Galileo's Dream

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “Maybe so.”

  Galileo accepted the artisan’s hand, and hauled himself up. He surveyed the house, the workshop, the garden, all turning blue in the dawn light. It was like something. “Marc’Antonio,” he said, “do you think it’s possible that we could be doing something important?”

  Mazzoleni looked doubtful. “Nobody else does what you do,” he admitted. “But of course it may just be that you’re crazy.”

  “In my dream it was important.” Galileo stumped over to the couch under the portico and threw himself down on it, pulled a blanket over him. “I have to sleep.”

  “Sure, maestro. Those syncopes must be real tiring.”

  “Leave me instantly.”

  “Sure.”

  Mazzoleni left and he drifted off. When he woke again it was the cool of early morning, sunlight hitting the top of the garden wall. The morning glory was a well-named flower. The blue of the sky had pale sheets of red and white pulsing inside it.

  The stranger’s old servant stood there before him, holding out a cup of coffee.

  Galileo jerked back. On his face one could see the fear. “What are you doing here?” He began to remember the stranger’s appearance the night before, but little beyond that. There had been a big heavy spyglass that he had sat on his stool to look through…. “I thought you were part of the dream!”

  “I brought you some coffee,” the ancient one said, looking down and to the side, as if to efface himself. “I heard you had a long night.”

  “But who are you?”

  The old man shoved the cup even closer to Galileo’s face. “I serve people.”

  “You serve that man from Kepler! You came to me last night!”

  The old one glanced up at him, lifted the cup again.

  Galileo took it, slurped down hot coffee. “What happened?”

  “I can’t say. You were struck by a syncope for an hour or two in the night.”

  “But only after I looked through your master’s spyglass?”

  “I can’t say.”

  Galileo regarded him. “And your master, where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s gone.”

  “Will he return?”

  “I can’t say. I think he will.”

  “And you? Why are you here?”

  “I can serve you. Your housekeeper will hire me, if you tell her to.”

  Galileo observed him closely, thinking it over. Something strange had happened the night before, he knew that for sure. Possibly this old geezer could help him remember—or help him in whatever might come of it. Already it began to seem as if the ancient one had always been there.

  “All right. I’ll tell her. What’s your name?”

  “Cartophilus.”

  “Lover of maps?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you love maps?”

  “No. Nor was I ever a shoemaker.”

  Galileo frowned, then waved him away. “I’ll speak to her.”

  And so I came into the service of Galileo, intending (as always, and always with the same failure) to efface myself as much as possible.

  In the days that followed, Galileo slept in short snatches at dawn and after dinner, and every night stayed up to look through his spyglass at Jupiter and the little stars circling it, his curiosity now tweaked by an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. He marked the four moons’ positions each night using the notation I, II, III, and IV, with I being the closest to Jupiter in the orbits he was now untangling, and IV the farthest away. Tracking and timing their movements gave him an increasingly confident sense of how long each took to circle Jupiter. All the expected signs of circular motion seen edge-on had manifested themselves. It was getting clearer what was going on up there.

  Obviously he needed to publish these discoveries, to establish his precedence as discoverer. By now Mazzoleni and the artisans had made about a hundred spyglasses, but only ten of them were capable of seeing the new little planets; they became visible only through occhialini with magnifications of thirty times, and sometimes twenty-five when the grinding was lucky. (What else had been twenty-five or thirty times larger?) The difficulties in making a device this powerful reassured him; it was unlikely someone else would see the Jovian stars and publish the news before him. Still, it was best not to be slow about it. There was no time to lose.

  “I’m going to make those bastard Venetians really regret their offer!” he declared happily. He was still furious at the senators for questioning his honesty in representing the spyglass as his invention. He took pride in his honesty, a virtue he wielded so vigorously as to make it a fault. He also hated their measly raise, which was not even to start until the new year, and now was looking more and more inadequate. And really, through all the years in Padua—eighteen now—he had kept in the back of his mind the possibility of a return to Florence.

  Ignoring the little awkwardness that had developed the year before with Belisario Vinta, he wrote another florid note accompanying the finest spyglass he had, explaining that he was giving it to his most beloved student ever, now the grandissimo Grand Duke Cosimo. He described his new Jovian discoveries, and asked if it would be permissible to name his newly discovered little Jovian stars after Cosimo. And if so, if the grand duke would prefer him to name them the Cosmian Stars, which would merge Cosimo and Cosmic; or perhaps to apply to the four stars the names of Cosimo and his three brothers; or if they should together be named the Medicean Stars.

  Vinta wrote back thanking him for the spyglass and informing him that the grand duke preferred the name Medicean Stars, as best honoring the family and the city it ruled.

  “He accepted the dedication!” Galileo shouted to the household. This was a stupendous coup. Galileo hooted triumphantly as he charged around, rousing everyone and ordering that a fiasco of wine be opened to celebrate. He tossed a ceramic platter high in the air and enjoyed its shattering on the terrace, and the way it made the boys jump.

  The best way to announce this dedication to the world was to insert it into the book he was finishing about all the discoveries he had made. He pressed hard to finish; the combination of work by both day and night left him irritable, but it had to be done. At night, working by himself, he felt enormously enlarged by all that lay ahead. Sometimes he had to take a break and walk around in the garden to deal with the thoughts crowding his head, the various great futures looming ahead of him like visions. It was only during the days when he flagged, slept at odd hours, snarled at the household and all that it represented. Scribbled at great speed on his pages.

  He wrote the book in Latin so that it would be immediately comprehensible across all the courts and universities of Europe. In it, he described his astronomical findings in more or less chronological order, making it into a narrative of his discoveries. The longest and best passages were on the moon, which he also augmented with good etchings made from his drawings. The sections on the stars and the four moons of Jupiter were shorter, and mostly just announced his discoveries, which were startling enough not to need embellishment.

  He told the story of his introduction to the idea of the occhialino or perspicillum with some circumspection:

  About ten months ago, a rumor came to our ears that a spyglass had been made by a certain Dutchman, by means of which visible objects, although far removed from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen, as though nearby. This caused me to apply myself totally to investigating the principles and figuring out the means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument, and I achieved that result shortly afterward on the basis of the science of refraction.

  A few strategic opacities there, but that was all right. He arranged with a Venetian printer, Tomaso Baglioni, for an edition of 550 copies. The first page, an illustrated frontispiece, said in Latin:

  THE STARRY MESSENGER

  Revealing great, unusual, and remarkable spectacles,

  opening these to the consideration of every man,

  and especially of philosopher
s and astronomers;

  AS OBSERVED BY GALILEO GALILEI

  Gentleman of Florence

  Professor of Mathematics in the University of Padua,

  WITH THE AID OF A PERSPICILLUM

  lately invented by him,

  In the surface of the moon,

  in innumerable Fixed Stars,

  in Nebulae, and above all

  in FOUR PLANETS

  swiftly revolving about Jupiter at differing distances and periods,

  and known to no one before the Author recently perceived them

  and decided that they should be named

  THE MEDICEAN STARS

  Venice 1610

  The first four pages following this great proem of a title page were filled by a dedication to Cosimo Medici that was exceptionally florid even for Galileo. Jupiter had been in the ascendant at Cosimo’s birth, it pointed out; pouring out with all his splendor and grandeur into the most pure air, so that with its first breath Your tender little body and Your soul, already decorated by God with noble ornaments, could drink in this universal power…. Your incredible clemency and kindness … Most Serene Cosimo, Great Hero … when you have surpassed Your peers You will still contend with Yourself, which self and greatness You are daily surpassing, Most Merciful Prince … from Your Highness’s most loyal servant, Galileo Galilei.

  The book was published in March of 1610. The first printing sold out within the month. Copies circulated throughout Europe. Indeed its fame was worldwide. Within five years word came that it was being discussed at the court of the Chinese emperor.

  Despite this literary and scientific success, the Galilean household was still running at a loss, with Galileo’s time also massively overcommit-ted. He wrote to his friend Sagredo, I’m always at the service of this or that person. I have to eat up many hours of the day—often the best ones—in the service of others. I need a prince.

  On May 7, 1610, he wrote a follow-up inquiry to Vinta. He did not beat around the bush, but made it an explicit letter of application, a real piece of rhetoric. He requested a salary of a thousand florins a year, and sufficient free time to bring to completion certain works he had in progress. Glancing up at the dusty workbooks on the shelf to make sure he forgot nothing, he made a list of what he hoped to publish if he were given the time:

  Two books on the system and constitution of the universe, an overarching conception full of philosophy, astronomy, and geometry; three books on local motion, an entirely new science, as no one else ancient or modern has discovered the many amazing properties that I demonstrate to exist in natural and forced motions, which is why I may call this a new science discovered by me from its first principles; three books on mechanics, two pertaining to principles and foundations, one on its problems—and though others have written on this same material, what has been written to date is not one-quarter of what I will write, either in quantity or otherwise. I have also various little works on physical subjects, such as On Sound and Voice, On Vision and Colors, On the Tides, On the Composition of the Continuum, On the Motion of Animals, and still more. I will also write on military science, giving not only a model of what a soldier ought to be, but also mathematical treatises on fortification, the movement of troops, sieges, surveying, estimating distances and artillery power, and a fuller description of my military compass,

  —which is in fact my greatest invention, he did not add—a single device that allows one to make all of the military calculations I have already mentioned plus also the division of lines, the solution of the Rule of Three, the equalization of money, the calculation of interest, proportional reduction of figures and solids, extraction of square and cube roots, identification of the mean proportionals, transformation of parallelepipeds into cubes, determination of proportional weights of metals and other substances, description of polygons and division of circumferences into equal parts, squaring of the circle or any other regular figures, taking the batter of scarps on walls—in short it was an omnicalculator, able to make any computation you could want, despite which hardly anyone has noticed its existence, and even fewer bought one, so stupid was the common run of humanity!

  But that was not germane, even though the reaction to his compass still galled him and was one of the events driving this whole move back to Florence. It wasn’t a good subject to bring up, so he only moved to his conclusion:

  Finally, as to the title and the scope of my duties, I wish in addition to the name of Mathematician that His Highness adjoin that of Philosopher. Whether I can and should have this title I shall be able to show Their Highnesses whenever it is their pleasure to give me a chance to deal with this in their presence with the most esteemed men of that profession,

  —such as they are, being for the most part grossly overpaid Peripatetic idiots!

  Reading over the final flourishes, and looking at the red leather of their best spyglass yet, embossed in gold with typical Florentine and Medici figures, it seemed to him that the opportunities being offered to any potential patron were too great to decline. What an application! Even the transport case into which everything was loaded for the Florentine courier was beautiful. Who could say no to such a thing?

  And, in fact, on May 24, 1610, a reply from Vinta came to the house behind the church of Santa Giustina, the house on Via Vignali where they had all lived and worked together for eighteen years. Grand Duke Cosimo, Vinta wrote, accepts your services.

  Galileo wrote to accept the acceptance on May 28. On June 5, Vinta wrote back, confirming that his title would be “Chief Mathematician of the University of Pisa and Philosopher to the Grand Duke.”

  Galileo wrote back in turn, asking that his title be revised to “Mathematician and Philosopher to the Grand Duke.”

  He also requested that he be absolved of any further obligation to his two brothers-in-law arising from defaults on dowry payments for his sisters. That would allow him to go home without the inconvenience of embarrassing lawsuits from those disgusting chiselers, or the possibility of arrest. He would go up to them in the streets and say to them, “I am mathematician and philosopher to the Grand Duke, go fuck yourselves.”

  And all this was agreed to in his formal appointment of July 10, 1610. The new service to Cosimo was to begin in October. It was understood to be a lifetime appointment.

  He had a Prince.

  The move from Padua to Florence was complicated, and what had never been more than controlled chaos at Hostel Galileo fell into utter chaos. Among other more practical tasks, Galileo had to deal with a lot of hard feelings in Padua and Venice. Many of the Venetian pregadi were outraged to hear he was walking out on his acceptance of their recent offer, calling it gross ingratitude and worse. The procurator Antonio Priuli was particularly bitter. “I hope I never lay eyes on that ungrateful asshole again!” he was said to have shouted, and of course this was quickly reported to Galileo. And it wasn’t just Priuli; the anger was widespread. It was obvious Venice would never again offer him employment. He had cast his lot with Florence, and, people said grimly, it had better go well for him there, or else.

  Galileo gritted his teeth and forged on with the chores of the move. This reaction was to be expected, it was just part of the price he had to pay to get patronage. It was a sign that the Venetians had valued him and yet taken advantage of him, and knew it and felt guilty about it, and as people would always rather feel angry than guilty, the transmutation of the one to the other had been easy. It had to be his fault.

  He focused on practical matters. Merely boxing up the contents of the big house took weeks, and just at a time when his astronomical work was at a crucial point. Happily that was night work, so that no matter the loud and dusty tumble of days, he could always wake up after an evening meal and a nap, settle down on his stool, and make his observations through the long cool nights. This meant forgoing sleep, but as he had never been much of a sleeper anyway, often existing for months at a time on mere snatches, it did not really matter. And it was all too interesting to stop. “W
hat must be done can be done,” he would say hoarsely to Mazzoleni as he flogged them through the afternoons. “We can sleep when we’re dead.” In the meantime, he slept whenever it was cloudy.

  The household therefore avoided him in the morning, when he was often abusive, and even at the best of times a bit befuddled and melancholy. He would throw things at anyone foolish enough to bother him in the couple of hours it took to pull himself together, and out of what looked like deep sleep he could kick with vicious accuracy.

  Once up, groaning and yawning on his bed, he broke his fast on leftovers, then took a walk in his garden. Pulled a few weeds, plucked a lemon or a cluster of grapes, then went back in to face the day: the move, the correspondence, the students, the accounts, the catering. A long dinner or supper usually included sugared ravioli, veal, great pies filled with pork, chicken, onions, garlic, dates, almonds, saffron and other spices, then also salads and pasta, all washed down with wine and ending with chocolate or cinnamon. At night, everyone else would collapse into bed while he went out to the terrazzo alone and made his observations, using spyglasses they had constructed back in the spring; there would be no more improvements made until he was settled in Florence.

  But before that, of course, there was Marina to attend to. Ever since she had gotten pregnant, Galileo had provided her with the funds to rent and keep a little house on the Ponte Corvo, around the corner from his place, so that he could sometimes drop off the girls on the way to his lectures at Il Bo. Now Virginia was ten, Livia nine, and Vincenzio four. They had spent their whole lives between the two houses, although the girls were mostly in Galileo’s big place, being taken care of by the servants. Now decisions had to be made.

  Galileo stumped down to the Ponte Corvo unhappily, readying himself for the inevitable tongue-lashing. He was a barrel of a man with a red beard and wild hair, but now he looked small. At moments like these, he could not help remembering his poor father. Vincenzio Galilei had been the most henpecked, pussy-whipped pancake of a husband in the history of mankind. He had felt the lash daily; Galileo had seen it with his own eyes. Marina was nothing compared to the old dragon, who was an educated woman and knew just where to stick the knives. Indeed, Giulia was even now a more fearful presence to Galileo than Marina, no matter Marina’s black gaze, her cobalt-edged tongue and thick right arm. He had heard so many harangues in his life he was an expert at them, a connoisseur, and there was no doubt the old rolling pin was champion of the world. His father’s hung head, the tightness at the corners of his mouth—the way he would pick up his lute and hit its strings, playing tunes double time and fortissimo, even though this only served as accompaniment to Giulia’s dread arias, which were louder by far than the lute—these scenes were all too clear in Galileo’s mind, if he did not avoid them.