Vimes has decided not to be intimidating today, so the task falls to Angua. Looks like.

Summary

Moist returns to Harry with signed contracts for the railway construction. Far away, a dwarf named Bedwyr speaks to his wife about the Grags and she urges him not to join them. Moist rides into Vetinari’s office on his golem horse (borrowed from the government) to complain about having to spend so much time persuading landowners to build the railway, but Vetinari is not interested and furthermore decides that the new priority is to build the first branch of the railway to Quirm, while Drumknott and the dark clerks take over supervision of the first branch to Sto Lat. Lu-Tze converses with Ridcully about the monks being worried because it is not “steam engine time”, although he is not personally worried about it. Dick Simnel is sad because he is not even qualified for training in the Guild because he invented his own discipline, but Moist advises him not to worry and to call Harry King’s niece, who he is fond of. The very first train journey from Sto Lat to Ankh-Morpork takes place with the invitation of the press and important officials and everything goes smoothly. Fred and Nobby patrol the station area and Fred wonders if they will need railway police.

Moist finally gets home after much more negotiation and learns that Harry hired a troll named Trouble to keep unwanted visitors out of the station. Moist takes the evening off and goes home to Adora Belle, who has been tracking his progress in the Clacks system, which he didn’t know she could do. The wizards take their first train ride with the help of Ponder, who has become a trainspotter. Moist watches the people in the station and notices that two toddlers are on the tracks just as the Iron Girder is heading toward them. He saves them, makes himself a hero again, and then goes back to Harry to tell him that he has to shut down operations for a week to implement safety measures. Harry fully agrees, and as Moist continues to talk, he comes up with more ideas about how to make money from the railroad (including a mid-range car to get more people to pursue wealth) because his brain can’t stop. He encounters too much opposition when he tries to build the railway through Quirm, where family property rights prevail, but the Marquis of Aix en Pains recommends a better route: an area in the Badlands that is owned by the government but is infested with bandits and goblins. Moist smells change in the air…

Ardent sits down in the Dirty Rat dwarf bar in Ankh-Morpork and subtly intrudes on conversations to rile up the locals and get them freaked out about the railway. Moist tells Harry that they have a place to build the railway, but he needs Harry and his force of enforcers to clear the bandits from the area. They set off and accomplish this task with relative ease, turning the bandits over to the Marquis. A young dwarf has been kidnapped and threatened by the grags to do as he is told or face the consequences. Moist asks Adora Belle if he can take Of the Twilight the Darkness to a meeting with the Quirmian goblins, and they stop briefly at the Marquis’, only to find that they are 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 of a better life in Ankh-Morpork. He insists to Moist that they must take the group now, but on the way back to the station under construction, they discover that all the workers have been murdered by dwarves. Moist feels anger overcoming him and leads the goblins into battle against the dwarves, 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 iconographer so they have documentation of what happened.

After documenting, they load the bodies onto the trolley and head back to the border. Moist has to deal with several people who harbor resentment towards him about the band of goblins, and quickly talks sense into them. He takes the goblins to Adora Belle, who lets them sleep in the Tump Tower, and is then brought in by the guard for questioning about the whole massacre. Vimes finally praises him for doing what he couldn’t and advises him to be careful, then tells him that Vetinari is waiting to speak to him. On the way to the palace, a dwarf tells him that he is on Gram’s list of execution victims. Moist berates Vetinari for not telling him this, but Vetinari explains that he already told Adora Belle and she wanted to surprise him with it. He very gently reminds Moist to keep his place as Agent of Chance and sends him on his way. King Rhys is furious at the actions of Ardent and his crew; he banishes them and brands anyone who helps them as traitors to Scone. A dwarf working with the Grags tries to sabotage the Iron Girder and dies; Nobby believes the train was defending itself. Moist asks Simnel about this and they wonder if the train is developing some kind of soul because of all the attention and adoration from the masses.

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This book too has almost dreamlike qualities in its transitions, but I feel it most strongly in the section where Moist rescues the children from the train, because the scene just blossoms amidst the rest of the narrative. The same goes for the growing realization that the Iron Girder forms some kind of soul or being. The way these books effortlessly give personality and power to objects, games, and concepts is an endless reminder of our impact on our own reality.

It’s incredibly relevant that Moist goes through some things in this book that force him to face his own morality, as his role in building the railroad this time is less theatrical and more tactical. He’s averse to violence in general, but the narrative essentially shows us that this is partly because he hasn’t been exposed to much of it. When he sees horrific violence being perpetrated on others, something inside him breaks. With that in mind, it’s only fitting that he has to meet both Vetinari and Vimes after the massacre, as both feel the need to check in on him – Vetinari to make it clear that this won’t happen again without consequences, Vimes to look him in the eye as someone who knows what it feels like to be overcome by the power of darkness, and to make sure he’s okay.

Moist essentially undergoes the same transformation that Vimes did in Snuff. He learns the minds of goblins through an ugly ordeal, and then finds himself having to defend them from any human who doesn’t want them near him. Of the Twilight the Darkness does most of the work at the beginning, as Moist is astonished by the goblin’s intelligence. But it’s worth noting that when he mentions this, Of the Twilight the Darkness relights his pipe, which, as the narration notes, “made him more human somehow.” The steps the human mind takes to impart sentience to others are mentioned even in places where the humanization process is rather ugly, as here.

One of the keys to understanding the chain of events is that it never occurs to Moist that this could happen while he is working on all the permits for the tracks. He is baffled by the idea that the railroad could be the target of such an attack because he is in showman mode; he is not thinking about what the railroad represents to anyone watching. And this is a book that is very concerned with the inexorable path of progress and how vehemently it is resisted despite its inevitability.

And of course most of the progress is good – goblins becoming humans, peace between dwarves and trolls, fresher seafood in Ankh-Morpork – but there are still things that are downright abhorrent. For example, it’s pretty appalling that while Moist is ranting to Harry about the need for safety systems around the railway, he’s simultaneously inventing the concept of class-based carriage systems on the trains and believes that teaching people to aspire to a higher class level by giving them a few perks for a little more money is some kind of gift to the masses. Harry believes this too, of course, as it’s the definition of what people often mean when they cite the bootstraps theory to those on the lower rungs of the economy.

Progress also means that we always accept the bad sides along with the essential and inherently good sides.

Digression and small thoughts

• The most French thing ever is when the Marquis says that their goblins make their own wine and immediately corrects himself and says “wine-like substance”. Of course he means the snails, but you know what he really means.

• I like how the goblins became ceramic artisans by making unggue pots that have had their magic removed. Much like cultures have other art forms that have cultural significance but can be modified to prevent cultural theft – the first that comes to mind is the Maori ta moko tattoos that are tailored specifically to the person and their family heritage, while there are alternative, stylistically similar designs that tourists and tattoo enthusiasts can get without appropriating a person’s personal history.

• It’s so good that Moist suddenly comes up with the idea of ​​asking a golem horse if it can talk. It fits with the way its brain works, but is also one of those questions that makes you 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 penchant for dating the wives of the difficult men in his life and secretly being infinitely more open with them is perhaps one of his most endearing qualities? It just bothers me that we never get to see it. Show his teas with Sybil and Adora Belle, I want the gossip.

Pratchettisms

Next week we read up to: