Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

On his way out, Dick looked in at the King and said, ‘Is he okay, Mother?’

Moist watched Mrs Simnel’s face very carefully.

‘He’s gradely, lad,’ she replied. ‘He just needs his sleep, such a shame to wake him up.’

Dick flashed a glance to Moist as his mother said that and seemed to be entertaining a thought and then shrugged like a man who had thought better about it. He handed Moist a parcel of clean clothes for himself and the King and then kissed his mother again.

‘You will see to it, won’t you, Mother, that they leave in time for the Zemphis express?’

And she did, after a bowl of porridge, hot and sugary, just the kind Adora Belle totally disliked. Moist could feel it sticking to his bones as he and the King, smiling and rejuvenated after their nap, left the haven of Mrs Simnel’s little house as the sun began to rise over Sto Lat.

In a cavern somewhere near the gloomy, somewhat twisted metropolis of Slake the grags were discussing the railway menace, and ways of stopping it. They had found an artificer who liked working iron, and since he was a dwarf from Ankh-Morpork he was in a position to explain matters to them.

Sitting nervously in the dimly lit cavern and trying to appear to be very much on the side of the grags while, of course, being on the side of the money, the artificer explained that locomotives are heavy, and derailing them might be best left to when a train was heading through gorges or near the mountains. And he suggested that an alternative would be to deprive the engines of the basic necessities – fuel and water – and then attack them when they were most vulnerable. He had fortuitously come across a map that showed the locations of all the coal bunkers and water cranes and towers, and this he now produced.

‘And just supposing we set our sights on stopping a particular train … how many people do we need to take down these … water cranes?’ croaked an anonymous grag in the darkness.

‘You’ll need plenty of you on this,’ said the helpful dwarf. ‘The opposition is probably bright enough to realize that you’ll be focusing your efforts on disabling the engines, and will have the cranes and bunkers well guarded. Of course,’ he added, ‘when you’re up high in the mountains you have the advantage on ’em.’

The artificer looked hopeful after this, in so far as he could be seen in the dark cavern, and said, ‘Well, that’s about it, sirs. It’s not very difficult, but you know where to contact me if you need me.’

In truth, the cavern was giving him the heebie-jeebies, and he wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. He heard the voice of the leader saying, ‘Well done, my friend. Please take this gold as a token of appreciation and, yes, we do know where to find you and every member of your family as well.’

The artificer looked into the heavy leather bag and was delighted. ‘Very kind of you, sirs. I hope to help you again at some time in

the future.’

And he went away happy with such big wages for so little real work. The grags didn’t know anything! It was like taking money off children, but he kept smiling and said goodbye and had his throat cut in the darkness by a delver before he’d even left the dripping chamber. After all, what grag would hand over gold to an Ankh-Morpork dwarf? To a grag they were all unbelievers.

Moist was aware, as he and the King made their way hurriedly from Mrs Simnel’s house back to the station, of the dark clerks keeping an eye on them, invisibly tracking them on either side. Yesterday’s clothing had gone, and after a quick wash and brush-up the King had the appearance of a dwarfish businessman while Moist was scruffier, looking like an engineer hurrying on his way to work.

The cry from the porter announced, ‘Shortly to depart from platform one the Altiplano Express, stopping at Big Cabbage for Brassica World and Zemphis for Zemphis Falls. Sleeping compartments at the front of the train. All aboard, ladies and gentlemen!’

Moist whispered to the King, ‘You know what to do, sire.’

The King showed his ticket to the guard, who looked at it very carefully before saying gruffly, ‘Middle Class, middle of the train.’ Moist walked off as fast as he could and didn’t look around. Looking around pegged you as a nervous person. You had to rely on instinct alone. Everybody knew what to do.

He had to manoeuvre to get out of the way of crates of chickens and he thought, why are there always crates of chickens? By the sound of it they didn’t really want to be there. And now it seemed that chickens were going everywhere. A mother with a child hurried past. A goblin waved to presumably his wife, although it was quite hard to tell with goblins, and Moist glanced at the guard and savoured, just for one moment, the silence before the train came alive.

He embarked via the guard’s van and the first person he met was Detritus without his badge and therefore being, well, just another troll. He looked uncomfortable. Behind Detritus Moist found Commander Vimes dressed as a guard, apparently thoroughly enjoying himself, if Moist correctly interpreted his twisted grimace.

Vimes waved a clacks flimsy and said cheerfully, ‘The idiots! They tried their tricks while they were still on Ankh-Morpork soil. Poor souls … I suppose they thought they were outthinking us, but Cheery and her lads had the measure of them in swift order – Sir Harry’s men too by the sound of it – and now both lots are heading for the Tanty where the dark clerks will be engaging them in important discussions. Let’s hope the news doesn’t get out to the grag command just yet.’

It was going to be a long haul to Zemphis. And after Zemphis they’d be launching on to the new track, which no passenger train had yet travelled. Time enough to worry about that when they got there, Moist told himself firmly. For now disguise was crucial; he must be the engineer, the lucky man who got to ride the latest Mark II Flyer every day and get paid for it.

As Moist walked up and down the carriages he began to look at the passengers around him. Amongst the normal mix of Ankh-Morporkians and other folk from the Sto Plains and surrounding areas whom he would expect to see on the regular journey to Zemphis, there were some dwarfs, travelling both together and singly. A few he recognized as part of the Low King’s entourage; others were, if he was any judge, Ankh-Morpork dwarfs. Mind you, there was more than one kind of Ankh-Morpork dwarf: one sort were happy at being Ankh-Morpork citizens, and others seemed to feel grumpy and nervous about their status, not realizing that in Ankh-Morpork nobody paid much attention to what you were – unless you looked wealthy, in which case you would definitely be the centre of attention.

And then there were the people trying a little too hard to present themselves as harmless members of the public. They always stood out and Moist wondered if they knew how obvious they were to the trained eye of the suspicious scoundrel. They were worried and trying desperately not to look worried and nonchalance, real nonchalance, is very difficult to fake. If you didn’t have the knack it cried out … amateur.

One dwarf in particular had caught Moist’s eye as he passed, so he came back a short while later and took the seat opposite. As Moist sat rocking with the rhythm of the train, he sensed some discordance. Not fear, exactly, but the pulse of fear squashed down so heavily that it was almost singing, and in the privacy of Moist’s skull the tickertape of suspicion ticked away.

Moist had been clever so far, not staring and, indeed, trying to look like a person who was not trying not to stare, a professional nonchalant, but the dwarf who was under his eyes was sweating. Sooner or later something was going to break.

‘Oh, I know who you are!’ Moist said suddenly, keeping his voice low. ‘You’re one of those train spotters, aren’t you? I never forget an anorak.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m a very keen train spotter, sir,’ said the dwarf, keeping his voice level while his beard dripped sweat and his eyes screamed help.

‘Excellent. So you’d know the top speed of a Flyer, then, would you? No?’