Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “I’m not stupid!” said Wheeler. “Danny refusing to get us inside is stupid!”

  “You have to show your ticket everywhere,” said Laurette. “Being inside is useless if you don’t have a ticket.”

  “And Danny told us,” said Xena, “anybody who can’t come up with the seventy-five bucks, tell him and he’ll help.”

  “I thought I could,” said Wheeler.

  “No, you mean you thought you could force him to gate you in,” said Hal, “and you were wrong.”

  “The whole point of going to Busch Gardens instead of Disney or Harry Potter or anything else was that Williamsburg is in Virginia,” said Laurette. “So our parents would actually believe we could make a quick trip here and back. As I recall, we made that switch because your parents were the ones who wouldn’t let you go to Florida.”

  “So my parents are worse than I thought,” said Wheeler. He turned to Danny. “I need help after all. Can’t you get the money now?”

  “So I should go to Veevee,” said Danny, “and then we go to an ATM and she withdraws the money, and then I come back here, all because…” The truth was that Danny could do this all quite easily. It wouldn’t take five minutes, and Veevee would think it was hilarious. Why was he so annoyed?

  “I think Danny’s getting pretty fed up with you, Wheeler,” said Laurette. “I know I am.”

  “Fine, I’ll wait out here while you all go in and have fun,” said Wheeler. “But I’ll tell you, if I were a gatemage, there wouldn’t be an ATM in Williamsburg with any money left in it.”

  “Such a genius,” said Hal. “So you stand in front of each ATM, on camera, make a little gate and reach inside the machinery, fumble around till you find all the twenties, and then wait for them to identify you and come to your house and find stacks of stolen twenties, and then you get to explain how you got the money out of the machines.”

  “They couldn’t hold me in prison cause I’d be a gatemage,” said Wheeler.

  “A one-man crime wave,” said Hal. “The anti-Batman.”

  “I can’t even reach inside ATMs anymore, Wheeler,” said Danny. “That was something that was only possible when I had gates. I can go places, I can take people with me, but I can’t make little gates and reach into things, or listen to something without being there myself.” Well, that wasn’t strictly true, Danny thought. I can make a clant, which I never could before. But the clant would be there, so it’s pretty much the same thing.

  “Why didn’t Pat come?” asked Xena.

  “She doesn’t like rides,” said Laurette.

  “She doesn’t like Wheeler,” said Sin.

  “None of us like Wheeler,” said Xena, “but we all came.”

  “She’s coming,” said Danny. “When she finishes her chores.”

  “Her parents treat her like a child,” said Xena.

  “Her parents treat her like an adult who has to do her share of the work,” said Danny. “It’s the whining that turns it into something only children do.”

  “That means you’ve got the money for Pat’s ticket,” said Wheeler. “Pay for me to get in, and then you and Pat can go get more money from your aunt.”

  “You’re so clever when you’re spending other people’s money,” said Laurette.

  “No he’s not,” said Hal.

  “Come on,” said Wheeler.

  Danny counted out the cash.

  “Why didn’t your aunt just give you a credit card?” asked Wheeler.

  Danny handed the money to Hal. “Spend it all in one place,” he said.

  “Hal gets to carry the cash because, like, he’s our daddy now?” said Sin.

  Hal handed the money to Laurette.

  “What does this make me, the mommy?” asked Laurette.

  “How can you stand being with these repulsive drowthers?”

  Danny had felt Hermia arrive, but the others were visibly startled.

  “Oh, the traitor bitch expects to come with us now?” said Sin.

  “Why aren’t you dead?” asked Laurette.

  Hermia ignored them. “Danny, we need to talk.”

  “Talk,” said Danny.

  “Without the children,” said Hermia.

  Danny wasn’t going to play along. It was dangerous to be alone with Hermia.

  “I could send them away,” said Hermia.

  “No, you could only take them away and come back without them,” said Danny, “and they’d have to hold your hands, which I doubt they’d do.”

  “How do you know I haven’t learned to send people without touching them?” asked Hermia.

  “Have you?” asked Danny.

  “No,” said Hermia. “But it’s stupid of you to underestimate me the way you always do.”

  “I never underestimated you,” said Danny. “I trusted you.”

  “See?” said Wheeler. “I’m not the only stupid one.”

  “I always acted in your best interests,” said Hermia, “even if you were too ignorant to know what your best interest actually was.”

  “Which is more dangerous,” Danny asked his friends, “the man who swears to kill me, or the friend who knows better than me?”

  “The most dangerous is Set, the one who made your own hands kill your lady love,” said Hermia.

  In the moment, Pat appeared. But she said nothing.

  “Of course your lady love knew the moment I showed up,” said Hermia. “What took you so long, O thou omniscient lover?”

  “I knew you’d have to talk for a while before you did anything,” said Pat mildly. “So I had time to wash my hands before I came.”

  “Outnumbering a gatemage is pointless,” said Hermia.

  Pat said nothing. Danny said nothing. Danny’s silence came from his fear of what Hermia intended to do next. He had heard her claim to serve his interests, and her assertion that Set was his most dangerous enemy. She could not possibly be so stupid as to try to take on Set directly … could she? Danny had been able to sense prets for long enough now that he not only knew where and how many they were, but also the nature of individual prets. They weren’t complicated. Either they were weak or strong. The strong ones were able to become human beings, because they could rein in the instinctive behaviors of the beast, and the most powerful also carried with them an entourage of lesser prets, which formed their outself.

  The outself prets were not weak. Only strong prets could bind themselves to a human, either as inself or outself. And strength was not the only attribute that Danny could sense in them. He also knew which ones were bold, and which were fearful. That was what he always sensed in the Sutahites—fearfulness. At first this had struck him as odd. The Sutahites had nothing, so they had nothing to lose. What would they be putting at risk?

  But then he had realized that their timidity was not situational, it was inherent, it was part of who they were. They were not timid because they had anything to lose; they had followed Set because they were timid, and he had promised to take care of them, tell them what to do, keep them safe.

  Were they safe? Or were they nothing? They were not part of anything except Set himself, and he was nothing, except whatever human he could dominate. And now he wasn’t even dominating the human that he occupied. Danny had taken such firm control of his body that there was nothing now for Set to play with in order to manipulate him. What did the Sutahites think of that?

  And there was another attribute of prets: the will to power. They all had some of it, or at least all of them that composed a part of a human being, ka or ba. But Set had a will to power that was insatiable. Perhaps it was this bright flame of ambition and pride that the Sutahites attached to.

  Not for the first time, Danny wished he could sense his own pret, and see himself truly. But that was beyond his power, and Pat had told him that it was beyond hers as well. This meant that Hermia, too, could not see her own attributes. But Danny and Pat could. Hermia was very ambitious, and so bold as to have no inhibitions at all. Strength, though—she had little. Not enough to
control her impulses, not enough strength to wait before acting.

  This was not a promising combination: vast ambition, utter fearlessness, and a nearly complete lack of self-control. Pat and Danny had discussed this more than once. Danny refused to believe that human character could really be reduced to these three attributes, and Pat was inclined to agree—“too reductionist,” she said—and yet neither of them could detect any other attributes in the pret of any person’s inself or outself. “Just because we can’t see more doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” said Danny.

  “And surely the experiences we have in life can shape our character and change it,” said Pat.

  “Or maybe not,” said Danny. “People think that heredity is everything, but we see people overcome both heredity and environment all the time, while others with every advantage collapse into a puddle of ruin at the first challenge. We haven’t been able to see and judge prets for long enough to know if they can change.”

  “Maybe when we have children,” said Pat.

  But Danny didn’t know if they even should have children. They couldn’t pretend not to know what they would know about their children’s prets. About their deep inner character. About the part of them that quite possibly could not change.

  Hermia, however, was not their child. She was an erstwhile friend who had proven herself utterly unreliable. Not for the first time Danny wished that he could have discussed Hermia with the Gate Thief, especially now that they had conversed together for a while. But Danny could not go to Westil to talk to Wad without bringing Set there, or exhausting himself by making another clant. And Wad could not come to Mittlegard without making a Great Gate, which he would not do—especially because Hermia would know he had done it, and then could not be stopped from taking people to the Great Gate and passing them through it.

  The Greek girl has us both stymied. So I have to deal with her on my own. I just don’t know how I can deal with her, or what “dealing with her” would even look like.

  “You’re not going to forestall me?” asked Hermia. “Gate me somewhere?”

  “You’d just come back,” said Danny.

  “You’re learning,” said Hermia.

  “No,” said Pat. “You learned this from us.”

  “It’s not as if you invented it,” said Hermia. “I’m not violating some patent. You died and came back knowing stuff, and I learned it because I’m a gatemage and I could tell more about what was and wasn’t happening. Give me credit here, Pa-tree-cee-ah. I took this from you, you didn’t give it.”

  Danny didn’t even bother looking at Pat, and his peripheral vision told him that Pat didn’t look away from Hermia, either.

  “Whatever you’re going to do,” said Danny, “just do it.”

  “No, don’t!” cried Xena. “I mean, for pete’s sake, how inconsiderate are you! We don’t want any wizard war while we’re right here.”

  “I do,” said Wheeler.

  “No you don’t,” said Hal.

  “Buy the tickets for all of you,” said Danny, “and hang on to the change or use it to buy food. Pat and I will be in when we can.”

  “If,” said Xena.

  “Move,” said Pat, giving Xena a little push.

  Hermia was laughing, and not nicely, as Danny’s friends walked briskly away.

  “Glad to provide you with amusement,” said Danny.

  “You should have let them stay. Remember, I’m the one who told them what you are and explained everything. I’m part of your group whether you like it or not.”

  “Not,” said Pat softly.

  “Maybe you’ll like me better when we’re done here,” said Hermia. “Because I’m here to relieve you of a burden you aren’t really qualified to bear.”

  “Me?” asked Pat.

  “You?” asked Hermia, looking annoyed. “What, are you pregnant? If you are, then I’m not relieving anything. No, I’m talking about what Danny’s got inside him.”

  “No,” said Danny. “Don’t do it. I don’t think you can, but don’t even try, because believe me, you’re the one who isn’t ready.”

  “I’m qualified because I’m the only one who’s got any perspective. You’ve picked up Loki’s absolute horror of letting Set get to Westil, but—”

  “Look at her Sutahites,” said Pat. “Not a cloud outside of her, they’re riding inside, as if they were her gates.”

  “I don’t have gates,” said Hermia. “You took them.”

  “Inside her hoard,” said Danny. “So many.”

  “Do you think they’ve possessed her?” asked Pat. “Do you think she’s making her own choices?”

  “I know she is,” said Danny. “Her mind is made up. She has no idea of what she’s doing, but she also doesn’t care about the consequences, because all that matters to Hermia is that she’s hungry to prove that she’s greater than I am.”

  “I don’t have to prove that,” said Hermia. “The real question is, am I greater than Loki?”

  “The one thing you don’t understand,” said Danny, “is that you’re not greater than Set.”

  “Gate away, Danny,” said Pat.

  “She can follow me anywhere,” said Danny. “I can’t hide from her.”

  “Exactly,” said Hermia.

  “So do the insane thing you came here to do,” said Danny, “and then I’ll decide how to respond.”

  Hermia smiled. “I didn’t come here for you, so I don’t care how you respond, Danny North. Once you were the most important thing that ever happened in my life. But now that place has been taken by someone else.”

  Danny said nothing.

  “Set,” Hermia said, her voice turning oddly seductive. Who feels the need to seduce Satan? “I invite you into me. I can do anything Danny North can do. You can leave him behind and really accomplish something with me. Come into me, Set.”

  What Hermia didn’t realize was that Set made the jump the moment she first invited him. But Danny could see that it took Set awhile to find his way into Hermia’s body. He had learned something from the new skills Danny had acquired in Duat. Set rooted more deeply in her than he ever had in Danny.

  Hermia fell silent, her face looking a little surprised, then vacant, then exultant.

  “Should I kill your little friend again?” asked Hermia—but Danny knew it was Set speaking now.

  “You can’t,” said Danny.

  “Why can’t I?” asked Hermia.

  “Because I forbid it.”

  Hermia’s hand flashed out, holding a handgun that Danny had not realized she carried in her purse.

  And then the handgun was gone. Pat must have moved it.

  “Really,” said Pat. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  Hermia looked at her savagely, then at Danny with complete loathing. “Do you want to know what hell is? Being trapped inside somebody as weak and stupid and … nice as you.”

  “Thanks,” said Danny. “I won’t say I’ll miss you.”

  “Oh, you will,” said Hermia. “Why haven’t you tried to kill me yet? Gate me inside the sun? Loki tried that. An inconvenience, a delay.”

  “It’s all right for you to kill Hermia,” said Pat. “She asked for it.”

  “I don’t kill people just because they ask for it,” said Danny. “And it wouldn’t work.”

  “Do you know what else won’t work?” asked Hermia. “Trying to keep me from going to Westil.”

  “Nobody’s keeping you from anything,” said Pat.

  But Danny was doing something. It was what Pat said, about the Sutahites being inside Hermia like gates. Danny reached out, the way he had when the Gate Thief first tried to take his gates, and ate Hermia’s Sutahites.

  And just like that, he had them locked inside himself.

  But the Sutahites were not Hermia’s, never hers. They always belonged to Set. They had followed him out of Duat, the way that near-human prets followed the strongest prets, becoming their ba, giving them the powers that would turn into magery.

  So wh
en Danny ate Hermia’s Sutahites, it was Set who reeled at the sensation. Nobody had ever done anything like that to him, Danny knew.

  In his alarm, Set did something by reflex: He polled his ba. He enumerated his Sutahites, called to them, kindled them, woke them.

  Even though they were scattered over the surface of the Earth, accompanying billions of people, every one of them became clear to Danny North, not by number, but by location.

  And he ate them all.

  It felt strangely familiar, to have tens of billions of Sutahites inside him, completely contained in his hearthoard. It took Danny a moment, but he realized: Ever since he had given all his gates to Wad, and then returned all the imprisoned gates to themselves, Danny had felt empty. And now he was full again.

  Well, half full.

  I had more gates in me than Set has Sutahites, thought Danny. How is that even possible?

  Or his Sutahites are somehow smaller than my gates were, so they take up less space.

  These were fleeting thoughts, and Danny had no time to pursue the answers because Hermia’s face now wore a look of complete panic. “What have you done?” she asked.

  “Played a little Hungry Hungry Hippos with you,” said Danny. “I win.”

  “You won nothing!” shouted Hermia. “Nothing!” And then, very quietly: “Nothing.”

  It seemed to Danny that the last “nothing” referred to what Set had left. Instead of possessing the body of a gatemage and using it to carry half his Sutahites to Westil, he had no Sutahites. They were gone.

  They were his kingdom. His body, his self. He could reach out with them, influence people, and he did. They were his wings, his eyes, his ears, his voice whispering into the ears of everybody all at once, and now he’s blind, deaf, mute, wing-broken. He has Hermia. And nothing else.

  Hermia’s hands lashed out, but whatever Set meant to do—jab his eyes out? slash his cheeks? throttle him?—Danny would never know, because he was suddenly thirty feet away. He hadn’t done it—Pat had.

  “Really, Danny,” she said, “letting her slash you was just too nice.”

  Hermia knew where they were, of course, and a moment later she had gated in front of them. “I think I’ll go to Westil,” she said.

  “Go,” said Pat. “You’ll be the only passenger.”