Galileo’s Dream

Galileo has little strength of judgement wherewith to control himself, so that he makes the climate of Rome extremely dangerous to himself, particularly in these times, when we have a Pope who hates geniuses.

Eventually Galileo took the ambassador’s hint, or decided on his own, and announced he was returning to Florence. Cardinal Farnese hosted the farewell banquet in his honour, and accompanied him in his trip north as far as Caprarola, the country villa of the Farnese, where Galileo was invited to rest a night in luxury. Galileo carried with him a written report he had requested and received from Cardinal del Monte, addressed to Cosimo and Picchena. The Cardinal had finished his tribute with the words, Were we still living under the ancient republic of Rome, I am certain that a statue would have been erected in his honour on the Capitol- perhaps next to the statue of Marcus Aurelius-not a bad companion in fame. No wonder Galileo’s head had been turned. The visit to Rome was a complete success, as far as he knew.

Things continued that way after he got back to Florence. He was feted in fine style by Cosimo and his court, and it was clear that Cosimo was extremely pleased with him; his Roman performance had made Cosimo’s patronage look very discriminating indeed.

The Medici youth was no longer so young; he sat at the head of his table like a man used to command, and the boy Galileo remembered so well was no longer evident. He looked quite a bit the same, physically: slight, a bit pale, very like his father in his features, which was to say long-nosed and narrow headed, with a noble forehead. Not a robust youth, but now much more sure of himself, as only made sense: he was a prince. And he like everyone else had read his Machiavelli. He had given hard commands, and the whole duchy had obeyed them.

‘Maestro, you have set the Romans on their heels,’ he said complacently, offering a toast to the room. ‘To my old teacher, the wonder of the age!’

And the Florentines cheered even louder than the Romans had.

Soon after his return, Galileo got involved in a debate concerning hydrostatics: why did ice float? His opponent was his old foe Colombe, the malevolent shit who had tried to hang scriptural objections around his neck and thus cast him into hell. Galileo was anxious to stick the knives in this man while his Roman victories were fresh in everyone’s mind, and went at the contest like a bull seeing red, yes. But then he was frustrated by Cosimo, who ordered him to debate with such insignificant enemies in writing only, speaking over such a gadfly’s head to the world at large. Galileo did that, writing as usual at great length, but then Cosimo ordered him to debate the issue orally with a Bolognan professor named Pappazoni, whom Galileo had just helped to get his teaching position at Il Bo. This was like staking down a lamb to be killed and eaten by a lion, but Galileo and Pappazoni could only play their parts, and Galileo could not help enjoying it, as it was only a verbal killing after all.

Then Cardinal Maffeo Barberini came through Florence on his way to Bologna. Cardinal Gonzaga also happened to be in the city, and so Cosimo invited both of them to attend a repeat performance of Galileo’s debate on floating bodies, to be held at a court dinner on 2nd October. Papazzoni again made a reluctant appearance, and after a feast and a concert, and much drinking, Galileo again slaughtered him to the roaring laughter of the audience. Then Cardinal Gonzaga stood and surprised everyone by supporting Papazzoni; but Barberini, smiling appreciatively, perhaps remembering their warm meeting back in the spring in Rome, took Galileo’s side.

It was therefore another triumphant evening for Galileo. As he left the banquet, well after midnight, and long after the sacrifice of Pappazoni, Cardinal Barberini took him by the hand, hugged him, bade him farewell, and promised they would meet again.

The next morning, when Barberini was to leave for Bologna, Galileo did not show up to see him off, having been unexpectedly detained by an illness he had suffered in the night. From the road Barberini wrote a note to him:

I am very sorry that you were unable to see me before I left the city. It is not that I consider a sign of your friendship as necessary, for it is well known to me, but because you were ill. May God keep you not only because outstanding persons such as yourself deserve a long life of public service, but because of the particular affection that I have and always will have for you. I am happy to be able to say this, and to thank you for the time that you spent with me.

Your affectionate brother,

Cardinal Barberini

Your affectionate brother! Talk about friends in high places! To a certain extent it seemed he had a Roman patron now to add to his Florentine one.

All was triumph. Indeed it would be hard to imagine how things could have gone better in the previous two years for Galileo and his telescope: scientific standing, social standing, patronage in both Florence and Rome-all were at their peak, and Galileo stood slightly stunned on top of what had proved a double anno mirabilis.

But there were undercurrents and counterforces at work, even on that very morning when Galileo did not show up to see off Cardinal Barberini. Galileo had been ill, yes: because a syncope had struck him when he got home from the banquet the night before. Cartophilus had hopped down from the trap in front of their house in Florence, had stilled the horse, and opened the gate; and there in the little yard stood the stranger, his massive telescope already placed on its thick tripod.

In his crow’s Latin the stranger said to Galileo, ‘Are you ready?’

Chapter Seven The Other Galileo (#ulink_229c3337-1877-5b57-bc59-5a42030664ab)

You are given a light to know evil from good,And free will, which, if it can endureWithout weakening after its first bout with fixed Heaven,

If it is believed in, will conquer all it meets later.So if the present world strays from its course,The cause is in you; look for it in yourself.

-DANTE, Purgatorio, Canto XVI

‘Yes, I’m ready,’ Galileo replied, his blood jolting through him so that his fingers throbbed. He was afraid!

But he was curious too. He said to the stranger, ‘Let’s go up to the altana.’

Cartophilus carried the massive telescope up the outside stairs, bent double under the load. ‘Local gravity getting to you at last?’ the stranger asked acerbically, in Latin.

‘Someone has to carry the load,’ Cartophilus muttered in Tuscan. ‘Not everyone can be a virtuoso like you, signor, and fly off when the bad times come. Skip away like a fucking dilettante.’

The stranger ignored this. On the roof’s little altana, with the telescope on its tripod, he put a fingertip to the eyepiece and swung it into Jovian alignment; it came to rest with a refinement that seemed all its own. Again Galileo felt the sensation that this had happened before.

And indeed the telescope was somehow already aligned. The stranger gestured at it. Galileo moved his stool next to the eyepiece of the glass and sat. He looked through it.

Jupiter was a big banded ball near the centre of the glass, strikingly handsome, colourful within its narrow range. There was a red spot in the middle of the southern hemisphere, curling in the oval shape of a standing eddy in a river. A Jovian Charybdis-and was he going there to meet his own Scylla? For a long time he looked at the great planet, so full and round and banded. It cast its influence over him in just the way an astrologer would have expected it to.

But nothing else happened. He sat back, looked at the stranger.

Who was frowning heavily. ‘Let me check it.’ He looked at the side of the telescope, straightened up, blinked several times. He looked over at Cartophilus, who shrugged.

‘Not good,’ Cartophilus said.

‘Maybe it’s Hera,’ the stranger said darkly.

Cartophilus shrugged again. Clearly this was the stranger’s problem.

They stood there in silence. It was a chill evening. Long minutes passed. Galileo bent down and looked through the lens again. Jupiter was still in the middle of it. He swallowed hard. This was stranger than dreaming. ‘This is not just a telescopio,’ he said, almost remembering now. Blue people, angels…‘It’s something like a, a tele-avanzare. A teletrasporta.’

The stranger and Cartophilus looked at each other. Cartophilus said, ‘The amygdala can never be fully suppressed. And why shouldn’t he know?’

The stranger re-examined the boxy side of the device. Cartophilus sat down on the floor beside it, stoical.

‘Ah. Try it again,’ the stranger said, a new tone in his voice. ‘Take another look.’

Galileo looked. Moon I was just separating from Jupiter on its west side. III and IV were out to the east. An hour must have passed since the two visitors had arrived.

Moon I cleared Jupiter, gleamed bright and steady in the black. Sometimes it seemed the brightest of the four. They fluctuated in that regard. I seemed to have a yellow tinge. It shimmered in the glass, and in the same moment Galileo saw that it was getting bigger and more distinct, and was mottled yellow, orange, and black-or so it seemed-because in that very same moment he saw that he was floating down onto it, dropping like a landing goose, at such the same angle as a goose that he extended his arms and lifted his feet forward to slow himself down.

The spheroid curve of Moon I soon revealed itself to be an awful landscape, very different to his vague memories of Moon II, which were of an icy purity: I was a waste of mounded yellow slag, all shot with craters and volcanoes. A world covered by Etnas. As he descended, the yellow differentiated into a hell’s carnival of burnt sulphur tones, of umbers and siennas and burnt siennas, of topaz and tan and bronze and sunflower and brick and tar, also the blacks of charcoal and jet, also terracotta and blood red, and a sunset array of oranges, citron yellows, gilt, pewter-all piled on all, one colour pouring over the others and being covered itself in a great unholy slag heap. Dante would have approved it as the very image of his burning circles of Hell.

The overlayering of so many colours made it impossible to gauge the terrain. What he had thought was a giant crater popped up and reversed itself, revealed as the top of a viscous pile bigger than Etna, bigger than Sicily itself.

He floated down toward the peak of this broad mountain. On the rim of the crater in its summit was a flat spot, mostly occupied by a round yellow-columned temple, open to space in the Delphic style.

He drifted down onto the yellow floor of this temple, landing easily. A square box made of something like lead or pewter lay on the ground beside him. His body weighed very little, as if he were standing in water. Overhead Jupiter bulked hugely in the starry black, every band and convolute swirl palpable to the eye. At the sight of it Galileo quivered like a horse in shock and fear.

On the other side of the box stood a knot of some dozen people, all staring at him. The stranger was now standing behind him.

‘What’s this!’ the stranger exclaimed angrily.

‘You know what this is, Ganymede,’ said a woman who emerged from the knot of people. Her voice, low and threatening, came to Galileo in language that was like a rustic old-fashioned Tuscan. She approached with a regal stride, and Galileo bowed without thinking to. She nodded his way, and said, ‘Welcome to Io, you are our guest here. We have met before, although you may not remember it very well. My name is Hera. One moment please, while I deal with your travelling companion.’

She stopped before the stranger, Ganymede, and looked at him as if measuring how far he would fall when she knocked him down. She was taller than Galileo and looked immensely strong, in form like one of Michelangelo’s men, her wide shoulders and muscular arms bursting from a pale yellow sleeveless blouse, made of something like silk. Pantaloons of the same material covered broad hips, thick long legs. She seemed both aged and young, female and male, in a mix that confused Galileo. Her gaze, as she looked from the stranger to Galileo and back again, was imperious, and he thought of the goddess Hera as described by Homer or Virgil.

‘You stole our entangler,’ Ganymede accused her, his voice coming to Galileo’s ears in an odd Latin. The Jovians’ mouths moved in ways that did not quite match what Galileo heard, and he supposed he was the beneficiary of invisible and very rapid translators. ‘What are you trying to do, start a war?’

Hera glared at him. ‘As if you haven’t already started it! You attacked the Europans in their own ocean. Now the council’s authority is shattered, the factions are at each other’s throats.’

‘That has nothing to do with me,’ said Ganymede coldly.