She found him drifting, one hand holding him steady, the long frail body looking worn out in the bad light. It looked even worse in good light, she knew. Bones like dried sticks and his flesh hanging loose, spotted with benign moles too numerous to count. The cleansing effects of light? She'd always wondered where a committed night-owl had found time and the opportunity to abuse his skin. More than a century old, and the postdoc felt her customary fear of ending up like him. Lost looks; diminished energies. And she wasn't an authentic genius like him. No residual capacities to lean against, the great long decline taking its toll--
"Yes?" said the astronomer. "What is it?"
She cleared her throat, once and again, then asked, "Are you all right, sir? We were wondering."
"I bet you were," he replied. Only then did he take his eye off the eyepiece, the haggard face grinning at her. "Well, I'm fine. Just got tired of the noise, that's all."
She didn't know how to respond. Leave now? Perhaps she should leave, if he wanted quiet.
But when she turned, he said, "No," with force.
"Sir?"
"Here. Come see this."
As always, she did as she was told. She kicked across the room and used a single eye, knowing the trick but not having done this nonsense in years. Why did anyone bother with lenses? Even when this observatory was built, digitized images were the norm. The best. And besides, what she saw here was just the focused light from a single mirror--a representative sampling of the whole--meaning it was almost useless to their ongoing work. Too simple by a factor of ten million. Yet she wasn't the old man's maybefavorite for nothing, feigning interest, squinting into the little hole until he seemed satisfied.
"It's the same as last time," he said, "and the time before. It's always the same, isn't it?"
She looked at him, nodding and saying, "Why shouldn't it be?"
"But doesn't it amaze you?" He asked the question, then he spoke before she could answer. "But not like it amazes me. Do you know why? Because you grew up expecting to see the beginning of time. When you were a little girl, this place was catching first light with its first mirrors, and by then the goal was obvious. Isn't that right?"
)
