Gatefather

by Orson Scott Card

  The report to their friends at Parry McCluer was simple enough. “That entity who possessed Danny?” said Pat. “He’s dead.”

  “Hit by a bus?” asked Sin.

  “Plane crash?” asked Wheeler.

  “Bored to death by possessing one of you two?” asked Hal.

  “Hermia did it,” said Danny.

  “She was so good-looking,” said Wheeler.

  “Also, completely out of your league,” said Laurette.

  “Everybody’s out of Wheeler’s league,” said Xena.

  “Maybe, but in which direction?” said Wheeler.

  “You think there are girls who are, like, beneath you?” asked Xena.

  “Like, yes,” said Wheeler, with a Groucho-like leer. “And don’t ask who, or I might have to break your heart.”

  And that was it. Done with. Back to planning how to be bored together all summer. The Busch Gardens trip was judged to be a bust because Danny bailed. Nobody wanted to do any of the free things Danny could get them into. “The International Peace Garden in North Dakota is a really cool place,” Danny assured them.

  “It’s in North Dakota,” said Hal. “Therefore, not cool.”

  “North Dakota’s having a huge economic boom because of the Parshall Oil Field,” said Danny. “Lowest unemployment in the U.S., per capita gross domestic product a third higher than the rest of the country.”

  “What Danny’s saying,” said Laurette, “is that when we graduate, anybody who isn’t going to college should head to North Dakota.”

  “They have colleges in North Dakota,” said Wheeler. And then, “Don’t they?”

  “Missing the point, Wheeler,” said Laurette.

  “It’s fine for you smart people who get good grades,” said Xena. “All I have is hair and cleavage.”

  “Plenty of employment opportunities,” said Hal. “In fact, infinite employment opportunities.”

  “Not funny,” said Sin.

  And it finally dawned on Danny that maybe high school friendships weren’t necessarily a lifetime choice. “Can’t we both take the GED?” asked Pat. “I don’t know if I’m going to care about high school this year.”

  “Let’s decide after a few more weeks,” said Danny. “We just did some really important things. But we’re human—it will stop feeling all that important and then we’ll go back to caring about stupid stuff.”

  “That’s so … encouraging,” said Pat. “What about getting married?”

  “Eventually,” said Danny. “Maybe soon. But this isn’t the week to decide, because marriage and having kids, that’s the only thing that feels as important as killing Set and liberating the Sutahites.”

  “I hate it when you’re sensible,” said Pat. “I want to always be the sensible one.”

  “That means you always have to be sensible,” said Danny.

  “No, it just means I always have to be more sensible than you.”

  The visits to the Families went reasonably well, meaning that none of them had any idea about Set or the Sutahites, and all they cared about was Great Gates and what the Norths were going to do now that they had control of America’s whole war machine. “We have no choice but to go for China,” several of them insisted.

  Danny didn’t bother arguing with them. As he told Pat, “They don’t speak Chinese and they’re idiots.”

  “So you’re saying they should only try to take power in a democracy, where those are regarded as qualifications.”

  Stone and the Silvermans did understand what they had accomplished, but they refused to offer any advice. “We can’t undo the fact that all the Families and all the Orphans that we know about went through a Great Gate,” said Stone. “Most people aren’t aware yet that there’s been a massive power shift, but the stories of great mages are spreading.”

  “Nothing in the grocery store tabloids,” said Leslie.

  “Which means that they actually do have standards of credibility,” said Marion. “Who knew?”

  “Maybe if we leaked it to them that we Mithermages are all aliens from another world,” said Leslie.

  “That would do it,” said Stone. “So please don’t.”

  Finally, it came down to a summit meeting of all the mages who could go anywhere, with or without gates. The same group that had gathered by the oak at Persimmon Knob. Only this time, they met in a clearing in Westil, with Ced and a half-dozen treemages watching and listening.

  And it was Ced who offered the first serious proposal. “Look, I’m the one who screwed up big time when I first got here,” he said. “But here’s the thing. Everywhere I went, trying to make up for the destruction my tornados caused, everybody already understood that a windmage had done it. They couldn’t prevent what I did, and it shocked them that I would come and try to help clean up the damage. But they knew about magery. They knew about affinities, they watch their children to see if they have some kind of potential.”

  “Doesn’t work that way in Mittlegard,” said Danny. “They believe it if and only if they see it, like what my parents did with choppers and tanks. But then they treat them like irresistible … superheroes. Or supervillains. Like Zod in Superman.”

  “Superman Two,” said Pat. Then she waved her hand to erase the comment. Nobody cared about a movie from 1980. Nobody had seen the movie except her and Danny, and he watched it only because Hal and Wheeler made them all watch every superhero movie.

  “Marion and I don’t watch comic book movies, dear,” said Leslie. “But we get the point. Having really powerful mages pop up all over Mittlegard is extremely disruptive, but everybody in Westil knows what’s going on.”

  “We already know that we’ve got to keep American military hardware out of Westil,” said Danny. “But Ced, I think you’re right. The Mithermages have to come home to Westil.”

  “It isn’t home,” said Stone. “We’ve lived on Earth for fifteen centuries.”

  “More to the point, we’re used to indoor plumbing,” said Marion.

  “Drowther inventions,” said Danny. “I’m sure Gyish and Zog will prefer whatever they do with pee and poo here.”

  “Gyish and Zog think people should worship their pee and poo,” said Marion. “And there are bound to be mages just as arrogant in all the other Families.”

  “With the power they have, they’ll all become arrogant,” said Danny. “It’s like doctors. They don’t have any magic, of course, but people believe they have powers. Healing powers. So people treat them like gods, and a lot of doctors get sucked into the mystique and start acting like gods. It makes them bad doctors and it makes them bad people. Same with politicians. Bureaucrats. Rich people. It’s human nature. If people treat you like an alpha, you think you are an alpha, and other people’s feelings and choices don’t matter.”

  “So let me see if I get what you’re suggesting,” said Loki. “You want to protect Mittlegard from arrogant people who think their power gives them the right to decide for other people, without consulting them.”

  “Irony noted,” said Danny. “But we’re gathered here because this is the group that controls access between the worlds, and because we have the power to move people from one world to the other and make them stay there.”

  “And therefore we have the right to choose.”

  “No,” said Danny. “We got manipulated into letting them all go through Great Gates. It was a mistake, and we knew it. What we’re deciding is how to undo it. How to protect drowthers from people who have way too much power.”

  “Like us,” said Loki.

  “You can go back to stealing gates from every gatemage who’s ever born,” said Danny. “Once we’ve sorted things out.”

  “I’m not going back into the tree,” said Loki.

  “Look,” said Pat, “it’s not our job to sort this out for all time. We’re only responsible for the time we live in, which is now. And here’s the thing. If we decide to move all the Families, all the Great Gate mages, to Westil, and then we realize it was a terrible mist
ake, we can put them back where they were.”

  “Where do we go?” asked Enopp.

  Anonoei laughed. “Darling, we can go anywhere we want.”

  “That’s the big hole in all these plans,” said Danny. “We’re like Congress. We make huge decisions that wreck things for everybody else, but then we exempt ourselves.”

  “Nobody can force us to go anywhere or stay anywhere,” said Eluik. “But apart from that, and healing people, we don’t have all that much power. We do transportation and healing.”

  “We’re like emergency medical technicians,” said Enopp.

  “We can do harm,” said Pat.

  “But this group,” said Danny, “I think we’re all decent people. Anonoei, Eluik, Enopp, you know just how terrible a gatemage’s powers can be. Will you ever do something like that to somebody else?”

  “We can’t do it,” said Anonoei. “We don’t make gates, we just go.”

  “I’m going to be a gatemage,” said Enopp. “I think I already am one.”

  “So here’s how it works,” said Danny. “We use our own power to visit back and forth between worlds as often as we like. But we don’t hurt anybody, and we don’t show off. Nobody knows there are still gatemages on either world. And if Enopp grows up to be an asshole, the Gate Thief takes away his gates.”

  “Not if I take his first,” said Enopp.

  “Not if I take yours now,” said Loki.

  “Whatever kind of mage you grow up to be,” said Pat, “there’s nobody here with even a visible fraction of Danny’s outself. And Danny won’t tolerate anyone using their powers to hurt … regular people.”

  Danny buried his face in his hands. “I don’t want to be boss of the world.”

  “Too late,” said Anonoei. “But you’re doing fine, and nobody here wants you to stop.”

  “Except me,” said Danny.

  “Let’s meet here every year or so,” said Anonoei. “So we can size each other up. See how things are going.”

  “There’s another danger,” said Pat. “I’m not a gatemage, and neither are Anonoei and Eluik, but we learned how to do this direct movement of our ka. I learned it in Duat, without even realizing it, and Anonoei learned it from Danny getting Bexoi out of her body, and Eluik learned it when I helped him and Enopp disentangle. But Hermia and Veevee learned it just by watching.”

  “We were already gatemages,” said Veevee.

  “But Eluik wasn’t, and I wasn’t, and Anonoei wasn’t.”

  “You’re saying that there’s a danger of this kind of magery propagating,” said Danny.

  “We don’t teach it just by using it,” said Eluik. “And if we use it when nobody else is watching, then it can’t spread.”

  “We have to promise to be careful,” said Anonoei. “Beyond that, what can we do?”

  “So we’ll remain in both worlds,” said Loki. “Watching to see what happens. But all the other mages get moved to Westil.”

  “With or without giving them time to pack?” asked Pat.

  “Can’t give them any kind of notice,” said Veevee, “or they’ll go into hiding, some of them, anyway.”

  “Huge imbalance,” Ced commented, raising his hands to get them to stop. “All the mages from Mittlegard will have passed through a Great Gate several times, and none of the mages from Westil.”

  That left them silent for a while.

  “If we just plunk them down here in Westil,” said Pat, finally, “they have to have superior power just to survive. People will have to treat them with respect for a while. Make a place for them.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Loki. “If it turns out the Mittlegardians are too powerful, I can select a few Westilian mages to pass through a Great Gate, as a counterbalance.”

  “You?” asked Danny. “The Gate Thief, making a Great Gate?”

  “A tightly locked Great Gate, which nobody else can find except another gatemage,” said Loki.

  “So how do we do it?” asked Pat. “We don’t know where every member of every one of the Families is.”

  “We invite them all to pass through a gate,” said Anonoei. “Children included. Babies included. Everybody. We just don’t mention that we won’t be bringing them back.”

  “And if somebody hides out,” said Danny, “then the moment they surface and start maging around in Mittlegard, I gate them here.”

  “Permanent policeman of the world,” said Veevee.

  “Somebody’s got to do it,” said Danny.

  “Oh, I wasn’t arguing against it. It just occurred to me that all those years I wished for gatemagery, I never thought it would turn me into a cop.”

  “Think of yourself as the angel with a fiery sword,” said Danny. “Standing outside the garden of Eden, telling Adam and Eve not to even try to get back in.”

  “I’m not sure which I like most,” said Veevee. “Angel or fiery sword.”

  “When do we do this?” asked Pat.

  “It’s morning here,” said Loki, “so I’m ready to put in a full day.”

  “Nobody knows you,” said Eluik. “I mean, in Mittlegard.”

  “Nobody knows me anywhere but in Iceway,” said Loki. “But when I magically appear in front of them, they’ll recognize my authority.”

  “It’s early afternoon for Pat and me,” said Danny, “but we can put in the rest of the day doing this.”

  It ended up taking a couple of weeks, because the Families were pretty spread out, looking out for their business interests. The only ones who suspected anything were Danny’s own parents.

  “We knew Loki was against our taking armaments to Westil,” said Mother. “But I think it was you that brought our tanks and chopper back.”

  “And all their crews and pilots,” said Danny. “When they invent explosives on their own, then they can fire projectile weapons at each other.”

  Mother and Father looked at each other. “You’re going to send us there, aren’t you,” said Father.

  “I am,” said Danny. “And I’ll do it right this second, unless you can convince me that you won’t tip my hand to the rest of the Family.”

  “You’d just gather us all up anyway,” said Mother. “All we’d accomplish is making it take longer.”

  Danny shrugged. “I might miss somebody. I don’t carry a perfect census of the Family in my head. And Thor had roamers, didn’t he? Family members who never came home.”

  “We can ask him,” said Father.

  “I’ve had a chance to see a lot more of Westil than a grassy hill with standing stones,” said Mother. “You aren’t exactly punishing us.”

  “No running water. No airplanes. No sewers.”

  “But you forget,” said Father. “We specialized in drowther machines. I don’t know how long we’ll have to be without the modern amenities.”

  “Better plumbing than tanks,” said Danny. “But don’t count on finding fossil fuels. I have no idea if Westil had a carboniferous period.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” said Father. “But I think we proved that we’re not reliant on fossil fuels.”

  “I hope,” said Danny, “that you give the drowthers a better life, the way their scientists and engineers and doctors gave a better life to us.”

  “And you don’t want us to improve their weapons,” said Mother.

  “Arrows and swords cause plenty of damage,” said Danny.

  “Especially without a gatemage to heal them,” said Father. “That choice was yours.”

  Danny listened to that. When he left the Families stranded in different parts of Westil, he gave each Family a half-dozen healing tokens—gates that would move a person a fraction of an inch whenever they were touched by the face of the amulet. He also gave Loki dozens of them to pass out among the Westilians—mages and drowthers alike.

  “I think I need to learn how to make more like this,” said Loki.

  “Knock yourself out,” said Danny.

  Anonoei brought her sons home, but they returned to Ohio and Kent
ucky whenever they wanted, because nobody could stop them anyway. As Leslie joked, “It’s not like we can send them to their rooms for a timeout when they’re naughty.”

  “Then again,” said Marion, “they’re never naughty.”

  “And that’s what should worry you the most,” said Veevee.

  By the time all the mages were transferred to Westil, it was time for school to start in Buena Vista, Virginia.

  “You were right,” said Pat. “I still want to marry you. But maybe we finish high school first. Do it at a more regular time.”

  “I don’t know if I can keep my hands off you that long,” said Danny.

  “Why should you be the only boyfriend in an American high school who keeps his hands to himself?” asked Pat.

  “Because I already have one son,” he said.

  Danny hadn’t admitted paternity to anyone, but he kept a gate attached to the boy, so he could see everything he was doing, everything that happened around him. He called it his baby monitor. Nicki Lieder didn’t know it, but she wouldn’t have to worry about childhood diseases or accidents. Nothing was going to go wrong in her baby’s life.

  And Coach Lieder was so glad that his daughter was alive that he got over his fury that she got pregnant; and Lieder naturally fell in love with the little boy, whom she named after him. “Because you’re the only grandfather he’ll ever know,” Nicki told him, and there was a definite opinion at Parry McCluer that Coach Lieder had somehow become a human being since his grandson was born.

  Danny ran track. He won a lot. He also lost sometimes.

  Pat and Danny did well in school, but they did it by studying, not by using gates to pass information to each other. “What’s the point of cheating on a test?” Pat asked, when Xena suggested it. “If you learn it, then you know it, and you pass the test. If you pass the test without knowing the stuff, then the only person you’ve cheated is yourself.” Xena wanted to call Pat a complete selfish bitch for that policy—in fact, she did call her that, one time, but Laurette and Sin sided with Pat and then Pat helped Xena study.

  Danny’s studying consisted of brushing up on things he had learned during his homeschool days. He also became very good at Super Smash Bros. on Sin’s Wii and League of Legends with anybody who would let him on their team, provoking both despair and admiration among the geek elite at Parry McCluer. But, as with running, he didn’t win every time.