“I think one day you will, though I sense you still have
along way logo.”
“It’s just that it’s so new to me. The magic, not the
music. Everything’s so new to me. I’m not of this world.”
“I know. You smell of elsewhere. Do not let your
transposition faze you. Newness is life’s greatest pleasure
and delight.” She indicated the shelves wailing them in.
“Every new product I encounter is a source of wonder-
ment to me.”
“1 wish I could share your enthusiasm. But I can’t help
my homesickness. You can’t, by any chance, send me
home by the same means you use to stock your goods?”
he asked hopefully.
“I am truly sorry,” Snooth told him softly, and it struck
him that she was. “This is only a receive-and-disperse
operation. I can only ship products, not people.”
Jon-Tom slumped. “Well, it’s no more than what I
expected. Clothahump said as much.”
“You must tell me about your travels. Oddly, I know
more about many other worlds than about this one. The
result of being tied to my business.”
So partly to please her and partly to help relieve his own
disappointment, Jon-Tom regaled her with a recitation of
the adventures they had experienced during their long
journey. It took at least the half day Snooth had claimed
before she finally called the march to a halt. Jon-Tom
looked down the aisle. They stili were not in sight of its
end.
Strange medications filled bottles and jars and contain-
ers of unfamiliar material. The twenty-foot-high shelves
they had halted before represented a cosmological phar-
macopia. Jon-Tom made out pills and drops, salves and