Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “I don’t,” said Hermia. “I won’t send things through a gate, I’ll take things with me when I go.”

  Alf laughed. “So you’ll be hand-carrying jet planes and attack helicopters and tanks.”

  “Maybe it won’t work,” said Hermia. “I don’t know. What do you lose by letting me try?”

  “One big problem,” said Gerd.

  “Only one?” asked Alf.

  Gerd raised a finger. “Runways.”

  “Oh now,” said Alf. “That is important. Airplanes need a long straight smooth wide road for takeoffs and landings. How much paved road do you think they have in all of Westil?”

  “Cobbled? Many miles,” said Hermia. “Straight? None. Smooth? None. So maybe no planes after all.”

  “Good,” said Alf. “Because it’s a lot easier to learn how to drive and aim and fire a tank than a jet. And if you screw up, you don’t fall thirty thousand feet.”

  “You’re thinking of training locals, then,” said Gerd.

  “As soon as we can.”

  “So you’re thinking of doing this,” said Gerd, feeling herself slump inside.

  “Hermia has a point.”

  “Hermia also has a record of betrayal,” said Gerd.

  Hermia only looked at her. Calmly.

  “She isn’t arguing,” said Gerd.

  “How can I?” she said. “It’s true. Danny gave me orders and refused to listen to my arguments. He assumed that because I stopped arguing, I would do what he said. But he was wrong. His plan was stupid and doomed to fail. Two mages per Family? While the Orphans would all get to go? My way, we aren’t actually at war with each other yet. His way, and the war would have been immediate. So I moved the only Great Gate I had access to and sent my family through. I made it all take time, so Danny had plenty of chance to respond and do the only thing he could do—take all the other Families through his own new gate. Don’t you think that was a better plan?”

  “It was,” said Alf. “But you betrayed Danny.”

  “I disagreed with Danny and failed to obey him,” said Hermia. “Please tell me, in all your lore of gatemages, whether you ever heard of an obedient one.”

  Alf chuckled.

  Gerd did not. “We will be totally dependent on her,” she said. “She can take us anywhere and leave us stranded.”

  “I could do that right now,” said Hermia, “and you couldn’t stop me.”

  Gerd wondered if a jolt of static electricity could stop Hermia’s heart before she could jump and heal herself. No, she would need to make that jolt strike Hermia’s brain, short-circuiting everything, including whatever part of her brain triggered jumps.

  “Before you try to kill me,” said Hermia, “you should be aware that this kind of jump has nothing to do with any part of my physical body. You could fry my brain and I could still do it, and heal myself in the process.”

  Gerd smiled. “It’s nice to know that we think alike.”

  “I’m not like Danny,” said Hermia. “I grew up as a valued member of a Family, and so I learned to think like one. Your isolation of Danny allowed him to become soft.”

  “Compassionate,” said Gerd.

  “He’s a dear,” said Hermia. “He loves the drowthers and thinks their lives and their happiness are as important as ours. On even-numbered days I see his point. On the other days, though, I recognize that power only exists if you use it to increase your power. Every time you fail to act to protect your interests, you embolden your enemies to defy you more and more openly, until finally you have no influence at all, except whatever raw power you have. Danny doesn’t understand this. He has—or had—so much raw power that he didn’t understand that real power comes from getting other people to obey you before you have to compel them. But here you are in Taiwan, showing me that you understand that.”

  “We do,” said Alf. “So here’s my question. Mittlegard is a known quantity. There are vast and terrible weapons here, but Gerd and I are uniquely qualified to use or neutralize them. We can and will dominate this world.”

  “And every Family knows that you two are the ones that they must kill,” said Hermia.

  “If you meant to do that,” said Gerd, “we’d be dead.”

  “But we know nothing about Westil,” said Alf. “They’ve had fifteen centuries since our last map, our last history. We don’t know what kingdoms are where, which are on the make and which are declining.”

  “And we don’t know what condition their magery is in,” said Gerd.

  “They haven’t had Great Gates at all,” said Hermia, “and you have. Loki is the only one who can make Great Gates now, and he won’t do it. So if I can take you to Westil, and regardless of whether my version of travel will enhance your powers, you’ll still be the most powerful mages in Westil.”

  “Except for Loki,” said Alf.

  “And anyone else he or Danny brought from here to there,” said Gerd. She thought she saw a hesitation, a momentary deadness in Hermia’s eyes as she concealed something that she knew. There was someone from Mittlegard that Danny had taken to Westil. And maybe vice versa, for all they knew. That was a mystery that deserved a little prying into.

  “Why should we go from the known to the unknown?” asked Alf.

  “Besides,” said Gerd, “Odin and I have shaped and honed our magery to be able to control and enhance the technological artifacts of Mittlegard. There won’t be any electronics or heavy machinery on Westil, will there?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hermia, “but I doubt it.”

  “I can’t do anything with wooden machinery,” said Alf. “Like the kind in water and windmills.”

  “Anything that lasts will be metal,” said Hermia.

  “Showing that you know nothing about the tolerances of cast iron compared with wood,” said Alf.

  “So don’t go,” said Hermia. “I’ll go back and see if my Family wants to see if I can transport a fleet of ships to the oceans of Westil.”

  “One good windmage or seamage would put them on the bottom of that ocean,” said Gerd.

  “But we have mages to prevent them, and ours have been through a Great Gate. We’ll do well enough.”

  “So why did you come to us first?” asked Alf.

  “Because my Family thinks they own me, the way you stupidly thought you owned Danny. They held me prisoner on a miserable little Aegean island.”

  “How do you hold a gatemage prisoner?” asked Alf.

  “I was between gates,” said Hermia. “Danny had taken all of mine to punish me, and I hadn’t yet learned how to jump without gates.”

  “It seems to me that every power you have is owed to Danny,” said Alf.

  “And I’m grateful to him. I taught him a lot as well. I think we’re even,” said Hermia.

  “I have an idea,” said Gerd. “Take one of us to Westil right now and let’s see if we even have anything to talk about.”

  “One of us?” asked Alf.

  “If her plan is only to get us out of Mittlegard, then she can’t do it to both of us at once,” said Gerd. “You’ll be here to destroy her Family and continue to keep these weapons working until you bring Mittlegard into obedience and the other Families into submission.”

  “She would just come back and kill me. Or take me wherever she wanted. Gatemages of any kind are uncontrollable,” said Alf.

  “Except by other gatemages,” said Gerd.

  “Good call,” said Hermia. “If I betrayed you by stranding his mother on Westil, Danny would take steps.”

  “He could kill you whenever he wants, I think,” said Gerd.

  “Well, I’m hard to kill, even for him,” said Hermia. “But he isn’t the killing kind. No, he would simply bring you back to Mittlegard and stop me from doing anything to either of you. So there it is—you have a guarantee that this particular trickster god won’t bother trying to trick you.”

  Gerd held out her hand. “Take me,” she said.

  Hermia took her hand, then looked at Alf. “Y
ou can bear to be separated from the woman you love?”

  “It won’t be for long,” said Alf.

  “I think you both need to see Westil long enough to judge for yourselves what you might accomplish there,” said Hermia.

  “You’ve never been married,” said Gerd.

  “We’ve worked in close partnership for decades,” said Alf. “Gerd will see anything that I would see. She will know anything that I would know. And I know she’s safe with you, or my vengeance will be terrible.”

  “Danny’s vengeance,” said Hermia.

  “You won’t care about the difference,” said Alf.

  * * *

  AND THERE SHE was on Westil. In a circle of standing stones, just like before. Her hand was still in Hermia’s hand—at least the girl hadn’t abandoned her to make her own way.

  “Where are we?” asked Gerd.

  Hermia looked around. “I find it interesting that the passage between worlds still has some element of randomness. I thought I was taking you back to the gatecatcher that we used before. But here we are in mountains overlooking a sandy desert. The obvious guess is Dapnu Dap, but I have no way of knowing if this desert is part of something that vast.”

  “So the passage between worlds is random,” said Gerd. “Now we’re in a particular place, and you should be able to go to any other known place.”

  “In Mittlegard, yes,” said Hermia, “because I know most of the places we might want to go. It’s not as if I ever set up housekeeping here.”

  “Then take me back to Alf.”

  “We have things to learn,” said Hermia. “Let’s go spying.”

  “Shouldn’t we change clothing first?” asked Gerd. “I’m betting these outfits will stand out.”

  “The shoes are certainly impractical,” said Hermia. “You really walked around Taiwan in those?”

  “I walked around my house,” said Gerd. “And with you holding on to me, I don’t expect I will actually have to do much outdoor walking here, either.”

  “Danny has a point about the arrogance of the Families,” said Hermia.

  “Beginning with you, my dear,” said Gerd. “Let’s find a place where we can go shopping.”

  “None of them take American Express.”

  “But all of them accept the five-finger discount,” said Gerd. “As long as we can make a clean getaway. What do you think of our chances?”

  “I wonder how bad our accents are,” said Hermia.

  “You gatemages have such a way with languages that I’m betting yours will be superbly local within moments,” said Gerd. “And I’m content to let you do all the talking.”

  By nightfall, they had the costumes of ladies of high station in the riverport city of Ny, the capital of Nefyryd, and knew a surprisingly large amount of interesting but probably useless information about the cotton and weaving trades, and the shipping and overland routes that brought wealth into Nefyryd from all the other kingdoms.

  Alone in a very rich house that Hermia had learned was standing empty, the two of them began to figure out their next move.

  “We can assume,” said Hermia, “that the rumors of a great Tempester in Hetterwee are true, and that Danny has somehow managed to curtail the depredations of the Orphan Cedric who didn’t come back from the first Great Gate he made.”

  “It still doesn’t tell us where Danny is,” said Gerd. “I’m surprised he hasn’t come to us already.”

  “We didn’t make a gate,” said Hermia. “Not the kind that he and Loki would instantly recognize. The kind of jump we did, maybe Danny can detect it or maybe he can’t. Loki almost certainly can’t. And if Danny can, maybe he’s just waiting to see what we do.”

  “Or maybe he’s busy,” said Gerd.

  “More to the point,” said Hermia, “how do you assess your potential power here on Westil?”

  “The machinery is trifling,” said Gerd. “Not even a good clock. And no indication that there’s any higher technology elsewhere, because they have enough wealth here to import anything of real value or interest from anywhere else in the world.”

  “Comfortable climate,” said Hermia. “We’re almost in the tropics here, if that term applies, but it’s not as suffocatingly hot as, say, Manaus, or even Havana.”

  “I have no interest in this city in particular,” said Gerd.

  “Ny rules over one of the largest nations of Westil, and one of the richest,” said Hermia.

  “A one-crop economy,” said Gerd.

  “Not very observant of you,” said Hermia. “Like America, they also export food. Especially to the northern islands. They are self-sufficient in most metals, because the northern marches of Nefyryd reach well into the foothills of the High Mountains—”

  “Mitherkame,” said Gerd.

  “The locals avoid that word,” said Hermia. “Too sacred.”

  “It always has been,” said Gerd. “That’s why we refer to this world as Westil instead of Mitherhame, let alone Mitherkame. But I see no reason not to name things by their right name, when it’s just the two of us talking.”

  “Do you think some tanks and attack helicopters here could make an impression?” asked Hermia.

  “Of course,” said Gerd. “But Cortés and Pizarro didn’t win with those primitive muskets and cannon they brought with them. The Inca and Aztec soldiers could have overwhelmed them in moments. They learned enough about the local culture to overcome them with mind games.”

  “They also made allies,” said Hermia. “Or at least Cortés did.”

  “So yes,” said Gerd, “there are possibilities here. And … even though I’m no Meadowfriend, it seemed as if every grain of pollen in the air was welcoming me. As if this was the atmosphere I was meant to breathe. It’s quite an overpowering sensation.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” said Hermia, breathing deep. “So we should probably return to Odin and reassure him that I haven’t buried you deep in the ice somewhere in Antarctica.”

  “And yet I still feel…”

  “You sound as if you want to do something very wicked,” said Hermia. “I didn’t know anyone but gatemages ever felt that way.”

  “We’ve been deliberately invisible the whole time we’ve been here,” said Gerd. “And that was a good plan. Only … shouldn’t we let them know that a Lightrider has been here? I can’t turn off their computers or cellphones with an electromagnetic pulse. But a dazzling display of lightning in a clear sky?”

  “Impressive, of course,” said Hermia. “But will that be enough? If the idea is to come here and make an alliance with Nefyryd, shouldn’t you give your display some kind of purpose? A point?”

  “I don’t want to show myself in the open yet,” said Gerd.

  “Oh, I agree. Let’s leave it anonymous. But show, by what the lightning does, that you’re on their side. A god has come—to protect them.”

  “Who were their trading rivals? File Apwor, Barliham, Ru, Nix—”

  “Nix is in the far north,” said Hermia. “And I think Loki’s work is all in the far north. From things Danny has said.”

  “So the lightning singles out the ships of Nix?”

  “I don’t think you should destroy any of them. I wouldn’t want us to start a naval war.”

  “No, but … show their vulnerability,” said Gerd. “I’m thinking—vast lightnings in the sky, but only a bit of dancing light on every ship carrying the banner of Nix.”

  “Maybe just … little fires at the tops of the masts?” asked Hermia. “Nobody dies, no ship sinks, but they have to scramble to put out the fires, and maybe refit a little before they sail away?”

  “If only the ships of Nix are affected,” said Gerd, “are we saying that we’re the friends of Ny or the enemies of Nix?”

  “I don’t think it matters yet,” said Hermia. “It’s just enough to start rumors flying. The way the Tempester of Hetterwee has the whole world talking. They’re speculating that a Great Gate has opened again, somewhere. Let’s give them a little more to ch
ew on.”

  From the terrace of the house they had a fine view of all the ships docked at the wharves or anchored in the river. And once Gerd had a fairly steady stream of lightning dashing back and forth across the sky, it was easy to see which banners flew from the various ships. They marked five Nixy ships and Gerd drew down wisps of lightning to illuminate them, and then intensified them all at once, at the tops of the masts, so they burst into flame.

  The banners immediately flared, and there was an immediate hurly and bustle on the docks. Two of the ships were at a berth, and men from shore could rush on board to put out the flames. Two others were anchored near to shore, so that boats could reach them quickly and join the men aboard who were already fighting the flames.

  In every case, they immediately unstepped the highest portion of each burning mast, cutting the sheets and lines so that they could be pitched overboard. There was no machinery to bring water to the tops of the masts. Something for Alf to invent for them, perhaps, thought Gerd. A system of pumps. A fireboat that could stand off from a burning ship and put out the fires.

  “Uh-oh,” said Hermia. “That one’s getting out of hand.”

  The ship that was anchored farthest out in the river was now burning right down to the deck. Nobody seemed to be fighting the fire on board, and if one of the boats from shore was headed out there, they weren’t going to reach it in time.

  “They should have left some of their crew on board,” said Hermia. “Instead of letting them all go drinking and whoring in town.”

  “They might be on board,” said Gerd. “Asleep below deck. Where they couldn’t hear any of the shouting from closer in to shore.”

  “Probably all so drunk they couldn’t be wakened by anything. Or the thunder would already have woken them,” said Hermia. “You put on quite a noisy show.”

  “You have to go waken them so they can get off the boat,” said Gerd.

  “There’s nobody on board,” said Hermia.

  “You don’t know that,” said Gerd. “If this is to look like a great mage announcing herself, there shouldn’t be any deaths.”

  “I get it,” said Hermia. “You expect me to go out there, into a burning ship, and wake them up?”

  “Gate them to land, if that’s what it takes,” said Gerd.