sword.
“I mean, give it some thought.” The first mushroom
again, which was taking on something of the air of a
fungoid spokesman. Jon-Tom saw no lips or mouth. The
words, the thoughts, came fully formed into his mind
through a kind of clammy telepathy. “What would we talk
about?”
“Nothing worth wasting the time discussing,” agreed
another mushroom with a long, narrow cap in the manner
of a morrel. “I mean, you spend your whole existence
sitting in the same spot, never seeing anything new, never
moving around. So what’s your biggest thrill? Getting to
make spores?”
“Yeah, big deal,” commented the toadstool. “So we
don’t talk. You never hear us talk, you think fungoids
don’t talk. Ambulatories are such know-it-alls.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the second mushroom. “Noth-
ing matters. We’re wasting our efforts.”
“Wait.” Jon-Tom approached the major mushroom,
feeling a little silly as he did so. “You’re doing something
to us. You have been ever since we entered the deep
moors.”
“What makes you think we’re doing anything to you?”
said the spokesthing. “Why should we make the effort to
do anything to anyone?”
“We’ve changed since we entered this land. We feel
different.”
“Different how, man?” asked the toadstool.
“Depressed. Tired, worn-out^ useless, hopeless. Our
outlook on life has been altered.”
“What makes you think we’re responsible?” said the
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Alan Dean Poster
second mushroom. “That’s just how life is. It’s the normal
state of existence. You can’t blame us for that.”
“It’s not the normal state of existence.”
“It is in the Moors,” argued the first mushroom.