terms, he permitted himself a moment of silent exultation.
They'd done it! With Drom's help they'd succeeded in
beating Jalwar to Crancularn. Now he could relax. The
object of their long, arduous journey was almost in his
grasp.
He turned to leave. "We don't want to upset your siesta.
We'll come back tomorrow."
A small brown shape pushed past him. Mudge took
up an aggressive stance on the lowest step. "Now let's
'old on a minim 'ere, guv'nor." The otter fixed the
proprietress with a jaundiced eye. "This 'ere dump is
the place I've been 'earin' about for weeks? This
cobbled-together wreck is the marvelous, the wondrous,
the magnificent Shop o' the Aether and Neither? And
you're the owner?"
The kangaroo nodded.
"Well," announced Mudge in disgust, "it sure as 'ell
don't look like much to me."
"Mudge!" Jon-Tom angrily grabbed the otter by his
shoulder.
The kangaroo, however, did not appear upset. "Ap-
pearances can be deceiving, my fuzzy little cousin." She
turned to face Jon-Tom as she stood on enormous, power-
ful feet. She was as tall as he was. The rickety porch
boards squeaked under her weight.
"I can tell just by looking at you that you've come a
long ways to do your shopping. Except for the Crancularni-
ans, most of my customers travel far to buy from me,
some by means most devious. Some I sell to, others I do
not." She turned and pointed toward a thin scrawl on a
worn piece of wood that was nailed over the doorway. The
sign said:
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE 255
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYTHING
"It's not for ourselves that we come seeking your
help," Jon-Tom told her. "We're here at the behest of a
great wizard who lives in the forest of the Bellwoods, far
across the Glittergeist Sea. His name's Clothahump."
"Clothahump." Eyes squinted in reflection behind the
granny glasses. She put out a hand, palm facing down-
ward, and positioned it some four feet above the porch.
"Turtle, old gentleman, about yea high?"
Jon-Tom nodded vigorously. "That's him. You've met
him?"
"Nope. But I know of him by reputation. As wizard's
go, he's up near the top." This revelation impressed even
the skeptical Mudge, who'd always thought of Ciothahump
as no better than a talented fakir verging on senility who
just happened to get lucky once in a while. "What's
wrong with him?"
Jon-Tom fumbled with the vial around his neck, removed
the small piece of paper from within. "He says he's dying,
and he's in terrible pain. He says this can cure him."
Snooth took the fragment, adjusted her glasses, and read.
Her lips moved as she digested the paper's information. "Yes,
yes...I believe I have this in stock." She glanced back at
Jen-Tom. "Your devotion to your mentor does you credit."
Which made him feel more than a little guilty, since the
main reason he'd undertaken the journey was to protect his
only chance of returning home by ensuring Clothahump's
continued good health.
"You overpraise my altruism."
"I think not." She stared at him in the most peculiar
fashion. "You are better than you give yourself credit for.
That is why you would make a good adjudicator. Your
good instincts outweigh your common sense."
For the second time since arriving at the store Jon-Tom's
eyes widened. "How did you know that I was studying to
be a lawyer?"
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Alan Dean Foster
"Lucky guess," said Snooth absently, dismissing the
matter despite Jon-Tom's desire to pursue it further. She
held out the paper with the formula written on it. "May I
hold on to this?"
Jon-Tom shrugged. "Why not? It's the medicine we
need."
Snooth tucked the paper neatly into her pouch. Again
Jon-Tom thought he saw something moving about within.
If Snooth was carrying a joey, it was evidently either too
immature or too shy to show itself.
"Come on in." She turned and pushed wide the door.
The front room of the building was furnished in simple
kaleidoscopic style. To one side was another rocking chair,
only instead of being fashioned of wood it was composed
of transparent soap bubbles clinging to a thin metal frame.
The bubbles were moving in slow motion and looked fragile
and ready to burst.
"Surely you don't sit in that?" Roseroar said.
"Wouldn't be much use for anything else. Like to try
it?"
"Ah couldn't," the tigress protested. "Ah'd bust it as
well as mah tail end."
- "Maybe not," said the kangaroo with quiet confidence.
Reluctantly, Roseroar accepted the challenge, turning to
set herself gently into the chair. The soap bubbles gave
under her weight but did not break, nor did the thin metal
frame. And the bubbles kept moving, massaging the chair's
new occupant with a gentle sliding motion. A rich throbbing
purr filled the room.
"How much?" Roseroar inquired.
"Sorry. That's a demo model. Not for sale."
"Come on, Roseroar," Jon-Tom told her. "That's not
what we came for." She abandoned the caressing chair
sadly.
As they crossed the room, Jon-Tom had time to notice a
circular recording device, a heatless stove, and a number
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
257
of utterly alien machines scattered among the familiar.
Snooth led them through another doorway barred by opaque
ceramic strips that hung in midair and into a back store
room filled with broken, jumbled goods. A bathroom was
visible off to the left.
A second suspended curtain admitted them to the store.
Jon-Tom's brain went blank. He heard Roseroar hiss
next to him and even the always voluble Mudge was at a
loss for words. Drom inhaled sharply in surprise.
As near as they could tell, the shop filled the whole
inside of the mountain.
XV
Ahead of them was an aisle flanked by long metal shelves.
The multiple shelving rose halfway to the forty-foot-high
ceiling and was crammed with boxed, crated, and clear-
packaged goods. Jon-Tom saw only a few empty slots. The
shelving and the aisle between ran away into the distance
until all three seemed to meet at some distant vanishing
point.
He turned and stared to his left. Shelves and aisles
marched off into the distance as far as he could see. He
looked right and saw a mirror image of the view on his left.
"I never dreamed..." he began, only to be interrupted
by the proprietress.
"Oh, but you have dreamed, shopper. Everyone dreams."
She gestured with a negligent wave. "There are a lot of
worlds in the plenum. Some produce a lot of goods for
sale, others only a few. I try to keep
up with what the major
dimensions are doing. It isn't an easy job, being a shopkeeper.
There's one place where time runs backwards. Plays hell
with my inventory."
Jon-Tom continued to gape at the endless rows. "How
258
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
259
do you know what you've got here, let alone where it's
located?"
"Oh, we're very up-to-date in the store." From a side
pocket she extracted a length of bright blue metal six
inches long and two and half an inches thick. A transparent
facing ran the length of it. There were no buttons or
switches visible.
"Pocket computer." She showed it to Jon-Tom. As he
watched, words scrolled rapidly across the face. Lan-
guages and script changed as he stared. Twice Snooth
turned it vertically and the words scrolled from top to
bottom. Several times they reversed and traveled from
right to left. Once there were no letters at all, only colors
changing in sequence. Once there was only music.
"Thought-activated. Handy little gadget. Bought it from
a place whose location can't be determined, only inferred.
Very talented folks there. See?"
A chemical formula appeared on the transparent facing
and froze in position. A long numerical sequence appeared
below it.
"Down this way." Snooth hopped off to her left, even-
tually turned down an aisle.
Roseroar stared at the endless ranks of goods. "How
many shelves do y'all have down heah?"
"Can't really say," the kangaroo replied. "It changes
all the time."
"You run this whole place by yourself?" Jon-Tom asked her.
She nodded. "You get used to it. I like stockwork, and
the perks are good."
"How far is the medicine?"
"Not far. Only about half a day's hop. Any longer and
I'd have paused to pack us a meal or dig out a scooter."
"Is that anything like the Honda ATC we saw one of
your customers riding around outside of town?"
"That'd be Foharfa's toy. He's going to break his neck
on that thing one of these days. No, a scooter's just an
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Alan Dean Poster
inertialess disc. You guide it by sensing your relationship
to the local planetary magnetic field."
Jon-Tom swallowed. "I'm afraid I don't have a license
to drive anything like that."
"No matter. I'm enjoying the walk."
"Can we buy one to get us 'ome, maybe?" Mudge
asked hopefully.
"Sorry. I've none in general stock. Besides, I make it a
rule not to let certain goods travel beyond Crancularn. The
world's a complicated enough place as it is. You can
overtechnologize magic if you're not careful."
"Looks like your business is rather slow," observed
Drom.
Snooth shrugged in mid-hop. "I'm not looking to get
rich, unicorn. I just like the business, that's all. Besides,
it's a good way to keep up with what's going on in the
greater cosmos. Goods are better than gossip and more
honest reflections of what's happening elsewhere than
official news pronouncements and zeeways."
"Must be 'ard on profits," Mudge commented.
"That depends on what kind of profit you're trying to
make, otter."
Jon-Tom eyed the kangaroo uneasily. "That's a funny
thing for a shopkeeper to say. Are you sure you aren't
some kind of sorceress yourself?"
"Who, me?" Snooth appeared genuinely shocked. "Not
I, sir. Too many responsibilities, too many regulations
attached to the profession. I prefer my present employ-
ment, thank you. And the cost-of-living in Crancularn is
low." A pause, then, "What about this ferret and girl you
referred to earlier?"
"They were traveling with us," Jon-Tom explained.
"We had an unfortunate parting of the ways."
"Unfortunate, 'ell!" Mudge rumbled. "The dirty bug-
gers stole our map, they did, and it were only by dint o'
good luck and this spellsinger's determination and this
one-horn's knowledge o' the lay o' the land that we ...!"
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
261
Snooth interrupted him, smiling at Jon-Tom. "So you
are a spellsinger? I noticed the duar you carry right off, but
I imagined you to be no more than a traveling musician."
"I'm still an amateur," Jon-Tom confessed. "I'm still
learning how to control my abilities."
"I think one day you will, though I sense you still have
along way logo."
"It's just that it's so new to me. The magic, not the
music. Everything's so new to me. I'm not of this world."
"I know. You smell of elsewhere. Do not let your
transposition faze you. Newness is life's greatest pleasure
and delight." She indicated the shelves wailing them in.
"Every new product I encounter is a source of wonder-
ment to me."
"1 wish I could share your enthusiasm. But I can't help
my homesickness. You can't, by any chance, send me
home by the same means you use to stock your goods?"
he asked hopefully.
"I am truly sorry," Snooth told him softly, and it struck
him that she was. "This is only a receive-and-disperse
operation. I can only ship products, not people."
Jon-Tom slumped. "Well, it's no more than what I
expected. Clothahump said as much."
"You must tell me about your travels. Oddly, I know
more about many other worlds than about this one. The
result of being tied to my business."
So partly to please her and partly to help relieve his own
disappointment, Jon-Tom regaled her with a recitation of
the adventures they had experienced during their long
journey. It took at least the half day Snooth had claimed
before she finally called the march to a halt. Jon-Tom
looked down the aisle. They stili were not in sight of its
end.
Strange medications filled bottles and jars and contain-
ers of unfamiliar material. The twenty-foot-high shelves
they had halted before represented a cosmological phar-
macopia. Jon-Tom made out pills and drops, salves and
262
Alan Dean Foster
unguents, bandages and bindings, scattered among less
recognizable items.
Snooth regarded the shelving for a moment, consulted
her blue metal bar, and hopped a few yards farther down
the aisle. Then she climbed one of the motorized ladders
that ran from the topmost shelf to tracks cut in the stone
floor and ascended the shelving halfway.
"Here we are," she said, sounding gratified. She opened
an ordinary cardboard box and removed a small plastic
container. "Only one. I'll have to restock this item. I don't
have the room to keep more than one of any item on the
shelves. There are instructions on the side which I presume
your wizard will know how to interpret."
"I'm sure he will," Jon-Tom said, reaching relievedly
for the container.
"Stop right there, please."
Jon-Tom whirled. Roseroar growled and reached for her
swords as Mudge tried to ready his longbow.
"Don't!"
A figure emerged from behind a translucent crate
containing frozen flowers and came toward them. In his
hands Jalwar held something resembling a multiple cross-
bow. At least three dozen lethal-looking little darts were
clustered in concentric circles at the tip of the weapon.
"Poison. Enough to kill all of you at once. Even you,
mistress of long teeth." Roseroar continued to glower at
the new arrival, but let her paws fall slowly from the hilts
of her swords.
"A wise decision," Jalwar told her.
Jon-Tom was staring past him. "Folly. Where's Folly?"
When the ferret did not immediately reply, Jon-Tom felt a
surge of excitement despite the precariousness of the
situation. "So she didn't go with you voluntarily, did
she!"
"No." Jalwar made the admission indifferently. "But
she came, and that was all I required. I needed assistance
in hauling rudimentary supplies, and she struck me as the
THE DAY or THE DISSOJKAJVCE
263
easiest of all of you to manipulate. As a beast of burden
she proved adequate." He smiled thinly, enjoying himself.
"Then, too, the destruction of innocence has always appealed
to me, and she still had a little left."
Jon-Tom struggled to restrain himself. He didn't for a
second doubt the lethality of those multiple darts or Jalwar's
willingness to employ them.
"Where is she? What have you done with her?"
"In good time I will tell you, my impetuous blind
friend." The ferret cocked an eye toward Snooth. "So that
is the precious medicine our friend Clothahump requires so
desperately. How interesting. I suddenly feel the need for
some medication myself. You, proprietress! I'll take that
container, if you don't mind."
"Take a 'elluva lot more than that to cure wot ails you,
mate," said Mudge insultingly.
"You think so, do you? Yet I am not so sick that I have
failed to outwit you all. I did not think you would make it
here without the map, and in my confidence I slowed my
approach. I thought in any event that with the aid of my
help I would always know your location. Indeed, without
that help I would not have been able to rush in close on
your heels and track your progress within this place from
two aisles over."
"What help?" Jon-Tom asked warily.
"Now, be that the right tone with which to greet an old