Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

Adora Belle looked down at a face that would take a frantic battalion of mothers to love, but nevertheless she smiled and said, ‘Thanks, mister. I must say you’ve really got acclimatized for somebody who has spent most of their life in a cave. I can’t believe you don’t even worry about heights, that never ceases to amaze me. And thanks again, it really is good coffee and still warm, too.’

Of the Twilight the Darkness shrugged as only a goblin could shrug. The effect was rather like a parcel of snakes dancing.

‘Missus Boss, goblins no stranger to acclimatize. Don’t acclimatize, don’t live! And anyway, things going well down there, no problems. Goblins got respeck! And how is Mister Slightly Damp?’

‘Moist is fine, my friend, and surely you know my husband doesn’t like the name you goblins have given him. He thinks you’re doing it on purpose.’

‘You want that we stop doing it?’

‘Oh, no! It teaches him a lesson in humility. I think he needs to go to university on that score.’

The goblin grinned in the way of a conspirator, and he could see Adora Belle trying not to laugh, while overhead the clacks continued sending its messages to the world.

Adora Belle could almost read the messages simply by watching the towers, but you had to be very, very fast; and the goblins were even faster than that. And who ever would have thought their eyesight was so discerning? Using the new augmented colour shutter boxes after dark, most human clacks spotters could separate about four or five or maybe even six colours on a very good clear night, but who could have imagined that goblins, fresh out of their caves, would be uncannily able even to identify puce as opposed to pink, while most humans didn’t have a clue what a damn puce was if they saw it?

Adora Belle glanced at Of the Twilight the Darkness and once again acknowledged to herself that goblins were the reason why clacks traffic was so much faster, more accurate and streamlined than ever before. And yet how could she reward them for the increased efficiency? Sometimes the goblins never even bothered to take their pay. They liked rats, of which there was never a shortage, but because she was indeed the bossfn16 she felt it incumbent on her to persuade the lit

tle nerds that there were, indeed, many other things you could be doing apart from coding and deciphering clacks messages. She almost shivered. They actively, obsessively liked to work, all day and all night if possible.

She knew if the name on the door said ‘Boss’ then in theory she had to think about their welfare, but they weren’t interested in their own welfare. What they wanted to do was code and decipher, pausing only when the lady troll with the rat trolley came round. Honestly! They liked their work and not just liked it, but lived it. How many bosses had had to go all around the workplace telling people they really had to stop working now and go home? But then they didn’t go home, they wanted to stay up in their clacks towers, and in the small hours of the night chat by clacks to goblins elsewhere. They would rather chatter than eat, it seemed, and even slept on the tower, dragging in little straw beds for when they were forced by nature to take a nap.

Adora Belle had insisted to the trustees that there should be a foundation set up, against the day when goblins and their children might want to move further into society. So a scant while after the remarkable musical talents of Tears of the Mushroom had been so spectacularly unveiled to Ankh-Morpork high society, the goblins had become people, strange people, yes, but people nevertheless. Of course, there was the smell, but you couldn’t have everything.

Novelty went around Ankh-Morpork just like an embarrassing disease, thought Sir Harry King the following afternoon as he looked down on to the compound where people were peering through the gates and fencing in a great susurration of speculation. Harry knew his fellow citizens from the bottom up, as it were, willing slaves to novelty and the exotic, rubberneckers all of them. The whole crowd were turning their heads as one to keep track of Iron Girder, like a flock of starlings, and all the time Iron Girder was chuffing away with Dick waving from the footplate, the air still full of the smuts and smells. And yet, he thought, it’s all approval. No one’s disagreeing, no one’s frightened. A beast from nowhere. A fiery dragon, all smoke and cinders, has appeared among them and they hold up their children to look at it, waving as it goes past.

What strange magic—? He corrected himself; what strange mechanics could have achieved this? There was the beast and they were loving it.

I’ll have to get familiar with these words, Harry thought as he left his office: ‘footplate’, ‘boiler’, ‘reciprocal’, ‘molybdenum disulphide’,fn17 and all the tiresome but fascinating language of steam.

Having noticed that Harry was watching them, Dick Simnel allowed Iron Girder to slow down gently until, with an almost imperceptible bump, she came to a halt. Dick jumped off the footplate and strolled towards him, and Harry saw a triumphant look in his eye.

Harry said, ‘Well done, lad, but be careful, be very, very careful. Be careful of everything right now. I’ve been watching the faces of them people with their noses pressed up against my fence, their little faces all corrugated, as it were. They’re fascinated, and fascinated people spend money.

‘The most important thing in business is to work out who gets that cash and it’s like this, my boy, it’s a jungle out there and I’m more than a multi-millionaire, much more. I know that while happy handshakes are very pleasing and friendly, when it comes to business you can’t do without bloody lawyers because in this jungle I’m a gorilla! It’s best you tell me the name of yours and I’ll get my lawyer to get in touch so they can talk all lawyer-to-lawyer while totting up their dollars. I don’t want no one to say that Harry King fleeced the lad who tamed the steam.

‘For what it’s worth I’ll fund you up to a certain point, no doubt about that, because I think this engine of yours has real possibilities, huge possibilities. So now you’ve got my interest and by the time the papers find out about this you’ll have everyone’s interest.’

Dick shrugged and said, ‘Well, Sir Harry, it’s great that you’re giving me a chance, so anything you suggest’ll be okay by me.’

Harry King almost screamed, ‘No, no, no! I like you, I like you a lot, but business is, well, business is business!’ Harry’s face was now puce with anger. ‘You don’t go and tell anyone that you’ll take whatever they want to give you! You bargain, lad. Don’t get starry-eyed! You bargain. You bargain hard.’

There was silence and then the lad said, ‘Mister King, before I decided to come to Ankh-Morpork I talked about things with me mother, a very shrewd lady – she ’ad to be, what with me dad being somewhere out there in the ether, if you catch my drift. And she said if someone wants to do business in the big city, Dick, make out that you’re simple and see ’ow they treat you. If they treats you properly, simple as you are, then it’s likely you can trust them. And then you can show them how smart you really are. And well, sir, it seems to me you’re as straight as lunchtime. I’ll go and find a lawyer right now.’ He hesitated. ‘Er, where can I find a lawyer I can trust? I might not be as clever as I think I am.’

Sir Harry laughed heartily. ‘It’s a tough call, lad, and a question I’ve lately needed to ask myself, as it happens. My friend Mustrum Ridcully over at the University told me about one only yesterday: a lawyer so straight he could be used as a crowbar. Why not let your lads go on showing Iron Girder to the crowd, and come with me in my carriage, although it’s not a patch on the one you brought here, eh? Eh! Come on, lad, let’s go, shall we?’

At his office in the Lawyers’ Guild building, Harry King and Dick Simnel met Mr Thunderbolt, surprisingly large and, surprisingly, a troll. A troll with a voice like gently flowing lava.

‘You will wish to know my credentials, gentlemen. I am a member of the Ankh-Morpork Guild of Lawyers and served my articles here under Mister Slant,’ said Mr Thunderbolt. ‘As well as my Ankh-Morpork practice I am the only troll to have, moreover, accreditation as a lawyer in the realm of the Low King. Apropos of nothing, Sir Harry, I am also the nephew of Diamond King of Trolls, although, of course, I must add that the nature of troll families is such that the mere word “nephew” does not do the situation justice.’

The voice was the voice of a professor, but one who had chosen to speak in an echoing cave. The features were more or less like those of all trolls, unless you looked for the giveaway signs and recognized the careful masonry work, the richness of the plant life in the visible cavities and, not least, that elusive shine, and possibly shimmer, which caught the light so delicately; not boldly in your face, but irresistibly there.

‘And yes, I am diamond through and through and therefore I cannot tell lies for fear of shattering. Furthermore, I have no intention of trying to do so. It appears to me, gentlemen, from what you tell me, that the two of you are in accord, neither wishing to play unfairly and both of you wishing to act decently with one another and so, on this occasion, much as my Guild colleagues might disapprove, I suggest I act as mediator and lawyer for both of you. Troll justice is remarkably straightforward – I only wish that this could be the case everywhere else. However, should you fall out then I would not undertake work from either of you subsequently.’

Thunderbolt smiled and little sparkles flashed around the room like a firework display.

‘I will put together a short document which might, in other places, be called an agreement to agree. And I am the judge not on the side of you individually but on the side of you both. I am diamond and I cannot allow injustice to happen. I suggest, gentlemen, that you continue with your project, which seems to me remarkable, and leave the paperwork to me. I look forward to seeing you at the compound tomorrow.’

Harry and Dick were silent in the coach until Dick said, ‘Weren’t he nice? For a lawyer.’