‘No, they’re leaving! Burning clacks towers was stupid! I say stupid! Everybody wants their news and it makes us look like criminals, which we are. And that’s not justified.’
A dwarf who had been silent during the conclave in the cavern was remembering the old Djelibeybi legend about the way to get an ass down from the minaret, and of course the answer was you first have to teach it not to be an ass. But in what world could that ever happen when you’re dealing with grags? It was, she thought, time to see for herself just how life was in the lands of the Troll King. She had been very careful, oh dear, so very careful and so she had survived, she hoped, to be the jackass that got out of the minaret, but alas, the idiots were still encouraging impressionable young dwarfs to attack the clacks towers. Whoever had had that idea had doomed them without dialogue.
Rhys Rhysson was right, she thought. We’ve lost all balance. We have to get out of here, out of everything that is here, out into the light. Surely, she thought, they wouldn’t suspect her. She had been forensic in her search for unbelievers.
Nevertheless, when at last she ran the knives got her before she stumbled. And then there were eight left in the cavern and those watching in the darkness watched more closely to see who would be next. The time would be coming when the purity of darkness could not be mocked!
The terrible fact was that when dwarfs schism, they schism … every deviation from the norm was treated as an attack on all that was truly dwarfish.
Others had already fled and died, and who could say they knew how many more were left, not only in this cavern but in other caverns all the way to Uberwald. And the trouble with madness was that the mad didn’t know they were mad. The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing.
Everywhere one looked there were committees nowadays, mostly because, by arrangement and with the blessing of Lord Vetinari, other principalities, large towns and city states saw no reason to wait for the completion of their slice of the magic of the train, and, seizing these opportunities, new companies were entering the railway business with rather more success than the Wesley brothers. Drumknott was in his element as the paperwork mounted and his files multiplied; he contrived to be everywhere and into everything, ably supported by Mr Thunderbolt.
There were committees discussing industry standards, public safety, passenger welfare, whether one company’s freight truck could be hitched to another company’s train to complete its journey without need to offload[51] — and all the knotty financial and legal arrangements that would entail.
The whole proposition of other businessmen launching their own railways had made Harry call for Thunderbolt.
After hearing Harry’s complaints, the lawyer said, ‘It’s a matter of patents, Sir Harry. You know, all that fiddly stuff that you said you paid other people to get their heads around? Well, Mister Simnel and I have filed applications for every one of his innovations. But I am sure there is more than one way of building a machine to run on rails. You cannot patent the idea of a railway as such, and if you take a walk down the Street of Cunning Artificers you will find someone quite bright enough to discover how to make a train that will run on rails without infringing any of the patents I have been able to obtain for you.
‘The idea of steam locomotion as such has been there for all to see and we all know that a boiling kettle will try to lift its own lid. Being clever, some young man watching the fire will work out that if he builds a bigger kettle he will be able to lift a bigger kettle lid. Although, as we saw at Effing Forest, he soon learns that it’s not as simple as that. They’re not all as bright and clever as Dick Simnel.’
Harry snorted. ‘Stupid hayseeds. Not a patch on our Dick and his lads. All they’ve done is leave their old mum bound for the poorhouse.’ And Sir Harry harrumphed. A full-blown harrumph.
Unaware that his client was temporarily distracted by the thought of a destitute lady living in the Effing Forest, bereft of her boys, her pride and joy, Thunderbolt continued. ‘Take Mister Simnel’s pressure gauge. Once the principle is proved and understood, the Cunning Artificers, extremely cunning as they are, might well find some way of achieving the same results without breaching patent. It’s what they do. Cunning by name and nature.’
Thunderbolt had got Harry’s attention now. ‘And before you explode, Sir Harry, it is all within the law.’
‘What? After all I’ve done and the money I’ve put in!’ Harry’s face was as red as a beacon. He looked as though he needed one of Dick’s pressure gauges himself.
Moist decided to intervene. ‘Harry, the whole point of trains is that they’re universal. Put them on the tracks and away they go.’
In his mellifluous tones, the lawyer continued. ‘If I were you, Sir Harry, I would simply leave it to me to keep an eye on such things as patents and licences and regulation whilst you and Mister Simnel fill the world with steam. And remember, Sir Harry, the important thing is that you were the first. Nobody can take that away. You, Sir Harry, are on what I believe is called the hog’s back, the top of the heap, the founder of the railway. The Ankh-Morpork and Sto Plains Hygienic Railway Company is as solid as the bank.’
The troll smiled and said, ‘Or, indeed, as me — and I am diamond.’
Business for the Hygienic Railway Company was indeed booming, and the workforce ever expanding. The goblins from the Quirmian maquis had passed news back to their friends about the opportunities in the Big Wahoonie, which they seized with alacrity. And once Dick’s announcement of his Railway Academy had been splashed across the papers, in the wake of the Effing Forest incident, there were queues of people every day wanting to be taken on as apprentices. Simnel was heavy on the lads he accepted, telling them they had got to let the iron into their soul. And it was not unknown for him to kick someone straight out again if he felt they weren’t up to scratch.
Returning from another trip to review progress on the Quirm line, Moist paused to take in the latest changes to the compound. There were the apprentices … engrossed in their own little mechanical world with Wally and Dave tutoring them and making sure they had got their caps sufficiently flat. Moist watched them in their blissful mechanical dream and he could not help but notice that they were surrounded by goblins, most definitely paying attention, seriously so, as if their lives depended upon it, and gathering up any discarded greasy rags, which to goblins were like haute couture, and the mark of a real swell back in the burrows. And near by the train spotters were comparing numbers. And there was Mr Simnel, equally engrossed in his latest contraption.
As Moist crossed the compound towards him, Mr Simnel, with his greasy hat and his grubby shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to his elbows, wiped his grinning face with a rag, leaving a greasy smear on the grease.
‘Mister Lipwig! Grand to see you! I have something to show you! We brought this beauty down from Sto Lat yesterday and built it last night!’ He was shouting even louder than normal. ‘Essential equipment! It’s my design! I built it and I call it t’turning table!’
Moist almost had to put his hands over his ears as the engineer stepped closer. It’s because he works with the trains all day, he thought, he has to be heard among all the hissing and clanking, but I wonder how he talks to his Emily?
And as for the turning table, it was, well, it was a table and it turned: a huge metal table with a pair of rails running across the centre, which was turned around by means of a large handle attached to a ratchet mechanism being wound by a troll with a look of intense concentration. Moist watched while Dick gave his demonstration.
51
A development that proved fatal to the Brassica Carriage Company, which had elected to construct its engines and tracks to a gauge based on the horse-drawn cabbage delivery carts.