The Genius of Galileo

Galileo was, Clive quickly discovered, the most enthusiastic person he'd ever met. And Clive had met monkeys who treated bananas like religious artefacts.

"You must be an envoy from the cosmos!" Galileo said, circling Clive like a man examining a new species — which, to be fair, he was. "Sent to confirm my theories about the heavens!"

"I'm a sheep who fell through a hole in time," Clive said.

"Precisely! A cosmic messenger in humble form! The universe has a sense of humour!"

Clive couldn't argue with that.

Galileo's observatory was a mess. Lenses everywhere — on tables, on shelves, balanced on stacks of books. Parchment covered every surface, filled with drawings of moons and planets and mathematical notation that made Clive's eyes cross. In the corner stood a telescope, enormous and brass, pointed at the ceiling like a cannon aimed at God.

"I have observed the moons of Jupiter," Galileo said, practically vibrating with excitement. "Four of them! But the Church says I am wrong. They say the Earth is the centre of everything. I need proof, and you — you are my proof!"

"I'm not proof of anything," Clive said. "I can barely prove I'm not a sheep."

But Galileo wasn't listening. He shoved a piece of parchment and a quill into Clive's hooves. "Write! Draw! Show me the secrets of the cosmos!"

Clive looked at the blank parchment. He looked at the quill. He did what he always did.

He doodled.

Circles. Lines. A spiral that was supposed to be a snail but came out looking like an orbit. A dot in the middle that was supposed to be an eye but looked like a sun. And around it, smaller dots — four of them, because Clive's hoof slipped and made extra marks.

Galileo snatched the parchment. His eyes went wide. His hands trembled.

"This," he whispered. "This is a heliocentric model. The sun at the centre. The planets in orbit. And here — the four moons of Jupiter, exactly as I observed them!"

"That's a snail," Clive said.

"It's PROOF!" Galileo shouted, holding the parchment above his head like a trophy. "Irrefutable, cosmic, woolly proof! I shall call this the Clivean Model!"

"Please don't."

"THE CLIVEAN MODEL!" Galileo was already writing. Notes, annotations, references to Clive's "divine calculations." He worked with the speed of a man who'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

Clive wandered over to the telescope while Galileo scribbled. It was pointed at the ceiling, which seemed wrong. He nudged it — gently, he thought — and it swung toward the window, knocking over a basket of apples in the process.

One apple rolled across the floor, hit a stack of books, and launched off the edge of the table like a tiny, fruity cannonball. It arced through the air and landed in a bowl on the windowsill with a plonk.

Galileo spun around. "Did you see that? The trajectory! The parabolic arc! The gravitational—" He grabbed a fresh parchment and started drawing. "This confirms my theories about projectile motion!"

"An apple fell off a table," Clive said.

"SCIENCE!" Galileo corrected.

Over the next two days, Galileo became convinced that Clive was the greatest mind in history. Everything Clive did — scratching his ear, knocking things over, standing in front of the telescope at the wrong moment — was interpreted as a breakthrough.

"You see how he positions himself relative to the light source?" Galileo whispered to an imaginary audience. "He's demonstrating the principles of optics!"

"I'm trying to find a comfortable spot to nap," Clive said.

"OPTICS!" Galileo wrote furiously.

On the third day, Clive was eating an apple pie that Galileo's housekeeper had made — the one genuine perk of this whole situation — when the floor started vibrating. The lenses on the shelves rattled. The telescope swayed.

"Oh no," Clive said, recognising the feeling.

The wormhole opened in the corner of the observatory, smaller this time but just as insistent. Papers flew. Lenses rolled. Galileo clutched his parchments to his chest.

"The cosmos calls you home!" Galileo cried, his eyes shining. "Go, divine sheep! Your work here is done!"

"I didn't do any work!" Clive shouted as the wormhole grabbed him. "I DOODLED AND ATE PIE!"

"YOUR WISDOM SHALL SHAPE THE FUTURE!" Galileo's voice faded as Clive was pulled through. "CENTURIES FROM NOW, A GENIUS SHALL ARISE WHO INHERITS YOUR BRILLIANCE! THEY SHALL CALL HIM—"

The wormhole closed. Clive never heard the name.