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?'
'Ah, that's it, you see, sir—I can't. I'm under a curse, I am. A terrible thing.' He blew his nose again.
'Cursed to run a shop?'
'Forever, sir, forever. And never closing! For hundreds of years! There was this sorcerer, you see. I did a terrible thing.'
'In a shop?' said Twoflower.
'Oh, yes. I can't remember what it was he wanted, but when he asked for it I – I gave one of those sucking-in noises, you know, like whistling only backwards?' He demonstrated.
Twoflower looked sombre, but he was at heart a kind man and always ready to forgive.
'I see,' he said slowly. 'Even so —'
'That's not all!'
'Oh.'
'I told him there was no demand for it!'
'After making the sucking noise?'
'Yes. I probably grinned, too.'
'Oh, dear. You didn't call him squire, did you?'
'I – I may have done.'
'Um.'
'There's more.'
'Surely not?'
'Yes, I said I could order it and he could come back next day.'
'That doesn't sound too bad,' said Twoflower, who alone of all the people in the multiverse allowed shops to order things for him and didn't object at all to paying quite large sums of money to reimburse the shopkeeper for the inconvenience of having a bit of stock in his store often for several hours.
'It was early closing day,' said the shopkeeper.
'Oh.'