Raising Steam (Discworld 40)

In the small hours of one morning in the Plains township of Little Swelling when it was pouring with rain that hammered on the makeshift lodgings, Moist pulled back the tarpaulin and wood door to see the face of Of the Twilight the Darkness, who couldn’t be called soaked, because there was really very little of him to soak.fn61 As soon as the goblin got inside the bothy, such water as was on him simply disappeared.

Almost automatically Moist looked up to see the lights of the local clacks tower and as he did so it flashed a familiar code: it was from Adora Belle. He recognized her code as easily as he would recognize his own. ‘Quickly!’ he said. ‘Get up that tower and get that message back to me, now!’

He waited, and in the gloom the voice of Of the Twilight the Darkness said, ‘Did I hear the magic word, Mister Little Damp?’

Moist was surprised at himself because, even though the goblin had a smell you could almost see, that was no reason for not minding your manners, so he said, ‘Please, Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness. Thank you so very much.’

And thus chastened, Moist kept silent as the little goblin scuttled back out into the rain and scampered towards the tower.

Moist finished his ablutions, gathered his things together – on the assumption that whatever the message it would require him to go somewhere else – and went out to where the golem horse was waiting unregarding of the weather, just in case it needed waking up, because however hard he tried he couldn’t think of it as anything other than alive. Admittedly, the horse was giving him incipient piles, no matter how much padding he put between himself and it. And although the creature could now speak, Moist still yearned for all those fussing little rituals that defined horsemanship. He was aware that there should be such things as nose bags and adjusting the straps and giving the beast some water. The lack of these rituals slightly unbalanced Moist. It was creepy. In the falling rain it was as if he was in two different worlds.

And while he was wondering whether he should give the horse a name, which somehow would have made things feel better, Mister Of the Twilight the Darkness arrived, clutching a damp and smudged pink clacks flimsy.

Vetinari wants to see you immediately. Stop. PS Any chance of bringing home some of that goblin potion with you. Stop. PPS If you pass a bakery we could do with a couple of sliced loaves. Stop. Your loving wife. Stop.

And he thought, well, isn’t it nice to be wanted?

No more than a few hours and a bumpy ride through pouring rain later, the door to the anteroom outside the Oblong Office was opened by Drumknott, replete in a very smart engine driver’s hat, wiping his greasy hands on an equally greasy piece of ever-present engine driver’s rag.

‘His lordship will be with you presently, Mister Lipwig. You’ve been a very busy man lately, haven’t you?’

Moist could now see that the little secretary was also looking tanned beneath the smuts and soot, and the hat was, gods forbid, jaunty, a term never before applied to Drumknott.

‘Have you spent much time on the railway, Mister Drumknott? It looks like it’s doing you some good.’

‘Oh, yes, sir! His lordship allows me to take a few turns on the railway late mornings after he’s finished the crossword. After all, everything is about the train these days, isn’t it, and he was gracious enough to say that I’m keeping him in touch.’

At that moment, there was a shrill whistle from the other side of the door and Drumknott pulled it open to reveal Lord Vetinari, to Moist’s total surprise, catching one of the new little steam engines just as it was about to plunge off the highly polished desk. The familiar straights and curves were surrounded by little toy people: guards, engine drivers, passengers, the portly controller with a big cigar and various engineers with tiny crafted sliding rulers. And the tyrant caught the falling engine in a gauntlet, leaving water and oil dripping down on to the expensive polished ebony floor tiles.

‘Quite amazing, isn’t it, Mister Lipwig?’ he said cheerfully through the smoke. ‘Though isn’t it a pity that they can only run on rails? I can’t imagine what the world would be like if everyone had their own steam locomotive. Abominable.’

His lordship held out his hand for Drumknott to clean it with a not-so-greasy rag, and said, ‘Well, Mister Lipwig is here, Drumknott, and I know you can’t wait to get back to your wonderful railway.’

And Drumknott – the Drumknott who thought the finer things of life were stored in manila folders – headed off down the stairs two at a time to get into the cab, shovel the coal, start the engine, blow the whistle and breathe in smuts and soot and be that most wondrous of creatures, an engine driver.

‘Tell me, Mister Lipwig,’ said Vetinari, as the door closed. ‘It occurs to me that rocks on the line could easily derail a locomotive …’

‘Well, my lord, away from Ankh-Morpork we give the engines cow-catchers, a kind of plough, if you will. And remember, sir, a locomotive running free has a considerable weight and the signallers and linesmen keep an eye on the track.’

‘So, there has so far been no deliberate sabotage?’

Moist said, ‘Not since the attack on Iron Girder months ago, unless you mean the little boys who put their pennies on the track just to get them flattened? That seems to be more of a pastime, and copper bends easily. It’s gone quiet, hasn’t it, sir? I’m thinking about the grags knocking down clacks towers and generally being difficult. It looks like they’ve given up.’

Vetinari winced. ‘You could be right. Certainly the Low King appears to believe so, and Commander Vimes reports that his agents in Uberwald are not picking up any disturbances. Other sources indicate the same. But … I worry that extremists are like perennial weeds. They may disappear for a while but they don’t give up. I fear they’ve gone further underground, waiting for their moment.’

‘Which moment would that be, sir?’

‘Do you know, Mister Lipwig, I wonder about that every night. I take some pleasure in the fact that the era of the locomotive has begun with care and thought and a scientific outlook instead of a lot of tinkering. Encouraging free-for-all simply encourages more episodes such as we saw in the Effing Forest. So …’ Vetinari now stared directly at Moist. ‘Tell me, how is the railway to Uberwald coming along?’

‘Making very good progress, sir, but there is a shor

tfall … as it were. We were expecting to drive the golden spike halfway through next month. There’s a lot of work still to do and we’re driving the train underground around the Gruffies. We’re tunnelling hard, but there are already a lot of cave formations up there.’

And there’s the bridges, he thought. You haven’t told him about the bridges. ‘And, of course, once we get to Uberwald we’ll eventually continue on to Genua.’

‘Not good enough, Mister Lipwig, not good enough at all. You must speed up. The balance of the world could be at stake.’

‘Er … with all due respect, my lord, why?’