Gatefather (15 page)

Yes, This One affirmed.

Would my body have obeyed me?

No answer.

Because I
did
keep pushing, I
struggled
, and I couldn't get past Set's contradiction.

Couldn't?

Pushing is not how you get your body to obey, Pat suggested. Pushing is compulsion. There is no compulsion between the body and its owner, its ka and ba.

I felt Set as if he were blocking me, so I pushed. But pushing accomplished nothing because my body doesn't respond to pushing, and neither does Set.

Understanding flooded through Danny. When I make a gate, I don't
push
the gate, I
invite
it. My own body is controlled the way a mage gets his heartbound to obey: by invitation, by trust, by willing obedience.

Danny, Pat murmured. I think we barely know our own bodies. I think we ride them like leaves on the wind, blown about by the body's desire, and only rarely persuading the body to follow a higher plan. You knew how to block your body's fulfilment of desire—that's how you resisted the girls who wanted you. How you resisted me. But resisting your body is not the same as knowing it.

Right, replied This One.

I can't expel Set, thought Danny. So I can't stop him from interposing himself between my body and my will.

But that idea was immediately set aside by This One. Or rather, Danny immediately felt sluggish-minded and stupid, which is how he experienced This One's “no.”

I
can
stop him from getting between me and my body. By making sure they are not two separate things. By truly becoming one with my body. So there's no interval into which Set can push through and block me.

But if I do that, Set will give up and leave, and then we won't know where he is.

Tomorrow's battle, Pat answered. Your freedom, your control of your body: today's battle.

This One said nothing.

I think I can't learn how to do this here, away from my body, thought Danny North.

That is right.

Please make an exception to the rule and let Pat and me go back to our bodies. We will learn how to know our bodies better, so no one else can come between us, so that our bodies will respond perfectly to our will.

And how will I explain this to all the wights who have asked for exactly that, and been denied?

Explain that I will try to make the worlds safe from Set.

You are already one of the great ones here, Danny, replied Pat. I saw it the moment we returned. They knew you, they remembered you. They rejoiced to see you but they were also puzzled, because you haven't yet done the work appointed for you.

How was I ever supposed to do that work if no one ever told me what it was?

We choose our own works, said This One.

Am I choosing well? asked Danny.

You are choosing, and noticing your choice, and taking responsibility for it.

But is it the right way?

Why do you think there is only one right way to do your chosen work?

Because there are so many wrong ways!

You want me to always tell you what's the right way so you never get it wrong. But if you come to count on me, then once again, am I not the one doing it, and not you?

Yes, you'd be doing it, and I'm content with that! Let me help
you
. Please don't make me guess.

It doesn't work that way.

Change the rules until it does!

The rules are not of my making. They're in the nature of things. Power comes only by persuasion, by love and service. It comes from trying and learning.

A quote from
The Empire Strikes Back
that Hal and Wheeler always used came to mind. “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

This One responded with sadness and scorn. The opposite is true, This One seemed to say. There is only try, and try again, until you can persuade the world to work according to your new plan for it. There is no “do” because everything has a mind of its own, and follows the laws it already understands.

So you can't change the laws, Danny replied to This One. Not because you are blocked from changing them, but because without the laws there
is
no doing, no making, no knowing. The laws
are
the universe, and we kas and bas, we inselves and outselves, we prets—we can only find a place within those laws, and by obeying them gain a measure of power.

Closer. Closer. Close enough for now.

May we go back? asked Danny North. May we be alive again on Mittlegard, in our same bodies, using what we've learned here to
try
to make the world safe from that old liar Set?

There was no answer; there was no
time
for an answer. Because Danny immediately felt the overwhelming rush of sensation. He was in his body again.

He could hear: the noises of the street outside, the highway two blocks over. He could feel: the vibrations in the floor. He could smell: the iron stink of spilled, congealing blood. Pat's blood.

Danny opened his mouth to speak.

His mouth spoke.

“Welcome back, Danny North,” his mouth said. “Brought your girlfriend, too, I see. Let's kill her again and see how many times we can do this.”

Danny paid no attention to the message from Set. Instead, he now could sense how his ka connected with every cell of his body. Only that wasn't enough. He tried, for a moment, to push the tendrils of himself deeper. Only there were no tendrils and there was no pushing. Instead, he asked his body to receive him more deeply, and now he was aware of the minute workings of the cells, the business of life at the most basic level.

And still he knew that it would not be enough.

Let me be a part of you. Let me know you well enough to serve you.

The cells of his body became large to him, because his awareness reached so deeply inside them, all at once. He felt the weight of large molecules drifting through the liquids in the cells. He sensed the businesses and processes, the atoms jostling, shifting from one molecule to another. How can I know this? Because this is the body that was given to me. The body that gives itself to me.

This deep knowledge of his own flesh and bones filled him with light and fire. There was a larger world inside himself than outside, or so it seemed.

He opened up his mouth to speak. “Pat, are you all right? Are you back?”

And then that welcome voice, that crazy voice that had volunteered to die. “Of course,” she said. “And it's scarcely been three minutes since I came to your door.”

Danny's mind reeled. The death of Pat, the journey to another world, the long, elaborate, wordless conversation with This One on Duat, and it all took place in such a brief period of time that their bodies had not begun to decay.

By reflex, without thinking, Danny tried to pass a gate over Pat to make sure that she was well.

Only he had no gates.

Yet still, something passed over her, something of Danny's making, and she was well.

“I have no gates,” said Danny. “How did I pass you through a gate that I don't have?”

“I don't know, but I was in pain and felt logy, and now it doesn't hurt at all, and I'm sharp and clear again.”

“But I didn't make a gate.”

“Maybe you don't need gates to do it anymore,” said Pat. “Maybe it's enough for you to ask every part of my body to be healed at once.”

Danny wanted to think about this, but he was interrupted by a feeling that it took a moment to identify.

Set was trying to leave him.

“Please don't go,” said Danny. “I don't think you're ready to wander off without me yet.”

And just like that, Set stayed.

 

7

Hermia recognized the girl the moment she appeared. It was Danny's drowther girlfriend, Pat. Only she was no drowther anymore.

“What ill wind blows you here?” Hermia asked.

“Danny and I were curious about how you're doing these days,” said Pat.

Hermia laughed a little. “How do you like my cell?”

Pat looked around expressionlessly. “You gave your Family a Great Gate. Do you expect me to believe that exile on the island of Arkoi was your reward?”

“They exiled me to Patmos, where my Family owns a little bit of … well, everything. But the place was crawling with Christians who thought that because God gave John such a wild dream on Patmos, he'll keep pumping out deep revelation to seminarians and pious tourists.”

“No gratitude from your Family, then?”

“They were grateful—till the Great Gate disappeared. Good old Gate Thief, still in business after all.” Hermia knew that this visit wasn't prompted by curiosity and certainly not by friendliness. She was going to have to face Danny's judgment sooner or later. So if Pat wouldn't bring up the subject, Hermia would. “You know that I didn't choose to betray Danny.”

A hint of a smile? The girl's face was so hard to read. “The devil made you do it,” she said.

Such hypocrisy. “That's the excuse Danny's using these days, isn't it?” Hermia saw the moment she said it that this was a mistake. Pat was loyal. It was her main virtue. Only a fool would speak ill of Danny, even as a joke.

But Hermia was a gatemage—a gateless one, so all she had left was her perverse sense of humor. It was too much to expect Pat to understand this.

Hermia felt a sudden wind roil her hair, and then a gust threw her off balance and she fell, chair and all, onto the tile floor.

“Oh, very good,” said Hermia. “Clever windmage, to knock down a powerless prisoner.”

“You're not
my
prisoner,” said Pat.

“I am now,” said Hermia, “since I can't get away, and you're the one in the room with all the power.”

“You chose to betray Danny,” said Pat. “There's always a choice.”

“You're right,” said Hermia. “But oddly enough, I think I made the choice Danny North would have made. If you can stop blowing things over long enough to listen, I think you'll agree with me.”

The air was suddenly still. “It was wrong of me to use the wind that way,” said Pat. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm not much for forgiveness, but—”

“I wasn't apologizing to
you
,” said Pat, her voice thick with scorn. “Tell me your story. Not so I can judge you, but so that Danny can hear. For some reason, he thinks he owes you a hearing.”

“How is he listening?” asked Hermia. “There's no gate in this room and there never was. How did you get here?”

Pat paused a moment, perhaps to make a point of the fact that she wasn't going to answer Hermia's questions. “I think you were going to explain why you moved the Wild Gate and wrecked Danny's plan,” said Pat.

“I didn't believe in Danny's ‘plan' because it was never going to work.”

“Not with
you
subverting it,” said Pat.

“But I wasn't going to subvert it,” said Hermia. “I was going to let it fail under the pressure of all its inherent errors.”

“I'm not here so you can critique Danny's plan. It failed because of what
you
chose to do.”

“And here's why. My clever Family put together a list of Danny's friends. You, the three stupid girls, and Hal and Wheeler.”

“The other girls aren't stupid.”

“Compared to you they are,” said Hermia. “Compared to me, of course, you're all stupid except maybe Hal. But the point is that Danny cared about all of you. And the Family was perfectly willing to spend you, all at once or one at a time, in order to get Danny to give them exclusive use of a Great Gate.”

“So we were hostages even though your Family didn't have any of us in custody.”

“Silly child,” said Hermia. “Families don't have to have you in
custody
. They only have to know where you are and how to get to you. Which of you would have been able to stand against a single dogsbody, let alone a mage with real power.”

“Nobody had
real
power till the Great Gate.”

“Compared to you and your friends, they
all
had power.”

“But we could get away.”

“Not quickly enough,” said Hermia. “They knew about your amulets.”

“Because you told them.”

“Because you all fingered them while delivering your messages. And I had one, too, remember. Do you think the Families can't figure out
obvious
things? They may have had old-fashioned, out-of-date powers, but their brains are the latest model
Homo sapiens
, and when it comes to the use of coercive power against drowthers, you have no idea how skilled they are. The Iliad didn't begin to plumb the depths of what they could and would do.”

“So you moved the Wild Gate in order to save me and my friends.” Pat sounded skeptical.

“I don't give a rat's ass about you or your friends. But
Danny's
friends, now—I knew they were his hobby and you were the momentary love of his life.”

“Momentary. Cute.”

“Oh, grow up, Patty. Everybody in the Families is notoriously fickle, but gatemages most of all. Most of the really good Eros stories are the escapades of Gatefathers. And even though Jupiter gets the credit for Leda and Ganymede and all the other kidnapped lovers, it was always a gatelord who did the carrying off. Danny may not know it yet, but he'll lose interest. Maybe not as quickly as most of them, but ‘faithful gatemage' is an oxymoron.”

“So I'm Danny's
momentary
conquest. You've hurt my feelings. Boo hoo. That's your whole story?”

“I knew that they probably couldn't kill all of you, but they could hurt most of you, scare you all, and maybe kill a couple. Even if I warned Danny, it wouldn't matter. He couldn't be everywhere at once, but the Family could. And of course, anything
we
knew, other Families could figure out, what with all the spying we all do all the time. Ratmages have their role to play; there are mice in the walls and floors. As an example of ruthlessness, the Hittites found Danny and me and blasted him with a shotgun without asking questions. He lived, of course, because he could gate himself away before he died. But if it had been me they blasted, I couldn't have used my amulet quickly enough. Ditto with you and your chums. So yes, I took the threat seriously. I knew Danny would rather revise his hopeless plan than lose any of you. So I moved the Wild Gate. But I pretended it was harder than it actually was, so Danny would have plenty of time to realize it was gone from the Silvermans' barn so he could set up an alternative. Maine, wasn't it? But I didn't tell anyone where his Great Gate was. I was playing as nicely as I could, giving him every chance to keep the Families in balance.”