‘This is my dad.’

The man put down a large slab of cheese and said, ‘Can’t shake hands, sir, I’m all over cheese, apart from what’s not all over grease. Nesmith is the name.’

‘Well, Mister Nesmith, perhaps your children might go off and play while I have a little chat with you.’

When Edith and the others had made themselves scarce at the speed of sound, Moist said, ‘You must have heard the squealing?’

‘Oh, yessir, I did, and our Jake and Humphrey were sent off to see what was going on, what with me just home after a long shift.’

‘Well, Mister Nesmith, I congratulate you for your clean and well-spoken children, but I’m sorry to say they came very close to at least disabling the new express to Uberwald.’

Nesmith’s face went grey as he contemplated a future with no work and no pension and quite probably a criminal record. Greasy tears flowed out of his eyes and he said, ‘Anyone hurt, sir? If anyone’s hurt I’ll tan their hides.’

‘Some broken crockery, and there’s work to be done to get the track cleared before we can leave.’

The big round face was contorted. ‘I can help there, sir, I can help, but I’ll tan their hides for them, you see if I don’t.’

‘No, you will not, Mister Nesmith, I’ll see you pay for it if you do, indeed I will. Look, they could have caused a terrible accident, but the important thing is that they didn’t. They wanted to appear brave, as far as I can see, and you can’t blame kids for that. However, the railway isn’t a playground. Do you understand me, Mister Nesmith? Now, if I were you I’d get out my jim crow, off shift or not, and help clear the rails. Oh, and treasure your eldest daughter: you might be grateful for her imagination one day.’

Ohulan Cutash beckoned. Moist knew it as a likeable kind of place: a little market town with the usual hinterland of farmers and lumberjacks. Some mining too, dwarfs and humans quite often these days working on the same mine and even the same seams. It was big enough to have a mayor and sensible enough to have a very good tavern called the Fiddler’s Riddle. And apparently it was a place where the current unpleasantness had not yet reached.

What Moist hadn’t expected to find, as they pulled up to the platform just past midnight, was the brass band and the flags and the Morris dancing and the fun-fair, which it appeared had been organized to welcome the first proper train to arrive at the newly constructed station and had been going on for hours.

And as soon as Iron Girder came to a stop with her last hiss, Mr Skiller, the landlord of the Fiddler’s Riddle, who turned out also to be the town mayor, began an address offering the freedom of his little town to everyone on the train. Although of course it wasn’t a little town, oh indeed not, to its mayor. It was chasing Ankh-Morpork. A little part of Moist’s brain laid a bet with itself that very shortly the words ‘on the map’ were going to be uttered.