The Fifth Civilization: A Novel Read online

  He could wait all day.

  Chapter 4

  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 a
t 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.

  Chapter 5

  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 comp
any 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.