Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

As Moist slept, the train barrelled like a very slow meteor through the night, climbing up through the Carrack Mountains. Almost the only light to be seen with the moon under a cloud came from the engine’s headlamp and the glow from the furnace when the door was opened to shovel in more coal.

The engine stokers of the Hygienic Railway were a breed apart: taciturn, perennially grumpy, seemingly only willing to talk to the drivers. In the unwritten hierarchy of the footplate the drivers were at the top, of course, and then the stokers and after the stokers there would be the wheel-tappers and shunters: lesser beings but acknowledged as useful. At times it appeared that the stokers considered themselves the most important component of the railway, keepers of its soul, as it were. When off duty they all messed together, grumbling, puffing their wretched pipes, and talking to nobody else. But shovelling coal all day built muscles of iron, so the stokers were strong and fit, and sometimes between shifts there were sparring matches with shovels, with the combatants cheered on by their fellows.

In fact, one of the stokers on the train was a bit of a legend, according to the others, although Moist had not come across him yet. Stoker Blake was said to be death on legs if he was aroused. The other stokers were fierce fighters, but it was claimed that none of them ever got to touch Stoker Blake. A stoker’s shovel, incorrectly used, was an illustration of Commander Vimes’s dictum that a workman’s tool used cunningly could give the average watchman a real headache.

And so the stokers laughed and danced as they sparred with their shovels and got drunk – but not when they were going to be on the footplate. They didn’t need telling about that.

Tonight, cocooned from the cool wind that flew around the cab, Stoker Jim said to the train driver, ‘Here’s your coffee, Mick. Fancy a fry-up?’

Mick nodded without taking his eyes off the track ahead and so Stoker Jim carefully reached out and fried a couple of eggs on the back of his shovel, courtesy of the fiery furnace.

The houses hastily built for the railway workers were close to the water cranes and coal bunkers so that an eye could be kept on the precious coal and water supplies. They were quite small, which put some strain on the accommodation when there were children and grandparents as well, but everyone said that it was twice as good as what might be found in the big city and, after all, you were out in the fresh air, at least in between locomotives.

On this night, Mrs Plumridge, mother of Jack Plumridge the linesman, realized that her chamber pot was overflowing and cussed herself for not emptying it before twilight. She didn’t trust the gleaming porcelain in the ablutions. All her life she had gone outside to a designated private spot in the garden, taking care to remember which of her little plots to empty it in this time, and therefore things got rather receptacle-shaped when a dwarf jumped out in front of her, screamed, ‘Death to the railway!’ and tried to throw something at her.

In response, Mrs Plumridge hefted the chamber pot with a strength you might not have expected from such an old woman who, according to her son, was made out of teak. The pot was very large and remained regrettably very full and the scream woke up all the households near by … and when the miscreant delver came back to consciousness he was tied up and en route to Ankh-Morpork for judgement.

The railwaymen and their grannies were no-nonsense people, earthy, you might say, and they didn’t even allow the delver to wash himself, and that was a terrible thing in the circumstances.

When Moist awoke the following morning, he realized that he was hungry and was pleased to discover that there was breakfast (all-day breakfast it turned out) in the dining carriage.

He found the dining car empty but for Bashfull Bashfullsson and the Low King, sitting chatting like businessmen with a deal to make, taking advantage of the cornucopia.

Quietly, the

King welcomed him and said, ‘Not seen much of the train so far, Mister Lipwig. Been in a planning session with Bashfullsson and the others since we boarded. Will you join us?’

As Moist sat down, Bashfullsson turned to him as if to an ally. ‘I’m trying to get Rhys here to tell us what he’s up to.’

The King merely smiled at this. ‘I intend to take Schmaltzberg with you, my friend Bashfullsson, and do it with as little bloodshed as possible. Believe me, although it’s vexing to remember it, I am the King of my enemies as well as my friends. There’s a certain noblesse oblige, see. It’s a bad king who kills his subjects. I would rather see them humiliated than dead.’

Bashfullsson said, ‘Really? After all the things they’ve done? And the things they’ve caused to be done? Finding young dwarfs and filling them with excitement and idiotic revelations …’

‘I have names,’ said the King. ‘Names of leaders, names of hangers-on. Oh yes, there will be a reckoning. Not an auto-da-fé.’

‘I fear you were too understanding with them last time, sire,’ Bashfullsson said, picking his words carefully. ‘Sad to say, but I’ve come to the conclusion that if you keep turning the other cheek they’ll go on slapping you in the face. I think there’s nothing for it but to go in, cut out and have done. No point in knocking politely this time, saying can I have the Scone of Stone back, please.’

To Moist’s surprise, the King said, ‘However much we disdain the word “politics”, one of its most useful aspects is the stopping of bloodshed. Oh yes, bloodshed there will be. But the generations stream away and people change and things thought of as totally impossible suddenly turn out to be everyday. Nay, essential. Just like the railway is becoming, see. Apropos of that, Mister Lipwig, how is the railway progressing? How are your loggysticks going?’

‘Copacetic, sire. That’s an engineer term meaning all satisfactory.’

The King gave Moist a look. It wasn’t by the standard of looks a nasty one, but it was after all a King’s look, and the gaze of the King was subtly quizzical and testing.

‘We shall see, boyo, we shall see.’

And after breakfast, there was nothing for it but to watch the mountain scenery flow past as if on some endless winding belt: trees, rocks, more trees, bigger rocks, trees again, what was possibly a clearing where lumbermen were working, brief darkness as they reached a rock big enough to require a tunnel, and so on, and yet, Moist thought, behind all those trees and all those rocks and crags, there are homesteads and small villages that we don’t know about and so one day we will have to have a stop here … here … and here. And then one day, some kid from the settlement high up in that last lot of rocks will catch the train and end up in Ankh-Morpork, full of hope, and why not? Station by station we are changing the world. And he allowed himself a little glow of pride.

Apart from the Falls,fn70 the only place that was of any significance in Zemphis was Downsized Abbey. It was a ruin now, the monks long gone; these days it was more of a souk, a medina, a heaving bazaar which reminded Moist of the Shades of Ankh-Morpork on their holidays. Nothing was still. Silence was a rare blessing. And everyone was a trader and it seemed that sooner or later everything and everyone could be bought and sold. And, if necessary, disappeared.

Of the trading routes in Zemphis, the Aglet Road stood out, as caravans of camels arrived on their way to bring the people of the Plains the tiny little things on the ends of their shoelaces without which civilized life would be unbearable and quite dangerous. There were spices from Klatchfn71, materials from the Counterweight Continent which had arrived by slow barge, other mysterious delicacies, and unfortunately many ways to become very happy in a short space of time and stone dead shortly afterwards.

Alongside the legitimate goods traded at the front of the stalls, without doubt there was some contraband, as many traders luxuriated in the semi-lawless landscape. Cages of undomesticated imps were available in the back rooms of some more unscrupulous shops, and after dark the occasional camel slipped in or out of the town carrying barrels of crude treacle.

And even though most sensible people wishing to hang on to their personal possessions, or indeed their lives, would follow the advice of those who had been there and give it a wide berth, some possibly foolhardy tourists did come to Zemphis on their way to see the Paps of Scilla, a jagged mountain range which allowed the determined mountaineer an absolute smorgasbord of ways to be found upside down above a crevasse and hanging by one leg over white water that acted like the mother of all grinders. There were eight peaks in all, sharp and unforgiving, and if there were such a thing as the good ambushing guide it would be right up there with the winners.

Contemplating the Paps from a seat conveniently placed by the burghers of Zemphis as a lookout point for those admiring the view, Moist reflected that shortly their train would have to travel through those peaks. They didn’t look so bad on the map, but up close and personal they were awesome. Scilla must have been very proud eight times over.

A mist hung over the greenery clinging to the steep foothills of the Paps. The terrain looked impassable for a train, but Simnel’s sliding-rule boys had found a suitable way through. Track had been laid and Moist knew that they’d had trolls hanging around there all week, keeping guard.