The sandy bottom fell away once again.
"It'll wear off," the otter mumbled. "It 'as to. Ain't
nobody can stay drunk this long no matter 'ow strong a
spell's been laid on 'is belly. I wonder when 'e did it?"
"The same tune he did everything else," Jalwar explained.
"Don't you remember the song?"
"You mean that part about it bein' 'the worst trip I've
ever been on'?"
"Not just that. Remember that he made the tigress
captain because she was the best sailor among us? That
would leave him as next in command, would it not?"
"Beats me, mate. I'm not much on ships and their
lore."
"He reduced himself to first mate," Jalwar said posi-
tively. "That was in the song, too. A line that went
something like "The first mate, he got drunk.' "
"Aye, now I recall." The otter nodded toward the
helpless spellsinger, who remained enraptured by a hyste-
ria perceptible only to himself. "So 'e spellsung 'imself
into this condition without even bein' aware o1 doin' it."
"I fear that is the case."
"Downright pitiful. Why couldn't 'e 'ave made me first
mate? I'd 'andle a long drunk like this ten times better than
'e would. 'E's got to come out of it sometime."
"I hope so," said Jalwar. He glanced at the sky.
"Perhaps we will lose this infernal fog, anyway. Then we
might pick up a wind enabling us to turn back."
"Now, I told you, guv," Mudge began, only to be
interrupted by a shout.
What stunned him to silence, however, was not the fact
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
97
of the shout but its origin. It came from the water off to
starboard.
It was repeated. "Ahoy, there! You on the sloop! What's
happenin'!"
"What's happenin'?" Roseroar frowned, tried to see
into the fog. "Jon-Tom, wake up!" The sails continued to
luff against the mainmast.
"Huh? Wash?" Jon-Tom laughed one more time, then
struggled to stand up.
"Ahoy, aboard the sloop!" A new voice this time,
female.
"Wash... whosh that?" He stumbled around the center
cabin and tried to squint into the fog. Neither his eyesight
nor his brain was functioning at optimum efficiency at the
moment.
A second boat materialized out of the mist. It was a low-
slung outboard with a pearlescent fiberglass body. Three ...
no, four people lounged in the vinyl seats. Two couples in
their twenties, all human, all normal size.
"What's happenin', John B.I" asked the young man
standing behind the wheel. He didn't look too steady on
his feet himself. A cooler sat between the front seats, full
of ice and aluminum cans. The cans had names like Coors
and Lone Star on them.
Jon-Tom swayed. He was hallucinating, the next logical
step in his mental disintegration. He leaned over the rail
and tried to focus his remaining consciousness on the funny
cigarette the couple in the front of the boat were passing
back and forth.The other pair were exchanging hits on a
glass pipe.
The big outboard was idling noisily. One girl leaned
over the side to clean her Foster Grants in the ocean. Next
to the beer cooler was a picnic basket. A big open bag of
pretzels sat on top. The twisted, skinny kind that tasted
like pure fried salt. Next to the bag was a two-pound tin of
Planter's Redskin Peanuts, and several brightly colored
tropical fruits.
98
Alan Dean Poster
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
99
He tried to will himself sober. If anything could have
cleared his mind, it should have been the sight of the boat
and its occupants. But the uncontrollable power of his own
spellsinging held true. Despite everything he tried, the
self-declared first mate still stayed drunk. He swallowed
the words on his tongue and tried a second time.
"Who... who are you?"
"I'm Charlie MacReady," said the boat's driver cheeri-
ly, through a cannabis-induced fog of his own. He smiled
broadly, leaned down to speak to his girlfriend. "Dig that
getup that guy's got on. Must've been a helluva party!"
Jon-Tom briefly considered his iridescent lizard-skin
cape, his indigo shut, and the rest of his attire. Subdued
clothing... for Clothahump's world.
The girl in the front was having a tough time with her
sunshades. Maybe she didn't realize that the glasses were
clean and that it was her eyes that needed washing out.
She leaned over again and nearly tumbled into the water.
Her boyfriend grabbed the strap of her bikini top and
pulled hard enough to hold her in the boat. Unfortunately,
it was also hard enough to compress certain sensitive parts
of her anatomy. She whirled to swing at him, missed badly
thanks to the effects of what the foursome had been
smoking all morning. For some unknown reason this
started her giggling uncontrollably.
Jon-Tom wasn't laughing anymore. He was battling his
own sozzled thoughts and magically contaminated blood-
stream.
"Who are you people?"
"I told you." The boat's driver spoke with pot-induced
ponderousness. "MacReady's the name. Charles MacReady.
I am a stockbroker from Manhattan. Merrill Lynching.
You know, the bull?" He rested one hand on the shoulder
of the suddenly contemplative woman seated next to him.
She appeared fascinated by the sheen of her nail polish.
"This is Buffy." He nodded toward the front of the
boat. "The two kids up front are Steve and Mary-Ann.
Steve works in my office. Don't you, Steve?" Steve didn't
reply. He and Mary-Ann were giggling in tandem now.
The driver turned back to Jon-Tom. "Who are you?"
"One hell of a good question," Jon-Tom replied thickly.
He glanced down at his outrageous costume. Is this what
happens when you get the DTs? he wondered. Somehow
he'd always imagined having the DTs would involve
stronger hallucinations than a quartet of happily stoned
vacationers loaded down with pot and pretzels.
"My name... my name..." For one terrible instant
there was a soft, puffy blank in his mind where his name
belonged. The kind of disorientation one encounters in a
cheap house of mirrors at the state fair, where you have to
feel your way through to the exit by putting your hands out
in front of you and pushing through the nothingness of
your own reflections.
Meriweather, he told himself. Jonathan Thomas Meri-
weather. I am a graduate law student from UCLA. The
University of California at Los Angeles. He repeated this
information slowly to the driver of the boat.
"Nice to meet you," said MacReady.
"But you, you, you, where are you? Where are you
from?" Jon-Tom was aware he was half crying, but he
couldn't stop himself. His desperation overwhelmed any
suggestion of self-control.
The song, the song, that seemingly innocuous song so
full of unforeseen consequences. First the boat, then the
storm and his drunkenness, and now ... where in the song
had the sloop John B. been going?
The stockbroker from Manhattan pointed to his right.
"Just out for the afternoon from the Nassau Club Med.
You know, man. The Bahamas? You lost out of Miami or
what?" He jiggled the chain of polyethelene beads that
hung from his neck.
"Wanna come back in with us?"
"It can't be," Jon-Tom whispered dazedly. "It can't be
this easy." The song he'd repeated over and over, what
1OO
Alan Dean Foster
was the phrasing? ' 'Around Nassau Town we did roam... I
wanna go home, I wanna go home... this is the worst
trip, I've ever been on."
"7 wanna go home," Jon-Tom sang in his mind. "Around