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'Is that the big city on the Ankh? Sprawling place, smells of cesspits?'
'It has an ancient and honourable history,' said Rincewind, his voice stiff with injured civic pride.
'That's not how you described it to me,' said Twoflower. 'You told me it was the only city that actually started out decadent.'
Rincewind looked embarrassed. Yes, but, well, it's my home, don't you see?'
'No,' said the shopkeeper, 'not really. I always say home is where you hang your hat.'
'Um, no,' said Twoflower, always anxious to enlighten. 'Where you hang your hat is a hatstand. A home is —'
'I'll just go and see about setting you on your way,' said the shopkeeper hurriedly, as Bethan came in. He scooted past her.
Twoflower followed him.
On the other side of the curtain was a room with a small bed, a rather grubby stove, and a three-legged table. Then the shopkeeper did something to the table, here was a noise like a cork coming reluctantly out of a bottle, and the room contained a wall-to-wall universe.
'Don't be frightened,' said the shopkeeper, as stars streamed past.
'I'm not frightened,' said Twoflower, his eyes sparkling.
'Oh,' said the shopkeeper, slightly annoyed. 'Anyway, it's just imagery generated by the shop, it's not real.'
'And you can go anywhere?'
'Oh no,' said the shopkeeper, deeply shocked. 'There's all kinds of fail-safes built in, after all, there'd be no point in going somewhere with insufficient per capita disposable income. And there's got to be a suitable wall, of course. Ah, here we are, this is your universe. Very bijou, I always think. A sort of universette . . .'
Here is the blackness of space, the myriad stars gleaming like diamond dust or, as some people would say, like great balls of exploding hydrogen a very long way off. But then, some people would say anything.
A shadow starts to blot out the distant glitter, and it is blacker than space itself.
From here it also looks a great deal bigger, because space is not really big, it is simply somewhere to be big in. Planets are big, but planets are meant to be big and there is nothing clever about being the right size.
But this shape blotting out the sky like the footfall of God isn't a planet.
It is a turtle, ten thousand miles long from its crater-pocked head to its armoured tail.
And Great A'Tuin is huge.
Great flippers rise and fall ponderously, warping space into strange shapes. The Discworld slides across the sky like a royal barge. But even Great A'Tuin is struggling now as it leaves the free depths of space and must fight the tormenting pressures of the solar shallows. Magic is weaker here, on the littoral of light. Many more days of his and the Discworld will be stripped away by the pressures of reality.
Great A'Tuin knows this, but Great A'Tuin can recall doing all this before, many thousands of years ago.
The astrochelonian's eyes, glowing red in the light of the dwarf star, are not focussed on it but at a little patch of space nearby . . .
'Yes, but where are we?' said Twoflower. The shopkeeper, hunched over his table, just shrugged.
'I don't think we're anywhere,' he said. 'We're in a cotangent incongruity, I believe. I could be wrong. The shop generally knows what it's doing.'
'You mean you don't?'
'I pick a bit up, here and there.' The shopkeeper blew his nose. 'Sometimes I land on a world where they understand these things.' He turned a pair of small, sad eyes on Twoflower. 'You've got a kind face, sir. I don't mind telling you.'
'Telling me what?'
'It's no life, you know, minding the Shop. Never settling down, always on the move, never closing.'
Why don't you stop, then?'
