DESIRE NO MORE-3
457 Words
THE SMALL MAN LOOKED at his faculty advisor. “No,” he said. “I am not interested in working for a degree.”
“But—” The faculty advisor unconsciously tapped the point of a yellow pencil against the fresh green of his desk blotter, leaving a rough arc of black flecks. “Look, Ish, you’ve got to either deliver or get off the basket. This program is just like the others you’ve followed for nine semesters; nothing but math and engineering. You’ve taken just about every undergrad course there is in those fields. How long are you going to keep this up?”
“I’m signed up for Astronomy 101,” Isherwood pointed out.
The faculty advisor snorted. “A snap course. A breather, after you’ve studied the same stuff in Celestial Navigation. What’s the matter, Ish? Scared of liberal arts?”
Isherwood shook his head. “Uh-unh. Not interested. No time. And that Astronomy course isn’t a breather. Different slant from Cee Nav—they won’t be talking about stars as check points, but as things in themselves.” Something seemed to flicker across his face as he said it.
The advisor missed it; he was too engrossed in his argument. “Still a snap. What’s the difference, how you look at a star?”
Isherwood almost winced. “Call it a hobby,” he said. He looked down at his watch. “Come on, Dave. You’re not going to convince me. You haven’t convinced me any of the other times, either, so you might as well give up, don’t you think? I’ve got a half hour before I go on the job. Let’s go get some beer.”
The advisor, not much older than Isherwood, shrugged, defeated. “Crazy,” he muttered. But it was a hot day, and he was as thirsty as the next man.
The bar was air conditioned. The advisor shivered, half grinned, and softly quoted:
“Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I am nothing a-cold;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.”
“Huh?” Ish was wearing the look with which he always reacted to the unfamiliar.
The advisor lifted two fingers to the bartender and shrugged. “It’s a poem; about four hundred years old, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you give a damn?” the advisor asked, with some peevishness.
Ish laughed shortly, without embarrassment. “Sorry, Dave, but no. It’s not my racket.”
The advisor cramped his hand a little too tightly around his glass. “Strictly a specialist, huh?”
Ish nodded. “Call it that.”
“But what, for Pete’s sake? What is this crazy specialty that blinds you to all the fine things that man has done?”
Ish took a swallow of his beer. “Well, now, if I was a poet, I’d say it was the finest thing that man has ever done.”
The advisor’s lips twisted in derision. “That’s pretty fanatical, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” Ish waved to the bartender for refills.
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- Writer
