Nation

triumphantly.
    “And the telescope?” asked the boy.
    “Certainly! A sixteen-inch Newtonian telescope was one of the first things they unloaded! That night everyone looked through it!” said the old man. “And there were all the things that had been on the list and six gentlemen from the Royal Society, just as promised.” The old man smiled broadly as he recalled. “Of course, we’ve had quite a few scientists since then. My father told me that Mr. Einstein sat in this very chair and played the violin. An interesting little fact is that my father accompanied him on the drum, and the effect was considered…unusual. I myself was privileged to accompany Sir Patrick Moore and Professor Richard Feynman when they were up here together. Xylophone, bongos, and war drum. Wonderful! Very musical people, scientists. And I was very proud to shake the hand of Professor Carl Sagan when he came here with people from the electric television. Do you remember that the ghost girl thought the glass beads on the ceiling of the cave were a star map, but she couldn’t work it out? The professor showed the world that it did indeed map the stars, but the stars as they were thirty-one thousand years ago, and that was confirmed by something called Fission Track Dating of the glass our little toy stars were made of. We’re learning new things all the time. I can’t recall how many astronauts came here. Interestingly, although several of them went to the moon, none of them met the lady who lives there.”
    “Yes, but did the ghost girl ever come back again ?” said the girl in a determined voice.
    “Not exactly, but her son and granddaughter did,” said the old man.
    “Then it’s still sad,” said the girl.
    “Well, I don’t know about that,” said the old man. “I understand she married a very nice gentleman from Holland. A prince, I believe. And of course you know she became queen.”
    “Yes, but it still shouldn’t have happened like that,” the girl insisted.
    “Well, she went back for the sake of her nation, and he stayed here for the sake of his. Wasn’t that right?”
    The girl considered this and said: “I suppose they both thought more about their people than they thought about each other.”
    “And you, young man?”
    The boy looked down at his feet. “I think they both thought more about their people than they thought about themselves.”
    “Good answers. And I think they were happy, in their own ways.”
    “But they were still sweet on each other,” said the girl, not giving up.
    “What a delightfully archaic term! Well, yes, when she died—which was not long after Mau died—the trousermen were not very happy, because they wanted to bury her in a stone box in one of their god houses, but she had the Gentlemen of Last Resort on her side. They brought her here in a steamship full of ice, and she was wrapped up in papervine and weighed down with stones and sent into the dark current, where we had gently sent Mau only two months before. And then, my great-grandfather wrote, everyone cried and cried…as I see the two of you are now, in fact, doing.”
    “It was just dust,” said the boy.
    The old man smiled and fished a handful of folded papervine out of his pocket and handed it to the girl, saying, “Feel free to blow your nose.”
    “And then two dolphins were seen swimming in the lagoon,” said the girl firmly. She blew her nose and gave the papervine back.
    “I don’t recall ever being told that,” said the old man, taking it by what seemed to be the least damp corner.
    “It must have happened, though,” the girl insisted. “It’s the only right ending. They would have been swimming in the lagoon, but people were probably crying too much to notice.”
    “Yes, that could have been it,” said the old man tactfully. “Now, I think, for the official bit.”
    He led the way out of his little office and along a wide wooden veranda. It had one of the best views on the island. One end of it was tangled in the canopy of the low forest, so that leaves and flowers cascaded over it, and the other had a breathtaking view across the lagoon. There was a little shed at that end.
    “And since the night the first telescope was set up here, we have had the Tell and the Show, for young people when they come of age,” the old man said. “Ha! By now, of course, you kids have hung out around every dome and telescope array on the mountain, right? They spring up like mushrooms, don’t they? But perhaps