Orson Card - The Gate Thief

“I’m a Cobblefriend,” said Marion. “I can’t fly, nor can my clants, such as they are.”

“Then why didn’t you wait for me to make a gate and carry the rope up there?” asked Danny.

“Hard for you to believe, I know, Danny, but before you ever came to this farm, I was able to wipe my butt all by myself.”

Danny grinned. “Are you suggesting that you want me to install a rectal gate? Outbound only, I promise.”

Marion made as if to smack Danny, though he never had and never would. But then he stopped. “Could you?” he asked. “Not rectal, but a gate that’s attached to a person instead of to a place?”

“When Hermia gets here,” said Danny.

“Hermia. Veevee. They’ll only know what’s in books.”

“And I only know what I’ve tried,” said Danny. “All those years I tried to figure out how to lock gates and how to take them back inside myself, and I couldn’t figure any of it out until I saw it done.”

“Somebody had to be the first gatemage,” said Marion. “And from what Hermia says-if you can trust a Greek-”

“It’s only a problem if they’re bearing gifts,” said Danny. “And she’s Pelasgian.”

“From what she says you may be the most extravagantly gifted gatemage ever. So you’re going to have to break new ground to reach your potential.”

“Parents always think their children have more potential than they actually have,” said Danny.

“What about gatemage surgery?” asked Marion. “Those tracking devices inside Hermia-can’t you gate them out of her?”

“I have a map in my head of all the gates I’ve made,” said Danny. “But I can’t map the inside of a person’s body. Going through a gate heals people of any injuries or dysfunctions, but if I start making gates to remove bits of Hermia, it would only be by chance if I found the tracking devices her family installed in her.”

“At least now I understand why you want to gate up to the roofbeam to hang a rope-it’s something you know you can do.”

“Don’t you mostly do things you know you can do?” asked Danny, a little resentful now.

“Yes,” said Marion. “Tell me. If you took one end of the rope down here, then gated to the roofbeam, would the rope just follow you and string out from here to there, or would it get cut off where the gate began?”

“It would look cut off,” said Danny. “But it would still be connected. It would go up to the mouth of the gate down here, and the very next inch of rope would then emerge from the gate up there.”

Marion shook his head. “Stonemages like me believe in solid connections. Not sudden leaps through spacetime.”

“Where’s Mom?” asked Danny.

“Out scouting for anybody’s clant or heartbeast. You’re making a Great Gate again, which is exactly what all the Families want, not to mention rogue Orphans we might not even know about.”

“I can’t believe that passing through a Great Gate allowed her to sense anybody’s outself within a couple of miles,” said Danny.

“And I can feel all the disturbances in the rock, not to mention the flow patterns, for a hundred miles in every direction. There’s a reason why people had to go through Great Gates before the drowthers deigned to call them gods.”

“So that’s what you and Mom are now?” asked Danny. “Gods?”

“If I had already been a Stonefather, and then went through a Great Gate, then yes, I think I could put on a show that would make drowthers feel a strong desire to let me have my way. But as a Cobblefriend? Let’s just say that my affinity is much more useful. I have more to give the stone, and so the stone replies with greater strength. That’s all.”

Danny stood there, looking at the ground, thinking of how Marion had opened up the earth near Parry McCluer High School and swallowed a pickup truck. Thinking: What will I be able to do, after I go through a Great Gate? And Veevee and Hermia? What does it do to a gatemage?

Wasn’t that what they were making this Great Gate to find out? With no Gate Thief left to threaten him, and with Marion and Leslie primed to keep all danger at bay, Danny could experiment a little. He could stay a minute or two on Westil. Not very long-not long enough to be in danger. But long enough to see the place where Marion and Leslie had lingered for only a fraction of a second. “We blinked and then came back,” Marion explained at the time. “It was daylight and there were rocks and grass, that’s all I know.”

“And he only knows about the grass because I told him,” Leslie had said. “Stonemages don’t care about grass, but Cowsisters have a real eye for it.”

Danny put a little weight on the rope that Marion had suspended. He was so hungry to make a Great Gate that he almost couldn’t wait until the others arrived.

No, that wasn’t true. Danny wasn’t hungry for it. What he was feeling as a powerful yearning was coming from many of the outselves trapped inside him. The Gate Thief’s old prisoners, not the Gate Thief himself- his gates were all about blocking Great Gates, stealing them, not using them, and certainly not building them.

Could Danny use some of the captive outselves in making a Great Gate, as if they were his own? Hermia had told him that in the old days, mere Pathbrothers would sometimes contribute to a Gatefather their three or four or dozen gates to help reach the critical mass to make a Great Gate. Could he use these captive gates the same way?

Danny tried to use one on an ordinary gate. That is, he did the inward thing that felt like gatemaking, only tried to access one of the captives to do it. The result was almost a physical pain, the rebuff was so sharp and strong.

No!

It felt like a shout from somewhere deep inside him. Not the word no, but the meaning of it, the idea of utter rejection.

It made sense. Danny could not force another mage’s gate. In Hermia’s account, the Pathbrothers would donate their gates willingly. These gates had all been stolen, from gatemages who most assuredly would not want their captor using their long-lost outselves to make his gates.

It would have been interesting to see the result of a Great Gate made out of so many different mages’ gates at once. But if they wouldn’t let him, the question was moot.

It made sense. If Gatefathers could make use of stolen gates, then they’d have done it all the time. The Gate Thief wasn’t taking gates in order to use them, he was taking them in order to prevent their being used.

And again he wondered why. Something about the Semitic gods. Something about Bel, the ancient Carthaginian deity.

I won a battle when I beat the Gate Thief, but I didn’t even know what war I was fighting in. For all I know I just intervened in the American Revolution on the side of the British. I have no idea who the good guys are. There are so many enemies; but what if my enemies are right to want to destroy me? What if my defeating the Gate Thief was the worst thing that ever happened in history?

“Stop brooding, Danny, it makes your mouth turn sour,” said Veevee.

So she had taken the gate from Naples, Florida. She was almost quivering with excitement. This Great Gate was more for her than anyone. After all her years of not knowing whether she was a gatemage or not, her complete vindication upon finding Danny’s gates and realizing she could unlock them had been the greatest joy of her life. But then came the frustration of not being able to do anything but unlock gates-that and teach Danny all the gatelore she had learned in a lifetime of study.

Now she had hope, however meager, that by passing through a Great Gate she might have her power augmented in some interesting way. It was all she had talked about, whenever there was nothing else to talk about, so that Danny knew that it was where her thoughts always turned in moments of idleness. She hadn’t nagged him, but he felt the pressure of her yearning all the same.