Chapter 76 - Backfire

I shut the throttle. The rotary engine died, and I looked between Sally, Armstrong, and Promo, confused. “Do any of you know how to build or operate one of these yet?”

Promo cocked his head at me. “Reckon I could maybe run it but ye lost me in the build.”

“Boss, I don’t even know what it’s supposed to be,” admitted Armstrong. “I just know it’s loud and it spins and I want one.”

Sally shrugged and pointed to the build guide she’d followed. I ran both hands through my fur. Somehow, the technology hadn’t unlocked yet.

System!

What gives? It ran! It’s a working engine. Where’s the unlock?”

Why?!

I buried my face in my hands. I didn’t understand it. The engine worked. And not just goblin worked. This thing was running on pure physics—would run on Earth, for maybe five minutes before seizing up. It should have been enough to unlock the node in the Goblin Tech Tree.

Was it because Taquoho jumped into it?

Then why didn’t internal combustion unlock?

I pulled the lever off the throttle control and hucked it, screaming out my anger. All the goblins immediately screamed and made throwing motions, many of them throwing whatever was close to hand—including mud, bones, a few rocks, and at least one tesla bomb with a half-dozen angry wasps inside. That did a fine job dispersing the crowd as everyone ran to get away from the shocking, hissing wasps.

I sat down and thumped the back of my head against the stump.

“Boss?” asked Armstrong.

“Just go,” I said. I waved a hand. “All of you!”

“Even us?” said a voice to the side. I looked over at a noblin canoneer hunched over a piece of paper on the ground.

“Especially you!”

The portly, oversized goblin scurried off, papers wrapped up in his arms. I groaned. Luther’s canoneers chronicled everything I did, at all times. I didn’t need comics made of my failures.

I just didn’t understand it. Based on everything I’d experienced so far, it should have worked. The engine had working fuel intake, a properly counter-balanced rotor, a heat sink, throttle controls, good seals, and the wasps were alive and popping if the sounds from the spark-plug jars were any indication. Our fuel was clean-burning, had more than enough power, and smooth flow.

We’d had combustion. It had been internal. As far as I was concerned, we had internal combustion. How was this even an issue?

The System wasn’t volunteering anything, either. It was being its usual recalcitrant self, probably sitting back and laughing at me. I was just glad Tribe Apollo didn’t have a pool, because whoever was on the other side of those admin privileges seemed the sort to delete the ladder while I was swimming.

The sun dropped low, and Chuck brought by a bark tray full of kilned pork. Apparently wallowing made me ravenous, because I tucked in and didn’t realize I’d finished until I was licking the grease off the bark. I handed the tray back to Chuck.

“Take it you heard?”

“Problems you can’t punch or ride. Not my forte, boss,” he replied, taking the bark and spinning it off into the night. “But you’ll figure it out. You always figure somethin’ out.”

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I sighed. “I just don’t get it. If engines aren’t a part of the Goblin Tech Tree… well, we’re dead in the water. Does the tree end at the preindustrial age? Was this whole moon thing a pipe dream?”

Chuck lifted his hand and put in front of Raphina. “She’s so close I feel like we could get her with a good thermal, boss.”

“Orbital dynamics are a bit more complicated than that,” I said.

“Do they gotta be?” he asked, climbing to his feet and shrugging.

I laughed, drawing my legs up so I could rest my chin on them. “Would make my job easier if they weren’t.”

“Maybe you just think too much,” he countered. Chuck loped off into the night.

Nothing seemed to deter Chuck, or the rest of the goblins for that matter. I was their king, and I would get them to the moon. They had absolute confidence in me—albeit, as long as I stood behind them. But if I couldn’t even get internal combustion engines off the ground, how would I ever reach Raphina?

System, why do goblins follow kings?

No, I want to know why goblins show undying loyalty in the first place?

There was a pause.

System?

And what happens if I don’t? What happens if I never reach the moon?

A longer pause.

Is this a simulation?

No answer.

Does anything I do here matter?

Nothing.

* * *

I had fallen asleep at the stump and woke up at the very bottom of a sleeping mound with goblins pressing in on all sides. I pulled myself out and showered off at one of the casks. In the distance I could hear the crack crack of rifle fire already, and the deeper whump of a bomb-fruit going off. Some of Neil’s hunters must have been getting some target practice in before going out in search of game.

It was surprisingly easy to tune out the explosions, crashes, shouting, and general mayhem of the bluff village sometimes. Amazing how fast you get used to the strangest of circumstances. Even working for a rocket company, I’d never expected explosions to be a daily part of my life. Of course, the first one I’d encountered had been the rocket with me riding it.

I took a look at my engine, still silent from the night before, and sighed. Maybe I hadn’t refined the fuel enough. I could run it through another filter to maybe increase the purity. Maybe I needed another wasp in the spark chamber. Maybe the throat of the carburetor was lowering the temperature too much. And maybe goblins were just meant to ride cliffords forever. There was no way to know.

Armstrong was still sleeping at the top of the pile, so I took two of my other bodyguards and went looking for Taquoho. The Ifrit had come to begin integrating ceramics into their workflow, and I wanted to see how he was doing. It wasn’t hard to spot the Ifrit, since he was hovering—or rather, wobbling—in the unstable air above the kilns. I worried the paper on his rotors would catch fire with the smoke and cinders starting to rise from the massive ovens.

I waved him down, and he descended. Surprisingly, he’d already modified the design with articulated legs from his old vessel and hinges along the blades that allowed them to fold up to save room. The Ifrit dropped onto the ground and scuttled over.

“Ah, King Apollo! I noticed that the sheets you chose to paper my airfoils with has small sequential renderings of your tribal history. I wanted to ask about them.”

I put a palm to my face. “The comics. I’m sorry, Taquoho. It’s what I had handy while I was working. I’m sure you find it crude and reductive.”

Taquoho raised a placating leg. “On the contrary, o’ king! The Ifrit are formless fire and do not practice representational art, and the format is so intuitive to follow. Truly, I am grateful for these drawings, and some of my kin have taken notice of more art circulating in the village. I wondered if we could perhaps see more of it.”

“You want more comics?” I asked, incredulous. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll talk to the canoneers.

Taquoho dipped his vessel. “Thank you, Apollo.”

I stepped around him to a tray of fired parts from the night before. I didn’t recognize some of them, which I assumed meant they belonged to the Ifrit. “The first orders are going well?”

“Indeed!” said the flame spirit. “The material has all the properties that our friend Rufus promised, and then some. While we cannot manipulate it as easily brass, it is proving to be a most robust material, well suited for complex gearing and artifice. The only problem is, well…”

I got the impression of his gaze shifting and followed that impression over to the row of kilns. “Huh,” I said, counting. “I thought we had at least one more,”

“You did. Until last night.”

“Ah,” I said. And laughed. “You get used to it. Ifrit tech doesn’t blow up in your faces sometimes?”

“We do not have faces in which to blow up. But I believe I understand the crude and reductive metaphor you are using to convey the normalcy of the situation you describe. In fact, Ifrit artifice is known for its meticulous attention to detail and precision. You would be reasoned and wise to say that it is the defining characteristic of what makes a piece of artifice Ifrit, as compared to say…”

“Goblin artifice,” I said. “Which is the opposite. Ramshackle, loose, and…”

I looked at the remains of the kiln, and the ceramic parts that had been imbedded halfway into the neighboring kiln.

“One bad kick shy of exploding.”

“I daresay, yes,” said Taquoho. “A philosopher might describe it thus: if it is not about to explode, is it truly goblin artifice?”

I looked at the Ifrit. I looked at the kiln. I looked at the Ifrit.

“Taquoho,” I said, backing away and looking around for my taskmasters, “I’m going to get you all the comics you can read, you absolute genius!”

I grabbed the nearest engineer and told him to find Sally and Promo and have them meet me at the stump.