The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 57: Royal Planet
The Wau remained silent.
“What’s wrong, did I say something that made you go limp?” mocked Lucky, playing with his dagger. “Maybe you’ve got a tiny one and don’t want us to talk about it?”
His court rewarded him with a few laughs. A dangerous clown, far from his image as Lord of Trust.
“You were in the After and came back,” the Wau said slowly.
“Look at this motherfucker, he’s got dirt on everyone!”
“You’re quick to call everyone a motherfucker when your own mother was a sex slave who fled with you into the Booz marshes. Get therapy and move on.”
“Okay, you’re a sharp-tongued motherfucker, I’ll give you that. Let’s get to it. Spill it.”
“I want to go to the Royal Planet and meet Huan.”
Murmurs rippled through the assembly.
“First off, you gotta call him His Highness, never Huan. A guy says Huan around here, we cut off his head. All right, we’ll make a technical exception for you. Fine. What do you offer in exchange?”
“I’m not sure. I could kill you if you don’t?”
“One minute you’re killing, the next you’re not?”
“I’m just like you-pragmatic.”
“When we upload into the After, it’s forever. When we come back as Androids, we’re stored somewhere and updated regularly. Kill me, and I’ll come back a thousand times.”
“Once will be enough. After that, I’ll pick someone from here and put them in your place. Someone who won’t let you return, and who’ll lead me to His Highness.”
The Android twitched, trying to get back up, but couldn’t move gracefully and rolled onto the ground. He stood-no one laughed-and retrieved the molecular dagger that had fallen.
“Follow me, buddy.”
He led him into a large stone staircase descending underground. Mineral torches lit their descent in alternating hues of blue and gold.
“Huan, he’s your leader, right?”
“Yes. Listen, Wau. You should really say His Highness-I’m not joking. He could get mad and kill people at random. So, the HS knows about the Royal Planet?”
“The HS thinks there are twelve of you with three Ozys, brains fried on the local drug.”
The staircase curved 180 degrees, revealing a stellar map etched on a wall. A quick scan. None of the systems appeared in the LE’s charts. What is this place?
“And you, how did you find out?”
“I met runaway sex slaves in the Booz marshes.”
“I hate you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Since you know everything, fatso, you wouldn’t happen to know a Stella Nori? Pretty face, good runner, a bit of a tactician, and a treacherous whore who breaks her promises. Word is she’s a Wau.”
“If Stella belongs to the Wau Order, then I have bad news for you: we don’t know each other. Is that why you came back here?”
“For another one.”
“Who would’ve thought that beneath your murderous clown act beats a romantic heart?”
A new room, immense. Still lit by Xeno torches ... and inside ... a massive entangled gate.
The technology of entangled gates, though simple in principle, becomes exponentially more complex to manufacture and power as its size increases. A one-micron gate costs as much as a vehicle, and indeed, they are generally found in every ship’s Drift systems-allowing LEs from across the universe to communicate with the hubs on Prospero and especially Titus, where the main servers are located. A mini-gate, fifty centimeters wide, already costs two million thalers in research and development. Each gate is unique-every atom in one must correspond to the other.
The gates like the one Wau owns in his fortress cost a billion or two. It’s quite likely that many wealthy individuals across the universe own one-a modern version of old bunkers, allowing refuge in a secure apartment hidden inside a distant asteroid.
Finally, the Entangled Gates of the five great planets, the Big Five: Prospero, Titus, Alonso, Antioch, and Earth, are all connected and can transport entire fleets of ships. Their cost was immense and beyond budgeting-modern pyramids, the work of countless computers, scientists ... and today, each consumes several cubic meters of antimatter per day.
And before him, the Wau saw an Entangled Gate-vertical, rectangular, twenty meters tall by ten wide, on an opposite wall. Xeno manufacture. Appearing to operate without excessive energy. By what miracle...
It opened onto a dirt path lined with marble posts and wild grass, on a planet where two suns were rising. A few small Xeno animals, similar to gerbils, were entering and exiting the room.
And it all made sense: the Xeno tale, Babylon, the spiked seed, the path and its shadow.
Their voices echoed in the large space:
“I’ve got a question, fatso. They say the Aleph has an eye in every house and every ship, thanks to the Drift comm system.”
“That’s correct.”
“So he knows what we’re saying right now? And when I jerk off, he sees it?”
“Lucky, just because you can see everywhere doesn’t mean your eye is in the right place at the right time. The Aleph is a god, but he’s also a man, and that’s our chance. He’s like you, Lucky. Sometimes he jerks off, just like you. He’s got better things to do. Especially since he thinks he’s invincible.”
“And you, do you jerk off?”
“My main source of pleasure is imagining the moment you’ll finally shut up.”
The Wau continued as Lucky stepped back.
“I want nothing to do with His Highness,” said Lucky. “So go ahead and say we had no choice, which we didn’t.”
“Lucky, we’re not done.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
And the Wau stepped toward the gate, his giant shadow stretching behind him.
The Royal Planet ... a planet with 19% oxygen, two suns-a yellow dwarf and a white dwarf. On the other side of the gate ... rolling hills of grass and vivid red Xeno heather carving trenches between dwarf trees. Vast fields where, hunched over, not drones but men toiled-a landscape worthy of pre-stellar engravings of mythical Earth. In the sky, birds with eight-meter wingspans soared above.
Before him, the dirt road rose into a stairway carved into a cliff-steep hill, crowned like an acropolis by a bulbous dome, warped and open to the winds. The Xeno tale.
“I’m here to see His Highness,” declared the Wau to two men who approached.
These men wore only tunics woven like those of primitive Xenos, but they carried sabers as sharp as molecular daggers: their edges shimmered, suggesting that the very molecules in the air were split by them. Intimidated by the Wau’s size yet fierce in demeanor, they flanked him to lead him along the road. They trotted with dignity to match the giant’s heavy strides.
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