Foster, Dean - Spellsinger 03 - The Day of the Dissonance

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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"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.

Her visitors mounted the steps and crossed the porch.

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

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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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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'