abandoned the ongoing display of oceanic vulgarity and
climbed the central cabin to contemplate the horizon.
No, he wasn’t home anymore. Maybe he’d hallucinated
the whole incident. Maybe there’d been no ski boat full of
106
Alan Dean Poster
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
1O7
stoned stockbrokers from New York. Maybe the entire
episode was nothing more than the result of his drunkenness.
Except that Mudge and Roseroar and Jalwar had seen
them also.
The last vestiges of inebriation left him frighteningly
cold inside. It was bad enough that fate had dumped him
in this alien otherworld. Now it had chosen to tease him
with a glimpse of reality, of home. He felt like a poor kid
forced to stand in front of the main display window at
FA.O. Schwarz the night before Christmas.
Slipping the duar around in front of him, he tried the
song again, tried altering the inflection in his voice, the
volume of each stanza. Tried until his throat was dry and
he could hardly speak. Nothing worked. The song remained
a song and nothing more.
He tried other songs, with the same result. He sang
everything he could remember that alluded however vaguely
to going home, to returning home, to longing for home.
The sloop John B. cut cleanly through the waves, running
southwestward under Roseroar’s expert guidance. There
was no sign of land to cheer him. Only the dolphins with
their endless corny jokes.
“Sail ahead!” Jalwar yelled from the top of the main-
mast. Jon-Tom shoved his own concerns aside as he joined
Mudge near the bowsprit. Stare as he might, he saw only