The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 69: Kept Word
The Abandoned and Ada spent an enjoyable time together. The Xeno could not only speak her language, but reproduce songs-music included-with all the instruments, from all eras. Ada was rediscovering her own culture, something that, coming from Antioch, had been more or less hushed up.
After moving her head and body, still in her chair, to the sound of a rock ballad from the late 20th century, she received a call on her communicator.
On the comm terminal, the pale, long face of Salman.
- “Salman, my friend, you look like hell!”
- “Yeah, I’m in trouble, but at least the LE can put me in touch with Gorylkin, so it’s not all hopeless. I’m on Todolo right now.”
- “Don’t know it.”
- “It’s the planet where we met, keep up! The Aleph ... uh ... I don’t even know where to start ... okay, here: the HS has demanded from every conquered Xeno planet an amount of organic biomass equivalent to one percent of the individuals on the planet.”
- “Why?”
- “Who cares. The fact is, on Todolo, the only real biomass is the local Xenos. Their waste is just rocks or sterile soil.”
- “Too bad for that big idiot Aleph, then.”
- “You think that stops him? He brought in an old Invictus and ordered me, with a commando, to load it with Xenos. So I made a huge mistake: I said no. All my guys quit my team and I’m stuck alone in an empty embassy with an Ozy and two Ravens, and twelve MARs. But I know what’s going to happen-they’ll come with an Endymion and drop a rock on my head. Gorylkin, damn it ... tell me you’ve got a plan.”
- “You did that for the Xenos, Salman?”
- “I didn’t do it for the Xenos, or for you, even though you scare the crap out of me. I did it because I gave my word, and I’ve only got one. But I feel like I’m going to die here.”
Ada leaned back. Finally, someone who keeps their word. Along with the Wau. A precious person. She replied:
- “Hang on, I’m coming. They can turn your commando against you and send rocks your way. They could even send you a whole damn army, and the Aleph himself might show up. I’ll be there with you and we’ll kill them. All of them.”
Salman nodded gravely before cutting the connection.
- “The Abandoned, you wouldn’t happen to have a Drift coordinate for the planet ... uh...”
- “Where that call of yours came from?”
- “Yeah. I’ve got a return, but it’s via Fang, in other words the far end of the universe.”
- “I’ll calculate it ... give me a little time. Tell me, Ada, are you going to war? Like in your epics?”
- “Yeah, no choice. The HS is my people, but they’re doing stupid things, they want to capture Xenos. And these are the nice Xenos, the ones who think you’re really smart.”
- “Oh, that’s really sad. But maybe they have a good reason?”
- “If you only knew, my friend. It’s precisely when they have no good reason that humans start doing evil-that’s how you recognize them.”
- “Maybe I can help you?”
- “How so?”
- “A part of me comes with you. Three’s better than two. Do you have some sort of watertight container?”
Ada searched the bar, the cabins, the gym, the library, until she found an opulent bathroom with a bathtub. On the Shareplace, on Calchas, and on Clelia, she had only known static-electricity showers: a current running over the body, pulling the grime toward the wall-but on this ship, people stepped naked into a small open box, the bathtub, to be in the water and wash themselves. Clelia had water in abundance, but Ada had learned on the Shareplace to treat it like the precious liquid it was-the only way to quench thirst, and therefore to survive.
With Alpha she dragged the bathtub into an airlock, let it fill, then let it drain. When she reopened the airlock, a sweetish smell hung in the air. The walls and floor seemed slightly viscous. In the white clawfoot bathtub, a small ten-tentacled octopus raised one in a gesture that looked remarkably like a human thumbs-up.
- “Perfect, my dear!” he said, with the old-fashioned accent of vintage films.
They pushed the bathtub into the main room overlooking the cockpit. When the Abandoned dictated the Drift coordinates, Ada rushed to fire a grapnel at the sun and program a jump.
- “See you in a bit, Abandoned. I’ll set this up and then we’ll finish talking.”
- “But I’m staying with you, Ada. I’m in your ship.”
Ada asked Alpha to watch over the bathtub, and as soon as the ship had barely left the planet’s liquid, it violently entered Drift, to emerge, a fraction of a second later, in Todolo’s upper atmosphere, directly above the embassy city and directly beneath the Invictus-this old Endymion model, smaller and rounder, full of odd angles. Wow, now that was precise Drift calculation!
She grapples onto the Invictus, then works the thrusters to land. On the ground, Salman, FAM in hand, wearing a tactical suit feeding him oxygen, watches her descend. She grabs a respirator from a locker near the airlock and exits the Adventura with Alpha.
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