The Lost Gate Part 8

Where could he change clothes?

He jogged around behind the building-a surprisingly long way-till he came to a long street with row houses lining the other side. Most of them had stairways up to the front door, and several of them had bas.e.m.e.nt entrances under the stoop. Danny looked for a house that looked unoccupied at the moment, then lightly vaulted the iron fence and ducked under the stoop. It didn't take him long to swap clothes. Now he looked newer. Closer to normal. And he had shoes on.

The trouble was, he was still a kid. Would they even let him in?

The answer was simple enough.

No.

"What do you think I'm going to do, steal stuff?" asked Danny.

"Or color on the walls," said the security guy-but with a smile, as if to say, I don't make the rules and I know they shouldn't apply to you, but that's how things are.

And Danny couldn't explain: I'm hoping that somewhere in here-the Library that has everything-I'll be able to find something about gatemages. Even if it's written about as a collection of folklore or ancient legends, I need to find out what I'm supposed to be able to do and maybe find some clue about how to do it. Gatemages are supposed to be really powerful and dangerous, but except for getting out of tight situations, I can't think of anything remotely perilous that I can do with my gatemaking. So I need a book. book. I need a I need a clue. clue.

He thought of the library in the old house in the North compound. All the answers he wanted were there, he knew it. And what would any book in the Library of Congress be able to tell him? The best he could hope for would be ancient legends, treated by modern authors as mere folklore or even fantasy, but containing some kernel of truth that might guide him.

Every other kind of mage got training from others with his skill. Treemages were introduced to the trees by a Treefriend, beastmages to their beasts by an Eyefriend or Clawbrother.

The unfairness of it, the frustration, it all struck home at that moment and he felt tears come into his eyes. He brushed them away.

"Crying isn't getting you in here," said the security guy. But he wasn't smiling now.

"I know," said Danny. And, though his emotion had been real, he immediately thought of ways he might exploit it, lies he might tell. In the next moment, he rejected the lies. This drowther was a decent guy. It was his job to keep out unaccompanied children who might damage things. If he let Danny in he would be risking his job. Why should Danny bring so much trouble into his his life? Especially considering that there was another way. For a gatemage, there was always another way into or out of a place. life? Especially considering that there was another way. For a gatemage, there was always another way into or out of a place.

Danny stepped back from the security gate and peered through into the room. There were no visible books, but he could see that there was a kind of alcove. Leading to restrooms. He fixed the location in his mind so he could come back to it later, by other means. Then he turned and left.

Outside the building, he stood for a while looking up at the Capitol dome. Drowthers might have no magery, but they built this. this. What mage had ever What mage had ever built built anything? All right, yes, mages worked with the natural world, so great artificial things like this building were not even interesting to a mage. But still-without any particular powers except the skill of their hands and the thoughts in their minds, the drowthers had built great and beautiful things. Ugly things, too-but the Aunts always spoke of drowthers as if all they ever made were wars and stinks and stupidity. But it was not true. Drowthers also sometimes made things that were beautiful or mighty or clever or useful, or all of these at once. anything? All right, yes, mages worked with the natural world, so great artificial things like this building were not even interesting to a mage. But still-without any particular powers except the skill of their hands and the thoughts in their minds, the drowthers had built great and beautiful things. Ugly things, too-but the Aunts always spoke of drowthers as if all they ever made were wars and stinks and stupidity. But it was not true. Drowthers also sometimes made things that were beautiful or mighty or clever or useful, or all of these at once.

Maybe Loki noticed this, too. Maybe Loki came to care about the drowthers and realized that if he closed all the gates, tying the G.o.ds to the place they were in and taking away the vast increase in power that came from gating between the worlds, then the drowthers could come into their own. The world would belong to them, and not to the mages anymore.

But he still had to learn how to be a gatemage. Because he was was going to open a gate to the other world. To Westil, the ancient homeland of the mages. Loki might have been moved by compa.s.sion for the drowthers, but it had been nearly fourteen centuries, and the drowthers had come into their might and power. Surely now a Great Gate could be opened. What else was Danny born for, if not for that? going to open a gate to the other world. To Westil, the ancient homeland of the mages. Loki might have been moved by compa.s.sion for the drowthers, but it had been nearly fourteen centuries, and the drowthers had come into their might and power. Surely now a Great Gate could be opened. What else was Danny born for, if not for that?

I'm not another Loki, he thought. I'm the anti-Loki, the opposite. What he closed, I'll open. What he broke, I'll fix. What he hid, I'll find.

He opened a gate into the Library of Congress and found himself standing in the restroom alcove. He could see, not all that far away, the guard who had denied him entrance. But the man's attention was directed toward the outside and the other guards near him. He was not scanning for intruders who had somehow slipped in behind him.

As long as he was there, Danny used the restroom. It felt good to wash his hands and face. Days without was.h.i.+ng were good for begging, bad for personal comfort.

A man came into the restroom and stopped and looked at Danny. No, not at Danny, at his backpack.

"How did you get that in here?" he asked.

Danny remembered the signs outside, that all bags and backpacks had to be scanned. Nothing about their being prohibited. But apparently the fear of book-stealing meant that it was suspicious for a kid to have a backpack with him in the restroom. And this guy looked like the kind of jerk who would be delighted to drag Danny out by the ear and have him arrested for stealing, simply for the sheer pleasure of adding to the sum of human misery in the world.

So Danny opened his backpack, showing that there was nothing inside but clothes.

The man nodded. "All right, but check that bag at the desk before you go anywhere else." Then the man went into a stall, dropped his pants, and began to stink up the place.

Danny's first impulse was to flee-to make a gate to the outside, or at least to get out of the now-unpleasant room and into a place with cleaner air. Instead, he stood there contemplating the problem of the backpack. He couldn't have it with him, but he didn't want to lose it. He could go back outside and hide it somewhere and then return, but he ran the risk of someone finding it and stealing it while he was gone. Besides, it just felt... wrong. Inelegant, perhaps, as Auntie Tweng used to say of kludgy solutions to math or programming problems. "Yes, it works," she would say, "but it's not elegant. Truth is simple and elegant. That's how you know it when you see it."

What Danny needed to do was find a place to put the bag where no one would find it. Couldn't a gatemage open a way into some small compartment-like the paper towel dispenser?-and push something through it?

Danny had never yet made a gate without pus.h.i.+ng himself through it in the process. But he certainly couldn't push himself into the towel dispenser, not without blowing it all up when he tried to put himself into the same s.p.a.ce as the wall-or breaking every bone in his body to make himself fit.

So he stood there, ignoring the man's groans and stinks as he continued to relieve himself copiously. Danny thought: The guy really is is full of s.h.i.+t. full of s.h.i.+t.

He stood in front of the paper towel dispenser and contemplated it. It was embedded in the wall, a tall metal contraption that was mostly wastebasket below and towel dispenser above. The wastebasket was overflowing. Still, it was the obvious place to stash the backpack. Danny thought of just jamming it down into the trash, but by now he was committed to at least trying to create a gate without going through it. A tiny gate that would simply let him push the backpack through a thin sheet of metal into a narrow enclosed s.p.a.ce.

What could go wrong? The worst that could happen would be a huge nuclear explosion when the atoms of the backpack tried to occupy the same s.p.a.ce as the atoms of the dispenser, the wall, and the trash. And in that case, he wouldn't care anymore. Heck, he wouldn't even be in trouble, because they'd blame it on some terrorist or foreign power and it would trigger a devastating war that would slaughter millions or billions of drowthers. Doing some stupid impulsive thing that caused the death of drowthers was practically a family tradition. The only unusual thing would be that Danny would die as a consequence of his own stupidity.

But the fact that there were no legends about huge explosions from the idiotic actions of untrained gatemages suggested that either it could be done safely or it couldn't be done at all.

So he stood there, trying to make a gate without going through it. The trouble was, he didn't really understand what he was doing when he made a gate of any kind. He just knew how it felt felt-what he was doing inside himself while thinking of a place he wanted to be. How could he feel that way, including visualizing the inside of the trash receptacle, without moving himself into the place?

The man in the stall sighed with relief. How nice for him, thought Danny.

"Oh, d.a.m.n," whispered the man. "d.a.m.n d.a.m.n d.a.m.n."

Danny pressed the backpack against the trash receptacle and tried to think of it being inside. Nothing happened.

I might as well cross my fingers and wish, thought Danny.

"Are you still there?" asked the man.

"Yes," said Danny.

"This stall is out of toilet paper. Can you get me some toilet paper from the other stall?"

Danny set down the backpack and went into the other stall. Danny thought of unrolling long sheets of toilet paper and lofting them over the wall between stalls. Then he noticed that there was a spare roll of toilet paper behind the partial one. Only a thin sheet of metal stood between him and that entire roll.

The idea formed in the process of carrying it out. Danny would would move through a tiny gate in a metal sheet-but it would be just his hand, not his whole body. He reached out his hand while producing that gatish feeling inside himself and his hand pushed through the metal as if it weren't there-though he could still see it. It was his hand that disappeared. He thought: Hi, I'm one-handed Danny, the gatemage who drops off pieces of himself in every metal box he pa.s.ses. move through a tiny gate in a metal sheet-but it would be just his hand, not his whole body. He reached out his hand while producing that gatish feeling inside himself and his hand pushed through the metal as if it weren't there-though he could still see it. It was his hand that disappeared. He thought: Hi, I'm one-handed Danny, the gatemage who drops off pieces of himself in every metal box he pa.s.ses.

He felt his fingers close around the spare toilet paper roll. He pulled it out. It came easily. His hand was intact. So was the surface of the toilet paper dispenser.

He pushed his hand back through the surface and there was no resistance. He could feel around the empty s.p.a.ce where the spare roll had been. He pushed the roll back through and it went, fitting nicely into the s.p.a.ce. Danny pulled his hand back out-the roll was where it belonged.

"What are you doing?" demanded the man.

"Getting toilet paper for you," said Danny.

"Can you hurry it up?"

Danny wanted to say, You're pretty snotty-sounding for a guy trapped on a toilet who needs a favor.

Instead, Danny reached back into the little gate he had made. This time he had no gate-making feeling. The gate was simply... there. And he knew it was there, he could sense it, it was part of his mental map. He wondered if the gate would be there now for everyone else to use-if the janitor could now reload the dispenser without using his little key to open it up.

"Come on on!" the man insisted. And then, as if on cue, he let go with an enormous prolonged fart and there was another plop.

What flashed into Danny's mind was a perverse version of a line of Lady Macbeth's: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much poo in him?" Auntie Uck would have been proud of him for finding just the right quote.

Danny reached the roll of toilet paper to the top of the stall divider. "Catch," he said.

The man groaned.

Danny let go of the roll. It hit the floor and rolled back under the divider into Danny's stall.

"I missed it," the man said. His voice sounded agonized. More noises.

Danny nudged it back under the divider with his foot. The room stank worse than ever.

"Thanks," said the man. "For getting it dirty with your shoe."

Danny almost laughed at the man's stupidity. "Any time," he said.

He walked back out of the stall and went straight for the trash receptacle. He made a gate in it by pus.h.i.+ng his hand through to grab trash. He pulled out a handful of damp, wadded-up paper towels and dropped them on the floor. Now the gate existed. It was a simple matter to push the backpack through it and jam it into the s.p.a.ce.

When he had withdrawn his hand, Danny wondered why the backpack didn't just pop right back out through the gate. Then it occurred to him to wonder just how big the gate actually was. He pushed his finger against the metal surface just beside the spot where he could sense the gate was. Nothing. He touched a lot of other spots, and the metal was impermeable. He had to be reaching for the exact exact location of the gate-a place that no one else could possibly distinguish from any other-and then his whole hand went through as if the metal weren't even there. location of the gate-a place that no one else could possibly distinguish from any other-and then his whole hand went through as if the metal weren't even there.

So that's why it took magery even to find find a gate. A Sniffer might not be able to make anything or open a closed gate, but he could tell where one existed. A Keyfriend could reach through a gate like this one, even though he couldn't make one. So gates didn't actually have to be hidden. They were unfindable to those without gatemagery. a gate. A Sniffer might not be able to make anything or open a closed gate, but he could tell where one existed. A Keyfriend could reach through a gate like this one, even though he couldn't make one. So gates didn't actually have to be hidden. They were unfindable to those without gatemagery.

Or maybe it was only lame, half-a.s.sed gates like the kind an untrained gatemage like Danny could make that were automatically hidden. Maybe if he were a really powerful mage, he could make gates that anyone could use.

Anyway, the backpack was hidden inside the dispenser, Danny could get it out any time, and judging from the condition of this restroom, the trash receptacle wasn't going to be emptied anytime soon. Then again, the fact that the toilet paper dispensers were mostly empty might suggest that it was about time for the janitor to show up.

Well, if he finds my backpack, I'll just shoplift another. I can live without my old raggedy begging clothes. Maybe I'll stop begging anyway.

Danny gathered up the paper towel litter he had pulled out of the receptacle when he made the gate, and jammed it down into the trashbin from the top.

He heard the toilet flush. He heard the man stand up, the sound of pants being fastened. The man was sighing with relief when Danny reached the door and was gone. Only later did he realize that his encounter with this dump-taking jerk was precisely the kind of thing that the Family expected of drowthers. Danny remembered how sentimental and admiring he was about drowthers while looking at the Capitol dome, and he felt as if he had learned something. He wasn't sure what. Maybe just that n.o.bility and baseness could coexist in the same species. Maybe even in the same person. And that was just as true of the Westil Families as of drowthers. Great heroes, officious dump-taking morons-maybe they were even the same guys. For all he knew, this clown had won the Congressional Medal of Honor when he was younger.

Danny strode purposefully into a large open room-no, a vast vast room-filled with tables and counters and computer screens, and now there were shelves here and there with books on them, though it was obvious that these could not be a significant part of the vast collection of the Library of Congress. Probably you had to look up the t.i.tle you wanted and then ask for it to be delivered to you. room-filled with tables and counters and computer screens, and now there were shelves here and there with books on them, though it was obvious that these could not be a significant part of the vast collection of the Library of Congress. Probably you had to look up the t.i.tle you wanted and then ask for it to be delivered to you.

Danny sat down at a computer and began to feel his way through the software. On a whim he tried "gate magic" as his search terms. He expected to get either thousands of hits or none at all, depending on whether the search engine scanned through the contents of books or insisted on finding only that exact combination in a t.i.tle.

There were thousands of hits. Of course-the search engine had a notation: POWERED BY GOOGLE POWERED BY GOOGLE. Drowthers could do magic with data, as surely as treemages did magic with trees. Was it possible that this really was a power? That if he could bring one of the Google programmers through a great gate to Westil and back again, his power would be vastly increased? Then again, why would he need to? Computers were a kind of magery in themselves, or might as well be-to people who didn't understand them, they were every bit as inscrutable. The programmers got to know them and love them and understand them in order to coax the right results out of them-just as beastmages did with their beasts, or stonemages with stone.

Danny smiled at the thought of all the great mages in the history of the Westil Families as if they were stereotypical computer geeks.

"Young man, can I help you with something?" asked a woman. Her i.d. made her an employee of the library.

"My dad's in the bathroom," said Danny.

She smiled. "I just wondered if I could help you find something." She looked at the screen. "'Gate' and 'magic,'" she said. "Is this a research project?"

"I wanted old legends," said Danny. "About... magical travel. Getting from one place to another."

"Seven-league boots," said the woman.

"Maybe," said Danny, who had never heard the term but guessed at its meaning. Boots that could take you miles with every step-maybe that's how gatemagery would seem to drowthers. "Or, like, the winged feet of Hermes."

"Oh, excellent," she said. "You've already done some research before you came-you'd be surprised how many people come here without having done enough research to know how to recognize what they're looking for even if they find it. Here, let me narrow your search a little." She sat down in the next chair and typed in a list of search terms and various pluses, minuses, and parentheses. In moments she got a much smaller, more refined list of book t.i.tles, and then entered another command. "The list is printing out at my desk right now," she said. "I'll get you the top six books and you can pick them up over there in about fifteen minutes."

"Wow," said Danny. He really was impressed.

"We're here to serve the public," she said. "And... we finally have decent software. You should have seen what a mess it was before. It was a miracle if you could find anything anything if you didn't already know exactly what you were looking for." if you didn't already know exactly what you were looking for."

And then she was gone.

Ah, drowthers, thought Danny. Sometimes you love them, sometimes you hate them.

Then for the first time it dawned on him that cla.s.sing all drowthers together made no more sense than having a word for all animals that can't stand upright on two legs for more than a minute, or all animals with dry noses. What possible use could there be for such cla.s.sifications? The word "drowther" didn't say anything about people except that they were not born in a Westil Family. "Drowther" meant "not us," and anything you said about drowthers beyond that was likely to be completely meaningless. They were not a "cla.s.s" at all. They were just... people.

Danny didn't want to loiter around doing nothing, so while he waited for the books he went into another room, a smaller one where people were sitting at tables reading or studying or taking notes. There was art on the walls and Danny walked around the room looking at it. n.o.body did more than glance up at him-apparently being an unaccompanied child in this room was okay, as long as he didn't make noise or touch anything.

I'm just six inches away from being a human being, thought Danny. Just a little taller, maybe a touch of moustache, and I won't have to put up with all the suspicion.

Then again, dump-taking man would probably have treated me with disdain just for being younger than him and not wearing a suit.

I need a suit. Not right now, but eventually. I need to be able to look as if I come from more than one social cla.s.s. I need clothes that look rich, and not just Wal-Mart clothes. What good does it do for me to gate my way into a place, if I immediately look out of place there, and everyone stares at me? Just getting from place to place is nothing if I can't appear normal in the new place.

I wonder what they wear in Westil? When I make a Great Gate and go there, will they dress like us? Or something as different from shoplifted Wal-Mart clothes as our modern clothes are from ancient Egyptian or Chinese costumes?

It had been fifteen minutes. He didn't have to look at a clock, he just knew. He had always had that knack-waking up when he planned to, staying away from home until an exact time, even though he didn't own a watch. When he returned late, having missed dinner, it was never because he lost track of time. It was because he got better food after his parents made the rule that if he was late, he'd get no food in their house. Then he'd stop by Aunt Lummie's on the way home and get a great sandwich even as she scolded him for his irresponsibility. "But a growing boy can't miss meals, it's just wrong, wrong," she'd say, and Uncle Mook would roll his eyes.

Danny stood up. The nice library woman must be back by now. That is, if her estimate of fifteen minutes meant anything.

There she was at the counter, and there were six books beside her, just as she had said.

"These are almost the best I could do," she said as soon as he was close enough that she didn't have to raise her voice.

"Almost?" asked Danny.

"Maybe you don't care about oddities in the collection, but I'm afraid they're my favorite thing," she said.

"I guess it depends on what you mean by 'oddities.'"

"Come with me and see," she said. "Of course, you can't touch it."

"Touch what?"

"You'll see."

She led him through an employees-only door and up a flight of stairs. At the top, there was a door with a keypad, and when she entered the code and pulled open the door, there was a whoosh of air. "Climate controlled," she said. "Try not to do any global warming while you're in here." She chuckled.

He followed her inside. It was a large room full of books in acrylic boxes. But she led him to another area, where books were shelved without separate cases. On a low table an oversized book was lying open.

"The book itself is only a couple of hundred years old," she said, "and it isn't in English, so I don't know what use it would be to you."