Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

The problem was, he thought, that Euphemia still remembered the good old days when they were poor as church mice and therefore necessarily frugal with their money, and such habits bite to the bone, very much like the inadvisably digested fish which had been swimming somewhere in the vicinity of Harry’s bowels and threatening to swim a lot further.

Regrettably, Harry was a man brought up to eat everything that was put in front of him and that meant everything eaten up. When he had finally exited from the privy, where he fancied the damn fish had been watching him from the bowl, he had pulled the chain with such vehemence that it broke, causing the woman whom he sometimes called the Duchess to have words with him. And since words tend to lead to more words, nasty, spiteful little words flew on both sides, words that if Harry could help it would be flung back to the wretched fish which had started it all. But instead he and his wife had had what they had known all of their lives as an up-and-downer. And, of course, Effie, born in the next-door gutter to Harry, could give at least as good as she got in such situations, especially when armed with a quite valuable and decorative jug. Effie had a voice on her that at times could make a barrow boy blush, and she had called Harry the ‘King of Shit’, causing him to do what he never, ever wanted to do, which was to raise his hand in anger, especially since the jug with which his wife was now armed was also quite a heavy one.fn6

Of course it would blow over, it always did, and genuine marital harmony would drift into its accustomed place in the household. But nevertheless, all afternoon Sir Harry prowled around his compound like an old lion. King of Shit, well, yes, and because of him the streets were clean, or at least considerably cleaner than they had been before what might be called the Harry King dynasty. He mused, as he wandered, that his work was all about those unimaginable things that people wanted to leave behind them. And therefore there wasn’t much for him on the top table of society. Oh, yes, he was Sir Harry, but he knew that Effie really wished they could leave behind the whole stinking business.

‘After all,’ she said, ‘you’re as rich as Creosote as it is. Can’t you find something else to do – something that people actually want rather than need?’

Generally speaking, Harry was not very good at philosophy. He was proud of what he had achieved, but a tiny part of him was agreeing with Effie that surely there was something better for him than chasing the purefn7 and making certain the unreliable septic tanks of the city didn’t overflow. Somebody had to do it, of course – and it wasn’t as if it was actually Harry himself, not for many years, since he paid the gongfermors, dunnykin divers and now a whole army of goblins as well to do the dirty work. Still, what he needed now, he thought, was an occupation that was manly without being despicable.

Absent-mindedly, he sacked his latest lawyer, a dwarf who had been caught with his nasty little fingers in the till, and managed to do it without actually throwing the little bugger all the way down the stairs.

Unusually despondent, Harry prowled on, seeking to calm his nerves. At the edge of his compound he sniffed the air, so far as he dared. There was a wind blowing from the hub and he turned to face it and caught a tantalizing smell: a manly smell, a smell with a purpose, a smell that wanted to take him places, and it said promise.

The relationship between Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart was firm and happy, quite possibly because they didn’t see each other for substantial

periods of time, since she was immersed in the running of the Grand Trunk and he was dealing with the Bank, the Post Office and the Mint. Despite what Lord Vetinari thought, Moist did have proper work to do at these institutions and that was, in his own mind, called holding it all together. Things worked, in fact they worked very well, but they worked, Moist thought, because he was always seen in the Bank or the Mint or the Post Office being Mister Bank, Mister Post Office and Mister Mint.

He chatted to people, talked to them about their work, asked how their wives and husbands were, having memorized the names of all the family members of the person he was talking to. It was a knack, a wonderful knack, and it worked a treat. You took an interest in everybody and they took an interest in their work and it was vitally important that he was always around to keep the magic flowing.

As for Adora Belle, the clacks were in her bones, it was her legacy and woe betide anyone who got between it and her,fn8 even if that anyone was her husband.

Somehow the system worked as hard as they did and so they could afford Crossly, the butler, and Mrs Crossly too.fn9 Their house in Scoone Avenue had a gardener too, who appeared to come with the territory. Crispfn10 was also a decent handyman and quite talkative, although Moist never understood a word he said. He came from somewhere in the Shires and spoke using a vocabulary that was theoretically Morporkian, but in reality had lots of straw in it with the syllable ‘ahh’ working hard in every conversation. He made cider in his shed at the bottom of the garden, utilizing the apple trees that the previous owner had carefully cherished. He also, as a matter of course, cleaned the windows, and with the help of an enormous box full of every type of hammer, saw, drill, screwdriver and chisel, bags of nails and a number of other items that Moist could not recognize, and moreover did not wish to, made Moist’s life easy whilst making Crisp possibly the richest handyman in the neighbourhood.

Moist von Lipwig had done some heavy work once and couldn’t see any future in it, but he could look at it for hours, provided other people were doing it, of course, and clearly some of them liked what they were doing, and so he shrugged and felt happy that Crisp was happy being a handyman whilst Moist was happy not picking up anything that was heavier than a glass. After all, his work was unseen and depended on words, which were fortunately not very heavy and didn’t need grease. In his career as a crook they had served him well and now he felt somewhat smug at using them to the benefit of the citizenry.

There was a difference between a banker and a crook, there really was, and although it was very, very teeny Moist felt that he should point out that it did exist and, besides, Lord Vetinari always had his eye on him.

So everybody was happy and Moist went to work in very clean clothes and with a very clean conscience.

Having washed and dressed in said clothes in his private bathroom,fn11 Moist went to see his wife, practising his smile on the way and endeavouring to look cheerful. You never knew with Adora Belle.fn12 She could be quite acerbic. After all, she ran the whole clacks system these days.

She also liked goblins, which was why there were some living behind the wainscoting of the house and others in the roof. They smelled, but the smell wasn’t, once you got over the shock, all that bad. The compensation was that the goblins had taken the clacks into their scrawny hearts, one and all. The wheels and levers fascinated them. Moist knew that generally goblins hid out in caves and insalubrious places that humans didn’t bother about, but now, when suddenly they were being treated as people, they had found their element which was generally the sky. They could scramble up a clacks tower faster than any man could run, and the rattling, back-and-forth clanking and relentlessly busy machinery of the clacks had them in its grip.

Already, after only a few months in the city, the goblins had improved the efficiency of the clacks across the Sto Plains threefold. They were creatures of darkness, but their perception of light was remarkable. There was a whole malignityfn13 of goblins up on the roof, but if you wanted your clacks to fly fast, you didn’t use the term out loud. The villains of the storybooks had found their place in society, at last. All it needed was technology.

When Dick Simnel walked into Sir Harry King’s compound he wasn’t at all certain how you spoke to grand folk. Nevertheless, he managed to talk his way through the people in the front office, who had a rather jaundiced look and appeared to consider it their duty to ensure that no one should ever get to see Sir Harry King, especially greasy-looking young men with wild eyes trying hard to look respectable despite their extremely old clothing which, these gatekeepers thought, needed something, possibly a bonfire. However, Dick had the persistence of a wasp and the sharpness of a razor blade, and so eventually he ended up deposited in front of the big man’s desk like a supplicant.

Harry, red-faced and impatient, looked over his desk and said to him, ‘Lad, time is money and I’m a busy man. You told Nancy down on Reception that you’ve got something I might like. Now stop fidgeting and look me in the face square like. If you’re another chancer wanting to bamboozle me I’ll have you down the Effing stairsfn14 before you know it.’

Dick stared soundlessly at Harry for a moment, then said, ‘Mister Sir King, I’ve made a machine that can carry people and goods just about everywhere and it don’t need ’orses and it’s run on water ’n’ coal. It’s my machine, I built it and I can make it even better if you can see your way clear to advance me some investment.’

Harry King reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy gold watch. Dick couldn’t help but notice the famous gold rings that he had been told Sir Harry always wore, possibly as an ensemble of socially acceptable and extremely valuable knuckledusters.

‘Did I hear you right? It’s Mister Simnel, isn’t it? I’ll give you five minutes to catch my fancy and if I think you’re just another thimblerigger on the slant you’ll go out of here rather more quickly than you came in.’

‘My old mother always said seeing is believing, Mister King, and so I’ve come prepared. If you can give me some time to get t’lads and t’ ’orses …’ Dick coughed and continued, ‘I have to tell you, Mister Sir Harry, I took the liberty of parking them right outside your compound, ’cos I talked to people and they said that if Harry King wants something to start happening it ’as to ’appen fast.’ He hesitated. Was that a glint in Harry’s eye?

‘Well,’ the magnate grumbled rather theatrically. ‘Young man, even though time is money, talk is cheap. I’ll come out in five minutes and you’d better have something solid to show me.’

‘Thank you, Sir King, that’s very kind of you, sir, but we’ll have to get t’boiler warmed up first, sir, and so we’ll have ’er throbbing in no more than two hours, sir.’

Harry King took his cigar out of his mouth and said, ‘What?! Throbbing?’

Dick smiled nervously. ‘You’ll see, sir, you’ll see.’

Very shortly afterwards, and just in time, smoke and steam enveloped the compound and Harry King saw and, indeed, was amazed.

And Harry King really was amazed. There was something insect-like about the metallic contraption, bits of which were spinning incessantly while the whole thing was shrouded in a cloud of smoke and steam of its own making. Harry King saw purpose personified. Purpose, moreover, that would be unlikely ever to ask for a day off for its granny’s funeral.