Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

SAVIOUR find out more about our- selves ?”’ “IT thought you’d ask that,” the old man said, nodding in approval. “Its a good question,” “Well, then, what’s the answer to it?’ Patrick de- manded, impatiently. “The answer is that your case is something special. Something possibly very special. You see, Patrick, some people have quite a number of these special talents, while others have just one, or maybe two. I’ve just got one; I’m a telepath and that’s all, at present. Perhaps if there wasn’t a war, and if everyone started accepting the powers as being natural, and if they gave up-a lot of their time to investigating them and giving training to those who had them—perhaps under circum- stances like that I might find that ’'d got more ability than I thought. Anyway, one of these abilities is the power to see into the future. It’s called clairvoyance. Not many people have it in the group, but from the results obtained from those that can see ahead we’ve been able to get a better idea of things like ‘past’ and ‘present? and ‘future’ and ‘time.’ From these results we’ve been able to visualise 65 the future spreading away from us in the shape of a Fan, and on that Fan there is an infinite number of paths that we can take at any given moment in our lives. Follow me?” **I—I think so.” “Right. Now the ability to see ahead can never be a guarantee of what wi// happen, but only of what may happen, because the Fan is already there and the clairvoyant can never see the entire Fan but only one of the infinite number of paths, and he can never be certain whether that path that he sees is one near the outer edges of the Fan— which would be one of the least probable courses for the future to take, or whether it’s near the middle of the Fan, which would signify a higher degree of probability. Also, we’ve found that any action taken in the present to prevent an event occurring in the future, somehow shifts the position of the Fan—or of the constituent paths on the Fan, rather—so that prob- abilities become improbabili- ties and so on. And that’s the reason that you had to come here in the way you did come here, and why I couldn’t do any more for you when I first saw you. One of our comiclooks.corn