Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014: A Tor.Com Original

by Various Authors

  The new design came together methodically. Teasing out what were parts of the barricade and what were phantoms of the library and archivist slowed him down. He jumped every time the tarp buckled under the strain of roiling Turbulence. Father would have been disappointed with how long it was taking him, but Father now led Camp Terminus, a day’s trip away.

  The cart and the library galloping to keep pace looked like toys hurtling toward a tangled swarm of glowing, variegated threads as intangible as the barricade meant to stop them. Ritter dismissed the tarp and braced against a girder. The barricade swayed and rippled, alternately squat and lithe as it untangled then dissolved threads lashing at it.

  The storm of Turbulence dimmed, its snarled mass thinned down to scattered individual threads. Turbulence swarmed around the library and cart. The library reared, its translucent tusks shoving threads aside. The library and cart passed through the barricade as though it weren’t there. For non-engineers, it wasn’t.

  Now, Ritter had to stop the runaway cart. He jumped off the barricade and slammed onto the cart’s hood. Deck gave Ritter an amused gaze through the library tusk visor of his helmet, then waved. Very little fazed Deck.

  Ritter’s hand found the crack between the hood and the body of the cart. An imagined knife jammed into a lever. The hood swung up, slamming Ritter against the windshield. Ritter reached around and pulled free a piece of tubing. The motor died and Ritter felt Deck engage the brakes.

  “Not quite, Ritter.” The sharp, stentorian voice came from behind, not from the cart.

  That voice had etched itself too deeply into Ritter for him to mistake it. However, his father was several orders of magnitude too important to respond to a new graduate’s distress flare.

  “Father?” Ritter stumbled off the cart then snapped to attention. “Yes, sir.”

  Meeting Father was like crashing into the sandstone cliff that had erupted into existence while you weren’t looking. Father even looked the part. Thick shoulders and a general solidity settled on all engineers, but more so on Father. Even now that they saw eye-to-eye, Father still seemed to loom over him.

  “This is how you should have redesigned it.” Father marched to the barricade.

  He coiled then exploded, tumbling from one girder to another. The tall, hulking figure climbed up the barricade as easily as he’d walked to it. He exchanged the end point of one hose with that of another. The wall’s jitter evolved into a slight sway. Turbulence actually seemed slightly more agitated.

  “Do you understand why this is, on the whole, a better solution?” Father leapt off the barricade then marched back. His gaze could have cut diamonds.

  “No, sir.” If Ritter had said yes, Father would have asked him to explain. He’d learned as a child never to lie to Father.

  Father frowned. “But you at least see how it is in some ways a worse solution.”

  “Worse?” Ritter’s brow furrowed. The shelves of Father’s mind, as always, revolved around each other in complex curves that traversed hundreds of dimensions. Ritter had never seen a more intelligent mind.

  “Ritter, all engineering is a matter of trade-offs.” Father closed his eyes, as if to master himself, then opened them again. “Have they taught you nothing at the academy?”

  This was a question Ritter was certain he could work out the answer to. If worse came to worst, he had a fifty-fifty chance.

  “Rhetorical question, Ritter.” Father held up his hand. “Prepare a full analysis of the new Turbulence attack mode exhibited here and of the design deployed. I expect it on my desk tomorrow. You are now working on the overhaul of the barricade under my direct command. Understood?”

  “But what about…” Ritter ran out of words and resorted to pointing at the section of barricade he was sworn to watch.

  Father rolled his eyes. “I’ve already ordered the signalers on either side to split your territory. If they need help, they know to ask.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “On my desk. Tomorrow at dawn.” Father’s gaze shifted past Ritter to the cart, then back. For a moment, a smile might have crinkled his face. “Fix Deck’s cart. Camp Terminus is on his way back to civilization.”

  Father hefted the dead body of Ritter’s partner across his shoulders, then literally flew away. A transparent flying machine had surrounded him the instant before he leapt into the air.

  Ritter stared, jaw agape, at the prone figure growing smaller in the distance. He gave in to the urge to understand how the flying machine worked, letting it fill his mind for as long as he could still sense it.

  * * *

  Sandstone cliffs stood in the distance, clearly visible through the barricade. The occasional tent dotted the field of rock and sparse brush that lay on either side of the road to Camp Terminus. Engineers monitoring the barricade all stared at the library galloping behind the cart as it passed them. Libraries were black, massive beasts with thick legs and transparent tusks. They didn’t normally gallop and, frankly, it never looked possible.

  The cart rattled as if it were shaking itself apart. The doors and the hood clattered against their fittings and latches. Deck’s long legs kept bumping against the steering column. The power train, though, was silent. Ritter had replaced it entirely with one he’d built out of imagined parts. After the cart’s trip through Turbulence, the original power train would have disintegrated long before they reached Camp Terminus.

  Ritter wished he’d had time to refit the body too, but one was never late for an appointment with Father. Between the racket and the library bombarding his mind with invitations to climb its book walls, the analysis Father wanted was going slowly. Dense symbols covered only scant pages of the thick pad on his lap.

  Deck was doing an admirable job of not commenting on Ritter’s repairs. Veteran engineers, not fresh graduates, had the capacity to rebuild an entire section of the barricade. That Ritter could also reconstruct most of a cart afterward was odder still. Father had been training him since before he could walk. Despite an additional course load in librarianship, studying at the academy seemed like a vacation compared to Father. Explaining this never convinced anyone that he was normal, not that Deck needed any convincing one way or the other.

  The archivist had long ago rifled through Ritter’s mind as if he were some library that needed to be cataloged. All librarians were at least slightly telepathic. Otherwise, they couldn’t enter a library or know which book to retrieve when the best description a patron could muster was “a detective novel about mushrooms whose title is a type of bird.” The ability that interfered with Ritter’s sense of machines was a prerequisite for them. Some archivists were considerably more than slightly telepathic.

  Vast walls crammed with books occluded the pad of paper on Ritter’s lap. Deck had already started to catalog the beast and Ritter could sense the shelves and shelves devoted to chaotic dynamics. Just because Turbulence had wiped out the civilization that had created this archive didn’t mean they hadn’t had good ideas. A citation Father would actually have to look up was irresistible.

  “Junior, just go.” Deck took Ritter’s pad of paper away from him. “You’ve thought through your analysis so many times, I practically have it memorized.”

  Inside the library, Ritter stood on a book wall as broad and rugged as a cliff face. His fingers pinched one shelf while his feet pressed against the edge of another. Other walls lay orthogonal to it along nine different axes so that, in total, they formed a nine-dimensional lattice.

  Ritter climbed the wall, his hands and feet finding purchase in the cracks between books and the edges of shelving. Unlike engineering, his upper body served mostly as ballast here, extra weight for his legs to push up the wall. He leapt from wall to wall, searching for shelves devoted to chaotic dynamics.

  At the academy, he’d liked the librarianship classes best because he actually got to take them. His engineering professors all told him to show up to class only for the exams, then assigned him independent study. He needed somet
hing to fill up his time. The student librarians were more fun to be around anyway. They didn’t refer to Father with an awed expression and a reverent tone.

  Ritter had done well in his studies. He found his book quickly enough and landed back in the passenger seat of the cart with a soft whoosh, book in hand.

  “Junior.” Deck handed Ritter his pad of paper back. “Has anyone ever told you that—”

  “That I’d deal with Father better if I didn’t behave like a field mouse cowering beneath the great gray owl flying overhead, hoping not to be eaten?”

  Deck had undoubtedly felt Ritter’s panic during Father’s grilling. Ritter certainly felt Deck’s testiness now.

  “That wasn’t how I was going to put it.” Deck took a deep breath. “You’re hardly a field mouse, but the academy might have been easier to take if you didn’t also look exactly like him.”

  As Ritter had grown taller and broader, so had Father’s shadow. In his last years at the academy, professors hurried to stand whenever Ritter went to office hours, only to quickly sit down again when Ritter made it clear that he was the son, not the father.

  “The man whose designs have pushed the barricade hundreds of miles into the frontier gets to work with whomever he wants, I guess.” Ritter shrugged. “I’ll be the only person from my graduating class at Camp Terminus.”

  “You say that as if it were a bad thing, Junior.” Deck pulled off the road then stopped the cart. “If you’re so desperate to be out from under your father’s shadow, why aren’t you a librarian? Few enough are telepathic that everyone who is gets an offer from somewhere.”

  “I’m an engineer.” Ritter started writing the next section of his analysis. “A signaler in the middle of nowhere was the farthest away I could get.”

  Deck unfolded himself from the cart. He was as tall as Father seemed. As a child, Ritter had thought they were the same height until he’d seen them hand-in-hand and realized Deck was a head taller. Deck squatted a few times to stretch his legs, then walked around the cart to Ritter.

  “I have some pull with the archivists.” Deck thumbed through Ritter’s library book. “You think nothing of reading chaotic dynamics written in a dead language. It wouldn’t even be a favor to have you work for us. We’re still finding the occasional feral library. They need to be cataloged and translated. We’re always creating and updating archives for when the barricade inevitably fails—”

  “Not on my watch.” The words had erupted from Ritter before he’d realized.

  “Spoken like your father.” Deck glared at him. “Nevertheless, no civilization has ever held off Turbulence indefinitely. Your training as an engineer won’t go to waste as an archivist.”

  Ritter could see the disappointment on Father’s face now. Then again, at Camp Terminus, hundreds of minds would interfere with his. Father might be disappointed anyway.

  “Deck, how alike are minds and libraries? You repair minds the way you repair shelves and restore books, right?”

  “Well, people’s minds aren’t libraries, of course. You’ve sensed that yourself. Otherwise, we’d just restructure our shelves, fill ourselves with books and to hell with the academy.” Deck set the library book on Ritter’s lap. “Minds are far more complicated, but a few archivists can— No, Junior.”

  “But you can do it. Destroy the parts of my mind that read everyone around me.”

  Deck stared at Ritter for a minute. A frown spread across his face.

  “It’s a terrible idea. The shelves of a mind are more interconnected than those in any library. Much of your time at the academy would become an impenetrable blur. I don’t know who you’d be—”

  “But they’re not so interconnected yet that you can’t disentangle and destroy them but leave the rest of me intact.”

  “Junior.” Deck glared down, taking full advantage of his height. “That you can pull that out of my mind is a reason not to do this.”

  Deck strode back around, jumped into the driver’s seat, then pulled the cart back onto the road. “Take some time to think about my offer. Given how much of this cart you’ve imagined, I’ll be visiting your father for a while.”

  The mechanics at Camp Terminus would replace what Ritter had imagined with physical parts so that he could spend his capacity on the barricade. They’d compare his work to Father’s and then, like the professors at the academy, find it wanting. He knew it’d be good to do something where he couldn’t be compared to Father. Actually meeting Father’s expectations, though, seemed so much better. He could do that if, like any other engineer, the only mind he sensed was his own.

  * * *

  As usual, engineers approached Ritter with open arms and big smiles as he entered the canteen, only to mutter awkward greetings when they realized he was, not the father, but the son. Conversation had now resumed its usual simmer. Everyone laughed at their own jokes a little too hard and enjoyed each other’s company a little too desperately. One way or another, Camp Terminus broke engineers.

  When Ritter was six, Father burnt offerings at Mother’s grave, then brought Ritter with him to his new posting. Camp Terminus was always located where Turbulence was the most violent and consequently where the barricade was in the worst shape. This wasn’t the location where Ritter spent his childhood, but this was still the place where he spent it.

  Ritter took his post-shift meal alone in the corner. Steam rising from a bowl of rice always carried with it the smell of home. Bits of garlic and hot pepper flavored his plate of thinly sliced pig’s ears. Salty, metallic cubes of congealed pig’s blood floated in a light but gingery broth. His appointment with Father at sunrise, however, had stolen his appetite. The hour left until the meeting could not have been passing more slowly.

  A long shadow spilled over Ritter. Deck lurched over the table, his hands clasped behind his back.

  Ritter narrowed his gaze. “Father can’t meet this morning. You have … a box of papers you’re supposed to give me instead.”

  “Very good.” Deck tossed the box onto the table. The bowls and plate clattered as the box landed with a thud. “Open it.”

  The box had a flap tied shut with a string. Ritter pulled out a thick stack of paper. A piece of cardboard jutted out from near the top of the stack. The analysis Father had ordered stared back at him. Ritter flipped through his own work. The pages had empty white margins where Ritter had expected a torrent of words in Father’s sharp, precise hand. The only notation Father had made was a check mark at the top of the first page. Ritter hated the surge of joy rushing through his body. This was the most praise he’d ever received from Father.

  The piece of cardboard separated his analysis from the rest of the stack. Father had inscribed on it in an uncharacteristic scrawl: “Plans for new barricade. Analyze then suggest better trade-offs.” Ritter peered quizzically at Deck, whose eyebrows lifted in innocent curiosity.

  “Good news?” Deck’s mouth creased into a gentle smile when Ritter glared at him. “This is not how your father’s sense of humor—yes, he does have one—works. He’s quite serious about wanting your analysis.”

  Ritter leafed through Father’s plans. It was written in Father’s native language, dense blocks of equations surrounded by intricate diagrams. Anyone else might have expected to see this in translation, but Ritter had grown up with this language. Deck was undoubtedly right. Father expected him not only to understand this but have something intelligent to say about it. Ritter supposed that wasn’t impossible.

  The lone check mark stared at Ritter. Father would never be happy with Ritter merely understanding this design. With so many minds impinging on his, however, he’d never focus well enough to implement it.

  “Father doesn’t want just an analysis. He has always expected that his son would be an engineer just like him.” Ritter looked up at the archivist. “Please, Deck. You could fix my mind—”

  “Junior, you know your father loves you more than anyone else in the world, right?”

  From anyone else, t
hat would have been a platitude. Deck, though, was Father’s oldest friend. Only duty ever kept them apart. Deck was sworn to recover and restore feral libraries. Father was sworn to defend the world against Turbulence.

  “I don’t want to disappoint him.” Ritter held out the stack of paper. “He wants me to build this with him and so do I. I understand what I’m giving up. If you won’t help me, I’ll find another archivist—”

  “No. If anyone is going to do this to you…” Deck exhaled audibly, his mind blasting a reluctance that soon would no longer insinuate itself into Ritter’s mind. “Come on, let’s find somewhere private.”

  A loud shriek rent the air. Ritter jumped in his seat. Except for Deck, everyone else in the canteen glanced oddly at him, then returned to their conversations. Deck simply stared at him, concerned.

  No one else had heard it. Ritter closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to drive the shelves of other people’s minds out of his own. The barricade was about to fail. Fatigued gears and piston seals about to crack inundated his mind. He sprinted out of the canteen and headed toward the massive storm of Turbulence about to arrive.

  * * *

  In the distance, skeins of Turbulence lashed at the barricade. Engineers clung on its girders, dark specks tumbling against a multicolored light show. Loud, sustained shrieks still rang in Ritter’s ears. He raced toward the barricade, leaving Deck, despite the archivist’s longer legs, in a trail of dust somewhere behind him.

  Father ran along the barricade, ordering engineers to retreat and then to erect a retaining wall behind him. Those dark specks slid down, pooling at the ground. They scattered back, finally distinguishable as people as they grew closer.

  Turbulence wore down the barricade. Bright tangled threads crushed gears and flayed open pistons as they squirmed through. Father was constructing some sort of machine on the barren ground, engineers still running past him. A low drone filled the air. Sparks danced around Father as he swung up and down the frame of girders he’d created, forcing gears into place, attaching tubing to pistons.