The Gate Thief (Mither Mages)

by Orson Scott Card

  “Telling them nothing,” said Danny, “was the same as telling them everything—that I hadn’t spoken to you yet, that you didn’t know yet what would happen.”

  “We knew,” said Uncle Mook. “Zog and Gyish guessed wrong about the motive, but we all knew you’d come here. Because however much you may hate and resent us, you don’t want us dead.”

  “Don’t count on that,” said Gyish. “Spiteful little bastard.”

  “If he wanted us dead,” Aunt Lummy pointed out gently, “we’d be having this meeting inside Hammernip Hill. He could have put us there whenever he wanted.”

  “Do you accept the terms?” said Danny. “Assuming you’ve heard the three promises I’m demanding from everybody.”

  “We’ve heard them,” said Uncle Mook. “For some of us, the terms will be easy to swear to.”

  “Which is why Zog and Gyish had to be here,” said Danny. “They not only have to say the words. I have to believe them.”

  “Or what?” asked Zog. “You’re not sending me through the Great Gate anyway, so what can you do to hurt me?”

  Now it was time for a demonstration of power. Danny made a gate that swallowed Zog and dropped him from the ceiling. He landed sprawling on the table, the breath knocked out of him.

  The sheer surprise of it shocked everyone, and most of them jumped up or pushed back. Thor tried to do both and ended up knocking down his chair and then falling over it.

  “What can I do to hurt you, if you break your oath?” asked Danny quietly. “Why, anything I want.”

  Danny rose to his feet. The others sat down, except for Tweng and Uck, who were helping Zog get off the table and back to his chair. “As with all the others, I’ll expect your answer tomorrow.”

  “At what time?” asked Thor.

  “At the time I return,” said Danny.

  “And when will that be?” demanded Gyish, who was apparently unhumbled by what Danny had just done to Zog.

  Danny didn’t bother to answer. He just gated back to his living room, where the others were waiting.

  “That went well,” said Hermia dryly.

  It took a moment for Danny to realize that Hermia had been watching—and Danny had not made gates for her and Veevee this time.

  “Oh, don’t get all uffish about it,” said Hermia. “I’ve been working on trying to do something besides lock your gates.”

  “You made a gate?” asked Danny eagerly.

  “I wish,” said Hermia. “But I moved the other end of the last viewport you made for me.”

  “You moved it all the way to the library?”

  “No,” said Hermia. “I attached it to you, and you carried it with you. I was essentially looking and listening through the top button of your shirt.”

  Sin giggled. Xena glared at her. “Woah, cool,” said Wheeler.

  This was a huge breakthrough. Hermia could move the end of a gate and attach it to an object.

  “Can you do it, too?” Danny asked Veevee.

  “I haven’t tried,” said Veevee. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. I didn’t even realize she was listening while you were gone, or I would have been angry at you for not making me a viewport. I may not be as young and pretty as Hermia, but I love you more than she does.”

  “Will you teach her how to do it?” Danny asked Hermia.

  “Of course,” said Hermia. “I only succeeded for the first time just now, and I only had to move it a few feet. I have no idea how far I can reach with it. Probably not very far.”

  “So the messages are delivered,” said Pat, “and Hermia thinks you handled it well with your family.”

  “Actually, I think she was being sarcastic,” said Danny.

  “No, I wasn’t,” said Hermia. “I really think it went well. You made your point with that bully Zog, and everybody else you treated respectfully. I don’t know if I could have done that.”

  “He’s so ni-i-i-ice,” said Wheeler.

  “He is!” insisted Xena.

  Please get off my side, Xena, said Danny silently. Especially because I don’t even have a side.

  “My point is,” said Pat, “the messages are delivered, so isn’t it time you took us through a Great Gate?”

  “You?” asked Hermia in genuine surprise. “What’s the point?”

  “To see what it does to us,” said Pat. “There’s a lot of bastard mageblood in the world by now. Who knows whether we might not have some latent abilities?”

  Veevee laughed. “You don’t have to invoke all those happy impregnators among the corps of minor gods. Magery is certainly latent among the entire human race. Or so Danny thinks, since he’s so sure that humans began here in Mittlegard and only became mages when a tribe stumbled on a naturally occurring gate and got carried to Westil.”

  “If there were such a thing as naturally occurring gates,” said Hermia, “don’t you think there’d have been one during the centuries since Loki ate all the gates?”

  “The Gate Thief got any gate that opened,” said Danny. “And maybe they only happen when the planets are aligned somehow. Maybe there are cycles.”

  “Or epicycles,” said Hal.

  “Danny’s a Virgo,” said Xena. “I’m not sure how the planets lined up for him, though.”

  “It’s just a theory,” said Danny. “And it has nothing to do with astrology.”

  “Let’s test it,” said Veevee. “Take these little darlings through a Great Gate and see what it does to them.”

  “If you’re going to do it at all,” said Pat, “you need to do it before you send any of the Family mages through. Once there are other great mages loose in the world…”

  Danny thought of his father coming home with his power over metal and machinery multiplied by two. Or ten. And for that matter, what would his mother be able to do? There were gods in the past who really could hurl lightning. No doubt a mage of light and heat like Mama would be able to make lightning, after passing through the Great Gate.

  Pat was right. The Family mages would be godlike, and if they weren’t quite scrupulous about keeping their word to Danny, he’d be busy dealing with them. He wouldn’t have time to work with his drowther friends to find out just how permanent their drowtherhood might be.

  Well, he hadn’t told the Families exactly when he’d make this Great Gate he was promising. Obviously he couldn’t delay forever. If they became impatient, there was a Great Gate in existence, one that was not in Danny’s control.

  And that night, as Danny was undressing for bed, he couldn’t stop himself from playing through in his mind a not-terribly-unlikely scenario in which he delayed far too long, angering the Families, which then united against him and attacked the Silvermans in order to show their displeasure.

  Powerful as Marion and Leslie now were, because of their passage through a Great Gate, they could not stand against the united Families. Perhaps not even against one Family in a concerted assault. Yes, Leslie could detach all the beastmages from their heartbeasts. Yes, Marion could break up the earth under them.

  But there would be threats they couldn’t see. There would be winds and water that they couldn’t stop. There would be fire.

  And even if the whole farm in Yellow Springs was burned to the ground, there that public Wild Gate would be, waiting. As the victorious enemies gloated, walking over the burnt-out ruin of the Silvermans’ farm, their refuge, their lives, someone would accidentally step through the Great Gate. Wouldn’t that be the kind of prank that spacetime looked for?

  No, Danny could not delay forever. But if he took his drowther friends through a new Great Gate right away, perhaps there would be time enough to train them a little. Maybe they would have latent mageries that bloomed into sudden life. Maybe …

  Maybe pigs could eat with knives and forks. Even powerful mages born in Families took years of training in order to master their abilities. What fantasy was this, that Danny could bestow on his friends what his Family had as their inheritance?

  I am not all-powerfu
l. I may have the most useful magery in the world right now, the one that can change everything. I may have other people at my mercy. But I can’t even control a Great Gate that I made. I didn’t know the consequence of weaving into it the lingering outselves of long-dead rage-filled mages—but the fact that I’m not to blame doesn’t mean that I’m not compelled to live with the consequences of my foolishness.

  How much more foolishness will I have to bring about because of the things that I don’t know? It isn’t my drowther friends who need training. It’s me. But the only person in either world who can possibly help me is my most dangerous enemy. The Gate Thief.

  I have most of his gates under my control right now, but who knows what tricks he knows that I am not aware of? Who knows what danger I would be in if I went to him for help? He’s a Gatefather—he can lie to me as easily as he can breathe, so even if he promised to help me, how would I know that he meant to keep his word?

  And that image of the Silvermans’ farm as rubble and ash kept coming back to his mind.

  There was a knock at his door.

  He felt a thrill of terror, his heart leaping with sudden adrenaline. The Families had found him!

  Then he heard Pat’s voice. “It’s me,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

  Relieved, his heart still racing, Danny took the five steps to the door—the house was so tiny—without remembering that he was in the middle of undressing for bed. When the door opened, Pat looked him up and down.

  “I see you were expecting someone else,” she said.

  Danny was wearing his tighty-whities and his socks.

  “I was in the middle of undressing for bed,” he said. “And I wasn’t expecting anybody.”

  “I would have waited for you to put on a robe.” She stepped through the door and Danny closed it behind her.

  “I don’t own a robe.” He walked into the bedroom, picked up his jeans, and came back into the living room.

  “Don’t bother,” said Pat. “I won’t be here long.”

  “Long enough to sit down?”

  Pat looked around. “On what?” she asked.

  That wasn’t really fair—the house had come with an old tatty sofa, and there was a kitchen table with three wobbly chairs. But Danny always tossed his dirty clothes on the couch and the chairs were stacked up with books.

  Danny gathered up the clothes from the couch and dropped them on the floor.

  “Tidy,” said Pat.

  Danny put his hand on her back to usher her to the couch.

  Pat shied away. “What are you doing?”

  Danny pulled back his hand. “Offering you a seat?”

  “I can find my way to your couch without your hands on my body,” she said coldly. “I’m not Xena, I don’t want your hands all over me. And for what it’s worth, she isn’t, like, in love with you.”

  “I didn’t think she was,” said Danny.

  “Oh, she thinks she is,” said Pat, “but it’s not you she wants, it’s to have a god’s baby inside her belly.”

  “I’m not a god,” said Danny. “There are no gods, just people like me.”

  Pat faced him with fire in her eyes. “On the contrary, buddy-boy. People like you are proof that there are gods. Dangerous powerful beings who can do terrible things to people who don’t obey them.”

  “What terrible things have I done to you?”

  Pat touched her face. “Oh, isn’t it wonderful, my kind master! You have bestowed smooth skin upon your pock-marked servant! Now at last she’s worthy to have your hands placed upon her body!”

  Danny was completely flummoxed. He hadn’t meant anything at all by touching her. He didn’t know why he had even done it. He didn’t go around touching people.

  There was nothing he could say to change her false impression. “Have a seat while I put my pants on,” he said.

  “I told you I’m not staying long.” But she sat down and watched him pull up his jeans. “I don’t even know why I came.”

  “Well, we’ve settled that you aren’t here to have sex with me,” said Danny. He meant it as a self-mocking joke.

  “Right, just because I don’t want your hands on me, you think I’m some kind of cold frigid bitch.”

  Her words were so out of proportion to anything that had come before that Danny couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind. “Is that what I think?”

  “For your information, no, I wasn’t molested as a child, no, I wasn’t abused, no, I don’t have any repressed memories of terrible things that now interfere with the natural development of my sexuality. I’m just a private person who doesn’t like to be touched.”

  Danny just stood there for a couple of seconds. “It’s so good of you to come all the way over here and tell me that,” he finally said.

  Pat sat there, looking at him in surprise. It was as if she was only hearing now what she herself had just finished saying. “That’s not what I came here to say,” she said. Her face turned red and she looked away. “I can’t believe I went off like that, I don’t know what I was…”

  Danny pulled up one of the kitchen chairs across from her—he didn’t even have to take a step to do it, the kitchen being the other end of the living room—and sat on it. “Let’s pretend I didn’t touch you and so you didn’t react the way you reacted for whatever reason you reacted that way, and let’s just say that I asked you to come in and take a seat and here we are.” He put on an air of jovial welcome. “Pat, my good friend, what brings you here so late at night, considering that you don’t want to sleep with me or have my babies?”

  Pat was not amused at his humor. “My parents made me see a shrink because I like to be left alone.”

  “Well, that explains the ‘repressed sexuality’ thing.”

  “She had an M.D. and a Ph.D., but that just shows they’ll give those degrees to any bonehead who puts in the time. She was a fake who wanted to hypnotize me and put false memories into my head. She actually thought she had hypnotized me and started suggesting all kinds of sexual things my father had snuck into my room and done to me when I was three. She was, like, a volunteer hypnotic pornographer. Serious child porn. Ugly.” Pat shuddered. “My parents kept making me go back until I finally told my dad what that bitch was trying to get me to ‘remember’ he had done to me.”

  “But you hung on to the vocabulary.”

  “Whenever people go off on how I don’t like to be glad-handed or stroked, she comes to mind. Being an introvert isn’t a pathology, you know.”

  “I know,” said Danny. “I don’t like to be touched either.” He thought back to the way Lana had accosted him when he first came to Stone’s house, and he realized that he hadn’t spoken the actual truth. He hadn’t liked Lana touching him at the moment, because it was such a surprise and because he didn’t like her having control over him. But his body very much liked being touched, and he still remembered that encounter with Lana. He remembered it a lot, and he had imagined several different endings to the event that he much preferred to the way it had actually ended.

  But he knew that was nothing more than the impulse of his DNA to replicate itself. In fact, like Pat, he didn’t like to have people touch him. At least not without an invitation. “I have no idea why I did that,” said Danny, “and I’m sorry. I’m also sorry your parents didn’t get you, and I’m sorry the shrink was a schmuck. Can we please get on to whatever you actually came for?”

  Pat turned red again and curled up onto the couch, turning her body partly away from him. He had never seen her look vulnerable before. “What am I doing? Why am I saying these things?”

  “Really. Please,” said Danny. “Tell me what you came for.”

  “I’m worried about you,” she finally said. Still not looking at him. Still embarrassed. “You’re so. So.”

  “Stupid?” Danny prompted.

  “Yes,” she said. “Not school-stupid, not even people-stupid. I mean, you’re actually very clever and kind of sweet and I think you don’t have a m
alicious bone in your body, though your sense of humor is sometimes kind of on the mean side.”

  “Senses of humor usually are,” said Danny. “But I see your point. Thanks for the counsel.”

  “See?” she said. “You’re joking, but you’re also making fun of the fact that I came here at night, alone, and I’ve said everything wrong until I feel so stupid I could die, and yet you’re also sitting there waiting so patiently for me to finally say what I came to say, because you are sweet, and that’s why I’m so afraid, because I don’t think you know how evil some people can be.”

  Pat had no idea what it was like to live inside a Family. “I know a little more about evil than you think.”

  “I’m not talking about your family,” said Pat. “You’re the expert on mages or gods or whatever you people are. I’m talking about—people in general. Regular people. Even people who mean well. You’re so trusting! You came here to Parry McCluer and you decide you’re going to be friends with us, and why? Because the principal assigned Laurette to be your guide on your first day, and you just had to tease her and sit down with us and how did you choose us?”

  Danny had no answer to that. “I was going with the flow. If I hadn’t liked you guys, I wouldn’t have stayed around.”

  “But you didn’t like us,” said Pat. “I mean, how could you? We’re a mess, every one of us, weird on the outside and certifiably insane underneath that repellent exterior.”

  “But Laurette has nice cleavage, and I am of the heterosexual persuasion,” said Danny. “Maybe that’s all it is.”

  “You’re not one of those panting morons,” said Pat. “And in fact we really are pretty decent people, so you could have chosen a lot worse friends. My point is that you didn’t know, you had no idea who we were, but you plunged right in as if we were friends and. And.”

  “And then we became friends,” said Danny. “But isn’t that how it’s done?”

  “No!” said Pat. “It takes time!”

  “I didn’t have time,” said Danny. “I’ve only got a couple of years of high school and look, don’t you know how I was raised? I’ve told you—I never met anybody outside the Family. When I went to DC I only met a handful of people and one of them became a dear friend, one of them was a user who thought I was his ticket to easy street, the perfect burglar. One was a girl who really has the memories that your shrink tried to implant in you, and so she was completely unpredictable and selfish. One was her husband, for reasons I never understood. And then there was the convenience store owner who tried to murder me and my burglarizing partner, and the store owner’s assistant who I talked into murdering him and—am I boring you?”