Gatefather by Orson Scott Card Page B

returning to Ced’s dreams. Because Wad had lied—he had thoughts of Anonoei all the time, waking and sleeping. His dreams were more like memories—Anonoei enticing him, or cuddling with him, or taunting him, or … but no, they weren’t really memories. They were like things that had really happened. But always she said the same thing. “I’m here for you. Will you be here for me?”
    He couldn’t recall her ever saying that exact statement, though it was the implicit bargain between them. Why did it keep coming back to him, waking and sleeping?
    It was like the way Anonoei called to him when she was facing Bexoi, before she fell silent. Not an actual call, but a feeling, an insinuation into his thoughts.
    I’m here for you. Will you be here for me?
    Was she alive? Was her ka calling to him from Duat? What could she possibly need from him, now that she was dead?
    Maybe what he was feeling was those little bits of her that she left behind. Her outself, her ba, fragmented like a gatemage’s gates. Danny North had been able to talk to Wad’s own gates, to access his memories through them. Were Anonoei’s bits of outself still talking to each other, still reaching out to talk to the people she had known and cared about?
    Or was it the absurd idea that Anonoei’s sons had told him—that Anonoei was still inside Bexoi’s body? But that’s not how manmagery works, the whole ka moving into the one possessed. That was Set’s move. And while it might be hard to know which of Anonoei’s sons was the more insane, it was reasonably certain that they were neck and neck, and way over the finish line.
    They believe she’s still alive because they want it to be so. And so do I.
    I didn’t love her enough to still be obsessing about her on my own. I didn’t realize it, I thought I simply missed her a little, but Ced is dreaming too, and he didn’t know her all that well and could hardly miss her. But dreams of her being trapped inside a box, beating on it to get out, but when he opened it, there was only a dead thing or a monster or something. What were the last scraps of Anonoei trying to say? What did they need, that would be within Wad’s power to give?

 
    5
    Buck Harward’s career had gone just fine up till now. He made a good impression on people at the Point, and while he wasn’t sure which of the two generals he had served as aide was now looking out for him, it was obvious to Buck and everyone else that somebody was bringing him along. He made lieutenant colonel ahead of anyone else in his class, though not so early as to set a record. The real proof of someone’s patronage was the kind of assignment he kept getting: at age thirty-five, he had already served three tours in combat zones, two stints in the Pentagon, and one with NATO.
    Now he headed a Combined Arms Battalion, consisting mostly of recent trainees who had never seen combat. Because they were training in mountainous terrain in West Virginia, he assumed that they were preparing for possible future operations in Taiwan. He found this encouraging— this administration, at least, was not going to let China get away with gobbling up its neighbors. And Buck Harward would be in the thick of it with men he had trained himself. If he screwed up there would be no one to blame but himself—but he was fine with bearing responsibility. Because if he succeeded—brilliantly, he hoped—then the credit would all be his. That would help a soldier who hoped to end his career as Army Chief of Staff—or higher.
    But one of the problems with commanding a training battalion within a hundred miles of the Beltway and five miles from Interstate 81 was drop-ins—VIPs who wanted to get a sense of what the Army was doing or vent their opinions or have a photo op with guys in tanks. And Buck Harward knew better than to complain about this—not to his superiors and