You Will Grow Into Them

by Malcolm Devlin

  Nina searched the crowds for a face she might recognise, something familiar to anchor her amongst the sea of strangers. But there were so many people, men and women, and their crops were so wide-ranging! There were varieties she had never seen before: hinge fungus, brackets, black caps, gills, chains, and threads. Their colours were iridescent under the phosphor lamps, and so magnificent she felt they might overcome her simply by surrounding her.

  'This way.' Minnie steered her through the crowds to a table where Aunt Caroline was waiting. She was with a pair of gentleman Nina had never seen before. The older one was stocky and plump; the mass of pink curling strips which blossomed on his back drew unfortunate attention to his receding hairline. The younger man was taller and slimmer. When he bowed to greet Nina and her cousin, the back of his jacket opened to reveal tiers of bright yellow bracket growths.

  'This is Mr Yolland,' Aunt Caroline said. 'He and Mr Bracewell work for the Ministry of Agriculture.'

  Nina held out her hand. She smiled.

  'Mr Yolland,' she said.

  The young man bowed again, he took her hand and kissed it.

  'Miss Grey,' he said. 'An honour and a pleasure.'

  Mr Bracewell bustled him aside and took the hand Nina still held outstretched.

  'Miss Grey,' the older man said, 'please forgive my young friend. He has no poetry. An honour! A pleasure! Such inadequate expressions when faced with a beauty such as yours.'

  Nina blushed; her eyes flickered back to Mr Yolland who looked amused.

  'Your aunt tells us you're here from the mountains, Miss Grey,' he said.

  Nina nodded.

  'Near Druenin,' she said.

  'Nina's father is Mr August Grey,' Aunt Caroline said. 'He owns the South Druenin mines.'

  'He doesn't own them,' Nina said. 'Mr Illwood is the owner, my father manages the business.'

  'Mr Illwood thinks very highly of him,' Aunt Caroline said. 'He is an elderly gentleman, and he has no kin.'

  'But I wouldn't presume—' Nina said.

  'Nor should you,' Aunt Caroline said. 'That is my job and your parents'.'

  Nina lowered her eyes; the reprimand stung and felt unearned. She had always been brought up to be honest, but here, closer to the capital, things worked differently. In the few months she'd spent in the town, she had concluded that society spoke a dialect she had yet to master.

  'And I hear this is your first harvest,' Mr Yolland said, changing the subject.

  Nina shot him a grateful smile. 'It is.'

  'And how do you find it?'

  'It's magical,' she said.

  'In Nina's family,' Aunt Caroline said, 'only her mother has been seeded, so this is quite the novelty for her.'

  Nina bit back a remark. There were others in the mountains who were seeded, but she knew how petulant that would sound if she said it out loud. Instead, she looked up at Mr Yolland. His eyes met hers and they were kind but unwavering.

  'Well naturally,' he said, 'the dispensation for those who perform physical labour is an important one.'

  Mr Bracewell snorted; he'd been quiet since Nina's admission that her father's status was not quite as lofty as her aunt had advertised.

  'It's a waste of valuable real estate,' he said.

  Mr Yolland returned a tolerant look, and it struck Nina that this must be an argument he had heard before.

  'Nonsense,' he said. 'The energy of their labour would make their crops ripen far too early and the weight of their yield would impede their work. It's a question of balance, Mr Bracewell.'

  Mr Bracewell shrugged and looked out across the dance floor where the crowd continued to grow.

  'Well I concede that minerals are the colony's most important export,' he said turning back, his smile lodged firmly back in place. 'We did try exporting crops once, remember that? A disaster, ladies, a disaster. Those in other colonies view our harvest with distaste if you can believe such a thing.'

  He laughed, a great booming sound that made Nina nervous.

  'But then other colonies are not sterile,' Mr Yolland said. 'It isn't something they've ever needed to consider to be ordinary when they have acres of farmland at their disposal.'

  Mr Bracewell made a disgusted sound.

  'I should like it explained how that might be less grotesque,' he said. 'Growing crops in the dirt and the effluent, indeed. It's positively barbaric.'

  He shook his head.

  'No,' he said. 'Our ancestors understood when they came here that a new kind of farming was necessary. The ground may have been home to vegetation once, but that was a long time ago. Now there are just minerals, ores and oil. Everything that used to be alive now makes this a richer world, Miss Grey. Our ancestors had the foresight to understand that.'

  He raised his glass in a solemn and private toast.

  Mr Yolland looked amused, and opened his mouth to say something in reply when a bell sounded from across the room. Nina turned to see the doors at the far end open wide. The orchestra struck up the district anthem, and the guests to the harvest ball each took to their feet.

  Through the door came a procession. Four men carried a broad sedan between them, upon which, lying face down, was a man covered with the largest crop of bracket fungus Nina had seen so far. Great jagged shapes rose from his back in mountains of bright yellows and reds and they did not stop at his back but seemed to cover every inch of him. It was only by looking closely that she could see a face amongst all the vibrant growth.

  She glanced at Minnie for confirmation.

  'The Governor,' Minnie said.

  'A good man,' Bracewell added.

  The sedan was set down at the front of the room and upon it, The Governor wilted a little until one of his entourage propped him upright.

  Beneath the rising tide of bright fungal growth, the Governor nodded his head once and at this signal, the music picked up and the harvest dance began.

  *

  Nina had been to dances in the mountains of course. They took place in the union hut behind the mine worker's mess, and while she adored them, they were informal and their scale was so much smaller than this evening's entertainment. It was no wonder that Minnie and Aunt Caroline had considered them rather parochial when they'd arrived by carriage to collect her all those months ago. If nothing else, there was no real purpose to them. The harvest ball at the Governor's house felt as though it had a meaning behind it. All these people! All these crops! There was enough food in the room to feed the community for months and the sense that she was contributing gave Nina an enormous sense of pride.

  Mr Yolland offered her his hand for the first dance. The music swelled around them and Nina was quite taken away by it.

  'How does it compare to the mountains?' Mr Yolland said, as they circled past the dais where the Governor rested.

  'It doesn't,' Nina said, watching as the colours whorled around them. 'It's a whole other, wonderful thing.'

  Mr Yolland laughed and Nina was spinning again. He caught her, steering her with a blithe confidence she wondered if he was aware of any more. She followed his lead. At first, she felt she was too preoccupied remembering the steps she had learned at the academy, but together, the movement, the colours and the music combined to bleach such process from her mind. She felt herself existing solely in the present and it was so exhilarating that when the music finally concluded with a spirited flourish, she felt as though the energy and tempo of it had been ripped away from her. She tottered slightly, and although Yolland caught her, she felt like a fool.

  *

  Her second dance was with a serious looking young fellow whose jacket was open along the arms and shoulders, beneath which vivid blue hinges grew like epaulettes.

  'Quite a good floor, isn't it?' Nina said and the man agreed.

  'Best in the county,' he said, but he didn't say much else.

  Nina didn't mind. The man, handsome though he was, was a vehicle to her and nothing more. He guided her through the turbulence of the dance floor, but both we
re under the spell of the music. Nina felt like she was caught in a fast flowing river, her speed and movement guided by unseen currents far too powerful for her to resist.

  The music slowed and she glanced across the floor at the other dancers. Beside her, an elderly lady, her back shining with glittering purple barbs, was steered past by a white haired man, whose back was hunched beneath the weight of dark green, fibrous leaves. The lady's face was tight with concentration, as though every movement was an effort.

  'Does everyone dance?' Nina said. 'Some people seem so very old. They must be tired.' She recalled how in the Union Hall, the older people would sit around the edges of the room, watching the revellers from behind their black-boned fans.

  Her dance partner frowned.

  'It's the harvest ball,' he said. 'Of course everyone must dance. We expend energy and adrenaline so our crops will be at their very best when the Cultivators gather them from us.'

  He pushed her away from him a little so he could study her.

  'It is a curious question,' he said.

  Nina felt her cheeks reddening.

  'It's my first harvest ball,' she said. 'I'm down from the mountains. When we dance back home, it is for the music, for the joy of it…'

  She tailed off, quite ashamed of herself.

  The man looked away again; he turned her stiffly across the dance floor.

  'What a ghastly waste of time,' he said.

  *

  In the doorways around the ballroom, the Cultivators were standing, watching and waiting. They wore long, yellow mackintoshes that shone under the light from the chandeliers. Their goggles hung on straps around their necks and their scarf-filters were loose over their noses and mouths. The crops had been engineered so spores would only take root in their allotted hosts, but there were always stories where something had gone wrong and these days, all sensible precautions were taken.

  On the dais at the head of the room, the Governor danced alone. His was a strange and awkward dance, his movement impeded by the sheer weight of his crop. But he twitched and flailed, hammering his foot to the ground as best as he could to keep time with the orchestra. He had hauled himself to his feet and he twitched to the music like a palsied marionette, his face turned to the ceiling, his dance ecstatic.

  Like each of his guests, The Governor would be harvested that night, but only once his dance was done.

  *

  The dancing continued and Nina was taken by it. She began to lose all concept of time and almost believed she could have danced forever if the music played likewise.

  But the music stopped between dances and as the revellers parted, Nina found a little space near one of the pillars to get her breath back. She glanced around at the crowds rushing about, and found herself curiously paranoid that she would not find a partner for the next dance.

  At the back of the hall, she saw The Cultivators had started working, siphoning off dancers whose crops they judged to have ripened to their satisfaction, and leading them through the doors to an adjoining theatre. Nina could see others returning, their jackets buttoned down, the backs of their dresses tied up with ribbons to the nape of their necks.

  She saw the Governor talking to one of his staff. A shake of the head; he wasn't done yet.

  'Miss Grey, may I?' a voice spoke up to her left and relief flooded her. But when she turned, she was a little disappointed to see it was the plump figure of Mr Bracewell who had spoken. His hand was outstretched, and he was standing, half bowed, as though he was presenting himself to her for inspection, his baldness first.

  Nina collected herself.

  'But of course, Mr Bracewell,' she said. 'I'd be delighted.'

  She took his hand and allowed him to lead her into the throng.

  Despite both appearance and manner, Mr Bracewell proved himself to be more than competent on the dance floor. They turned around its periphery as though it were a carousel, and although Nina found herself adjusting her pace to compensate for the shortness of her partner's legs, she realised she was enjoying herself again.

  'So how do you find your first harvest?' Mr Bracewell said.

  'It really is magical.' Nina wished she could come up with a word that sounded less trite.

  'Somewhat different, I would imagine, from the dances you must have attended up in the mountains.'

  'Very different.' Nina smiled. 'So many colours. So many people.'

  'And your family are still there? Left behind?'

  Nina frowned. 'Well, yes, but it was good for me to come to the town. To be seeded, to be part of society—'

  Mr Bracewell laughed.

  'When I was a young man,' he said, 'thirty years ago, maybe more, I would pride myself on being the last to be Cultivated at the harvest dance. I would dance on and on into the night, and the dance floor would empty and the walls would become lined with those whose crops had been harvested, and those who were just tired and waiting for the feast to begin.'

  Nina smiled sympathetically.

  'I'm sure you were a marvellous dancer,' she said. 'I'm sure you could still be the last on the dance floor if you wished.'

  Mr Bracewell shook his head a fraction, his smile wistful.

  'No,' he said. 'That youth of mine is gone. That's what youth does. It leaves. Just as you left your home in the mountains for a better life in the town; just as the colonists left the Old World all those generations ago to set up their own, better places. The young of us set out, they seed new places, to produce crops that will be harvested, to dance until the end of the night. It is a rare sort of youth which spares a thought for those of us left behind.'

  There was no bitterness in his tone, just a thin edge of sadness which, small though it was, felt at odds with the atmosphere of the ball.

  Nina frowned. Her concentration gone, her rhythm went with it and she missed a step with an awful, clumsy clacking sound as her shoes struck the beautifully polished floor flat-footed. Disorientated, she pitched forwards, but Mr Bracewell caught her before she could fall. Close now, she could smell the sour sweat of him; she struggled away in revulsion but he held her tight.

  'Sometimes,' he said, 'I look up to the stars and wonder how far we have progressed. Seeding our kind through the heavens like a fungal bloom. And I imagine the stars blinking out, one by one as we pass across them like a shadow.'

  She felt his hand snake around her waist, his fingers pressing themselves to her back. Her eyes widened in horror as she felt him search out and then pluck a mushroom from the low reaches of her crop. With it, she felt a small convulsion run up her spine: a jolt of inexplicable pleasure, as though the lightest of feathers had drawn a delicate path down the small of her back. She struggled free and scowled at her partner.

  Around her, the music and the dancing continued, perfectly blind to her own little drama.

  Mr Bracewell was smiling, and Nina didn't like his smile at all.

  'You really mustn't take me seriously, you know,' he said.

  Nina inclined her head.

  'Excuse me,' she said. 'I need some air.'

  She pushed her way through the still-crowded dance floor and out of the hall.

  *

  She was not alone on the veranda; a few couples had retreated outside to engage in quiet discussion. Some who had already been harvested were there too, enjoying the comparative calm and looking across the town spread out below. They had covered their backs to hide the marks the harvest left behind, but they looked flushed and satisfied with the night.

  Nina leaned on the balustrade and surveyed the view. In the dark, she had to imagine its geometry. She knew the town spread down towards the plain, where it hugged the bank of the outflow river, but her view was limited to disparate, greenish pools cast by phosphor lanterns. With the ball so full, she wondered who might be left in the town. Manual workers, of course, and those on the alternate cycle; seeded only two months ago, their own ball would be later in the year.

  She looked up to the sky, straining her eyes to make out
the pin-prick stars, scattered above them. She tried to understand what Mr Bracewell had been talking about, but concluded he made no sense at all and that he was a miserable little man who simply wanted to ruin her mood.

  'There you are.' Minnie joined her at the balustrade and looked outwards. 'I think I prefer the view in the dark,' she said. 'Black mountains, black landscape, black river, black sky. At least the lights are beautiful.'

  She turned to Nina and smiled.

  'Mama thought we might have lost you,' she said.

  'No,' Nina said. She sighed. 'If the whole planet is so dead and ashen and sterile, do you ever wonder why we stay?'

  Minnie smiled and turned back to the view.

  'Do you miss the mountains?' she said. 'The real ones, I mean. Not these bumps we have here. I enjoyed my trip to your home, you know. It's always good to see more of the world. And the mountains! Oh, the mountains. They were beautiful, in their way. Beautiful and quite frightening.'

  Nina shook her head but didn't respond.

  'Come here,' Minnie said; she turned Nina by the shoulders and inspected her crop. 'You should maybe take another dance and then they'll be ready for you.'

  'I think I'm done with dancing for the night,' Nina said.

  'Well, I'm sure Mr Yolland will be very disappointed to hear it.'

  Nina turned, wide eyed. Minnie smiled broadly.

  From inside, the music came to a halt and Nina heard the crowd applaud loudly with enthusiasm.

  'The Governor,' Minnie said. 'He's leaving the dance floor to be harvested.'

  'He lasted longer than I expected.'