Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “Two moves,” said Pat.

  “He’s strong,” said Laurette. “And he didn’t tear anything or pop any buttons and I couldn’t believe it. And I was cold. For about a second. Because then he’s got me on the bed and he’s all over me and—”

  “Are you going to say you were raped?” asked Pat. She almost added, Like Nicki Lieder, but decided not to say her name out loud. Nicki had been possessed by the Belmage and then she was protecting herself from her father’s wrath and she didn’t accuse Danny so Pat couldn’t blame her for anything. Laurette, on the other hand …

  “No,” said Laurette.

  “That’s just it,” said Xena.

  “Oh, were you there?” Pat asked her.

  “Same thing with all of us,” said Sin. “Same move, same everything—”

  “Except I was home alone and he did it right there at the front door,” said Xena. “Didn’t even close the door before he had me starkers.”

  “Disrobed,” said Sin.

  “I’m really trying to figure out why you think I want to hear about his advanced skills,” said Pat.

  “Because it matters,” said Laurette, “so if these two will let me tell it, since they didn’t want to say anything till I started telling—”

  “Go,” said Sin. “It’s all yours.”

  “He couldn’t do it,” said Laurette. “He wasn’t, like, ready.”

  The other two nodded.

  “He was impotent,” said Pat, not believing it.

  “Yes,” said Laurette. “It was all his idea, and it’s not like we were fighting him off or anything—you’re right, we’re terrible people and disloyal friends and you should hate us forever or I hope for maybe just a year or a week or maybe not at all because it took us completely by surprise and then nothing happened.”

  “You’re naked on the bed with the man I’m in love with,” said Pat.

  “Living room carpet,” corrected Xena.

  “Not exactly nothing,” said Pat.

  “Nothing,” said Laurette. “And believe me, he was more surprised than we were. It’s like he couldn’t believe it.”

  “He must have come to me last,” said Sin, “because he did look like he expected it and he was totally pissed off.”

  “At me, I thought,” said Xena, “and I said, ‘You think I’m fat and ugly,’ and he says, ‘How are you doing this?’ and I realize he isn’t talking to me. He’s talking to himself.”

  “Only now we realize that he was talking to Danny,” said Laurette. “Do you see why this matters? Danny didn’t like what he was doing—because he really is in love with you.”

  “Or he thinks I’m ugly,” said Xena.

  “So Danny found a way to make it so his body couldn’t do the job,” said Sin. “He’s still in there, and he’s got a little bit of control.”

  Pat couldn’t help it. Her eyes filled with tears and she covered her face with her hands.

  “What are you doing?” asked Xena.

  “Pat doesn’t cry,” said Sin.

  “Shut up,” said Pat. “Just for a minute here, eat your stupid carrot cake.”

  “I hate the carrot cake,” said Xena. “And I like all cake, so you know it’s bad.”

  “She wants us to give her a second,” said Laurette.

  “A minute, actually,” said Sin.

  Pat took her hands away from her eyes. Emotions under control. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s good news. Danny’s still in there and he’s doing something that victims of the Belmage aren’t supposed to be able to do.”

  “What?” asked Xena.

  “Resisting him,” said Laurette. “Don’t you even understand why we’re telling her?”

  “I just thought we were confessing,” said Xena.

  “Resisting,” said Pat. “The Belmage isn’t completely controlling things.”

  Xena looked like it was finally dawning on her. “So it was the Belmage who was trying to … whatever … to me! Not Danny at all.”

  “Quiet,” said Laurette fiercely. “This is supposed to be a private conversation, for pete’s sake.”

  “Nobody understands what we’re talking about,” said Xena.

  “They know who Danny is and that we’re friends with him,” whispered Laurette.

  “But they don’t know what ‘whatever’ is,” said Xena.

  “Anybody who hasn’t had a frontal lobotomy knows exactly what ‘whatever’ is,” said Sin.

  “Except I don’t know what a full frontal bottomy is,” said Xena, “only it sounds really dirty. And kind of hard to do.”

  “Was there anything else?” asked Pat. “When he made his play and failed?”

  “No, he just got mad and left,” said Laurette.

  “Chewing himself out,” said Sin.

  “Chewing Danny out,” said Xena, full of newfound understanding.

  “If that’s all, then I think we’re done here,” said Pat. She got up from the table, shouldered her purse, and picked up her tray.

  The others started to get up.

  “No,” said Pat. “You stay here till I’m gone.”

  “What, are you playing spy or something?” asked Laurette.

  “I’m not playing,” said Pat. “I sat down here to have lunch with my friends. Only now I know I don’t have friends. So I’m leaving, and you’re staying.”

  “Come on,” said Sin. “Nothing happened.”

  “Not by your choice,” said Pat.

  “True,” said Laurette softly. “But Pat—”

  “Stay away from me,” said Pat. Then she dumped the garbage and returned the tray and left the cafeteria, trying not to show any emotion to anybody because it was none of their business.

  She didn’t go on to her next class. Instead she walked out of school and kept on walking, not to the place up in the woods and not home, either, but down the road and on and on, mile after mile. Not her most comfortable shoes today, but she didn’t actually mind a little pinching or the blisters that were almost certainly forming. It would be good to feel some pain, now that Danny had lost the power to pass them through gates and heal them.

  Though of course she could always pass through the gate on the amulet in her pocket. It was thoughtful of Danny to provide for emergencies. Except for his own emergency. With that, he was completely on his own.

  Her thoughts raced everywhere but kept coming back to that. Danny is completely alone. The only time he comes to his friends is when the Belmage is trying to force him to have sex with them, and then all Danny can do is protect them—always protecting other people—but he can’t do anything to save himself.

  And what do I do? Supposedly his girlfriend who supposedly loves him? I get jealous of my stupid friends for acting exactly the way I would have predicted they’d act, and as for Danny, I completely stay away from him.

  That’s what Stone told me to do. That’s what makes sense.

  Right, it makes sense to leave the man I love completely alone while he’s going through the worst thing in his life.

  But if I try to talk to him or go to him, then he’ll just be worried about me and have to try to protect me, and what if he can’t stop the Belmage from using me?

  Well, so what if he does? Just because it’s the Belmage doing it doesn’t mean I can’t still be making love with Danny. And with me, Danny won’t have to do whatever he did to make his body useless to the Belmage. He can go ahead because whether the Belmage is there or not, it’s what Danny and I both want to do so guess what, Belmage—we win!

  Stupid, she told herself. Stupid. Danny doesn’t want it that way, with an onlooker, with somebody else riding him like a pony. With a monster watching. And neither do I, because it won’t really be Danny. No way does Danny have some kind of magical trick to undress women in a couple of moves, if that’s what really happened. Danny’s not experienced, he’s not smooth, he’s just a kid, and that’s who I want to make love with, not a thousand-year-old incubus who uses up women like kleenex.

&n
bsp; But if I just talk to him. Just tell him that I know, that I—

  That’s the opposite of what Stone said to do.

  When did Stone become my boss?

  He became my boss when I went to him and asked him for advice and he gave it to me and I realized he was right. What good will it do if I let the Belgod know that we’ve figured him out, that we know Danny’s a captive? That would make me even stupider and more selfish and more disloyal than Xena and Sin and Laurette. As long as I stay away from him, Danny won’t have to worry about me.

  That’s the circle she kept running through, around and around in her mind, and underneath it all this nagging thought: Why did the Belmage go to all three of them and try to get Danny to have sex with them but he didn’t bring Danny to me? Can he read Danny’s mind and figure out that Danny doesn’t actually want me that way? Or was that gross encounter up on the hill the only try he’s going to make? That sure wasn’t smooth or experienced, that was just crude.

  She wasn’t sure where she was. She had been so lost in thought that she was probably lucky not to have wandered into traffic. Now she only knew she was on some rural road south of Buena Vista.

  Not that it mattered. She could get back to the school grounds whenever she wanted.

  She fingered her amulet, and then realized that using it would not only get her back to their little clearing in the woods overlooking the high school, it would also be noticed. By Danny, perhaps—though maybe he could hide his perceptions of his gates from the being who possessed him. But also by Danny’s friend Veevee. The one who pretended to be his aunt. Danny had said that she could sense whenever someone used his gates. Maybe she would come to see what Pat was doing. Maybe not. But if she came, Pat could talk things through with her. Stone said that Veevee had done a lot of research into the Belmage. Maybe she would know things that could help Pat make a rational decision.

  So Pat pushed her finger into the amulet.

  She was relieved that none of the others were in the clearing. The last thing she wanted was their company.

  She walked to the downhill side of the clearing and looked out over the school. Pat had been walking all afternoon—but not really, because school was still in session and the buses hadn’t even assembled. Some poor unfortunate PE class was running the hill with Coach Lieder watching them. Soon to be a grandpa, Coach Lieder. To the child of a Gatefather who was seduced by a succubus. Your daughter.

  Don’t dwell on that.

  “If you want to be alone I’ll go away again.”

  Pat turned around and gave Veevee a half-smile. “I was actually calling you. Or at least I kind of hoped you’d notice me and look into why someone was using Danny’s gates.”

  Veevee frowned. “They aren’t Danny’s gates.”

  Pat had no idea what this meant. “They go where Danny made them go.”

  “All very complicated,” said Veevee. “I don’t think I could have made sense of any of it before I went through the Great Gate. But here’s what happened. Loki—Wad—the Gate Thief—he gave his gates to Danny.”

  “But Danny already took them.”

  “But now they weren’t stolen, they weren’t imprisoned. They belonged to Danny. But you knew that. The thing is, that’s how Danny learned that gates could be given. So when the Belmage took over Danny’s body and started trying to get him to make a Great Gate, Danny gave all of Loki’s gates back to him. And then—and this was such an act of genius—he gave all his own gates to Loki as well.”

  “Including my private gate?”

  “Everything. Stripped himself bare.”

  “And he could do that? The Belmage didn’t stop him?”

  Veevee shrugged. “He didn’t stop him. But maybe he didn’t know what was happening until the gates were gone.”

  “So the gate I went through is Loki’s gate now.”

  “Oh, it’s more complicated than that,” said Veevee. “Because Loki took up all the gates.”

  “Ate them?”

  “No, no, they’re his now, so he just took them up. Like gathering up your knitting and putting it in a bag. So that he was sure none of them were left for the Belmage to use, probably. He doesn’t explain himself to me. All the gates I’ve been using disappeared, which terrified me—how long would it take me to get to Danny without gates to bring me here? I had already bought a plane ticket to get me to Roanoke when all of a sudden all my gates were back. Every one of them. Exactly where Danny had made them.”

  “That was … tidy of the Gate Thief.”

  “It was incredibly generous. Not at all typical of the behavior of gatemages or Family members. And you know whose gates he put back first? Yours. And then Danny’s other high school friends’. And he only put back the ones I use last of all. Maybe because I’m a gatemage of sorts. Or maybe because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t inadvertently putting back a gate Hermia might use.”

  “So the Gate Thief isn’t our enemy anymore.”

  “He was never your enemy, darling,” said Veevee. “But now, I don’t know. Because I think I’m seeing a lot of brightness in your outself. What are you?”

  Pat was a little confused by the question.

  “You went through the Great Gate like the rest of us,” said Veevee. “And now you’ve learned how to do some magery. What do you do?”

  “Wind,” said Pat.

  “Are you any good at it?”

  Pat shrugged. “That’s not why I called you.”

  “No, you called because you’re in love with Danny and you have some fantastical idea of helping him and you want to know what you might do that would be of any use.”

  Pat sank to the ground. “And because you didn’t come straight to that point, I’m betting that you’re going to say that I can’t do anything.”

  “Only because it’s true. Believe me, dear, if I thought anything you might do would help Danny, I’d send you off to do it even if it killed you.”

  “That’s rather heartless of you,” said Pat, “but—”

  “It’s not because I love Danny and don’t give a rat’s petoot about you,” said Veevee, “because Danny cares for you very much, and that means that the one thing I can do to help him is try to keep you safe. For him. In case he ever gets out of this.”

  “Which you don’t think he can do.”

  “Well, not without dying,” said Veevee. “Or having the Belmage find somebody else who is more useful to him. But compared to the greatest gatemage who ever lived, who would that be?”

  “Loki?” asked Pat.

  “Loki is no fool,” said Veevee. “All this stuff he did with gates—he did it from Westil. That’s quite incredible—to manipulate gates, make and unmake them, on another world—what a mage he is. But no, he’ll never get anywhere near Danny while the Belmage has him.”

  “So the Belmage, Set, he wouldn’t want a windmage?”

  “Oh, how noble of you,” said Veevee. “I’m not mocking you, it really is noble. But you’re an untrained novice at this, and there are some highly trained windmages who went through the Great Gate. There are about five hundred people on Mittlegard who are likelier targets for the Belmage than you. But it doesn’t matter. Even if the Belmage decides to abandon Danny, he’s a spiteful bastard, and he’ll probably kill Danny as he leaves.”

  “What’s the point?” asked Pat in despair.

  “To punish him for getting rid of his gates. To the Belmage, that must seem like the ultimate perfidy. ‘I took over a gatemage, and now he has no gates? Somebody’s got to pay!’”

  “Danny can’t go through this alone!”

  “He got into it alone, didn’t he?” asked Veevee. “He didn’t phone you up and ask if it was a good idea for him to do the bouncing bedcovers with the coach’s daughter, did he?”

  Pat shook her head. “But he did keep the Belmage from using his body to … sleep with my friends.”

  Veevee made her explain it all. Pat hated going over it again, but she made herself remember what the other g
irls had said.

  “Oh, this is splendid,” said Veevee. “This is unprecedented. In all the cases of possession by the Belmage himself—at least the ones we’re pretty sure were him—nobody was ever able to resist him to the slightest degree.”

  “So Danny’s doing well,” said Pat.

  “And no doubt pissing off the Belmage even more.”

  “Well, that goes without saying,” said Pat. “Are you saying that Danny’s as good as dead?”

  “I don’t know,” said Veevee. “He’s already done things that nobody has ever done to resist the Belmage. I’m very proud of my clever clever nephew.”

  “He’s not really your nephew, is he?”

  “The school records say so,” said Veevee, “and they’re very official.”

  Pat sat in silence.

  “Do you mind putting down that wind?” asked Veevee. “You’re scaring me.”

  Pat had no idea what she was talking about. Then she looked around and realized that there was a gale blowing in a circle all the way around the clearing. A wind so strong that it was bending the nearly leafless trees. It was making a kind of suction in the middle that had already raised her a few inches from the ground. Veevee was clinging to a branch.

  Pat reached out and stilled the wind. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know I was doing that.”

  “Undisciplined,” said Veevee. “Not your fault, but you really do have to keep the wind from picking up on your moods and acting them out.”

  “I didn’t know I was…”

  Veevee was looking at her with amusement. And, it seemed, pity.

  “Yes,” said Pat. “I did know. But I didn’t notice. It just felt…”

  “Natural,” said Veevee. “Listen, Pat. I love that boy almost as much as you do.”

  “But in a different way,” said Pat.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” said Veevee. “All the ways of loving people overlap more than we’re comfortable with admitting. Possessing, controlling, exploiting—we do those things and call them love just as we act kindly and unselfishly. And call it love.”