“We need to find water before we can return.”
I pick the furry cucumber up. “This isn’t good enough?”
“No. I would also like some meat.”
“You don’t think we’ll make it back?”
He glanced up at the sky, then back into the forest as if calculating how far we’ve come and our odds of finding water and food along the way.
“With our current supplies, no. If we had turned around this morning, probably.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“This is what you wanted.”
“No, it’s not!” My eyes prickle.
Birdy-bat like things burst out of the grass not far from where we stand. I stumble back. Aldit lifts his sword. His markings flare blue, and the electricity lights up his sword. Three of the animals drop out of the sky. He strides into the grass and a few seconds later, he returns with them, dropping their still warm bodies into the shirt-bag that I’m carrying.
“So what do you want, Ruby of the Humans?”
I stare at the swaying heads of the dark grass. “No one has ever asked.”
And I don’t know what I want. Returning to the colony is an easy goal. The expected one. I was assigned my job and told what was expected once we landed. I have followed the orders and plan laid out by the leaders and the people back on Earth who put this mission together. Those who question the leaders are called dissenters, troublemakers. People like Sabine’s sister who ask why too much, and who need to be watched in case they give others the idea that they didn’t have to obey.
My boss says there are always selfish ones who don’t want to follow the rules and who think only of themselves. By not returning, I am impacting the colony. Who will take my place?
Or do they already think I am dead?
In which case, what does it matter what I do?
Aldit is staring at me. I can’t meet his golden gaze. “What would you do if you were me?”
“I am not, though. I do not know your tribe, though the little I have learned, I do not like. A tribe is about the people. With no people, there is no tribe.”
“We aren’t a tribe.” We are little cogs in the grand plan of setting up a place for more humans to settle. Maybe in a few generations we’ll be a tribe. People will be living and enjoying, instead of obeying. “Do you want to return to your tribe?”
“No…and they do not expect it from me. My father’s last words to me were, make a good life somewhere else.”
“He wanted you to live.”
“Of course he did.” He presses his lips together. “Let us find water.”
“And if we don’t?”
He is silent for far too long.
“Aldit?”
“Then we risk the stream or die.”
Both options are shit. My choices have brought us to this point. The colony’s drumming into me that the colony comes first. Aldit is right. The people need to come first, or there is no colony.
Still following the stream, we walk into the grass. Here the stream is no bigger, and it is muddy. The grass on the edges has been trampled, and there are footprints left by the animals that have drunk from it.
He pauses to study the tracks. When he tilts his head, the hair on my arms and the back of my neck lifts. “We should quicken our pace.”
He doesn’t seem too worried, but there is an edge in his voice that makes me worry. Unlike him, I’m unarmed. I can’t even make electricity to defend myself. Asking for his sword won’t do me any good either. By the time the knife in my boot will be useful, I’ll be bleeding out from the bite wound.
