Moist hadn’t expected this, but he managed to catch the metaphorical ball. ‘Clean up your act, Harry,’ he said. ‘Engineers and suchlike know all about hot steel, high speeds and wheels spinning fast, right! For most people, exhilarating speed is a runaway horse. Many people get hurt in this city every year when dear old Dobbin the dray horse suddenly feels his oats and heads for pastures new down the middle of the road.
‘My advice is to shut down the Iron Girder rides for a week, for “maintenance”. Tidy up, keep all the sharp stuff out of the way, stick up some barriers and have a few lads wandering around in uniform looking like they mean business. You know the kind of thing. Make a show of being safe.’
And now Moist heard the little sizzle again, and it seemed to sizzle in his soul, filling him with ideas, and in the theatre of his head he sat up in the gods, watching the stage of his imagination, agog to see what he came up with next.
‘It’s not just around the compound that there could be incidents like this, Harry — we need to keep an eye on the whole line. Someone to spot if there are kids on the track, or cows, or a train going the wrong way.’ He saw Harry blanch at the thought of all the things that could go wrong, but he was in full flow now. ‘They’ll need a good view — some kind of watchtower would do the trick, with a clacks attached to signal to the drivers … Ask Dick — that brain of his is coming up with new designs faster than his hand can get them down on paper.
‘And here’s a tip: do something about those greasy old cattle wagons you’re running behind Iron Girder. They’re okay for a circus ride, maybe, but all of your rolling stock should be as good as the special ones we’re using on the Sto Lat line.’ Sizzle. ‘Yes! More posh carriages for the nobs, and …’ here Moist saw the money smile and continued, ‘here’s a thought, for those who aren’t quite nobs but aspire to be like them, well, why not give them carriages that are not quite so plush, but visibly better than the very cheapest coaches which are, perhaps, open to the weather. That would give them something else to yearn for, and you’ll have made yet another money pump.’
Moist now found himself caught in the glare of one of Harry King’s most dangerous expressions.
‘Mister Lipwig, damn me if you ain’t a most dangerous man, yes indeed! You’re inciting people to have ideas above their station, and that sort of thing makes people suspicious and anxious and, above all, very, very nervous.’
To Harry’s surprise, Moist almost sprang into the air, spinning. ‘Yes! Yes! That’s the way! Lord Vetinari’s way, too. He believes that people should strive to be better in every respect. I can see it now, Harry. Picture a young man taking his young lady on the train and hazarding an extra sixpence to go in the better-class seats. Well, he’s no end of a swell, and he’ll look around him and think, This suits me down to the ground and no mistake, I could do with more of this.
‘And when he goes back to work he’ll strive, yes, strive, to become a better, that’s to say, richer person to the benefit of both his employer and himself, and not, of course, neglecting to thank the owner of the railway, to wit, your good self, who allowed him to have ideas above his railway station. Everybody wins, nobody loses. Please, please, Harry, allow people to aspire. I mean who knows, they might have been in the wrong class all this time. Your railway, my friend, will allow them to dream, and once you have a dream you’ve got somewhere closer to a reality.’
Throughout all this Harry stared at Moist as if he’d just seen a giant tarantula, but he managed to say, ‘Mister Lipwig, a little while ago you were under a railway engine with fifty tons of rolling stock going past your ears and now you spring up like a jack-in-the-box, full of vim and vigour and schemes! What is it you’ve got? And how can I get some of it?’
‘I don’t know, Harry, it’s just me being normal. You just keep going, whatever happens, and you never stop. It works for me. And remember: clean up your act — our act — to make sure that the public don’t get caught up in the mechanisms.’
The sister state of Quirm comprised, like Ankh-Morpork, a major city, several theoretically autonomous satellites each vying with all the others for advancement, any number of squabbling townships, all bloated with self-importance, and a vast number of homesteads, parishes, farms, vineries, mines, hamlets, bends in the road that someone had named after their dog, and so on, and indeed, so on again.
Around the edges of the Ankh-Morpork hegemony[38] it was quite possible these days for a small farmer on the hypothetical outskirts of all that could be called Ankh-Morpork to lean over his own hedge and chat with a Quirmian farmer who was most definitely in Quirm at the time, without in any way considering that this was a political matter. The conversation would generally be about the weather, the abundance or otherwise of water and the uselessness of the government, never mind which kind, and then happily they would shake hands, or give a little nod, and one would go home to drink a pint of home-made beer after such a busy day, while the other would do likewise with a decent home-made wine.
Occasionally the son of one farmer would go to the hedge and see the daughter of the other one, and vice versa and that was why, in a few — but very interesting — places along the boundary, there were people who spoke in both tongues. This sort of thing is something that governments really hate, which is a very good thing.
Technically speaking, Quirm and Ankh-Morpork were bosom friends, after centuries of conflict mostly about things that turned out to be inessential, inconsequential, untrue or downright lies. Yes, you used to need a passport to travel in either direction, but since Lord Vetinari had taken office nobody really looked at them any more. Moist had been there many times in his younger days and in different guises and under different names and, on one very memorable occasion, a different sex.[39]
Moist mused for a moment as that triumph came back to him. It had been one of the all-time great scams, and, although there had been a large number of other fruitful escapades, he had never dared try it again. The nuns would have got him for sure.
But now, as the coach to Quirm finally reached the border, the only obstacle was a gate, theoretically locked and manned by a couple of officers, one on each side. However, such was the nature of inter-state relations that they were quite often asleep or, if not sleeping, were happily cultivating their little gardens on either side of the border. Some might ask what was the point? Everybody smuggled and, after all, the smuggling went both ways, and so a pragmatic approach was floating in the zeitgeist.
And today Moist had a list of people to see, oh yes, he always had a list. He knew that Quirm itself desperately needed the railway as it had lots of produce to sell or be left with heaps of stinking fish, and so Moist was expecting a happy week dealing with the lobsters,[40] but right now he was dealing with people far from the coast who considered their tiny patches of ground to be sacred. Yes, they wanted the railway, but if it went across their land they wouldn’t have any land left that wasn’t railway.
Moist was assisted in his negotiations in Quirm by Acting Captain Haddock of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, presently seconded to the Quirmian force, who had learned the lingo, in an Ankh-Morpork kind of way. Acting Captain Haddock explained the dilemma created by Quirmian traditions of landownership over a pint of very weak beer.
‘It’s all to do with something they call le patrimony. It means that all the kids have to get something when mum and dad pass over. A big farm might have to be split into two or even three or more so everyone can get their share. Even the government knows this is stupid, but no one in Quirm takes any notice of what the government says. So it’s up to you, Mister Lipwig, to get them to understand, but that’s it, I’m afraid.’
38
Which, it has to be noted, included a certain amount of hinterland, as with most city states.
39
The jailers couldn’t understand how he’d escaped until they realized they weren’t getting their washing back.
40
He knew he couldn’t use that colloquial term around there, of course, but after all, the people of Quirm called the people of Ankh-Morpork