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  "In the end, our Holy Church had to kill Giordano Bruno," Barberini said. "Still, the result need not be the same with Galileo. He is a different kind of man – more practical, more of a scientist than a mystic like Bruno. He may see a different kind of lesson in the Instruments."

  "No," Bellarmine insisted. "I will not have it."

  Barberini permitted himself the slightest of smiles.

  ***

  "You are a stubborn man," Bellarmine said to Galileo.

  "Stubbornness has nothing to do with this, Your Eminence," Galileo replied. "Truth is what this is about. I can say 'the Earth does not move,' as easily as the next man. But if, in truth, the Earth does move, then it matters not what I say. For in time others will make the same observations as I, and they will say that the Earth does move. And where will our Holy Church be then?"

  Bellarmine was at least heartened to hear Galileo refer to the Church as 'our,' even if this plural possessive pronoun likely came with some measure of sarcasm on the astronomer's tongue. "You are stubborn because you assume that future telescopes, perhaps with power far greater than yours, will see the same things in the heavens as your device," Bellarmine answered. "But how can you be sure of that?"

  "I am not sure of that," Galileo said. "Devices change, and so then does the knowledge they produce."

  "Precisely," Bellarmine said. "The only thing constant in this world is the Lord's word, and the only constant path towards that is the Church's teaching."

  "Yes, but if observations conducted through device A contradict the Church's teaching, then even though device A may be improved upon at some future time by device B, ought we not at least consider the evidence presented by device A at this time?"

  Bellarmine looked away. "Devices," he said at last. "Believe me, there are more devices in this Universe than you with or without your telescope have ever imagined."

  Galileo squirmed. "Are you referring to the Instruments? Do you seek to intimidate me by intimations of your Instruments of Torture?"

  Bellarmine said nothing.

  "I am a weak vessel," Galileo continued. "I might well sooner lie about what I know to be true than be subjected to your torture. But what would that gain you in the end? Do you suppose you can torture the whole world – impose your will on every human eye that looks at the heavens through a lens?"

  "I was hoping you might be persuaded, not by torture, but by reason itself, to see the dangers in the way you proselytize your theories," Bellarmine replied. "I was hoping that once so convinced, we might even enlist you to help in our cause – explain to the world that, although science always progresses, always changes, the soul and its place in the Universe remains constant, remains forever, and our Holy Church is the only reliable guide to that."

  "Forgive me, Eminence – but I fear it is the Church that is treading on the domain of science here, not vice versa, in your insistence that the Earth is the unmoving center of the Universe. And you have no evidence that the Copernican theory, which my telescopic observations support, is wrong."

  Bellarmine sighed. "Suppose I showed you evidence."

  Galileo scoffed. "Where, in the Holy Bible?"

  "No," Bellarmine said very quietly. "In Instruments perhaps ultimately not unlike your telescope – Instruments that offer vision far deeper than your telescope. Dangerous Instruments – far more dangerous than your telescopes." He wrung his hands. "I had hoped not to have to speak to you of this. But I see there is no other way."

  Galileo shuddered. "You are speaking to me again of torture? Of burning out my eyes?"

  "No, not of torture – at least, not of physical torture, I assure you," Bellarmine replied. "I would invite you to accompany me on a journey."

  "To the torture room?" Galileo asked, still not convinced.

  "To the city of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle," Bellarmine replied. "To Athens."

  ***

  Galileo complained every hour he was awake, which was most of the seven-day voyage by sea from Rome to Athens. "I don't like this kind of travel at this time of year," he said to Bellarmine after he had thrown up his latest meal overboard, "but I fear my life depends upon it."

  "I am bringing you to Athens to learn," Bellarmine replied. "You of all people should welcome that."

  Their ship entered the Port of Athens without incident. It bustled with international trade under Ottoman rule. Galileo was still complaining. "The Turks have telescopes, but to them they are just toys. They have no idea what they are looking at when they point them at the sky."

  The two disembarked with Bellarmine's servant Ruggero – a priest about thirty with the build of a Swiss Guardsman who had accompanied them on the voyage. He carried Bellarmine's and Galileo's belongings, as well as a number of knives.

  The weather was mild. "Our destination is about ten minutes on foot," Bellarmine said.

  Galileo nodded. "I would welcome a walk on solid earth after all of those days at sea."

  [Athens, 1615 AD]

  They arrived at Hakam's coffee house about fifteen minutes later. Galileo had stopped several times to divest his sandals of pebbles. "They serve a wonderful heated beverage they call kaweh – which means 'vigor'," Bellarmine explained. "The taste is delicious, the aroma is from heaven, and it will indeed strengthen your constitution and sharpen your intellect."

  Galileo smiled fully for the first time in a week.

  "They name many of their coffee houses after Hakam, and their proprietors take his name," Bellarmine continued. "Someone by the name of Hakam is said to have opened the first coffee house in Constantinople about sixty years ago."

  Ruggero walked into the coffee house alone, while Bellarmine and Galileo waited outside. The servant came out a few minutes later, and pronounced Hakam's safe to enter.

  The three walked into a dimly lit room, vivid with tobacco smoke and coffee and a cascade of Greek, Turkish, and Arabic voices. Galileo's eyes watered with pleasure. Bellarmine said something to Ruggero, who nodded and approached a well-dressed Ottoman on the far side of the room.

  "Would that be Hakam?" Galileo asked.

  "Presumably, or his assistant at very least," Bellarmine replied.

  Ruggero returned with Hakam, who smiled, bowed extensively to Bellarmine, and ushered the three to a table. Ruggero thanked Hakam and passed him some coins.

  "I took the liberty of procuring a cup of kaweh for you," Bellarmine said to Galileo.

  "Thank you," Galileo replied. "It looks to be a very expensive beverage, judging by what your priest paid the proprietor."

  "Only a small part of that payment was for the kaweh," Bellarmine advised.

  ***

  Galileo insisted on a second cup of coffee, and wanted a third.

  "Too much at one time is not good," Bellarmine said. "It will not get you intoxicated like wine, but it will disaffect your humor."

  Galileo started to object–

  "And we have only a limited amount of time to see the room behind that wall." Bellarmine gestured to the wall against which Hakam was standing, sipping coffee himself, and alternately watching Bellarmine's table and a colorfully, scantily clad young woman who was slowly undulating her body.

  "I can see why he would find her of interest," Galileo said, appreciatively.

  Hakam, noticing Bellarmine's gesture, approached their table.

  "Is the room ready for us?" Ruggero asked Hakam, in Turkish.

  Hakam nodded and led the three to the far wall. He pressed his hand against a panel, which opened to reveal a key hole. Hakam produced a key and applied it to the hole. He pulled a door open, and waved Bellarmine, Galileo, and Ruggero into the room.

  "I will await outside, here with you," Ruggero said to Hakam, who nodded.

  ***

  Bellarmine and Galileo entered the room and closed the door behind them.

  The room was well lit, but Galileo could not locate the source of the light. It was not sunlight or flame, Galileo was reasonably sure. There was a chair in the center of the
room, glistening with all kinds of metallic and reflective elements.

  "This is the Instrument of which you spoke," Galileo said, "which you wished to show me?" He shuddered, easily imagining how he could be tortured in such a chair.

  "Yes," Bellarmine replied. "And this is one of the things the Instrument produced." Bellarmine picked up a bound book from a table near the glistening chair and gave the book to Galileo.

  The astronomer sat in one of two plain wooden chairs at the table. He stroked the book, narrowed his eyes, and gasped. The title read, Dialogo sopra i due massimi systemi del mondo. It was indicated as published by the presses of Landini, in Florence, in the year 1632 AD – 17 years in the future.

  Its author was Galileo Galilei.

  ***

  "Clever forgery!" Galileo exclaimed, half in anger, half in admiration. "Your scribes at the College seek to publish some confusing document under my name, and therein mislead the world about my real contentions!"

  "I think it is not a forgery," Bellarmine said, "or, at least, something not as simple as a forgery. I think you will agree, if you continue reading."

  But Galileo turned away from the text, and focused instead on Bellarmine. "It is a Dialog about the Two Chief World Systems, purportedly written by me, except I did not write it. Therefore, it is a forgery."

  Bellarmine shook his head no. "I think you would do better to say not that you did not write it, but you did not write it yet."

  "Preposterous," Galileo said. "How could you possibly know that?"

  "Would it surprise you to know that I read your Sidereus Nuncius, produced via that very Instrument at which you have just been staring, in 1599, the year Clement VIII made me a Cardinal – a good decade before you would even make the observations with your telescope that would form the basis of that essay you published in 1610?"

  "Produced as in printed, as by Gutenberg's marvelous press?" Galileo asked.

  "No, not printed by this Instrument per se," Bellarmine said. "But the Instrument made your printed books possible for me to read, by a process far more marvelous than the press."

  "Forgive me, Eminence – but none of this makes sense. It cannot be true that you read a text of mine before I even wrote it!"

  "I assure you it is," Bellarmine said. "You see, I have been an admirer of your work – albeit secretly – for quite some time. Perhaps even longer than you."

  Galileo harrumphed, and returned his attention to the book. "Why did I need to travel to Athens with you to see this? Not that I minded the hot beverage and other things in that room outside." Galileo smacked his lips. "But you obviously have been here before, knew about this book – why did you not just take this book back with you to Rome? Surely it would be more safe there in your keeping than here."

  "It is not permitted. The books must stay in this room."

  "Not permitted by whom?" Galileo asked.

  "I do not know with any assurance," Bellarmine replied. "I met him three times. He said to me at one point that he was St. Augustine. At another that he was Heron of Alexandria."

  Galileo's eyes widened. "The author of Catoptrica, about reflecting surfaces?"

  "I believe so. Yes," Bellarmine said. "He also spoke of Ptolemy, but of meeting and knowing him, not being him."

  Galileo shook his head in disbelief. "I would suffer even your instruments used for torture in return for a conversation with Ptolemy, were that in the remotest sense a real possibility. But your informant is clearly a lunatic."

  "There is no way I can conclusively prove at this instant what I am telling you," Bellarmine allowed, "not about seeing Sidereus Nuncius in 1599, eleven years before you wrote it, not about the legitimacy of your authorship of the Dialogo that you see before you now, which apparently requires seventeen more years before it comes into being in the world outside of this room. And not about the Instrument you also see before you, and the man who claimed to use it to bring those and other books to me."

  "Other books from the future?" Galileo asked. "I still do not believe that."

  "Yes, from the future," Bellarmine replied. "But they are no longer in this room. He is concerned about leaving them here, for the same reason he does not want them to leave this room. He wants to avoid 'contamination of the future' – those were his very words."

  "But he had no concern about me seeing this Dialogo," Galileo said.

  "No concern," Bellarmine said. "In fact, he wanted me to bring you here, to show you this book."

  Galileo raised an eyebrow.

  "He has a plan for you," Bellarmine said—

  The conversation was interrupted by a flashing light and a strange sound in the room.

  "We must leave," Bellarmine said. "The light and the sound are a signal that we must vacate the room."

  Galileo looked again, very intently, at the book on the table. He had opened it to the first page, and he turned now to the second.

  "You cannot take that with you," Bellarmine reminded Galileo. "If you do, Hakam will stop you."

  Galileo looked at the second page another minute, then nodded and closed the book. "I understand. I needed to make sure this book was really written by me – I know my own thought and my own writing."

  "And was it?" Bellarmine asked, also wanting the answer to that question.

  Galileo rose. "It is impossible. But I believe it was."

  ***

  The two opened the door. Hakam bade the two to leave the room, which they did. Hakam closed the door behind them and locked it with his key.

  Ruggero and Hakam had been joined by two tall men of rugged build, armed with swords. They stood on either side of Hakam, with their backs to the door, and their eyes fixed on Galileo, Bellarmine, and Ruggero.

  "Did we commit some offense?" Bellarmine asked Ruggero in Italian, which he reckoned was the least likely of his tongues to be understood by Hakam. The armed men and Hakam stood impassively – whether in courtesy or lack of understanding of Bellarmine's words, it was impossible for him to tell.

  "I do not believe so," Ruggero replied in the same language. "I think Hakam only wants to insure that you do not enter the room at this juncture. He says it is a question of your safety."

  "I understand," Bellarmine replied. He looked at Hakam. "May we sit at a table and have more of your delicious kaweh?" Bellarmine asked Hakam, in Turkish.

  "Certainly," Hakam replied, and pointed with a smile to an open table on the other side of the room. Hakam beckoned another man, of average height, and instructed him to show his honored guests to the table across the room and bring them more kaweh. The two armed men stood by the door, expressionless.

  The four reached the table, and Hakam's man bowed with a flourish and receded.

  "Yes," Bellarmine told Galileo. "You can have one more cup of coffee."

  Galileo smiled broadly.

  ***

  "Why is it unsafe to stay in the room with the Instrument," Galileo asked, after their coffees arrived.

  "From what I understand, the signal was telling us that another Instrument was soon to arrive, to materialize, in the room," Bellarmine replied. "And that arrival greatly disturbs the air in the room – charges it like a bolt of lightning – with the consequence that anyone inhabiting the room at that moment is put at risk."