Raising Steam (25 page)

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 abomination. 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.

That was the spell of the clacks, and it wasn’t only goblins who felt it. Adora Belle knew and didn’t mind that the clacksmen and clackswomen would fraternize along the wonderful scintillating lines of light. After all, quite a few marriages had been brokered through the unsuspecting ether in the small hours of the night and sooner or later little clacksmen and women would be born.

Adora Belle had once told Moist, ‘You know that it takes a special kind of person to be a clacksman and especially a clackswoman, and it’s important that they marry and have children
with the right kind of blood. They’re our future, and heaven help them if their spouse doesn’t also work on the clacks. Clacks people are a type and like attracts like.’

When Moist told her the news of the accident in the Effing Forest she disappeared into her office, and Moist could hear the goblins stampeding towards it and then a rattle of the clacks on the roof. Before long she sent down another goblin with a flimsy that said, ‘News from Scrote. Stop. It’s a boiler that burst. Stop. Not a train. Stop. Horrible deaths of two people, but no engine as such. Stop.’

That latest discovery made Moist doubly sure of himself and he clamped his hand on Harry’s shoulder and said, ‘Please, don’t worry, Harry. I know how this one is going to go. All I need is for you and Mister Simnel to meet me in the Effing Forest as quickly as you can. And, oh, I think we might need Thunderbolt.’

It was time to talk to the golem horse once more. Moist was rather concerned about taking it on another long journey so soon, but the horse said, ‘Sir, I am a horse. Being a horse is my passion in life, and getting to the Effing Forest will be a breeze. Saddle up, please, and let’s be off.’

Moist had found something like a sweet spot in the gait. No muscle and bone horse could possibly gallop at this speed without legs getting tangled, but even so he covered the fifty miles to the Effing Forest by sunrise without much in the way of groinal sprains.

He immediately sought out the nearest pub to the accident, which was the premises of Edward Forefather, purveyor of fine beers, stouts and ales. At least that’s what it said on the rather large plaque behind the bar and Moist was not going to argue.

The publican, already up and dressed, looked him up and down and said, ‘I’ve been expecting somebody like you. You’re from the city, aren’t you? It’s about the explosion, isn’t it? Are you
one of them reporters? Only I wants money if you’re a reporter.’

Moist said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m with the railway. I heard about the explosion and came to see what had happened.’

Forefather looked him up and down again and said, ‘We know all about it. It was them Wesley brothers. How good is your stomach, young man? Of course, I’d leave the bar to help you, but that means I’d have to get my wife up to start on the early shift for the miners. They’ll be coming up for their breakfast soonish.’

Moist understood the unspoken request and handed the man a reasonable sum, then followed him outside where he was led along a path into the forest. This part of the forest was quite pleasant, not too dark, the kind of place where people would go for a picnic, but as they got in further, Moist could see that whatever they were going to find next, it wasn’t going to be a picnic.

In a clearing just a short walk from the pub the trees were stripped of their leaves, tangled wood was everywhere and the remains of the forge were embedded in various trunks. And there were fragments of the stricken boiler, too, some of them driven so hard into mighty oaks that Moist couldn’t pull them out. The haze in the clearing sent a chill down his spine.

He took a deep breath and said, ‘What happened to the bodies, Mister Forefather?’

‘Oh, yes, sir. I’ve got them back in my cellar, it being quite cold down there. They’re in a bucket. It isn’t a big bucket, either. It was two brothers, strapping great lads. Crucible was the brains and Jed was the blacksmith. Although in the bucket I couldn’t tell you which bits were whose. Jed was boasting about building a railway engine one day, and to tell you the truth, sir, he was a very good blacksmith, but what he knew about locomotives I wouldn’t dare think of. But he thought he could do it and all his mates were egging him on.’

He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘I was the first one to
arrive here and mostly all there was was a mist, and I didn’t like that at all. It was clammy and hot and made you want to puke. And that’s it, sir. Not much more to be said, sir.’

Moist looked up and said, ‘Should there really be an anvil up in that tree?’

The publican looked at him and then at the tree and said, ‘You’re a man with his eye on the business, aren’t you? Generally speaking, the anvil has always been on the ground, by and large, but it was a most powerful bang.’

Moist brightened up as best he could and said, ‘Thank you, Mister Forefather. Pretty soon there’ll be a lot of journalists coming to see all this and I’m sorry about that, but they turn up like flies.’

‘That’s all right, sir. Good for business. Journalists drink twice as much as anyone else and for twice as long. We had them around when the mine fell in and they really can take their liquor.’ Mr Forefather was rubbing his hands in anticipation.

In fact, it was mid-morning before most of the journalists put in an appearance. But well ahead of the pack was Otto Chriek of the
Ankh-Morpork Times
, who was always first on the scene.
^fn50

As for the rest of the press gang, they arrived at cross purposes, all of them expecting the others to tell them what was going on.

Mr Forefather was making hay by making bacon butties while his wife was frying eggs and the obligatory slice.

Moist put the word out that, while of course the railway was in no way involved, the owners were coming to see the accident site for themselves and would be happy to answer questions. By the time Harry King, Simnel and Thunderbolt arrived, Moist could see Forefather carefully raising the prices on his beers as, gradually, the pub filled from across the Sto Plains.