Anet began the survey by making Iven walk the narrowest gangway with a sack of sand.
“You want a movement estimate,” she said. “Start with your own feet.”
The gangway was folded back against the plateau, its city end resting on a support frame. It had a roof, waist-high rails and a deck of closely fitted boards. Anet placed a twenty-kilogram sack in Iven’s arms and sent him from one end to the other while Neri timed him. Then she gave a second sack to a local worker and asked them to pass each other.
They could do it, but only by turning sideways and stopping. Anet repeated the exercise with a stretcher frame carried by two people. The frame occupied nearly the full width. A third person could pass only at the wider section near the plateau landing.
“Now put a queue at both ends,” Anet said. “And give one carrier a child, another a bad knee, and a third no idea where she’s supposed to go.”
Neri wrote the times and conditions. “We’ll measure the wider sections and the landward landing separately.”
“Good. Don’t turn this into a single number.”
They inspected all eight gangways over the morning. Each had its own anchor structure, connection joint and maintenance record. Three were in routine use; two were undergoing ordinary maintenance; the rest were stored for the approaching crossing. Anet’s crew opened the covers on the joints, showing Iven how the sliding sections accommodated movement between a Marcher’s deck and…
