Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  “I’m assuming,” said Anonoei, “that something is wrong.”

  “The monster has left Danny North and now it’s in Hermia,” said Enopp. “She can’t control it at all, so it’s controlling her. What are you going to do about it?”

  Anonoei had no answer. She realized that the baby was getting frustrated because her left breast was apparently near empty. Anonoei changed sides as she thought about Enopp’s question. “I’m trying to think why you think I’m going to do anything at all. Do you think Set is susceptible to my poor powers as a manmage?”

  “The way Pat separated us,” said Eluik. “Can’t you get Set out of Hermia?”

  “I suppose I might—exactly the way Hermia got Set out of Danny.”

  “No, don’t let him into you,” said Enopp.

  “Nobody expels Set, you just offer him a new place to live,” said Anonoei. “And the less I see of Hermia, the better.”

  “You lived inside somebody,” said Eluik. “Helpless to make the body do what you wanted.”

  “And Enopp was inside you, Eluik, and neither of you realized that was what was happening. So why aren’t you the experts?”

  Eluik shook his head. “We’re children. We don’t just solve problems that have adults stymied.”

  “We know that killing Hermia won’t do any good,” said Enopp. “Set would only jump to somebody else.”

  “That’s the advantage I had,” said Anonoei. I was the manmage, the visitor. But Hermia’s the host, and she can’t leave her own flesh. Set’s got control. So help her get control. You did it, help her do it. “Bexoi was ready to die,” said Anonoei aloud. “And still, expelling her was something I couldn’t do on my own.”

  “You can still help Hermia get control of her body,” said Eluik. “Can’t you? Show her how?”

  “It’s not that easy,” said Anonoei.

  “But it is,” said Enopp. “Pat showed us what to do, and now we know how.”

  “Then you show Hermia.”

  “Earlier point again,” said Enopp. “I’m a child.”

  “Showing Hermia is the same as showing Set,” said Eluik.

  “Yes—one is as useless as the other,” said Anonoei. “You saw and you learned because it was being done to you. Inside your own bodies. But Wad watched Danny North liberate me, he saw as much as Hermia ever did, and he learned nothing. He still needs to make gates in order to go anywhere.”

  “Or that’s what he lets you think,” said Eluik.

  “You two and I were able to learn much, because we had to cooperate for Danny or Pat to set us free. And Pat and Danny learned what they learned because they were dead, an option that I don’t think is available to us, because I don’t think Hell will let us come back again.”

  “They call it Duat,” said Enopp.

  “And I call it Hell,” said Anonoei, “because that’s what it would be for us.”

  “You don’t think we should do anything,” said Eluik.

  “I think you should return to Mittlegard and never come back here. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean it’s wise to do it.”

  “Maybe between the two of us,” said Enopp, “we could control Set.”

  “Get that stupid thought out of your head,” said Anonoei. “Hermia had ten times the experience and training that you’ve had, and is she free?”

  “We don’t know,” said Eluik. “Because we don’t know to what degree she consents to the things Set is making her do.”

  The boy was subtle beyond his years, Anonoei was pleased to see. He must get that from me, she thought. I’ve never seen much subtlety in Prayard. Though that may mean that he’s so subtle I never detected it.

  “If she has become Set’s willing partner,” said Anonoei, “that’s all the more reason he won’t come out of her to dwell in you. And which of you would he choose, do you think? The one who spent years being inhabited by another boy’s inself?”

  “Seems likely,” said Eluik.

  “Or the one evil and stupid enough to do it?” asked Enopp.

  “Neither evil nor stupid,” said Anonoei. “Naive and inexperienced, that’s what you were, Enopp, and you had no idea what was actually going on.”

  “I could sense all of Eluik’s thoughts. I believed that meant he was inside me.”

  “Go back to that farmhouse in … Ohio, was it?”

  “Kentucky, now,” said Enopp. “It’s another state.”

  “We’re not supposed to say it aloud,” said Eluik.

  “Mother already knows,” said Enopp.

  “We’re never to call her ‘mother,’” said Eluik.

  “Nobody can hear me but Mother and you,” said Enopp.

  “As far as you know,” said Eluik. “Are you sure you can always tell when a gatemage is listening in?”

  This had gone on long enough. “Boys, I miss you terribly and I’m glad to see you’re well. But you must go home.”

  “It won’t be home till you’re there,” said Eluik.

  “I can’t,” said Anonoei. “I’m the queen here now.”

  “So what?” said Enopp. “If you went back to Mittlegard, it’s not like they could send bloodhounds to track you down and bring you back.”

  “Are you sure you want me like this?” Anonoei gestured to include Bexoi’s face and body.

  “Oh, definitely,” said Enopp. “Women in America pay a fortune to get a face and body like that.”

  “So you think I’m prettier in this body than I was in mine?”

  “It’s a trap,” said Eluik to Enopp. “Don’t answer.”

  “We want you with us, Mother,” said Enopp. “I’m not done growing up yet.”

  “I am,” said Eluik. “Childhood was brutal. I’m glad it’s over.”

  Anonoei had to laugh. “Perhaps it is. Go back and wait for me. When I can, I’ll come to you.”

  Jib gave a cough, and Anonoei looked down to see if the baby was throwing up or simply hungry. When she looked up again a moment later, the boys were gone.

  Were those the only choices? Either kill the person possessed by Set in a way that wouldn’t allow him to escape, or simply accept that Set could not be stopped?

  And there was no way that wouldn’t allow Set a chance to jump to someone else’s body. Especially not now, when he had had multiple chances to see this new kind of travel in action.

  Why do I care? Anonoei asked herself. Set has nothing to do with me. My monster was Bexoi and she’s gone. I’m now married to a man I love. I still have both my sons, and a decent hope of being able to spend time with them once all these struggles are over. I’m in the midst of my own happy ending, even if it is a little complicated. Let the gatemages sort out the messes they made. I’m busy cleaning up my own messes, thanks.

  Yet even as she reached this conclusion, she despised herself for thinking that way. I owe everything to Danny North, she admitted. And what if I, having pushed one person out of her own body, am the only one who can push Set out of Hermia’s meat puppet?

  We’ll see. No need for panic yet.

  20

  Danny sat on the bench that the Diamonds had placed near a shingle oak—a species that Colonel Diamond explained “has such small acorns most people don’t realize it’s an oak at all. We’ve got the only two known examples in this part of Kentucky.”

  They named almost every spot on the whole farm by the tree or trees that mattered to them. Their favorite was a chinkapin oak that dominated one hillside, but here on the shingle oak bench he and Pat had a good chance of not being interrupted.

  “I don’t think This One sent us back to Mittlegard so that you could die,” said Pat.

  “I’m already cheating death by being here, so … if I die, I die.”

  “Easy for you to say,” said Pat.

  “Why do you think it’s easy?”

  “Because you’re an idiot,” she said. “I was the one who was murdered, remember? I was the one who died. You just bound yourself to me and followed. You were my passe
nger. I’m the one who cheated death, and guess what, if I die, I think that sucks. Because I want to live a life, complete with husband, babies, grandchildren, the whole shebang. And since you got sent back here with me, I think we’re supposed to do that together. We’ve done death, so now let’s do life.”

  “And when it’s over, I release these Sutahites back into the world.”

  “Danny, have you noticed a sudden blossoming of kindness and goodness in the world since you gathered them in? Have wars stopped? No more terrorism? No more slaughtering people who have a different religion? No more hating?”

  “It takes time for people to overcome longtime habits of thought,” said Danny.

  “The Sutahites prompted people to act, but some people don’t need prompting,” said Pat. “It will take time for the decrease in bad actions to show up as some kind of statistical blip. Maybe it’ll be big. What if it cuts crime in half? There’s a shitload of crime, Danny. What’s half a shitload?”

  “Not sure it’s a unit of measure.”

  “It’s good to keep the Sutahites locked up. But Danny … they’re still bound to Set. They’re still his, the way your gates are still yours, even though you gave them to Loki. They don’t fight him, they obey him, but only because you commanded them to. They’re yours. And the Sutahites are Set’s.”

  Danny thought about that. “Are they?” he asked.

  “He commanded them, they supported him. Danny, I’m sure they got Laurette and Sin and Xena to act on their insane lust for you. That was a coordinated assault. Yes, they’re tied to Set.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re right, but I’m just … thinking here. Our ba gets tied to us when our ka goes into the body and bonds with it. When we leave Duat to be born, the prets of our ba, they’re the clouds of glory that we’re trailing when we come.”

  “I should never have gotten you to read Wordsworth.”

  “Reread. I had already read ‘Intimations of Immortality’ during my home schooling.”

  Danny quoted:

  Waters on a starry night

  Are beautiful and fair;

  The sunshine is a glorious birth;

  But yet I know, where’er I go,

  That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

  “I thought when we read it together,” said Pat, “it was the first time.”

  “It was the first time I read it when I was in love,” said Danny. “The first time I read it with you. The first time I had some inkling of why it mattered.”

  She nestled against him. Danny noticed how uncomfortable the bench was, and yet he didn’t want to leave it. Ever.

  “Set wasn’t born,” said Danny. “He wasn’t trailing clouds of glory. He was thrown out. Evicted. Ejected. And the Sutahites went with him. Or maybe they were also tossed. But none of them ever formed the kind of bond that we have. With a body. Between inself and outself. Are the Sutahites really part of Set’s self? I don’t think there’s room in his ego to include anybody else. They obey him, because what else is there to do? But does that mean they’re bound to him?”

  “What are you thinking?” said Pat. “That you can uncouple them from him? Like peeling cars from a locomotive in a trainyard? They’ve been together for thousands of years, Danny.”

  “Some people become friends because there’s nobody else. They go along just so they can feel like they’re part of something larger than themselves.”

  “Wheeler,” said Pat.

  “Yes,” said Danny. “I think there’s more to him than meets the eye, but yes. The group tolerates him because you all know he’s got nowhere else to go, nobody else to eat lunch with or hang out with.”

  “Pity?”

  “He’s useful,” said Danny. “He may complain and slow everybody down, but it’s more fun because he’s there.”

  “I’m not sure that idea would survive a poll of the group,” said Pat.

  “I don’t care what everybody thinks they think of Wheeler. He’s part of the group. The bond is real. But it’s also breakable. Even if the group has been together a thousand years, it’s not like the bond between ka and ba. He can walk away. He can join another group.”

  “So you think you can get the Sutahites to … change teams?”

  “I’ve done that, or at least I’ve taken them off Set’s team. For a while. No, I’m talking about something more. They followed Set because they had nowhere else to go. They weren’t tied to anything. They weren’t part of anything, not even a molecule, an atom. Nothing. Alone. But what if I offered them a place? A bond?”

  “How could you trust them?” asked Pat. “They’ve spent thousands of years trying to disrupt people’s lives, make everything worse and everybody unhappy. And you want to invite them in?”

  “Exactly,” said Danny. “Instead of holding them as captives, offer them what Set never could: a bond with a living person. And not just a bond like the cells of my skin are bonded to me. They’d be important, part of my power, my magery. They’d become part of my ba.”

  “You realize that means they’d become gates?”

  “I’m a gatemage. That’s what the prets of my ba do.”

  “You’ve already made a Wild Gate.”

  “It was wild because they were part of the ba of another mage, a dead one. They were lost, angry, frustrated. They’d been captives for centuries.”

  “And they weren’t part of your actual ba,” said Pat.

  “I don’t know if this can happen,” said Danny. “In the natural order of things, this is a bond that happens when a pret leaves Duat to be born. That was a long time ago for me.”

  “Seventeen years,” said Pat.

  “That could be a quarter of my life. No less than a fifth. That’s late in the process. I already walk and talk and feed myself. So maybe Thoth will allow it, and maybe he won’t.”

  “Thoth?” asked Pat.

  “I can’t just keep calling him ‘This One,’” said Danny. “We got the name of Duat from Egyptian lore, along with ‘ka’ and ‘ba.’ And Thoth is the Egyptian god who best fits what This One seems to do.”

  Pat was already reading from the Wikipedia listing on her phone. “‘Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe’—OK, that fits—stuff about Ra’s boat, yadda yadda, ‘the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead.’ OK, yes, if the name fits…”

  “The Sutahites aren’t dead, because they never lived. They’re still unborn. Preborn. So while Thoth is busy maintaining the universe, maybe he’ll allow a late birth-bonding between the Sutahites and a living human ka.”

  “You,” said Pat.

  “If they’re attracted to strength,” said Danny, “I must have been strong because I came here with a lot of gates.”

  “Big-time clouds of glory,” said Pat.

  “But why should they only have one choice? My way or the highway? Why not you, if they feel like it? Or … Veevee. Or Eluik and Enopp. Anonoei.”

  “The people who are aware of their prets.”

  “Loki too,” said Danny. “He saw what I did with Anonoei and Bexoi. He knows, he just hasn’t tried to do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Live as a pret. Move from place to place, and trust our body and anything attached to us to come along. That’s not the only power we have.”

  “Maybe we have the power to invite free prets and bond with them.”

  “Yes,” said Danny. “Except … I think it’s wrong to call the Sutahites ‘free prets.’ Because that suggests the others, the ones that are already in our ba, or in our bodies, or in the natural universe—that they aren’t free.”

  “They’re bound. Bond and free—always treated as opposites,” said Pat.

  “But that’s about slavery. About people, not prets. Look, a pret that’s part of the natural universe—a blade of grass. Part of a rock. Those prets have a place, they have a job. They’re so
mething. The Sutahites aren’t part of anything. As far as the universe is concerned, they’re nothing. Utterly powerless to act.”

  “It’s not like a pret that’s part of a rock is particularly powerful,” said Pat.

  “Yes, it is,” said Danny. “It has work to do. When gravity calls, and nothing blocks it, it rushes toward the center of the Earth. Joined with all the other prets in the rock. They move together. Somebody throws the rock, it hits a jackal, and the prets of the rock all interact with the prets of the jackal’s skin and skull and brain according to the rules. Together, the prets of that rock can be powerful. They can kill a jackal.”

  “If somebody throws the rock,” said Pat.

  “Right. And the prets in my ba can become gates, taking people from one place to another, from one world to another—but somebody has to make them into a gate. Me. They only do it when I command it. The way my hand only touches yours when I want it to.” He demonstrated.

  She kissed his hand.

  “So you’re thinking, they’d rather be a part of your ba than continue to be unattached. And that will make them nice.”

  “The only thing like a bond that gave them any purpose in life was obeying Set. Were they evil? I don’t think so. Maybe they were, but what would the second most evil pret in Duat have done when Set was expelled? Does he follow Set into exile? Or does he figure, OK, Set just proved that rebellion doesn’t work. So I’ll play along, I’ll be born, I’ll have a body, I’ll have whatever powers come with it. Maybe the second most evil was, like, Hitler. Or Stalin. Or Tamerlane. Or just some hideous child-abusing mother or father. But all the strong, ambitious, fearless ones like Set—they wouldn’t follow him. They’d come to Mittlegard and get themselves born.”

  “So the Sutahites aren’t ambitious enough to be evil—”

  “They’re the ones who saw Set as powerful, a protector, a leader. They attached to him and then found out that it didn’t get them anywhere. He let them down. Thousands of years of disappointment. Some of them might be pissed off. But Pat, they aren’t people, they aren’t part of anybody. They’re not even part of Set. They’re lonely, unattached. They don’t have to attach to somebody evil. They just have to attach to somebody strong.”