Gatefather (43 page)

Suddenly Hermia was beside Pat, reaching toward her. Just as abruptly, Danny moved her back to where he wanted her. “You've murdered before, Set.”

“But never so efficiently. I really do come out of nowhere now,” said Hermia.

“Hermia, you made your choice,” said Danny. “I can't save you now. But you can save yourself. Not the way you hope, though it will seem that way for a moment or two. The only way to save yourself now is to save everybody.”

“Oh, you think you have tricks up your sleeve, Danny,” said Hermia. “But I was inside you too long. I
know
you. You can't surprise me.”

“You really did help me, Hermia,” said Danny. “Your help outweighs your betrayal, in my mind and heart. I think of you as my teacher and my friend. I'm truly sorry that I've lost you. If there's anything you regret, in our friendship, I forgive you and I ask your forgiveness.”

“Oooh, now you're
scaring
me,” said Hermia, chuckling.

Danny said no more words. He simply plunged his inself into Hermia's body and began to guide Set's ka into the flesh. Danny could feel Pat grow more alert beside him, and then her ka was with his, leading Set, pushing him.

Each deeper penetration of Set into Hermia's body displaced Hermia's own ka, and yes, there was the momentary flash of hope, as she misunderstood what Danny and Pat were doing. And then she understood.

“Hermia, I'll tell you when,” murmured Danny.

Hermia shuddered. But Danny knew that it was Set shuddering, as, for the first time in his sojourn in Mittlegard, he was actually feeling something of what the body felt. Hearing with ears, breathing with lungs, seeing with eyes.

“Oh God,” Hermia's voice murmured. “Oh, God, so much, all at once.”

And then it was complete. Set was attached to this body as if it were his own, and Hermia was almost separated from it.

Almost, but not quite. “It will still go with you,” said Danny, “even though it belongs to Set now, because whatever you're attached to travels with you.”

Danny sensed the grim determination in Hermia now. And something else. Yes, he knew that aspect of the ka. Hermia was filled with love.

Then she was gone.

But Danny knew where she was. Danny was still with her, and Pat too, not possessing the body, but observing. They were at the bottom of the ocean—a few hundred miles out into the Atlantic. Instantly Hermia's body was crushed by the pressure. Drowning was out of the question; her lungs couldn't draw breath. Life functions stopped almost immediately.

Too late Set realized the trap. They had bonded him to the body, making it his own. He had consented to it, and the flood of sensations had confused and distracted him. Too late, he tried to pull away from Hermia's body, the way that Enopp had withdrawn his ka from Eluik. But by then he was too deeply connected to jump free as easily as he always had before. For a few seconds, Set had actually been alive in that body, and now it was crushed and he was dead. He had no power to jump to another body. There was only one destination he could leap to.

Hermia, too, was dead, but her ka had already been withdrawing from her body as Danny and Pat guided Set in displacing her. The choice Danny had offered her was to lose herself in order to save the world from any further interference by the monster she had so recently invited to dwell within her. Now she knew that she was not strong enough to master him. Nor could she have tricked him; that was Danny's and Pat's work. The only choice she had was to allow the death of her own body, after first surrendering it to Set. She had lost all, yet had one more act she could perform to change the world, and she did it. Instead of transporting her crushed body to a place with normal atmospheric pressure, thereby healing it, she let go of her body.

She had a choice that was not under Set's influence or control, and now she had chosen. She let her body die, and, with it, Set.

Danny had known no death but Pat's, and when she went to Duat, only he accompanied her. But Danny was not surprised that Duat sent a pret to greet Hermia. Not Thoth, the one they had thought of as This One. Yet the one who met her and traveled with her, he seemed to Danny to have the same kind of vividness and brightness that This One had possessed. Hermia responded as if she knew him at once, and for all Danny knew, they
had
known each other from some time before her birth. But now she was gone.

And so was Set. He, too, was accompanied on his journey by a bright pret, a ka sent from Duat. Yet it was clear that Set shrank from the one who greeted him. It seemed more like a prisoner being guarded than an honored traveler being welcomed home.

However they traveled, and whoever their companions were, Danny knew that the voyage would take only moments, and from Duat there would be no return. After all these thousands of years, Set was finally dead.

Danny could feel it inside himself, not because Set had been there, but because the Sutahites who had chosen him felt their last connection with Set dissolve. He was gone from Mittlegard, and now Danny's Sutahites were Sutahites no longer. They were part of Danny, completely in his ba. They were
him
.

Pat sighed. “Oh, Danny,” she whispered. “Who would have thought that the only way to end his life was to begin it.”

“Now that it worked,” said Danny, “it feels obvious.”

“They're truly mine now,” said Pat. “The prets that chose me.”

“You chose them back,” said Danny. “Till death do you part.”

Danny called the others, and they came, and they touched each other or held each other or, in the case of Anonoei and her sons, clung and wept together.

“Now it's official,” said Loki. “I'm the worst human being alive.”

“Maybe,” said Danny North. “But I doubt it. You haven't met Grandpa Gyish or Uncle Zog.”

“Should we tell Hermia's family?” asked Pat. “She died well.”

“They won't understand what she did,” said Loki.

“But they'll know we honor her for it,” said Pat. “That's something. And if anyone in her Family loved her, they'll want to know.”

So Danny took Pat by the hand, and led her off to tell the Greeks.

 

22

The world should have changed. There should have been headlines, like, “People aren't thinking of doing so many rotten things.” “Chances of another Hitler dropped by 40 percent.” “Fewer traffic accidents caused by driver aggressiveness and road rage.”

It was kind of a disappointment. “We went to a lot of trouble to save the world, and it doesn't feel saved,” said Pat one day.

“Hermia died for it,” said Danny.

“Hermia put herself in that situation all on her own,” said Pat. “I don't miss her.”

Danny already knew better than to suggest that some of Pat's hostility toward Hermia, even after her death, was misplaced jealousy. He could imagine her saying, “Oh, if not Hermia, then who is it I
should
be jealous of?” It was one of the problems with sharing his life with a really smart person. She had at least as many quick, devastating comebacks as he did.

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.”