Agnes had been to enough dances in her misspent youth to have the general idea, but she found herself having to learn new steps rapidly as she went along. Lobsang seemed to be struggling more than she was, and once even tripped over his feet and landed on the deck, only to be picked up again by his neighbours, laughing.
In the heat, noise and laughter, Agnes quickly tired – or rather, emotionless software in her gel-filled head ran programs to simulate tiredness, triggered fake sweat glands, and made her mechanical lungs pump harder at the warm air. She tried to embrace the feeling, and put aside the fact that she was basically living out a lie before these evidently good people.
When she took a break, Lobsang joined her by the rough-and-ready bar. He said, sipping a whisky, ‘I will always regret that I now have conscious control over my degree of drunkenness. And we could have been better prepared for this. We spent nine years training to be pioneers. We should have just downloaded a barn-dancing application.’
Agnes snorted. ‘Where’s the fun in that? Or the authenticity? You’re a city boy come to learn the ways of the country, Lob—George. Get used to it. Enjoy.’
‘Yes, but—’ He was interrupted, grabbed at the elbows by two burly middle-aged women who hauled him back into the line.
A smiling woman, dark, forty-ish, approached Agnes with a fresh cup of lemonade. ‘Sorry about that. We always seem to be short of men at these dances, and Bella and Meg can be a little boisterous when there’s fresh meat around. Like big birds on the prowl.’
‘Fresh meat? George will be flattered. Nothing fresh about us, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that; you’re making a fine impression.’ She stuck out her hand to shake. ‘I am Marina Irwin. My husband Oliver is out there somewhere.’
‘Irwin. Oh, it’s your boy who’s babysitting for us tonight. Nikos?’
‘That’s right. For a suitable fee, I’m sure. Quite the capitalist, my Nikos, for a twelve-year-old boy who’s grown up out in the green.’
‘It’s kind of him to miss the dance for us.’
‘Well, it was a sacrifice for him. But give him another year and we won’t be able to prise him away from the girls …’
Maybe, Agnes thought doubtfully. She had met rather a lot of twelve-year-old boys during her years in the Home in Madison, and Nikos struck her immediately as a decent enough kid – but a kid with a secret, a big one, an observation that had nagged at her since she’d met him.
Marina was still talking. ‘… I wouldn’t object if you gave him some work on your farmstead, by the way. It would be good for him to have some experience of that. Not many of us farm any more.’
Agnes pointed. ‘Sheep over there.’
‘Sure. We keep sheep mostly for the wool,’ and she smoothed her own dress, which, Agnes saw in the uncertain light, was knitted, and tinted a pleasant apple-green, presumably by some vegetable dye. ‘All you get from the local furballs – the forest animals – are scraps of skin. The feathers from the big birds are more useful, actually.’ Her voice had a pleasant lilt, Mediterranean, perhaps Greek, Agnes thought. ‘We do raise some crops – mostly potatoes, for the Stepper boxes. And for emergency food reserves, though this world is so clement we rarely need to dig into those.’ Though, even as she said that, the breeze picked up again, and Marina pushed loose hair from her forehead with a puzzled frown. She went on, ‘The first people here intended to go in for farming – they cleared the forest, marked out fields, the works. The old Barrow place up on Manning Hill, that you’ve taken over? That was one of them, as you’ll have guessed. And the old Poulson house is another – you know, the swap house, our local haunted house! My Nikos spends half his life in there, I think it’s a kind of clubhouse for him and his buddies. He’ll grow out of that.’
Agnes prompted, ‘But the farming didn’t stick.’
‘No. Now there’s a bunch of us spread out over the stepwise worlds. We do have homes, you see, but they’re scattered around, seasonal. We work together to maintain the farms for the sheep, the potatoes, a few chickens and such. And we have a kind of rota for when to meet up, for events like this. The rest of the time we just wander. We’re not combers, by the way! Oliver takes offence if you call him that.’
‘I get it. Just an easier life than farming.’
‘Well, that’s the idea. These worlds are so rich, why do our kids need to break their backs behind a plough? But,’ she said hastily, ‘what we choose isn’t for everybody. And it’s not to say you won’t make a go of your farm, if that’s what you want. To each his own.’
‘That’s a good philosophy.’
‘I mean, you’ll fit right in. If you do grow wheat and stuff we’ll be happy to trade for it.’ Marina sipped her lemonade. ‘And that little boy of yours looks like he’ll grow up big and strong, like his … father?’
Agnes suppressed a smile; the probe couldn’t have been less subtle. ‘I’m sure you’ve heard this already. Ben’s not ours. He’s adopted.’