second thoughts about his chances of being sent home.
Maybe this Snooth was no sorceress but just some local
shopkeeper who happened to have stumbled onto some
kind of one-way transdimensional gate or something.
Mudge pointed out a traveling minstrel. The diminutive
musical mouse was plinking out a very respectable polka
not on a duar or handlebar lyre or bark flute but on a
Casiotone 8500 electronic keyboard. Jon-Tom wondered
what the mouse was using for batteries.
Not all the devices in use were recognizably from his
own world. The sign over a fishmonger’s stall was a
rotating globe of red and white lambent light that spelled
out the shop’s name and alternated it with that of the
THE DAY OF THE DISSONANCE
251
owner. There appeared to be nothing supporting the globe.
As they stared, the globe twisted into the shape of a fish,
then into the outlines of females of various species in
provocative poses. Sex sells, Jon-Tom reminded himself.
Even fish. He walked over to stand directly underneath the
globe. There was no source of support or power, much less
a visible explanation for its photonic malleability. One
thing he was sure of: it hadn’t come from his own world.
Neither had the device they saw an old mandrill using to
cut wood. It had a handle similar to that of a normal metal
saw, but instead of a length of serrated steel the handle was
attached to a shiny bar no more than a quarter-inch in
diameter. The baboon would hitch up his gloves, choose a
piece of wood, put both hands on the handle and touch the