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
258
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