Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

THE LEVER AND THE FULCRUM when she learns what a threat your existence is, may ask a relative or hanger-on to do her the favour of picking a quarrel with you.” I turned this pronounce- ment—you might almost use the word prophecy—round in my mind for several minutes. I should never have seen it for myself, but with each step in the argument presented to me, as James had done, it made a sum in simple arithmetic. Tomos must carry out our father’s project for conquest. In order to be free to do so he must first consolidate his position, and a marriage with the daughter of Glawin of Argol would achieve this end. And the occasion of his marriage would present him not only with urgent and immediate reasons for dis- posing of me, but with new means of doing so. “I agree,” I told James. **I must practice steadily.” “I must also state that your chances of life will be con- siderably improved if you refrain altogether from the consumption of alcohol.” “Oh, no!’’ I told him. “‘Oh, no! What’s the use of re- maining alive if I am to have no fun?’ 24 “‘T am unable to supply you with reasons why you should strive to remain alive,’’ James said, taking me literally. “TI am attempting to deal with the instruction you gave me to protect your life—I assert that your chances of remain- ing alive are improved if you refrain from dulling your perceptions and slowing your muscular responses by con- suming alcohol.” “You remind me more and more of a tutor I once had,” I told him. “Except that if I threw a dart at your behind it would only be blunted.” In the next two years James saved my life twice; once by detecting a defect that mys- teriously developed in the steering of my land car; and again by deflecting a heavy piece of masonry that fell from a roof as I passed. In addition to these incidents, I survived no less than three duels. From the first I barely escaped with my life, but thereafter I not only practiced swordsmanship continuously, but studied the art theoretic- ally—balance of weapons, stance, psychology of attack— and developed my motions carefully under the robot’s all-seeing eye, taking each Comicloooks.eC@hn —