second millennium
celebrations.

Roan’s doorbell chimed.

At first Roan thought he was dreaming or he’d mis-programmed
the cooker. Then he remembered the sound, and tried to place the last time he’d
heard it. There was a slim chance it was Masao, maybe towing someone nice he
met while karaokeing “Auld Lang Syne.”
 
Roan hopped out of the recliner and checked the monitor connected to the
hall camera.

A Nyden stood outside his door, anxiously pacing.

What the hell? Roan thought for a moment it might’ve been
the one he saw on the Tubes, but what were the chances of that? Besides, that
one’s brain was a bit more greenish. The alien rang the doorbell again and
daintily knocked on the door.

“Mr. Roan?” came an accented voice. Now the knocking turned
from gentle to frantic pounding. “I need to see you about an urgent matter.”

For a moment Roan considered pretending like he wasn’t
there, or asleep, but who’d want to be left with a Nyden beckoning at their
door? The neighbors might talk. Better at least see who he was, but only
through the door.

“What the hell do you want?”

“I need to speak with you, immediately!”
 
His words were fast, high-pitched. The
Nyden sounded on the verge of panic.

“You’re already speaking with me. Tell me your name.”

“My name is David.”

“Your real name.”

“That’s what I go by on Earth. Please, Mr. Roan. I’m a
friend of Aaron Vertulfo.”

Aaron?

Roan touched the unlock button on his keypad and hesitated
before pressing it. This guy probably
was
an associate of Aaron, since that man always kept strange friends. But why the
hell would Aaron send an alien to talk with him? A call would’ve done just
fine. In fact, he’d wanted to catch up with Aaron anyway, as his scientist
buddy had been
incommunicado
for the
past year. Taking a galactic tour, Roan remembered, or something like that.

“Mr. Roan?”

One click and the door slid a third of the way open. The
Nyden named David jumped back ever so slightly, as if startled by the
mechanical action he desired. Roan saw he was a little taller than he thought,
with a few smaller and cyan-colored feathers near the top of the head, making
him a little older than Roan. The visitor was dressed in the form-fitting,
sleeveless azure suit that passed for dress clothes on Nydaya, a suit that
extended all the way down his chest and left his stick-legs exposed. No boots
or shoes covered his talons.

Roan contrasted that with underwear and a tattered robe. He
yawned and wondered if the clothes were why the Nyden had his mouth agape.

“Well?” Roan asked. “You’re a friend of Aaron’s?”

“That’s right.”

“You sure you’re not selling anything? Like smokesticks?”

“No…”

“And you’re not one of those Jehovah’s Witness aliens, are
you?”

“I…I don’t know what those are.”

“What do you want, then?”
 
Roan observed the alien through an
opening only the width of his foot. That would prevent any funny business.

“Mr. Roan, you should come with me. Aaron has an urgent
matter to discuss with you.”
 
David
sounded very polished, and Roan figured he must’ve been taught English by a
Brit. Figures, since they were the most sought-after teachers on the colonies.
Hard to get a job on your old island when much of it was still irradiated.

“Any business Aaron wants to discuss with me, he can tell me
about it over the com or in person. There’s no reason to send a
duck
like—I’m sorry, an
alien
like yourself to come meet
me.”
 
Roan told himself not to
antagonize the guy with specist slurs.

“Aaron was insistent. He’s being monitored.”

Roan laughed. “What, he’s being spied on?”

“Yes, he is.”
 
Roan wasn’t an expert at reading Nydens, but this guy didn’t look like
he was joking. Aaron was a senior researcher at the Mizutani Lab downtown,
getting the most out of his astrophysics degree by studying stars, monitoring
asteroids, checking up on solar activity. Once he’d talked Roan into letting
him stay aboard for a freight run just so he could analyze Comet Tsali at its
aphelion. No spy would be interested in any line of work so boring.

“Who’s after him?”

“We really should go now.”
 
David pointed his bony figure toward the
exit down the hall. As he did, Roan’s next-door neighbor, Mrs. Bashka, slid
open her door and stepped out into the hall. Both David and Roan shot a glance
at her, a fat and elderly woman who gasped at the alien in her hallway. In this
apartment complex, even a non-Euro at the doorstep was a rare sight indeed.
Quickly, Mrs. Bashka’s shock turned to indignation and then to anger, and she
strutted past the hallway conversation with her chin up in the air, too proud
to get worked up over the offworlder.

“Suppose I come,” Roan said, continuing the interrogation,
“How would we get there?”

“I have a private vehicle.”

“Oh? A skimmer?”

“A hovercar, yes.”

“I knew it.”
 
Roan never bothered to get a license, believing ground travel the
preferred methods of beggars and bottom-feeders. Maybe public transportation
was humiliating, but at least you got to
fly
.
“And when we take this skimmer, we’re going straight to Mizutani? Isn’t that on
the west side?”

“No, we’re meeting at a public place.”

“Ah, I see. To avoid the spies?”

“Yes.”

Roan nodded. “And this public place is where?”

“We should really be going,” David repeated, now glancing
side to side down the hall. Another door could open at any minute. Roan
suddenly realized he didn’t want David inside his apartment or outside it,
forever tainting his abode as the dwelling of a duck-lover.

“Look, wait just a few minutes. Let me get changed and think
this over.”

“So you’re coming?” David’s eyes enlarged, as if his anxiety
had changed to gratitude.

“I’ll think about it.”

With a flick of a button, the door slid closed, and Roan saw
David’s eyes shrink and thought he heard him mutter something that sounded like
weesh-to
. Was it a Nyden curse?
Did
they curse? Yesterday’s slacks were
on the floor next to the bed, and he wiggled them on. He threw the robe on his
recliner and went to his closet, pulling a Company shirt over his head. No time
to brush or shower, but Aaron wouldn’t mind. He topped off his outfit with a
grey jacket and his Company batball cap.

On his kitchen counter sat his Universal Communicator,
plugged in and recharging. Roan plucked it from its cradle and scrolled his
contacts for Aaron. His extensions, work and home, were both listed, and Roan
gave each a ring. A few beeps and then an away message, but no sign of life. He
put the com in a pocket. No point in leaving a message if he was on his way to
see Aaron now.

 
Maybe this was
all a ruse, some way to con Roan. It’d happened to him before—but a Nyden
con artist? The idea was laughable. Even if Aaron really wanted to meet him,
what David said made it sound like his mind had fallen down a black hole. Spies
and secret meeting spots belonged in a BV movie, not real life.

But the Company always gave him a week to unwind after an
interplanetary run, and Kel was gone. Getting caught in some kind web of
intrigue was better than thinking about her going off to Orion. And it was
certainly better than downing Swerdlow in his underwear.

But when Kel was right, she was right. Roan did crave
adventure. Before he stepped out the door to meet with the Nyden, he swung open
his pantry and grabbed an empty flour container. He reached inside and pulled
out an old Nalite pistol. Long-barreled and covered in rusty chrome, the weapon
hadn’t been fired in years, but its power cell still showed a charge.

Roan smirked. You just couldn’t be too cautious in this day
and age.

All Roan wanted to do was enjoy the passive luxury of the
passenger seat. Instead, he shut his eyes to avoid watching David navigate the
tight corners of Tokyo. Slower groundskimming buses and pedestrians rolled by
outside, affording Roan his first glimpse of the Tokyo streets in months.
Normally, he avoided the ground and all the claustrophobia its crowds induced.

“You never told me your Nyden name,” Roan said.

“It can be troubling for humans to pronounce,” David said, a
hint of a challenge in his voice. With gentle strokes of his feathered limbs,
David manipulated the vehicle’s controls with ease. Roan found himself oddly
drawn to and repulsed by the Nyden’s hands, which were brown and four-fingered
and came at the end of appendages that resembled tree trunks. He didn’t think
he’d ever been so close to a Nyden.

They turned onto a coastal road, the double towers of the
Rainbow Bridge still decorated with lanterns from the New Year’s celebration.
City Services still hadn’t taken them down, he noticed—the authorities’
usual efficiency must have been counterbalanced by the wild celebration of the
coming five hundred years.

“I can pronounce some Nyden names,” Roan said. “I’ve been to
your planet. Your Prime Minister or Premier, whatever he’s called…his name is,
uh,
Hetchay
, uh,
Hetchoy
…”

David laughed. At least, Roan assumed he did. His mouth gave
a sound that more resembled a terse squawk. How he spoke eloquent English with
a beak the size of a large fist was beyond Roan.

“That’s not quite it, Mr. Roan. Actually, according to the
language of his home country, you should pronounce his name with an accented
stress on the first syllable. It is quite a common name, really…”

“Watch it!”
 
They
were about to mate with the rear end of a garbage skimmer. David apologized and
pulled the throttle to the left, the antigravity cushion tilting the hovercar
at a forty-five degree angle. As Roan held on for his life, David casually set
the craft back down to its horizontal orientation. On the streets you had to
obey the ancient law of the lanes, like some
fin-de-millennium
cabbie from the holofilms. This is why Roan took
public transit.

David continued his explanation. “Now, you see, Chairman
HETtachoi
Velvvo hails from the
southern—”

“OK, David. I’m sorry the subject came up. I don’t want to
get into a pronunciation match.”

“Oh.”
 
David kept
his eyes glued on the street. “You know, your English language is fairly simple
to learn once you figure out all the complex grammar.”

“It can’t be
that
strange.”

“Oh, it’s much more complicated than what we speak on
Nydaya. How it ever became an official language of this planet mystifies me.”

“Something about empires, if I remember. Now answer me this,
David. How long have you been on Earth?”

“Earth?” The skimmer made a turn onto an expressway, gliding
alongside Tokyo Bay in the direction of the spaceport. Gargantuan bulk carriers
lumbered along the water. “Let’s see…about fifteen years.”

“Oh really? And how do you know Aaron?”
 
And why, thought Roan, had the name
“David” never come up in Roan’s conversations with his friend?

“I’ve known Aaron for about five years. I was teaching
biology at the University of Port Moresby, and we met when he was looking into
traveling to Nydaya. Apparently he had gotten my name from the Nyden embassy.
We corresponded and met for months and then he decided to employ me as his
assistant.”

“His assistant?”

“Yes. The Mizutani Laboratory was eager to have me work
there, in fact. I have found that the scientific establishments of Earth are
far more accepting of other species than political or military ones. Especially
when it comes to xenobiology.”

“Let me guess. That’s the study of…”

“The study of alien life, Mr. Roan.”

“Got it. What did Aaron need an assistant for?”

David hesitated. It was slight, but noticeable. “A project
he’s working on. Aaron will tell you about it in greater detail.” Ah, a
project. Something the “spies” were after, no doubt.

“You know, David, you are kind of mysterious for a Nyden.”

“I just think Aaron will tell it all better.”

“Fine. What you can answer is why Aaron needed a Nyden for
his assistant. Why couldn’t he trust a human?”

David’s bulbous head shimmered viridian. Maybe he was
bristling? “It wasn’t a matter of trust. It was a matter of expertise and my
unique perspective on the situation. I’ll have you know, Mr. Roan, that I was
granted my job based on my qualifications, not based on some idea of needing a
token alien in the lab. Many have accused me of being unqualified, sometimes
not so subtly.”

“OK, I get it. So Aaron recognized some potential in you?”

“Yes, yes he did. Ah, we’re almost there.”
 
Roan had an idea of where they were
heading. The area was a wealthy district that catered its resources either to
tourists or rich Tokyo citizens looking to buy seafront property. Roan usually
avoided the waterfront, preferring the dives and clubs of the east side where
the darkness made anonymity easier. But one time many years ago, when he tried
to get something going with Kel, he took her for a walk down by the Bay…

Kel…

“Please tell me we’re going to the beach, David.”

“No, the Yuko Mall.” The monolithic structure came into view
just then, perched on the edge of the harbor near a long pier. Shaped like a
fat, spiraling cone, Yuko Mall teemed with shops on each of its ten layers. At
the top, shimmering like a beacon, was the holographic logo of whichever
company had paid to rent the space this month. Right now it was HiLo Energy
Drink. Just the thought of having to navigate Yuko made Roan quiver. There were
bigger malls on the surface, in China and in some parts of New Europe, but none
had the fortune of being so close to the centers of Earth power. Rumor had it
that Bauxen royalty traveled for months across hundreds of light years just to
spend a few hours inside.

The skimmer passed a sign indicating a parking area ahead, a
collection of underground hangars where, for a small fee, you could store your
vehicle.
 
David slowed when they
reached the gate. An L-shaped machine whirred next to them and scanned their
skimmer, sending a lightning-fast wave of blue light through the vehicle. Roan
tensed, wondering if perhaps this wasn’t some sort of security method that
identified the skimmer’s occupants. David did his best to assure him. “They
scanned for a pass. Don’t worry, I have one, and they’ve deducted the charges
from my account. We can park legally.”

Roan nodded. They glided into the underground hangar and
searched the rows of old, new, and custom skimmers for a parking space. All
this private transportation was making Roan feel a little inadequate.

“Why this place, David? Why did it have to be Yuko Mall?”

“Because there are so many people inside. And the Kotarans
wouldn’t dare work their way through thousands of humans.”

Kotarans? Oh everlasting fuck.

***

Grinek dreaded the thought of entering such a crowded place.
Being squeezed between thousands of Earthmen was as appealing as jumping into a
pit of vipers, but the target was headed for the Yuko Mall. Vertulfo was clever
and fast; he’d have avoided detection altogether were it not for the Kotarans’
advanced software. His “fedora” headgear and trench coat could not hide his
features from the machine, and his dark skin also contrasted nicely with the
paler Japanese. Unfortunately, Vertulfo had taken crowded streets, and morning
traffic made it hard for their skimmer to pull up alongside him for the grab.

Their skimmer trailed a hover bus that Vertulfo had hopped
on. No dark-skinned Earthman had yet disembarked at any of the stops, leading
Grinek to believe Vertulfo was still on board. The bus was now reaching the end
of its scheduled line, which being the Yuko Mall, was no doubt the target’s
destination. This was a problem. Even if Grinek and Talmar were to enter it,
Vertulfo could always tell where his pursuers were by the gasps and frightened
looks of Earthmen.

Grinek turned to Talmar. The foot soldier was manning the
controls, pushing just enough on the throttle to let the bus stay several
meters ahead and avoid the appearance of tailing it. The Commander struck
Talmar on the shoulder and pointed to a path on his left. The concrete road
diverged in two directions. Public transport headed right to a buses-only area,
while private traffic was being led into an underground tunnel.

“We can’t follow him there,” Grinek said.

“What? Why?”

“Our vehicle will be stopped by the security forces if we
follow that transport. On the left is an underground storage facility.”

“Then I’m afraid we’ve lost him, Commander.”

Elementary Surveillance, a required course at the
intelligence academy, taught that
Segen
Ra
, or
Risk Taking, was among the
highest qualities of a brave fighter. Those who ran from danger were cowardly
and could never hope to rise above a junior desk clerk. Grinek did not make it
to his current rank using the instincts of a pen pusher. He unlatched the
skimmer’s entry hatch and waited for it to swing open. The smell of the salty
sea assaulted his nose.

“Commander, what are you doing?”

“Store this vehicle where appropriate. Do not let any of the
authorities stop you. If they do, show them your diplomatic credentials. Then
come find me by tracking my communicator signal.”
 
As the skimmer continued to hum along
the road, Grinek put one foot on the running board outside the vehicle, hanging
on to the open hatch for support. His monk’s robes flapped in the wind. None of
the curious looks from bystanders concerned him.

“And tell the operations ship I am pursuing the target on
foot.”

“Very well, Commander, but—”

Grinek leapt off the side of the vehicle and onto the
concrete roadway, a private skimmer honking as it passed him. With the
nimbleness and speed his species possessed, he hopped to a pedestrian walkway on
the side of the road. This followed the public transit path to the mall
entrance. Gasps and shouts heralded his arrival in the sea of Earthmen. Grinek
hated being forced to wade into this disgusting mass that attacked his
nostrils, but fortunately the crowd parted as he walked. Word was trickling to
the front that a Kotaran was coming through.

With a snarl, Grinek wrapped his claws around the oversized
monk’s hood and threw it over his head.