Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 66 — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION self as a friend of his son and he made me welcome, as I knew he would. He invited me in and offered me tea and, to me, that was the sweetest moment of my life. I almost cried as I fingered the well-remembered cups and stared at the old, familiar room. Its poverty startled me, used as I was to twenty- first century luxury, and little things threatened to trap me at every moment, I knew too’ much. I remembered where the sugar was kept in its old tin, where he used to keep his milk, the place to find the matches. It was hard not to speak of mutual friends and incidents about which no outsider could know. I had to force myself to act as a stranger, and yet all the time I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him who I was. We talked of his son and I felt shame as I listened to the quiet pride in his voice. We had argued, he and I, and I had been bitter of the opinion he must have given others 36 about me, but now I knew that to be all wrong. He loved me, was proud of me, and his only complaint was that I left him alone too long. I knew why he was alone. I knew what I was doing at that moment, the I that was young, of course, not myself. I was working and saving, enjoying myself in my fashion, and salving my conscience with the knowledge that “‘one day” I would make amends to my father for my neglect. That day had been sixty-one years in the coming and, now that I was here, he couldn’t know who I was. The two months passed all too quickly. I moved into the old house and the money I had brought with me made life as pleasant for him as it could. It wasn’t much. I had forgotten that, to him, things would not be the same as to me. Money from a stranger was not the same as money from his son. The company of a stranger was a poor substitute for the com- comicloooks.com