The Fifth Civilization: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

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