The CRES code

Chapter Twelve - Tettlehall

     Tettlehall was a coastal city, and the smell of salt and fish came out to meet them as the four hibernators approached the gates.

     There was a steady procession of carts and wagons passing between the heavy, iron strapped wooden gates, as well as people on foot, most of them carrying a parcel of belongings wrapped in a blanket balanced on their heads. The hibernators joined them and the guards gave them only a cursory glance as they passed them by. Then they were in a short tunnel passing under the thick, stone wall. There was a second pair of gates at the other end of the tunnel, almost as thick and strong as the first. They passed through them and then they were in the city.

     It was packed and crowded with people jostling shoulder to shoulder in the narrow streets. Wooden, tudor style buildings rose three or four storeys tall on either side, leaning so close towards each other near the top that people in their third storeys could almost have leaned out and shaken hands across the gap. At their bases, gutters ran with dirty, foul looking water. The air stank of sweat, urine, sewage and rotting vegetables and the hibernators screwed up their noses as they tried not to breathe it in. Young children with filthy faces and ragged clothes sat in doorways, staring up at them as they passed by, and beggars waved bowls at the richer looking of the pedestrians. Everyone was crushed against the walls by the wagons passing by and gulls waddled carefully around their feet on the lookout for scraps.

     "Why is it so crowded?" shouted Jane above the din of hundreds of people talking at once.

     "The smaller the wall is, the easier it is to defend," replied Loach. "I would imagine we'll find the remains of older walls in here somewhere, built when the city was smaller. All human habitations tend to grow, except in times of crisis. They probably build another wall around the city every so often, then allow the city to grow to fill it."

    "So they live in a state of perpetual seige," said Jane, staring around in wonder. "Outside they feel vulnerable, like Ronald. In here they feel safe, but have to live in these awful conditions."

     "It probably feels perfectly normal to them," said Emily. "Besides, it's not really that different from our own cities. The three of you wouldn't know, you all lived in pampered luxury, but I saw the reality of life for most of the human race. The slums, the ghettos, the shanty houses... Children starving in the streets, dying from treatable diseases. Plus, they had to breathe the poisonous, polluted air..."

     "Yeah, I get it!" said Loach irritably. "Mankind is a plague and you were the cure. I suppose you prefer this world to the one we knew."

     "Look at these urchins," said Emily, pointing down to a child sitting in the gutter at her feet. "He's filthy, but he looks healthy and well fed. Compare him to a similar child in one of our own cities. Half starved, coughing from tuberculosis and microparticles in the lungs..."

     "Yeah, mankind has really come a long way. Makes you proud."

     Emily glared at the mob boss but said nothing more.

     Jane spotted a woman down on her hands and knees scrubbing an already clean door step with a thick bristled brush and paused to ask her where the priest lived. The woman gestured vaguely further along the street, then dipped her brush into a wooden bucket of filthy water before returning to her scrubbing. The hibernators glanced at each other in vague amusement and pushed their way onwards. They asked two other people further on, receiving similar responses, before they came upon someone actually willing to speak to them. "Beside the chantryard on Mussel Street, on the corner of Dockers Block," said the owner of a market stall selling pies and cakes. "Jest keep going the way yer going," He looked for a moment as if he was going to try to sell them some pies, driven by the habits of a lifetime, but they were so obviously penniless that he turned away from them to find some real customers.