Spellsinger 03 – The Day of the Dissonance by Foster, Alan Dean

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.