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.[19] 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 Dong[20]. 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 amongst 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?’
19
A term meaning that the builder speculates about how far away he can be, and with how much money, before the buyer finds that the footings have, in fact, no feet, the septic tank is one foot deep with a tendency to flow backwards, and the bricks owe a lot to that most organic and venerable of all building materials, cow shit. The whole business traditionally begins with a plot, in every sense of the word. Entire suburbs were being built with such beguiling names as Nightingale Valley and Sunflower Gardens which had never heard a nightingale or seen a sunflower in bloom, but nevertheless were on the market with CMOT Dibbler Practically Real Estate and Associates, currently doing a roaring trade.