Maybe you believe Rosenberg, maybe you’re still looking for a way out. Maybe you just need a little more time to gather and wipe the necessary files. You can’t let them distract you from the computer and the files. “Go ahead, break the door down, I’m safe and I’m not—”
The door splinters through your apartment before you can finish the sentence. Rosenberg fills the doorway, tall and gaunt and moving mechanically like an animated corpse. The others remain out of sight, likely standing at the ready. Julius steps across the threshold, the fluorescent lights of your apartment scattering through the dark tangled edges of his wild hair like a halo.
You stand, your hand hovering at the ready over the mouse button, one click away from activating the wipe, a warning and a threat. One press, no evidence, no doubt, no threat. But you know it’s also the evidence Rosenberg wants most. It’s your only bargaining chip.
“Brother,” says Rosenberg, in a low growl. “You are making a terrible mistake.” He stares at your hand, and you wonder what he’d do if faced with the same horrible secret, the same horrible decision you have before you. Then you notice that his eyes are twitching, or maybe it’s just another trick of the light.
Most Venerable and Beloved Daughter Suor Maria Celeste
I have received word that you have begun to stir and that my letters have caused on at least one occasion a most gentle fluttering of your eyelids. Though I feel the Lord has forsaken me in many endeavors, I thank Him for such small gifts.
Vincenzo, your brother, happened upon me yesterday morn as I examined the color autographs from the distant suns that I had been following. Since my last letter, I have trained my clockwork mirror telescope on many stars, whether bright or faded, whether seemingly orange, or seemingly blue. The many gelatinous plates, upon which star autographs have been preserved with a fixative, now extend through my poor garden like rays from my old stone sundial like the pagan goddess Shiva’s many arms. They obliterate what little grass remains not overgrown with weed. Fortunately, the hedgerow hides this from my already angered neighbors who have taken to complaining of the clockwork’s unsightly appearance. It appears that I had indeed offended them with my experiment of the trumpets, as Salvatore so rightly feared.
“Father, you are distressed,” Vincenzo remarked in concern from his perch on the dial. “Not our Sister-Sister?” He has named you thus out of love and a poor sense of pun.
“I am distressed always over your sister,” I replied, “but currently I am consumed by my inexplicable failure in this experiment.”
Vincenzo approached the plate closest to him and examined it. “An excellent rainbow,” he declared, “albeit, overly crimson. Beautiful, nonetheless.”
“They are all tainted crimson,” I confessed. “My other Vincenzo has checked and rechecked the baths, and our apparatus, and after several correspondences with the East he swears no error or failure in apparatus or in method exists.”
“Would that I could assist you.”
“No. I am lost without your sister’s ear and her counsel. Only two explanations remain in this matter. For if one is correct, then my very sciences have failed me; and if the other, I have failed my God.”
Vincenzo then raised himself from the dial. “Father, I have thought much lately of your former pupil, Delmedigo the Spaniard. He is an excellent physician who is said to heal within the graces of God even though he be a Hebrew. Perhaps he might be of assistance?”
An excellent suggestion, I thought, even for your brother. And so, with the disposal of my humble invitation, my onetime student, José Solomon Delmedigo, has now graced your side. I understand that, with great skill and attention, he has been hastening your healing some time now. I have received word, that with his good work nearly completed, he promises to visit with me on his return to Spain.
I continue to pray for you. Your progress has renewed in my purpose, even though my results fail me. My heart leaps to share more with you, my daughter, but the hour is late and my bones have become as fragile and as quarrelsome as my spirit.
Your most affectionate and beloved father,
G.G.
“Don’t fail us now, Brother.” The words escape like steam from Rosenberg’s mouth. He doesn’t call you by name, won’t meet your eyes.
“The contents of this computer are too dangerous, Julius. Not just to me.”
Rosenberg takes a step forward and you stop him with your thumb against the mouse’s button. “This is a test, Brother,” he says.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Indeed,” Rosenberg half whispers, meeting your eyes for the first time, not looking away, not blinking.
“The Church, our world, is predicated on Saint Galileo’s science, and my theory could prove him wrong,” I tell him what he must already dread. “Were there others who stumbled across this same discovery in the past? Were they silenced, or have we all simply been led away from this discovery through the scientific control of the Church?” My voice rises. “Is what might have been discovered years ago without the Church, only being discovered by me for the first time now?”
“Had others made the same discovery, Brother, the world would already be a different place. It may yet be, thanks to theories such as yours,” Rosenberg answers without emotion.
“What kind of place would it be,” you ask, “without Church and science uniting us under one theology? War and dissent would replace progress. How backward would the world be, how backward would we become?”
“The world would be different, that is all. Whether better or worse, depends only on us. We move backward, we become backward, when we hide the truth.”
“And if that truth reveals a mistake made by an old man overjoyed by the recovery of his daughter and of his faith, a misstep so powerful that it has affected the course of history for hundreds of years?”
Dearest Darling Holy Daughter Suor Marie Celeste,
Joy is the kingdom of the Lord and all his wonders, greatest of which is the news of your convalescence. I have news that your eyes have opened, and I expect you have made an even greater recovery in the time it has taken these words to travel to you. Your recuperation has renewed my faith in the Lord and in His Church, and with my work I will honor all.
Your physician, Delmedigo, as I spoke of last, has visited with me and remains the strange and marvelous fellow I once knew as my pupil. It seems that since he has left my tutelage, he has become recognized as a great biblical scholar, mathematician, encyclopedist, and scientist (I borrow the term from your brother, as I have taken a liking to it). Moreover, I have discovered Delmedigo to be a fellow Copernican. After some pleasantries, both usual and unusual, and while surrounded by the gelatinous oddity of my garden, I put forth the problem of my failed colorimeter experiments to him.
“Most troubling,” he pondered, while standing over the sundial as your brother had not long before. “The baths in each plate favor the red, whether on hot days or on cold, on clear nights or cloudy, under moonlight or in darkness. Yet your reasoning that color and light are like sound, ripples in a pond, rings true.”
“Indeed,” I responded, marveling at Delmedigo’s play on words, and wondering if it was play also with me. Still, I know Delmedigo well, and he is not one for idle games.
“It occurs to me,” Delmedigo continued, “that dragging a stick toward oneself in a pond, pushes the closest ripples together, and rarifies those that trail. To sound, this becomes the changes in pitch you have described. To light, as you have surmised, it is color. In a rainbow, the color blue is closest to earth, red the farthest away and possibly most rarified. If your methods and apparatus are true and there is no error, then all these bodies you observe, they move away from this earth? If I am mistaken, then they must all move toward us, no? In any event we can conclude that they move with respect to us in altogether the same way.”
“But the Copernican view describes celestial movements that should display themselves as color shifts in many directions.”
“But this is vexing. My observation of the tides proves that we ourselves must also be in motion.”
Delmedigo pondered a moment. “Yes, but not to our own senses. Perhaps to understand this problem, another perspective must be adopted?” Delmedigo offered this suggestion, as if it were nothing more than a daily tea, then took his leave of me as humbly and as respectfully as he had arrived.
I have much to think on, Sister-Daughter: your recovery, and the awful truth only now becoming apparent to me borne on the wings of Delmedigo’s words. You have taken a long journey in your illness, as have I in my experiments and in my faith. Now we must both return. And it strikes me odd that we have been aided, both of us, by pagans, Mohammedans, and a Hebrew. It seems almost silly, not unlike one of your brother’s humorous tales.
Mend well, my most beloved intricate and perfect creation. In illness and in health, it seems you provide me more with solution than with problem.
Your most humbled and affectionate lord father,
G.G.
“Truth can be a problem, indeed,” says Rosenberg, staring you down. “A test of faith, in the least.”
“Not if you prevent my poisonous ideas from spreading,” you say. “Not if my theory disappears along with me. It’s the reason you’re here, isn’t it?”
“There will be others with similar ideas—you’ve said so yourself. Perhaps there have been others already, but their fear of the Church or the scientific limits of the time prevented them from coming as far as you have.”
“Or maybe their faith was stronger, their hubris weaker?”
“Word has spread about you, wild stories that your theory involves parlor tricks, balloons even, according to some.”
Rosenberg’s words terrify you because they are true. If your Brethren know about this, then others might easily discover what you have. They will. So why does Rosenberg toy now with you?
“No tricks,” you’re almost lying, “it’s all about mistakes. Saint Galileo was wrong about the tides, and he was wrong about this, too. Had he come to the proper conclusion about universal centrality, it would have divided the Church and set both it and science back hundreds of years.”
Rosenberg rubs his eyes unsteadily. “Saint Galileo’s mistake, Brother, may well have been something else entirely, as may yours.”
Most Blessed and Beloved Sister-Daughter,
To have your few words reach my failing eyes, even in your unsteady hand has, if I am not mistaken, been my greatest pleasure in this miserable life. Autumn is upon the land once again, stealing from nature its color and from me what remains of my disposition. Within the grace of your words, however, there is summer and sunshine, so my mind does not protest even as my bones do. In exchange for this, your gift, I return to you another, in your service, in that of the Lord, and in that of our beloved Church.
I have deciphered Delmedigo’s cryptic observations and I realize now that I did not fail. Vincenzo, my student, and I have captured the colors of countless more heavenly suns since my last letter. They, too, are red and our methods remain sound, but the merciful Lord in his kindness has allowed me to only now see the meaning in all this. Please forgive me, once again as I summarize and simplify.
The redness of the night’s stars can mean only that they move altogether away from us (or failing that, toward us, altogether, nonetheless). If our world inhabits a universe of constant motion, then this can only be true if one condition is met: that our world finds its place at the very center of that celestial movement. The Church has been correct all this time, but in a way heretofore unimaginable. Our earth constantly rotates and revolves around the sun, I still believe that, but by adopting a different observation point as Delmedigo suggested, from outside that of our planetary sphere, one may find a position, perhaps one that rotates, from where one is able to appreciate this most intricate dance that places our earth at rest at its center.
I have reviewed my conclusions with the Pope and he has accepted both them and my humble self back to the fold. I have been bestowed with the title of Astronomer Holy of the Vatican, and with a position at the right hand of the Pope, a man who once again calls me friend. In this honor, a pamphlet describing my conclusions will be published in unheard of numbers by the Church itself. And furthermore, it has been agreed that my methodologies and my sciences, as we are now calling them, are to be administered through the Jesuit order and the holy offices of the Church.
I can only give thanks to the Lord for returning you to me, and by making of me a more perfect instrument by which to illuminate his heavens. With the proofs of science at our disposal, the Pope and I are confident we can heal the schism that has developed lately within the Church. We believe also that we have finally found a common language, or even a proving grounds, with which to win over the Hebrews, the Mohammedans, and scores of nonbelievers.
Glory to God and all his creations, foremost amongst them my most gifted daughter, Marie Celeste. Peace and understanding to us all. Amen.
Your most illustrious lord father,
G.G.
“Understanding may well reside within those computer files you threaten now, Brother. They may be of help to us, rather than harm,” says Rosenberg in cool, measured tones.
You don’t know if you can believe Rosenberg, if you should trust him, or his Inquisition. They’ve been a benign arm of the Church for centuries, but their history is that of ruthlessness beforehand. It doesn’t matter now, though. You’ve made up your mind with Saint Galileo as your example. You have purified yourself with fire, and with the click of a mouse you will repent. You choose the Church as Saint Galileo did, that is the test, and you will wait for divine inspiration to show you the correct way, as it did Saint Galileo, even if it be flawed.
Your thumb depresses the mouse button.
Click.
Rosenberg watches the computer screen flicker to life, watches the progress bar which indicates the data being wiped forever from the magnetic surface of its hard drive. You have made your choice, passed your test. Why then does Rosenberg seem so sad? Didn’t you choose correctly?
“It’s better, safer, this way,” you say.
“We should not have entrusted you with the Holy Galileo letters,” he answers. “As their curator, you have fallen victim to Saint Galileo’s same mistake.”
“No, I haven’t. I’ve forsaken my pride in favor of the Church. I have no intention of pursuing my theories or proving them, not as Saint Galileo attempted.”
“And that is your mistake. The Inquisition is as its name states, an office of inquiry. Scientific or spiritual, they are the same. The Inquisition’s objective is to enlighten, to discover and disseminate the truth. By abandoning your hypothesis, one possible truth, you do a disservice to us all. Saint Galileo’s error was in his inability to accept possibilities, in his insistence that his was the one and only truth. The Church fell victim to this same error, in its own way, until its truth finally agreed with Galileo’s at the time of his ultimate discovery. The same truth you feel you now threaten. But the Church has since learned from this episode, as it appears you have not.”
“I don’t understand,” you say honestly.
“God is infallible, but man’s interpretation of God is not. Only once this is accepted can the scientific search for understanding share a common goal with religion.”
“But you know the Scripture. Doesn’t the Book of Job warn us specifically against just this kind of arrogant attempt at understanding God’s creation?”
“That is one interpretation. The one the Church prefers, the one that has united the world, is that Job invites us to attempt to understand that which we may never fully grasp. Job invites us to learn, to fail, and to succeed. Your theories may well do so in someone else’s hands, if not your own.”
Rosenberg motions at the doorway. An acolyte in tech robes, a battery pack b
elt attached to the parabolic antenna in his hand, slides into view. You realize they have it all now. Your computer’s magnetic hard drive reads and writes information using Modified Frequency Modulation techniques just like any FM broadcast and, given the proper equipment, is detectable just like any other radio signal. They have your work, every bit of your data; they read it on the first pass of the wipe. Rosenberg knew he’d get it one way or another, even without you. It was a test of your faith all along, a test of your faith in the Church and its offices.
“I failed,” you say, embarrassed and ashamed.
“Your faith is weak,” says Rosenberg in a formal tone, about to give sentence. “Do you accept the penance I now charge you with through the office of this Holy Inquisition?”
“I do.”
“You are to continue to illuminate this, your hypothesis, without fail. And as you progress, you are to report regularly to this Holy Office. This, in addition to the penances demanded of you by our Holy Father at your next audience.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, Brother,” Rosenberg’s tone and posture soften. “Many of us seek divine enlightenment our entire lives, with little success. I myself have never been so blessed. Please share with me one thing now. What was your inspiration? What are these stories of balloons?”
You consider explaining, but instead you reach into your pocket, the better to show him. Rosenberg watches you remove the deflated balloon, the one you had decorated with polka-dots for Brother Al-Fahudi’s party. He watches you put the balloon to your mouth, and he watches you inflate it slowly. Through the distorted membrane of the balloon’s yellow skin you see Rosenberg’s expression turn from puzzlement to wide-eyed realization. The balloon expands, the dots on its surface move apart, all moving away from each other, all at once across its expanding surface, with none at its center.
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