That was yesterday. Today, it happened.
The ship arrived at the dock in Pantygirdl, the largest town in Llamedos, just after lunch. The arrival of the grags on board, who had come to preach the truth of pure dwarfishness to the people of the town, would have been welcomed had they not come with delvers, the shock troops of the grags, who had never before been seen above ground. Until then, the people of Llamedos were quite happy that the grags were doing whatever it was they did in the realm of the spirit and the observances thereof, keeping things done properly so that everybody else could get on with the unimportant things like the mining and the fishing and the stonework up in the hills.
But today it all went horribly wrong, because Blodwen Footcracker was getting married to Davy Counter, an excellent miner and fisherman and, importantly, a human, although the importance of this fact did not seem to most people locally to be, well, important. Just about everybody in Pantygirdl knew them both and considered them a sensible match, especially as they had known one another since they were toddlers. And while they were growing up people wondered, as people did, about the chances of a dwarf and a human conceiving a child and considered it a long shot to say the least, but then they satisfied themselves by telling one another that, after all, love was certainly there in abundance and, besides, whose business was it anyway? He and she were compatible and loving and, as the mines and the boats took their toll of miner and fisherman alike, there were always plenty of orphans anxious for a new home in their own country. And everybody in Pantygirdl agreed that the situation, while not as it might have been, was nevertheless satisfactory to the kind of people who minded their own business, and they wished the happy couple, who were, it must be said, very nearly the same size, all the very best.
Alas, the grags and the delvers must have thought otherwise, and they broke down the doors of the chapel, and since people in Llamedos didn’t go armed to their weddings the grags had it all their own way. And it might have been a complete massacre were it not for old Fflergant sitting hitherto unnoticed in the corner, who, as everyone ran for shelter, threw off his cloak and turned out to be exactly the kind of dwarf who would take heavy weaponry to a wedding.
He swung a heavy sword and axe together in a wonderful destructive unison, a whirlwind of fighting, and in the end there were only two casualties among the wedding party. Unfortunately one of those was Blodwen, killed by a grag whilst clinging on to her husband’s arm.
Covered in blood, Fflergant looked around at the shocked wedding guests and said, ‘You all know me. I don’t like mixed marriages, but like you I can’t abide those bloody grags, the bastards! May the Gap take them!’
Lord Vetinari’s coach spun through the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and Moist watched the traffic scatter around them until they reached the River Gate and were out of the city proper. The coach bowled quickly along the road as it followed the Ankh downstream, towards Harry King’s Industrial Estate, a world of smokes, steams and, most of all, undesirable odours.
Ankh-Morpork was cleaning up its act. It had been a good act, full of spices, plagues, floods and other entertainments. But now the Ankh-Morpork dollar was rising high, and so was the price of property. Amazingly, a great many people wanted to live in Ankh-Morpork, as opposed to somewhere else (or quite possibly as opposed to being dead in Ankh-Morpork, which was always an optional extra). But, as everybody knew, the city was gripped in its ancient stone corsetry, and nobody wanted to be there, metaphorically speaking, when the stays burst.
There was overspill, and my, how it was spilling. Farming land around the city state, always at a premium, was now full of speculative building.fn19 It was a wonderful game, and Moist, in a previous life, would undoubtedly have joined in and made a fortune, several fortunes in fact. And indeed, while Lord Vetinari was looking out of the window, Moist listened to the sirens and their beguiling songs of money to be made by the right man in this right place and the entrancing vision hung in the air for a tantalizing moment.
Ankh-Morpork was surrounded by clay, easily dug up, so if the cow shit ran out there was the material for your bricks, right there in front of you, with timber easily available from the dwarfs, delivered to your site by water. Soon you’d have a terrace of bright new homes available to the rising and aspirational population anxious to buy, and then all you needed was a shiny billboard, and, most definitely, an exit strategy.
The coach passed by many buildings of this sort, which would no doubt be little palaces to the occupants, who had escaped from Cockbill Street and Pigsty Hill and all the other neighbourhoods where people still dreamed that they could ‘better themselves’, an achievement that might be attained, oh happy day, when they had ‘a little place of their own’. It was an inspiring dream, if you didn’t look too deeply into words like mortgage and repayments and repossession and bankruptcy, and the lower middle classes of Ankh-Morpork, who saw themselves as being trodden on by the class above and illegally robbed by the one below, lined up with borrowed money to purchase, by instalments, their own little Oi Dongfn20. As the coach rumbled past the settlements, known together as New Ankh, Moist wondered whether this time Vetinari, in allowing all these lands to be colonized in such a way, had been very stupid or indeed very, very clever. He plumped for ‘clever’. It was a good bet.
Eventually they arrived at the first outpost of the complicated, stinking, but ultimately most profitable, wire-netting-fenced compound of Sir Harry King, sometime tosher and rag-and-bone man, now believed to be the richest man in the city.
Moist liked Sir Harry, he liked him a lot, and occasionally they shared the wink of men who had made it the hard way. Harry King had indeed come up the hard way and those who got in his way went down the hard way too.
Most of the area before them was full of the products of Harry King’s noisome profession, conveyor belts coming and going from who knows where, being loaded and unloaded and sorted by goblins and free golems. Horses and carts went past loaded with even more grist for that particular mill. At the far end of the compound was a collection of large sheds, and in front of them a stretch of surprisingly clear space. Moist suddenly noticed the crowd outside the compound fence, pressing up against every inch of wire netting, and felt their expectancy.
As the coach stopped, he smelled the acrid scent of coal smoke cutting through the general fetor, and heard what sounded like a dragon having difficulty sleeping, a kind of chuffing noise, very repetitive, and then suddenly there was a scream, as if the biggest kettle in the world had got very, very angry.
Lord Vetinari tapped Moist on the shoulder and said, ‘Sir Harry tells me that the thing is quite docile if handled with care. Shall we go and have a look? You first, of course, Mister Lipwig.’
He pointed to the sheds, and as they got nearer the smell of coal smoke got thicker, and the almost liquid chuffing noise got louder. Moist thought, well it was a mechanism, that’s what it was, wasn’t it? Merely a thing like a clock, yes, just a mechanism, and so he straightened up and walked fearlessly, on the outside at least, towards the door where a young man with a greasy hat and an even more greasy overall was beckoning with a greasy grin like a fox looking speculatively at some chickens. It seemed they were expected.
Harry came bustling out and said, ‘Greetings, my lord … Mister Lipwig. Please come and meet my new associate, Mister Dick Simnel.’
Behind them, inside the shed, was the shuddering metallic monster, and it was alive. It really was alive! The thought lodged instantly in Moist’s brain. He smelled its breath and heard its voice. Yes, life; strange life but nonetheless life of a sort. Every part of it was subtly shaking and moving, almost dancing by itself, a thing alive, and waiting.
Behind the beast, in the shed, he saw wagons, presumably ready to be towed, and he thought, yes, it’s an iron horse. All around it were acolytes: men working on lathes, hammering on metal, running backwards and forwards with buckets of grease and cans of oil and occasionally pieces of wood which, right now, looked out of place a
mongst all the iron. And there was a strong sense of purpose that meant we want something done and we want it done fast.
Dick Simnel smiled broadly from behind a mask of grease and said, ‘’ow do you do, sirs. Well, ’ere she is! Nowt to be afraid of! Her name, technically, is Number One, but I call ’er Iron Girder! She’s my machine. I made her, every little bit: nuts, bolts, flanges and not to forget each and every rivet. Thousands of ’em! And all the glasswork too. Very important, your sight glasses and gauges. Had to design everything meself because no one has ever done it before.’
‘And when you give her rails she’ll move more freight than a battalion of trolls, and get there much faster to boot,’ said Sir Harry, standing behind Moist. And he added, ‘It’s true. I swear that young Simnel tinkers with Iron Girder all the time: tinker, tinker, tinker. An overhaul every day.’ He laughed and said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually got her to fly.’
Mr Simnel wiped his hands on his greasy rag, causing them to get even more greasy, and then proffered one to Lord Vetinari, who gently waved it away, saying, ‘I would prefer it if you dealt with Mister Lipwig, Mister Simnel. If I decide to allow you your fascinating … experiment, it will be to him that you answer, in the first part. Personally, I treasure my ignorance of how machinery works, although I am well aware that this is something of great interest to some people,’ he added, in a tone of voice that suggested he meant strange and secret people … busy people, excitable people, fiddling people, tinkering and volatile people. A kind, alas, who would say something as innocent as, let’s give it a try, it can’t hurt, surely? We can always hide under the coffee table.
‘My interest,’ continued Lord Vetinari, ‘lies in ways and means, opportunity, danger and consequences, do you see? I am given to believe that your remarkable engine is propelled by steam, heated until the boiler almost, but doesn’t quite burst. Is that not the case?’
Mr Simnel gave the Patrician a cheerful smile and said, ‘That’s about it, gaffer, and I’ve blown up one or three in testing, I don’t mind telling thee! But now, sir, we’ve got it right, sir. Safety valves! That’s the ticket! Safety valves made out of lead, bungs that melt if the fire box gets too hot so the water comes down and extinguishes the fire before the boiler blows.’
Simnel carried on, ‘Live steam is very dangerous, of course, to them that don’t have the knowing of it, but to me, well, gaffer, it’s as playful as a puppy. Sir Harry has allowed me to build a demonstration track, sir,’ and he gestured to the rails that led out of the shed and wound round the perimeter of the compound. ‘May I ask if you gentlemen would care to come for a little spin?’
Moist turned to Vetinari and said, with a flat face, ‘Yes, how about it … gaffer?’ And got a look like a stiletto. A look that said, we’ll have words about this later.
Vetinari turned to Simnel and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Simnel. I think on this occasion I will give that honour to Mister Lipwig. And I dare say Drumknott will be eager to accompany him.’
This was said brightly, but Drumknott looked anything but delighted at the opportunity, and frankly neither was Moist overjoyed, remembering too late that he had put on an expensive new jacket.
Moist asked, ‘Mister Simnel, why does your contraption need to run on rails, please?’
Dick Simnel smiled the expansive smile of a man who really, really wants to talk about his wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom, and in the worst cases suicide. Moist recognized the type; they were invariably useful and in themselves amiable and quite without malice of any sort, but nevertheless they were implicitly dangerous.
And right now, Mr Simnel, happy as a clam and greasy as a kebab, said, speaking earnestly, ‘Well, sir, steam likes it smooth, sir, and the countryside is full of ups and downs, and steam and iron are heavy, and so putting all this together back at Swine Town we found it much more sensible to lay down what we call t’permanent way, it’s a kind of road wi’ tracks, or rails, just for the engine to run on, as it were.’
‘Railway’ll do fine for the punters, though,’ said Harry. ‘I keep telling the lad – short and snappy, that’s the kind of name people remember. Can’t expect them to ride on something they can’t spell.’
Simnel beamed, and suddenly his genial face seemed to fill the world. ‘Now then, Iron Girder is greased, in steam and all fired up for you, gentlemen. Who’s ready for a little ride?’
Drumknott had not uttered a word, and remained staring at the dribbling engine like a man looking at his doom. Moist, taking pity on the little clerk for once, half pulled him, half helped him up into the small open cabin of the metal beast, while Mr Simnel fussed around, tapping mysterious brass and glass items, and the fire in the belly of the beast burned hotly, and filled the place with yet more smoke.
And suddenly there was a shovel in Moist’s hand, put there by Simnel so fast that Moist couldn’t avoid it. The engineer smiled and said, ‘You can be t’stoker, Mister Lipwig. If she needs stoking you’ll need to open up t’fire box when I tell you. Ee, we’ll ’ave some fun.’
Simnel looked down at the stunned Drumknott and said, ‘Er, as for you, sir, well, I’ll tell you what. You, sir, you can blow t’whistle, by means of this chain here. And as you see, gentlemen, this is by way of being a working prototype, with not very much of the comforts of home, but ’old on and you’ll be fine, so long as you don’t stick your head too far out. We’ll be pulling a fair few ton today. Sir Harry were interested to see what she were made of, and so, er, Mister Drumknott, blow the whistle, if you please!’
Speechlessly, Drumknott yanked on the chain, and shuddered as a banshee scream came from the engine. And then, well, thought Moist, there was not very much, just one chuff, a jerk, another couple of chuffs, and another jerk, another chuff, and suddenly they were moving, not only moving but accelerating as if the end of Iron Girder was trying to be out in front.
Through roiling clouds of steam Moist looked behind at the loads they were towing in the creaking carts, and he could feel the weight, and yet still the engine with its train was gathering speed and momentum. Mr Simnel was placidly tapping his dials and shifting levers, and now here came a curve, and the train chuffed, and every truck followed the curve like ducklings following their dear old mum, rattling a little, certainly creaking, but nevertheless being one big moving thing.
Moist had travelled fast before. Indeed, a golem horse, that rare creation, could have easily outpaced them. But this, well, this was machinery, handmade by men: wheels, bolts, brass knobs, dials, gauges, steam and the grunting sizzling fire box, beside which Drumknott was standing now, hypnotized and pulling the chain that blew the whistle as if performing a holy duty, and everything shook and continued to shake like a red-hot madhouse.
Lord Vetinari and Harry came into view as the train raced towards them on its first lap. And they disappeared behind Moist into the cloud of smoke and steam left hanging in the air. Then, as Iron Girder plunged on, it broke through into Moist’s consciousness that this wasn’t magic, neither was it brute strength, it was, in fact, ingenuity. Coal and metal and water and steam and smoke, in one glorious harmony. He stood in the fierce heat of the cabin, shovel in hand, watching and wondering about the future, as the train of carriages bumped round once more, screeching slightly on the second curve. Then, with the sound of tortured metal, it slid to a stop a few feet away from the watchers in front of Iron Girder’s shed.
Now Mr Simnel was all arms and business, shutting things down and turning things off as the wonderful engine died. Moist corrected himself: not died – she was sleeping but still dribbling water and hissing steam and, inexplicably, she was very much alive.
Simnel dropped down from the cab on to a makeshift wooden platform and looked at his enormous stopwatch, glanced at the dial and said, ‘Not bad, but I couldn’t really open ’er up round here. On the test track over at Swine Town I got her going at almost seventeen miles an hour, and I can swear that she co
uld go much faster if I could lay down a longer track! And she moved reet wonderfully, didn’t she, gentlemen? With all that load, tons of it.’ This was said to his fellow engineers.
‘Aye, what is it?’ And this, in fact, was directed to a small wide-eyed urchin, who seemed to have miraculously appeared by the side of the track. Simnel looked on gravely as the urchin took out a very small notebook from his jacket pocket and meticulously wrote down the numeral 1 as if it were a command.
And Moist, for some reason, couldn’t help himself from saying, ‘Well spotted, young man, and you know what? I rather feel that you’re going to need a much bigger book before long.’ And the certainty hit him that, although Lord Vetinari’s face was as impassive as ever, those of Harry King and some of the other on lookers were gleaming in the smoky light of the future to come. Given the numbers already lining the fence, straining to watch the train on its circuits of the compound, the news was out and flying.
Harry King said, ‘Well, gents, is this iron horse not amazing? She seems to be able to move anything, I assure you. Now, there’s a nice lunch awaiting us in my boardroom, gentlemen. Shall we go up there? … There’s some cracking good beef.’