The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,34

we know. That being so, he should think carefully before unleashing it.’

‘Yes,’ said Echo, ‘but if an alchemist spends his whole life searching for that source of energy and actually finds it one day, how will he be able to resist unleashing it?’

‘By asking that question,’ Ghoolion replied, ‘you’ve put your paw on alchemy’s eternally suppurating sore. It’s a very real problem. Now, what would you say to a hearty breakfast?’

Moon Talk

Echo found it even harder than before to sleep off his heavy meals during the hot and sultry nights that followed. If he failed completely he would steal out on to the roof by way of the secret door in the laboratory, which was always open now, and through the Leathermousoleum, which was deserted because the vampire bats spent the nights out hunting.

Once up there, Echo would make straight for Theodore’s abode in the hope of having a chat with the old Tuwituwu, if he wasn’t busy flitting around the chimney system or hunting mice in the dungeons. Theodore was a considerably more interesting conversationalist than the taciturn Sheet. His wide range of interests embraced the history of Ghoolion’s castle and the municipality of Malaisea, Zamonian biology, languages old and new, a smidgen of astronomy, jurisprudence, Uggliology, and just about anything else. However, his pet hate and principal object of study was Succubius Ghoolion, the Alchemaster himself.

‘My scholarship is uniserval,’ Theodore would say. ‘Ask me a question, if you can bear to hear the answer.’

Echo was in one of the melancholy moods in which he gazed sadly up at the moon, which had lately been waxing far too fast for his taste. He and the earth’s satellite had something in common in that respect - worse luck.

‘How much do you know about the moon?’ Echo asked, hoping to dispel his gloomy thoughts.

‘Hm,’ said Theodore. ‘Pretty well everything. How far away do you think it is?’

‘That’s easy,’ said Echo. ‘About as far away as those mountains over there.’

The Tuwituwu gave him a long stare.

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked at length.

‘The mountains are the most distant things I can see and the moon is hovering just above them, so it’s as far away as the mountains.’

The Tuwituwu gave him another long stare. ‘And that’s your ostranomical opinion?’

‘Well, I’m not a universal scholar like you, just a stupid Crat. All I know is what my mistress told me or read to me from her books, which weren’t very big and had pictures of funny animals in them. Ghoolion is teaching me a lot about alchemy but nothing about astronomy. He prefers to investigate little things.’

‘I see,’ said Theodore. ‘What if I told you that the moon is roughly twenty thousand times as far away from us as those mountains?’

‘I’d think you were a crackpot. Nobody can see that far.’

Theodore groaned. ‘Then we’ll have to begin at the very beginning. The moon is the lecestial body closest to our planet. It revolves round the earth at an average tisdance of 385,080 kolimetres or 60.27 terrestrial radii every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 11.5 seconds, simultaneously tarpicipating in the earth’s relovutions round the sun. Thus its actual obrit through space is an ecipycloid, lying partly outside that of the earth, which always presents its hollow side to the sun. Since the extrencicity of its obrit is 0.05491, its tisdance from the earth varies between 407,110 and 356,650 kolimetres. Have you got that?’

‘I doubt it,’ Echo said with a laugh.

‘Try to repeat what I said.’

‘The moon is the celestial body closest to our planet. It revolves around the earth at an average distance of 385,080 kilometres or 60.27 terrestrial radii every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 11.5 seconds, simultaneously participating in the earth’s revolutions round the sun. Thus its actual orbit through space is an epicycloid, lying partly outside that of the earth, which always presents its hollow side to the sun. Since the eccentricity of its orbit is 0.05491, its distance from the earth varies between 407,110 and 356,650 kilometres.’

‘You see?!’ said Theodore.

‘Well I’m damned!’ Echo exclaimed, putting a paw to his mouth. ‘Did I really memorise all that?’

‘You can do far more than that. The pacacity of a Crat’s brain is emornous. Now, how far away do you think those stars are? As far away from us as the moon, or are they nearer?’

‘You mean those holes in the sky? The ones the man in the moon makes, so the sun can shine through from his bedroom