Vimes has decided not to be intimidating today, so it falls to Angua. Checks out.
Summary
Moist comes back to Harry with contracts signed for railway building. Far away, a dwarf named Bedwyr talks to his wife about the grags and she urges him not to join them. Moist rides his (government loaned) golem horse into Vetinari’s office to complain about having to spend so much time wheedling landowners to built the railroad, but Vetinari isn’t interested and furthermore decides that the new priority is building the first branch of the railroad to Quirm, leaving Drumknott and the dark clerks to oversee the initial branch going to Sto Lat. Lu-Tze has a chat with Ridcully about the monks being worried because it’s not “steam engine time,” though he’s not personally concerned about it. Dick Simnel is woeful over not being qualified to even get a guild apprenticeship due to inventing his own discipline, but Moist advises him not to worry and to call on Harry King’s niece, who he’s fond of. The very first railway journey from Sto Lat to Ankh-Morpork occurs with press and important official invited, and everything goes off without a hitch. Fred and Nobby patrol the train yard area and Fred wonders if they’ll need railway policemen.
Moist finally gets home after much more land negotiating to find that Harry has hired a troll named Trouble to keep unwanted visitors away from the yard. Moist gets himself the night off and goes home to Adora Belle, who has been following his progress through the clacks system, something he hadn’t know she could do. The wizards go on their first train ride with the help of Ponder, who has become a train spotter. Moist is watching people in the yard and realizes that two toddlers are on the tracks right as the Iron Girder is bearing down; he rescues them, making himself a hero again, and then heads back to Harry to tell him that he has to shut down for a week to implement safety measures. Harry agrees wholeheartedly, and as Moist keeps talking he comes up with other moneymaking ideas for the railway (including a middle-class car to get more people to aspire to wealth) because his brain can’t stop. He comes up against too much pushback trying to get the railway through Quirm due to their familial property laws, but the Marquis des Aix en Pains gives him advice on a better route: an area of Badlands owned by the government, but covered in bandits and goblins. Moist can smell change in the air…
Ardent situates himself at the dwarf bar Dirty Rat in Ankh-Morpork and subtly inserts himself into conversations to get the population riled about the railroad and ready to act out. Moist tells Harry that they have a place where they can build the railroad, but he’ll need Harry and his enforcer squad to clear out the bandits from the area. They head out and manage this task with relative ease, delivering the bandits to the Marquis. A young dwarf was kidnapped and threatened by the grags to do as he’s told or suffer consequences. Moist asks Adora Belle if he can bring Of the Twilight the Darkness to meet with the Quirmian goblins, and they stay with the Marquis briefly, only to find that they’re being spied on by a dwarf. Moist and Of the Twilight the Darkness meet the Quirmian goblins and the goblin sells the group a story about a better life in Ankh-Morpork. He insists to Moist that they have to take the group now, but on the way back to the railway station under construction, they discover that all the workers have been murdered by dwarfs. Moist feels rage overcome him and leads the goblins in a fight against the dwarfs, killing three of them himself. Several goblins die. He comes to and is mortified, though Of the Twilight the Darkness is impressed. Moist asks the Marquis to join them with an iconograph so they have documentation of what happened.
After documentation, they put the bodies on the handcar and head back toward the border. Moist has to deal with several humans being difficult about the band of goblins with him and sets them straight in short order. He brings the goblins to Adora Belle, who has them sleep in Tump Tower, and is then brought in by the Watch for questioning about the whole massacre. Vimes winds up praising him for doing what he could not, and advises him to be cautious, then tells him that Vetinari is waiting to talk to him. On his way to the palace, a dwarf tells him that he’s on the gram’s list of people to be put to death. Moist berates Vetinari for not telling him this, but Vetinari explains that he’d already told Adora Belle and she’d wanted to surprise him with it. He very gently reminds Moist to maintain his place as an agent of serendipity and sends him on his way. King Rhys is besides himself over the actions of Ardent and his crew; he banishes them, branding anyone who helps them traitors of the Scone. A dwarf working with the grags makes to sabotage the Iron Girder and dies; Nobby thinks the train defended herself. Moist asks Simnel about it and they wonder whether the train is developing some kind of soul due to all the attention and worship of the masses.
Commentary
This book is another one that has almost dreamlike qualities in the transitions, but I feel it most in the section when Moist saves the kids from the train because the scene just kind of blooms in the midst of the rest of the narrative. The same goes for the growing recognition around the Iron Girder forming a sort of soul or being. The way that these books effortlessly imbue personhood and power onto items, games, and concepts is an endless reminder of our effect on our own reality.
It’s incredibly relevant that Moist is going through some stuff in this book that requires him to stare his own morality in the face, as his role in getting the railroad off the ground is less theatrical than it is tactical this time around. He’s generally averse to violence, but the narrative essentially shows us that’s partly because he hasn’t been exposed to much of it. Seeing terrible violence enacted on others breaks something in him. With that in mind, it’s only fitting that he has to meet both Vetinari and Vimes after the massacre, as they both feel the need to check in—Vetinari to make it clear that this won’t be happening again without consequences, Vimes to look him in the eye as someone who knows how it feels to be subsumed by the power of the dark and make sure he’s alright.
Moist essentially goes through the same transformation Vimes did in Snuff, coming to terms with the sapience of goblins through a very ugly ordeal and then finding himself in a position of needing to defend them to every human who doesn’t want them around. Of the Twilight the Darkness is doing most of the heavy lifting to start, as Moist is stunned by the goblin’s intelligence. But it’s worth noting that when he makes mention of this, Of the Twilight the Darkness lights his pipe again, which the narrative notes “made him somehow more human.” The steps that the human mind takes to render sentience onto others is noted even at the points when it’s kind of an ugly anthropomorphizing process, as it is here.
One of the keys to understanding the chain of events here is that it never occurs to Moist that this might happen as he’s working on all the permissions for the tracks. He finds himself baffled over the idea that the railway could become a target for this kind of attack because he’s in showman mode; he’s not thinking about what the railway represents to anyone looking in. And this is a book that’s very concerned with the inexorable path of progress and how vehemently it is resisted regardless of inevitability.
And most of the progress is good, of course—goblins getting to be people, peace between the dwarfs and trolls, getting fresher seafood in Ankh-Morpork—but there are still bits that are downright heinous. For instance, it’s pretty horrifying that in his rant to Harry about the need for safety systems around the railway, Moist also simultaneously invents the concept of tier class-based car systems on the trains, and believes that teaching people to strive for class elevation by giving them some perks for a little more money is some sort of gift to the masses. Harry also believes this, of course, being the definition of what people often mean when they cite bootstraps theory to those on the economic lower rungs.
Progress is also this too. We are always taking the nasty bits with the essential and inherent good ones.
Asides and little thoughts
- The most French thing ever when the Marquis says that their goblins make their own wine and immediately corrects himself to say “wine-like substance.” He means the snails, sure, but you know what he really means.
- I love the distinction of the goblins becoming ceramics artisans by making Unggue pots with their magic taken out. Very similar to cultures with other art forms that have cultural significance, but can be modified to prevent cultural theft—first that comes to mind is Maori ta moko tattoos, which are meant to be specific to the individual and their family heritage, while there are alternative stylistically similar designs that tourists and tattoo enthusiasts can get without appropriating someone’s personal history.
- The fact that Moist suddenly thinks to ask a golem horse if they can talk is so good. In keeping with how his brain works, but also one of those questions that you sort of kick yourself for not asking if you didn’t?
- Vetinari told Adora Belle that they were on the grags list, but not Moist… The Patrician’s preference for meeting with the wives of the difficult men in his life, and being secretly, infinitely more frank with them is maybe one of his most endearing traits? It only bothers me that we never get to see it. Show his teas with Sybil and Adora Belle, I want the gossip.
Pratchettisms
And now Harry King, Cess Pit Man, was metamorphosing into National Treasure.
Simnel looked even more haunted while Moist stood with his mouth metaphorically open and listened to the meticulous Mr. Simnel blaming himself for being a genius.
As always in these matters, everything had to wait until everything else was ready.
It was, in short, a light that hid from light, and it had a reason to hide.
Nevertheless, they looked like a people who had been hammered hard on the anvil of fate and had been laminated with a natural bravado, which did not entirely hide their wounds.
As stares went, their eyes were not baleful or angry, they were just… hopeful, in the grudging way of people who had to learn pessimism as a survival tactic.
Moist was somewhat disorientated, because Vimes was acting in a way that, if looked at forensically, might even have been somewhere within the circumference of friendly, rather like, he supposed, an alligator yawning.
It was like shaking hands with a boxing glove full of walnuts.
Next week we’ll read up to:
It was your slave but, in a sense, it might be the other way around.
No love for the Marquis of aches and pains in Pratchettisms? :) One of those things where I was halfway into the next sentence and had to go back to see if I had indeed read what I thought I had :D Like Douglas Adams, Pratchett does this beautifully…
Between the Marquis and Simnel we get a mess of brow furrowing accents. §-)
“but there are still bits that are downright heinous.”
Even the struggle for the right-of-way. We see it from Moist’s perspective, where the complainers are obstacles in the way of his future, but from their perspective, this is their family’s land since time immemorial. That’s not some stretch of land, that’s the place my great-great-great grandmother is buried, over there is where great-great-granddad built a shed so his wife could make her cheeses, this field here is where we were grazing our cattle before writing was invented. Someone comes with a team of navvies and a slide rule and a pile of iron rails and says he’s the future, what about our past? What about all the life we’ve had here, where our roots are millennia deep? Dig it up and throw it away, the future is here, what kind of answer is that?
The problem is that Quirm doesn’t give them a choice. Land holdings have to be divided equally between sons, becoming smaller with each generation. And Moist isn’t allowed to just buy the land and let the farmer move to Quirm (or Ankh-Morpork) to start a new life. They are essentially slaves to their land.
They are nothing of the sort. Quirm doesn’t practice serfdom; if they did it would be a whole other set of issues. The Quirmian farmers are not chained to the land, they have a right to the land. The future is happening to them, and they are being driven from their homes and forced to work for ruthless straw bosses in city sweatshops and murderous mills. In comparable Roundworld circumstances, some of the families displaced by industrialization had been on that land for longer than recorded history, and a whole lot of them wanted to stay.
I know Sir Pterry had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about folk music, but it’s a valuable historical resource in itself. If you want to know how many miles of rail were laid, read a history book. If you want to know what it was like for the people who used to live there, or the ones who had already lost their farms and had to go dig for a living, listen to some folk songs.
Quirm does give them a choice, the government is pointedly not involved, per the Marquis.
There’s a good amount of sleight of hand happening in the writing to prevent us from looking too closely at the downsides. villainising people who want heinous things like ‘a fair price for their land’ or just not to sell it entirely. So we have the convenient badlands, where we don’t have to think too hard about why the bandits are there if there isn’t anyone else to steal from, no decent people to worry about, just RPG bandits who don’t even post lookouts so that Harry King can wrap them up in two stagecoaches and an afternoon, before Moist has to do anything to compromise his morals too much.
That’s the traditional French name for the wines made in Britain ;)
The massacre was where I started to have trouble with this book because it felt like Moist was being turned into Vimes and the book felt much more like getting to a certain point instead of a book. This is one of the few Discworlds that I haven’t reread.
Pratchettisms
Now follow me, Mr. Lipwig, and try not to slosh. (Harry King)
It wasn’t that the grags were holding hard to yesterday; they hadn’t even got as far as this century. (Bedwyr)
Civis AnkhMorporkianus Sum. (Vetinari) [From Civis Romanus Sum – I am a Roman citizen]
Uncertainty is always uncertain, but the difficulty with people who rely on systems is that they begin to believe that nearly everything is in some way system and therefore, sooner or later, they become bureaucrats. (Lu-Tze)
Being full of workmen … laboring at cross-purposes just like on every big construction site anywhere.
Moist, on the other hand, in the vicinity of the press, was as straightforward as a sack of kaleidoscopes.
His mind was filling up with the world of locomotive possibilities at the speed of a hamster really at odds with the treadmill. (Lipwig)
But we are “stick-in-the-muds,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “I treasure that fact.”
“these dumb buggers really think you is the bee’s bollocks, think sun percolates out your ass.” (Of the Twilight the Darkness)
For those having trouble with pasting comments, there seems to be a limit on length.
Thoughts
All hail the Goddess Pippina with her Apple of Discord! [Eris Goddess of Discord in ancient Greece]
Lipwig is taken off the Sto-Lat assignment, which is handed to Drumknott and a dark clerk, much to Drumknott’s glee. Instead he is assigned to get a line to Quirm.
Moist and Simnel have a rambling talk about masters and Ephebe (which developed all of Simnel’s mathematics, wrote it down, and forgot about it). Moist convinces Simnel that he’s a self made master. It then turns out that Simnel is in love with Emily, Harry King’s daughter and Lipwig is overflowing with advice.
The kids on the track were kindergarteners, not toddlers. As Moist points out to Harry, they didn’t accidentally cross the track, they were drawn to it.
We see the first of many characters from the old books, All Jolson, and Moist has visions of new ways to make money, especially when the Sto-Lat line is a success and Quirm is next.
When Harry King and his enforcers capture the bandits, he, like Vimes but not Moist, leads from the front and marches into the camp alone.
It should be mentioned that Moist’s dwarf killing rage was enhanced by a goblin potion.
The Iron Girder kills a dwarf. Simnel is disturbed by this and has a rambling talk with Moist who convinces him not worry. But he knew what was behind it since last week: “Earth, air, fire, and water, the sum of everything! The goddess had found her worshipers.”
A couple of Pratchettisms:
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.
This is not utterly clearly written, but ISTM Pratchett is happier with people ignoring boundaries.
We are not difficult people, but the government drags its feet when it comes to cleaning out ze bandits, because, as you understand, bandits and governments ‘ave so much in common that they might be interchangeable anywhere in the world…
As we see now, some governments have nothing to offer but the bogus claim that Somebody Else is a danger the government will (might) protect their people from.