Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 51 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Now that he was on his way, he absurdly felt a desire to put off the moment when he and Judith would meet. He was rushing towards her far too quickly. Within a brief time of leaving the office, he was sitting beside the couch in the hospital. The Grey—he found he could not call it Judith, though he tried to believe that Judith was there—was no longer lying down. It sat up, yet this did not make it look alive : it gave an impres- sion of being a machine that did not spring into action until a human being gave it a reason for reacting. You felt you had to reach out and switch on. Warren said convention- ally: “Everything going all right? No complications?” As though, he thought, he were asking about an opera- tion for appendicitis. ““T am well. And you?” “TI still don’t believe it’s happened.” “It has happened. You may be sure of that.” 28 Warren leaned forward. “Tell me what sort of day you've had. What have you learned ?” There was a pause. When Judith began to speak, she did so in a precise voice that made her sentences sound like detached parts of a recitation. She had been taught a formal little lesson, and she was re- peating it. ‘I have been instructed in the first problems with which new Greys must cope. There are no restrictions. We may meet humans if we wish. We may retain our old friends if we wish.” “Then why do none of them—none of you, that is— do so? What goes wrong?” “It is better for us not to torment ourselves.” Warren snorted. a good one!” The voice said, without the anguish or melancholy that the words themselves might have implied: “ There is no feeling left, Warren. Warmth means nothing. There is no sense of touch, no smell of “ That’s comiclooks.cormn