Dr Lawn looked carefully down at Moist and said, ‘You don’t know what you did, do you, Mister Lipwig? Just you come along and we’ll see if you can walk.’
Moist could walk and wished he couldn’t. The whole of him felt as if it had been smacked very hard, but the nurses helped him upright and led him carefully to the ward next door, which contained, as it turned out, among the noise, two families; and there were small children and parents weeping. Bits of the past slammed into place in Moist’s memory and got bigger and more horrible as once again he felt the breath of the engine as it sailed over the top of him, a toddler under each arm. No, it couldn’t have happened like that — could it?
But clamouring voices were telling him otherwise, with women trying to kiss him and holding up their offspring to do likewise, their husbands at the same time trying to shake his hand. Bafflement filled him up like smoke and now in front of him Adora Belle was looking at him with a funny little smile, such as only husbands know of.
When they were at last able to disembogue themselves of the crowd of happy parents and somewhat sticky children, Adora Belle still had her faint smile. ‘Well now, my dear, didn’t you once say that a life without danger is a life not worth living?’
Moist patted her hand and said, ‘Well, Spike, I married you, didn’t I?’
‘You couldn’t resist it, could you? It’s like a drug. You’re not happy unless someone is trying to kill you, or you’re in the centre of some other kind of drama, out of which, of course, the famous Moist von Lipwig will jump to safety at the very last moment. Is it a disease? Some kind of syndrome?’
Moist put on his meek face as only husbands and puppies can do and said, ‘Would you like me to stop? I will if you say so.’
There was silence until Adora Belle said, ‘You bastard, you know I can’t do that. If you stopped all of that you wouldn’t be Moist von Lipwig!’
He opened his mouth to protest just as the door opened and in came the press: William de Worde, editor of the Ankh-Morpork Times, followed by a porter and the ubiquitous Otto Chriek, the iconographer.
And, because Moist would never stop being Moist von Lipwig until he died, he smiled for the iconograph.
He reminded himself that this was only the start. All the rest would be along soon … but no matter, he had danced this fandango many times before, and so he maintained his best boy scout face and smiled at Mr de Worde, who started off by saying, ‘It appears that you are a hero again, Mister Lipwig. The driver and the stoker say that you ran faster than they could brake the train, picked up the children and jumped to safety just in time. Safety, at that precise moment, being under your Iron Girder. It was a miracle that you were there, wasn’t it?’
And so the dance began.
‘Not at all. We make a point of keeping an eye on the visitors at all times, of course. The children were outside the compound and, strictly speaking, the responsibility of their parents, but we’ll be putting up barriers along that stretch of the line immediately. You have to understand, people are flocking here. They seem to be irresistibly drawn by the novelty of live steam and speed.’
‘And a very dangerous novelty, would you not say, Mister Lipwig?’
‘Well now, Mister de Worde, everything old was once new and until explored was unfamiliar and dangerous, and then, as sure as night follows day they become just part of the scenery. Believe me, sir, that’ll happen here with the railway, too.’
Moist watched the journalist painstakingly taking down his words and was ready when the man said, ‘I’ve heard from elderly people all across the Sto Plains who’re frightened of the noise and speed. And the trains leave smoke and cinders … Surely that’s dangerous for our fine city?’
Moist flashed his grin once more, thinking, here we go again.
‘This place you choose to call “our fine city” is almost all smoke and cinders, and a lot else besides. The trials of Iron Girder have impressed everybody with her ability to carry heavy loads safely and at speed. Let’s not forget that speed is essential when dealing with certain goods: your newspaper for one — no one wants to get their news late — and there’s my Post Office parcels for another. We can get your first printing on the breakfast tables at Sto Lat. And as for scaring the elderly, well, one old lady recently told me that we should have waited until all the old people were dead before starting up with the railway, and I think you’d agree that that might be a very long time!’
Moist saw the journalist’s face break into a smile, and knew he had a result. He continued, ‘People often use the excuse that old people won’t understand something when, in fact, they simply don’t want it or understand it themselves. Actually, old people can be quite gung-ho about risk, and very proud of it.’
And here, for dramatic effect, he looked serious. ‘Regrettably, prototype work cannot provide guaranteed safety; it’s hard to make things safe until you know they’re dangerous. Do you understand? I’m absolutely certain that one day the train will save many, many lives. In fact, I guarantee it.’
As soon as the excited press had got its quotes and pictures of the hero of the hour, and Moist had submitted to a final check by Dr Lawn, he said goodbye to Adora Belle and caught a cab to the compound. Once there, he barged into Harry King’s office without even knocking.
‘There should have been someone else on duty, Harry!’ he shouted, banging a fist on the desk. ‘If you have any sense, you’ll put proper guards around the track close to the compound to keep an eye on people when the trains are running! I pulled your chestnuts out of the fire this time!’ he screamed. ‘But I’ll tell you this, Harry. A couple of dead toddlers in a front-page story would’ve shut the railway down before we’ve hardly got started! Vetinari would do it, believe me. You know his distrust of mechanisms, and I doubt he’d lose much in the way of popularity if he told Mister Simnel to put his toys back in the box. It’d be a great shame, but people mustn’t die just because of a bloody engine!’
Moist stopped. He was panting and out of breath, and Sir Harry King, whose expression had hardly changed during the diatribe, now had a face of flaming red.
In the silence Moist thought he heard a curious sizzle, like the sound made by Iron Girder when she was relaxing after a heavy day on the straight and curves. You could perhaps call it a kind of metal purring, but it had now gone, leaving doubts that it had ever been there.
Harry looked Moist up and down and said gravely, ‘They said you flew under the train, holding two little kiddies in your arms. Did you?’
‘You know, I have absolutely no idea. I did see the kids with their heads on the tracks, listening to the funny noises on the rails, and I distinctly remember myself saying Oh bugger! Then something whacked me on the side of the head and I don’t remember a thing until I woke up in the Lady Sybil, on a bed, and that’s the truth. I am a liar for the purposes of amusement, publicity, trivial one-upmanship, personal profit and the gaiety of nations, but I’m not lying to you now.’
There was silence, broken when Harry said hoarsely, ‘You know I’m a granddad, don’t you? A little boy and a little girl, courtesy of my eldest, and I don’t often shiver, my friend, but I’m shivering now.’ Harry stood up, with eyes running tears, and said, ‘You’re the man for this, Mister Lipwig, so you tell me what I should do, please.’