Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 41 — page 120: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MOTHER vining nervous system, the calcifying bones. And over it all a monster thing of electronic circuits, contact breakers, grids and flashing lights. She sat in the garden. Without an electric seamer. Just a needle and thread. She took a stitch in the pale pink cloth on her lap, let it fall. It was good metalastic material. The one layette would do for all her children—her great- grandchildren, probably. Per- fectly resistant, it would never wear out, never look old, never look dirty. Science in everyday life! But pink. “Of course, it'll be a boy,’ Mike had said. *““We’ll be able to tell in a day or so. Maybe today.” And it would be a boy. Everything seemed to go as Mike planned... Amuri let the material fall away from her as she thought of him, her son. Pictured him _ as he might: be, the things he would do and say. Her son. No. Not her son. Not now. Her problem. The sun was right above her, she noticed. They would all be at lunch now. Time to do what she’d planned. What she’d thought about con- stantly since that terrible morning. Time to do some- thing for the instinctive ones, something to’ get down be- neath Mike’s scientific crust, to make him see... The tiny pink garment lay, forlorn, on the grass as Amuri walked away. Towards the machine, the towering machine... ... She lifted her gaze from the tank to the analyser. She fed in the punched card, the simultaneous problem that would wreck the circuits. Her own problem. But she knew the answer. The only true, human answer, even if it were not the logical one. For she was a mother, not a machine. 119 conmicloooks.comn