Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “But real love—”

  “Do you really love Danny North? You’ve known him for only a few months. I’ve known him for a few years. But the people who loved him most and first—his parents—they were ready to kill him if they had to, for the good of the whole Family.”

  “But it wasn’t a good family, so the good of the Family wasn’t good.”

  “And which family do you have in mind, when you speak of good families?”

  “Most families are mostly good,” said Pat.

  “How much do you love Danny North?” Veevee asked again. “Do you love him enough to kill him?”

  Pat turned away, her face flushing, because she knew exactly what Veevee meant. What if Danny’s only escape from the Belmage was death? Did she love him enough to set him free from that bondage?

  “I’m not saying that’s what you should do,” said Veevee. “He’s showing so much more freedom and control than any other possessed person I’ve read about. But he’s still not free.”

  “That’s like asking if you should let someone in a coma starve to death,” said Pat. “If you don’t know that they’re never going to wake up, what right do you have to—”

  “I’m not talking about killing him to set him free,” said Veevee. “Dead isn’t free. Dead is dead.”

  “Then why would I kill him?”

  “If it looked like Set was going to be able to use Danny to make a Great Gate, and Danny couldn’t stop him, then what would Danny want you do to?”

  “He’d want me to do whatever was necessary to take that power away from the Belmage,” said Pat.

  “Which means killing Danny, not to set him free, but to accomplish the purpose for which he went to war.”

  “So you’re saying that Danny was on a suicide mission,” said Pat.

  “Danny was like any other soldier,” said Veevee. “He knowingly put his life on the line. More than that—he knew he was the person in the most danger in this war, because he had the power the enemy most wanted. He told me and Hermia explicitly: ‘If the Belmage ever has me, kill me before I can make a Great Gate for him.’”

  Pat nodded. Danny had said pretty much the same thing to her. Not for her to kill him, but for someone to do it.

  “But it’s pretty hard to kill a Gatefather,” said Veevee. “He gets away too fast. So when Danny gave away all his gates, he wasn’t just keeping Set from making a Great Gate. He was keeping himself from being able to get away from any attempt to kill him.”

  Pat was crying and didn’t particularly care if she ever stopped. “He healed that little…”

  “She couldn’t help it. Danny could have helped it, but his body’s drive toward reproduction trumped his brain. Everybody who dies has a whole bunch of if-onlys. If only he had left one minute earlier, he wouldn’t have stepped in front of that bus. If only a kid’s parents had married somebody else, their genes wouldn’t have combined to give him cystic fibrosis or sickle cell or whatever. But here’s the truth, Pat: Everybody dies. Some die younger than others. Soldiers at least die in the service of something larger than themselves … but they’re still dead. If I had to arrange for Danny to get blown up or poisoned or something, it would tear me up forever. But I would do it, knowing that Danny isn’t just this boy that I love so much, he’s also the most terrible weapon in the world.”

  “But disarmed now,” said Pat.

  “Yes,” said Veevee. “But now he is possessed and controlled by the most evil creature in the world, and Danny has really pissed him off. Who knows how Set will punish him? So you wanted me to tell you what I know. Here’s what I know: That boy loves you. Maybe he’s been able to conceal that from Set, or maybe not. But if you come anywhere near him, and Set realizes what you are to Danny, then how can he hurt Danny the most?”

  “By hurting me.”

  “Yet I must be honest. Because what would give Danny the most joy? Seeing you again. And what would scare Danny most? Seeing you in the power of Set—because whatever Set might do to you, he would do using Danny’s body, so to Danny it would feel as if he were doing it.”

  “I get it, yes,” said Pat. “The worst, most terrible thing I can do is come anywhere near Danny North.”

  “And also the best and kindest thing. He misses us all, but if he doesn’t miss you most of all, then I don’t know my Danny.”

  “How do you even know that? Danny and I only just realized it the day before the Belmage took him.”

  “Danny and you might not have known it,” said Veevee. “But all the rest of us knew it. We also know that it’s young love and unlikely to last forever or even till next year. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. No love is stronger than adolescent love—it’s overwhelming, all-consuming. It’s what inspires the most passionate, godawful poetry in the world. It’s what makes people get moony over the stupidest love songs and the worst movies. It’s real. He would die for you.”

  “I would die for him, too.”

  “I believe you would,” said Veevee. “But if you die, it won’t be for him. It’ll be used against him. It’ll make his imprisonment even more hellish.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” asked Pat, trying to keep her voice from rising into a whine.

  “Go to high school, if you can bear it, what with Danny North’s body running around like a fellow student. Or go on a long vacation. I’m not suggesting you run away from home—why torment your family?—but tell them you’re going, and I bet Stone will take you in. Or maybe Leslie and Marion. Or, now that you’re a real mage, maybe Danny’s real family would take you in. As his betrothed.”

  “I don’t want to be in their power,” said Pat.

  “Smart girl. I’m just saying you have options.”

  “But Danny doesn’t,” said Pat.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Veevee. “We can pity him for that. But we can’t change it. I don’t see how he can get out of this without dying.”

  “Death is so final,” said Pat.

  “Mostly,” said Veevee.

  “What do you mean? Are there exceptions? Are you suddenly Christian? Do you think Lazarus came back from the dead?”

  “Oh, that is likely enough. All those miracles Jesus performed—they mostly seem within easy reach of a Gatefather. And if Lazarus was only in some kind of low-metabolism coma when they buried him, a Gatefather could easily bring him back. But not from the dead.”

  “Because gatemages can’t raise the dead.”

  “If you’re really dead, then they’re just dragging a corpse through a gate. It does nothing.”

  “So what did you mean about death being mostly final?”

  “Well, remember who we are. We Westilians. You’ve been hearing about us your whole life. There are stories. Katabasis.”

  Pat had heard the word in English class. “The descent into the underworld. Orpheus and Eurydice. Odysseus. Gilgamesh searching for Utnapishtim to find out how to bring Enkidu back from the dead.”

  “Oh, you really are an educated girl. How could that happen in a podunk town like this?”

  “There are books. There are good teachers.”

  “Osiris also dies and comes back.”

  “Yes, well, he was cut into pieces, so that doesn’t seem likely,” said Pat.

  “Adonis dies and Aphrodite brings him back,” said Veevee. “That might be another gatemage thing. But then there’s Hermes, who rescues Persephone from Hades.”

  “But Hermes is a gatemage,” said Pat. “Isn’t that right? Loki among the Norse, Hermes among the Greeks, Mercury with the Romans, Thoth with the Egyptians…”

  “Yes, he’s a gatemage,” said Veevee, “but he doesn’t take a dead-seeming Persephone and bring her corpse back to life. She is taken into the underworld, and Hermes goes there, finds her, and brings her back. So even though he’s a gatemage, it isn’t gatemagery, it’s katabasis.”

  “But how does anybody go into the underworld to bring somebody back?” said Pat. “I don’t know if I even believe in some u
nderground place beyond the River Styx or Lethe or whatever.”

  “Oh, I don’t, either. Remember that ‘Mount Olympus’ was really a whole planet called Westil. So it’s probably not underground. But it’s somewhere. The souls of the dead go somewhere, if those stories have any truth in them.”

  “Well, do they?”

  “The Families believe them,” said Veevee. “And so something happened, even if nobody knows exactly what. Here’s where I feel a tiny shred of hope: All my study of the Belmage gave me a strong impression that Set comes from the same place where human souls come from when we’re born and go back to when we die. Another world, I think. Danny thought so, too. We called it the world of the Belmages. But it’s not really—it’s more like heaven, which Lucifer was cast out of and sent to Earth.”

  “So I should take that literally?” asked Pat.

  “Danny and I did,” said Veevee. “Oh, not word-for-word. But Set is Lucifer. He dwelt somewhere in the sky before there was war in heaven and the great dragon was cast down to Earth. He came from a place, another planet, and Danny and I thought maybe it was the same place where souls go when we die.”

  “Souls,” said Pat.

  “Oh, you’re such a skeptic. Don’t you get it? We mages—we know that people have souls. We call them inself and outself, and since Danny’s little Egyptian expedition we started calling them ka and ba. But we know we have souls. And we know that Set is nothing but a spirit, a ghost, a soul without a body. So we can’t afford the pleasant ignorance of unbelievers.”

  “Are you suggesting that if Danny dies, I might be able to go and fetch him back?”

  “I have no idea,” said Veevee, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Then what’s your point?”

  “I don’t know if I even have a point. You said that death is so final, and I merely pointed out that every now and then there’s been a special case where somebody goes to the land of the dead and brings somebody back.”

  “Only Persephone had to keep going back,” said Pat.

  “Oh, now that part of the story is just silly,” said Veevee. “That’s a just-so story. ‘When Persephone returns to the world it’s spring, and then when she goes back to the underworld, it’s winter.’ That was added on to the story later, along with the absurd claim that Persephone’s mother was Demeter, the goddess of harvest and such.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “Oh, human storytellers have had their way with these stories for ages. Hermia told me that the Greeks—pardon me, the Pelasgians or Illyrians or whatever—they believed in Persephone, rescued by the Hermes of that time, but she had nothing to do with any of the Demeters, who all come from a completely different tradition anyway. The earth-goddess tradition has nothing to do with the Indo-Europeans and therefore has nothing to do with the Westilian Families.”

  “How do you sort it out?”

  “Remember that Bulfinch’s Mythology is just a feeble attempt to rationalize all the god stories as if each name went with only one person. And Ovid’s Metamorphoses were just as feeble at the same task. The Families started a lot of the stupidest stories themselves, the way that people lie to children for their own amusement. ‘Santa Claus won’t bring you presents if you’re bad. You’ll get a lump of coal.’ What does punishment of naughty children have to do with St. Nicholas? And how is it a punishment to get something that can keep you warm in winter?”

  “So with one breath you tell me to believe in the old myths, and in the next breath I’m supposed to think of them like Santa Claus putting coal in stockings.”

  “Exactly,” said Veevee.

  “You look so triumphant that I think you think you actually explained something.”

  “Oh, my poor darling, of course I haven’t explained anything. I’ve read all the same stuff that Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and a whole bunch of other philologists and psychologists read, and like them I’ve tried to fit it all together. The difference is that I don’t think I succeeded, and so I didn’t write a book.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?” said Pat helplessly.

  “The very best you can,” said Veevee.

  “But if I go off to do my best, what’s to prevent me from doing the very worst thing?”

  “If my reading has taught me anything,” said Veevee, “all the best stories arise from unintended consequences. You think you’re doing one thing, but you don’t have enough information, so you end up doing something entirely different. But then in the happy-ending stories, everything works out anyway.”

  “And in the tragedies…”

  “Well, there’s that,” said Veevee. “Sometimes you’re rescuing Andromeda from the monster Cetus, and sometimes you’re bringing home Medea, who will murder your bride and her own children to punish you.”

  “And how do you know?”

  “You don’t. You can’t know. Nobody ever knows all the consequences of the things they do. Which is why I told you that you’re supposed to do the very best you can.”

  “But I can’t know it’s the best if—”

  “You don’t know it’s the best! There’s no ‘knowing.’ There’s only doing. The best you can.”

  “I’m trying to think how your coming here has helped me at all,” said Pat.

  “Well, before I came, you were hopelessly confused and had no idea what you should do, but you knew you couldn’t be happy unless you did something.”

  “Which is exactly where I am now,” said Pat.

  “Oh, no, not at all, darling,” said Veevee. “Now you know that the wisest person you know—me—doesn’t know anything more than you, except that almost anything you try to do has the potential to be a disaster. Including doing nothing! So as the person who quite possibly loves Danny most, and as the person whom he most certainly loves most, you’re in the best position to think of what is the best thing to try.”

  “But it will all turn disastrous!”

  “Since every path is disastrous, I don’t know how anything you can do will make it worse.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “Quite possibly, but it will make a good story,” said Veevee.

  “Yes, I’ll go down in history as an idiot, like Psyche with her stupid lamp.”

  “Don’t forget Pandora and her little casket of all the ills of the world,” said Veevee helpfully.

  “I always thought that was a metaphor.”

  “Oh, it most definitely is. And not a nice one, either. Look, my dearest ignorant lovely sensitive well-meaning child, what you have to decide is which action has the best chance of success.”

  “I can’t know that either,” said Pat.

  “No, I said it wrong,” said Veevee. “You decide which action has a chance for the best success.”

  Pat covered her face. “I’m tired. What in the world is the difference?”

  “If you think of an action whose best outcome is that Danny’s still a slave to Set, but he got you pregnant or something, what have you actually accomplished, except horribly complicating your own life and giving Danny no real happiness because it will feel to him like a failure. You see? Even if you succeed exactly, the outcome won’t have changed anything that matters to Danny—only to you.”

  “Since I wasn’t thinking of going to him to get pregnant, that really doesn’t—”

  Veevee laughed. “You liar. As soon as you found out that the coach’s daughter was carrying Danny’s baby, you’ve been insanely jealous.”

  Pat couldn’t argue with that.

  “I’m telling you that you could probably succeed in that. Unless Set decided not to impregnate you, but instead makes Danny torture you to death.”

  Pat shuddered. “But anything I do might end that way.”

  “I know,” said Veevee. “And Set may make Danny search for you until he finds you, so that even if you do nothing that could still happen. As I said, all the awful outcomes are on the table. So you have to do something that at least offers a possibility of a really goo
d outcome.”

  “The only good outcome is Danny alive and Set out of his body and gone from the world.”

  “It’s not a good outcome if he’s gone to Westil and comes back with an army of a hundred thousand mages under his control, my dear,” said Veevee.

  “Danny alive and free, and Set not in a position to harm anybody ever again.”

  “Now you really are too ambitious, my pet,” said Veevee.

  “Best outcome,” said Pat. “You can’t deny that that’s the best outcome.”

  “Yes, it’s victory in the whole war against the Belmages.”

  “And Danny alive and free.”

  “I wasn’t forgetting that. But darling, you’re a novice windmage—though pretty skilled, judging from the highly localized cyclone you whipped up when I first got here. I don’t think there’s any plan you can come up with where your actions can lead to the defeat of Set. Still, it’s lovely to dream.”

  “I don’t have any plan at all,” said Pat. “But you’re right. Because you came to me here and we had this conversation, I’m now looking for a different kind of action. Not the action of Juliet, stabbing herself to death because she thinks Romeo is dead. That’s just melodrama and self-indulgence. Just emotion. I’ll find something rational, or I won’t do anything at all.”

  “Rational?” asked Veevee. “Who does anything rational?”

  “Me,” said Pat. “If I can think of something.”

  “Well, if you refrain from action until you have a rational plan, then both you and Danny will be safe from any screw-ups you might otherwise perpetrate.”

  “At least I’ll be thinking instead of just walking around crying and wanting to scream,” said Pat. “So … thank you for coming to me.”

  “And thank you for talking to me. Aren’t we a pair of shopkeepers? Thank you. No, thank you.”

  Pat laughed.

  Veevee came to her, raised her up from the ground, and gave her a hug. “You’re a dear,” said Veevee. “Danny could have chosen so much worse.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Pat. “But I do aspire to be something better than not-the-worst.”

  “You’re doing very well so far,” said Veevee. “And if you do take a trip to the underworld, do come back and tell me about it.”