Raising Steam (42 page)

Ardent almost spat and said, ‘You say that when you’re known to be one of the biggest traditionalists in all the mines?’

‘I still am. And most of our traditions were to keep us safe, just in the way that the grags in their great, heavy clothing exploded
the firedamp so that we wouldn’t be burned alive. The rules of the mine. They learned the hard way and the traditions are there for a purpose; they work. But somehow, you and the others don’t realize that outside the caverns the world is different. Oh, I keep the special days and knock twice on every door and follow all the tenets of Tak. And why? Because they bring us together, as did the clacks towers until your blessed delvers started to burn them. Burning words dying in the sky! Is that to be the legacy of the dwarfs?’

He stopped. Ardent had gone pale and seemed to be shivering. But then his eyes blazed, and he snarled, ‘You won’t be driven, Albrecht, and nor will I. Train or no train. It’ll never get here anyway. The world is not ready for locomotion.’

He glared at Albrecht, who said, ‘Yes, of course it isn’t. But what you don’t understand is that the world wasn’t ready for the clacks but now it screams if they are burned down. And I believe that locomotion has not finished with us yet.’

The response was the slamming of the door and the turning of the key. And now the fool had locked him in for the night, just where he wanted to be.

There were guards, Albrecht knew, but like guards everywhere they tended to slumber or go off somewhere to smoke a pipe during the long hours of the night, and in any case very few of them came near to this particular dungeon since sensible guards didn’t want to upset someone like Albrecht. Even if you thought you were on the right side, you never
knew
who the winner would be and in those circumstances smaller fry might be the ones to get fried …

After a while, Albrecht picked up the little spoon with which he had eaten his meal and there was the subtle scratching of rock dust which led to the appearance of a goblin, who grinned at him in the gloom.

‘Here you are, squire, here’s clacks flimsies, fresh from
Commander Vimes. And bottle of oil for lamp. Oh, and toothpaste you asks for. Have been told to tell you that train is moving like no one business. Sure to be here on schedule.’

It was a kind of therapy to hear of the inevitable approach of the famous Iron Girder, day after day.

The aroma of a goblin, Albrecht thought, seemed to be a metaphysical one. After the initial shock, you had to wonder if the goblin smell was somehow arriving inside your head as much as through your nostrils. It wasn’t even all that bad. It had the savour of old sculleries and southernwood.

He took the packages and scanned the flimsies with the speed of a dwarf who had learned to assimilate the written word quickly. And he spoke with interest to the young goblin, a caste he had hitherto dismissed as a waste of space at best and a nuisance otherwise, but they seemed to be more level-headed than most of his fellow dwarfs, especially that fool Ardent, and it was amazing how they could get about in the darkness of Schmaltzberg and make use of every rat hole before making use of the rat.

And this one waited patiently while Albrecht sorted out some flimsies of his own to go back to the locomotive. And then the old dwarf did something else that surprised him.

He said: ‘What’s your name, young goblin? And may I beg your pardon for not enquiring earlier? Please forgive an old dwarf who hasn’t kept up with the times.’

The goblin looked stunned and said, ‘Well, guv, if it don’t hurt anything, I am The Rattle of the Wheels. Railwaymen friends is calling me Rat for short name. That makes oldies very annoy.’

Albrecht held out a hand. The Rattle of the Wheels stepped back and then came forward sheepishly.

‘Nice to meet you, Rattle of the Wheels. Have you any family?’

‘Yes, your worship. My mother is Of the Happiness the Heart, father is Of the Sky the Rim and small brother is Of the Water the Crane.’

And after a moment the goblin said, ‘Actually, sir, you can stop holding my hand.’

‘Oh, yes. I suppose that my name should be Of the Moment the Stupefied. Good luck to you and your family. You know, in a way I’m jealous of you. And now I’ve finished my work for the day I’d like you to take my paperwork, such as it is, and hide it somewhere around here where no dwarf is going to look.’

‘We cleans toilets, sir. Knows plenty-many places that not visited. Same time tomorrow?’

The handshake fulfilled, the goblin disappeared into a hole that even a rat might find difficult to get into. And as the sounds of the goblin scrabbling through the hole faded away, Albrecht thought, I would
never
have done that before. What a fool I was.

Miss Gwendolyn Avery of Schmarm awoke in the middle of the night to the shaking and rattle of the multiple bottles of age-defying unguents on her dresser. And then she realized that the whole house was shaking to a rhythmic thudding.

When she described this episode in dramatic tones to her friend Daphne the following morning, she said that it was like the sound of a lot of men marching past. She put it down to the cherry brandy she had had before going to bed whilst Daphne, knowing Gwendolyn’s regrettable spinster status, put it down to wishful thinking.

The Slake ranges were half tundra, half desert, mostly windswept. In short, a fossil of a landscape where nothing generally grew but stumbleweed,
^fn76
and the occasional gregarious pine, the nuts of which were said to be an antidote to melancholy.

There was water, oh yes, but mostly underground, and
prospectors and rock hounds were said to send down buckets to dredge water from the depths of the caves.

It was slightly easier to find water on the uplands hubwards of the tundra, where there were icy streams courtesy of the Everwind glacier, making it possible to raise goats there. And so goats were what young Knut’s family had bred and milked and minded down the centuries. And when the goats were eating what passed as grass on these highlands, he would sleep and dream of not chasing goats over a near-barren landscape. He had liked it at first but he was growing older and something was telling him that there was a better life than watching goats eat their lunch … once, twice and sometimes thrice. Sometimes the faces they made were an entertainment and sometimes he laughed. And yet a yearning in him told him that goats were not enough.

And so it was, when the long sound echoed across the tundra, that he hurried to see what was making the wonderful noise and saw a shining streak snaking its way over the landscape in the early morning light; and it was heading his way. He wondered if it was anything to do with the strange bars of metal laid carefully on the tundra below by the gangs of men some weeks before. He had run errands for them and sold them his mother’s cheese, but he couldn’t really understand what it was they were doing and since the goats stepped carefully over the metal strips without harm he had given up wondering. But as far as he could make out from what the men had said, it was all for a wondrous thing that could go around the world on a flash of steam, and now he wanted to know more about this singing beast coming over the tundra, occasionally spitting fire.

Knut scrambled down off the hillside to where the air was warmer, leaving the goats, and ultimately traced the noise to a kind of big shed. And just as he got to it, the creature, carrying people inside it, broke out of the shed and hurtled away along the metal rails. He watched it until it had entirely disappeared. And
later some of the townspeople told him it was what they called a ‘locomotive’, and in his heart the yearning started and began by degrees to grow. Yes, there truly were other things than goats.

Having spent a long afternoon and evening alert for anything un toward while Simnel and his lads lay dead to the world, Moist in his turn had slept soundly all night and now dozed right through the morning, rocked by the motion of the train as she steamed on from Slake across the valley of the Smarl, dreaming of the bridge over the gorge at the Wilinus Pass, never a picnic at any time, that was looming up fast like a tax demand.

Anything could happen before they entered that dry-land maelstrom of sliding rocks, falling rocks and, well, rocks full of bandits of all disciplines. To coin a term that might fit the circumstances: it was like running a gauntlet with no shoes – a gauntlet full of rocks. And even pebbles had bad attitudes at that altitude. Moist winced at the thought of the place.

The train hurtled on through the vast landscape. A huge amount of space, oh yes, but not many towns, just the occasional settlement. There was so much space everywhere and Iron Girder ate it up like a tiger, attacking the horizon as if it were an affront, stopping only if it was known that water and coal were available. You could never have too much of either.

By the middle of the day, the mountain ranges of Uberwald were getting closer and the air was getting colder and Iron Girder’s pace had settled to a steady climb through the foothills towards their destination.

Lonely goatherds could be seen on the trackside, and amongst the people staring at this new mechanism there was a definite outbreak of dirndls. In every township they passed people were ready for them with flags and, above all, with bands that wheezed and oompah’d as the crowds cheered Iron Girder on her way. And, yes, as the train came past slowly and carefully you had to watch out for
the little boys running after her, following the dream. It was a sight to yodel for.

And now Moist noticed that Simnel was looking increasingly worried and took the opportunity of one of the engineer’s rare breaks from the footplate to speak to him privately.

‘Dick, Iron Girder is the best locomotive you’ve ever built, right?’

Simnel wiped his hands on a rag that had already seen too many greasy hands and said, ‘She surely is, Mister Lipwig, we all know that, but it’s not Iron Girder I’m fretting about. It’s that bridge over t’gorge. We’ve done everything we can, but we need more time. There’s no way the bridge will hold with all the weight of the train an’ all.’

‘Well now,’ said Moist, ‘you have the loggysticks and the knowledge of the weights and the stresses and all the other sliding rule business and that’s telling you one thing, but I’m telling you now that if the bridge is still not secure when we get there I propose that Iron Girder will fly across the gorge with you and me on the footplate. You might call it a sleight of hand, even a trick, but we
will
fly.’

The engineer looked like a man who has been challenged to guess under which thimble the pea is, and knows deep in his boots that it will never, ever be the one he selects.

‘Mister Lipwig, are you talking about magic here? I’m an engineer, I am. We don’t ’old wi’ magic.’

And suddenly Moist’s voice was as smooth as treacle. ‘Actually, Mister Simnel, I think you’re wrong in that. You believe in the sunshine, although you don’t know how it does it. And since we’re on or near the subject, have you ever wondered what the Turtle stands on?’

Dick was cornered and said, ‘Ee, well, that’s different. That’s just how things are meant to be.’

‘Pardon me, my friend, but you don’t know that. Nevertheless you go to bed at night quite happy in the belief that the world will still be there when you get up in the morning.’

Once again, Dick tried to get a grip on the proceedings, still wearing the look of a man certain that whichever thimble was going to be picked up it wouldn’t be his. A given in the scheme of things.

‘So we’re talking about wizards, then, Mister Lipwig?’

‘Well … magic,’ said Moist. ‘Everything is magic when you don’t know what it is. Your sliding rule is a magic wand to most people. And I know some kinds of magic. And so I’ll ask you, Dick, have I ever let you down in any way during our time on Harry King’s business?’

‘Oh no, Mister Lipwig,’ said Simnel, almost affronted. ‘I see you as what my old granny called full of fizz.’

Moist caught the fizz in the air and juggled it.

‘There you are, Dick. I believe you when you say that the numbers on the sliding rule are telling you things. In return I’d like some trust from you. No, please don’t use your sliding rule for this. It’s the wrong tool for the job. I know something … Not exactly magic, but extremely solid … and with what I have in mind, by the time we get to the bridge you’ll think we’re riding through the air.’

Simnel once again looked as if he was about to cry. ‘But why won’t you tell me?’

‘I could,’ said Moist, ‘but Lord Vetinari would have me dead.’

‘Eee! We can’t ’ave that, Mister Lipwig,’ said Simnel, shocked.

Moist put an arm round Simnel and said, ‘Dick, you can perform miracles, but I propose to give the world a spectacle that’ll be remembered for a very long time.’

‘Eh up, Mister Lipwig. I’m just an engineer.’

‘Not just an engineer, Dick:
the
engineer.’

And as Simnel cherished that thought he smiled nervously and said, ‘But ’ow? There just isn’t enough time and there aren’t enough men, neither. Harry King has brought out all his ’eavy-duty workers from the city and the plains and so I don’t know where you’ll get more support from.’

‘Well,’ said Moist, ‘I’ll have to be like Iron Girder. I’ll just whistle.’

Simnel laughed nervously. ‘Ee, Mister Lipwig, you’re a sharp one!’

‘Good,’ said Moist, with a confidence he wasn’t entirely feeling. ‘We should be ready by dusk.’

Just then Iron Girder let loose a little bit of steam and Moist wondered if it was a good omen, or possibly a bad one, but it seemed to him to be an omen anyway, and that was enough.

That afternoon, in an attempt to distract his thoughts, Moist decided to tackle something that had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since they had left Sto Lat. And for that he needed to talk to Aeron.

The King’s secretary was slim for a dwarf, almost nimble and quick, and decidedly ubiquitous, his long beard following him like a banner as he went about on the King’s business. He carried a sword, not traditionally a dwarf weapon, and had acquitted himself well during the attack on the train at the Paps of Scilla.