Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

Rhys Rhysson swore when he saw the corpses and young Simnel wept, but it was now fully morning, and time was passing. After a quick consultation with Commander Vimes and the Low King, the decision was made to leave. As everyone reboarded the train, Moist and Simnel said farewell to the gnomes.

‘Please look after this place and give these gentlemen a decent burial, with a stone,’ said the red-eyed Simnel. ‘And if possible can you do owt wi’ t’water crane?’

Slam beamed again. ‘It’s only metal. Didn’t I mention that we’re tinkers as well? We can definitely fix it for you.’

‘Well then,’ said Moist, ‘you and your people are now working for the railway and that means you are working for Harry King and Sir Harry doesn’t like anything bad to happen to his employees, oh my word yes. You’ll see trains a lot in the future and I think you’ll find your lives considerably more busy. I’ll send a clacks to Sir Harry about remuneration.’

‘What’s remuneration?’ said the little tinker.

Moist said, ‘You’ll find out.’

As Iron Girder struck out for Slake, the gnomes lined up and waved tiny little handkerchiefs until long after the train was out of sight.

Fishing for carp in Lake Overshot that afternoon, Mr Geoffrey Indigo was quietly surprised when the water in the lake simply disappeared in a certain amount of bubbling, leaving some gasping fish, startled frogs and a rather attractive nymph, who was very angry and spat at him as if it was his fault. But the man who had written that well-known book Out with my Flies in All Weathers kept his calm and made a note to mention this phenomenon at the next meeting of the Overshot Fishing Society.

As he meticulously cleaned his gear and generally tidied up, he heard a liquid noise and was surprised for a second time to see that the hole in the landscape was now refilling with water. He watched amazed as the nymph spat at him again, leaving him feeling somewhat wronged. And on the way home, squelching a little, he wondered if anyone would believe him.

When he told his wife later about the strange day, she snorted.

‘Geoffrey, you really shouldn’t take your brandy flask with you!’

‘I didn’t take it with me,’ he protested. ‘It’s still on the sideboard, where it always is!’

‘Then just don’t tell anybody,’ his wife concluded. ‘People will think you’re strange and we can’t have that.’

Geoffrey, the least strange person in the world, except possibly when it came to talking about fish, decided not to say anything. After all, you didn’t want to become a laughing stock …

Moist was starting to worry about Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers. What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going. If you met them away from the cab, their conversation was about gears and wheels and timings, but it was clear to Moist that they were frazzled after days of living on the footplate and wrestling their locomotives through various little tantrums.

And so he confronted Mr Simnel, saying, ‘Surely we can afford to slacken pace a little and let you and your lads get your heads down for a bit? As far as I can see, we’re well on schedule.’

And he detected in Dick’s eyes not madness but something else more subtle. He was sure it had no name. It seemed to be a sort of hunger for anything that was new and above all for proving that something could be refined to the point of perfection and kept there. In the goblins this was endemic, although it didn’t seem to do them much harm. Humans, apparently, were another matter.

‘People are going to die if we push them any further,’ he said to Dick. ‘You lot would rather work than sleep! I swear, sometimes you seem to be as mechanical as Iron Girder, and that’s not right, you have to … chill, get laid back before you are laid-back and laid down for ever.’

To Moist’s amazement, Dick suddenly ripped out at him like a lion. He could almost hear the growl.

‘Who are you to talk, Mister Moist? What have you made, built, fretted over? I see none of your fingernails are torn and you can talk well in a fancy way, but what is it you’ve made? What is it you are?’

‘Me, Dick? Well, now I come to look at it I’m the grease that turns the wheels and changes minds and moves the world along. Or you might say that I’m a kind of a cook, but it is a special kind of cookery. It’s a bit like the sliding rule; you just move things about at the right time and you get the answer you need. In short, Dick, I make things happen, and that includes your railway.’

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist’s tone became gentle. ‘And I now see that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You’ve run out of steam, Dick. Look, we’re well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it’s daylight and we’re out of the mountains it’s going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We’re all going to need our wits about us when we get near the Pass. Surely you can take some rest?’

Simnel blinked as if he’d not seen Moist the first time, and said, ‘Yes, you’re right.’

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man’s speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compart

ment, put him to bed and noted that the engineer didn’t so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it. And that job done, he went to the guard’s van where Vimes was drinking coffee and carefully going through the paperwork relating to the captive delvers, who in the pinch sang like most canaries.

‘Commander Vimes, can you help me a moment?’

‘Problem, Mister Lipwig?’

‘The lads are working all the time and they seem to think it’s the badge of a man never to go to sleep.’

‘I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night’s rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can.’

‘Very good,’ said Moist. ‘Now look at them here. Still working on the sliding rules and fretting themselves because they’ve spent too much time trying to put one over on the universe.’