Some women clearly believed that their parts unadorned were attractive enough—a theory Galileo found he agreed with, no matter how much his eye was at first drawn to the variously bejeweled or threaded nests of hair framing startlingly revealed labia—while the men were both more obtrusive and less interesting to him, by the nature of his inclinations. And the ones with their sporty priapic erections looked after a time very suspicious, as if their owners had had recourse to some kind of effective aphrodisiac. Galileo did not like the obsequiousness of dogs either.

As he and Hera made their way through this dance, he frequently glanced sideways at her. Surely the mere fact of this carnival custom meant there still existed concepts of decorum that could be turned on their head; that was what Carnivale was for, a release of restraint, an overturning, a misrule, an upwelling of whatever was repressed by the everyday. But Hera appeared unabashed by her nakedness, or his, or anyone else’s. She spoke with acquaintances, introduced Galileo to some but not to others, all with the same demeanor she usually exhibited, severe but attentive. That this could be seen even on an eagle’s face was indicative of some quality in her nature. Behind her, outside the long curving windows that held them in their orbit, the Third and Fifth Rings of Valhalla arced to the close horizons as if looking in at them. Taken all together it was a strange sight.

“Is there a Lent to follow this Carnivale?”

“Some period of penance, you mean? No, I don’t think there is.”

Then as they continued their promenade among the perfect animal-headed humans, Galileo spotted a real tiger, which gave him a huge start. No one else was paying any particular attention to it, and the tiger did not seem to notice the humans. Soon after that Galileo spotted a trio of giant white-furred bears, awesome to witness, and then a troop of baboons. A stag, a wolverine … All the creatures were relaxed and oblivious, as if the people there were only another kind of animal in some peaceable kingdom, where all together went boldly on their way, and where humans, with their skin so luminous, their long muscles so smooth, the women’s figures so curvy, constituted somehow a natural royalty, even in such a magnificent host of beasts. The women of this world, he noted, were not like those of his time, or the female figures in Greek and Roman statues; they were longer-limbed, broader-shouldered. Humanity itself had changed over the centuries. And why not? It was almost four thousand years since the Greeks; and they were walking on one of the moons of Jupiter.

As they continued their circumnavigation, he noticed that the air was turning blue around them, and it felt humid. “Your head will allow you to breathe no matter the medium,” Hera told him. “Be ready to swim.”

Then suddenly, without any wall or other transition he could see, they were swimming, and far underwater at that. All the people ahead of them were horizontal, floating or swimming like fish in the sea. Water seemed to have coalesced around him, covering his piggish mask and filling his nostrils, and in a panic he stroked wildly upward, hoping for a surface.

“I told you, you can breathe,” Hera said to him, her usual rustic Tuscan still clear in his ears. “Your mask will help you. Just breathe, you’ll be fine.”

Galileo tried to reply, but he was too frightened to unclench his teeth. Finally, desperate for air, he breathed in water, and did not drown. It was air in his lungs, it seemed. He tried again and it was so. He was breathing air.

Hera was laid out horizontally now, stroking forward and away from him. He struggled to follow her, but he had never learned to swim, and in the blue liquid filling the gallery from floor to ceiling he could only flail, all the while tightening his buttocks so that his guts did not squirt out of his hernia. “Help!” he called through clenched teeth.

Hera heard him and stroked back gracefully, still holding their wet clothes in one hand. She then showed him how to move his arms, first straight and together ahead of him, then pulling out and back, like a turtle. It worked pretty well. And since he could breathe the water, it didn’t matter that he was slow. He followed her awkwardly, and could not help noting that when she kicked like a frog she briefly exposed her private parts in a startling way, like a mare pulsing in heat. He could not kick in the same way without spilling his guts.

Around him to left and right were not only swimming people and their masks, fur or feathers flowing wetly, but also some kind of rounded black bird that flicked by at great speed. Also a giant truncated fish, like a head without its body; and then dolphins, sinuous and supremely graceful; and something gray and rounded like a fat woman; and then a whole pod of enormous whales, black and smooth, their long flippers paddling lazily. Their eyes were as big as dinner plates, and seemed to regard the scene around them with intelligent curiosity. Soon after Galileo noticed them, a sound vibrated in his ear, a rising glissando that shot up and out of his range of hearing, then tore back down into it and dropped to a basso profundo so deep that his stomach vibrated uncomfortably. The low vibration was like the sound of the floor of the universe, buzzing its continuo under all.

With an effort he caught up to Hera’s side. “That’s the same cry we heard inside Europa,” he managed to say. Even talking did not seem to drown him. He breathed a few more times, tried it again. “Don’t you think?”

She tipped her head toward the whales. “Those are humpback whales,” she said. “They’re famous for their songs, which sometimes take them hours to sing. They can repeat them almost sound for sound. And it’s a strange thing, but their songs have been getting lower in tone ever since humans began recording them. No one knows why that is.”

“Could they be, I don’t know—in communication with the thing inside Europa?”

“Who knows? Everything is entangled, they say. What does your physics lesson from Aurora tell you?” And with a sharp pull she swam on.

He followed her, dodging the whales as best he could, watching the aquatic dance of the animals and the animal-headed humans. Growing confident in his breathing, he began to enjoy himself. He was struck by the beauty of all the ways creatures moved—all except for him, he had to admit. Even birds knew how to swim, indeed he saw that it was more natural to them than it was to people. Although these people could really swim. He tried to emulate them as best he could while still keeping his legs together. A bit of a dolphin kick seemed to work pretty well.

After a while Hera turned to him and said, “We’ll be crossing back into air soon. Take care.”

Which was all well and good, but what kind of care he was to take was completely unknown to Galileo, and in a moment he found himself falling, spilling and sliding down onto the wet floor of the gallery, gasping for air like a beached fish. Hera had landed on her feet, and was drying herself off before a blast of air, holding up their clothes before her. Galileo stood beside her and felt his body dry likewise in the hot wind pouring over them. Already he was somewhat habituated to her eagle head and statuesque white body. They were what they were. She was good to look at though. In her presence it was hard to imagine what else you might look at instead of her.

A person approached them with the grace of a dancer, smaller-breasted than most of the women, genitals some mix of female and male, the mask a head of a buzzard, wrinkled and droop-mouthed. Involuntarily Galileo drew his head back, and the buzzard laughed, a high giggle.

“Is this the Galileo?” it asked Hera, in what Galileo heard as Latin.

“I am Galileo,” Galileo answered sharply. “I can speak for myself.”