Only you’d never know that from the way Coach Lieder was taking it. Apparently the future of the human race depended on the outcome of every event. If a Parry McCluer athlete won, the human race was safe for another year. If one of the kids from Lexington won, then the alien assault ship was that much closer to landing and enslaving all of human life. Lieder didn’t get angry at the losers, he got despondent. He even said, “We’re doomed, we’re doomed.” Even though his team was doing a little better than the other guys.
When the manager-a sophomore that Danny barely knew-pointed this out, Lieder looked at him with pity. “Oh, we don’t suck as bad as Rockbridge. That’s like going out with an ugly girl and saying, ‘Well, at least she’s breathing.’”
Since Danny suspected the manager had never gone out on any date, “breathing” would have been an improvement for him. But the kid wisely said nothing.
Danny won the 1600 and 3200 meters easily, but Lieder glowered at him and pointed out that he was nowhere near his best time. “It was a race,” said Danny. “I won it.”
“But you didn’t try,” said Lieder.
“I didn’t have to,” said Danny. And then inspiration struck. “You want to show these guys my best? In November?”
Lieder thought about this. “So you think you’re our secret weapon.”
“I’ve only been running competitively for a few weeks,” said Danny. “If I’m a weapon, it’s still secret from me.”
Lieder turned his back and walked away. Which, for Lieder, was like an apology.
But then Lieder got the bright idea of tossing Danny into the 200 meters with no prep.
“I’m tired,” said Danny.
“You don’t get tired,” said Lieder.
“Of course I get tired,” said Danny.
“Ricken is limping like a big baby. If you’re in the race, he’ll try harder.”
Danny had committed to the team, which meant obeying the coach, even when he was pushing his athletes too hard in an event that meant nothing. So he said, “Sure thing,” and went to take his place at the starting line.
The 200 was almost a sprint, like running a football field from one end zone to the other and back again. But it was Ricken’s big event and Danny wasn’t going to shame him in it. Even though Ricken was glaring at him as if jumping into his event had been Danny’s idea.
Danny passed a gate over Ricken, just in case he really had hurt his ankle like he said. Then, to be fair, he passed all the other runners through gates that took them no distance at all, but got rid of any fatigue or stress injuries or cramps they might be suffering. Let’s have an even playing field, thought Danny. Everybody do your best.
It turned out that Ricken’s best was better than Danny’s after all. Of course, Ricken actually cared and Danny was tired. He hadn’t passed himself through a gate, so he was still fatigued from the two longer races. Truth to tell, though, he might have been able to stay ahead of Ricken when he made his move at the end. But Ricken wanted it, it was his event, and Danny didn’t want to be an asshole.
“You asshole,” said Ricken, still panting after the race. “You let me win.”
“You mean I didn’t trip you?” asked Danny. “I didn’t shove you?”
“You didn’t sprint.”
“I ran the thirty-two and the sixteen already today. I didn’t have a sprint in me.”
“You moron!” shouted Lieder as he approached.
“He talking to me or you?” asked Danny.
“Must be me, because you’re not a moron, you’re an asshole,” said Ricken. But he punched Danny lightly in the arm and moved off. They both knew it was Danny that Lieder was yelling at.
“I send you into the 200, you run the 200!”
“Ricken and I left all the Rockbridge guys licking our sweat,” said Danny. “And Ricken didn’t show injury, did he?”
“I don’t send you in to inspire the other guys,” said Lieder. “I send you in to win.”
Danny stood there.
“You got anything to say for yourself?”
“Besides how I already won two races?”
“Without trying.”
“But without losing.”
Again a silence.
“You’re still at war with me, aren’t you?”
“No sir,” said Danny. “The 200 is Ricken’s distance. He trains for it. He’s better than me.”
“Bull pucky,” said Lieder.
Danny leaned close and talked softly. “I told you I don’t compete. I hate competing. Ricken competes. He cares.”
“Start caring,” said Lieder.
“If I cared about track,” said Danny, “would I be at Parry McCluer, with you as my coach?” Danny turned his back and walked away. Not toward the stands. Not toward the team. But toward the fence, which he scrambled over almost like a hop, and then across the road. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like he was walking off the team. But to Danny’s more discerning perceptions, he was merely walking off the field because his last event was over.
Lieder must have seen this too, because he didn’t yell at Danny to get his butt back with the team, and all the usual abuse.
Or maybe it was because Nicki was there talking to her dad. Calming him down maybe. Or telling him that she liked putting her tongue in Danny’s mouth and so he’d better not piss the boy off. Whatever.
Danny didn’t go to the parking lot where the team bus was waiting. Instead, he started running up Greenhouse Road, away from Highway 11. Let it look like he was blowing off steam.
What he was really doing was following the voices.
He had learned to ignore the clamor of the captive gates; they were not so much voices as inchoate longings that did not speak to anything in Danny’s experience. They felt distant to him, though in the abstract he felt bad about their long captivity. That vague compassion had been, he supposed, the reason he had included the most eager of them in the Great Gate he made in Silvermans’ barn. Hadn’t that turned out well.
The voices that had been Loki’s own gates, however, were a different matter. At first their nagging chant had been like the pulse of a large beast, another heart beating somewhere in his body. Gate, gate, gate, they intoned; and when he made the Great Gate, they had seemed to panic. But them, too, he had pressed down and kept at bay, so that he could concentrate on other things. He thought that it must be rather like tinnitus, the unceasing whine that some people hear constantly in their ears. You just learn to blank it out.
But in the days since Loki had given his gates to him, everything had changed. The constant throb of gate, gate, gate was gone. At first, what remained had seemed to him like silence, except for the distant clamor of the captives that remained inside him.
It was not silence, though. It was something different. These gates that had once seemed almost insane in their monomania were now attentive, observant. Danny felt himself being watched. But not in an unfriendly way, not by a stranger. Rather it was as if his own inmost mind, the part of his mind that watched his conscious thoughts and responded to them, had been joined by others. They did not judge him, but they had suggestions.
That was what had taken him a while to understand. They did not speak in words. Even the gate-gate-gate of the past had not been in actual language. It was deeper than language. He knew the meaning of the pulse of desire. But he could not have named the language it was being spoken in, and then concluded that it was no language at all. It was self-speech. As was their conversation now.
Voices, then, but not words. And yet remembering their suggestions, even a half-moment later, he thought of them as words. His own words. His own language. Just as his conscious mind translated the impulses that came from his deep observer-mind into language the moment they surfaced into consciousness. When Loki gave his lost gates to Danny, they had become, if not an actual part of himself, the most intimate of friends. They were on his side. Their suggestions were designed to help him do better.