Galileo's Dream

by Kim Stanley Robinson

“Not at all, maestro! Don’t hit me. I just don’t know. It’s been too long.”

  “But you came to me with the Ganymede, you stay with me and watch me, you don’t go back to Jupiter—and you say you don’t know?” He bunched his fist.

  “I stay here because I have nowhere else. Cartophilus has to play his part. And now I’m used to it. I like it. It’s home. The sun, the wind, the trees and birds—you know. This is a real place. You can sit in the dirt. You yourself have noticed how removed they are up there. I don’t think I can go back to that. So, I’m stuck. I have nowhere that is really mine.”

  They stared at each other in the darkness. Galileo let his arm fall.

  Everything now changed. The Linceans were overjoyed at the opportunity that this new pope represented, what they called a mirabile congiunture. They begged Galileo to finish his treatise, which he was now calling Il Saggiatore. It was the word used to describe those who weighed gold and other valuables—The Assayer—but Galileo meant more than that by it, hoping to suggest the kind of weighing done by those who put all nature on the balance, like Archimedes. The Experimenter, one might say, or The Scientist.

  But The Assayer too, sure. In this case, he was weighing Sarsi’s Jesuitical arguments, and finding them wanting. Knowing Pope Urban VIII would be one of the readers of his book—its ultimate reader, its recipient, one might say—he began to write in a more literary and playful style, pastiching the pope’s own liberal writing. He considered what he loved in Ariosto, and took pains to do similar things. He had long since understood that all these debates were a kind of theater, after all.

  If Sarsi wants me to believe with Suidas that the Babylonians cooked their eggs by whirling them around in slings, I will do it, but I must add that the cause of this cooking of the eggs was very different from what he suggests. To discover the true cause, I reason as follows: “If we do not achieve an effect which others formerly achieved, then it must be that in our operations we lack something that was part of their success. And if there is just one single thing we lack, then that alone can be the true cause. Now we do not lack eggs, nor slings, nor sturdy fellows to whirl them; yet our eggs do not cook, but merely cool down faster if they happen to be hot. And since nothing is lacking to us except being Babylonians, then being Babylonians is the cause of the hardening of the eggs, and not friction of the air.” And this is what I wished to discover. Is it possible that Sarsi has never observed the coolness produced on his face by the continual rush of air when he is riding post? If he has, then how can he prefer to believe things related by other men as having happened two thousand years ago in Babylon, rather than present events which he himself experiences?

  Sarsi says he does not wish to be numbered among those who affront the sages by disbelieving or contradicting them. I say I do not wish to be counted as an ignoramus and an ingrate toward Nature and toward God. For if they have given me my senses and my reason, why should I defer such great gifts to the errors of some mere man? Why should I believe blindly and stupidly what I wish to believe, and subject the freedom of my intellect to someone else who is just as liable to error as I am?

  Finally Sarsi is reduced to saying with Aristotle that if the air ever happened to be abundantly filled with warm exhalations in the presence of various other requisites, then leaden balls would melt in the air when shot from muskets or thrown by slings. This must have been the state of the air when the Babylonians were cooking their eggs. At such times things must go very pleasantly for people who are being shot at.

  Ha ha! The Linceans laughed; they loved passages like this when Galileo sent them along for revision and approval. This was the first time Galileo had ever submitted drafts of a book to a committee of fellow philosophers, and though he found it frustrating, it was interesting as well. It was going to be a statement with the imprimatur of the Academy of Lynxes; it would have their backing, and with that it would enter the Roman intellectual wars, where the new was now battering the old into the ground. Cesi begged him to finish the book, and then come to Rome and rout the Jesuits utterly. Cesi would publish it in the name of the Linceans, and had already had the title page altered so that the book would now be dedicated to Urban VIII.

  Good surprises kept happening. Cesarini was made an official member of the Academy of the Lynxes, and four days later the new pope made him a cardinal. So a Lincean was now a cardinal! And the pope also appointed his own nephew Francesco to be a cardinal—that very same Francesco whom Galileo had just helped to obtain a teaching position at the university in Padua!

  Galileo began to believe Cesi: this was indeed a mirabile congiunture. It might even be possible to get Copernicus taken off the list. So he wrote more of his treatise every day. He sent letters to Cesi and the other Linceans, promising to finish the revisions they had suggested to him. Cesi had the publication scheduled in Rome. He urgently wanted Galileo to come to the capital. Galileo wanted it too. He made the request to Picchena to be allowed to go, and after some hesitations, Picchena and the Medici lady regents agreed to the plan. So preparations for another trip to Rome were made, and the book was almost finished.

  Near the end of Il Saggiatore, the first book Galileo had published since the ban of 1615, he dispensed with the sarcastic attacks on Sarsi, and made some philosophical points that were new. These would come back to haunt him later:

  I must consider what it is that we call heat, as I suspect that people in general have a concept of this which is very far from the truth. For they believe that heat is a real phenomenon, or property, or quality, which actually resides in the material by which we feel ourselves warmed. Now I say that whenever I conceive any material or corporeal substance, I immediately feel the need to think of it as bounded, and as having this or that shape, as being large or small in relation to other things, and in some specific place at any given time; as being in motion or at rest; as touching or not touching some other body; and as being one in number, or few, or many. From these conditions I cannot separate such a substance by any stretch of my imagination. But that it must be white or red, bitter or sweet, noisy or silent, and of sweet or foul odor, my mind does not feel compelled to bring in as necessary qualities. Without the senses as our guides, reason or imagination unaided would probably never arrive at qualities like these. Hence I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the consciousness. Hence if the living creature were removed, all these qualities would be wiped away and annihilated.

  Very deep stuff, and strangely—even suspiciously—ahead of its time; although at the same time, far behind the Jovians’ understanding of things. Galileo knew perfectly well that he was describing his state of mind before Aurora’s tutorials; that was something he wanted to do here, just to clarify his thoughts in their evolution. He wrote as he had always written. That it was also true that what he was calling effects of consciousness extended beyond heat and tickling and taste and colors to fundamental qualities like number, boundedness, motion or rest, location or time—that was something he knew but still could not feel. It remained a conundrum to him, part of the feeling of anachronism always disorienting him.

  That these sentences of Il Saggiatore could be construed as denying the reality of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, during the sacrament of Communion—that they were, in other words, according to the Council of Trent and the doctrinal law of the Holy Church, heretical statements—did not occur to Galileo, or to any of his friends and associates.

  But it did to some of his enemies.

  In the midst of all this excitement, and Galileo’s preparation for another journey to Rome, the weekly letter would arrive from Maria Celeste:

  As I have no bedroom of my own, Sister Diamanta kindly allows me to share hers, depriving herself of the company of her own sister for my sake. But the room is so bitterly cold, that with my head in the state it is in these days, I do not know how I
will be able to stand it there, unless you can help me by lending me a set of those white bed-hangings which you will not want now. I should be glad to know if you could do me this service. Moreover, I beg you to be so kind as to send me that book of yours which has just been published, so that I can read it, as I have a great desire to see what you have said.

  These few cakes I send are some I made a few days ago, intending to give them to you when you came to bid us adieu. Sister Arcangela is still purging herself, and is much tried by her remedies, especially the two cauteries on her thighs. I am not well myself, but being so accustomed to ill health, I do not make much of it, seeing too that it is the Lord’s will to send continual little trials like this. I thank Him for everything, and pray that He will give you the highest and best felicity. To close I send you loving greetings from me and from Suor Arcangela.

  Sire’s Most Affectionate Daughter,

  S. M. Celeste

  P.S. You can send us any collars that want getting up.

  Galileo heaved heavy sighs as he read this. He arranged to have blankets sent over to the convent, and with them a letter asking Maria Celeste if there was anything else he could do. He was sure to go to Rome sometime soon to meet with the new pope, he told her. He could ask the Sanctissimus for something for the convent, perhaps some land to generate income; perhaps a direct endowment, or some simpler form of alms. What did she think the nuns would like most?

  Maria Celeste wrote back to say that alms would be very well, but what they needed most was a decent priest.

  Galileo cursed when he read this. “Another priest. They need food!”

  Her letter went on to explain:

  Since our convent finds itself in poverty, as you know, Sire, it cannot satisfy the confessors when they leave by giving them their salary before they go. I happen to know that three of those who were here are owed quite a large sum of money, and they use this debt as occasion to come here often to dine with us, and to get friendly with several of the nuns. And, what is worse, they then carry us in their mouths, spreading rumors and gossiping about us wherever they go, to the point where our convent is considered the concubine of the whole Casentino region, whence come these confessors of ours, more suited to hunting rabbits than guiding souls.

  Galileo couldn’t be sure if she knew what hunting rabbits meant in Tuscan slang, or if she actually meant hunting rabbits; but he suspected the former, and laughed, both shocked and pleased at her sophistication.

  And believe me, Sire, if I ever began telling you all the absurdities committed by our present confessor, I should never be done, for they are as numerous as they are incredible.

  She was so smart. Surely she was her father’s daughter, for the acorn never fell far from the tree (except when it did, as with his son). Indeed it sometimes seemed to Galileo that Maria Celeste was the only sane and competent nun in the entire convent, carrying the other thirty on her slim shoulders, every day and every night: supervising the cooking, nursing their ills, making their preparations, writing their letters, and keeping her sister out of the wine cellar, which apparently was a new problem to add to all Arcangela’s others. Maria Celeste’s letters to Galileo were almost always written in the seventh or eighth hour of the day, which began at sunset, meaning she was getting only a couple of hours of sleep before the bell rang for compline, and their predawn prayers would begin. The relentless routine was beginning to tell on her, Galileo could see when he took his baskets of food over. She had no meat on her bones, there were always dark rings under her eyes, and she complained of stomach trouble; she was losing her teeth; and she was just twenty-three years old. He feared for her.

  And yet still her letters came, each one exhibiting intense care to make it shapely on the page, utilizing her characteristic clear hand with its big loops, and the flowing proud signature at the bottom.

  But so often filled with trouble. One morning Galileo watched himself opening her latest letter, full of a sudden dread, and started to read, then shouted with alarm. “Oh no! No! Jesus Christ! Pierrrrrrr-a! Fill a basket, and find Cartophilus and tell him to get Cremonini ready. Their mother abbess has gone mad.”

  This worthy was no longer Vinta’s sister but another woman—small, dark, and intense. “She’s slashed herself thirteen times with a kitchen knife,” Galileo told La Piera as he pulled on his boots, finishing Maria Celeste’s letter as he did so. “These people are not competent to live!” he exclaimed bitterly. “They need an income, some property, a trust—anything!”

  La Piera hustled off with a shrug; convents were like that, the shrug said. But she was angry too. “I’ll come along,” she said as she reappeared.

  On the way over the hills to San Matteo, it was easy to feel that all this had happened before, because it had. His feet had made the very track through the grass that they now followed. It all just kept happening. Sky as gray as rain.

  Over at San Matteo, they found things even worse than Maria Celeste had reported, which was not unusual, but this time far beyond anything previous. Not just the mother abbess but also Arcangela had lost her mind, and on the very same night. Arcangela had apparently heard the abbess screaming in her suicidal hysteria, and in response had begun banging her head against the wall of her room. She had done that until she fell insensible. Now she was conscious, but refusing to speak even to her own sister, who was clinging to Galileo’s arm now, red-eyed with fear and grief, frustration, and sleeplessness. All around her was nothing but weeping and lamentation, as all the sisters demanded her attention at once.

  Seeing it, Galileo lost his temper and said to them loudly, “It’s like a henhouse with a fox inside it, except there’s no fox, so you should all shut up! What kind of Christians are you anyway?”

  This last sentiment started Maria Celeste crying too, and Galileo enfolded her in his arms. They looked like a bear holding a scarecrow pulled from its pole. She wept on his broad chest, into his beard. “What happened?” he asked again helplessly. “Why?”

  She composed herself, and led him back to the dispensary as she told him the story. The mother abbess had been more and more anxious, upset about problems that she would not confess to anyone. At the same time, Suor Arcangela had stopped speaking entirely. The latter had happened before, of course, and although it was a cause for concern, there was nothing they could do about it, as they knew from long experience. “So we were limping along the best we could, when last night the full moon brought on a lunacy in the mother abbess. She was heard crying out, and when we went to her chambers to see what was wrong, we found her slashing her arms with one of the kitchen knives, and moaning. In the uproar we didn’t hear Arcangela yelling in her room,”—a private room that Galileo had paid for, to keep her out of the dormitory at night, where she had trouble sleeping, and disrupted the others as well. “When we finally heard Arcangela, I was the first one there, and I found her—pounding her forehead, hard, against the wall! The bricks had cut her and she was bleeding. It was a cut on the forehead, you know how those bleed. Her face was covered with it. And she still wouldn’t speak. It took four of us to get her to stop beating her brains out, and now she is restrained on her bed. She’s just begun to talk again. But all she does is beg to be let free.”

  “You poor girl.” Galileo followed the shivering Maria Celeste to his younger daughter’s room.

  Arcangela saw him in the doorway and turned her battered head away. She was tied to the mattress with innumerable strips of cloth.

  Then: “Please,” she begged the wall. “Let me go.”

  “But how can we,” Galileo asked her, “when you harm yourself like this? What would you have us do?”

  She would not answer him.

  After sunset, in the last hour of light, they headed back to Bellos-guardo. It was clear to all of them that no matter Maria Celeste’s courage and ability, they had left behind a convent in desperate disarray. On the trail over the hills, Galileo was full of heavy sighs. That night he sat at the table before his roast capon a
nd bottle of wine, and barely ate. La Piera moved around slowly, cleaning up with as little noise as possible.

  “Fetch Cartophilus to me,” Galileo said at last.

  A few minutes later the old man stood before him in the lantern light. Clearly he had been asleep.

  “What can I do, maestro?”

  “You know what you can do,” Galileo replied, with a look as black as any of Arcangela’s. The family resemblance in that moment was startling.

  Cartophilus knew when Galileo could not be denied. He ducked his head and nodded as he left the room.

  That night when Galileo was out on the back terrace, looking stubbornly through his telescope at his little Jovian clock in the sky, Cartophilus emerged from the workshop, carrying the pewter box that held the teletrasporta under one arm.

  “You’ll send me to Hera?” Galileo said.

  Cartophilus nodded. “I’m pretty sure she still has the other end of it.”

  When Cartophilus had prepared the box, Galileo stood next to it. He looked up at Jupiter, so bright up there near the zenith. Suddenly it bloomed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Fear of the Other

  In order to produce a significant shift in the collective psyche, it would require a great many more people than are at present able to integrate their animality into their conscious mind. At present, powerful women who reject the Eve complex, and males who are ridding themselves of misogyny, tend to trigger or inflame the misogyny of those caught in the Thanatos complex. There is simply not a powerful enough female or feminine object of the ego ideal to pull women away from the patriarchal archetypal structures that maintain misogyny, let alone pull men away. The next movement in the evolution of the collective psyche has to be a spiral return to the archetypal mother.