Galileo's Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the line to see for themselves. Every Venetian holding in the eastern Mediterranean was subject to attack by Turks and Levantine pirates. Individual ships, fleets, coastal towers, even fortress towns as formidable as Ragusa had suffered surprise assaults. Thus the rulers of Venice, all of them with naval experience of one sort or another, were now nodding to each other meaningfully, and circulating into the crowd surroundingGalileo to shake his hand, slap him on the back, ask for future meetings. Fra Micanzio and General del Monte in particular had worked with him at the Arsenale on various engineering projects, and their congratulations were especially hearty. They had first met him twenty years before, when they had brought him in to consider if there were ways the oars of their galleys could be reconfigured to give them more power, and Galileo had immediately sketched out analyses of the oars’ movement that considered their fulcrum to be not the oarlocks, but the water surface, and this surprising new perspective on the problem had in fact led to improvements in oarlock placement. So they knew what he was capable of. But this time del Monte was shaking his hand endlessly, and Micanzio was grinning, with eyebrows raised as if to say with a laugh, Finally one of your tricks will really matter!
    And at this moment, Galileo could afford to laugh with him. Galileo suggested to him that they time the interval between this observation of the fleet through the glass, and the moment when ordinary lookouts saw the ships with their unaided vision. The Doge overheard this and required that it be done.
    After that, Galileo had only to stand by the device and accept more congratulations, and point the thing to resight it if someone requested it. He drank their praise and he drank wine from a tall gold cup, feeling expansive and generous. The colorful throng around him, with its impressive percentage of purple, sparked memories of Carnivale—memories that gave every festive evening in Venice an aura of splendor and sex. Combined with the height of the campanile, and the beauty of the watery city below them, it felt like they stood on Olympus.
    On the winding way back down the campanile stairs, Galileo was joined on one dark landing by the stranger, who then clomped down the iron stairs beside him. Galileo’s heart leaped in his chest like an animal trying to escape. The man was dressed in black, and must have lurked in waiting for Galileo, like a thief or an assassin.
    â€œCongratulations on this success,” the man said in his hoarse Latin.
    â€œWhat brings you here?” Galileo asked.
    â€œIt seems you listened to what I told you before.”
    â€œYes, I did.”
    â€œI was sure you would be interested. You of all people. Now I will return to northern Europe.” Again:
Alta Europa
. “When I come back to your country, I will bring a spyglass of my own, which I will invite you to look through. Indeed I invite you now.” Then, when Galileo did not reply (they were nearing the bottom of the stairs and the door to the Piazzetta), he said, “I invited you.”
    â€œIt would be my pleasure,” Galileo said.
    The man touched the case Galileo carried from his shoulder. “Have you used it to look at the moon?”
    â€œNo—not yet.”
    The man shook his head. If his face was a blade, his nose was its sharpened edge, long and curved, tilted off to the right. His big eyes gleamed in the stairwell’s dim light. “When you achieve a power of magnification of twenty or thirty times, you will find it really interesting. After that, I will visit you again.”
    Then they reached the ground floor of the campanile, and walked together out onto the Piazzetta, where they were interrupted by the Doge himself, waiting there to escort Galileo back to the Signoria: “Really, my dear Signor Galileo, you must do us the honor of returning with us to the Sala del Senato to