Raising Steam: (Discworld novel 40) (Discworld Novels) Page 19

  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, PLEASE DO NOT PANIC. YOU 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. WELL, 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, TAK MIGHT INDEED BE GENTLE. STRIVE AS YOU HAVE NEVER STRIVEN. YES, TAK 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.’

  And then he brightened up and said, ‘Come on, Dick, life is good! Has your sliding rule allowed you to come to an arrangement with Miss Emily?’

  Simnel blushed. ‘Aye, we’ve been doing some talking, mostly about Iron Girder, and her mam’s letting me come to tea wi’ ’er tomorrow.’

  ‘In that case, I suggest you get yourself a new shirt … you know, one that isn’t greasy, and clean your boots and your nails and everything else, and now you’re getting loaded up with money you must get yourself a sharp new suit. I know a few places that’d give you a good deal.’ He sniffed and added, ‘And have a bath, why don’t you, for the sake of Miss Emily.’

  Dick blushed further and grinned. ‘Right you are, Mister Lipwig. I wish I could be deb on air like you are.’

  ‘It’s easy, Dick, you’ve just got to be yourself. They can’t ever take that away from you.’

  And when Moist left his desk for another look at where last night’s excitement had taken place, he met Harry King, dressed to the nines and distressed to the maximum.

  Harry flourished a bow tie at Moist and said, ‘I hate these damn things, I mean, what’s the point?’ He growled. ‘Got another bloody civic thing on tonight, Effie just thrives on them. I told her I’m busy, what with dealing with the railway, but she’s determined to make a better man of me. And all this business about what knife and fork you eat from, it’s a deliberate puzzle set out to make a simple bloke like me feel like a stranger. Whatever you pick up isn’t going to change what the food tastes like, but Effie presses my knee hard if I gets it wrong.

  ‘She wants me to have electrocution lessons, gods be damned, and I’m putting my foot down about that one. Knobs or not, I’m still Harry King and I’m still going to sound like Harry King. And I told Effie that I don’t mind giving the money away to orphanages and suchlike – I like to see the faces of the little kiddies light up like daisies – it’s the swank I don’t like and all the incessant chattering when I could be doing good work in my office. Effie says it’s knoblyess obligay, but just because I’ve got a lot of knobs I don’t have to accept it, right? It’s a terrible thing when a man can’t be himself, knobs or no knobs.’

  Fifty miles turnwise of Ankh-Morpork lies the Effing Forest, a source of laughter for some, but nevertheless, throughout the year, full of birdsong and, surprisingly, the occasional logger, as well as the family-run coal mines that are too small for the dwarfs to covet but just about big enough to scratch a living.

  On this fine morning in the Wesley family forge, Crucible Wesley was arguing with his brother.

  ‘Okay, you’re a blacksmith, granted, but that engine looked complicated to oi. Jed, you’re a good smith and a big lad, but I can’t see you hammering out a whole locomotive on your own. You need a bit more of the book learning, say oi. You saw those boys at that there compound in the smoke with their sliding rulers, although you couldn’t quite work out what them was for.’

  The aforesaid Jed, dripping perspiration and stink, looked up from his anvil. ‘Look, it’s simple, you boils up the water, you boils it up really hot, and that drives the pistons and it’s them as turns the wheels. There ain’t really that much to it, apart from the oiling and the greasing. Oi reckon that stopping it once started’ll be the ’ardest thing to do.’

  Crucible Wesley, considered by locals as the brains of the outfit, in so far as the outfit had any brains, was nervous about this and went on, ‘I know you were Blacksmith of the Year in Scrote three years running and got the silver cup that our mam’s so proud of, but oi dunno … Oi reckon there’s summat more to it’n that. Trade secrets and whatnot.’

  Jed appeared to commune with the spirits for a while and then he announced, ‘Well, oi’ve got the boiler half done and that’s a fact. And oi reckon that if we takes it slowly there shouldn’t be nuffin’ to worry about. After all, oi seen steam coming out of Mam’s kettle, ’tis only wet air after all.’

  He thumped the boiler standing on its makeshift pedestal next to his work bench with one enormous hand.

  ‘Come on, help me outside with this and us’ll give it a go … We can always shut her down if she looks like she’s turning on us and oi reckon oi can outsmart a bloody kettle.’

  They carried the huge vessel outside, although, truth to tell, Jed proudly picked up most of the weight on his own. His brother watched in admiration and a certain amount of trepidation, or it would have been trepidation had he known the word existed. As it was he could feel sweat trickling down his back. He started edging away backwards and once again he tried to remonstrate with his elder brother.

  ‘Well, oi dunno, Jed, they was doing all those measurements and things like that with levers and suchlike and when it was hissing, it damn well hissed.’

  ‘Yeah, and it cost we a dollar to see it! Don’t ’ee worry about a slipping stick … like I said, oi reckon oi got more brains than a boiler! And if it gives oi any problem then I’ll hammer it out into horseshoes. Come on, I’ll get the fire going and you can help oi pump the bellows.’

  After Crucible had managed to help his brother set the boiler up in the clean open air amongst the trees, he had one last stab at trying to crowbar some sense into the dialogue.

  ‘Oi reckon it’s too difficult, otherwise us’d hear about other folk doing it as well.’

  But to his dismay this suggestion only served to make his brother even more determined to tame the steam, because the man said, tapping the side of his nose, ‘That’s because oi reckon they weren’t as clever as oi!’

  There is something vaguely worrying about the word ‘reckon’ that leaves the ear, for many hard to understand reasons, wishing it was something else a little more certain and a little less frightening. And as bad luck would have it, some twenty minutes later an ear was exactly what spiralled down out of the settling steaming fog and through mangled trees that looked as if they had been scythed by dragons, and the birds that were coming down cooked …

  Moist was, by inclination, a stranger to the concept of two in the morning, a time that happened to other people. He didn’t object to a certain amount of early alfresco when he was on the road, especially on the rail road, which was more like camping and therefore fun, but to be awakened in his own bed in the small hours was an ab
omination. That cried to the heavens for justice, although he did not cry at Sir Harry, who had just arrived in Scoone Avenue with all hell following him.

  Crossly the butler rushed to get in front of Sir Harry as etiquette required, but Sir Harry swarmed up the stairs waving a clacks flimsy at anyone he could see, and burst into Moist’s bedroom, booming, ‘Someone has been buggering around with a steam contraption and has managed to kill two people, including himself, down in the Effing Forest. And you know what? Clacksmen on the Scrote tower spotted the explosion then went out and found the carnage, and you know the clacksmen! The news is already all over the bloody place! And so, apparently, are bits of the poor buggers! Two people dead, Mister Lipwig. The press’ll have our guts for garters.’

  By this time Moist had managed to get his pants on the right way up. He spluttered, ‘But Harry, we aren’t doing anything in the Effing Forest at the moment. There’s going to be a little branch line that goes to Scrote and that’ll be a very good earner, but this is nothing to do with us. Crossly, please get Sir Harry a stiff brandy and a soft chair.’

  ‘Nothing to do with us or not, Moist, you know the press will be round us like flies on a midden.’

  Moist said, to the annoyance of Harry, ‘Trust me, Harry. Trust me. It wasn’t us and I see no reason to worry. I’ll deal with the press. I imagine they’ll all be going to the Effing place as soon as it gets light, so if you don’t mind I’ll head there right now and be ahead of the game.’

  ‘It’s no bloody game!’ Harry boomed.

  And over his shoulder, Moist said, ‘I’m sorry, but it helps to think of it like that, Harry.’

  Just as Moist was heading down the stairs with Harry simmering behind him, Adora Belle arrived home. She sometimes worked nights on the Grand Trunk; she told Moist that it was to keep people on their toes, but he knew that she actually loved the quiet watches of a clear night when messages would twinkle from hill to hill like fireflies.