Raising Steam (16 page)

But it was a nice day, the sun was shining, and as Iron Girder raced along the track a couple of horses in the field alongside tried to catch up with her. So much for Mr Hardwick, and poo to him again because Iron Girder chugged her way down through gentle slopes to the township of Upunder where they stopped to allow the passengers to enjoy the very best of brassica hospitality.

After that it was a short run down to Ankh-Morpork itself, which was beckoning with long smoky fingers. They crossed the new iron bridge over the Ankh and wheezed on to Harry King’s compound, where a brass band was playing the national anthem,
‘We Can Rule You Wholesale’, to the cheers of the waiting crowd.

At the banquet that evening the rail travellers were joined by other Ankh-Morporkian and Sto Plains dignitaries. And in the peroration of his address Sir Harry announced that the next city to receive the magnificent railway would be Quirm, it was hoped very shortly. In the thunder of applause, Harry toasted the Quirmian ambassador, Monsieur Cravat, and this was followed by more toasts, including one to Iron Girder herself. Lord Vetinari opined that it had been a very helpful day; and the unknown quantity of sphincters that had been tightened once again relaxed somewhat.

When the party broke up, some of the guests were walking sideways or hardly at all. Dick, seeing a familiar face swim into his happy world of coloured lights, said, ‘Ee, that were champion, Mister Lipwig! All those tiny places in the distance all along t’track … I were thinking that the railway could be like a tree: you know, one big trunk and then all branches … You’d make ’em cheap and small but I reckon people’d like ’em … Make folks’ lives easier if they could get a train from
anywhere
—’

Moist, resolutely ignoring the beckoning possibilities, cut him short. ‘Steady on, Dick. First we have to get to Quirm.’ And then drive that express train route to Uberwald, he added to himself … His lordship was so very keen on international relations.

Later that night, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs proceeded in a policeman-like fashion around the railway compound. After all, they bore the Majesty of the Force and therefore had a right to be absolutely anywhere they liked, looking at anything they wanted to.

And as their boots swung in unison, Fred Colon said, ‘I hear they’re taking the railway all the way to Quirm. My old woman’s always going on at me about us taking a holiday down there. You’ll know about that, Nobby, now you’re practically married and got responsibilities. But you know me, I’m allergic to all that avec, and I hear you can’t get a good pint there for love nor money.’

‘Actually,’ said Nobby, ‘it ain’t all that bad. When I was working the rota last week on the goods yard there were a load of cheeses that got broken open by accident, as it were. Of course, they couldn’t be sent back and it’s amazing what Shine of the Rainbow can do with cheese. It’s good stuff, especially with snails.’ Nobby realized he was talking treason and so hurriedly added, ‘Their beer is still like piss, though.’

Fred Colon nodded. All was what it should be. He glanced back at his friend and said, ‘If the railway works properly, things are going to be quite different. I hear telling the train’ll be going very fast and that means if a bloke does a robbery and then goes and catches the train, he could be away on his toes long before we could ever catch up with him. Maybe the railway will need policemen. You never know! It’s like old Stoneface said, wherever you get people, you’ll get crime and then you’ll get policemen.’

Nobby Nobbs considered this information like a goat chewing the cud, and said, ‘Well, you go and tell old Vimesy that you want to be the first railway policeman, eh? I’d love to see his face!’

Billy Slick surveyed the very large person at the front of the queue and sighed.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘you can’t all be train drivers. We’ve got lots of train drivers right now and it takes time to work your way up to being a driver. Ain’t there anything else you can do?’

‘Well,’ said the crestfallen lad in front of him, ‘my mum says I’ll make a very good cook one day.’

Billy smiled and said, ‘Might have something for you then, we need cooks.’ He pointed out another recruiting table a bit further along and said, ‘Get yourself over to Mabel. She’s looking for catering staff and that sorta thing.’

The young man’s face lit up with excitement and he hurried off
to a future which almost certainly included unsociable hours and hard labour in cramped conditions but, most importantly, unlimited free rides on the wonder of the age.

‘I’m a painter, mister,’ said the next man in Billy’s line.

‘Excellent! Sure you don’t fancy being a train driver?’

‘No, not really. I’ve always been a good painter and I expect the locomotives need painting.’

‘Great!’ said Billy. ‘You’re hired. Next!’

When Billy looked up from his clipboard he found the craggy figure of a young troll looming over him.

‘Man said der’s a job wiv a shovel and tons of coal. Could do dat,’ the troll said, adding a hopeful ‘Please?’

‘A stoker?’ Billy guessed. ‘Blimey, you’re a bit big for the footplate, but we could use you around the place and no mistake. Put your mark here.’

The table shook as the troll’s thumb hit the form and cracked his clipboard.

‘Good man – I mean, troll,’ Billy said.

‘Nuffin’ to worry about. Get dat all der time.’

The troll rumbled away in the direction of the coal store and his place in front of Billy was taken by a smartly dressed young lady with an air of authority.

‘Sir, I think the railway is going to need a translator. I know every language and dialect on the Disc.’ Her voice was firm but there was a glint of excitement in her eyes as she looked at Iron Girder and the other engines in the compound and Billy knew she was hooked. He also knew that ‘translator’ was not on his list of vacancies and sent her off to Sir Harry’s office, while he returned to his search for shunters, tappers and other workers. And so the line moved on again. It seemed everybody wanted to be part of the railway.

It felt to Moist, bumping in the saddle as the golem horse bore him back towards Ankh-Morpork, that he had been talking for years
with greedy landowners who were asking for enormous rents even if it was achingly obvious that the railway would benefit the whole area, and this time, to reach Quirm, there was going to be more than eight times the length of route to cover. And when he wasn’t talking to landowners, he was talking again to the surveyors, who were not greedy but were definitely horribly
precise
. They rejected proposed routes as too steep, too waterlogged, crumbling, or occasionally flooded and, in one case, full of zombies. Acceptable routes might just as well have been drawn by a snake snaking around the landscape from suitable ground to suitable ground. And everybody wanted the railway close, oh yes please, but not so close that they could hear it or smell it.

And that was the Sto Plains in a nutshell, or, if you like, a cabbage bucket. Everybody everywhere wanted the benefits of steam but not the drawbacks. And no city on the Plains wanted the Big Wahoonie to get more than its fair share.

It took the diplomatic genius of the Patrician to set the record straight, reminding them that although the railway was being built initially in Ankh-Morpork, if other cities and towns wanted to partake of its usefulness, well, yes, in a sense it would be theirs because what goes down on the up line must go up on the down line.

Politics? Vetinari loved it. This was the ocean in which he swam. But assuredly you never crowed, just showed the world the tired visage of a conscientious civil servant, doing things cheaply and with the minimum of fuss. He had long ago perfected the art of giving way with a smile when engaged in complex negotiations, but Lord Vetinari’s smile was that of a man who knows that his opponents have yet to find, metaphorically speaking, and despite their cleverness, that their underpants are now down around their ankles and their backside on show for all to see.

Ankh-Morpork to Sto Lat was becoming a regular journey, and it was
working
now. Moist had written the slogan, ‘
You don’t
have to live in Ankh-Morpork to work in Ankh-Morpork’
and properties in Sto Lat were becoming quite sought after. The idea of a little place in the country away from the big city, but with acceptable communications to Ankh-Morpork, suddenly looked
very
inviting.

The hours of travel on the golem horse were proving altogether conducive to creative thought. His mind was filling up with the world of locomotive possibilities at the speed of a hamster
really
at odds with its treadmill. Another synapse in Moist’s head flashed; the trains were just the start! The railway now, he knew, was something in the ether, floating over the whole world. An
idée fixe
, if he would excuse his own Quirmian.

Nevertheless, the engines remained important. Dick Simnel’s workshops at Swine Town had been turning out many marvels, carefully placed on wagons behind the never-tiring Iron Girder. She now shared the big shed with two newcomers that Simnel had called the Flyers, which made the regular run to Sto Lat and back, while Iron Girder herself had gone back to giving rides around the Ankh-Morpork compound, extended with a short loop along the river to show off the new bridge. The small but growing band of patient train spotters had written down a number two in their little books, then a number three.

Within minutes of his arriving back in Ankh-Morpork, Moist was borne off by an ebullient Harry to see the latest development. Dodging sparks, they arrived at the doorway of the monstrous engine shed guarded by one of Harry’s heavies, who glared even at his employer. He looked human, or at least humanoid, and Harry introduced him merely as ‘Trouble’. Trouble, glaring at Moist, moved away from the door so that Moist and Sir Harry could go inside.

Moist could feel Trouble’s glare on the back of his neck as he walked through, and asked, ‘Harry, does Trouble have an official Watch record?’

Harry King stared for a moment at Moist and said, ‘Of course he’s got a Watch record! He’s a
security guard
! And I need him. People have been hanging around, trying to break in, especially at night, and the
official
security – the Watch, the golems and guard dogs – generates a whole lot of paperwork whereas Trouble deals with trouble. Don’t trouble Trouble and Trouble won’t trouble you, as my granny always said.’ Harry chuckled and added, ‘Don’t you worry, Mister Lipwig, I’ve expressly told him not to kill you … today.’

Moist took this under advisement and turned for a last brief look at Trouble, who made up a new scowl just for him, a reminder that there were oh so many painful things you could do to a person without actually killing them.

Harry nodded to the giant, who began to pull at a large tarpaulin in the middle of the floor – and clearly when Trouble pulled something it definitely remained pulled – to reveal an engine much larger than Iron Girder or any of Simnel’s creations Moist had so far seen.

Harry slapped Moist on the back and said, ‘Well now, Mister Lipwig, while you’ve been wining and dining with the nobs and diddling them out of their fortunes, I, and of course Mister Simnel, have been very busy boys, oh yes indeedy! The lad is up finishing off in the drawing office right now, but this new engine is the bee’s knees, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘It’s not exactly fun, what I’ve been doing—’ began Moist indignantly, but Harry cut in.

‘Yes, I know, we’re all doing our bit towards Vetinari’s dash for Quirm, although personally I don’t have much time for the lobsters; but I can see it’s showing the flag of Ankh-Morpork and all that, and of course, if we can get really fresh fish and seafood into the city, then we’ll be on the hog’s back or, as they’d say, “the snail’s shell”. And Dick says this new baby,’ he slapped the gleaming sides of the new engine as though it were a prize racehorse, ‘will
haul more freight and get there more quickly than any of the others!’

Moist thought about this and said, ‘You know what, I bet you that as soon as our boy Simnel finishes this new Flyer he’ll make sure that Iron Girder goes just that little bit faster. Harry, he’s not going to let her be eclipsed even if it means constant tinkering until she’s up to scratch. There’s so many workers on the job these days, he spends most of his time on her in any case. She’s the prototype of all of them, and he keeps changing the prototype.’

‘And he wants to walk out with our Emily! Well, he’s a smart lad and she’ll always know where he is.’

The thought flitted across Moist’s mind
I wonder what Iron Girder thinks about that
. And even as he dismissed the ridiculous notion he fancied he could hear a slight hiss.

Harry was still admiring the latest locomotive. ‘I reckon the lobsters will be like chiens with deux tails to be the first real foreigners to have the famous railway. And our Emily tells me that the Quirmian for “railway” means “card game” so that would be right up your ruelle, yes? Make sure you keep an ace up your manche, Mister Lipwig, okay?’

‘Manche?’

‘Effie is learning me to talk lobster, she thinks it’s a lovely and romantic language.’

Moist was moved to point out that he had hardly seen his own wife in the last month and had completed over fifty complex negotiations just to get to the border with Quirm.

‘Capital, so you’ve really got your eye in now, yes? Anyway, Quirm ain’t so far away and you’ll enjoy the sunshine when you get there. And I tell you what! Before you go you can have a day off in lieu! And I don’t say that to many people.’

Moist cleared his throat. ‘Actually, er, Harry, you don’t in fact employ me. The city does.’

‘Does that mean I can’t sack you?’

‘I’m afraid so, Harry.’

Harry snorted with laughter. ‘I hate having people around I can’t sack. It’s unnatural.’

It had been a long day after some long weeks and even longer months and that evening Moist was grateful to step into his own house, looking forward to his big four-poster bed which had a mattress that wasn’t stuffed with straw, and pillows – actual pillows! Very few of the hostelries that Moist had stayed at during his travels considered pillows necessary or useful. Right now, metaphorically singing, he let himself in before Crossly could get there, and went not into the main part of the house but into the little corridor that led to Adora Belle’s study, where his beloved was talking to Of the Twilight the Darkness.