Orson Card - The Gate Thief

“Try again,” said Danny.

“She go to the beach,” said the man. “Then we go in her room. She not come back yet.”

Now that Danny had a chance to study the men, he could start making guesses. “Persians?” he asked. “Hindi?”

The assassin managed to look scornful in the midst of his ongoing terror.

“Tell me what Family you’re from,” said Danny.

“Never,” said the man.

So it was a Family-an Orphan would have declared his non-Family status proudly. And it was a Family that regarded hiding its identity as more important than life itself. Any of the known Families might have wanted to do this assassination stealthily, but the secrecy wouldn’t be important enough to die for it. After all, killing gatemages was something they were all sworn to do.

A Family, then, that everyone thought was extinct?

Danny ran through a mental list. Middle Eastern, from the look of them. But all the Families were Indo-European, and in the Middle East that list wasn’t very long. “Hittites?” he asked.

“No!” shouted the man.

Hittites they were, then. Interesting. Exciting, even. How had the Hittite Family remained hidden all this time? They were supposed to have been wiped out before Pompey came to Syria, though some Family historians speculated that they might have adopted the Armenians and helped them surreptitiously.

But historical interest would have to wait. “If Hermia is dead,” said Danny, “so are you.”

“Alive!” the man cried. “We not touch her.”

“No Great Gates!” shouted the other man, the weeping one. “Bel comes! Bel goes to Yllywee!”

So they were allies of the Gate Thief. Or shared his fear; Yllywee was an ancient name of Westil. Danny remembered the runic inscription in the Library of Congress. “We have faced Bel and he has ruled the hearts of many.” Manmages from another world-a world not Earth and not Westil. “Loki found the dark gate of Bel through which their god poured fear into the world.” Why would it matter whether Danny made a Great Gate if Bel already knew how to make gates of his own?

The Hittites knew something, and he had to find out what it was.

Danny moved the tail of the gate that suspended them to the barn. They plopped in a sodden mass amid the straw near a milking stall. At once Danny brought back the mouth of the gate, scooped them up, and hung them in the air ten feet above the barn floor.

“What’s going on, Danny?” demanded Marion. “How can you bring strangers to-”

“Hittites,” said Danny. “They shot me, and they know something about Bel.”

There had been enough discussion of the runic passage that everyone immediately understood the significance.

“I need you to question them while I’m gone,” said Danny to Marion.

“I’m not an interrogator,” said Marion.

“I didn’t say torture them,” said Danny. “Ask them questions.”

“ You’re torturing them,” said Marion. “Look how afraid they are! They’re falling and falling!”

“People pay money to go up in airplanes and freefall like this before they open their parachutes,” said Danny. “It’s not torture, it’s just a way of keeping them where we want them.”

“Not here,” said Marion.

“Fine,” said Danny. “I’ll put them back out over the Atlantic till I find Hermia.”

“No!” shouted Leslie from the door. “Let them go at once!”

“They killed me!” shouted Danny. “They’re assassins.”

“And Hittites,” added Veevee. “So they’re evil and interesting.”

“This is not what a good man does,” said Leslie coldly.

Danny knew at once that she was right. His fear and anger had made him act by reflex. Yet he had also shown restraint, and he wanted credit for it.

“I could have killed them,” said Danny. “I didn’t kill them.”

“They’re sopping wet,” said Leslie.

“I didn’t know they couldn’t swim,” said Danny. “But I pulled them out of the water, didn’t I?”

“Get them out of my barn,” said Leslie. “Now.”

Back to the ocean, then. Again, Danny had to move the tail of the gate first, which put them back in the water, flailing and sputtering, and screaming whenever they could catch their breath. Then he got them back up in the air. By now they thought of that continuous freefall as a good thing, no doubt, compared to drowning.

Danny followed them this time, suspending himself in the air. No falling in the water-when he was moving himself through space, he was much quicker, more deft about it.

“I’m going to go see where my friend is,” said Danny. “If she’s hurt or dead, I’ll do the same thing to one of you while the other watches.”

“We not to touch her, we not talk to her!” the less-panicked man insisted.

Danny gated himself back to Hermia’s hotel room in Rio. It was empty this time, no shotguns waiting. The door was undamaged-they must have bribed their way in. Danny went to the balcony and looked out over the broad beach. So many people lying there or milling around. But after a few minutes he spotted someone who might be Hermia. He made a gate near her. If it was Hermia, she’d see it and step into it; if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t.

It was. She did.

“Is it already time?” she asked as soon as she was in the hotel room.

“I came here for you,” said Danny, “and I was met by a shotgun blast.”

Hermia saw the pellet pattern on the wall, Danny’s punctured clothes, and exclaimed softly. “My Family wouldn’t-”

“Not your Family,” said Danny.

“They just shot to kill? Without a warning?”

“No negotiations. Just … bang.”

“Who was it?”

“Hittites, I’m pretty sure.” He grinned.

“Extinct gods with shotguns,” said Hermia.

“Extinct for two thousand years, no less. They didn’t actually admit to being Hittite, but it’s the one they denied instead of being evasive. I have them hanging over the Atlantic.”

“I want to talk to them.”

“You want to lock the gate they’re using so they drop into the water and drown,” said Danny.

“Eventually, yes,” said Hermia. “You’re too soft, Danny. People who shoot first can’t be left alive.”

“People who talk about Bel have some explaining to do,” said Danny. “And they didn’t actually kill me.”

“They killed your clothing,” said Hermia. “Walk around like this and you’ll start a new fashion. Perforated clothing. Shotgun Style by Calvin Klein.”

“I want to make the Great Gate before anything else happens,” said Danny. “Those clowns aren’t going anywhere. We’ll have plenty of time to question them after.”

“If we make it back,” said Hermia.

“If we don’t, then someday somebody will find a heap of bones and some empty clothing hanging in the air over some spot in the Atlantic. It’ll make the cover of the Enquirer .”

“You sound like you don’t care,” said Hermia, “but I know you do.”

Danny sighed. Leslie thought the worst of him, Hermia thought the best of him, and they were both right. Danny gated the two men into a single cell in the county jail in Lexington, Virginia. “They’re on dry ground now, all right?” he told her. “Now let’s get this gate made before somebody notices them and lets them out.”

“Where are they?” she demanded.

“In jail,” said Danny. He made a viewport into the cell and showed her.

Hermia spoke to them. “Don’t make a sound,” she said. “If you try to get out or if you talk to anybody at all, it’s back to the ocean for you.” Then she added a few words in a language Danny had never heard.

“Yes, they understood me,” she said to Danny. “The Hittite-Armenian theory seems to have some merit.”