Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 44 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

THE LEVER AND THE FULCRUM product of your heredity and environment; that is to say, you were an unimportant princeling, the illegitimate son of an energetic, unscrupulous and not over-intelligent ruler of an already degenerating race—you were idle, self- indulgent, suspicious, pur- poseless....”’ “Thank you, that’s quite enough,” I told him. “Now will you listen to this?” I repeated what I had just heard about myself and asked: “Do you agree with that des- cription ?” “Yes,” the robot said. *“Good! I’m complimented. How do you account for this change?” “Your life has been diverted into a new path, as a result of an intelligent appreciation of the dangers with which you are surrounded. In addition, the former purposelessness of your existence was always a source of dissatisfaction to you.’ “T agree with that,” I said. “Now here is a_ difficult question for you—would this change have taken placewith- ~ out you?” These ideas, and in particu- lar, that question, had been shaping in my mind for a long time. I had never aban- 23 doned my early incredible suspicion that this robot was actuated by a private purpose; I felt that I had now manceu- vred him into a position where he must admit that he was in- fluencing my life and moulding my character. Of course, in such a dilemma, any human being could lie without blink- ing, but no robot—or at least, no ordinary robot—was cap- able of such a thing. Robots carry out orders; they store information; they assimilate it; summarise it; draw con- clusions from it; calculate, record, memorise, deduce, verify, assess, and supply answers as required; but as they have no hopes, ambitions, fears, hates or plans, so there is no occasion on which they could be suspected of producing anything other than © a true answer. *“No, sir.” This was no lie: I knew that without him I should never have changed. “What would I have be- come?” I demanded. ““You would have degener- ated still further along the lines you were following—and there is also a strong probabil- ity that you would have been killed before now.” ‘‘Why have you done this for me?” I asked. I thought comicloooks.conn Be pe Ay