“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.”
“You speak Armenian?” asked Danny.
“It came up,” said Hermia. “I’m a gatemage, it’s a language.”
Danny reached out his hand, and the two of them gated to the barn.
6
“What did you do with them?” demanded Leslie.
“They’re alive,” said Hermia. “And safe.”
Leslie looked at Danny suspiciously. “I want to hear it from him.”
“Because you think you can tell if I’m lying?” asked Danny.
“We assume you’re lying,” said Stone. “Because we’re all hoping you killed them and had done with it.”
“I’m hoping no such thing!” said Leslie.
“We can’t control a gatemage anyway,” said Marion to Leslie. “He did what he did, he’ll do what he does.”
“I can make him feel guilty about it,” said Leslie.
“That’s not very sporting,” said Veevee. “Danny feels guilty for being alive.”
“Make the Great Gate,” said Hermia. “If the Hittites are onto us, then everybody knows that there are gatemages in the world again, and they’ll be looking for a Great Gate.”
“That’s an argument against making one,” said Stone.
“It’s an argument for making one now,” said Hermia, “and all of us going through it except Marion and Leslie, because they’ve already gone and somebody has to keep watch.”
“You’re coming right back, aren’t you?” Leslie asked Danny.
“Unless the Gate Thief gets me this time,” said Danny.
“Do you think there’s any chance of that?” asked Veevee.
“He’s weaker than he was,” said Danny, “but he knows a lot more than I do.” Danny walked to the rope, took hold of it, pulled the noose wide open.
“I hate that noose,” said Veevee. “It looks so grim.”
Danny made no answer, just pulled the noose down over his head and shoulders, then tightened it under his armpits. Now he could put his weight on the rope while keeping his hands free.
His feet were still on the floor of the barn. He turned around and around until the rope was so twisted that it lifted him off the floor. Only the tips of his toes touched.
“Want us to wind you tighter?” asked Hermia.
“I’m pretty tightly wound already,” said Danny.
“Very funny,” said Veevee.
“I’m still not sure whether I should go through it,” said Stone.
“Do it,” said Veevee, “and keep me company.”
“It will give you the power to make plants grow and cover everything,” said Marion.
“That’s kudzu,” said Stone. “It doesn’t need any help from me.”
Veevee took hold of his hand. “‘Come and go with me to that land where I’m bound,’” she sang.
“Is that a real song?” asked Stone.
“A very old one,” said Veevee. She sang again: “‘I’m gonna walk the streets of glory on that great day in the mornin’.’”
“I need to concentrate,” said Danny. “And I need the two of you to be watching, so you know when to go through the gate.”