Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “Veevee is not a quick learner,” said Hermia. “She’s not dumb—gatemages are never dumb—but she’s so full of her own thoughts and her own ego that she really can’t observe anything. I know that about her because she and I worked together trying to learn how to move gates and other useful skills back when Danny had gates and we were still on the same team. You notice that I learned how, and she didn’t.”

  “Yes,” said Pat.

  “I’m just as full of my own thoughts and my own ego,” said Hermia. “But I know that about myself, and I can switch it off long enough to really concentrate on things outside myself. I’ve spent this afternoon concentrating on you.”

  Pat found this flattering, which annoyed her. She hated being so manipulable. “I haven’t done anything,” said Pat.

  “Oh, you’ve sat there not-reading that book whenever you wanted to not-talk with me. When you and Danny brought me here, I should have been baffled because there was no gate. But I already knew that you hadn’t made any gates in all your moving around back on the island. So when Danny took me—I know it was Danny and not you, because you followed an instant later—I didn’t look for a gate. I’m not a cat, constantly trying to catch the laser pointer. I didn’t look for anything outside myself at all. The things you had told me—you led me to look inside myself. To see if I could sense, could grasp, whatever it was that Danny grabbed hold of in order to drag me here to Florida.”

  Pat had to admit that this sounded far more sensible than anything else Hermia might have done.

  “And I think I did sense it. Not the way you sense something outside yourself, like a smell or a sound. And not even the way you see yourself in a dream, in the third person, as if you were hovering just over your own shoulder, watching what you do. No, what I sensed was the part of me that Danny tugged on. Only it wasn’t a tug. It was more like an invitation that was so powerful that I fell into it. Like gravity. I fell here. That’s what it felt like.”

  And now that Hermia had put it into those words, Pat realized that it was true, or at least truish. She thought of the headlong rush to Duat and yes, it was like falling. As inevitable as gravity. And so was coming back to her body.

  “So I thought, ‘That’s who “I” am,’ and yes, I’m putting air quotes around ‘I’ because it’s not the thing I’ve thought of as myself for my whole life. It’s not this face or these hands or this body that eats and pees and walks and reads, it’s not my eyes or any of my senses. But when Danny tugged on it and I fell here, it was me doing the falling, and all those other things came along with. So it’s me. It’s who I am. But there isn’t much of it, is there? If I were really stripped down to that tuggable thing that fell, it wouldn’t really be me, would it. Just a fragment.”

  “The fragment that makes all the decisions,” said Pat.

  “Ah. Yes. That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it. Whatever part of us decides, that’s our true self.”

  “Ka,” said Pat.

  “Inself. Or … pret,” said Hermia. “Names for the part of myself that’s always listening to my thoughts, always observing me. The judge who evaluates everything I do. But whenever I’ve ever been aware of that watcher, that judge, it flies away, recedes out of reach. Until now. Now I know where it is. I can tug on it too. Because Danny showed me how to find it.”

  Because of what Hermia said, Pat felt her own inself in a curious new way. In Duat, that’s all she had been, just that ka, naked and almost but not quite alone. Because Danny was there. She was always aware of him, and therefore always aware of where she was in relation to him.

  But now she was also aware of Hermia. Not of the woman, but the ka within her. The way she had been able to sense the ka and ba of Enopp and Eluik. Those, Danny had shown to her. And now Hermia was showing herself to Pat.

  Showing it for a purpose. Showing it so that Pat would tug on it.

  Only Pat didn’t know how. She had never done it.

  Except that even as she thought this, she made the contact—just as she had contacted Enopp and Eluik, as she had communed with This One. Only she didn’t want that kind of intimate wordless communication with Hermia. Hermia was too strong and dangerous, she could not be trusted. And so Pat recoiled from her, and instead of that recoil taking a physical form, Pat moved her ka across the room and she was standing by the window facing into the room.…

  And Hermia was not sitting where she had been sitting. She was standing only a few feet away from Pat. Smiling.

  “I see,” said Hermia.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” said Pat.

  “I don’t care,” said Hermia. “You were running away from me, I get that. But you were in contact with me. I felt that. Not a tug, just a touch. But when you moved, I kept the same position. See? I’m exactly as far from you as I was before. You’re standing, so I’m standing, but the distance is the same.”

  “How very Mr. Science of you,” said Pat.

  “I mean I know the distance. Not the name of the distance, but its exact length, and I was able to hold on to that. Is that how it is with you and Danny? You know where he is, and you can always jump to him.”

  Pat nodded.

  “So right now I’m anchored to you the way you’re anchored to him,” said Hermia.

  “I don’t know,” said Pat. “He had to send me to you, because the only thing I know how to do is move a few feet, to a place I can see—or to go to Danny.”

  Hermia closed her eyes. A long time. And then she was back near the door.

  “Very good,” said Pat, feeling pleased at Hermia’s achievement and frightened by it. What would Danny say?

  “But that’s inside the room,” said Hermia. “And I don’t know where Danny is, so I really don’t love him as much as you.”

  “That’s not about love,” said Pat. “That’s about going to Duat together. That’s about dying and having him surround me. I lost my body, but I still had Danny North.”

  “Ah,” said Hermia. “So the connection I feel to you isn’t at all the same. But look, I can choose what position to be in, relative to you.…”

  Hermia appeared in rapid succession in places all around the room.

  And then she was entirely gone.

  No. She was out on the balcony, and now she walked back inside the condo. “Veevee would know how to do this, too,” said Hermia, “if she could just pay attention.”

  “But it’s still quite limited,” said Pat.

  “Oh, I know. But don’t you see how useful this is? Each time I move, I’m healed. Just like passing through a gate. I think what happens is that all the prets that make up my body—am I getting that right?—they jump right along with me and reassemble. Only they reassemble according to the right plan, and not whatever accidental injuries or weaknesses I might have developed along the way. Do you think I’m right?”

  Pat didn’t have to answer. Hermia just went right on.

  “So now I’m not helpless. If I had come home to that shotgun blast that Danny took, I could gate away instantly, by reflex. Even if I stayed in the same hotel room, I’d be completely healed. They shoot me again, I just move again. Unkillable. Uncatchable.”

  Pat couldn’t help but laugh. “I think at some point they’d run crying out of the room.”

  “Men who depend on guns don’t know what to do with people who aren’t afraid of them,” said Hermia. “People who won’t die when they’re shot.”

  “So this is useful,” said Pat.

  “The real question is, if I can anchor on you, a person who barely knows me and definitely doesn’t like me, can I perhaps find another ka? Someone I know well? Let me ask you—you know where Danny is right now, yes? Is it far?”

  Pat almost answered: He’s in two places. His body is in his little rented house in Buena Vista, with Set locked away inside him, but he’s also operating a clant on Westil. A perfect copy of his body, so that in a way, Danny is completely on Westil, only without Set inside. Except that the body on Westil is just an illu
sion, it isn’t a part of him, it isn’t bonded to him like his real body in Buena Vista here on Earth.

  But Pat didn’t think it was wise to let Hermia know that Danny could be in two places at once. She had already taught her too much.

  “I wonder if I have a sense of my mother,” said Hermia. “She’s a ruthless, frightening, selfish, despicable human being, but she is my mommy.”

  Pat realized that in all these days since she had died and learned how to sense other people’s ka and ba, it hadn’t even occurred to her to look for her mother or father. What kind of unnatural child am I, not to have a sense of them?

  A woman leaves her father and mother to cleave unto her husband, or some such wording. That’s why she never thought to look for them. She was “cleaving unto” Danny North.

  “No sense of where she is, though,” said Hermia. “And I’m really content with that. I like being away from her. And Daddy. But surely there’s someone else. Veevee?”

  Just raising the question made Pat think of Veevee and, to her surprise, she knew exactly where Veevee was. In a car, driving along Tamiami Trail, having just left Trader Joe’s. Why do I know that? Have I been unconsciously tracking her?

  “Please,” said Hermia.

  “She might wreck the car if we—”

  But the words “car if we” came out of her mouth inside Veevee’s car. Hermia and Pat were sitting in the back seat, side by side.

  “You little brats, you’re practicing without me,” said Veevee.

  “What else do you expect?” said Hermia.

  “From you, nothing better,” said Veevee. “But Pat isn’t a brat, she isn’t a gatemage.”

  “She is now,” said Hermia. “Maybe the brattiness follows.”

  “I didn’t realize I was tracking you,” said Pat. “Or that I knew how to find you so quickly.”

  “And now Hermia knows,” said Veevee.

  “Not really,” said Hermia. “Pat knew where you were, and I just came along for the ride.”

  “Did you?” asked Pat. “Because I never decided to make the jump.”

  “You must have, or we wouldn’t be here.”

  “It is so hard to concentrate on driving,” said Veevee.

  “And yet you’re doing it,” said Hermia.

  “My body is driving by reflex,” said Veevee. “I’m more distracted than if I were texting right now.”

  “Still in the lane,” said Hermia.

  Pat let them bandy words. She was trying to find the ka of someone important to her. But she had experienced Veevee’s ka when Danny was moving her around, trying to teach her. Had Pat ever really sensed anybody else except those Westilian boys?

  But maybe it wasn’t just a matter of finding people. Maybe …

  And there she was, in the clearing in the woods above Parry McCluer High School. Just like that. It was a place she knew well. A place she had gated to before.

  There was somebody there. It was during high-school hours, but there were a girl and a boy, vigorously snogging.

  Xena. Yes, of course Xena. And … oh, not possible. Wheeler.

  Before she could make a sound, Pat was gone again. To another place she knew very, very well. The bathroom mirror where she had spent so many hours of her life washing her acne-plagued face with benzoyl peroxide soaps. A place she knew better than any other.

  I don’t have to go where Danny is. I can go to places that I know well. And when I was there in the gathering place in the woods, I didn’t recognize Xena and Wheeler by face, I knew them by their kas. I knew them. I could find them again no matter where they were.

  But at this moment, she didn’t want to find them because she knew where they were and what they were doing and she couldn’t imagine that she would be a welcome visitor.

  There were two people looking into the bathroom mirror. Hermia was beside her. “You came here?”

  “Second choice,” said Pat. “I went to the clearing in the woods first.”

  “I thought you made two jumps,” said Hermia. “But I’m not good at this yet.”

  “Places I’ve been to a lot,” said Pat. “Places that were emotionally important to me. Easy to find them. To just go.”

  “Are you really so vain that your bathroom mirror is—”

  “I had terrible acne till Danny healed me,” said Pat. “I wasn’t being vain when I stared into this monster movie screen.”

  “You poor dear. And also, lucky you.” Hermia squinted.

  Even squinting, she was pretty. Pat really should hate this woman.

  “So what place has ever been so important to me?” asked Hermia.

  And then she was gone.

  It was Pat’s turn to follow her. She knew the place at once—behind the gym down at the high school. “Where you first met Danny, knowing he was a gatemage,” said Pat.

  “Knowing he had started to make a Great Gate,” said Hermia. “I don’t know how I understood that, because it’s not as if I had ever seen one. But it was all entwined. Lots of gates together. So … I knew. And there he was.”

  A moment’s pause, and she was gone again.

  Again, Pat followed.

  A large building made of stone. Almost monumental. “Library of Congress,” said Hermia. “See? There’s the Capitol dome. We’re behind the Library of Congress right here, but this is the spot where I sat while I was showing Danny how to close his gates. And it was here that he … made a gate into me. Oh, it was such a powerful feeling, such a … but you know that. It has to be like what you experienced when … only I wasn’t dead, so, not the same after all.”

  Danny had never talked about any kind of powerful experience with Hermia at this point in their story. She didn’t like that it bothered her. Maybe it was more powerful for Hermia than it was for Danny.

  “Shall we go back to Veevee’s condo?” asked Hermia. “Do you know the place well enough to get there?”

  “Do you?” asked Pat.

  “Well, it was never very important to me until today. My liberation from jail and all that. And the place where I learned how to…”

  Pat didn’t hear because she had jumped to Veevee’s apartment.

  “Gate from one place to another without making gates,” said Hermia.

  “Did you follow me?” asked Pat. “Or jump here on your own?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hermia. “I just came here. I think. But now I think we need to separate.”

  Pat knew immediately that this was the dividing line. Hermia had learned all she needed to from Pat—or all she thought there was to learn. One of those. But she was done with Pat now, and wanted to go do things that she didn’t want Pat to see.

  “You’re really not a nice person,” said Pat to Hermia. Not angrily or bitterly. It was simply the truth.

  “I am a nice person,” said Hermia. “I could have just gone.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Pat. “Because I might have followed you, and you don’t want me to. So you had to tell me not to follow you, and you knew that I’d comply, because I, in fact, am a nice person.”

  Hermia smiled at her. “Very accurately expressed. For a windmage, you have a way with words.”

  “Don’t go to Danny,” said Pat.

  “Why not?” asked Hermia. “I assume he’s at home, so even if I can’t find his ka, I can find his house. That place is very important to me.”

  “Please don’t go to Danny,” said Pat.

  “I don’t pose any threat to you, and you know it.”

  Pat closed her eyes. “He’s doing something very difficult and dangerous, and you already know too much. If you go there, and Set sees what you know how to do…”

  Hermia gave a low chuckle of understanding. “You’re afraid that if Set saw that I could make gates, or whatever we do now, he might jump to me.”

  “And whatever Danny’s doing, your arrival won’t help him,” said Pat.

  “Well, I’ve already interfered with his plans too often as it is,” said Hermia. “I won’t
bother Danny until I really need to. And Pat. You treated me better than I deserved.”

  “Yes,” said Pat. “But with any luck, we all get treated better than we deserve, from time to time.”

  “You deserve Danny,” said Hermia, “and Danny deserves you. And that may be the most completely true and nice thing that I’ve ever said to anybody in my life.” Hermia leaned close and kissed Pat on the cheek. “Work on your windmagery, darling—it’s nice that you can make quick getaways, but you need to make sure you have a powerful offensive weapon, too, when the war starts in earnest.”

  And then she was gone.

  Pat just stood there in Veevee’s apartment, trying to think of some reason why it wasn’t completely disastrous for Hermia to have gained this ability.

  Then Pat walked out onto the balcony and worked on whipping up a powerful twister with edges so clearly defined that nobody on the beach felt even the slightest uptick in the wind. The twister whirled at monstrous speed fifty feet up, and reached high into the atmosphere. Pat then brought the top of it down so that the twister was no thicker than a frisbee, though it was half a mile wide, a disk of intensely destructive wind.

  It was so exhilarating.

  She slowed it. She sped it up. She narrowed it, then widened it. She took care to keep it out of the flight path of any airplanes, though she couldn’t resist capturing a couple of hopeless kites and whipping them away at such speeds that they were instantly torn to shreds. The wind was so hungry to feel that power and kites were cheap and easy to replace. The young men who were flying them would have a story to tell. “The kite just … disappeared. A jerk on the line and then it was dead, and there was nothing left, like some invisible bird came and ate it whole.”

  Everybody wins. And I have an offensive weapon already. If I ever need it. Oh, please, let it be that I never, never need to use this against a person.

  Veevee came out onto the balcony after a while. “Playing with your windmagery?”

  “Better than teaching a traitor how to move around the world on seven-league boots.”

  Veevee made a show of pouting. “Her you can teach?”

  “Now that I’ve seen how she learned, maybe I can teach you,” said Pat. “If you really want to know.”