The Price of Flight 38
Hanna in Love V0.01.
Now I'm on a roll again… just getting on with it and progressing the story. One of several being actively written justnow. I think I've evaded Hanna coming up behind me and demanding action to be taken concerning her storyline. I think.
Disclaimer: I've done the background reading on how helium is refined and purified for commercial use and I realise this is done as a by-product of natural gas production/fracking et c. It can be extracted from the atmosphere, but this is a slow expensive process which is above all laborious and uneconomic.
So that's how it is on our world. The Discworld has almost no oil or natural gas production. The stuff is probably there, down under people's feet within the Disc. And I'm sure Discworld alchemy deals with Klatchian Black Oil, in small amounts. You know, when it unaccountably bubbles up spontaneously in the deep Klatchian desert and is prized for its curiosity value. Totally useless stuff otherwise. But the Bleiballoon Luftschiff concept needs, ideally, helium. So I'm claiming Rule of Unobtanium for the Discworld and having it being refined directly from the atmosphere; maybe on a magical world pure gas helium doesn't gradually diffuse into space, and slightly different rules apply..
Great fun was also had in finding out about events in and around Lake Constance, Switzerland/Austria/Germany/Lichtenstein, in the historical period approx. 1890 – 1910. There will be many references.(1). Starting with the Discworld name for the lake.
Lake de Coverlet, Überwald
Doctor Johanna Smith-Rhodes stood on the lakeside shore, admiring the view. Lake de Coverlet was big. Not to the same scale of big as Lake Mouldavia, out to the further widdershins, so hugely big that it classed as an inland sea. But big enough here so that the furthest shore was a grey-blue-green haze of forested hills ascending to distant mountains.
She remembered the research briefings. This was where several rivers had met and discharged surplus water into a natural basin. It had all stabilised here millenia ago. Human settlements had arisen, and in those hills and mountains you got Dwarfs and Trolls. Apparently there were also other things here, like vampires and werewolves, but then, this was Überwald. A place where quite a lot of sentient species sort of got along. The occasional nocturnal crunch and shriek notwithstanding.
She had also reflected, listening to the humans who lived and worked here, that this was also a meeting point of human ethnicities. Überwaldean was spoken and seemed to be the main human language. That was fine. She spoke it. But she'd been intrigued to hear Quirmian was widespread here too. Apparently it was a Latatian hangover, and once or twice in history the Quirmian Empire had got this far and left people, and a language, behind. In this region of Überwald, Quirmian and Überwaldean speakers had managed to get along and had a bilingual society organised by something called cantons, local administrative regions. The cantons also grouped as a sort of loose federation. Apparently it all worked. Lady Margalotta, down in Bonk, kept an eye on things.
It was, she reflected, a nice place. Idyllic, even. If you shut your ears to the construction going on down on the lakeside, on land owned by Count Ferdinand as part of one of his estates. Dwarf and human builders were engaged in erecting large structures there, where a sort of factory complex was emerging. Necessarily, it had to be built big. The local canton had also insisted that insofar as it was possible, the structures had to be in harmony with their surroundings. She just wasn't sure how they were going to manage that.
But, as all parties had agreed, this was Progress. And Progress could not be hindered, not here in the Century of the Clock-Building Cuckoo.
She considered the Sheds.
She shook her head.
Shed suggested a cheerfully ramshackle structure where tinkering happened. Perhaps a well-built inobtrusive wooden structure at the end of a garden where tools were stored. A place where a husband, with the connivance of his wife, could mess about with things of male interest well away from the house.(2) The operative word for a shed was small.
The things at the lakeside were not small. Anything but. She was looking at massive structures. Several hundred feet long and at least a hundred feet high. They even had slipways at the lakeside end running down into the water, indicating that boats of some sort were being built in there.
The acrid, sooty, smell of steam power permeated, competing with the scents of Nature. The noise of steam engines was everywhere too. And behind the Sheds were the tall cylindrical tanks, used for Storage and Preparation. Mysterious tubes and conduits connected them.
Johanna sighed. Vast amounts of money must be funding this. It was one of the things she was here to find out more about, a straightforward assignment to look around, poke her nose in, ask the right questions, follow the right leads, and Report Back.
It wasn't even a Guild assignment. The Guild had accepted she was there in her other role, as part-time City Watch, wearing her hat as Special Detective-Constable Smith-Rhodes of the Cable Street Particulars, currently on attachment to the Air Watch, under the direction of Captain Olga Romanoff. The Dark Council had accepted Johanna was here as City Watch and had courteously waived any sort of professional fee, provided they received copies of the reports afterwards. Olga had indicated she was agreeable to this. Sometimes, the Guild was happy to be paid in kind. Information was worth money. This information would, among other things, help calculate the professional contract fee on the Count Ferdinand von Bleiballoon, should pragmatic political necessities ever indicate that his annulment was necessary.
Johanna sat at the lakeside and, out of habit, ran the numbers. Fourteen days Watch salary, pro rata, with active duty supplements. Full expenses, which Olga had said she would initial without looking too closely at. And the other thing.
She looked down the lake to the Sheds again. That set-up must have cost hundreds of thousands, expressed in dollars. And maybe millions, in, what was the local currency, marks. Überwaldean Reichsmarks. (3) Well, the Count has significant estates, largely in Prussica. But here at Lake de Coverlet, this is his most remote and out-of-the way estate. So he sets up here. And for people like that, the money piles up, over the years, into the sort of heap where you need mountaineering gear and breathing apparatus to climb to the top. Somebody like Lady Sybil has been able to divert a lot of that accumulated wealth into supporting the City. Research into warships. Actually building a couple of warships. Sponsoring a couple of Regiments. Providing R&D funding for the Air Watch. Helping to build the Air Watch. Vetinari stressed how important that is. And her fortune may have been dented by this, but there's still a fortune left over. The question is, how many reserves has Ferdinand von Bleiballoon got? Inspector Pessimal, back in Ankh-Morpork, is finding out through his contacts. They've asked me to dig around here, too.
Johanna considered another very attractive possibility. She'd even prepared a sales pitch for this, to bring out when the time was right. She reflected she'd quite like the guided tour of the Sheds and the Produktionsanlage für Flüssiggas. At present it was off-limits, the excuse being that some aspects of the production cycle were potentially dangerous and it would not be right to expose the ladies…and other guests… to un-necessary risk. You are a natural historian by profession, Gnädige Frau Doktor? Perhaps we can retain a local forester to show you the natural history of our beloved Lake Konstanza, Lady Smith-Rhodes? You and your daughter, such a delightful child?
Johanna sighed. She could have gained access by night, in a very discreet sort of way. But she suspected it was a twenty-four-hours a day production plant. Too many people, too much light.
Hanna was working on the Count, to suggest her two Lady's Companions could safely be shown the Factory. Johanna let her mind unboggle. Count Ferdinand had seemed a pleasant, if stolid, sort of man. And it was clear he found Hanna von Strafenburg to be of interest. As far as Johanna could tell, he found her attractive and personable. It was hard to tell with Überwaldean nobility.
By Prussican standards, he's crazy about her. Hard to tell.
And that was another thing: she, Johanna, was a Special Detective-Constable. She was in Watch active service in the company of Technical Sergeant Gertrude Schilling, and Senior Sergeant Hanna von Strafenburg. Both of them out-ranked her. She wasn't in command of this mission.
"Don't stray too far, sweetheart." she said.
Ruth had found a place where she could make sketches of the lakeside and had unpacked sketchpad and pencils.
Johanna smiled. What was more understandable than an artistically inclined little girl making sketches in an area of great natural beauty? It compensated for not being able to bring iconographic machines into a place where local security might get twitchy. Iconographs of the Sheds and the Produktionsanlage might be held to be an abuse of hospitality. But Art, sketches by a little girl with talent and a keen eye, would be understood as Art.
"I like it here, mummy." Ruth said. "Thank you for taking me."
"It's a break." Johanna said. "A few days in the countryside. Good for both of us."
Johanna reflected that this might come under the "Take Your Daughter To Work Day" thing. Except that this wasn't an Assassin contract, and she'd once vowed not to expose any of her three daughters to that. Not unless they chose to train at the School…
She sighed. Earlier that year, her oldest daughter, a part-time Air Watch pilot and Witch, had been present on the Guild contract in Syrrit, for unavoidable professional reasons. And had indeed seen her mother, and her aunt, at work. That worked out alright. We all got home safely and Bekki got a large bonus.
Today, Ruth, her youngest, was with her, tangentially part of a job. She reflected on the irony involved in the fact that her third daughter, the one who actually was training to be an Assassin, had not yet seen her mother at work. She put the uncomfortable thought out of her head that sooner or later, this would probably happen and she and Famke would end up bonding over a joint contract. It was bound to happen. Depend on it.
She supressed the bout of inconvenient conscience. This was not an Assassin contract. There was very little risk involved. Basically it was a working holiday. She was here as the wife of Unseen University's Vice-Chancellor, Sir Ponder Stibbons. And a Dame twice over in her own right. Therefore those noble credentials Lord Vetinari had foisted on her were actually being useful and she was, legitimately, Lady Johanna Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons. Therefore self-evidently a Person of Quality, of lower noble standing to the Countess Hannelore von Strafenburg, and somebody demonstrably a respectable mother of a small child, and such a pleasant and well-behaved child too, my Lady.
And ideally suited, with experience of marriage and motherhood, to be a Lady's Companion to the Grafin von Strafenburg, a friend, supporter and chaperone to the Countess during her courtship by His Excellency The Count.
Johanna had set aside her Republican upbringing and inclination and had adopted the role, as her Assassin training had demanded. On the sleeper train out from Ankh-Morpork to Bonk, she had realised what the Lady's Companion side of thing meant, to support and nurture Hanna. And, she had realised, Gertrude.
Hanna and Gertrude were both Witches. They had trained in Lancre. They had seen steading practice in Lancre. At Pseudopolis Yard, both, without complaint or reservation, spent shifts in the Watch Steading, providing routine everyday Witch services to City Watch members and their extended families who needed Witches. The feedback said that Hanna, while chilly and austere and formal, was also a conscientious Witch who provided excellent care for people who came to her with life's little problems.
What puzzled Johanna was that every witch did childbirths and midwifery. No exceptions. It was a fundamental thing. Witches were midwives. In one sense it defined them. Her daughter Bekki was only just seventeen but had done nearly thirty. Perhaps more. People at Home, both white and black, tended to big families and sometimes a Wi… Healthcare Practitioner… was needed. Witches – she tried to block the thought that Bekki was a Witch – also dealt with the before. Those things that put a baby in there in the first place. Bekki had explained that Mrs Ogg delivered through training in this sort of thing and showed you the, err, preparations that you sometimes needed to give people, mum. What they were for. She also, err, explained why.
She got that this was Witch training too. And that, you know, Witches tended to marry late or not at all and sometimes didn't have the time. They say about Mistress Weatherwax… Johanna hesitated, then shrugged and let "May her soul have mercy on the Gods" play out in her head, on the grounds that it didn't do any harm, and it was courteous. Anyway, they say about…her… that she was in the position of the village blacksmith, who could shoe a horse, fix the tack, diagnose its ailments, clean and fix its teeth, and so forth. She knew everything about horses but the crucial thing was that she'd never, ever, got into the saddle herself and ridden one, in all her nine decades of life.
On the train out to Bonk, and then into the coach for the uncomfortable ride out to Lake de Coverlet wishing the Air Watch had been able to fly them in, Johanna had realised she was in the company of somebody else who'd never ridden the metaphorical horse in her life. And who, she suspected, hadn't spent that much time in the blacksmith's forge or even the paddock.
The same applied to Gertrude, a genius at technomancy, a Wizard-level ability with thaumomancy, a born engineer, and a woman to whom men were an alien species.
Johanna Smith-Rhodes had taken a deep breath, and started giving Hanna von Strafenburg some practical education in the Facts of Life. Gertrude, she decided, needed it too.
In one vital respect, this was not a straightforward assignment. But at least it's a safe one. It had better be, my daughter is with me.
There was a well-appointed chateau here, a herrenhaus, in local Überwaldean. Assigned rooms were luxurious here, by Prussican standards. Maidservants had been assigned, and Johanna had reminded herself not to show too obvious an interest in the weaponry that decorated the walls. Reminding people of her primary occupation would not be advisable here. Although, that's an interesting set of schwanze swords(4) on the wall there, the ones used by the duelling clubs…
Gertrude Schilling had expressed a little interest, but had shaken her head and said "Prussicans." Johanna had been reminded that while Borogravians spoke pretty much the same language, they had a different outlook on life.(5)
Exploring the local town and having found a coffeeshop run by displaced Borogravians, the visitors had taken their ease in somewhere that was picture-postcard Überwald, possibly un-necessarily so. Johanna appreciated that Ruth's school had attempted to resolve the problem of what they could actually hope to teach a ten-year-old girl genius who was vastly ahead of everybody else by quite a long way. The Convent School of Seven-Handed Sek had proposed to focus Ruth's teaching on scholastic areas where it was agreed her ability wasn't that far above the norm for a girl in Primary Year Five, or Sixth Grade, or whatever they called it now at this level. (6) Mother Superior had proposed that, as Ruth was already bilingual and had been exposed since birth to two languages, we could do worse than give her special tuition in languages. After all, as a musician, Brindisian and Quirmian would be useful. Brindisian is also a language of Art. Überwaldean, too.
Ruth's mind was now being engaged by Languages, at least at school. She was making steady progress.
Here, she was talking to Gertrude, in Überwaldean, where she could, about things of common interest. As far as Johanna could make out, they were discussing boiling points of liquids. But her own Überwaldean was light on technical and scientific vocabulary. She wondered what Wasserstoff was, which apparently boiled at minus two hundred nine-and-fifty degrees. Or something called Stickstoff, that made its transition at minus one hundred-five-and-ninety grads. Reference was also being made to eine Pumpe, die sehr kleineDingezerkleinert.
Johanna felt vaguely worried that Ruth seemed to be getting all this perfectly while her mother was floundering.(7)
Never mind, she can explain it all to me later. In short words with pictures.
"Traudl is doing what she is good at, I think." Hanna von Strafenburg said, with a nervous uncertain smile. "She is discussing the science with your wunderkind daughter. Perhaps you and I should order more cake?"
"Good idea." Johanna agreed. She sensed that justnow, Hanna was as nervous and highly strung as a basket full of kittens. Cake might help. Chocolate cake, for preference. At least she knew the Überwaldean vocabulary for this.
"Kohlendioxid. Leicht. Minus sechsundfünfzig Grad." Gertrude said, with confidence.
Ruth indicated understanding.
"Das muss einer der ersten sein, der veröffentlicht wird?" she replied.
"I almost understood that." Johanna said to Hanna. She called a waitress over and ordered
"Bitte füllen Sie den Kaffee auf." she directed. "Wir benötigen auch zwei Portionen Schokoladenbeutelkuchen. Vielen Dank."
She wondered why the waitress appeared to wince. This always happened when she spoke Überwaldean, for some reason. Hanna smiled slightly.(8)
"Not your fault, I know." Hanna said. "But your accent makes you sound like Prince Heinrich. Overbearing and threatening, as he is. The man whose rule these people fled, to escape."
Hanna beckoned the waitress over.
"Extra cream on my portion, please. And the Frau Doktor is from Rimwards Howondaland. You should really listen to her speaking Morporkian. That is also interesting to listen to."
Johanna felt the start of a scowl, and then realised Hanna had actually cracked a joke. Bekki had said this was possible, if you were around her for long enough and she felt relaxed and at ease. She grinned. This was for the good.
Talking to Hanna over cake, Johanna discovered what Wasserstoff was, and then Sauerstoff, Stickstoff, Kohlendioxid, and one or two others. And that one of the purposes of this place was to refine them.
Gertrude and Ruth joined in. They explained more.
"And they're around us all the time, mixed in together in the air." Johanna said. "A free resource. The raw material costs nothing. Got it." she said, confidently. "But the trick is separating them."
Gertrude tried not to wince. But a Rimwards Howondalandian, pronouncing a word like separating.
"Well, all except Wasserstoff." she said. "At the moment that's how he gets lift for his airships, so he needs lots of it. But there are obvious risks. A naked flame in the wrong place, and whoomf. So now he's setting up the test-plant for mining the atmosphere. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Mining for what he hopes will be a sort of gold, out of fresh air."
"Think of steam, mummy. From a kettle. That's water that's got so hot it's changed into a gas." Ruth said, helpfully. "But it cools down. As it gets colder it becomes water again. Liquid. We only think it's hot, because it can be all burny. But everything has its own hot and cold."
"So you freeze air till it gets so cold it stops being air and turns into a liquid." Johanna said. She was also uneasily aware Ruth had evolved a "talking to mummy-and-daddy" voice, so as to get difficult things over to slower-minded people, like her parents. "Everything is a sort of steam, in its own temperature range. Until it gets so cold it doesn't want to be gas any more."
"Every gas has a different boiling point." Gertrude said. "Also, subjecting a gas to pressure means it gets colder of its own accord, so there's no need to expend energy in freezing it. Boiler's Law again. Err.. as it all condenses out at different temperatures, it gets diverted off to separate holding tanks. Helium comes out last of all, at a really low temperature. That's the one he's really after. But once he's got it, it's there for ever. It's a noble gas, reacts with nothing, and provided there's no leak in the gas-bag, that's the lift. Forever."
"What does he do with great big tanks of all the others?" Johanna asked.
Gertrude shrugged.
"I think there's a limited use for sauerstoff and stickstoff." she said. "And some kohlendioxid has a commercial use as dry ice, if he pushes it further to get it to solidify. But I'm betting most of it gets flared back off into the atmosphere. Not worth keeping, otherwise."
"Izzatso…" Johana said, in a low voice. She remembered a long talk she'd had with Ponder just before setting out. Possibilities were forming in her mind. As were dollar signs. She remembered the layout of the town of Konstanzia-am-de-Coverlet. It actually had a Clacks tower. Perfect…
She listened attentively to the technical briefing, delivered jointly by Gertrude and her daughter, a part of her mind spinning it into a different direction.
"So this Wasserstoff…" Johanna said.
"It makes sense to set up by a large lake." Gertrude remarked. "An endless supply, really. You get it by passing an electrothaumic current through water. This breaks down water, Wasser, into its two constituents, sauerstoff and wasserstoff. Sauerstoff, you don't need so much. But Wasserstoff is a lot lighter than air. You can use it to fill the gasbags in airships. Lots of lift."
"This is the one that explodes when a naked flame touches it." Hanna said, thoughtfully.
"Yes. Cataclysmic reaction. Lots of exothermic energy." Gertrude said, as if this was not greatly important. "But if there aren't any naked flames, it's safe enough."
She closed her eyes, in a sort of bliss.
"I wonder how high they can go?"
"A long way, if they explode." Hanna said.
"Where does the energy come from, for the necessary electrothaumic current?" Johanna asked.
"My guess is, Johanna, they've got a few Igors working there." Gertrude said. "They're drawn to this sort of thing. A Marsther with an obsessive streak doing interestingly dangerous things. They'll be queuing up to wait for a thunderstorm and harness the power of the lightning."
She paused again.
"Look, this is Überwald." she explained. "Lots of boding. Lots of thunderstorms."
"Daddy said the Wizards can do this." Ruth said. "With magic. Split water into two gases using a magically induced electrothaumic charge."
The others looked kindly at her.
"We should also look for Wizards working here." Hanna said. "Thank you for telling us, Ruth. Captain Romanoff advised me she thinks very highly of you. She was not wrong."
"So where is the most likely Wizard college?" Johanna asked. "I'll ask Ponder to find out if any Unseen graduates are likely to be working here."
"There are Colleges of Wizardry at Bonk and at Heidelburger University in Prussica." Hanna said. "Heidelburger is the most likely place. After that the next one is Blondograd. It is not impossible, although very unlikely. Blondograd is in Rodinia, after all."
"Mouldavia, anyway." Gertrude said. "There used to be one in Wiener, but it closed during the Wars. I heard they were considering re-opening."
Johanna nodded. She could get Ponder to use contacts at these other Wizard colleges to find out what they knew. She also recalled Ponder describing a research paper on the speculations of two Wizards, Herr Zauberer Fritz Haber and Herr Zauberer Karl Bosch, on how a dependence on organic fertilizer in farming could be reduced if only an economic way could be found to "fix" nitrogen out of the air into a form that could be used to replenish nutrients in soil. The first step would be to refine nitrogen from the air in a pure form… Davinia Bellamy from next door, a doctor of botany who knew about soil, had aso considered this to be an exciting idea.
Johanna saw the dollar signs again as her mind found a use for all that pure nitrogen, a by-product here that was otherwise only going to be vented back into the air again. She would talk to Ponder, she decided. If the two original Wizards could be found, they could be offered a percentage. And she needed a look at this gas refinement plant. She could just bet that the Herr Grafin Ferdinand von Bleiballoon hadn't even begun to think about patents on the mere sideshows, the supporting infrastructure he needed to make the airships work.
She smiled a happy smile. This was going to be more interesting than she had thought. And she hadn't even seen an airship yet.
A short one to keep the story going. To be continued…
(1) Four countries border the Lake, and none can agree where the international borders are drawn on the lake system itself. Kudos to the enterprising gentleman who moored his houseboat on the lake and said to all four governments – once you've decided whose jurisdiction I live in, send me a tax statement and I'll pay it gladly. On the Discworld, of course, it'd all be Überwald. (Austria would be the Discworld Borogravia, so maybe one non-Überwaldean nation gets a say)
(2) At this point, Johanna paused. She knew this happened in other marriages. She was married to a Wizard. Who had a Study, inside the house, that he retreated to.
(3) Ankh-Morpork wasn't the only place where ghosts and remnants of long-gone monarchy persisted. Kings and crowns everywhere, as Sam Vimes sourly said. Überwald might not have had a Kaiser for a long time, nor the unified Reich that came with the deal. But the currency was still the Reichsmark.
(4) I know. Low pun. The word is actually "schlanger" sword, for the ones used by university duelling societies in Prussia where the intention was to graduate with a distinguishing facial scar…
(5) It had not taken Gertrude long to discover the best coffee-and-cake café, in the town of Konstanz-am-de Coverlet. It was actually owned by Borogravians who had fled the endless war.
(6) Johanna reflected it was easier at her sort of school: First Form, Second Form, Third Form, Fourth Form, Fifth Form, Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth. Otherwise,
(7) It occurred to me while I was looking up the vocabulary for this bit. Language teaching in British schools, even at the higher level, never, ever, once touches on the scientific and the technical. When I did higher level French, I do not remember once being exposed to what the chemical elements are called in French. It never eve occurred to me they didn't use the English words – I thought this was universal. However, we were taught late-mediaeval French literature and plays by Moliere. Extensively. It's just occurred to me that this was a pretty big omission and displays a pretty big bias. It may have improved since I was at school. But I bet English kids doing the advanced school course in German will learn about the writings of Goethe or the poetry of Schiller and completely bugger all about Germany's contributions to industry and science.
(8) Comedian Trevor Noah's observation about South Africans speaking German. He discovered German-speakers wince even when the grammar is perfect and the context is correct. Apparently if your first language is Afrikaans, German emerges sounding as if it has a strong Austrian accent. This makes even a polite request to pass the salt sound like an intention to invade Poland. Even Austrians will hear it and think "Why is this person doing a Hitler impression?" And we think South African accents in English can sound abrasive and discordant…
Notes Dump
The boring bits. Vocabulary in Überwaldean for the bewildered:
Kohlendioxid: carbon dioxide.
Sauerstoff: oxygen.
Stickstoff: Nitrogen.
Wasserstoff: hydrogen.
Helium is still Helium, apparently; I'd have expected to see "Sonnestoff" as helium was first inferred from a solar spectrum and "Helios" means "of the Sun" in Greek. The rest of the noble gases are also as per English.
A little side-project involves an idea that's been niggling at me for some time…. Taking That Song, the old Spitting Image scurrilous ditty about "I've Never Met A Nice South African", and rewriting it for the Discworld.
Some explanation: the song is a jolly ditty about a renowned explorer recounting all the strange and improbable things he's seen on his travels, which escalates through swimming in Timbuctoo, meeting ten-foot tall pygmies, seeing unicorns in Burma, and meeting modest Germans…. to the utter blank he drew on finding any nice (white) South Africans. It's a historical fossil written at a time when apartheid was a going concern with no seeming possibility it would ever end, and in the show, segues out of a satirical piece involving the loathsome President Pik Botha addressing My Fellow South Africans. Botha declares he is going to tell you The Facts As They Really Are, announces a series of bizzarely lunatic things, like "Cars run on Gravy!" and "Salmon live in Trees!" to huge cheers, and concludes with "Reform in South Africa is on the way!"
Then the song… which I know makes perfectly nice decent Saffies grit their teeth and say "Ag man, very bleddy funny."
I know it no longer applies. But… Rule of Funny…
I've got as far as this. It's foundering on not being able to get the scansion straight and Terry didn't really come up with all that many placenames on the Disc that rhyme with each other. This is very much first draft:
I've travelled this Discworld of ours from Hergen to the Rim
I've seen sunshine in Llamedos, been to the Great Nef for a swim;
I've met people from Rodinia who took no drink at all,
And I've danced with ten foot Dwarf-folk in their darkest deepest hall,
I've met an airsick Witch, and a werewolf who's no bitch,
But I've never met a nice White Howondalandian!
(Enter Chorus) No he's nivver mit a nice White Howondalandian,
And that's not bleddy surprising, man!
'Cause we're a bunch of errogant bastards
Who hate bleck people!
Strandpiel 2 and Price of Flight are unavoidably overlapping a lot, as
they deal with events occurring in the same time frame, some of which are even related. This happens during the gap, in the few months' grace in between the end of the Syrrit Crisis and the Howondalandian Situation boiling over.