Read Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 for Free Online Page B

others.
    Cordle couldn’t understand why this should be, until one midsummer’s day, when he was driving through the northern regions of Spain while stoned out of his mind, the god Thoth-Hermes granted him original enlightenment by murmuring, “Uh, look, I groove with the problem, baby, but dig, we gotta put carrots in or it ain’t no stew.”
    “ Carrots? ” said Cordle, struggling for illumination.
    “I’m talking about those types who get you uptight,” Thoth-Hermes explained. “They gotta act that way, baby, on account of they’re carrots, and that’s how carrots are.”
    “If they are carrots,” Cordle said, feeling his way, “then I—”
    “You, of course, are a little pearly-white onion.”
    “Yes! My God, yes!” Cordle cried, dazzled by the blinding light of satori.
    “And, naturally, you and all the other pearly-white onions think that carrots are just bad news, merely some kind of misshapen orangey onion; whereas the carrots look at you and rap about freaky round white carrots, wow! I mean, you’re just too much for each other, whereas, in actuality—”
    “Yes, go on!” cried Cordle.
    “In actuality,” Thoth-Hermes declared, “ everything’s got a place in The Stew! ”
    “Of course! I see, I see, I see!”
    “And that means that everybody who exists is necessary, and you must have long hateful orange carrots if you’re also going to have nice pleasant decent white onions, or vice versa, because without all the i n gredients, it isn’t a Stew, which is to say, life, it becomes, uh, let me see. …”
    “A soup!” cried ecstatic Cordle.
    “You’re coming in five by five,” chanted Thoth-Hermes. “Lay down the word, deacon, and let the people know the divine formula. …”
    “A soup !” said Cordle. “Yes, I see it now—creamy, pure-white onion soup is our dream of heaven, whereas fiery orange carrot broth is our notion of hell. It fits, it all fits together!”
    “Om manipadme hum,” intoned Thoth-Hermes.
    “But where do the green peas go? What about the meat , for God’s sake?”
    “Don’t pick at the metaphor,” Thoth-Hermes advised him, “it leaves a nasty scab. Stick with the carrots and onions. And, here, let me offer you a drink—a house specialty.”
    “But the spices, where do you put the spices ?” Cordle demanded, taking a long swig of burgundy-colored liquid from a rusted canteen.
    “Baby, you’re asking questions that can be revealed only to a thirteenth-degree Mason with piles, wearing sandals. Sorry about that. Just remember that everything goes into The Stew.”
    “Into The Stew,” Cordle repeated, smacking his lips.
    “And, especially, stick with the carrots and onions; you were really grooving there.”
    “Carrots and onions,” Cordle repeated.
    “That’s your trip,” Thoth-Hermes said. “Hey, we’ve gotten to Corunna; you can let me out anywhere around here.”
    Cordle pulled his rented car off the road. Thoth-Hermes took his knapsack from the back seat and got out.
    “Thanks for the lift, baby.”
    “My pleasure. Thank you for the wine. What kind did you say it was?”
    “ Vino de casa mixed with a mere smidgen of old Dr. Hammerfinger’s essence of instant powdered Power-Pack brand acid. Brewed by gnurrs in the secret laboratories of UCLA in preparation for the big all-Europe turn-on.”
    “Whatever it was, it surely was ,” Cordle said deeply. “Pure elixir to me. You could sell neckties to a n telopes with that stuff; you could change the world from an oblate spheroid into a truncated trapezoid. … What did I say?”
    “Never mind, it’s all part of your trip. Maybe you better lie down for a while, huh?”
    “Where gods command, mere mortals must obey,” Cordle said iambically. He lay down on the front seat of the car. Thoth-Hermes bent over him, his beard burnished gold, his head wreathed in plane trees.
    “You okay?”
    “Never better in my life.”
    “Want me to stand by?”
    “Unnecessary. You have helped me