Gatefather (35 page)

“Do you know how it feels to me?” asked Wheeler. “Weirdly quiet. It's not like I heard actual voices or words or anything. But it's like something that used to keep me agitated all the time has taken a vacation.”

“Will that make Wheeler less weird?” asked Laurette.

“Doubtful,” said Pat.

“This is what makes me so frustrated,” said Danny. “We do this banter all the time, everybody does it, insulting each other, mocking each other, only … it hurts, doesn't it? We hurt each other. Can't we just stop? Can't we just be kind? Wheeler's not weird, he's just another human trying to figure out how he can belong to a tribe. And in
this
group he doesn't exactly stand out for weirdness, does he? Look at us. The ‘popular' kids call us weird, because we don't obey them and dress like them and worship them, but screw them, they're nasty and stupid. We're smart and … let's stop treating each other the way
they
treat us. Because we don't deserve it.”

They were all silent for a while.

“I didn't know it bothered you,” said Laurette.

“It didn't. I didn't even notice it till now. But here's Wheeler telling us that he used to be agitated all the time, and Pat and I are telling you that he was plagued with these
things
from outside himself, trying to make him unhappy and self-destructive, and then you have to call him
weird
?”

“I'm the one who said it,” said Laurette, “and I was asking if it would make him
less
weird—”

“I know what you said, Laurette, and it wasn't just you. Everybody laughed. Including me!”

“But not Pat. She never laughs,” said Xena.

“Yes, she does,” said Danny. “All the time.”

“With you,” said Sim.

“
At
you,” said Hal. “No, erase that, sorry. It's just such a
habit
!”

“It's how we know we're part of the group,” said Laurette. “The popular kids, they make fun of people
outside
their group. We tease each other, but we're never mean to people outside.”

“Yes, we are,” said Sin.

“We're as vicious as the popular kids,” said Xena.

“Yes, but we're smarter, so the things we say about them are actually funny.”

“I didn't mean to disrupt everything,” said Danny. “I'm not mad, and I'm not blaming you or anybody because I do it too. It just felt wrong, right at that moment, for us to mock Wheeler. It's like, we found out he had a hidden wound, a dagger sticking out of his ribs, and I pulled out the dagger and then we started laughing at him for bleeding.”

“That was a really bad analogy,” said Laurette.

“It was only a little bad,” said Danny. “It was also a little accurate. Of course we can tease each other. If we didn't poke each other, yeah, how would we even know that we belonged. I just wish we could stop poking each other right in the bleeding wounds. Let's try to heal the wounds, and poke somewhere else.”

“I'll try,” said Pat. “But we're high-school kids, you know.”

“We haven't all aced the SAT and the ACT,” said Hal.

“You know that those tests measure nothing except your ability to take tests,” said Danny.

“But since college consists of passing a whole bunch of tests for four years, that's a good skill to have,” said Sin.

“I wish we were smarter so we could form a team like Scorpion,” said Wheeler.

“Which one are you?” asked Hal. “Sylvester?”

“I wish,” said Wheeler. “I'm more like … one of the civilians who gets in the way.”

“I'm Paige,” said Laurette. “I'm the normal one who helps them communicate with humans.”

“So Danny is Walter?” asked Wheeler. “The genius?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” said Danny.

“You
so
need to get cable in that little house of yours,” said Xena. “
Scorpion
. It's a TV show about a team of geniuses who don't get along, only they really need each other so they keep almost breaking up but then they can't survive without each other.”

“We don't keep almost breaking up,” said Danny.

“We also don't have to get ratings every week so we can stay on the air,” said Pat. “It's always got all this fake conflict, only I find myself caring even though I know it's just writers manipulating me.”

“It's the little boy, Ralph,” said Xena. “That's what makes me care.”

“Danny isn't Walter,” said Hal. “Danny is Cade. The grownup with real power in the real world, who comes in and saves their asses time and again.”

“But also he's the one who keeps getting them into danger in the first place,” said Laurette. “Sorry, Danny, but … kind of true.”

“We're discussing a TV show,” said Pat.

“Because it applies to us,” said Hal. “Come on, Pat, we can't just sit around thinking serious thoughts and discussing Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and the Elder Eddas.”

“Where did Kierkegaard come from?” asked Pat. “Who's heard of Kierkegaard?”

Sin had her phone out, trying to remember how to spell Kierkegaard—if she had ever known. Hal started helping her.

“Danny doesn't need cable,” said Wheeler. “He needs a tablet.”

“But to stream any shows, he'd have to get wi-fi, which he doesn't have unless he gets cable, and then he'd have cable,” said Xena.

Sin started reading. “‘Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.'”

“I have no idea what that means,” said Danny.

“Neither do I,” said Sin, “but Kierkegaard said it.”

Hal started reading off her phone. “‘Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the windowpanes, which vanish with the warmth.'”

“Sounds like a depressed Dane,” said Pat.

“But he's a
great
Dane,” said Wheeler.

“Woof,” said Xena.

Sin was reading again. “OK, here's one. ‘Don't forget to love yourself.'”

“Maybe Danes need to be reminded of that. Especially in winter,” said Pat. “But Americans usually need to be reminded to love somebody besides themselves.”

“‘The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays,'” said Sin.

“If Danny's a god,” said Wheeler, “I wonder if anybody prays to him.”

Danny held up his hand, knowing that somebody would start doing it just to be cute. “Please don't. Please be my friends and don't ever call me a god. I don't act like I think I'm a god, do I? I try not to.”

“You just, like, cast out Wheeler's devils,” said Xena. “You may not be a god but you're
something
.”

Danny buried his head in his hands. “I'm Danny North, and I've got way more power than any human being should have, but I still can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with it. A lot of terrible things are happening and worse ones are coming and it's partly my fault, so I think it's my job to stop them but I don't know how and, hell, I don't even know how things are
supposed
to look when I set everything to rights, because the world kind of sucked
before
I found out I was a gatemage, and I know
that
wasn't my fault. So do I scale back the suckage until it only sucks as much as usual? Or am I supposed to fix the whole thing? Or just stop the
worst
suckathons and then crawl in a hole somewhere like Loki did after he closed all the gates?”

“Danny is confused,” said Laurette.

“He doesn't like to be confused,” said Sin. “He's an organized person. This is not the right planet for him.”

“There
is
no right planet for me,” said Danny, “and I've been to all three.”

“Stay on this one,” said Pat. “For me.”

“Love is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” said Xena brightly. “Don't correct me, Laurette, I wasn't being stupid, I was being ironic.”

“‘It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards,'” read Hal. “‘But they forget the other proposition—'”

But he couldn't finish, because the others howled him down. “Forget Kierkegaard,” said Sin, taking back her phone.

“‘People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought, which they seldom use,'” Hal recited quickly.

“Hal's going to major in philosophy,” said Xena.

“
Danish
philosophy,” said Wheeler.

“The philosophy of danishes,” said Xena. “He'll get so fat.”

“I think Kierkegaard sounds cool. Paradoxical and stuff. Not as insane as Nietzsche.”

“You've read Nietzsche,” said Laurette.

“After I met an actual superman, I thought I owed it to myself to read
Man and Superman
,” said Hal.

“That's George Bernard Shaw,” said Pat.

“I know,” said Hal. “But it was Nietzsche who coined the term ‘ubermensch,' so I read
Also sprach Zarathustra
—”

“Please tell me you didn't read it in German,” said Pat.

“I can't read German,” Hal said. “And I can't understand Nietzsche even in English, only he sounds like he thinks he's smarter and better and more dangerous and cool than everybody else, which means he's the opposite of Danny, because Danny keeps apologizing for being what he is, which is dumb.”

“Thanks,” said Danny.

Hal read off the screen of his own phone, “‘The most common form of despair is not being who you are.'”

“‘Be yourself,'” quoted Xena. “‘Everybody else is taken.'”

“She used to have a T-shirt that said that,” said Sin.

“I still have it,” said Xena. “But I bought it before I got my boobs, and now I can't get the shirt to go down over them, so nobody could read it anyway.”

“Anybody looking at your chest
now
,” said Laurette, “is not reading.”

“Thank you,” said Xena.

“‘The most painful state of being is remembering the future,'” read Hal, “‘particularly the one you'll never have.'”

Danny laughed wryly. “That sounds like it actually means something. If only I were intelligent enough to see how it applies to me. Guys, I learned a lot today, and on top of that, I found out that you're willing to listen to me go on and on about how
hard
my life is, which is ridiculous because if anybody in this world can get whatever he wants, it's me. So thanks.”

“I think we should all get college credit for a class in Kierkegaard,” said Laurette.

“Just remember that Danny took away
my
devils,” said Wheeler, “but you've still all got yours.”

“That was kind of inaccurate,” said Pat, “since you've already got a bunch of new ones.”

“The devil made me say it,” said Wheeler.

“I've got to go think about stuff,” said Danny. “Meaning I need some sleep.”

“If you take Pat with you, you won't sleep,” said Laurette.

“Get a life, Laurette, it's not like that,” said Pat.

“If I take Pat with me, I'll think better,” said Danny.

“With your
brain
?” asked Wheeler.

“Wheeler doesn't need Sutahites to be a jerk,” said Pat. Then she turned to Wheeler. “Of course, I meant that in the nicest possible way.”

Danny took Pat's hand. “Want to come with me?”

Her answer was to jump to his house—taking him with her. It was strange being her passenger. But also kind of nice. Like he could turn things over to somebody else, even if only for a minute, and it would still come out OK.

 

16

“There have never been dragons,” said Lus, the old loremaster. “They're a legend that originated in Mittlegard, but such creatures have never existed anywhere, least of all here in Mitherhame.”

Gerd only smiled—which, Hermia knew, was exactly the pose a person needed to strike if she was to be thought powerful. However, Hermia's pose was not one of power; she wasn't CEO of a powerful corporation, she was merely a consultant, and what she had to sell was her wisdom. Or at least her useful data.

“When we call it a dragon,” said Hermia, “everyone knows what to expect. It will fly. It will spew out fire and kill from a distance and up close. And it will be impervious to arrows and swords. But no, there has never been a
living
dragon, and that is not what Lady Gerd of the North will demonstrate here today. For instance, everyone knows that the only thing that a dragon cannot penetrate is stone. The city of Y was built here in these craggy hills precisely so that it could be built of local stone, which is very hard. What could a dragon—if there were such a creature—do against these walls?”

“Nothing, of course,” said Lus, because he was a lover of logic.

“Your implication,” said Queen Genoesswess, “is plain. This ‘dragon' of yours
will
harm our walls, or why show it to us? Suppose that your claim is true. To harm our walls would certainly impress us. But then we would have to rebuild the wall.”

Hermia glanced at King Sorian, who, as usual, was listening to everything and saying nothing. “Have you no stonemages?” Hermia asked.

The queen smiled. “The walls of this redoubt were built by ancient Stonefathers, from the age when we passed between the worlds. It is all living rock, drawn up from the bowels of these hills and shaped according to their dreams. There's no stonemage in all the world who can do any such thing.”

“Then perhaps,” said Hermia, “we could choose a different target. What do you think, Lady of the North?”