Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  Tillman probably didn’t hear him. But he did turn and walk away along the corridor right at that moment. So … maybe.

  “All these Sutahites,” said Pat. “How strong are they?”

  “They only have the power to bring thoughts into your head,” said Danny. “To remind you of desires you already have. So … they’re only as strong as their victims let them be. How strong were they with you? Back when you still listened?”

  “Oh, I never actually planned a suicide attempt. Mostly, my despair led me to oversleep and do badly in class and alienate anyone who might have become a friend. Normal middle school things. I wonder what it’s like for thirteen-year-olds in Westil.”

  It took Danny a moment, but then he smiled. “That’s right. That was Loki’s whole project. To keep the Sutahites out of Westil.”

  “I get the impression that life there can be perfectly miserable without any help from the Sutahites,” said Pat.

  “Maybe,” said Danny. “The woman who murdered the boys’ mother, or tried to, anyway—”

  “Her body died,” said Pat.

  “Murdered her, then. She didn’t need any little voices seducing her. Nothing but her own naked ambition.”

  Pat was silent for a moment. “What about you, Danny? Do you have any ambitions?”

  Danny thought about that. “Well, I … not specific ones. I don’t even know what I want to major in in college.”

  “By all means, let’s go see the school counselor! You’re only a year from graduation, it’s time to decide where you want to go to college and whether you’re premed or, I don’t know, aviation? Astrophysics? Maybe you can figure out faster-than-light travel, or interstellar voyages, or maybe just the ability to travel instantly from one place on Earth to any other place.”

  “Now you’re being silly,” said Danny. “That’s just sci-fi stuff, you can’t actually do those things.”

  She clung a little closer to his arm. He was aware of how her body pressed against his.

  “I’ll tell you my ambition,” said Danny. “To be with you, living in the same house, raising the same ugly little children—no, wait, your genes might prevail.”

  “You can heal their acne for them. I don’t think that’s cheating. Acne doesn’t build character, it prepares you to buy a gun and shoot people.”

  “I’m even more ambitious than you think,” said Danny. “I want to have the kind of job where I can break away when I need to.”

  “Like Superman,” said Pat. “Somebody needs saving, so you duck into a storage closet to change into your cape.”

  “No,” said Danny. “So I can break away and come home when one of the kids needs a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Oh, like that’ll happen,” said Pat.

  “We have to let them get their immunizations and checkups or we’d look like irresponsible parents,” said Danny. “And sometimes I’d break away just to come home and have you hold me like this, and to remember, This is why I left my Family, this is why I left Silvermans’ … to find you.”

  “That may be too extravagant an ambition,” said Pat. “It presupposes that they’ll ever leave you alone. It seems to include the idea that somehow, someday, you’ll get rid of that ugly terrible thing inside you.”

  “I don’t want to be rid of it,” said Danny. “Right now I always know where it is. If it leaves me and goes anywhere but Duat, then my real worries begin again.”

  “So your parents taking over the U.S. military isn’t a real worry?”

  “They haven’t started any new wars, just made it so our allies—America’s allies—have a better chance of winning.”

  “So you don’t think it meant anything when Hermia took your mother to Westil?”

  Danny shook his head. “I don’t know what that was, but they’re not insane.”

  “Your mother’s not,” said Pat. “But Hermia?”

  Danny had more confidence in Hermia’s sanity than Mother’s. “Let me walk you home,” said Danny.

  “The others will be waiting up on the hill,” she said. And then, before he could protest: “Danny, they’re afraid you’ll lose interest in them.”

  “When a guy has a girlfriend he’s really in love with, he always loses interest in his other friends.”

  “And they all feel abandoned and resentful,” said Pat. “I’ve read the same young-adult novels as you.”

  “I think this is important—seeing the Sutahites. Seeing where they cluster. Now it’s so obvious, I wonder that I didn’t see it before.”

  “You’re always walking through dust, tasting it, inhaling it, collecting it on your clothes and skin. But you only notice it when it’s caught swirling through a beam of sunlight.”

  “Well, Thou Beam of Sunlight, thank you for showing me. Wish I could hear what they’re saying.”

  “I already told you,” said Pat.

  “Every kid the same?”

  “Pretty much. Come on, Danny. Adolescence is when you dream of being a superhero and come to understand your own worthlessness, both at once.”

  “So which belief are the Sutahites pushing on these people?”

  “Both at once,” said Pat, “and then they follow up on whichever message starts to succeed. At least, if I wanted to destroy teenagers’ lives, that’s what I’d do.”

  Danny chuckled mirthlessly. “I guess they’re working me with both stories all the time.”

  Pat stepped away from him and looked him up and down. “No Sutahites that I can see.”

  “How many that you can’t see? Think of it as ‘unproven reserves.’”

  “I think I can see them all, and you don’t have any,” said Pat. “And neither do I.”

  “Maybe they gave up on you because you’re too strong,” said Danny.

  “Or because we both went to Duat and got the ability to see prets and move as prets. Maybe they don’t even think of us as people now. Or maybe talking to This One made us immune.”

  “Or maybe I don’t get any Sutahites because I have their master inside me, and so they keep clear.”

  “Let’s sneak off and get married,” said Pat. “I think all this not going home with you is silly.”

  “I’ve got the devil himself inside me,” said Danny. “Perhaps not the time to start a family.”

  “But he’s not controlling you anymore. Maybe you’ve got him imprisoned forever.”

  “Even if he really can’t get away, ‘forever’ means ‘until I die,’ and that’s definitely not forever. What if I died and turned him loose on you? Or on one of our children?”

  “And what if a satellite falls out of the sky and lands right on top of you, killing you so quickly and completely that you don’t have time to jump anywhere and heal the flat, roasted, radioactive paste that your body would instantly be turned into?”

  “You’re a poet at heart, my love,” whispered Danny, and he kissed her.

  “Please,” said a passing guidance counselor. “Young love is beautiful to feel, but repulsive to look at.”

  “Thank you,” said Pat. “For a moment there I actually felt attractive and lovable.” The guidance counselor was already many paces away. Pat called after him, “But you put a stop to that!”

  “If they didn’t have rules like that, the halls at school would probably be one continuous orgy,” said Danny.

  “But he was really titillated by it,” said Pat. “That’s why it made him so uncomfortable.”

  “He doesn’t want to think of students in a sexualized context,” said Danny. “I think that’s part of his job description.”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t part of yours,” said Pat.

  “But it was,” said Danny. “I’m just bad at my job.”

  The school was mostly cleared out, because this close to the end of the school year, few clubs or teams had any activities or practices. It was easy to get behind the building and then shift to the clearing on the hill. The others were already there.

  “Oh, look, they took a breathing bre
ak,” said Xena.

  “You can breathe while kissing,” said Laurette.

  “You can also blow down the other person’s throat,” said Sin, “and it sounds like a backward burp.”

  “Have we stumbled into Anthropology One?” asked Pat. “Or a horror movie where the teenagers all deserve to die?”

  “If they were literate,” said Hal, “they would have called it snogging instead of kissing. That’s what J. K. Rowling taught Americans who could read.”

  “Oh no,” said Wheeler. “We’re muggles.”

  “You’re only just now realizing that?” asked Xena.

  “What were you talking about before we got here?” asked Danny.

  “The usual,” said Laurette. “School’s almost over and next year is senior year and I’m not going to be valedictorian.”

  “We were patting her hand and saying ‘poor baby,’” said Xena.

  “We were gloating,” said Hal.

  “She never had a realistic chance of it,” said Sin, “and she’s finally entered the wonderful world of sanity.”

  “Said the girl with thirty festering piercings,” said Wheeler.

  “Eighteen,” corrected Sin.

  “But most of them are festering on both entry points,” said Danny, “so I think Wheeler might be close to the truth.”

  “If they ever get too bad,” said Sin, “I go through the gate that leads here and then I’m fine.”

  “So you walked up here?” asked Wheeler. “On purpose?”

  “Those of us who want to live past forty-five seek opportunities for exercise,” said Sin.

  “And those of us hoping to reproduce someday don’t punch holes in ourselves like spiral notebook paper,” said Xena.

  “Bitch,” muttered Sin.

  “So the end of junior year means the end of civility,” said Danny. “Duly noted.”

  “You don’t have to worry about it,” said Wheeler.

  “Worry about what?”

  “Senior year, graduation, college, what you’re going to do for a living,” said Wheeler.

  “There aren’t a lot of job openings for gatemages,” said Danny. “Especially the ones who’ve lost their gates.”

  “You say you lost them,” said Hal, “but from what I can see, you and Pat both gate wherever you want.”

  “We all took the PSAT this year,” said Wheeler, “and they say that’s a pretty good indicator of college aptitude. So even though I’m preternaturally intelligent and sexily tech-savvy, I’m probably not going to college.”

  “That’s just dumb,” said Danny. “I remember your score and there are thousands of colleges that would take you.”

  “I have to get into a no-tuition school,” said Wheeler, “or one where I can live at home, because no way can my parents or me earn enough to cover tuition and room and board.”

  “He rejects Dabney S. Lancaster Community College,” said Laurette, “because they don’t meet his lofty standards.”

  “I’m poor,” said Wheeler, “but that doesn’t mean I should waste my brain going to a school that anybody can get into.”

  “A snob who looks down on everything that he can afford,” said Hal. “It’s a catch-22.”

  “It’s preventable self-destruction,” said Pat. “If you hadn’t goofed off you’d have the grades to get a scholarship to UVA. And you probably could get into Washington and Lee.”

  “Bunch of snobs,” said Wheeler.

  “They have an eighteen percent acceptance rate,” said Sin. Apparently she felt a need to explain how she knew. “I had dreams.”

  “What about you, Danny?” asked Xena. “You could get into any college, but why bother?”

  “I can physically get into any college, but if I want a degree, I don’t have anybody prepared to pay my tuition at Harvard.”

  “Harvard has a six percent acceptance rate,” said Xena, “and no, I never thought I could go there.”

  “You have to have, like, a four point oh,” said Laurette, “a perfect SAT, and either a Nobel Prize or a letter of recommendation from a President.”

  “Only if it’s a Democratic President,” said Wheeler. “A Bush letter will keep you out. Even at Yale.”

  “Poor Republican Wheeler.”

  “I’m really a Libertarian,” said Wheeler.

  “But look at Danny,” said Laurette. “When I mentioned a four point oh and a perfect SAT, he didn’t blink.”

  “No, he actually kind of did his maybe-I’ll-blush thing,” said Xena.

  “Straight A’s?” asked Hal. “Really?”

  “You already took the SAT?” asked Pat.

  “I was homeschooled back in Ohio. You have to present proof of achievement after every school year, so I took the SAT every June. Except then they also made me take the ACT to prove that it wasn’t a fluke.”

  “So you got a perfect score,” said Hal, sounding depressed about it.

  “I knew the answers,” said Danny, “or I guessed really well.”

  “Just the last time you took it, or every time?” asked Wheeler.

  Danny didn’t want to answer. But his hesitation was all the answer they needed.

  “Oh ye gods,” said Xena. “When he came to Parry McCluer he had already gotten a perfect score on the SAT and the ACT.”

  “Five times,” said Wheeler.

  “I earned those scores,” said Danny. “And it wasn’t five times, I only took them twice each. I studied long and hard.”

  “So, he’s a god,” said Sin, ticking things off on her fingers, “and nondisgusting in appearance—”

  “Matter of opinion,” said Wheeler.

  “A matter of female opinion,” said Xena, “with considerable corroboration from nonmembers of this group, including the pregnant one.”

  “And he can go anywhere in the world and send anybody else anywhere, he can get into anything, he can get away from anything, he can gate the clothing right off any woman—”

  “We don’t need to hear about your erotic dreams, Sin,” said Laurette.

  “Can he?” Xena asked Pat.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Pat.

  “And he has straight A’s and perfect college entrance exams,” Sin finished.

  “But his community service sucks,” said Wheeler.

  “He’s just not a Princeton man,” said Hal with fake regret.

  “Have any of you thought of going to Southern Virginia?” asked Danny. “It’s right here in town.”

  “It’s a religious school,” said Laurette, “and we don’t go to that church.”

  “You could get into any Ivy,” said Hal. “Or probably MIT or Cal Tech, since you aced the math side.”

  “I don’t have any desire to go to an Ivy,” said Danny. “Or MIT or Cal Tech or Stanford or the Sorbonne.”

  “What I can’t figure out,” said Wheeler, “is why you had any desire to come here to Parry McCluer.”

  “He’s told you,” said Pat. “He used to gate to this hill and spy on the school. So this was the high school he wanted to go to.”

  “Have we fulfilled your wildest childish dreams?” asked Hal.

  “Wildest childish dreams, wildest childish…,” Xena intoned rapidly, making a tongue twister out of it.

  “What do you desire, O thou onliest god of our acquaintance?” asked Laurette.

  “What dost thou desire,” corrected Hal.

  “Why are we talking about what happens after senior year?” asked Danny.

  “Meaning he’s already made his plans and they don’t include us,” said Xena.

  “How could they?” said Sin. “He goes to other planets. He has titanic struggles with dark gods from other worlds.”

  “He can shit into a gate and not have to wipe his ass,” said Wheeler.

  To the universal groans and protests, Wheeler held up sheltering hands. “Come on, you know you’ve all thought of it.”

  “Toilet paper works fine,” said Danny. “The most fastidious gods all use it. What are you guys d
oing this summer?”

  “We were kind of hoping you’d tell us,” said Sin. “It’s not like we have any money, except Laurette and, sort of, Hal. We can’t go anywhere.”

  “Unless,” said Wheeler.

  “No!” the others shouted him down.

  “We agreed not!” Laurette said.

  “Failure to argue is not agreement,” said Wheeler.

  “It’s all right,” said Danny. “Transportation’s not a problem. Where do you want to go?”

  “Disney World,” said Xena.

  “The Harry Potter place at Universal Studios,” said Sin.

  “Wizarding World of Harry Potter,” said Xena.

  “What about the rides? They cost money,” said Wheeler.

  “We can’t lay hands on enough money to pay for the rides?” asked Danny.

  “Well, there’s lots of it lying around inside banks,” said Wheeler, “which some people could get to easily.”

  “Haven’t we learned anything?” asked Pat.

  “We’ve never even tried robbing banks,” said Wheeler.

  “I meant about Danny,” said Pat. “About what kind of person Danny is. You keep projecting onto him your own childish fantasies about what you’d do if you had a cloak of invisibility or something.”

  “Cloak of invisibility is nothing,” said Wheeler. “You still have to travel all that distance, and on foot, too.”

  “Wildest childish, wildest childish…,” began Xena again.

  “Shut up, Xena,” Laurette said sweetly. “I’m saving you from yourself.”

  “I’m willing to get us to any place in the world,” said Danny. “But we can’t go on rides without tickets. And they probably have some kind of serious ID system and my abilities don’t extend to holographic forgery.”

  “So, really,” said Hal, “you’re pretty much useless after all.”

  “It’ll be winter in the Andes, so I don’t suggest Machu Picchu,” said Danny. “The Alps?”

  “I’ve seen pictures,” said Hal. “If we went in person, I’d just think, Oh, it looks very much like the pictures.”

  “You taught Pat,” said Wheeler. “Why can’t you teach us?”

  “Because you would go inside the bank vaults,” said Hal.

  “You don’t trust us,” said Wheeler.

  In a word, No, thought Danny. And apparently it showed on his face. Wheeler looked away in disgust.