Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

Over the next few weeks more and more people heard about Iron Girder and even larger crowds passed through Ankh-Morpork to see the new marvel of the age, including delegates, ambassadors and representatives from most of the towns across the Sto Plains. And, of course, there were the other artificers and freelance tinkerers, inspecting everything they could see and trying to find out everything they could about what it was they weren’t being allowed to see.

Every night Iron Girder was driven along a set of rails into a locked shed on the compound where she would be safe from interference due to the presence of Harry’s most fearsome attack dogs and also two golems, brought in by Harry because, unlike dogs, they couldn’t be killed by a meal laced with poison poked under the door. They patrolled the huge shed, sometimes with members of the City Watch just for the look of the thing.

Moist spent a lot of time in and around the compound in his not very official but somehow understood role as the grease in the outfit’s management, as essential as the buckets of the stuff that seemed to be required in everything to do with the railway. He had, after all, a stake in the railway’s fortunes as head of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, where money was starting to go in and out faster than a revolving door as Harry wrote cheques for iron shipments, timber and extra metalworkers, many of whom were from the company of Free Golems: every one of them his own man, albeit one made of clay.

And grease was definitely needed here. There was a mountain of paperwork already being generated by the railway, which Moist skilfully passed along to Drumknott, whose passion for paperwork was not quite yet eclipsed by his new passion for the railway. The little pink man was in hog heaven.

Surveyors had been called in to work on a route. They were everywhere with their little theodolites. They treated Dick Simnel as one of them, only different. Moist was pleased about that. Dick had friends now, and if they didn’t understand all of his language they did indeed recognize it as bona fide

language somewhat similar to their own and therefore they gave him respect. After all, these other people, in a way, did what he did only in different shapes, stresses, curves, loads, tolerances and substances, and thus where it counted were brothers under the skin. And like Dick, they worked by numbers and knew the absolute necessity of getting them right, and especially they knew the absolute requirement for precision.

In the compound the sound of metal on metal filled the air, and on every flat surface in Harry King’s offices maps were laid out, and they were good maps.

‘Lads,’ Dick Simnel had said to the theodolite men, ‘Harry King is a good gaffer who pays top dollar for a top-rate service. He’s chancing everything to get the locomotives running, so I want you to make it easier for him. Iron Girder can take some slopes, and by ’eck she’ll take more before I’m through, but for now, what I’m telling thee is to keep t’permanent way as level as possible. And I know that there are such things as tunnels and bridges, but they take a lot of time and are flippin’ expensive! Occasionally a little detour might save us a lot of money, which is to say your wages. But think on, and I know it’s obvious, but do not go anywhere near swamps and other shaky ground. A locomotive with its coal tenders, carriages and crew is reet, reet ’eavy and the last thing we want to be learning is ’ow to pull a bogged-down locomotive out of t’quicksand.’

And off they’d gone. The men with clean shirts every day. The men of the sliding rule. Moist liked them because they were everything he wasn’t. But maybe he should teach them about being a scoundrel. Oh, not about taking money from widows and orphans, but about being aware that many people weren’t as straight as a theodolite.

The surveyors proved only too happy to agree that the area around Sto Lat was the gateway to the Sto Plains, so now all they needed to do was get the people with, as it were, the keys to the gate to understand this, a job that everybody was extremely happy to turn over to Mr Moist von Lipwig.

As it turned out, there were a great many landowners between Ankh-Morpork and Sto Lat, and any number of tenants. Nobody minded a clacks tower near by. Indeed, often these days they demanded one, but, well, a mechanical thing chuffing through your cornfields and cabbage plantations spewing out smoke and cinders, well, that was a different matter, which would be the kind of problem that could be settled only by the application of that wonderful lubricant known to every negotiator as warm specie.fn24

The aristocrats, if such they could be called, generally hated the whole concept of the train on the basis that it would encourage the lower classes to move about and not always be available. On the other hand, some were of a type that Moist recognized: shrewd old buffers who’d lead you to believe they were harmless and possibly slightly gaga and then, with a little twinkle in their eye – BANG! – squeeze more money out of you than a snake, twinkling all the way.

Lord Underdale, one such gentleman, had plied Moist with an indecent amount of gin and brandy while naming his terms: ‘Now see here, young man – twinkle, twinkle – you can take your tracks across my land if we can agree a route and it won’t cost you a penny if you will firstly carry my freight for nothing and secondly put a loading station just where I want it so that I can also travel anywhere I want merely by flagging down one of your locomotives. Do you see, young man – twinkle, twinkle – I go free and my freight goes free. Do we have an accord?’

Moist looked out of the wonderful mullioned windows at the smoke beyond the ancient trees and said, ‘What exactly is your freight, sir?’

The old man, all beautiful long white hair and ditto beard, said, ‘Well, now, since you ask, it’s iron ore with a certain amount of lead and zinc. Oh dear, I see your glass is empty again. I must insist you have another brandy – it’s such a cold day, is it not? Twinkle, twinkle.’

Moist smiled and said, ‘Well, your lordship, you are a tough bargainer and no mistaking – twinkle, twinkle, TWINKLE. Since our project is very heavy when it comes to metals, we could perhaps do business? That is to say if our surveyors don’t come up with any problems, such as swampy ground and suchlike.’

‘Well, Mister Moist, since you have drunk every last drop of brandy I have pressed on you without appearing to be the least bit intoxicated, I must consider you a man after my own heart – twinkle, twinkle.’

And here Moist definitely detected the subtle signs of intoxication as the old man said, ‘I have to tell you that yesterday I was contacted by a man who said he represented the up-and-coming Big Cabbage Railway Company.’

Moist knew about them, yes, they were a company all right, but they didn’t yet have a single engine or anybody as skilful as Simnel to tame the raw steam. He rather suspected that a lot of money would go their way from the gullible and then, when there was enough, the bright office would be empty and the gentlemen concerned, with different moustaches, would be legging it somewhere else to start up another railway company. Part of him longed to be one of them and then he thought, I am one of them, only this one has to work.

‘Apparently,’ continued Lord Underdale, ‘they are going to build a far superior engine to the one being demonstrated in Ankh-Morpork.’ The old man laughed at Moist’s almost total lack of expression and said, ‘You told me that you represented a railway company, Mister Lipwig. Well, now your company has … company!’

Moist belched forensically, very carefully choosing his time. ‘This may be the case, sir, but we have – hic! – a working engine, which is … the toast of Ankh-Morpork!’ And here Moist allowed a certain slur to enter his voice and continued, ‘And now, why don’t we, as gentlemen, cut a deal and shake hands on it like gentlemen so we both know where we stand?’ He stood up and stumbled a little, saw the extra twinkle in the old man’s face, and rejoiced.

Later, in the stables, as he saddled up to go home, Moist audited his afternoon’s work. This was a game he knew all too well. He had seen the trap and had been prepared, and thus the side deal for iron-ore shipments and railway access was a sensible one but slightly more beneficial for the railway, in recognition of the fact that elderly gentlemen shouldn’t try to get impressionable young men drunk, especially when they own more land than any reasonable person could ever need. Yes, Moist thought, moral compass? He smiled.

Before he mounted up, Moist carefully removed from about his person two hot-water bottles and a rubber pipe. He very carefully stowed both bottles in a large padded saddlebag, smiling as he did so. The old boy really shouldn’t have tried to make him drunk. It was so … unethical.

When Moist eventually got back to the city, he went straight to the centre of Harry King’s compound, ran up the stairs to Sir Harry’s great big office, and dropped yet another portfolio, prepared by Mr Drumknott, of all the contacts he had dealt with, the rents, the routes agreed.

‘These are for your lads, Harry, and this is for you.’ He set down very carefully a large crate containing a number of bottles.

Harry stared at him and said, ‘What the hell are these for!’

Moist shrugged and tapped his nose. ‘Well, Harry, it’s like this. A lot of the people I have to deal with are elderly men who think they’re cunning and try to fill me with expensive alcohol in the belief that they can get the better of the deal and no mistake. Of course, I drink every drink put in front of me! No! Don’t look like that! I really can hold my drink. In fact I can hold a great deal of drink, and I’m pleased to report that rubber doesn’t detract from the taste of whisky, very fine brandy or Jimkin Bearhugger’s best gin.’

‘Well done, Mister Lipwig. I’ve always known you’re a man to watch extremely carefully and I do so like to see a master at … work. Now follow me, Mister Lipwig, and try not to slosh, will you?’

In a few weeks the compound had changed beyond recognition: the big drop forges that used to thud behind Quarry Lane had been moved wholesale out of the centre of the city and enormously augmented their rate of hammering with the rhythms of the railway factory.

Harry seemed very proud of it, considering that if muck was brass, a thump of the hammer was pennies from heaven. As they walked through the cacophony he shouted, ‘Great lads, the golems! They’re always punctual, and they don’t get ill. Most of all, they just like working! And I like anyone who likes to work: goblins, golems, I don’t care what you are if you’re a good worker.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘As long as you don’t dribble too much. Just look at the way those lads hammer things with their fists. I wish I could get more of them, but you know how it is.’