Mothers and sisters with baskets or daughters on their backs avoided the bridges. They swarmed up ladders instead, crossing roofs and climbing down into narrow, winding streets full of garbage, vendors with carts, or baskets making deliveries or hawking wares, their neighbors, and their cousins. A father, restless, engorged, and strangely graceful, flitted through the crowds.
The vital traffic—military, public health, and anything that had to be rushed between islands—was not on the streets. That traffic drove through the network of concretelined “security” tunnels that ran even deeper than the sewer pipes.
Arron squeezed through the crowd, saying “hello” and “the light of day looks good on you” about every three minutes to somebody who called his name. Occasionally he was able to call a name back to a recognized face.
His notoriety had sneaked up on him. In addition to his research, he'd done lectures and talks for assorted Getesaph schools and government departments. Copies of his less formal pieces, modified for paper, got reproduced all over the Hundred Isles. He was Human and he was a man, so of course he was a curiosity, but somewhere along the line it had turned into more than that. He had to admit he enjoyed it. It wasn't every field researcher who got to have fans.
Arron started up a broad, much-braced metal ladder that slanted over a grocery. A shortcut over three roofs that would save him a half hour of threading through crowds. He slid sideways for a mother who carried three infant daughters on her back. A fourth peeked over the rim of the linen-swaddled pouch.
On the roof, a loose crowd gathered around a dry fountain in the northwest corner. Mothers, sisters, and daughters talked, exchanged items out of baskets, or just stood together holding hands. All the public fountains and pools were dry since the plague hit the city. They had been places for bathing, drinking, and laundry washing, and had spread disease even faster than the dirt and animals in the streets. Looking up the island's slope, Arron could see the chvintz Thur, the Dead quarter. The edges of the city had been deserted as the population shrank and huddled in on itself.
Sudden thunder split the morning open. The roof shuddered underneath him. A gust of hard, hot wind knocked him flat against the smooth tiles and smashed all the breath out of him. Something thunked against his helmet. Screams, tearing stone, rattling dust, and more thunder poured over him. The tiles under him seemed to tilt.
His ears rang painfully. Arron lifted his head and saw a dust cloud folding in on itself. He lowered his gaze to the roof and swore. The tilting sensation hadn't been an illusion. The roof sagged dangerously in the northeast corner across from the fountain.
Around him, Getesaph gingerly raised ears and heads. They saw the dust cloud and the sag in the roof. The sound of shouts, swearing, and bloody protracted curses against the t'Therians penetrated the sharp ringing that engulfed his hearing.
Of course it was the t'Therians. It was always the t'Therians, whatever it was. Almost always. Enough times.
Arron's fingers felt a vibration under the tiles. He was pretty sure he'd have heard a low creak if his ears were working right.
Down. We need to get down.
Mothers and sisters with daughters clutching their backs or held tight against their chests, crawled or walked in a half crouch up the slope. Some leaned against one another. A number were cut and bleeding. At least two limped.
“Scholar Arron!” exclaimed a sister he didn't know. She peered closely at him, almost pressing her nostrils against his helmet. “You are hurt? You are hit? Someone help me with Scholar Arron!”
“I am fine! I am fine!” he protested as half a dozen hands lifted him to his feet and settled him in the approved crouching position. There was an idea running around that Humans were delicate, just because they were smaller, and not as strong, and were very bad swimmers, and couldn't stand up again immediately after a bomb blast without their vision blurring and their knees wobbling.
Arron let himself be gently led to the southwest edge of the roof. The ladders on that side had been sheltered from the blast. Sisters hung back, and Arron with them, to let the carrying mothers pick their way down first. The streets below were a stew of milling, shoving bodies and, to Arron anyway, unintelligible voices.
When Arron's turn came, he abandoned pride and climbed down backward, using both hands. His escorts followed solicitously beside him. Once they reached the ground, the sisters stood him in an undamaged doorway.
“Rest yourself, Scholar Arron,” one admonished. “Public Health will be here soon to see to you.”
With that, they turned and joined the river of mothers and sisters heading for the blast site.
Arron leaned against the arched doorway just long enough for his knees to stop trembling. His ears still rang, and his balance wasn't too certain, but he forced himself into a shambling run toward the devastation.