These days there was a flourishing colony of goblins in Overhang Minor. The goblins were purveyors of fine pots, and Feeney knew that the production of pots was generally a quiet pastime and didn’t involve very much banging. The small cave that passed as an office was, and you have to be careful about this sort of thing, definitely not manned but goblined. And the sound coming from the great cavern beyond it was not about pots, that was certain. It was metallic, heavy metal. Well – and Feeney stumbled here slightly, mentally at least – goblins were free, and if people wanted to bang metal around in the privacy of their great caverns, then they could. He blinked. It was the new world. If you didn’t get your head around it, it could turn you upside down.

Feeney was polite and had been smart enough to pick up some of the goblin lingo, which really helped. It was a sunny day and it was an easy trip to the Overhangs and, yes, on the hill above the cavern there was a clacks station, goblined by goblins. After delivering his papers and force orders, Feeney sat down for a quiet word with his fellow officer and broached, in a careful way, the subject of the goblins banging things around in a context of disturbing the peace. Since there were very few humans living anywhere near the goblins’ settlement, Chief Constable Feeney put the complaints down to the humans’ residual dislike of goblins doing anything whatsoever anywhere, but he did advise that maybe moving whatever it was they were doing further into their caves might be a very good idea.

The crackling voice of Boney said, ‘No worries, boss, hang. We are copacetic on this one. No problems here.’

‘Well, that’s good to know, but why all the banging and clanging, Boney?’

‘Chief, you know plenty goblins go to Ankh-Morpork and work for Sir Harry King, the shit magnet, on the railway. Know how it is, yess? Comes back every month with wages. Never had wages before! Sometime they comes with diagrams … And ideas and scheming attics.’

Boney watched his superior officer with a certain level of concern, and heard Feeney say, ‘They are stealing … ideas?’