The Fifth Civilization: A Novel

by Peter Bingham-Pankratz

  Like all warriors of the Hedda nation, Two Mountains hunted immediately after nightfall. His people thrived when the sun went down, owing to their bodies’ heightened senses, and it was at this time, anyway, that the meatiest and the most coveted game appeared—along with the most dangerous. Duexi were asleep at this time, as they based their lives around the sun, and could be gathered easily once one became accustomed to killing a sleeping beast. Highland kegars, on the other hand, were something to always be wary of. Before one could grab a duexi and the bounty stuck to its hide, one had to make sure the area was free from kegars.

  Only a half a river’s length from his enclosure and Two Mountains was in dangerous territory. The kegars avoided large groups of people because they could smell trouble, so most of the time the animals stayed away from gatherings. But once a hunter was alone, he was fair game. Two Mountains had lost a brother that way.

  Two Mountains tread carefully, listening for the sounds of twigs snapping or leaves rustling. He walked on the tips of his four toes, as always, making sure to hit rocks or bare earth. Sounds worked to the advantage of both prey and predator. Something snapped—Two Mountains stopped and removed his bow from his back, loading an arrow on it and flexing it into a ready-to-fire position.

  It would happen in moments, he knew.

  The beast pounced from behind a bush. Its paws sank into Two Mountain’s hairy back, but only briefly, and the hunter rolled forward. The kegar let go and hurled itself in front of the warrior, landing on all fours. To attack Two Mountains again, the creature had to turn around, and while it did this Two Mountains dropped his bow and yanked his spear from his knapsack.

  The kegar turned rapidly. Growling, it leapt in the air at Two Mountains. The hunter braced himself for death but held out his spear firmly in front of him. Already lunging at Two Mountains, the animal could not move out of the way of the point. The spear dug between its tusks and into its throat.

  Two Mountains held the kegar like he held a hunk of meat over a fire. Clawing with its paws and gnashing its teeth in anger, the kegar was only pushing the spear deeper into its throat. Two Mountains knew he was in a dangerous position: many a novice had died at this stage, moving too quickly to confirm the kill and being swiped by knife-like claws. Unlike those unskilled hunters, however, Two Mountains was patient. He let the animal bleed, holding it at a firm distance until, after a minute, all movement stopped.

  Two Mountains set down the spear and unsheathed his final weapon, his flint dagger. Heart pounding, he moved to the kegar’s head, near its twitching jaw, and pushed the dagger into the base of its skull. Finally, the beast was dead.

  Most highland kegars were attracted to the scent of their fallen. Even if this one was a lone hunter, there were probably others nearby, because like people the kegars did not travel far outside their packs. Two Mountains could either leave the carcass and continue to hunt for duexi, or take the kegar back to the community. Leaving the carcass to be found by its friends would be the safer option, he reasoned, but Two Mountains also longed for kegar meat. It was still many cycles before the spring feast. He decided to risk taking the carcass back to his camp, where its friends would not travel.

  With a piece of vine he kept curled in his sack, he tied a rope around the animal’s left leg and around his right wrist. This was the only way to carry such an animal, as taking it on your back was only practical if you wanted to drain the thing right there. No longer worried about making noise, Two Mountains pushed forward through the leaves and the trees and the twigs, beseeching God to calm any nearby kegars. In a short time, he saw the familiar dome of his birch bark enclosure. He frowned when he set the carcass down nearby, knowing it had lost some of its desirability as it scraped against the ground.

  Snowy Island surprised him. Two Mountains’ wife was awake and about, despite her exhaustion at calming their rowdy child the night before. She was already lighting the fire that would burn throughout the night, and preparing their first meal, roasted ground gaggesh. When she noticed Two Mountains carrying the kegar, she smiled and stifled a laugh. The hunter figured he looked tired and sweaty from his fight, and she often joked that he looked much like an animal himself in that state. He laughed, too.

  While Two Mountains prepared the kegar for preservation, a most curious thing happened.

  The hunter had laid the kegar on its back and made a shallow cut in its belly to drain the blood. While the blood flowed, Two Mountains watched the embers from their fire ascend into the sky, which was brilliant with stars. It was one of those rare dark nights when only the half-moon remained visible, the moon having gone to the underworld again.

  As the embers mixed with the stars, Two Mountains noticed a bright flash in the sky. It was a white light, very brief, and once it had blinked out there was a small, moving star in its place. Two Mountains could not trust his eyes, and thought perhaps it was a stray ember, but when he stood and moved away from the fire he saw that there was no question the light was a star. It wasn’t stationary like the others, and moved through the sky. He watched, enchanted, as it arced above the valley until it was lost on the horizon beyond the Irefol Range.

  There was no time to lose. He left the kegar to drain, not thinking that leaving the animal out might ruin the meat. He hurried back to his enclosure. Snowy Island would be the first to hear of what he’d seen, and then after that, the Chiefs.

  Chapter 30

  Roan never imagined the Colobus would exit FTL so close to the mystery planet. The coordinates, a series of numbers programmed into the main navigational computer, never betrayed any indication of how close the Colobus would be coming to the desired destination. At best, Roan figured he’d be searching for days in a largely starless region of space. But Aaron Vertulfo was right on the money with the numbers—the blue alien world filled the cockpit windows and proved just how skilled a planet-finder he was.

  “Shit on a stick!” Roan cried, rapidly shutting off the thrusters and pulling the yoke. His actions lifted the Colobus’ nose away from the planet rather than toward it. If they’d continued on their path, the freighter would have collided with the atmosphere before any on-board system was ready. And Roan did not want to see their adventure end with them turning into a meteor.

  “Oh my God,” Kel said. “It’s true. What Aaron said was true.” She sat in the copilot’s seat, her elbows on the control panel and her head resting on her palms. She wasn’t the only one there. David had barely squeezed his feathered frame into the back of the cockpit, while Duvurn and a few Bauxens were forced to wait outside the hatch, jostling for a peek and what was to be the sight of the pentury.

  “It’s a planet!” the Prince squealed. “A genuine planet!” The man was near hysteria. “Servant, fetch me five bottles of the Aginivo, vintage…the year of Chairman Gask. I think they are apt for this occasion.” The servant, however, remained enthralled with the sight out the windows.

  “Doesn’t anyone care how close we came to skipping off the atmosphere?” Roan said, acting the killjoy. He adjusted the yoke and the pitch, and the blue blob in front of them was now drifting out of sight. “We’d be charred toast—we’d be history at history, if you will.”

  Kel rolled her eyes. “But we’re not toast, Nick,” she said. “You should learn to enjoy the view.” The Colobus began shaking. Kel reached over to Roan’s set of controls and pressed a stabilizer button; the shaking stopped in moments. Coming out of FTL so close to a massive body had shocked some of the systems on the ship, and the Colobus wasn’t exactly in pristine shape.

  Slowly, the planet crept back into view, unfolding beneath them like a sea. Evidently they were over the night side of the planet, with the sun behind them. At the edge of this black sea was a blue horizon where they could hopefully soon glimpse distinct oceans and continents.

  “What should we call it?” Roan asked.

  “Perhaps we should postpone naming it,” David suggested. “The inhabitants might already have their own name for it. Re
member your Christopher Columbus, and the Bauxen explorer Grajetus, whose unfortunate spate of naming started a worldwide conflict some fourteen hundred years ago.”

  “Fine, fine,” Roan said. “That’s assuming there are inhabitants, you know.”

  “Correct.”

  Kel looked over the console in front of her. A circular representation of the planet blinked onto a screen, surrounded by a pulsating blue field, which indicated the ship’s sensors.

  “OK, we’re scanning for iron and other metals that might signal construction. Our sensors are primitive, but they should be able to pick up any large cities. This would be simple on any of the four major planets.” The computer whined in negative. “Nothing. At least, not in this hemisphere.”

  “Scan for any large bio readings,” Roan said. “Maybe there’s a group of people we can land near.”

  “Call it Wenayla!” Duvurn yelled from the back, pounding his fist against the wall.

  “A minor Bauxen deity,” David clarified. “Of fertility.”

  “Wenayla!”

  Roan and Kel tried their best to ignore Duvurn. The computer whined another negative, and Kel frowned. “Our sensors aren’t powerful enough to detect a crowd of even thousand people. If there were millions clustered in a city, maybe. But nothing besides apparent vegetation is reading.”

  Nick shook his head. “Great. So we find a new planet and nobody’s home. That’d be rich. I didn’t risk my life to come here and discover the fifth alien species is a clump of moss.”

  Something clasped onto Roan’s shoulder. Somewhat startled, Roan looked back to see David wrapping a feathery talon around it. He was leaning in to get a closer look at that planet out the cockpit windows.

  “Actually, Mr. Roan, adding a planet full of unclassified flora would benefit science greatly. You must get past your biases about humanoid species being the only ones that matter. By expanding the definition of life, the Four Civilizations have discovered many alien species, though none that are bipedal or use complex language. Remember that on Iquelmus, the Bauxens found bacteria living within the methane seas. In the Fortu System, several moons have been confirmed to contain small rodents. And then there were the Chickens of Orion, who did not survive the first five years of human colonization.”

  “Be that as it may, David, I didn’t come all this way to find a planet full of farting cattle. I came to find an intelligent species. Someone we can relate to.”

  “Wenayla!” Duvurn shouted again. “Wenayla, Wenayla, Wenayla!”

  Roan glanced at David. “That most of us can relate to.”

  Duvurn continued. “As the richest person on this vessel, I demand naming rights!”

  Roan had enough. He jabbed a finger through the hatchway at Duvurn. “Listen! Until we ask these inhabitants what they call their world, we’re calling it ‘Aaron’s Planet.’ ”

  Duvurn said nothing. His mouth twisted into a wide, toothy Bauxen scowl.

  “It’s final, then,” Kel said.

  “Where’s that wine?” Duvurn growled from behind them. The Bauxen servant jumped from his awestruck daze and clattered out of sight to the mess hall. Duvurn laughed, and Roan broke a smile as well. If there was any occasion that merited a few glasses of port, it was this one. They’d just completed the journey of two lifetimes.

  It had been a relatively uneventful, and some might say boring, month. Since blasting out of Bauxa, they’d detected no sign of any pursuers, or indeed space traffic of any kind. They were heading to a dead region of space, where a lack of habitable worlds and light years of cosmic dust had given commerce no reason to penetrate. Kel snugly fit into her role as captain, and Roan volunteered for the role of copilot. It was only natural, since the two had decided to reboot their relationship.

  Company policy is that the command structure of a ship cannot be romantically intertwined, but they weren’t on a Company-sanctioned mission, so to hell with that. At Kel’s insistence, the two made a point not to rub it in the other’s faces, even going so far as to spend much of the workday on opposite sides of the Colobus. But as the weeks wore on, the two became more inseparable, taking dinner together and all but abandoning their separate quarters. Roan had to admit he was embarrassed when David mentioned he heard a bout of lovemaking one night and asked if he could sit in once and observe (no).

  The alien, though, had grown on Roan. They were swapping stories about Aaron and science now. While the Nyden couldn’t convince the cynical pilot there was something ethereal about the whole universe, Roan was growing to tolerate his conversations more, and was perusing the ship’s encyclopedic database for information about the Nyden culture.

  Now the Bauxens were another story. The good Prince seemed fond of barking orders and taking constitutionals in his quarters. Perhaps Duvurn’s habits shouldn’t reflect on the whole Bauxen race, Roan reasoned. Most of the other Bauxens had pitched in with maintenance and cooking, as well as other minor duties. Instead, the Prince’s actions should speak to the lethargy of royal entitlement.

  After completing one orbit, Roan and Kel set the ship on autopilot and followed the rest of the crew down to the mess hall for the celebration. There wasn’t any rush to actually fly into the atmosphere so soon. Duvurn had gotten to the cafeteria before them, and had several of his trademark wine glasses with spiral handles laid out on the table before him.

  Their atmosphere was jubilant. A Bauxen poured wine liberally into the glasses. Some centuries-old tunes by the Earth artist Ellington played over speakers. Most of the crew trickled down to the mess eventually, even Moira. All were placing their trust in the autopilot and the alarms that would sound in case anything untoward happened.

  Not that they expected anything to, since they’d left all trouble behind on Bauxa.

  Duvurn held up a glass to Kel. “No word from the surface?”

  “No communication of any kind.”

  “Well, then…” He held up a glass of wine high above his head, some of the liquid spilling out. “Some of you humans may not be familiar with the Bauxen way of toasting. We are all familiar with it here!” He repeated the line to some of the Bauxens who didn’t speak English, and they laughed. “You see, on such a momentous occasion as this, it is customary to drink as much as possible in as little a time as possible. That way, by the time you’ve had enough, you appear twice as happy for the occasion as you normally would.”

  “Only twice?” Roan asked.

  “It depends, I suppose.” Duvurn moved the glass to his wide lips, then stopped to survey his human hosts. “Please, take a glass. There is quite a lot of Aginvio and we should finish it all.”

  “That may not be the best idea,” Kel said, though she was scooping up a glass as she did. “We don’t know what’s out there. Maybe we can have a bigger celebration once we land on the planet.”

  “Are you subverting my traditions?” Duvurn asked, though it was evident that the good Prince was only teasing. He looked to his men, who were waiting impatiently with their glasses and even spilling their liquid on the mess hall’s linoleum. Since the humans did not appear to be especially keen on this tradition, Duvurn waved his hand and his men began to down what was in their glasses, finishing within seconds. Roan tasted some of the wine, then his glass over to Duvurn, who was now struggling to uncork the next bottle. A servant jumped in to complete that task while Duvurn finished Roan’s drink.

  “Somehow I’m no longer thirsty,” Roan said, then moved with Kel over to the mess hall window. The Planet was effulgent, bathing the room in blue and green. Two continents were visible, locked together by a connection of algae-green isthmuses. All the usual landforms seemed to crisscross their jagged frames: dark mountains, topped with clouds; rivers leading into lakes and the oceans; a desert bordering what appeared to be a series of steppes. It was more verdant than any of the four planets in existence, save perhaps Nydaya, and certainly more so than Earth. If it had any inhabitants at all, they probably reveled in its beauty each day.

 
; “It kind of makes you think of Eden, doesn’t it?” When Kel said this, she rested her head on Roan’s shoulder.

  “Eden? You talking about the place Christians believe in?”

  “Yes, Nick, of course that’s what I meant. What we have before us is an unspoiled paradise. Think of how beautiful it would be to see it up close.”

  “A real utopia. Yeah.” Roan noticed rows of islands in the ocean they were currently over, green and beautiful and tropical, and probably much like the Garden of Eden he remembered hearing about. None, of this, of course, settled the questions they came here to answer. Did the planet have life? If so, how old was it? And did all other life in the galaxy originate from here? Roan told himself not to worry about those questions at the moment, and focus on the here and now. Beauty wasn’t going to give him any answers.

  “Something wrong?” Kel asked. She rubbed her hand along Roan’s back.

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking: out of one hundred billion planets in the galaxy, what are the chances we found the one that started it all?”

  David came up alongside the two, holding a glass of wine. This surprised Roan, as he was sure the Nyden’s philosophy prevented him from drinking.

  “Oh no, this glass was not my idea,” David said, as if sensing what Roan was thinking. “The Prince handed this to me and I took it. I didn’t want to be rude. You know, he and his fellow Bauxens are on the road to being quite intoxicated.” Kel and Roan glanced back at the table, and Duvurn was blabbering about something in his own language, much to the delight of his fellow citizens. In his hand was a bottle of wine, uncorked and full, no doubt soon to disappear. The human crewmen were sitting at a table, far away, eyeing the group with a mixture of shock and awe.