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  He headed for Rio’s tent first. For the most part he smoked molla before going home to his wife and it didn’t bother her. She was at home all day tending to chores within the village, and free to spend her free time cavorting with whichever man or woman she pleased while Yuto was away. That didn’t mean that Yuto was the unaware husband in the relationship, he had had his fair share of trysts, it was simply the way of life on the desert planet.

  Rio’s tent was an exact replica of every other tent in the colony. Each was a relic from the Shrike, a canvas exterior held up by a spherical contraption made of many rods, which could be collapsed, folded and fit neatly into a telescoping cylindrical tube. The tube was also collapsible and when opened completely made up the bottom of the tent. Everything else in the tent had to be carried in a backpack during nomadic phases. The only seating in any of the tents were cushions woven out of molla stems that could be filled with air. Every hour these cushions had to be refilled, the air slowly pushed out by the weight of an Exo being. Rio was already sitting on a cushion with Deirde next to him. He was busy loading dried molla caps into a pipe crafted out of metal. Deirde twiddled with a book of matches between her fingers. Her lips were dyed black with molla spores and she would often apply a paste of the spores around her eyes, a fashion statement that Yuto wished his wife, or any other woman in the colony would pick up on.

  They greeted Yuto as he sat and Deirde struck a match and lit the pipe as Rio held it to his lips. He held the hit in his lungs for several beats before breathing out a blue cloud of smoke. He passed it to Deirde who did the same, before passing it to Yuto. Yuto took a hit and reveled in the strange taste that filled his mouth before exhaling a string of blue O’s. As he exhaled his vision was augmented with bright colors and mild tracers that made the boring and drab tent look like something out of his dreams. His focus was enhanced, similarly to when he snorted the molla spores, but without the scatterbrained effect. The effect it had on his heart-rate was inverse and he felt calm. He and his friends fell into a bout of cackling laughter until the initial high subsided.

  In the meantime, Aileen and Herma floated around each other coyly before sinuously rising in the air, each of their suction cups matched up. They flew upward, slowly and steadily in an S-shaped pattern before dropping to the ground in a spasm of coitus. The creatures’ bodies became one and it was impossible to tell the difference between where one creature started and the other ended, even though Herma was a milky white color. Deirde’s goni left her shoulder and joined the frolicking mass. This was a common occurrence but despite it, no goni had reproduced since the last Exos had been born. If a goni wasn’t born when an Exo was, the human would die as it wouldn’t have a bacterial donor. Gonis formed lifelong bonds with their owners and would not affiliate themselves with another human, and as such, newborn Exos needed a goni infant to inoculate them with the bacteria needed to survive on AE625. Deirde’s goni was an electric blue color with threads of yellow running the length of its body. Deirde named it Deirde. The eccentric woman believed that she and her familiar were one being, a belief that was only slightly radical.

  “I think we should leave,” Deirde said, breaking the drug-induced chill.

  Yuto and Rio looked incredulously at her.

  “And go where?” Rio asked with an eyebrow raised to his hairline.

  “Anywhere we want. We are hunters and we can survive without the rest of the clan,” Deirde said, which was exactly what every hunter had thought on at least one of their travels.

  “I think we should go to the original settlement,” Yuto said, and Deirde howled with excitement.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Her eyes lit up, the molla making them look even crazier.

  “But we have a responsibility to the colony,” Yuto said, viewing both sides of the issue.

  This time Rio disagreed. “There are other hunters, we won’t be missed. And we won’t have to drink our own piss half the time.” Rio’s eyes began to take on the same crazy gleam as Deirde’s. “You’re the only one with a wife, you can bring her with us or leave her.”

  Yuto thought about bringing his wife, Taiga, and feel a lump in his stomach. He’d rather leave her, and Deirde saw this.

  “You don’t love her, and you know it. She won’t miss you and you won’t miss her. You are only together out of convenience. How many other lovers have you had since you publicly announced your marriage?” Deirde asked. It sounded harsh, but it was just honest. The closest thing to love between two Exos Yuto had ever seen was Deirde and Rio.

  “Probably every woman in this colony other than the crones and you,” Yuto said and a laugh bubbled up from his stomach before erupting from his lips. “I wouldn’t think twice about Taiga and she wouldn’t spare me a second thought.”

  “So when do we leave?” Rio asked in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper.

  “Next time one of us finds enough water to fill all of our packs. Instead of bringing it back to the camp we will mark it ourselves and the three of us will fill our packs the next day.” Deirde grinned wolfishly and put her hand in the middle of the circle, the other two placing theirs on top of hers. “No one but us can know.”

  Chapter Three

  Hours later, Yuto stumbled back to his tent, his mind still buzzing from the molla. The stars shone brighter than before, each wearing an aura of some fantastic color that was usually lacking. Yuto stopped and stared at them, enjoying the last remnants of his high. He entered his own tent and found his wife, Taiga, drying out their molla portions to make soup the next day. She had short dark hair that framed her flat, plain face. She wasn’t unattractive, but she was plain nonetheless. She was short and stocky, with toned arms and legs. Despite her plainness she attracted many men and a few women with her gravitational personality.

  “You are later than usual,” she commented offhandedly. It wasn’t an accusation. She and Yuto simply had no connection other than sex. They talked about their days, attempted at procreation, and then went to bed. They didn’t discuss ideas, cook, or do anything together other than sex and small talk.

  “After today’s fruitless search, I smoked more molla than usual.” Yuto shrugged. “How was your day?”

  She shrugged in answer. For the past weeks, if not months, there had been little to talk about.

  Then they threw themselves at each other. Their relationship had gone from having little meaning to it, to purely physical.

  Yuto tore out of his clothes and began to remove Taiga’s, his lips locked with hers. The faint taste of dirt lingered in both of their mouths. It didn’t bother him, such was life.

  X

  Yuto and Taiga were lying in bed, naked and sweating. But for the most part, they were silent. The two fell asleep without saying another word to each other. In only a few more hours Yuto would rise and begin searching for molla and water the next day. It wasn’t a terrible routine, but it was a routine. Its appeal had already waned on Yuto, and he wanted more now. It had been weeks since he indulged in an extramarital affair, but those too were losing their luster. Yuto sighed and rolled over and let sleep take him. Moments later it seemed, he was woken up by the warbling cry of Aileen. He dressed in the dark quietly, as to not wake Taiga. Hunters had to wake before the sun in order to make as much ground as possible before the scorching heat came over the horizon.

  He exited the tent and Aileen floated over to his shoulder, her suction cups wet and sticky on his skin. He scratched her head and whispered, “Sometimes I think that only you understand me.”

  Chapter Four

  In the opposite direction, Rio set off from camp, Herma perched on his shoulder much like Aileen was on Yuto’s. His boots scuffed the dirt as he mulled over the previous night. He was fully committed to abandoning the colony, and the prospects of finding the first settlement thrilled him. According to legend, the original colony could be returned to in five hundred years. By then the water in the underground spring would refill enough to support the colony for another hu
ndred years. It was a promised land of sort, but Rio would never see it and neither would the children that he couldn’t have. He would never reproduce, he had no reason to live for a next generation—he only had himself to care for. Rio saw no reason to remain in the colony and even if he died in the wild, it would have little effect. In the grand scheme of biology, he was a one chapter book. After Yuto left, Deirde had begged him to try sleeping with her. He gave in like he always did, but nothing came of it for him, although she did—several times.

  As a result, Rio was frustrated and a day spent wandering in the desert would be good for him. His goggles were equipped with night vision and allowed him to traverse the rock scattered terrain effortlessly. AE625 was almost pretty at night in the absence of heat, but in a devastated way. The wind blew the dry sand, weathering rocks in odd patterns as they reached for the sky in huge, twisting chunks. Canyons created by water a millennia ago dug out the landscape in deep troughs. When hunting, Rio usually explored the canyons and the caves that riddled them, hoping there would be something along the ancient waterways. It had been four days since he found water of any kind. Canyoneering was difficult for Rio because of his large frame. Some of the handholds wouldn’t support his weight, and many caverns tapered down until he couldn’t fit deeper in them. He was fit, of course, being a hunter, but he lacked the lithe figures of Yuto and Deirde.

  The landscape changed little over the hours, especially from Rio’s vantage point at the nadir of a canyon. The sun’s slow creeping advance went unnoted by Rio, except for the subtle lightening of the sky. The canyon wound slowly and sinuously, and Rio imagined what it might have looked like with water in it. He had never seen a river before and he imagined a magnificent torrent of azure liquid barreling along its length, not the gentle meandering stream that was the likely culprit of the erosion. None of the colonists knew what any large body of water would look like. The only water that had ever amounted to anything was the stagnant water sitting in the tank at camp. Rio explored the caves in the region, scaling the walls to find them, often disappointed by their shallow ends, lacking both mollas and water. His hands were calloused and often bleeding from the jagged rocks he scaled all day.

  Herma flew beside him, gently flapping its wings on the air currents. When Rio began to struggle it would land and wait patiently on the rocks for its master to continue climbing. Rio’s hands were slick with sweat and felt soft against the hard rocks. Each point of the hard granite dug into his palms and another abrasion formed. His chest and stomach were similarly scraped, but he had a goal in sight, an opening in the cave wall another hundred feet up, large enough that he could stand in it. Panting, he steeled his reserve not to look down and reached for the next handhold. It stuck out bare centimeters from the rock wall and he wrapped his fingers around it, tugging to test whether he had enough leverage.

  Not satisfied, he looked for a foothold, found a slight indent in the rock and pushed his body higher, using his tentative handhold while snaking close to the wall to avoid being caught in the wind that whistled down the canyon, moaning eerily like the ghosts of the planet. The ghosts of a long-dead, dry, planet. His muscles strained to hold his weight until his eyes alighted on another handhold and he ascended another foot. It was slow going, but he wanted to be cautious instead of getting himself into a predicament he couldn’t get out of. He had to climb back down once he had explored the cave, after all. Despite his careful planning his route still wound across the canyon wall. By the time he was halfway to the cave, the sun was creeping over the edge of the canyon, a sliver of light beating down on Rio. He began sweating more profusely and often he doubted his grip.

  Regardless of the treacherous climb, he made it after another forty minutes and heaved himself over the ledge. His breath caught in his chest when he saw the cavern end before it had gone five feet into the rock. He screamed and heard his voice echo back to him six times over. Each time the sound faded, along with his hopes of finding water. Herma repeated his call forlornly, its voice, neither male nor female, containing a slight metallic quality. This was because gonis, like birds, had a syrinx, not a larynx, and could operate either side of their voice box independently, making each song a duet. Herma looked as defeated as Rio and the two sat in dejected silence, not looking up from the sandy dirt that clung to their bodies.

  Rio blew out a long sigh in capitulation and swung his legs over the cliff, eying the canyon that wound before him. The muted tones of the canyon fit his newfound mood. He found a foothold and eased his bodyweight on to it before pivoting to face the cliff-wall and began his descent. If it was possible to trudge whilst rock-climbing, he managed it. Each of his movements bore more weight than his actual mass and were slow and dejected. It took him thrice as long to scale down the canyon as it did for him to climb up it. Though he was focused on each handhold, he did so mechanically. His mind was numb from his failure and no thoughts were spinning through his cranium as they usually did.

  When his feet finally touched solid ground he stood there for a moment before Herma’s bugling call brought him back to reality. He turned his gaze to the goni and saw what it was making a fuss about. At the base was a tiny pool of water; it barely trickled an inch onto the sand before it evaporated due to its glacial pace. Nonetheless, it was water. Rio examined the water and saw that it had eroded its way down the canyon, invisible until it crept out along the canyon bottom. Its source had to be at the top of the cliff. With Rio’s luck it was probably at the very top of the cliff. He would have to scale the canyon wall again.

  His muscles ached, and he knew he wasn’t capable of climbing it again. His entire body felt drained and judging by the sun he knew he had no other option than to return to camp and try to find the water again tomorrow. He pulled a map out from his pack and did a few mental calculations on the poorly drawn canvas and lightly marked the spot with a cylinder of graphite. The makeshift pen left his fingers and hand blackened and shiny. He didn’t mark the spot in an obvious way, though, and he definitely did not mark it as a potential water source. Instead, he smudged it with his fingers, making it look like a mistake. This way the Elders wouldn’t know that he had found water. Hopefully it was enough for him, Deirde, and Yuto to make their escape.

  Chapter Five

  With her goggles pressed tightly against her face and a scarf wrapped around her neck and face, the pelting sand bothered Deirde very little. But what bothered her greatly were the sixteen figures she saw moving on the horizon. The last three of the caravan of wanderers pulled carts behind them and switched every half hour to not lose speed. Deirde had watched them for several hours now. She could tell they were at least humanoid and that they weren’t part of her colony, and decided to move in closer to get a better look. Traveling in the shadows of the rock monoliths that burst from the planet’s surface, she positioned herself so that she would intercept the troop’s path yet still be behind them. As she grew closer, her goni became agitated and lightly cooed a warning. Deirde ignored Deirde, but the creature was persistent and gently wrapped its tail over Deirde’s shoulder and drifted backward, flapping its wings slowly.

  “What?” Deirde hissed softly and gently. She purred at Deirde in reassurance. “We will be fine.”

  The goni eyed her flatly before settling back on her master’s shoulder. Deirde smiled and turned to resume her espionage and snaked around the base of the spiraling tower she was hiding behind. Much to her dismay, she rounded the corner right into the leader of the troop. He was as tall as Rio, but slender, and he wore all black clothing. He wore a duster jacket that bore an insignia Deirde had only seen drawn in the sand and on maps. The Exos had called the symbol ‘tree’ and no one alive knew what it meant, other than the rumors that it was the symbol of the Original Settlement.

  The man’s face was concealed by a mask with wide orbs for the eyes, the mouth covered with two cylinders that filtered the air for sand particles and other airborne molecules. The rest of his party wore the same strange masks. This
only took Deirde a mere second to take in before noticing the creature on the leash right in front of her. It stood nearly three feet tall and was a quadruped, but at the moment it was balanced on its hind legs sniffing the air. Its eyes were a milky white, and its skin appeared to be the same gelatinous texture as the goni’s, except this creature had long spines that covered its back and were hollow like a needle. The blind creature’s nostrils were nearly as wide as an Earthling horse’s, and they constricted with each breath as if trying to capture a smell. The animal’s snout was long and tapered despite its sizeable nostrils. Underneath the freakish nose, a fat purple tongue tasted the air. The beast’s paws were shovel-shaped claws designed for digging. The creature took one final sniff before settling onto all four limbs and turning its blind face towards the man holding its leash. Its sinuous scaled tail swung behind it expectantly. The animal’s body was exceptionally pale and that, along with its digging claws, led Deirde to believe that it was a subterranean creature. What the humans were doing with it, she had no idea.

  The man in front pulled off his mask and squinted as the sand whipped across his face. His skin was dark brown, though not naturally, it had been burnt by the sun one too many times and had a permanent ruddy-brown hue. His hair was cropped close to his skull and Deirde could see a vein bulging above his left ear. The rest of his face was a myriad of piercings, three along his right eyebrow and two more at the corners of his lower lip. He eyed Deirde up and down blatantly and she felt both uncomfortable and excited. Deirde took a faltering step, unsure of what to do, but at the same time she felt her blood pumping with excitement. She hadn’t ever met another Exo being who wasn’t a part of the colony.