Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson

the paucity of furniture, or the confusion and squalor of his place. In any case there she stood in the kitchen doorway wiping her hands, as beautiful as ever, even though the years had been hard on her. Black hair, black eyes, a face that still caught Galileo’s breath; the body he loved, her hand on her hip, washcloth flung over her shoulder.
    â€œI heard,” she told him.
    â€œI figured you would.”
    â€œSo—what now?”
    She watched him, expecting nothing. It wasn’t like the time he had explained what their arrangement would be, sitting on the fondamenta in Venice with her five months pregnant. That had been hard. This was merely awkward and tedious. They hadn’t been in love formany years. She was seeing a man out near the docks on the canal—a butcher, he thought it was. He had what he wanted. Still, that look, that time in Venice—it shot through into this time too, it was still there between them. He had a particular sensitivity to looks, no doubt the result of growing up with Medusa for a mother.
    â€œThe girls will come with me,” he said. “Vincenzio is too young. He still needs you.”
    â€œThey all need me.”
    â€œI’m taking the girls to Florence.”
    â€œLivia won’t like it. She hates your place. It’s too loud for her, there are too many people.”
    Galileo sighed. “It will be a bigger place. And I won’t be taking in students anymore.”
    â€œSo now you’re a court creature.”
    â€œI am the prince’s philosopher.”
    She laughed. “No more compasses.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    They both went silent, thinking perhaps about how his compass had been an ongoing joke between them.
    â€œAll right then,” she said. “We’ll be in touch.”
    â€œYes, of course. I’ll keep paying for this place. And I’ll need to see Vincenzio. In a few years he’ll move to Florence too. Maybe you can move to Florence then too, if you want.”
    She stared at him. She could still flay him with a look. The tightness at the corners of her mouth reminded him of his father, and he felt a stab of remorse, thinking that maybe now he was the Giulia. A horrible thought—but there was nothing for it but to nod and take his leave, the back of his neck crawling under the heat of that fiery gaze.
    All during this time he continued to make his nightly observations, and to spread the word concerning the usefulness of his glass. Occhialino, visorio, perspicillum—different people called it different things, and he did, too. He sent excellent glasses to the Duke of Bavaria, the Elector of Cologne, and Cardinal del Monte, among other nobles of court and church. He was now in the service of the Medici, of course, but the Medici would want the capabilities of his glass advertisedto as many of the powers in Europe as possible. And it was important to establish the legitimacy of what Galileo had reported in his book by having it confirmed in other places by influential figures. He had heard there were people like Cremonini refusing to look through a glass, and others claiming his new discoveries were merely optical illusions, artifacts of the instrument itself. Indeed, he had suffered an unfortunate demonstration in Bologna, when he had tried to show the famous astronomer Giovanni Magini the Medicean Stars, and only been able to see one himself—which may have been because three were behind Jupiter, but it was a hard case to make, especially with the odious Bohemian climber Martin Horky there smirking at every word, obviously delighted that things weren’t going as planned. Afterward he heard that Horky had written to Kepler telling him that the visorio was a fraud, useless for astronomy.
    Kepler was experienced enough to ignore backstabbing by such a loathsome toad, but his characteristically long and incoherent letter in support of Galileo’s discoveries, published as a book