Cosmos (1970s): The Complete Fiction by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2021-11-14T21:00:00+00:00

September 1977

All the Universe in a Mason Jar

Joe Haldeman

ONE MAN’S MEAT . . . .

New Homestead, Florida: 1990.

John Taylor Taylor, retired professor of mathematics, lived just over two kilometers out of town, in a three-room efficiency module tucked in an isolated corner of a citrus grove. Books and old furniture and no neighbors, which was the way John liked it. He only had a few years left on this Earth, and he preferred to spend them with his oldest and most valued friend: himself.

But this story isn’t about John Taylor Taylor. It’s about his moonshiner, Lester Gilbert. And some five billion others.

This day the weather was fine, so the professor took his stick and walked into town to pick up the week’s mail. A thick cylinder of journals and letters was wedged into his box; he had to ask the clerk to remove them from the other side. He tucked the mail under his arm without looking at it, and wandered next door to the bar.

“Howdy, Professor.”

“Good afternoon, Leroy.” He and the bartender were the only ones in the place, not unusual this late in the month. “I’ll take a boilermaker today, please.” He threaded his way through a maze of flypaper strips and eased himself into a booth of chipped, weathered plastic.

He sorted his mail into four piles: junk, bills, letters, and journals. Quite a bit of junk, two bills, a letter that turned out to be another bill, and three journals—Nature, Communications of the American Society of Mathematics, and a collection of papers delivered at an ASM symposium on topology. He scanned the contributors lists and, as usual, saw none of his old colleagues represented.

“Here y’go.” Leroy sat a cold beer and a shot glass of whiskey between Communications and the phone bill. John paid him with a five and lit his pipe carefully before taking a sip. He folded Nature back at the letters column and began reading.

The screen door slapped shut loudly behind a burly man in wrinkled clean work clothes. John recognized him with a nod; he returned a left-handed V-sign and mounted a bar stool.

“How ’bout a red-eye, Leroy?” Mixture of beer and tomato juice with a dash of Louisiana, hangover cure.

Leroy mixed it. “Rough night, Isaac?”

“Shoo. You don’ know.” He downed half the concoction in a gulp, and shuddered. He turned to John. “Hey, Professor. What you know about them flyin’ saucers?”

“Lot of them around a few years ago,” he said tactfully. “Never saw one myself.”

“Me neither. Wouldn’t give you a nickel for one. Not until last night.” He slurped the red-eye and wiped his mouth.

“What,” the bartender said, “you saw one?”

“Saw one. Shoo.” He slid the two-thirds empty glass across the bar. “You wanta put some beer on top that? Thanks.

“We was down the country road seven-eight klicks. You know Eric Olsen’s new place?”

“Don’t think so.”

“New boy, took over Jarmin’s plat.”

“Oh yeah. Never comes in here; know of him, though.”

“You wouldn’t hang around no bar neither if you had a pretty little .

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