Chronica (5 page)

"My faith in your power of reason has not been misplaced," Bellarmine replied.

Galileo read for about another hour, then rose. "The
kaweh
has apparently excited not only my mind but my digestive system. I must—"

"Of course." Bellarmine rose, and the two left the room.

***

Hakam, who was talking to Ruggero outside the room, accompanied Galileo to an indoor facility.

"The armed guards left a while ago," Ruggero informed Bellarmine. "I believe I heard them speaking in Latin, in a dialect not familiar to me."

Bellarmine raised an eyebrow.

Galileo returned with Hakam a few long minutes later. "I think I have read enough," Galileo said, with fatigue.
 

"Good," Bellarmine replied. "Back in Rome, I am sure that your friends are thinking we have been torturing you, or have killed you, or are threatening to do one or the other if not both. It would be helpful if you could show your face and assure everyone that you are unharmed."

"But I am not unharmed," Galileo said. "My intellect has been stretched to the breaking point, perhaps beyond. I will never be the same."

"This is the price we pay for knowledge, is it not? This is the price you want the whole world to pay – a world of people with intellect far weaker than yours – when you offer your theories, which you are so sure are true, about the Earth and the heavens. Except, you are not so sure now, are you."

"No, I am not," Galileo admitted.

"Let us take our leave," Bellarmine said in Turkish to Hakam. "We are grateful for your kindness and hospitality."

Hakam nodded. Bellarmine, Galileo, and Ruggero left the coffee house. They walked five minutes towards the port, retracing their steps, and stopped at an inn. "This is a good place for a quiet repast and a good night's sleep," Bellarmine said to Galileo.

***

They boarded the ship for their return voyage to Rome the next morning. Galileo and Bellarmine talked about nothing other than what had happened the previous day at Hakam's coffee house.

"You need not worry about the survival of your soul," Bellarmine said softly to Galileo. "Others before you have seen those Instruments and their wonders, and survived quite well."

"Others? Who?" Galileo asked.

Bellarmine pondered for a moment. "Leonardo da Vinci saw those Instruments. I suppose there is no harm in telling you that."

"Yes, I could believe that," Galileo said. "He is rumored to have made sketches, extraordinary, of flying devices, and of machines that could live under the sea."

"The rumors are true," Bellarmine said.

"And where did the Instruments come from? You mentioned Heron, St. Augustine? How long have those Instruments been in Athens?"

"That I am unable to tell you, not because I do not want to, but because we honestly do not know," Bellarmine said. "Not everyone in the Church believes the St. Augustine account – even though it was given to me by a man who claimed to be St. Augustine, and at another time Heron of Alexandria, as I told you. But some of my brethren say Marco Polo brought one of the Instruments back with him from Cathay. I do not believe that. I suppose they are not too heavy for transport across land or sea, but there is nothing I have seen in the Instruments or what they have conveyed that suggests a provenance in the Orient."

"Which of your brethren know about this?" Galileo asked.

"Mostly Jesuits," Bellarmine answered, "and a few others."

"And how long have these Instruments been in Athens?" Galileo asked.

"Unknown," Bellarmine replied, "we believe many hundreds of years. The first definite record we have of them here is in 1357 AD. I have scrutinized the works of Aquinas from the century earlier but so far I have no indication that he knew of any future books or any conveyances like the Instruments. The first Churchmen who attempted to read the books could barely understand what they read. They of course were conversant with some of the references to the Ancients. But when they came upon you – Galileo Galilei – they had as much comprehension of you as you do of Albert Einstein."

Galileo trembled. "I understood not much of Einstein – most of his mathematics is far beyond me. But I grasped some of Isaac Newton, and from that vantage point, and what little of Einstein I could comprehend, I can see that my work is . . ."

Bellarmine nodded sympathetically.

"So much knowledge to be had there, in that room in Athens," Galileo said, rubbing his eyes. "Will I be permitted to return?"

"Perhaps," Bellarmine said. "We shall see."

"I must renounce my views of the cosmos? That is the price for my return to Athens? I would not necessarily be averse to that, given what I have seen, or what I think I have seen, of what the future thinks of my work."

"It is far more complicated than that, and the choice will not be mine alone," Bellarmine said.

"But even if I renounce what I have said, even if I publish not another word about my telescopic observations and their support of Copernicus, that will not stop others from following in the path I have started," Galileo said. "Even the Church lacks the power to erase what the printing press has already placed in the hands and minds of the world, or at least its scholars!"

"We do not want you to renounce anything – not now," Bellarmine replied. "Word of course eventually will indeed spread about your discoveries and your theories. We know that from the Instruments. We cannot stop that. Nor do we want to. What we want is to make sure, as much as possible, that word reaches the people at the right time, in the right way – when their souls are ready to accept it."

"But how?" Galileo asked.

Bellarmine put his hand on Galileo's shoulder. "Leave the details to us. You can continue writing and publishing as you have been doing – but try to take care to make sure you distinguish between science and its explanations, which change throughout history, and faith and its explanation of the way things truly are. In time, you will write your
Dialogo
– you have already read it, so you will have an advantage." Bellarmine smiled a beatific smile. "Who knows, perhaps some of our very discussions in the past few days will find their way into that fine book. But also take care not to include anything you have read from the future, because that would—"

Galileo nodded. "Yes. I understand."

"Do not worry," Bellarmine said. "We will provide you with instructions – detailing just when you should write your treatises, just when you should appear obstinate, just when you should give in. Leave it to us."

"Yes," Galileo said, still not trusting Bellarmine or the Church completely, still wary that all he had experienced in Hakam's coffee house was not somehow some ruse by the Church to control him, but vexed deeply enough by the Instruments and the books to accede to Bellarmine's requests at least for now.

[Rome, 1615 AD]

"A fine wine," Bellarmine said, and offered a glass to Barberini, the night after he, Galileo, and Ruggero returned to Rome.

"And a fine journey, too, judging by your countenance," Barberini replied. "I take it all went well with Galileo. I told you the Instruments were the best way to proceed."

"We must beware the deceptively easy wisdom of hindsight," Bellarmine said. "Our brethren showed Bruno the Instruments too, and his reaction was very different from Galileo's. He was uncontrollable. He had to be burned, as you know. Just a year after I became a Cardinal. That was sinful, I am sorry to say. It should never have happened. It must never happen again."

"But you seem sure that Galileo is on the right path," Barberini said.

"I am as sure as I can be of anything pertaining to the Instruments," Bellarmine replied.
 

Barberini looked at him with just the slightest quizzical expression, and bid his brother cardinal a good night. "You should sleep," Barberini told Bellarmine, "even successful journeys take their toll on the body and spirit."

Bellarmine closed his eyes after Barberini left, but his sleep was soon interrupted by Ruggero at the door. "Sorry to disturb your respite, Your Eminence," Ruggero said softly. "He wishes to talk to you."

Bellarmine nodded. He knew who the 'he' was. Ruggero left and Heron entered the room.

***

Bellarmine managed a smile and bid his visitor to sit. "Something to drink?" he asked, out of basic courtesy, though he had never seen Heron drink a drop in his presence.

"No thank you," Heron replied and sat. "But do not let me stop you."

"I have had enough for the evening," Bellarmine replied.

"Well, then," Heron said. "I came to inform you that your trip to Athens with Galileo apparently went very well."

"Apparently?" Bellarmine knew just what Heron was saying, but wanted to hear it from the time master's mouth.

"What Galileo read in Athens will temper his exuberance," Heron replied. "He will still put forth his telescopic evidence in favor of the Copernican system – which is, after all, an improvement over Ptolemy's
Almagest
, which had its usefulness – but Galileo will present his views in a more gradual way, which will not overly disturb the people, and will give your Church time to make this revolution in such fundamental thought a little less disruptive."

"And you know this because you have seen the results in the future," Bellarmine supplied the last line of this strange confession.

"Yes," Heron said.

"We owe you a debt of gratitude," Bellarmine said, truthfully.

"Might we discuss a way in which you could repay it?" Heron asked.

Bellarmine tried not to look surprised or put off. This was something he had not expected. "Of course."

"There is a woman at large who is bent on undoing all that I – and now, you – have done," Heron said.

"A woman?"
 

"Yes," Heron replied, "as dangerous to me as Joan of Arc was to the powers she opposed."

Bellarmine looked Heron in the eye. "Joan of Arc was found innocent, wrongly executed, and is a martyr to our Church, as surely you know."

"I invoke her name as an analogy of what one woman can do," Heron said, "not as someone equal in all respects to the woman who plagues me and my work. This woman also has no army at her command. But she is cunning and dangerous. I thought she died in 415 AD. But I have come to see I was wrong in that belief."

Bellarmine lowered his gaze, looked up at the ceiling, then back at Heron. "How can I help you?"

Chapter 3

[New York City, 2062 AD]

Sierra joined Max at a table near the edge of the main library in the Millennium Club, shaking her head no.

"Heron's work," Max said, darkly. "He's the only one with the power to do this, other than you, in the future – as far as you know."

Sierra now nodded, sat, and poured water for herself from a pitcher that kept the liquid at the precisely the best temperature for human consumption, regardless of the temperature in the room. She had attempted to set the sleek, time-bounding Chairs to 2262 AD, 200 years in the future, and several nearby times, somewhere she and Max could be for however long without running into themselves or anyone who knew them. But the Chairs wouldn't take those settings. "If I'm the one who blocked the Chairs from going to the future – from wherever I may be now in the future – that's even a better reason for not going anywhere near that time," she said.

"On the grounds that your future self knows better than you do now? That assumes that you're actually learning as you go along," Max added with a sarcastic chuckle. "The more we do this, the more I think Dylan was on to something literally true for us in 'My Back Pages' – I knew more when we started this than now."

"We've been at this three days," Sierra said, trying not to lapse into the self-pity that was always on the verge of being the time traveler's companion. "If we keep waiting for the line to the far future to open up, we may find the Chairs gone."

"Or additional Chairs in the room, with their passengers hunting for us in 2062."

"Exactly," Sierra said.

"So we go to the past?" Max asked.

"Let's wait one more day, and if the future is still blocked, yeah, we go to Mr. Appleton in 1896, a year after we left, and see if we can do anything to make this 2062 less . . . disconcerting than it is."

***

Sierra and Max climbed the spiral staircase to the room with the Chairs the next day. The two in which they had arrived a few days earlier were still glistening in the center of the room.

"I called my father one more time this morning, when you were sleeping," Max said suddenly. "I guess my way of saying goodbye."

"I'm glad you did," Sierra said, "but it's not necessarily goodbye."

"I know," Max said, hoarsely. "Nothing's definite about anything. He thought I was playing some kind of joke on him. Apparently my other self called him yesterday, and of course had no recollection of my call to my father a few days ago. My father asked me to stop it."

Sierra put down her bag with 1890s garb and took Max's hand. "That's part of why it's a good idea that we get out of this time, one way or the other."

She squeezed Max's hand, walked to one of the Chairs, and ran her fingers lightly over the inlaid digital controls. She shook her head no. "The future is still blocked. Should we try 1896?"

Max nodded, gave Sierra her travel bag, and sat in the second chair with his. The two decided on a specific time and date in 1896. Sierra synced the two Chairs, Max confirmed that the sync was engaged, and Sierra tapped the key on the control that would send the two chairs back to arrive at precisely the same time in 1896.

Bubbles ascended around each of them, they each had the sensation of a snowflake on their lips, and the bubbles receded.

[New York City, 1896 AD]

They took their time dressing in their 1890s clothing, appropriate for a couple in their late 20s in the Millennium Club. They helped each other with the hooks and buttons. Max gave Sierra an encouraging kiss on the neck and stepped back. "You look lovely, my dear," he said, with a reasonably good approximation of 1890s cadence.

Their plan was to get a room in the hotel they had stayed in the last time they had been here – just a week ago in their lifetimes – then call Appleton on one of those brand new spanking old phones to see if he was home, and, if he was, take a train from Grand Central, just down the block, up to Appleton's home in Wave Hill.