The Fifth Civilization: A Novel (14 page)

Grinek went down on the mat. Pain swirled around his lower
body and paralyzed his right arm. He couldn’t believe he fell for the bait.

 
Vorjos had
fallen too, but there was a sneer of satisfaction on the man’s face. He lay
across from the Commander, tail tucked between his legs, panting and surveying
the room around him. The crewmen had stopped sparring and all eyes were on the
two. No trainee came forward to assist, however, not wishing to interrupt the
two powerful men.

“The Council wants immediate results, Grinek,” Vorjos said,
working himself to his feet and offering a hand. Grinek, still in pain and on
the mat, batted it away. He was going to get up on his own time, with his own
strength. “They are allowing you to go ahead with this folly, but only if you
get results within two days. We will be at Bauxa then, will we not?”

“Yes, we will,” Grinek said, gritting his fangs. His knees
felt like dry sticks.

“Then I don’t have to tell you that we have to have the
Colobus
in our hands in two days,
hopefully at Bauxa. If not…I have orders to get us turned back to Kotara. You
are a good officer, but you also good at underestimating your opponents.”
 
Vorjos wobbled as he worked to an
upright position. He rubbed his tail disgustingly, in full view of others, and
hobbled to the chair where his robe was placed.

“You claim I’m afraid of the truth,” Grinek said, still
sitting on the mat. “But maybe you are afraid of what I’ll find on this planet.
That I will prove that Bar’Hail and Fox’Lo and Gri’Nelda are nothing more than
erle
shit.”

Vorjos, now done massaging his tail without shame, wrapped
his robe around his body. “Commander, I am simply reporting to you what the
Council says. It is my job to report, and in turn to do what they say. These
are their concerns and fears. Remember that you work for them as well, and you
are at their mercy.”
 
He limped
through a group of soldiers still lightly sparring, soldiers hoping to catch an
earful of what the two officers were saying.

“When we reach the system in question,” Grinek called out,
“I will find a mirror so you can see your own face. I think I’ll be the one laughing.”

“Laughing is the lowest form of expression.”
 
Vorjos didn’t turn, simply exiting the
training center, his walk slightly strained. Grinek grimaced once more and bent
his knees to support his frame. A crewman tried to help him up, but Grinek
shouted him away.

“Another quarter hour of sparring!” he commanded. “To make
up for your lethargy!”
 
The men,
achingly tired, began sparring once again. Grinek worked his way to his chair
and picked up his uniform.

That
erle
shit
Vorjos. That fucker. He had known about his right arm. Without a uniform, the
scar was visible on his upper forearm: a long depression covered by scar
tissue, jagged and unsightly. No fur grew around it. Grinek had gotten it the
last and only time he let a combatant surprise him.

It was during the Grisholdan rebellion on Kotara seven years
previously. The deluded Grisholdan ethnic group decided they didn’t want to be
part of a unified Kotara anymore and their continent rose in rebellion. Grinek
was among the thousands of elite troops sent to put an end to this doomed
uprising. In two weeks the rebellion was crushed, but one of the rebel leaders
escaped and Grinek was sent in after him. The man was tracked to a forest,
where Grinek hunted him for hours, his scent growing more pungent the closer
Grinek came.

But Grinek had been careless. He did not look above, in the
trees, and that was where the rebel leader was hiding.

The rebel leapt from a branch. Quietly, with his hatchet at
the ready. Grinek heard a branch snap and threw his arm up to block the blade.
But it sunk in, deeply. The two fell to the muddy ground and the hatchet was
pulled out of the arm, its edge bloody and ready for another blow. But even as roared
in pain, Grinek sunk the claws of his other arm into the rebel’s neck, and he
watched the man’s eyes as they bulged to immense proportions. The hatchet arm
grew slack. And then the weapon dropped from the man’s hand and the life
drained from his body.

On the
Hanyek
,
Grinek grunted. That was seven years ago, and now the Grisholdans could only be
found in Kotaran folklore. He’d won that battle, but never again would Grinek
allow himself another such lapse.

 
He regarded his
uniform. Just an assembly of fabric like so many others in the Imperium. Grinek
decided he wouldn’t put it on until he reached the bridge. Everyone he passed
in the halls was going to see his muscles and scars. They were going to marvel
at them.

As captain of the
Dunnock
,
Roan would occasionally take a “spirit day.” A day in which Masao would take
over and Roan would curl up with a bottle of Swerdlow in his quarters.
Sometimes he’d wake up on the other side of the ship, usually nestled by a
pipe. The crew loved it, mainly because a drunken captain meant they could take
the day off, too. It was a deep space vessel, after all. Automation meant a lot
of stuff could be left to the computer.

Roan was currently taking a spirit day on the
Colobus
.

He’d been taking a lot of them lately.

Holding a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, Roan
stepped through the threshold of the laundry room and plopped himself down on
the bench near the last machine. On the
Dunnock
,
he’d enjoyed that seat the best, since it always stayed heated by the vents
from the drying process. It was good to know that on the
Colobus
, it was still one of the warmest spots on the ship.

Roan unscrewed the bottle top and poured a shot of the amber
liquid into a glass. Downed it in a gulp. He coughed as the whiskey snaked down
his throat but quickly poured another shot. This was the good stuff: Serafinowicz,
brewed in Australia by settlers from the former British Isles.

Kel hadn’t wanted Roan to get ahold of the liquor. She
must’ve remembered how he’d been drawn to it when he was bored, and he had
definitely
been bored on the
Colobus
, where he was treated like an
extraneous nuisance and the cause of everyone’s misery. Two of the Muslim
crewmembers asked if the alcohol could be strictly controlled, and Kel used
that as an excuse to lock it all away in a mess hall cabinet. She had the only
key, Kel told everyone, and looked at Roan when she did.

Luckily, Roan knew how to pick locks.

Roan put the bottle of Serafinowicz on the bench and closed
his eyes, listening to the hum of the dryer. Whose clothes were inside, he
wondered. Who was even up this late? Most of the crew was asleep, anticipating
their imminent arrival at Bauxa and, possibly, their way off the
Colobus
. Roan supposed it didn’t matter
if anyone came to get their clothes and saw him like this. He’d run into the
crew before during his spirit days. As long as they didn’t say anything to him,
he got along just fine with their presence.

He just wanted to see Kel. Just wanted to ask her, when he
was stone drunk and without a filter, why she’d been avoiding him. Why she’d
blocked him out over the past month, why she didn’t let him near the ship’s
controls. None of it made sense.

Roan poured another glass.

“Having a one-man party, eh?”

Roan almost dropped the glass. He whirled to face the
doorway and saw Masao there, concentrating hard on the black hole hologame in
his hand. The man’s beard was as unkempt as ever and his hair looked just as
unwashed. None of it had seen a comb for days.

“Were you following me, Masao?”

“Nope. Sometimes I come down her to meditate, too.” He
looked up from the hologame. “Or in your case,
medicate
.”

“Cut me some slack.”

The ball of light in Masao’s game dipped into the black
hole. A giant X flashed above the machine; he’d lost another round. Masao
cursed and turned the thing off. “I’m never going to get the hang of these
things. What happened to good old virtual reality, huh? Fought a lot of dragons
back in my day. Find me a headset on this ship and I bet I could fire up some
of my old quests.”

“Masao, I really want to be alone.”

“Ah, but I’ve got a few more minutes on my clothes.” Roan
regarded his former copilot. Disheveled, the epitome of dirty, Masao was at
that very moment wearing a white shirt with more holes than the moon.

“You might want to jump in there yourself, you know,” Roan
said.

Masao ignored him. “So now I know why I can never find you
in your quarters, Nick. You’ve been taking spirit days again. Don’t think we
haven’t all noticed. Kel was just telling me the other day she thought we were
a few bottles light. Said she should’ve installed a sensor to see how many
times the cabinet was opened.”

“I was gonna return the bottle.”

“The
point being
,
Nick, is that you should find other avenues of entertainment. I get so bored
doing the damn diagnostics and inventory every day that I’ve been searching
through everything this ship has to offer. The
Colobus
has a much newer media library than the
Dunnock
ever did. You should try
listening to music from the 23
^rd
century, after the exodus and first
contact. Very dark and brooding stuff…”

“Not interested.”

“Or try holofilms. I’ve watched every one programmed on this
ship at least once.”

“Do they have different pornos than the ones on the
Dunnock
?”

“
Or
, Nick, maybe
you should just try talking to someone.”

That made Roan pour the last of his shot down his throat.
The liquid was sharp and smoky, but he suppressed a cough. Talking was what he
wanted to avoid. Just sit in the laundry room and listen to the dryer tumble
around and
think
.

“She might still love you,” Masao said quietly, “If she
wanted to keep you off the liquor. I mean, it was for your own benefit.”

“Who?”

“Who? Who do you think, Nick? Doctor Kazen? If there’s a
woman in the world who would be fine with you destroying your liver I think
it’s the good doctor. Now
that’s
irony. Anyway, you know who I mean. The captain.”

Kel.

Roan stood up. Began pacing the room. There were four
washer/dryers for the entire crew, and Company policy was that you did laundry
every week. Ships were confined spaces. They got smelly. Everyone remembered
the first Alcubierre drive pioneers and how much freshener they poured into
those ships.

But Roan couldn’t remember the last time he’d done laundry.
Weeks ago, probably, right after they left the solar system. He could only
imagine how his worn out jacket smelled.

God, what was becoming of him?

“Hell of a way to show your love, though,” Roan said.
“Locking up the liquor. Kel could use a good drink now and again. It would
loosen her up.”

“She doesn’t want you to get sloshed and kill that
Kotaran.”
 

Roan remembered the being they had locked away in the cargo
bay, drugged up and under 24/7 guard. As far as Roan knew, it hadn’t done
anything but grunt in the month they’d had it captive. Roan figured the guy was
in some kind of trance. Kel had repeatedly stopped Roan from visiting their
prisoner—in the unspoken belief, he knew, that the he would snap and put
a laser through the kanga’s brain.

“I just want to talk to him, Masao.”

“Yeah, right. Kel knows you too well. She has to, she’s the
captain. She’s able to tell everyone’s moods. Tell when they’re happy or sad.
Or still not quite together after the death of their friend…”

Roan stopped. He thought of Aaron. The man he’d known for
ten years, cut down on the seafront. Putting his hands to his head, the captain
leaned up against the washer/dryer opposite Masao, letting its vibrating frame
massage him.

“At some point you gotta let your grief go, Nick. Gotta
shout it so loud that it wakes up people back on Earth. Keeping it inside you
is gonna make you explode. And I do not want to mop anymore human remains on
this godforsaken ship.” He gave a disgusted sound. “You don’t want to know what
I saw in the cockpit. What Silverman looked like after those Kotarans carved
him up.”

There was silence save for the hum of the dryer. Masao
started to regard the whiskey bottle. He picked it up and sloshed it around,
enchanted like it was the first time he’d seen liquor.

“I think that’s why I have to go to Aaron’s planet,” Roan
said. “To get some closure. To know for myself if he was right. If I just left
to go back to Earth, or stayed on Bauxa forever, I would always wonder. And I
think…I think that then his death would be for nothing.”

“But you can make it mean something.”

“That’s right. And what did Kel say? I crave adventure. I
think that’s right. I’ll be going where no human has gone before.”

Masao popped the bottle top and took a swig. Swirled it
around in his mouth and swallowed. For a few moments, nothing. Then he hacked
the loudest series of coughs Roan had ever heard from the man. Roan couldn’t
stop laughing.

“Jesus Christ, you like this stuff?”

“It’s Serafinowicz. You can’t get better—”

Masao tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered
against the wall with a piercing crash, sending glass and liquid everywhere.
Roan cringed and clutched his hair, looking wide-eyed at his (former) copilot.

“You’ll wake everyone up! Remember that guy who dropped the
toolbox last week?”

“Yeah.” Masao stood and clasped his arms on the shoulders of
Roan. It was the first time Roan could remember Masao touching him. Was the man
drunk himself? “Nick, look. You’re making the right decision. You need to go to
this planet and find whatever’s there. The origin of life, Atlantis, Eden, God,
whatever. Don’t just do it for you. Do it for humanity. Maybe all the species
will learn to live in harmony, just like your friend David keeps saying.”

Roan shook his head. “A pipe dream, Masao. We humans all
know we’re part of the same species, yet we still kill each other. Once we nuked
a third of our own planet. So what hope is there for four species to come
together?”

“Listen. I didn’t know this Aaron well. Saw him maybe once
or twice when he came on the
Dunnock
.
But I remember him mentioning where his family came from. Some island country
in the western hemisphere that’s now covered in nuclear fallout. He had
nothing
growing up, not even a bucket to
piss in. But he had the stars. That was enough for him. And by God, he became
something
. Even the Japanese grew to
like him. And we don’t like foreigners.”

“Masao…”

“Listen. You gotta prove his life’s work was right. You
gotta make that story have a happy ending. When someone goes from nothing into
something they better damn well amount to something great. Otherwise, you end
up like me. Someone who wasted his life. Who could have been something.”

“Masao, come on now…”

Masao shoved his fat finger in Roan’s face. “Don’t say ‘come
on, Masao.’ Just do what you have to do. Go to Kel and tell her you’re coming
with her and David to this planet. That’ll at least give you a few months to
sort out whatever the two of you had. I don’t know if you can salvage it. Maybe
you two will be wandering souls forever. But you will never know unless you
talk to her. And unless
you
be the
initiator.

“Take it from me, Nick. Talking’s good, it lets both you and
her know what you’re thinking. Too many times in the past I’ve let silence take
over and it comes back to haunts me. It’s the stuff regrets are made of.”

In reality, Roan could’ve gotten that spiel from any crewman
on the ship, or even an advice columnist in any of the global rags. Coming from
Masao Mori, whose idea of a relationship was midnight to dawn followed by a
there’s the door
, the advice didn’t
exactly exude credibility. And yet Roan knew Masao well enough to know the
advice was sincere. The fat man was always looking for love. He didn’t get it
from his Japanese parents, he didn’t get it from the Euros he grew up with, and
he didn’t get it from the Company. But he knew it when he saw it.

“Masao, what can I say…thank you for that.”

The washer/dryer buzzed. The noise was startling. They both
leapt up from their intimate moment.

“Someone’s clothes are done,” Masao said.

Roan raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say they were yours?”

“They’re mine.” Both men turned to the door. Sundar Kher stood
there, holding a basket. The young Sikh was consistently mystified by the two
stowaways on the
Colobus
, and as
usual he wore a look of surprise on his face.

“We were just going,” Masao said. Roan nodded and the two of
them made for the exit. Roan grinned at the Sikh crewman and noticed he was
staring at the glass and the alcohol on the floor.

“Sorry about that,” Roan said. “We’ll clean it in the
morning.”

Sundar watched them warily.

In the hallway, Masao clasped his hand around Roan’s back as
the two of them walked.

“So, you going to see Kel?” he asked.

“Not now. She’s probably asleep.”

“Ah, right. Speaking of sleep, we should probably do that,
too.”

“Right you are. Let’s get you back to your quarters, ol’
drunky boy.”

They rounded some corridors.

“Masao?”

“Yes?”

“You followed me to the laundry room, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, ever since you took the liquor from the mess hall.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, captain.”