The Gate Thief

by Orson Scott Card

  “Yeah, but there’s also been a lot of genuine drowther-boinking,” said Danny. “The Mithermages have a lot of descendants scattered through the human race. In fact, by now I’d say that every living human has a Westilian ancestor.”

  “So why didn’t the Great Gate waken the mage in me?” asked Hal.

  “Maybe it did,” said Danny. “It takes time to learn how to find your affinity and make things happen.”

  Right then, a little dust devil formed in the middle of the group, stirring up a bit of dust. And then it was gone almost as soon as they noticed it.

  “OK, who did that?” asked Danny.

  Nobody said anything.

  “We’re talking about finding your affinity,” said Danny, “and one of you shows the power of a windmage.”

  The dust devil reappeared and then skittered over to spatter dust and leaves on Wheeler. He jumped up and brushed himself off. “Sneak attacks are against the rules,” he said, brushing himself off.

  “You wanted to have a monster chase you,” said Hal.

  “Seriously, who did that?” asked Danny.

  Everybody acted innocent. They were all curious about it, looking at each other, but nobody fessed up.

  “What’s the point of hiding who can do this?” said Danny. “That’s really good, that’s like what a second-year windmage learns to do. And dumping the stuff on Wheeler, if that’s who you were aiming at, that’s why I call it a second-year thing. Nobody can do that in their first year.”

  Danny watched to see who showed pride when he said that. But nobody showed anything on their faces. Which is why Danny was reasonably sure that it was Pat. She was the only one who could keep her face a complete blank, when she wanted to.

  But if she had some reason for not coming forward in front of the others, Danny would respect that.

  “I know why you’re in high school, Danny,” said Sin. “It’s your secret identity.”

  “Clark Kent at the Daily Planet,” said Laurette.

  “Without the glasses,” said Sin.

  “And you don’t even need a phone booth,” said Hal.

  “He doesn’t wear a costume so he doesn’t need to change clothes,” said Laurette. “Or a bat cave to keep his car in. Or anything.”

  “But it’s still his secret identity,” said Sin.

  “‘By day, a mild-mannered high school track star,’” Laurette fake-quoted. “‘By night, Loki! Mercury! Thoth! Faster than a speeding bullet!’”

  “Mightier than a thrown spitwad,” said Hal.

  “Able to leap onto curbs in a single bound,” said Pat.

  “And look inside the girls’ bathroom whenever he wants,” said Wheeler.

  “Eeew, you could,” said Xena. “But why would you want to? It’s poo and pee, just like boys.”

  “Not just like boys,” said Wheeler. “Most definitely not.”

  “How did we get onto poop and peeping toms?” asked Pat.

  “I don’t spy on people without a reason,” said Danny.

  “Yeah, like you want to see whether they drop their dirty undies on the floor or put them in the hamper,” said Laurette.

  Danny lay back and closed his eyes. “Wake me when it’s over.”

  “It’s over,” said Pat. “Because we’re all growing up. Right now. I declare puberty to be finished.”

  “I hope not,” said Wheeler. “I was really hoping for more body hair.”

  All the girls but Pat said “eeeewwww” at once. Wheeler was delighted.

  “I’m supposed to be at track practice but I’ve got to get home and sleep,” said Danny. “It’s getting cold and the sun is still up.”

  “Supposed to be a storm coming through tonight,” said Xena.

  “Not snow,” said Laurette.

  “No, just rain,” said Xena. “To make little things grow.”

  “Xena likes to make little things grow,” said Hal.

  “As long as they’re attached to Danny North,” said Laurette.

  Xena turned on Hal in fury. “Hal!” she growled.

  Before she could say anything or throw something at him, Hal moved away. “Why are you going after me? It was Laurette who—”

  “Girls can say things like that to each other,” explained Pat.

  “I’ve got to go talk to my parents,” said Danny. “And I have to get Veevee to write out an excuse for my absence today.”

  “You need to get a nap first,” said Pat.

  “Do you think they’re going to do like Zog in Superman II and make the President kneel to them in the Oval Office?” asked Wheeler.

  “If they feel like it,” said Danny. “If they even care.” And then Danny said, “They won’t make anybody kneel, but they’ll definitely want to get control of the army and navy and air force and all. Because we’re not immortal, and so we have to know where the weapons are so we don’t get blown up or beheaded while we’re trying to control a clant a hundred miles away. Especially because weapons got really powerful since the Gate Thief closed things down in 632. So you don’t necessarily get advance warning.”

  “It really is going to be war,” said Hal.

  “Yeah,” said Wheeler, grinning.

  “Danny, take me home with you, just for a minute,” said Pat.

  Several woos and wo-hos from the others.

  “I need to talk with you,” said Pat, rolling her eyes.

  “‘Please put your baby in me,’” said Hal in a falsetto.

  “Let’s get out of here so they can gossip about us,” said Danny. He reached out a hand for Pat. She took it.

  He gated to his living room and the moment she saw where they were she clung to him, her whole body pressed against his. Hungry. Frightened. “It really is war,” she said. “What you did with the Great Gate last night and this morning, taking all the mages in the world through it, because that disloyal bitch—”

  She stopped herself. “No. If you’re not angry, I’m not going to get angry.”

  “I’m angry,” said Danny. “I just can’t do anything about it, so why develop an ulcer?”

  “People will die,” she said. “You could die. If somebody blows you up, who’ll put you through a gate to heal you?”

  “It’s not likely, but it could happen,” said Danny. “I’m more worried about a completely different enemy, though. One who can take over people’s bodies and control them.”

  Pat looked up at him, without letting go. “You’re talking about being possessed by the devil.”

  “Who knew it was true?” asked Danny. “But it is. And I don’t even know if anyone would be able to tell if I was taken over.”

  “I’d know,” said Pat.

  “Would you?” asked Danny. “I’m worried that maybe I wouldn’t even know.”

  “If somebody was inside you? Making you do stuff against your will?” Pat shook her head. “You’d know. And I’d know, because I’d test you. I’d ask you a question and if you didn’t know the answer, I’d know it wasn’t you.” She pulled on his head and neck to draw him down and kiss him. Then she licked the tip of his nose. “I’d ask what I did right after I kissed you.”

  “What if he had access to all my memories?” said Danny. “What if he could answer all the questions?”

  “I’d still know,” said Pat. She kissed him again, this time long and hungrily. Her hands moved across his back, gripped his buttocks.

  He pulled away from her. “No,” he said.

  “This isn’t a game for me,” said Pat. “Like for the others. I’m not playing ‘sleep with a god and tell your friends.’ I love you, Danny North. I’m not too young to know that. Girls married a lot younger than me. Juliet was thirteen.”

  “That was fiction, and it didn’t end all that well,” said Danny.

  “You’re going off to war. When you told us what you spent all night doing, I thought, what if something had gone wrong, what if Hermia had trapped him or tricked him and he simply never came back? And instead of crying when I thought that, my
hands just instinctively went to my belly. My empty uterus. It’s an instinct, Danny. We want to be pregnant when our man goes off to war.”

  “I’m not going to make any bastards,” said Danny. “Period, ever. You think your parents are ready to let you marry a high school kid with no job, who lives in a shanty like this?”

  “I don’t care about marriage,” said Pat. “People don’t, they just don’t care about that.”

  “The smart people do,” said Danny. “The people who want to raise a family, and not just get pregnant.”

  She had her hands inside his waistband and was pushing downward on his pants. He thought of Lana the first time he met her in Stone’s house in DC. His body was responding the same way, only this time he wasn’t surprised and frightened. If anything, he wanted Pat more than she wanted him.

  “I love you, too,” said Danny, “but I’m not one of those gods.” And, just as she got his pants down to his thighs, he gated her away, back to her own bedroom.

  He wanted so badly to go through that gate after her.

  Instead, he ate the gate so Hermia couldn’t use it to get into her house, just in case she decided to start going after his friends. And then, too tired to make a decision about pulling his pants back up or taking them off the rest of the way, he gated himself to his own bed and fell asleep exactly as he was.

  He dreamed of her, though. He vaguely remembered dreaming of other things, forgotten things, strange things, he dreamed that she was on the bed beside him, pressing herself against him, naked, whispering to him. “I love you, Danny,” she whispered.

  In the dream he held her, explored her body. He tried to kiss her but for some reason she evaded his kiss. He laughed and moved his hand up to her face and still she tried to turn her face away when he went to kiss her. He was ready to explode with desire for her. She didn’t want his kisses, she wanted his baby, and that’s all he wanted, was to give her that.

  In the dream his body was poised over her. She was pulling his hips down. Then he kissed her before she could dodge.

  It wasn’t Pat.

  He opened his eyes.

  It was Nicki Lieder, the coach’s daughter.

  “I came to see you, the door was unlocked,” she whispered, “and here you were, so ready for me.”

  It still felt like a dream. But it also felt completely real. Real, but with the cloudiness of a dream in his mind. Nicki Lieder. Not Pat at all. He didn’t love Nicki. But she was naked under him, and he knew how much she wanted him, and at this moment all he could think of was that he wanted her, too. Not her, but a woman, the woman here under him, the woman who had come to his bed. The woman in this extraordinary dream.

  No, it’s not a dream, said something inside him. It’s not a dream, it’s someone who has the power to cloud your mind.

  “You want me inside you,” said Nicki.

  “Yes,” said Danny, even as something in his mind screamed at him, Listen to what she said, listen to what you just agreed to, it’s not you inside her, it’s someone asking to come into your body, and you said yes, you said yes, you fool.

  And in the moment of ecstasy and release, he could feel it, this thing entering him at the groin and filling his whole body, taking control of his body. He tried to fight it, tried to move, but already he couldn’t, already it had him.

  He could feel his body roll off the girl. He could see her lying there, gasping, looking confused. Looking relieved. And then weeping.

  “That’s right, Nicki,” his own lips said, though he was not speaking, and only found out what they were going to say when they said it. “I’m gone now. You can have your body back, nicely healed by Danny North here. Maybe pregnant. Wouldn’t that be nice? Now be a good girl, get dressed, and go home.”

  Danny’s body sat up and watched her as she gathered her clothing and put it on, still weeping softly.

  “I enjoyed being inside you,” said Danny’s mouth. “You’re a sweet thing and you’ll find that this all becomes like a bad dream, and then like a good dream, and then you’ll miss me, you really will. They all do. The ones that live.”

  And Danny was thinking: He was here for weeks. He found me weeks ago, when I came to Lieder’s house and healed his daughter. Was he already inside her then, or did he find her afterward, take control of her when she was clean of her cancer? Maybe Danny could have fought him off any other time, but now, asleep, exhausted, half in a dream, and then the Dragon asked him through Nicki’s mouth, asked him to let him come into Danny, and Danny said yes. But I didn’t realize what I was saying, I thought I was consenting to the sex, and it was sex in a dream, not real, nothing was real, it’s not …

  Not fair.

  Except this was war. Shaped like love, a moment ago, but it was the crucial battle in a war. The enemy had stolen a march on him, was suddenly in a place where he wasn’t supposed to be.

  Now he has control of a gatemage.

  But he doesn’t, thought Danny. Because I can still think these thoughts. I can still …

  Danny tried to make a gate and pass himself through it, to see if he could shed this creature like a disease.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” his own throat said, the glottal stops that said, No no no. “Let’s make a gate for her, to send your little girlfriend home.”

  In that moment Danny learned several important things. The Dragon had no idea that Danny really had just gated his girlfriend home—the real one, the one that he hadn’t had sex with. The Dragon also had to use Danny’s mouth to talk to him—it couldn’t just put thoughts into his head. So it wasn’t completely in control, and didn’t even have complete access. He controlled movement and he controlled speech. But that was all a matter of muscles.

  Except he could block Danny from creating the gate he wanted to create. Could he make Danny create one?

  No, no, that’s not the question, not the question at all.

  Inside Danny’s hearthoard, he now realized who had been warning him, screaming at him. Loki’s gates.

  Loki knew. Loki had never been possessed, so his outself could not remember having been possessed by Set. That meant Loki was observing him from the outside. From another planet, however many lightyears away it was, Loki had realized what was happening, had seen past the fog in Danny’s mind, past the belief that it was an erotic dream, into the truth.

  But what Loki’s gates did remember was being given. They knew how one Gatefather could give the obedience of his gates to another.

  And so Danny tapped into their kinetic memory, and with their consent, Loki’s gates obeyed him and showed him how to give them back to Loki.

  The act of giving back the gates didn’t move them or make them. Those would have been physical acts, apparently, and the Dragon who possessed him could have felt such an action, could have blocked it. But in all likelihood, the Dragon had never possessed a gatemage who gave a gate to another. It had no idea what was happening.

  He felt his control over Loki’s gates slip away.

  But now he knew how to do it.

  So, again without moving or making his gates, leaving them wherever they already were, Danny gave all of his own gates, every one of them, to Loki.

  And just like that, they were not under his control. He was still aware of them. They were still where they were supposed to be. But they weren’t his. They didn’t belong to Danny North.

  Nicki was dressed now. Danny could feel it when the Dragon gave the command to make a gate to take her back to her home. He could sense that the Dragon knew how to do it, knew where both the mouth and the tail of the gate should be.

  But no gate came rising out of the hearthoard at his command. No gate formed.

  Danny felt a kind of blindness come over him. No, it was rage. Fear? It wasn’t an emotion of the body, it was a transformation of some kind within the Dragon itself, and then Danny’s own body responded to it. Blood flowed hard and hot, his face flushed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Nicki, sounding frightened.

  Danny’s
body rose from the bed and stood on the floor, pants dropping around the ankles, but definitely not aroused, not as it had been. No, it was filled with rage and terror and it screamed.

  Nicki screamed back and then ran from the room, ran out of the house. Danny heard the screen door slam behind her.

  “What have you done?” demanded the Dragon in Danny’s own voice, with Danny’s mouth and throat and lungs, his tongue and teeth.

  I’ve done nothing, Danny said silently. I gave a gift to a friend.

  “The gates are still there, I can feel them,” said the Dragon. It used Danny’s body to dance around the room, jump up and down, as if somehow this would jar something loose. “You’re a Gatefather, I took a Gatefather, why can’t I touch your gates!”

  He ran to the kitchen, and Danny understood that his body was in search of a knife. It was the animal mind that sought for one—for the first time Danny could feel the distinction between animal intention and his own will, his own ka. The animal’s desire did not reach inside him and kindle any answering wish. The body wasn’t his to control now. But he was still inside it, still absolutely tied to it, feeling all its sensations.

  The knife was in the hand.

  It stabbed down, into Danny’s thigh. Again. Again.

  The pain was excruciating. The Dragon felt it too; he groaned in agony.

  “Make it better,” said his own voice. “Make a gate.”

  But there was no gate that belonged to him.

  Another stab. “You’ll bleed to death unless you heal this. Do you understand that?”

  I do understand it, thought Danny. I understand that I’ll die. But what happens if I die with you inside me?

  Nothing happens, thought Danny, despairing. Because Set isn’t tied to my body the way my ka is. When my body dies, I’m done, my ka moves away from here. But he will remain.

  “I can keep it going after you bleed to death,” said Danny’s mouth. “Not terribly long, but long enough to get to somebody else. Someone you know.”

  He was trying to call up a clear memory. Danny immediately thought of Hermia.

  Hermia was the one. Let him find Hermia and take possession of her.