Len followed Elsi down a narrow wooden gangway suspended between two steaming rows of mushroom trays. The shift from the high-vaulted cloche aisle into the fungal chambers was marked by a sudden, choking increase in sky thickness. The air here was not merely damp. It felt heavy with spore dust and decaying compost. It carried a rich, earthy reek that coated the inside of the throat like warm paste.
The fungi grew in tiered cedar boxes stacked six levels high against the dark rock stonework. It reached fifteen feet to the rough stone ceiling. Long troughs of oyster flesh and pale shelf fungi absorbed the heat from padded steam lines that ran beneath the decking, their moist white brackets overlapping like shingles on a storm roof. There was no real sunlight here—had not been for four thousand days—yet the growth was rampant, pale and unnatural, fed by the constant warmth and sulfur-rich water bled from the town heating mains.
A dozen women and young girls worked along the benches, their hands dyed dark purple from spore wash. They moved with horn knives. They scraped mature clusters into woven willow hampers with quick, clockwork slices that never varied in depth. The scrape of the horn against cedar was a nonstop, dry rhythm beneath the hiss of the steam cocks. None of them looked up as Len passed. They worked with the silent, rhythmic hurry of laborers who knew that every hour of lamp fuel had been rationed against an office quota…
