Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION “How old?” I asked. ‘‘Hard to tell,’ the man said, tapping his teeth. “Two thousand odd years perhaps. Who knows?” “Is there any limit to the amount of information that can be pumped into one of those?” “IT can’t answer that with- out knowing the brain-type of this specimen. Some of our own, with molecular link- age type of cortex, have no practical limit. I should dearly like to take this one apart, my Lord...’ He looked at me inquiringly. ‘“‘No, thank you,” I told him. I saw that his enthusiasm was enough to drive him to take the thing apart, but doubted whether his skill was sufficient to reassemble the pieces afterwards. This success of mine brought me a naval appointment, some congratulations, and rather too much publicity for my liking. The publicity had the effect I feared; it made brother Tomos uneasy, and as I have indicated already, his all-too-frequent attacks of uneasiness were very often fatal for other people. Don’t imagine for one mo- ment, however, that Tomos ever ordered a murder; if 12 you think so, you wrong him. Never in all his life had he ordered anyone to be mur- dered. It is true, however, that during his fits of uneasi- ness he had the habit of muttering—aloud and in the hearing of some, shall we say, appropriate, person— that so-and-so was a menace to the state, a mischief- maker. Nearly always, the person named was killed in a perfectly natural sort of accident within a week or so of Tomos making the remark about him. The accident arranged for me took the form of a burg- lary. Everyone knows that burglars often hit too hard, or shoot too quick, when disturbed—and it would have been quite a final accident as far as I was concerned but for two things. It happened this way. One evening—you will dis- approve of this, I’m sure, but you must know me for what I am—I had a visitor, a lady visitor, a very pleasant young lady with red hair. The door of my suite was sealed, and James—you remember that James was one of the old- fashioned sort of robots with a switch—was standing in his recess, switched off. Hang- comicloooks.conn