Chapter 69 - The Cult of the Right Angle

Personally, I thought it quite clever making the schematics for a basic rotary engine our first religious symbol. Drawn on blue-tinted paper from the accidental goblin pulping at the paper press even gave me the feeling of working with actual blueprints—albeit ones with an unpleasant, fuzzy texture. Codifying schematics gave the goblins working on it a religious incentive to create careful reproductions. The canoneers proved deft hands with their charcoal sticks and faithfully reproduced drawings as if they’d been sketching them their entire lives. Which, I suppose, technically, they had.

Within a few hours we had a functional manual for a hydrocarbon-powered motor, though entirely pictographic with representational iconography and all measurements in relation to the rough size and shape of a goblin head. But what was really wild, was that Sally’s engineers finally seemed to understand the more complex relationships between the various dimensions of the drawings when the canoneers canonized them. It was like a shortcut to introducing complex ideas for undeveloped technology through the goblin tech tree.

New molds were hammered out for the various parts and fixtures of the engine and sent to the kiln. In the meantime, I also codified smithing and made sure taskmasters were revered figures in the new doctrine. Like village elders. Not that they needed any help. The various divisions of the labor pool already treated their respective taskmasters like rock stars.

Feeling quite satisfied with the day’s work, I called a halt for dinner and joined the rest of the goblins in the central square for the communal mealtime. The igni were still working through the javeline meat and had repurposed the crank and impeller technology to invent sausage-making. All we needed was a little wheat flour and yeast and we could start having brats and buns.

It took me a moment to realize that all the goblins were looking at me before touching their food, which was a completely new phenomenon. I looked around, and spotted Luther waving for my attention.

“What is it?” I asked the lead canoneer.

“They want you to recite a meal-time litany, o’ King.”

“I’m not a religious figure,” I said. “You do it.”

Luther bowed low. “That right is reserved for you alone.”

I sat back, sighing. As if being king wasn’t enough. Now I had to be pope, too. I raised my hands overhead and made a circle with my thumbs and index fingers. “Ever higher. Ad Luna per aspera.”

The goblins aped my hand signal and then dug into dinner. I leaned back in my spot and considered. It’s not every day you get to design a science-based religion.

* * *

I woke up with the excitement of a kid at Christmas, pulling myself from the bottom of the goblin mound and jogging to the kilns. Having cooled overnight, I opened the hatch on the kiln and pulled out the still-warm crank case halves built to religious precision, excitement growing. Neither looked to be deformed or misshapen—at least not to the degree I expected of goblin-manufactured parts. They were still a bit wonky and oblong, but they were consistently wonky and oblong. The two halves married up in a way that they could be sealed and bolted with a rotor and crankshaft in place. This was an engine that could potentially be fired up. And once this tribe had access to the power of angular momentum… the sky really would be the limit. The igni could use this as an example to hammer more—many more, hopefully—out of metal. Sally could make powered airplanes instead of just rocket-assisted gliders.

I was so excited I completely missed when Eileen ran up to me with a report and had to be shaken out of my fervor.

“What is it?” I asked.

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“The Ifrit are on their way!” she exclaimed. “Caravan spotted coming off the plain. Scout just told me.”

“Make sure we’re there to greet them,” I said. “And get the Canaveral convoy on the move. We need to make some room.”

System, how much clay do we still have?

<32 chooms, with an additional 43 chooms in discovered nodes.>

Excellent.

New technologies and new friends. This was going to be a big, big day.

I explained the next steps and then worked on my electric motor project until Chuck woke up, at which point I had the cliffords saddled up, and I mounted up on the back of Chuck’s doggo with a few of my bodyguards. I felt bad for the poor clifford trying to hold Armstrong up. The scrapper taskmaster was almost as big as a noblin.

“Eileen says they found the road markings and they’re following it north. Small group, three or four wagons,” I told Chuck.

“Alright, let’s go bring ‘em in,” said Chuck, pulling his clifford around. He thumped its side with his palm and it took off, yapping and slobbering as it dug its claws into the turf. As we rode, I remarked at the road.

“Buzz did a good job clearing a path here,” I said.

“Makes it easier to bring in beasties,” said Chuck. “But we’re still eatin’ em faster than my lads can rustle ‘em up—at least the ones we can catch on the cliffords. They’re not mean to hunt things that can run, not while carrying goblins, anyway. They get tired. Most of what we chase out here gives us the slip, even working together.”

“You need something that doesn’t get tired,” I said.

“Got plans for somethin’ like that, boss?”

“The boss has got plans fer everything,” said Armstrong.

I grinned. “Just wait and see.”

We rode in (relative) silence for the kilometer or so of rough road before a hulking figure in black cloth wraps leapt out of the woods in our path. It was twice my height at least, enough to make the javeline look small, despite having its legs in a wide stance. It was broad across the shoulders and wore a brass, horned mask that triggered the same part of my goblin brain as the night haunts. Its hand rested on the hilt of a curved sword at its hip, as long as I was tall, and—holy hell. Was this a human?

If it was, it was level 35. Chuck pulled the cliffords up and every rifle and slinger with the welcome party was aimed at the new arrival. The brass mask scanned across our collected group and several centimeters worth of steel slid from scabbard.

“Boss, get behind me!” said Armstrong, stepping forward with his rifle—the same one I’d used to kill Hrott.

“Hold!” I said as the goblins around me tensed up. “We’re expecting company, remember?”

“Yeah, little flame guys, not… this,” growled Chuck. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like them,” growled Armstrong.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to like it,” I said. Then, raising my voice, “You speak? Are you with Taquoho?”

After a few more seconds of hesitation, during which I hoped none of my goblins would get trigger happy, the masked man took his hand from the hilt of his sword and relaxed out of his readied stance. He moved to the side, and beyond him, two more like him flanked what I can only describe as a walking wagon, striding up the road on six spindly brass legs. I could hear the rhythmic whirring of gears and clockwork and the apparatus glowed with a pale blue flame. The Ifrit were walking.

Several smaller clockwork creatures walked alongside, or tended to parcels stacked high on the flat bed of the wagons that teetered dangerously on the ungainly gait of the heavy brass artifice. Each of them no doubt had an Ifrit pulling its strings, and they ranged from a dozen centimeters across to half the height of a goblin. Some had four legs, some six. But no two were the same size or proportion. Each of them made a bowing gesture as they passed me by spreading their front two legs on the ground, though none spoke.

The goblins chittered and pointed—fingers, not guns—at the convoy. For my part, I wondered what was in the packages. Hopefully the raw materials I’d asked for. I scanned the convoy and the other wagons but didn’t see the familiar face I was looking for.

“Is Rufus not with you?”

“Ah, King Apollo,” said a familiar, whispering voice. I turned and looked at the small brass quadruped scuttling toward me. It was about the size of a cat, and radially symmetrical with no front of back that I could determine. The first thing I noticed about his vessel was that the joint for his front right foreleg had been replaced with a ceramic bearing. Huh.

“Taquoho,” I said.

“Our friend Rufus continued on to the coast in effort to secure more of the canvas you requested and pass on some of your ceramic tools. But we have brought additional supplies and Ifrit as we had discussed and agreed.”

“You’ve brought more than that,” I said, eyeing the security detail. Seeing humans from this perspective… man, there’s no other word for it but terrifying. I looked at one of my wranglers, trembling in the human’s shadow with his rifle clutched in his fists. If the human held it, it would look like a child’s toy gun—too small for him or her to even operate effectively. “You didn’t say there were humans coming with you.”

“Did Rufus not explain? Apologies, King Apollo, I am truly embarrassed. These humans are our paladin. We could not have crossed the desert without them and they shall be staying with us at the bluff. I trust this presents no problem?”

I bared my teeth in what I hoped was a friendly manner. “None at all,” I said.