Raising Steam (24 page)

The Patrician stared at Moist, who said, ‘Yes, I understand. The commander is Vetinari’s terrier and I—’

‘You, Mister Lipwig, are
useful
and a conduit for serendipity. For example, I understand you have just blessed us with more goblins at a time when we need them. Apart from that, I am told by Sydney, the head ostler, that one of our golem horses arrived here declaring “Give me livery or give me death”. We had been given to understand that golem horses do not talk, but it would appear, Mister Lipwig, that you have introduced that one to the delights of speech. I am impressed.’

Lord Vetinari’s smile was widening. ‘What a little bundle of joy
you are, Mister Lipwig.’ He sighed and continued, ‘To think I once fed you to Mister Trooper’s capable hands. He often asks after your wellbeing. You know he never forgets a neck. Now off you go, Mister Lipwig … your audience needs you.’

The Low King’s bellow of rage and betrayal when the news of the massacre at the railhead arrived echoed around the state quarters and into every corner of the great cavern. Bats dropped out of the ceiling, in the bakeries the dough refused to rise, and the silver on the decorative weaponry tarnished.

Rhys Rhysson sat down heavily on the Scone of Stone and waved the clacks flimsy he had just received.

‘Dwarfs have killed railway workers!’ he shouted. ‘Ordinary men, going about their business in an enterprise that would be useful to dwarfs as well as humans.’ The King looked almost in tears and thumped a fist into the palm of his hand. ‘This after the clacks towers!’ he said, with a groan of loss. ‘This is a message from Diamond King of Trolls and he is trying not to upset me, but I think he feels sorry for me.’

He raised his voice and shouted, ‘And this is the king of the trolls, our one-time arch enemy, but now a personal friend of mine! What will
he
think about the trustworthiness of dwarfs now? Thanks to intelligence gathered by the Ankh-Morpork Watch, including our own Cheery Littlebottom, we have the names of the idiots who did the deed. And now I know exactly who is behind it all.’

He paused and glared at the growing crowd. ‘Where is Ardent? Bring him to me at once! I’ll show him what his idiotic ranting has caused! I want him brought here in chains if possible. Good heavens, Tak gave us the Koom Valley Accord and now the little blister is trying to break it.’

The crowd was bigger now and the voice of the King was even louder. ‘I repeat, I want him here. Now. Today. No excuses. No second chances. No redemption. Let it be known that the King will
not let the benefits of the Koom Valley Accord be turned to dust by adventurers who believe that the past is still with us and belongs to them. All I see is its sterile echo.

‘And I notice these days talk against goblins who are working in the human industries, such as the new railway and the clacks. I hear a lot of complaints that it is taking work from us dwarfs, but why is that? Because goblins learn quickly, work hard and are glad to be in Ankh-Morpork! And the dwarfs? We have factions that bring us down with every flaming tower … Who would trust us after that? Remember, if Tak teaches us anything, he teaches us to be tolerant of all sapient shapes. Let me tell you, the world changes with every generation and if we don’t learn to surf on the tide then we will be smashed on the rocks.’

By the Low King’s side, Bashfull Bashfullsson picked up the theme. He looked around at the assembled dwarfs and spoke.

‘Tak did not expect the stone to have life, but when it did, he smiled upon it, saying “
All Things Strive
”.’ Glaring at the onlookers, Bashfullsson continued, ‘Time and again the last testament of Tak has been stolen in a pathetic attempt to kill the nascent future at birth and this is not only an untruth, it is a blasphemy! Tak even finds it in his heart to suffer the Nac Mac Feegles, possibly for their entertainment value, but I wonder if he will continue to tolerate
us
… He must look at us now with sorrow, which I hope will not turn into rage. Surely the patience of Tak must find some limitations somewhere.’

Bashfullsson bowed to the Low King and said, ‘I am your servant, your majesty. What would you have of me?’

The King, still red in the face, said, ‘I won’t have you bow to me, my friend, I rather think I should bow to you. Your words are wise as ever and will be proclaimed in every mine.’

At this point a dwarf arrived in the chamber at a run and whispered something to the Low King’s loyal secretary, Aeron, who looked sombre.

‘I regret to report, sire, that Ardent and his friends seem to have disappeared.’

‘So, the stupid troublemaker has run away,’ hissed the Low King in barely suppressed fury. He raised his voice and announced to the crowd, ‘They are banished. All of them. No doubt the cowards will find a place to hide, but anyone who helps them will be treated as traitors, not to me but to the Scone.’

In the privacy of the robing room a little while later, the King was pacing up and down when Aeron arrived with the latest report.

‘They’ve caught some of the small fry, but the main players have indeed got away.’ As he mentioned a couple of names, Rhys Rhysson’s face went as cold as marble. Aeron placed a calming hand on his shoulder and continued, ‘Albrecht and the folk of his mines are on your side, though many of the others appear to be wavering.’

‘Wavering? That’s not good enough. I need their full commitment,’ said the King.

His secretary smiled. ‘You’ll get it, I’m sure. There may be some rogue elements still to be mopped up but we’ll get them soon. But do be careful, Rhys, I can see this is taking a lot out of you and that’s not good. And you do have another card to play.’

The King shook his head. ‘Not yet, but perhaps some time soon, at a point of my choosing. I just have to find the moment.’

Aeron smiled again. And then there was the sound of a kiss.

The dwarf vandal had a stroke of luck. There was Engine One, right below him, the one they called Iron Girder, and there was no time to waste. He was an expert, and cunning, and the grags would pay handsomely if even one wretched locomotive was destroyed.

He dropped down silently from the roof and landed just behind the prestigious engine. It was a good time to throw a monkey wrench in the gears … There were guards, he knew, but they were stupid and sluggish and tonight they were on secondment and
patrolling a long way away. He had checked and double-checked. And so he soundlessly approached the loco motive, alone in her cavernous shed.

There were so many things you could do to kill a railway engine and he had imagined them all. And so in the dark, ready to climb up again, out of the skylight, he unrolled his bag of implements, all carefully wrapped in hide so they didn’t clink or rattle, and stepped up purposefully on to the footplate of Iron Girder …

… and in the gloom the locomotive spat live steam, instantly filling the air with a pink fog …

The dwarf waited, unable to move, and a sombre voice said, P
LEASE DO NOT PANIC
. Y
OU ARE MERELY DEAD
.

The vandal stared at the skeletal figure, managed to get himself in order and said to Death, ‘Oh … I don’t regret it, you know. I was doing the work of Tak, who will now welcome me into paradise with open arms!’

For a person who didn’t have a larynx Death made a good try at clearing his throat. W
ELL, YOU CAN HOPE, BUT CONSIDERING WHAT YOU INTENDED, IF
I
WERE YOU
I
WOULD START HOPING HARDER RIGHT NOW AND, PERHAPS, VERY QUICKLY INDEED
. Death continued, in tones as dry as granite, T
AK MIGHT INDEED BE GENTLE
. S
TRIVE AS YOU HAVE NEVER STRIVEN
. Y
ES
, T
AK MIGHT BE GENTLE, OR
…

The vandal listened to the sound of silence, the sound like a bell with, alas, no clapper, but finally the dreadful silence ended in …
NOT
.

Iron Girder had screamed the shrill whistling scream of a lady in distress that had cut through the air like a knife, and by the time Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sergeant Colon reached the shed, running extremely carefully and precisely,
^fn49
all they found besides
Iron Girder was some warm dampness, vaguely pink, a tool roll and a few fragments of bone.

‘It looks like the locomotive fought back!’ said Nobby. ‘I know what this is, sarge. It’s eldritch – uncanny, you could say.’

Fred Colon stepped forward and said, ‘It don’t look oblong to me, Nobby. Look at this crowbar and tool roll … You can’t tell me that the engine lies awake at night like an old biddy keeping a poker beside her bed to fight off burglars. I reckon she was being coy. Live steam! It’s a good job me and you were able to scare away all the other assailants!’

‘And they was
very
heavily armed,’ said Nobby, speaking very deliberately, to make things absolutely clear, ‘but they didn’t have the spunk to face us, that’s what it was.’

Water was dripping from the stout girders high up in the shed. Colon looked around and said, ‘Hey, Nobby, what’s that white thing up there embedded in the roof?’

Nobby squinted and said, ‘Er, it looks like half a skull if you want my opinion, sarge, and it’s still steaming.’

In the distance were sounds of thudding feet as the golem guards came at speed and quickly spread out.

Nobby raised his voice and said, ‘We’d better tell them that the others’ll be ten mile away by now, sarge, at the speed they were going, and I think old Vimesy might give us a day off in lieu for this night’s work.’

‘But look,’ said Colon. ‘We’ve been patrolling past that locomotive time and time again and nothing has happened to us.’

‘We weren’t proposing to smash her up, now, were we, sarge?’

‘What? Are you saying Iron Girder knows who her friends are? Do me a favour … she’s only a lump of old metal.’ And in the silence something made a little clinking noise. Colon and Nobby held their breath.

‘Wonderful machine, though, ain’t she, Nobby! Look at those beautiful smooth lines!’

There was another pause as breaths continued to be held and Nobby said, ‘Well, the golems are here now, sarge, and it’s the end of our shift. I’ll write a fulsome report as soon as we get back to the yard and that reminds me, you’ve got to give me my pencil back.’

The two of them perambulated away at impressive speed and for a while Iron Girder was alone; and then there was a very small sound that appeared to be half whistle and half giggle.

Sooner or later everything to do with the railway passed across Moist’s desk and generally he hastened it all along its way. Today he was looking across the paperwork at a clearly embarrassed Dick Simnel.

‘Now come on, Dick, you tell me what you think happened last night. It seems as if the grags were setting about to put more than a dent in Iron Girder. This could be connected with the attack on the railhead, but there were some … significant differences. I expect there are a lot of ways of putting a locomotive out of commission, but the Watch was on the scene within minutes and according to them
she
fought back and got one of the murderous band. I know the two watchmen of old and every fight they have is always against much bigger forces, at least that’s what they say if no one else is around, but it does seem that she got her retribution in first, you might say, and boiled him. They’re still mopping the floor. How do you think that happened, Dick? Was it magic of some sort?’

Simnel blushed and said, ‘Mister Lipwig, I’m an engineer. I don’t believe in magic, but I’m wondering right now whether magic believes in Iron Girder. Every day when I come into work there’re the train spotters, always there, and now they’ve got little sheds of their own … Have you noticed? They almost know more about ’er than I do, I tell thee, and I look at t’people who’re still taking rides, I look at their faces and they’re not the faces of engineers, they’re more like the faces of people going to church, and so I wonder
what’s ’appening. No, I can’t tell you how Iron Girder killed the dwarf who was trying to kill her and why she’s never done it while everyday folk are around. That looks like thinking to me and I don’t know how she thinks.’

Dick was glowing red now and Moist felt sorry for the engineer who lived in a world where things did what they were told, all the little numbers adding up, all the calculations dancing to the rattle of the sliding rule just as they should. But now he was in a conceptual world where the authority of that sliding rule held no sway.

Dick looked desperately at Moist and said, ‘Do you think it possible that an engine like Iron Girder has a … soul?’

Oh, dear, thought Moist, he’s really having problems here. Out loud he said, ‘Well, I see you move your hands over her once she’s stopped and it seems to me that you’re petting her, and I notice that all the other drivers do that too, and although the Flyers have numbers I notice that the drivers give them names and even talk to them – in expletives, occasionally, but nevertheless they’re talking to a mechanical thing. I do wonder if life is catching somehow, because I also notice that every time people go for joyrides on Iron Girder they pat her too and they would swear they don’t know why. But what do
you
think?’

‘Ee, I know what you mean. In the early days when I were just getting started I remember I spoke to Iron Girder all t’time and shouted often enough and occasionally swore as well, especially if she were truculent. Aye, you might have a point. There’s a lot of me in her; a lot of me blood and buckets of me sweat and many, many tears. I’ve lost the end of one thumb to her and most of my fingernails are blue and I suppose, when you think about it, there really is a lot of her in me.’

He looked ashamed when he said that and so Moist quickly jumped in with, ‘I think you’re right, Dick, it’s one of those times when you have to stop thinking about how and why and just remember that whatever’s happening is working and it just might
not work if anyone gets smart and tries to find the soul of what’s happening. There are times when a sliding rule just doesn’t cut the mustard and if I was you this morning I’d get her all sleek and shiny and let her
see
her worshippers and
feel
their worship. They’re yearning for something and I don’t know what it is, so drink up the gravy and don’t spoil things with too much thinking or too much worrying either. And I promise you I won’t mention a word of this conversation to anyone.’