A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Proposed Trade-Offs for the Overhaul of the Barricade (2 page)

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 something 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, that 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.

No machine constructed by just one engineer, even Father, could possibly settle or divert this much Turbulence. As more of the machine coalesced into being, Ritter realized what Father intended to do. Ritter redoubled his sprint, his arms pumping furiously and his thighs burning. He shouted at the engineers in front of him to stop Father, but they simply continued to erect their retaining wall. Maybe they didn't understand Father's machine. Maybe they were too focused on building the retaining wall. Or, more likely, they were too loyal to Father.

The barricade ruptured. Wild gears and belts flew away before they dissipated. The shrieking in Ritter's head stopped, leaving only a hollow ringing in his ears. Turbulence burst through like a flood of heavy spring rain. Multicolored skeins entangled engineers who'd fled too slowly or too late. Threads flayed the shelves of their minds. Volumes of knowledge split and fell. Engineers slumped to the ground as they forgot they needed to breathe or, for that matter, how.

Father's machine unfolded, stretching like wings just behind the failing parts of the barricade. Hinges droned as machinery cantilevered into place. The ground trembled when the machine landed, a solid wall that ran the length of the breach. Father stood in the middle, tiny compared to the oncoming storm.