Moist belched forensically, very carefully choosing his time. ‘This may be the case, sir, but we have — hic! — a working engine, which is … the toast of Ankh-Morpork!’ And here Moist allowed a certain slur to enter his voice and continued, ‘And now, why don’t we, as gentlemen, cut a deal and shake hands on it like gentlemen so we both know where we stand?’ He stood up and stumbled a little, saw the extra twinkle in the old man’s face, and rejoiced.
Later, in the stables, as he saddled up to go home, Moist audited his afternoon’s work. This was a game he knew all too well. He had seen the trap and had been prepared, and thus the side deal for iron-ore shipments and railway access was a sensible one but slightly more beneficial for the railway, in recognition of the fact that elderly gentlemen shouldn’t try to get impressionable young men drunk, especially when they own more land than any reasonable person could ever need. Yes, Moist thought, moral compass? He smiled.
Before he mounted up, Moist carefully removed from about his person two hot-water bottles and a rubber pipe. He very carefully stowed both bottles in a large padded saddlebag, smiling as he did so. The old boy really shouldn’t have tried to make him drunk. It was so … unethical.
When Moist eventually got back to the city, he went straight to the centre of Harry King’s compound, ran up the stairs to Sir Harry’s great big office, and dropped yet another portfolio, prepared by Mr Drumknott, of all the contacts he had dealt with, the rents, the routes agreed.
‘These are for your lads, Harry, and this is for you.’ He set down very carefully a large crate containing a number of bottles.
Harry stared at him and said, ‘What the hell are these for!’
Moist shrugged and tapped his nose. ‘Well, Harry, it’s like this. A lot of the people I have to deal with are elderly men who think they’re cunning and try to fill me with expensive alcohol in the belief that they can get the better of the deal and no mistake. Of course, I drink every drink put in front of me! No! Don’t look like that! I really can hold my drink. In fact I can hold a great deal of drink, and I’m pleased to report that rubber doesn’t detract from the taste of whisky, very fine brandy or Jimkin Bearhugger’s best gin.’
‘Well done, Mister Lipwig. I’ve always known you’re a man to watch extremely carefully and I do so like to see a master at … work. Now follow me, Mister Lipwig, and try not to slosh, will you?’
In a few weeks the compound had changed beyond recognition: the big drop forges that used to thud behind Quarry Lane had been moved wholesale out of the centre of the city and enormously augmented their rate of hammering with the rhythms of the railway factory.
Harry seemed very proud of it, considering that if muck was brass, a thump of the hammer was pennies from heaven. As they walked through the cacophony he shouted, ‘Great lads, the golems! They’re always punctual, and they don’t get ill. Most of all, they just like working! And I like anyone who likes to work: goblins, golems, I don’t care what you are if you’re a good worker.’ He thought for a moment and added, ‘As long as you don’t dribble too much. Just look at the way those lads hammer things with their fists. I wish I could get more of them, but you know how it is.’
Moist looked around the fiery hellhole that was the ironworks. In the satanic air he could just about tell the golems from the human workers in their leather overalls, because the golems were the ones walking around holding pieces of red-hot iron in their bare hands. The furnaces illuminated the grey sky, and always and forever the clanging went on. And the pile of fresh new rails got bigger and bigger.
He nodded, since normal speech was clearly out of the question among the clanging and the banging. Indeed, he knew how it was. In short, the citizens of Ankh-Morpork who might be expected to fill the heavy-lifting trades, such as the golems and the trolls, were increasingly realizing that just because they were big and tough did not mean they had to do a big tough job if they didn’t want to. This was, after all, Ankh-Morpork, where a man walked free even if he was not, strictly speaking, a man.
The problem, if you could call it that, had been building up for some time. Moist had first noticed what was happening when Adora Belle said that her new hair stylist was a troll, Mr Teasy-Weasy Fornacite[25], and, as it turned out, a pretty good hairdresser, according to Adora Belle and her friends. And there it was: the new reality. If all sapient species were equal, that’s what you got: golem housekeepers and goblin maids and, he thought, troll lawyers.
Harry King was rumbling on as they emerged back into the open: ‘It’s a bugger! Now they’re free, you can’t get the golems! Ask your missus! They’re all off doing landscape gardening and suchlike daisy rubbish, and I reckon I’m paying every human ironworker in the damn city double the odds, and only twenty-one of them heavy boys. It’s such a shame, such a shame.’
‘I don’t know, Harry, you seem to be moving phenomenally fast.’
Harry nudged Moist and said, in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I’ll have you dumped in the river if you tell anybody this, but I’m loving it! I mean, most of my life has been, not to put too much of a fine point on it, shit, honest to goodness shit, not to mention of course piss, which has also been a very good friend to me, but you see all that is just moving stuff about, not actually making something. And it gets better because, you see, it’s something me and the Duchess can talk about in polite company. Oh, of course, I’ll still be maintaining the night-soil business and all of that … it is, after all, my bread and butter, so to speak, which, to tell you the truth, is more like steak and all the trimmings nowadays, but right now my heart is in the iron. And who can say that ain’t beautiful, Mister Lipwig? I mean, daffodils, well, I quite like them, but look at the sheen on the steel, the sweat on the men; the future being made one hammer blow at a time. Even the slag is beautiful in a way.’
Iron Girder passed by on her everlasting journey around the compound and Harry said, ‘What we need is the right class of poet.’ He flung out a hand towards the admirers with their notebooks and all the others who clung to the railings. ‘Look at them all! They’re looking for miracles. And you know what? They’ll get them.’
It started to rain, but the onlookers, especially the train spotters, with their very useful clothing, just stood there, watching Iron Girder kick up a mist into the air.
It seemed to Moist that for a moment Harry King was somehow different, even more alive than usual, and Harry, it had to be said, was pretty vital in any case. And now Harry King, Cess Pit Man, was metamorphosing into a National Treasure.
Bedwyr Beddsson tried to get his boots off. After a night in the mines it was amazing what you found in your boots, some of it alive. When the boots were off, not without a struggle, he took the harness off Daisy the pit pony and watched her sniff the clean air and canter into the little field near the entrance to the mine. It did your heart good to see her. There were times when Bedwyr would have liked to do the same thing. His mother had told him, you can’t change your stars, meaning, presumably, this is your life and you have to live it. Now, as he stepped inside his living quarters, he wondered if Tak might let him try again.
He loved Bleddyn, his wife of many years, and his children were doing just fine in the school in Lancre, but today he was troubled. The grags had called and were quite polite this time, although neither he nor Bleddyn really cared for politics. How could they mean anything when you’ve spent your life sweating down in the mines? His pony was now free, but he was at the end of his tether. He just wanted to provide for his family as best he could. What was a dwarf to do?
25
The moment Moist heard the name he went for the dictionary and was relieved to find that fornacite was a rare lead, copper chromate arsenate hydroxide mineral. The troll was a lovely bluey green colour.