Gatefather (28 page)

“I miss our quiet life on the farm.”

“We didn't
have
a quiet life on the farm. We were always traveling here or there, doing diplomacy with the other Families, working on honing and expanding our mageries, harmonizing them. And I think that right here, in this war of survival for Taiwan, we're proving that we've achieved more than any other mages in history.”

Gerd heard him, but the words felt empty. “Alf, I know you're right, but I can't bring myself to care whether one group of Chinese people is ruled by another group.”

“The Americans care, the world cares, so it's a good demonstration.”

“Of what? For what?”

“That whatever nation has our protection is going to prevail in battle. It's what we've always done.”

“And in the end, what difference does it make? More dead drowthers on one side than on the other. Rich and powerful drowthers strutting around as kings or emperors, making little token donations to priests who pretend to care about pleasing us. Alf, didn't the centuries without gates teach us
anything
?”

“Taught us we don't like being without Great Gates,” said Alf. “Which, to all intents and purposes, we still are.”

“Danny took us through his gate.”

“Last. Came to us
last
. There's no loyalty in the boy.”

“He's loyal to those who are loyal to him. When did he see any spark of loyalty from the Family, when he was growing up? And when he made his first Great Gate, who showed up to try to kill him?”

“Defend him, fine,” said Alf. “I even agree with you. But he has to get over it.”

“Whether he does or not,” said Gerd, “here we are on this mountainous island with barbarous food and unintelligible language, constantly fiddling with airplanes and weapons and tanks and even rifles and machine guns, and somebody said something about battery packs for night vision and communications, and it's very boring work. I mean listen to what I just said:
work!
I might as well be the employee of some corporation.”

“Magery is work. Only drowthers think it isn't.”

Gerd knew he was right. She hated hearing the hint of a whine in her own voice. But she was
not happy
. “Is this all we were hoping for? When we kept Danny alive? That our powers would be magnified so we could make drowther weapons work better so they could kill each other more efficiently? Didn't we used to dream of going home to Westil?”

Alf came out of the bathroom, his mouth still full of toothpaste and the toothbrush in his hand. “When did we
ever
talk about going home to Westil?”

“Constantly!” said Gerd.

“We talked about going
to Westil
, because that would mean our powers would be fantastically increased, we would be gods again! But going ‘home' to Westil? None of us has lived there for fifteen hundred years. I don't even know if our version of Westilian language is even spoken there.”

“But we'd have enhanced powers there, too,” said Gerd. “And they don't have all these terrible weapons. Or at least I hope they don't.”

“Maybe they have worse ones,” said Alf.

“If I can't just live peacefully in Virginia, Alf, then why not go to Westil and see what our ancient homeland is like? Why is it wrong for me to feel nostalgia for a land I've only glimpsed for a second or two? Americans all feel nostalgia for whatever homeland their ancestors came from, whether they've lived there or not.”

“Sounds to me like you already want to retire.”

“Maybe I just need to get a good night's sleep.”

“If the mainland Chinese will cooperate by not sending bombers or commandos or—”

“If we're such hot stuff, Alf, why do the mainlanders still
have
any bombers or helicopters?”

“Because they make them faster than we can blow them out of the sky.”

“When do the Taiwanese with all these enhanced weapons we've given them take over and do all the fighting for themselves?”

“They're doing all they can. Pilots can only fly so many hours. Planes run out of ammunition. We're dealing with finite numbers here.”

“So we have to keep waking up in the night to take their planes and choppers out of the sky.”

“In a word, yes,” said Alf. “Because when the world sees what we are doing for Taiwan, they take us seriously.”

“They take America seriously.”

“Oh, come on, Gerd. America
is
us, now. Last week, all it took was the President announcing that America was sending sixteen enhanced jets and fifty enhanced tanks to Israel, and the Islamic armies pulled back from the borders and the jets stopped intruding in Israeli air space.”

Gerd thought about that for a moment. “So maybe with all the killing here, we're saving lives there.”

“Yes! That's the point! A powerful demonstration, and then our enemies back down.”

“America's enemies.”

“When we take a nation under our protection, then their enemies are our enemies. That's what it means to be gods.”

“The Iliad doesn't read that way.”

“The story of The Iliad was put together by clowns who didn't know what they were talking about.”

“The old stories make it all seem so personal. What happens when a great mage from another house takes us on? What good will our jets do against a Watersire who can make America suffer from a drought? Or a Rootherd who can make plants die of some uncontrollable blight—but only within America's borders?”

“Enough bombs and they'll decide to stop.”

“Oh, Alf, come on. We know enough history—enough
recent
history—that we can be sure there aren't enough bombs to do that. If America is starving, America will submit. And besides, how would we even know
which
of the other Families was doing it?”

“You have a point. Taiwan and Israel only face enemies who have no mages protecting them.”

“But our enemies can all see the limitations of our power because we're showing everybody all that we can do,” said Gerd. “And they'll gang up against us because the other Families have hated us for centuries. Us against everybody. I want to go home to Westil!”

Alf stood there in silence for a moment, and then put the toothbrush back in his mouth and brushed as he returned to the bathroom.

Where he was standing, a young woman suddenly materialized. Gerd recognized her immediately.

“You,” said Gerd. “That Greek girl.”

“Hermia by title,” said the girl. “Yllka was my birth name.”

“It seems the Great Gate has made a real gatemage out of you after all.”

“No,” said Hermia. “And Danny took all my gates anyway, so it wouldn't matter.”

“Yet here you are.”

Alf was now standing behind Hermia, fury in his eyes and stance.

“There's nothing you can do, Odin,” said Hermia, giving him his title. “Danny and his girlfriend taught me a different way of moving without gates at all. I can be gone—and healed from any damage you do—almost before you do whatever you're thinking. Gone and with no trace of where I went.”

“Aren't you the powerful one,” said Alf.

“You know that I'm not,” said Hermia. “Everything depends on gatemages, everybody's power, healing in battle. But that's all we are—transportation and medical. Everybody else has more real power.”

“How modest of you,” said Gerd. “Though of course you can ‘transport' your enemies to the bottom of the ocean or deep into space or the heart of the sun or miles up in the sky. So I can't really think of you as just ‘transportation and medical.'”

“All right,” said Hermia. “I'm very powerful. So powerful that I could listen to your whole conversation tonight without your knowing I was here. My purpose was only to gather information, but something occurred to me and I realized that you're missing an opportunity by not doing
exactly
what Gerd is yearning for.”

“None of your business,” said Alf.

“Even if we can't stop you from listening,” said Gerd, “we don't have to empower you by listening to
you
.”

“‘Empower,'” Hermia repeated. “You are
so
American.”

“In gods we trust,” said Alf. “What do you want, Yllka?”

“I had a thought, that's all. And since you're the only people in either world who can do anything about it, I might as well say it to you and see if it leads anywhere.”

“Then say it,” said Alf.

“These planes and tanks you've enhanced—never run out of fuel, parts never wear out cause there's no friction, make their own electricity, practically fly themselves, weapons that don't miss—”

“We know what we did,” said Alf.

“You made them more powerful and useful, but you're still just working with stuff drowthers made.”

“We're working with the world around us, the way mages always have,” said Gerd testily. She didn't like the implication that they somehow depended on drowthers. Though she knew that it was true.

“Oh, I know. But still, your planes may win more fights than theirs do—but they've got pretty good planes. They have to refuel more, they miss more, but they don't
always
miss, so the two of you have to fight them directly. Go outside in the middle of the night and take them out of the sky with lightning, or by making their parts crumble so they stop working.”

“We know what we do, girl,” said Alf.

“Alf, she's setting up to suggest that we take some of those planes and tanks to Westil,” said Gerd. “Where the other side won't have tanks and planes at all. Ours don't need to be refueled, and if we could get them there at all, we could get more missiles and bullets and artillery shells. Only we wouldn't have to use up many, because once they saw what the cannons and missiles on a jet could do, who would fight us?”

“What ‘other side'?” asked Alf.

“Whichever side is against the side we choose,” said Gerd. “We don't care which side here, either. But once we pick, then our side has to win.”

“So we invade Westil, is what you're saying,” said Alf. “Live here for fifteen centuries, wishing we could go home—but we go home with heavy armaments and blow stuff up.”

“Sounds like the essence of magery,” said Hermia. “Why fight where the other side has a fighting chance?”

Alf chuckled. “Well, ain't that something.”

“We'd have to bring pilots with us,” said Gerd. “They wouldn't be all that happy to leave Mittlegard.”

“Doesn't have to be for very long,” said Hermia. “Take the ones that want to go, use them to train locals on Westil, and then let the ones from Mittlegard go home. With lots of pay, of course.”

“The North family isn't rich like you Greeks,” said Gerd.

“The North family has complete access to the treasury and the credit of the United States of America and every bank within its borders,” said Hermia.

“Oh, that,” said Gerd. She felt foolish that she hadn't remembered. They weren't an obscure family on a compound in Virginia anymore.

“What's in this for you?” asked Alf.

“Well, that's just it. You know Danny would never make a Great Gate for you to take armaments to Westil. Or Pat. Certainly not the Gate Thief. So if you're going to get there, it has to be with my help.”

“What's your price?” asked Alf.

“Not money,” said Hermia. “And besides, I'm not
sure
I can do it.”

Gerd didn't have to turn and look to know that Alf was rolling his eyes.

Hermia held up a hand. “I
think
I can, but I had no reason to try. It would just irritate Danny and Loki, for no good purpose. I have no business on Westil right now, except
your
business. I had some thoughts of going there and offering to take local mages to Mittlegard and back, spice things up a little there, but the problem is that with this new way of going from place to place, I'm not sure if it will have the enhancing effect of a Great Gate.”

Alf raised a skeptical hand. “Well, now, if—”

“Think,” said Hermia. “You've already made the Great Gate passage, so you don't need any enhancing effect. All you need is to get from one place to another. What I don't know is, does the enhancement come from just traveling between Mittlegard and Westil? Or does it come from passing through an area of dozens of gates aligned to carry people between the worlds? No way to know until we try.”

“The way you travel now,” said Gerd. “Without making a gate. Does it still heal the traveler?”

“Yes, absolutely,” said Hermia. “So it gives me hope that the Great Gate enhancement will work, too. I just don't know yet.”

“If there's no actual gate,” said Alf, “how do you find it again?”

“I don't,” said Hermia. “I won't
send
things through a gate, I'll
take
things with me when I go.”

Alf laughed. “So you'll be hand-carrying jet planes and attack helicopters and tanks.”

“Maybe it won't work,” said Hermia. “I don't know. What do you lose by letting me try?”

“One big problem,” said Gerd.

“Only one?” asked Alf.

Gerd raised a finger. “Runways.”

“Oh now,” said Alf. “That
is
important. Airplanes need a long straight smooth wide road for takeoffs and landings. How much paved road do you think they have in all of Westil?”

“Cobbled? Many miles,” said Hermia. “Straight? None. Smooth? None. So maybe no planes after all.”

“Good,” said Alf. “Because it's a lot easier to learn how to drive and aim and fire a tank than a jet. And if you screw up, you don't fall thirty thousand feet.”