They exchanged a few words about what had happened to the visiting English scholar who’d suffered the brain injury. Finally, he asked, “Are you still researching the twinkling of stars?”

“Yes. After observing the sun’s twinkling for two years, I moved on to other stars. As I’m sure you understand, the techniques necessary to observe other stars are completely different from those to observe the sun. The project didn’t have new funding. It halted for many years. We just started it back up three years ago. Right now, we are only observing twenty-five stars. The number and scope are still growing.”

“Then you must have produced more mosaics.”

The moonlit smile that had surfaced so many times from the depths of memory over the past ten years now emerged in the sunlight. “Ah, you still remember! Yes, every time I come to Mount Siyun, I collect pretty pebbles. Come, I’ll show you!”

She took him into the observatory where they’d first met. A giant telescope confronted him. He didn’t know whether it was the same telescope from ten years ago, but the computers that surrounded it were practically new. Familiar things hung on a tall curved wall: mosaics of all different sizes. Each one was of an undulating curve. They were all of different lengths. Some were as gentle as the sea. Others were violent, like a row of tall towers strung together at random.

One by one, she told him which waves came from which stars. “These twinklings, we call type A twinklings. They don’t occur as much as other types. The difference between type A twinklings and those of other types, besides that their energy fluctuations are orders of magnitude larger, is that the mathematics of their curves is even more elegant.”

He shook his head, puzzled. “You scientists doing basic research are always talking about the elegance of mathematics. I guess that’s your prerogative. For example, you all think that Maxwell’s equations are incredibly elegant. I understood them once, but I couldn’t see where the elegance was….”

Just like ten years ago, she suddenly grew serious. “They’re elegant like crystals, very hard, very pure, and very transparent.”

Unexpectedly, he recognized one of the mosaics. “Oh, you re-created one?” Seeing her uncomprehending expression, he continued. “That’s the waveform of the sun twinkling in the mosaic you gave me ten years ago.”

“But … that’s the waveform from a type A twinkling from Alpha Centauri A. We observed it, um, last October.”