Enormous mushrooms and toadstools dripped with mois-
ture as Jon-Tom and his companions walked beneath
spore-filled canopies. Some of the gnarled, ugly growths
had trunks as thick as junipers, while others thrust deli-
cate, semi-transparent stems toward the sodden sky. There
were no bright, cheerful colors to mitigate the depressing
scene, which was mostly brown and gray. Even the occa-
sional maroon or unwholesomely yellow specimen was a
relief from the monotonous parade of dullness.
Some of the flora was spotted, some striped. One
displayed a checkerboard pattern that reminded Jon-Tom of
a non-Euclidian chessboard. Liverworts grew waist-high,
while lichens and mosses formed a thick, cushiony carpet
into which their boots sank up to the ankles. Clean granite
was disfigured by crawling fungoid corruption growing on
its surface. And over this vast, wild eruption of thallophytic
life there hung a pervasive sense of desolation, of waste
and fossilized hope.
The first couple of days had seen no slowing of their
progress. Now their pace began to degenerate. They slept
longer and spent less time over meals. It didn't matter
what food they took from their packs or scavenged from
the land: everything seemed to have lost its flavor. What-
ever they consumed turned flat and tasteless in their
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
69
mouths and sat heavy in their bellies. Even the water
which fell fresh from the clouds had acquired a metallic,
unsatisfying aftertaste.
They'd been in the Moors for almost a week when
Jon-Tom tripped over the skeleton. Like everything else
lately its discovery provoked little more than a tired mur-
mur of indifference from his companions.
"So wot?" muttered Mudge. "Don't mean a damn
thing."
"Ah'm sitting down," said Roseroar. "Ah'm tired."
So was Jon-Tom, but the sight of the stark white bone
peeping out from beneath the encrusting rusts and mildews
roused a dormant concern in his mind.
"This is all wrong," he told them. "There's something
very wrong going on here."
"No poison, if that's wot you're thinkin', mate." Mudge
indicated the growths surrounding them. "I've been care-
ful. Everythin' local we've swallowed 'as been edible,
even if it's tasted lousy."
"Lucky yo," said Roseroar. "No game at all fo me.
Ah find mahself reduced to eating not just weeds, but this
crap. Ah declah ah've nevah been so bored with eating in
all man life."
"Boring, tired, tasteless.. .don't you see what's hap-
pening?" Jon-Tom told them.
"You're gettin' worked up over nothin', mate." The
otter was lying on a mound of soft moss. "Settle yourself
down. 'Ave a sip o' somethinV
"Yes." Roseroar slipped off her swordbelt. "Let's just
sit heah and rest awhile. There's no need to rush. We
haven't seen a sign of pursuit since we left that town, and
ah don't think we're likely to encounter any now."
"She's right, mate. Pull up a soft spot and 'ave a sit."
"Both of you listen to me." Jon-Tom tried to put some
force into his voice, was frightened to hear it emerge from
his lips flat and curiously empty of emotion. He felt sad
and utterly useless. Something had begun to afflict him
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Alan Dean Foster
from the day they'd first set foot in the Moors. It was
something more than just boredom with their surround-
ings, something far more penetrating and dangerous. It
was a grayness of the heart, and it was digging its
insidious way deeper and deeper into their thoughts, kill-
ing off determination and assurance as it went. Eventually,
it would ruin their bodies as well. The skeleton was proof
enough of that. Whatever was into them was patient and
clever, much too calculating, it occurred to Jon-Tpm, to be
an accident of the environment.
He tried to find the enthusiasm to fight back as he
turned to scream at the landscape. "Who are you? Why
are you doing this to us? What is it you wan??"
He felt like a fool. Worse, he knew his companions
might think he was becoming unhinged. But they said
nothing. He would've welcomed some outcry of skepti-
cism. Instead, the sense of hopelessness settled ever deeper
around them.
Nothing moved within the Moors. Of one thing he was
fairly confident: this wasn't wizardry at work. It was too
slow. He had to do something, but he didn't know what.
All he could think of was how ironic it would be if, after
surviving Malderpot, they were to perish here from a
terminal case of the blahs.
So he was startled when a dull voice asked, "Don't you
understand it all by now?"
"Who said that?" He whirled, trying to spot the speak-
er. Nothing moved.
"I did."
The voice came from an eight-foot-tall mushroom off to
his left. The cap of this blotchy ochre growth dipped
slightly toward him.
"Not that I couldn't have," said another growth.
"Nor I," agreed a third'.
"Mushrooms," Jon-Tom said unsteadily, "don't talk."
"What?" said the first growth. "Sure, we're not loqua-
cious, but that's a natural function of our existence. There
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
71
isn't much to talk about, is there? I mean, it's not just a
dull life, man, it's boring. B-o-r-i-n-g."
"That's about the extent of it," agreed the giant toad-
stool against which Roseroar rested. She moved away from
it hastily, showing more energy than she had in the
previous several days, and put a hand to the haft of each
sword.
"I mean, give it some thought." The first mushroom
again, which was taking on something of the air of a
fungoid spokesman. Jon-Tom saw no lips or mouth. The
words, the thoughts, came fully formed into his mind
through a kind of clammy telepathy. "What would we talk
about?"
"Nothing worth wasting the time discussing," agreed
another mushroom with a long, narrow cap in the manner
of a morrel. "I mean, you spend your whole existence
sitting in the same spot, never seeing anything new, never
moving around. So what's your biggest thrill? Getting to
make spores?"
"Yeah, big deal," commented the toadstool. "So we
don't talk. You never hear us talk, you think fungoids
don't talk. Ambulatories are such know-it-alls."
"It doesn't matter," said the second mushroom. "Noth-
ing matters. We're wasting our efforts."
"Wait." Jon-Tom approached the major mushroom,
feeling a little silly as he did so. "You're doing something
to us. You have been ever since we entered the deep
moors."
"What makes you think we're doing anything to you?"
said the spokesthing. "Why should we make the effort to
do anything to anyone?"
"We've changed since we entered this land. We feel
different."
"Different how, man?" asked the toadstool.
"Depressed. Tired, worn-out^ useless, hopeless. Our
outlook on life has been altered."
"What makes you think we're responsible?" said the
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Alan Dean Poster
second mushroom. "That's just how life is. It's the normal
state of existence. You can't blame us for that."
"It's not the normal state of existence."
"It is in the Moors," argued the first mushroom.
Jon-Tom held his ground. "There's some kind of telepa-
thy at work here. We've been absorbing your feelings of
hopelessness, your idea that nothing's worth much of
anything. It's been eating at us."
"Look around you, man. What do you see?"
Jon-Tom turned a slow circle. Instead of the half-hoped-
for revelation, his gaze swept over more of what they'd