But as time wore on into the late autumn, Martha slowly--oh, so slowly!--began to realize that there was importance to getting things right. She continued to tease. But she did her teasing before James closed the "Run" button.

CHAPTER TEN

Once James progressed Martha through the little dictionary, he began with a book of grammar. Again it started slowly; he had to spend quite a bit of time explaining to Martha that she did indeed know all of the terms used in the book of grammar because they'd all been defined by the dictionary, now she was going to learn how the terms and their definitions were used.

James was on more familiar ground now. James, like Martha, had learned his first halting sentence structure by mimicking his parents, but he remembered the process of learning why and how sentences are constructed according to the rules, and how the rules are used rather than intuition in forming sentences.

Grammar was a topic that could not be taken in snippets and bits. Whole paragraphs had to be read until Martha could read them without a halt or a mispronunciation, and then committed to memory with the "Run" button held down. At the best it was a boring process, even though it took only minutes instead of days. It was not conflicting, but it was confusing. It installed permanently certain solid blocks of information that were isolated; they stood alone until later blocks came in to connect them into a whole area.

Each session was numbing. Martha could take no more than a couple of hours, after which her reading became foggy. She wanted a nap after each session and even after the nap she went around in a bemused state of mental dizziness.

Life settled down once more in the House on Martin's Hill. James worked with the machine himself and laid out lessons to guide Martha. Then, finished for the day with education, James took to his typewriter while Martha had her nap. It filled the days of the boy and girl completely.

This made an unexpected and pleasant change in Mrs. Bagley's routine. It had been a job to keep Martha occupied. Now that Martha was busy, Mrs. Bagley found time on her own hands; without interruption, her housework routine was completed quite early in the afternoon.

Mrs. Bagley had never made any great point of getting dressed for dinner. She accumulated a collection of house-frocks; printed cotton washables differing somewhat in color and cut but functionally identical. She wore them serially as they came from the row of hangers in her closet.

Now she began to acquire some dressier things, wearing them even during her shopping trips.

James paid little attention to this change in his housekeeper's routine, but he approved. Mrs. Bagley was also taking more pains with the 'do' of her hair, but the boy's notice was not detailed enough to take a part-by-section inventory of the whole. In fact, James gave the whole matter very little thought until Mrs. Bagley made a second change after her return from town, appearing for dinner in what James could only classify as a party dress.

She asked, "James, do you mind if I go out this evening?"

James, startled, shrugged and said, "No, I guess not."

"You'll keep an ear out for Martha?"

The need for watching a sleeping girl of seven and a half did not penetrate. "What's up?" he asked.

"It's been months since I saw a movie."

James shrugged again, puzzled. "You saw the 'Bride of Frankenstein' last night on TV," he pointed out.

"I first saw that old horror when I was about your age," she told him with a trace of disdain.

"I liked it."

"So did I at eight and a half. But tonight I'm going to see a new picture."

"Okay," said James, wondering why anybody in their right mind would go out on a chilly night late in November just to see a moving picture when they could stay at home and watch one in comfort. "Have a good time."

He expected Mrs. Bagley to take off in her car, but she did not. She waited until a brief toot! came from the road. Then, with a swirl of motion, she left.

It took James Holden's limited experience some little time to identify the event with some similar scenes from books he'd read; even with him, reading about it was one world and seeing it happen was another thing entirely.

For James Holden it opened a new area for contemplation. He would have to know something about this matter if he hoped to achieve his dreamed-of status as an adult.

* * * * *

Information about the relation between man and woman had not been included in the course of education devised by his father and mother. Therefore his physical age and his information on the delicate subject were approximately parallel.

His personal evaluation of the subject was uncomplicated. At some age not much greater than his own, boys and girls conglomerated in a mass that milled around in a constant state of flux and motion, like individual atoms of gas compressed in a container. Meetings and encounters took place both singly and in groups until nearly everybody had been in touch with almost everybody else. Slowly the amorphous mass changed. Groups became attracted by mutual interests. Changes and exchanges took place, and then a pair-formation began to take place. The pair-formation went through its interchanges both with and without friction as the settling-down process proceeded. At times predictable by comparing it to the statistics of radioactivity, the pair-production resulted in permanent combination, which effectively removed this couple from free circulation.

James Holden had no grasp or feeling for the great catalyst that causes this pair-production; he saw it only for its sheer mechanics. To him, the sensible way to go about this matter was to get there early and move fast, because one stands to make a better choice when there is a greater number of unattached specimens from which to choose. Those left over are likely to have flaws.

And so he pondered, long after Martha had gone to bed.

He was still up and waiting when he heard the car stop at the gate. He watched them come up the walk arm in arm, their stride slow and lingering. They paused for several moments on the doorstep, once there was a short, muted laugh. The snick of the key came next and they came into the hallway.

"No, please don't come in," said Mrs. Bagley.

"But--" replied the man.

"But me no buts. It's late, Tim."

Tim? Tim? That would probably be Timothy Fisher. He ran the local garage where Mrs. Bagley bought her car. James went on listening shamelessly.

"Late? Phooey. When is eleven-thirty late?"

"When it's right now," she replied with a light laugh. "Now, Tim. It's been very--"

There came a long silence.

Her voice was throaty when the silence broke. "Now, will you go?"

"Of course," he said.

"Not that way, silly," she said. "The door's behind you."

"Isn't the door I want," he chuckled.

"We're making enough noise to wake the dead," she complained.

"Then let's stop talking," he told her.

There was another long silence.

"Now please go."

"Can I come back tomorrow night?"

"Not tomorrow."

"Friday?"

"Saturday."

"It's a date, then."

"All right. Now get along with you."

"You're cruel and heartless, Janet," he complained. "Sending a man out in that cold and storm."

"It isn't storming, and you've a fine heater in that car of yours."

"I'd rather have you."

"Do you tell that to all the girls?"

"Sure. Even Maggie the Washerwoman is better than an old car heater."

Mrs. Bagley chuckled throatily. "How is Maggie?"

"She's fine."

"I mean as a date."

"Better than the car heater."

"Tim, you're a fool."

"When I was a kid," said Tim reflectively, "there used to be a female siren in the movies. Her pet line used to be 'Kiss me, my fool!' Theda Bara, I think. Before talkies. Now--"

"No, Tim--"

Another long silence.

"Now, Tim, you've simply got to go!"

"Yeah, I know. You've convinced me."

"Then why aren't you going?"

He chuckled. "Look, you've convinced me. I can't stay so I'll go, obviously. But now that we've covered this problem, let's drop the subject for a while, huh?"

"Don't spoil a fine evening, Tim."

"Janet, what's with you, anyway?"

"What do you mean, 'what's with me?'"

"Just this. Somewhere up in the house is this oddball Maxwell who hides out all the time. He's either asleep or busy. Anyway, he isn't here. Do you have to report in, punch a time clock, tuck him in--or do you turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of twelve?"

"Mr. Maxwell is paying me wages to keep house for him. That's all. Part of my wages is my keep. But it doesn't entitle me to have full run of the house or to bring guests in at midnight for a two-hour good-night session."

"I'd like to tell this bird a thing or two," said Tim Fisher sharply. "He can't keep you cooped up like--like--"

"Nobody is keeping me cooped up," she said. "Like what?"

"What?"

"You said 'like--'"

"Skip it. What I meant is that you can't moulder, Janet. You've got to get out and meet people."

"I've been out and I've met people. I've met you."

"All to the good."

"Fine. So you invited me out, and I went. It was fun. I liked it. You've asked me, and I've said that I'd like to do it again on Saturday. I've enjoyed being kissed, and I'll probably enjoy it again on Saturday. So--"

"I'd think you'd enjoy a lot of it."

"Because my husband has been gone for five years?"

"Oh, now Janet--"

"That's what you meant, isn't it?"

"No. You've got me wrong."

"Tim, stop it. You're spoiling a fine evening. You should have gone before it started to spoil. Now please put your smile on again and leave cheerfully. There's always Saturday--if you still want it."

"I'll call you," he said.

The door opened once more and then closed. James took a deep breath, and then stole away quietly to his own room.

By some instinct he knew that this was no time to intercept Mrs. Bagley with a lot of fool questions.

* * * * *

To the surprise and puzzlement of young James Quincy Holden, Mr. Timothy Fisher telephoned early upon the following evening. He was greeted quite cordially by Mrs. Bagley. Their conversation was rambling and inane, especially when heard from one end only, and it took them almost ten minutes to confirm their Saturday night date. That came as another shock.

Well, not quite. The explanation bothered him even more than the fact itself. As a further extension of his little mechanical mating process, James had to find a place for the like of Jake Caslow and the women Jake knew. None of them were classed in the desirable group, all of them were among the leftovers. But of course, since none of them were good enough for the 'good' people, they were good enough for one another, and that made it all right--for them.

But Mrs. Bagley was not of their ilk. It was not right that she should be forced to take a leftover.

And then it occurred to him that perhaps Mrs. Bagley was not really taking the leftover, Tim Fisher, but instead was using Tim Fisher's company as a means toward meeting a larger group, from which there might be a better specimen. So he bided his time, thinking deeply around the subject, about which he knew nothing whatsoever.

Saturday night was a repeat of Wednesday. They stayed out later, and upon their return they took possession of the living room for at least an hour before they started their routine about the going-home process. With minor variations in the dialog, and with longer and more frequent silences, it almost followed the Wednesday night script. The variation puzzled James even more. This session went according to program for a while until Tim Fisher admitted with regret that it was, indeed, time for him to depart. At which juncture Mrs. Bagley did not leap to her feet to accept his offer to do that which she had been asking him to do for a half hour. Mrs. Bagley compounded the affair by sighing deeply and agreeing with him that it was a shame that it was so late and that she, too, wished that he could stay a little longer. This, of course, put them precisely where they were a half hour earlier and they had to start the silly business all over again.

They parted after a final fifteen-minute discussion at the front door. This discussion covered Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and finally came to agreement on Wednesday.

And so James Holden went to bed that night fully convinced that in a town of approximately two thousand people--he did not count the two or three hundred A.E.C.-College group as part of the problem--there were entirely too few attractive leftovers from which Mrs. Bagley could choose.

But as this association grew, it puzzled him even more. For in his understanding, any person forced to accept a second-rate choice does so with an air of resignation, but not with a cheerful smile, a sparkle in the eyes, and two hours of primping.

James sought the answer in his books but they were the wrong volumes for reference of this subject. He considered the local Public Library only long enough to remember that it carried a few hundred books suitable for the A.E.C.-College crew and a thousand or so of second-hand culls donated by local citizens during cleanup campaigns. He resorted to buying books by mail through advertisements in newspapers and magazines and received a number of volumes of medical treatises, psychological texts, and a book on obstetrics that convinced him that baby-having was both rare and hazardous. He read By Love Possessed but he did not recognize the many forms of love portrayed by the author because the volume was not annotated with signs or provided with a road map, and he did not know it when he read about it.

He went through the Kinsey books and absorbed a lot of data and graphs and figures on human behavior that meant nothing to him. James was not even interested in the incidence of homosexuality among college students as compared to religious groups, or in the comparison between premarital experience and level of education. He knew the words and what the words meant as defined in other words. But they were only words and did not touch him where he lived.

So, because none of the texts bothered to explain why a woman says Yes, when she means No, nor why a woman will cling to a man's lapels and press herself against him and at the same time tell him he has to go home, James remained ignorant. He could have learned more from Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats, or Browning than from Kinsey, deLee, or the "Instructive book on Sex, forwarded under plain wrapper for $2.69 postpaid."

Luckily for James, he did not study any of his material via the medium of his father's machine or it would have made him sick. For he was not yet capable of understanding the single subject upon which more words have been expended in saying less than any other subject since the dawn of history.

His approach was academic, he could have been reading the definitive material on the life-cycle of the beetle insofar as any stir of his own blood was concerned.

From his study he did identify a couple of items. Tim Fisher obviously desired extramarital relations with Mrs. Bagley--or was it premarital relations? Probably both. Logic said that Mrs. Bagley, having already been married to Martha's father, could hardly enter into premarital relations, although Tim could, since he was a bachelor. But they wouldn't be premarital with Tim unless he followed through and married Mrs. Bagley. And so they must be extramarital. But whatever they were called, the Book said that there was about as much on one side as on the other.

With a mind mildly aware of the facts of life, distorted through the eyes of near-nine James Holden, he watched them and listened in.

As for Mrs. Bagley, she did not know that she was providing part of James Holden's extraliterary education. She enjoyed the company of Tim Fisher. Hesitantly, she asked James if she could have Tim for dinner one evening, and was a bit surprised at his immediate assent. They planned the evening, cleaned the lower part of the house of every trace of its current occupancy, and James and Martha hied themselves upstairs. Dinner went with candlelight and charcoal-broiled steak--and a tray taken aloft for "Mr. Maxwell" was consumed by James and Martha. The evening went smoothly. They listened to music and danced, they sat and talked. And James listened.

Tim was not the same man. He sat calm and comfortably on the low sofa with Mrs. Bagley's head on his shoulder, both of them pleasantly bemused by the dancing fireplace and with each other's company. He said, "Well, I'm glad this finally happened."

"What happened?" she replied in a murmur.

"Getting the invite for dinner."

"Might have been sooner, I suppose. Sorry."

"What took you so long?"

"Just being cautious, I guess."

He chuckled. "Cautious?"

"Uh-huh."

Tim laughed.

"What's so darned funny?"

"Women."

"Are we such a bunch of clowns?"

"Not clowns, Janet. Just funny."

"All right, genius. Explain that."

"A woman is a lovely creature who sends a man away so that he can't do what she wants him to do most of all."

"Uh-huh."

"She feeds him full of rare steak until he wants to crawl off in a corner like the family mutt and go to sleep. Once she gets him in a somnolent state, she drapes herself tastefully on his shoulder and gets soft and warm and willing."

Mrs. Bagley laughed throatily. "Just start getting active," she warned, "and you'll see how fast I can beat a hasty retreat."

"Janet, what is with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you hiding?"

"Hiding?"

"Yes, confound it, hiding!" he said, his voice turning hard. "Just who is this Charles Maxwell character, anyway?"

"Tim, please--"

His voice lowered again. "Janet," he said softly, "you're asking me to trust you, and at the same time you're not trusting me."

"But I've nothing to hide."

"Oh, stop it. I'm no schoolboy, Janet. If you have nothing to hide, why are you acting as if you were sitting on the lid?"

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

"Your words say so, but your tone is the icy haughtiness that dares me, mere male that I am, to call your lie. I've a half-notion to stomp upstairs and confront your mysterious Maxwell--if he indeed exists."

"You mustn't. He'd--"

"He'd what? I've been in this house for hours day and night and now all evening. I've never heard a sound, not the creak of a floorboard, the slam of a door, the opening of a window, nor the distant gurgle of cool, clear water, gushing into plumbing. So you've been married. This I know. You have a daughter. This I accept. Your husband is dead. This happens to people every day; nice people, bad people, bright people, dull people. There was a young boy here last summer. Him I do not know, but you and your daughter I do know about. I've checked--"

"How dare you check--?"

"I damn well dare check anything and anybody I happen to be personally interested in," he stormed. "As a potential bed partner I wouldn't give a hoot who you were or what you were. But before I go to the point of dividing the rest of my life on an exclusive contract, I have the right to know what I'm splitting it with."

"You have no right--"

"Balderdash! I have as much right as anybody to look at the record. I grant you the same right to look up my family and my friends and the status of my bank account and my credit rating and my service record. Grant it? Hell, I couldn't stop you. Now, what's going on? Where is your daughter and where is that little boy? And where--if he exists--is this Charles Maxwell?"

* * * * *

James had heard enough. No matter which way this was going, it would end up wrong. He was proud of Mrs. Bagley's loyalty, but he knew that it was an increasing strain and could very well lead to complications that could not be explained away without the whole truth. He decided that the only thing to do was to put in his own oar and relieve Mrs. Bagley.

He walked in, yawning. He stood between them, facing Tim Fisher. Behind him, Mrs. Bagley cried, "Now see--you've awakened him!"

In a dry-throated voice, Tim said, "I thought he was away at school. Now, what's the story?"

"It isn't her story to tell," said James. "It's mine."

"Now see here--"

"Mr. Fisher, you can't learn anything by talking incessantly."

Tim Fisher took a step forward, his face dark, his intention to shake the truth out of somebody. James held up a hand. "Sit down a moment and listen," he ordered.

The sight of James and the words that this child was uttering stopped Tim Fisher. Puzzled, he nodded dumbly, found a chair, and sat on the front edge of it, poised.

"The whereabouts of Mr. Maxwell is his own business and none of yours. Your criticism is unfounded and your suspicions unworthy. But since you take the attitude that this is some of your business, we don't mind telling you that Mr. Maxwell is in New York on business."

Tim Fisher eyed the youngster. "I thought you were away at school," he repeated.

"I heard you the first time," said James. "Obviously, I am not. Why I am not is Mr. Maxwell's business, not yours. And by insisting that something is wrong here and demanding the truth, you have placed Mrs. Bagley in the awkward position of having to make a decision that divides her loyalties. She has had the complete trust of Mr. Maxwell for almost a year and a half. Now, tell me, Mr. Fisher, to whom shall she remain loyal?"

"That isn't the point--"

"Yes, it is the point, Mr. Fisher. It is exactly the point. You're asking Mrs. Bagley to tell you the details of her employer's business, which is unethical."

"How much have you heard?" demanded Fisher crossly.

"Enough, at least to know what you've been hammering at."

"Then you know that I've as much as said that there was some suspicion attached."

"Suspicion of what?"

"Well, why aren't you in school?"

"That's Mr. Maxwell's business."

"Let me tell you, youngster, it is more than your Mr. Maxwell's business. There are laws about education and he's breaking them."

James said patiently: "The law states that every child shall receive an adequate education. The precise wording I do not know, but it does provide for schooling outside of the state school system if the parent or guardian so prefers, and providing that such extraschool education is deemed adequate by the state. Can you say that I am not properly educated, Mr. Fisher?"

"Well, you'd hardly expect me to be an expert on the subject."

"Then I'd hardly expect you to pass judgment, either," said James pointedly.

"You're pretty--" Tim Fisher caught his tongue at the right moment. He felt his neck getting hot. It is hard enough to be told that you are off-base and that your behavior has been bad when an adult says the damning words. To hear the same words from a ten-year-old is unbearable. Right or wrong, the adult's position is to turn aside or shut the child up either by pulling rank or cuffing the young offender with an open hand. To have this upstart defend Mrs. Bagley, in whose presence he could hardly lash back, put Mr. Fisher in a very unhappy state of mind. He swallowed and then asked, lamely, "Why does he have to be so furtive?"

"What is your definition of 'furtive'?" asked James calmly. "Do you employ the same term to describe the operations of that combination College-A.E.C. installation on the other side of town?"

"That's secret--"

"Implying that atomic energy is secretly above-board, legal, and honorable, whereas Mr. Maxwell's--"

"But we know about atomic energy."

"Sure we do," jeered James, and the sound of his immature near-treble voice made the jeer very close to an insult. "We know all about atomic energy. Was the Manhattan Project called 'furtive' until Hiroshima gave the story away?"

"You're trying to put words in my mouth," objected Tim.

"No, I'm not. I'm merely trying to make you understand something important to everybody. You come in here and claim by the right of personal interest that we should be most willing to tell you our business. Then in the next breath you defend the installation over on the other side of town for their attitude in giving the bum's rush to people who try to ask questions about their business. Go read your Constitution, Mr. Fisher. It says there that I have as much right to defend my home against intruders as the A.E.C. has to defend their home against spies."

"But I'm not intruding."

James nodded his head gently. "Not," he said, "until you make the grave error of equating personal privacy with culpable guilt."

"I didn't mean that."

"You should learn to say what you mean," said James, "instead of trying to pry information out of someone who happens to be fond of you."

"Now see here," said Tim Fisher, "I happen to be fond of her too, you know. Doesn't that give me some rights?"

"Would you expect to know all of her business if she were your wife?"

"Of course."

"Suppose she were working in the A.E.C.-College?"

"Well, that--er--"

"Would be different?"

"Well, now--"

"I talked this right around in its circle for a purpose," said James. "Stop and think for a moment. Let's discuss me. Mr. Fisher, where would you place me in school?"

"Er--how old are you?"

"Nine," said James. "In April."

"Well, I'm not sure--"

"Exactly. Do you suppose that I could sit in a classroom among my nine-year-old contemporaries very long without being found out?"

"Er--no--I suppose not."

"Mr. Fisher, how long do you think I could remain a secret if I attended high school, sitting at a specially installed desk in a class among teenagers twice my size?"

"Not very long."

"Then remember that some secrets are so big that you have to have armed guards to keep them secret, and others are so easy to conceal that all you need is a rambling old house and a plausible façade."

"Why have you told me all this?"

"Because you have penetrated this far by your own effort, justified by your own personal emotions, and driven by an urge that is all-powerful if I am to believe the books I've read on the subject. You are told this much of the truth so that you won't go off half-cocked with a fine collection of rather dangerous untruths. Understand?"

"I'm beginning to."

"Well, whether Mrs. Bagley accepts your offer of marriage or not, remember one thing: If she were working for the A.E.C. you'd be proud of her, and you'd also be quite careful not to ask questions that would cause her embarrassment."

Tim Fisher looked at Mrs. Bagley. "Well?" he asked.

Mrs. Bagley looked bleak. "Please don't ask me until I've had a chance to discuss all of the angles with Mr. Maxwell, Tim."

"Maxwell, again."

"Tim," she said in a quiet voice, "remember--he's an employer, not an emotional involvement."

James Holden looked at Tim Fisher. "And if you'll promise to keep this thing as close a secret as you would some information about atomic energy, I'll go to bed and let you settle your personal problems in private. Good night!"

He left, reasonably satisfied that Tim Fisher would probably keep their secret for a time, at least. The hinted suggestion that this was as important a government project as the Atomic Energy Commission's works would prevent casual talk. There was also the slim likelihood that Tim Fisher might enjoy the position of being on the inside of a big secret, although this sort of inner superiority lacks true satisfaction. There was a more solid chance that Tim Fisher, being the ambitious man that he was, would keep their secret in the hope of acquiring for himself some of the superior knowledge and the advanced ability that went with it.

But James was certain that the program that had worked so well with Mrs. Bagley would fail with Tim Fisher. James had nothing material to offer Tim. Tim was the kind of man who would insist upon his wife being a full-time wife, physically, emotionally, and intellectually.

And James suddenly realized that Tim Fisher's own ambition and character would insist that Mrs. Bagley, with Martha, leave James Holden to take up residence in a home furnished by Tim Fisher upon the date and at time she became Mrs. Timothy Fisher.

He was still thinking about the complications this would cause when he heard Tim leave. His clock said three-thirty.

* * * * *

James Holden's mechanical educator was a wonderful machine, but there were some aspects of knowledge that it was not equipped to impart. The glandular comprehension of love was one such; there were others. In all of his hours under the machine James had not learned how personalities change and grow.

And yet there was a textbook case right before his eyes.

In a few months, Janet Bagley had changed from a frightened and belligerent mother-animal to a cheerful young prospective wife. The importance of the change lay in the fact that it was not polar, nothing reversed; it was only that the emphasis passed gradually from the protection of the young to the development of Janet Bagley herself.

James could not very well understand, though he tried, but he couldn't miss seeing it happen. It was worrisome. It threatened complications.

There was quite a change that came with Tim Fisher's elevation in status from steady date to affianced husband, heightened by Tim Fisher's partial understanding of the situation at Martin's Hill.

Then, having assumed the right to drop in as he pleased, he went on to assume more "rights" as Mrs. Bagley's fiancé. He brought in his friends from time to time. Not without warning, of course, for he understood the need for secrecy. When he brought friends it was after warning, and very frequently after he had helped them to remove the traces of juvenile occupancy from the lower part of the house.

In one way, this took some of the pressure off. The opening of the "hermit's" house to the friends of the "hermit's" housekeeper's fiancé and friends was a pleasant evidence of good will; people stopped wondering, a little.

On the other hand, James did not wholly approve. He contrasted this with what he remembered of his own home life. The guests who came to visit his mother and father were quiet and earnest. They indulged in animated discussions, argued points of deep reasoning, and in moments of relaxation they indulged in games that demanded skill and intellect.

Tim Fisher's friends were noisy and boisterous. They mixed highballs. They danced to music played so loud that it made the house throb. They watched the fights on television and argued with more volume than logic.

They were, to young James, a far cry from his parents' friends.

But, as he couldn't do anything about it, he refused to worry about it. James Holden turned his thoughts forward and began to plan how he was going to face the culmination of this romance next September Fifteenth. He even suspected that there would probably be a number of knotty little problems that he now knew nothing about; he resolved to allow some thinking-time to cope with them when, as, and if.

In the meantime, the summer was coming closer.

He prepared to make a visible show of having Mr. Charles Maxwell leave for a protracted summer travel. This would ease the growing problem of providing solid evidence of Maxwell's presence during the increasing frequency of Tim Fisher's visits and the widening circle of Mrs. Bagley's acquaintances in Shipmont. At the same time he and Martha would make a return from the Bolton School for Youth. This would allow them their freedom for the summer; for the first time James looked forward to it. Martha Bagley was progressing rapidly. This summer would see her over and done with the scatter-brain prattle that gave equal weight to fact or fancy. Her store of information was growing; she could be relied upon to maintain a fairly secure cover. Her logic was not to James Holden's complete satisfaction but she accepted most of his direction as necessary information to be acted upon now and reasoned later.

In the solving of his immediate problems, James can be forgiven for putting Paul Brennan out of his mind.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

But Paul Brennan was still alive, and he had not forgotten.

While James was, with astonishing success, building a life for himself in hiding, Brennan did everything he could to find him. That is to say, he did everything that--under the circumstances--he could afford to do.

The thing was, the boy had got clean away, without a trace.

When James escaped for the third, and very successful, time, Brennan was helpless. James had planned well. He had learned from his first two efforts. The first escape was a blind run toward a predictable objective; all right, that was a danger to be avoided. His second was entirely successful--until James created his own area of danger. Another lesson learned.

The third was planned with as much care as Napoleon's deliverance from the island.

James had started by choosing his time. He'd waited until Easter Week. He'd had a solid ten days during which he would be only one of countless thousands of children on the streets; there would be no slight suspicion because he was out when others were in.

* * * * *

James didn't go to school that day. That was common; children in the lower grades are often absent, and no one asks a question until they return, with the proper note from the parent. He was not missed anywhere until the school bus that should have dropped him off did not. This was an area of weakness that Brennan could not plug; he could hardly justify the effort of delivering and fetching the lad to and from school when the public school bus passed the Holden home. Brennan relied upon the Mitchells to see James upon the bus and to check him off when he returned. Whether James would have been missed earlier even with a personal delivery is problematical; certainly James would have had to concoct some other scheme to gain him his hours of free time.

At any rate, the first call to the school connected the Mitchells with a grumpy-voiced janitor who growled that teachers and principals had headed for their hills of freedom and wouldn't be back until Monday Week. It took some calling to locate a couple of James Holden's classmates who asserted that he hadn't been in school that day.

Paul Brennan knew at once what had happened, but he could not raise an immediate hue-and-cry. He fretted because of the Easter Week vacation; in any other time the sight of a school-aged boy free during school hours would have caused suspicion. During Easter Week vacation, every schoolboy would be free. James would also be protected by his size. A youngster walking alone is not suspect; his folks must be close by. The fact that it was "again" placed Paul Brennan in an undesirable position. This was not the youthful adventure that usually ends about three blocks from home. This was a repeat of the first absence during which James had been missing for months. People smile at the parents of the child who packs his little bag with a handkerchief and a candy bar to sally forth into the great big world, but it becomes another matter when the lad of six leaves home with every appearance of making it stick. So Brennan had to play it cozy, inviting newspaper reporters to the Holden home to display what he had to offer young James and giving them free rein to question Brennan's housekeeper and general factotum, the Mitchells. With honest-looking zeal, Paul Brennan succeeded in building up a picture that depicted James as ungrateful, hard to understand, wilful, and something of an intellectual brat.

Then the authorities proceeded to throw out a fine-mesh dragnet. They questioned and cross-questioned bus drivers and railroad men. They made contact with the local airport even though its facilities were only used for a daisy-cutting feeder line. Posters were printed and sent to all truck lines for display to the truck drivers. The roadside diners were covered thoroughly. And knowing the boy's ability to talk convincingly, the authorities even went so far as to try the awesome project of making contact with passengers bound out-of-town with young male children in tow.

Had James given them no previous experience to think about, he would have been merely considered a missing child and not a deliberate runaway. Then, instead of dragging down all of the known avenues of standard escape, the townspeople would have organized a tree-by-tree search of the fields and woods with hundreds of men walking hand in hand to inspect every square foot of the ground for either tracks or the child himself. But the modus operandi of young James Holden had been to apply sly touches such as writing letters and forging signatures of adults to cause the unquestioned sale of railroad tickets, or the unauthorized ride in the side-door Pullman.

Therefore, while the authorities were extending their circle of search based upon the velocity of modern transportation, James Holden was making his slow way across field and stream, guided by a Boy Scout compass and a U.S. Geodetic Survey map to keep him well out of the reach of roadway or town. With difficulty, but with dogged determination, he carried a light cot-blanket into which he had rolled four cans of pork and beans. He had a Boy Scout knife and a small pair of pliers to open it with. He had matches. He had the Boy Scout Handbook which was doubly useful; the pages devoted to woodsman's lore he kept for reference, the pages wasted on the qualifications for merit badges he used to start fires. He enjoyed sleeping in the open because it was spring and pleasantly warm, and because the Boy Scout Manual said that camping out was fun.

A grown man with an objective can cover thirty or forty miles per day without tiring. James made it ten to fifteen. Thus, by the time the organized search petered out for lack of evidence and manpower--try asking one question of everybody within a hundred-mile radius--James was quietly making his way, free of care, like a hardy pioneer looking for a homestead site.

The hint of kidnap went out early. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, of course, could not move until the waiting period was ended, but they did collect information and set up their organization ready to move into high speed at the instant of legal time. But then no ransom letter came; no evidence of the crime of kidnapping. This did not close the case; there were other cases on record where a child was stolen by adults for purposes other than ransom. It was not very likely that a child of six would be stolen by a neurotic adult to replace a lost infant, and Paul Brennan was personally convinced that James Holden had enough self-reliance to make such a kidnap attempt fail rather early in the game. He could hardly say so, nor could he suggest that James had indeed run away deliberately and skilfully, and with planned steps worthy of a much older person. He could only hint and urge the F.B.I. into any action that he could coerce them into taking; he did not care how or who brought James back just so long as the child was returned to his custody.

Then as the days wore into weeks with no sign, the files were placed in the inactive drawer. Paul Brennan made contact with a few private agencies.

He was stopped here, again, by another angle. The Holdens were by no means wealthy. Brennan could not justify the offer of some reward so large that people simply could not turn down the slim chance of collecting. If the missing one is heir to a couple of million dollars, the trustees can justify a reward of a good many thousand dollars for his return. The amount that Brennan was prepared to offer could not compel the services of a private agency on a full-time basis. The best and the most interested of the agencies took the case on a contingent basis; if something turned their way in the due course of their work they'd immediately take steps. Solving the case of a complete disappearance on the part of a child who virtually vanished into thin air would be good advertising, but their advertising budget would not allow them to put one man on the case without the first shred of evidence to point the way.

If Paul Brennan had been above-board, he could have evoked a lot of interest. The search for a six-year-old boy with the educational development of a youth of about eighteen, informed through the services of an electromechanical device, would have fired public interest, Government intervention, and would also have justified Paul Brennan's depth of interest. But Paul Brennan could say nothing about the excellent training, he could only hint at James Holden's mental proficiency which was backed up by the boy's school record. As it was, Paul Brennan's most frightful nightmare was one where young James was spotted by some eagle-eyed detective and then in desperation--anything being better than an enforced return to Paul Brennan--James Holden pulled out all the stops and showed everybody precisely how well educated he really was.

In his own affairs, Paul still had to make a living, which took up his time. As guardian and trustee of the Holden Estate, he was responsible to the State for his handling of James Holden's inheritance. The State takes a sensible view of the disbursements of the inheritance of a minor. Reasonable sums may be spent on items hardly deemed necessities to the average person, but the ceiling called "reasonable" is a flexible term and subject to close scrutiny by the State.

In the long run it was Paul Brennan's own indefensible position that made it impossible to prosecute a proper search for the missing James Holden. Brennan suspected James of building up a bank account under some false name, but he could not saunter into banks and ask to examine their records without a Court order. Brennan knew that James had not taken off without preparation, but the examination of the stuff that James left behind was not very informative. There was a small blanket missing and Mrs. Mitchell said that it looked as though some cans had been removed from the stock but she could not be sure. And in a large collection of boy's stuff, one would not observe the absence of a Boy Scout knife and other trivia. Had a 100% inventory been available, the list of missing items would have pointed out James Holden's avenue of escape.

The search for an adult would have included questioning of banks. No one knows whether such a questioning would have uncovered the bank-by-mail routine conducted under the name of Charles Maxwell. It is not a regular thing, but the receipt of a check drawn on a New York bank, issued by a publishing company, and endorsed to be paid to the account of so-and-so, accompanied by a request to open an account in that name might never be connected with the manipulations of a six-year-old genius, who was overtly just plain bright.

And so Paul Brennan worried himself out of several pounds for fear that James would give himself away to the right people. He cursed the necessity of keeping up his daily work routine. The hue-and-cry he could not keep alive, but he knew that somewhere there was a young boy entirely capable of reconstructing the whole machine that Paul Brennan wanted so desperately that he had killed for it.

Paul Brennan was blocked cold. With the F.B.I. maintaining a hands-off attitude because there was no trace of any Federal crime involved, the case of James Holden was relegated to the missing-persons files. It became the official opinion that the lad had suffered some mishap and that it would only be a matter of time before his body was discovered. Paul Brennan could hardly prove them wrong without explaining the whole secret of James Holden's intelligence, competence, and the certainty that the young man would improve upon both as soon as he succeeded in rebuilding the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

With the F.B.I. out of the picture, the local authorities waiting for the discovery of a small body, and the state authorities shelving the case except for the routine punch-card checks, official action died. Brennan's available reward money was not enough to buy a private agency's interest full-time.

Brennan could not afford to tell anybody of his suspicion of James Holden's source of income, for the idea of a child's making a living by writing would be indefensible without full explanation. However, Paul Brennan resorted to reading of magazines edited for boys. Month after month he bought them and read them, comparing the styles of the many writers against the style of the manuscript copy left behind by James.

Brennan naturally assumed that James would use a pen name. Writers often used pen names to conceal their own identity for any one of several reasons. A writer might use three or more pen names, each one identified with a known style of writing, or a certain subject or established character. But Paul Brennan did not know all there was to know about the pen-name business, such as an editor assigning a pen name to prevent the too-often appearance of some prolific writer, or conversely to make one writer's name seem exclusive with his magazine; nor could Brennan know that a writer's literary standing can be kept high by assigning a pen name to any second-rate material he may be so unfortunate as to turn out.

Paul Brennan read many stories written by James Holden under several names, including the name of Charles Maxwell, but Brennan's identification according to literary style was no better than if he had tossed a coin.

And so, blocked by his own guilt and avarice from making use of the legal avenues of approach, Paul Brennan fumed and fretted away four long years while James Holden grew from six to ten years old, hiding under the guise of the Hermit of Martin's Hill and behind the pleasant adult façade of Mrs. Janet Bagley.

CHAPTER TWELVE

If Paul Brennan found himself blocked in his efforts to find James Holden and the re-created Holden Educator, James himself was annoyed by one evident fact: Everything he did resulted in spreading the news of the machine itself.

Had he been eighteen or so, he might have made out to his own taste. In the days of late teen-age, a youth can hold a job and rent a room, buy his own clothing and conduct himself to the limit of his ability. At ten he is suspect, because no one will permit him to paddle his own canoe. At a later age James could have rented a small apartment and built his machine alone. But starting as young as he did, he was forced to hide behind the cover of some adult, and he had picked Mrs. Bagley because he could control her both through her desire for security and the promise of a fine education for the daughter Martha Bagley.

The daughter was a two-way necessity; she provided him with a contemporary companion and also gave him a lever to wield against the adult. A lone woman could have made her way without trouble. A lone woman with a girl-child is up against a rather horrifying problem of providing both support and parental care. He felt that he had done what he had to do, up to the point where Mrs. Bagley became involved with Tim Fisher or anybody else. This part of adulthood was not yet within his grasp.

But there it was and here it is, and now there was Martha to complicate the picture. Had Mrs. Bagley been alone, she and Tim could go off and marry and then settle down in Timbuctoo if they wanted to. But not with Martha. She was in the same intellectual kettle of sardines as James. Her taste in education was by no means the same. She took to the mathematical subjects indifferently, absorbing them well enough--once she could be talked into spending the couple of hours that each day demanded--but without interest. Martha could rattle off quotations from literary masters, she could follow the score of most operas (her voice was a bit off-key but she knew what was going on) and she enjoyed all of the available information on keeping a house in order. Her eye and her mind were, as James Holden's, faster than her hand. She went through the same frustrations as he did, with different tools and in a different medium. The first offside snick of the scissors she knew to be bad before she tried the pattern for size, and the only way she could correct such defective work was to practice and practice until her muscles were trained enough to respond to the direction of her mind.

Remove her now and place her in a school--even the most advanced school--and she would undergo the unhappy treatment that James had undergone these several years ago.

And yet she could not be cut loose. Martha was as much a part of this very strange life as James was. So this meant that any revision in overall policy must necessarily include the addition of Tim Fisher and not the subtraction of Mrs. Bagley and Martha.

"Charles Maxwell" had to go.

James's problem had not changed. His machine must be kept a secret as long as he could. The machine was his, James Quincy Holden's property by every known and unwritten legal right of direct, single, uncluttered inheritance. The work of his parents had been stopped by their death, but it was by no means finished with the construction of the machine. To the contrary, the real work had only begun with the completion of the first working model. And whether he turned out to be a machine-made genius, an over-powered dolt, or an introverted monster it was still his own personal reason for being alive.

He alone should reap the benefit or the sorrow, and had his parents lived they would have had their right to reap good or bad with him. Good or bad, had they lived, he would have received their protection.

As it was, he had no protection whatsoever. Until he could have and hold the right to control his own property as he himself saw fit, he had to hide just as deep from the enemy who would steal it as he must hide from the friend who would administrate it as a property in escrow for his own good, since he as a minor was legally unable to walk a path both fitting and proper for his feet.

So, the facts had to be concealed. Yet all he was buying was time.

By careful juggling, he had already bought some. Months with Jake Caslow, a few months stolidly fighting the school, and two with the help of Mrs. Bagley and Martha. Then in these later months there had been more purchased time; time gained by the post-dated engagement and the procrastinated marriage, which was now running out.

No matter what he did, it seemed that the result was a wider spread of knowledge about the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

So with misgiving and yet unaware of any way or means to circumvent the necessity without doing more overall harm, James decided that Tim Fisher must be handed another piece of the secret. A plausible piece, with as much truth as he would accept for the time being. Maybe--hand Tim Fisher a bit with great gesture and he would not go prying for the whole?

His chance came in mid-August. It was after dinner on an evening uncluttered with party or shower or the horde of just-dropped-in-friends of whom Tim Fisher had legion.

Janet Bagley and Tim Fisher sat on the low divan in the living room half-facing each other. Apart, but just so far apart that they could touch with half a gesture, they were discussing the problem of domicile. They were also still quibbling mildly about the honeymoon. Tim Fisher wanted a short, noisy one. A ten-day stay in Hawaii, flying both ways, with a ten-hour stopover in Los Angeles on the way back. Janet Bagley wanted a long and lazy stay somewhere no closer than fifteen hundred miles to the nearest telephone, newspaper, mailbox, airline, bus stop, or highway. She'd take the 762-day rocket trip to Venus if they had one available. Tim was duly sympathetic to her desire to get away from her daily grind for as long a time as possible, but he also had a garage to run, and he was by no means incapable of pointing out the practical side of crass commercialism.

But unlike the problem of the honeymoon, which Janet Bagley was willing to discuss on any terms for the pleasure of discussing it, the problem of domicile had been avoided--to the degree of being pointed.

For Janet Bagley was still torn between two loyalties. Hers was not a lone loyalty to James Holden, there had been almost a complete association with the future of her daughter in the loyalty. She realized as well as James did, that Martha must not be wrested from this life and forced to live, forever an outcast, raised mentally above the level of her age and below the physical size of her mental development. Mrs. Bagley thought only of Martha's future; she gave little or no thought on the secondary part of the problem. But James knew that once Martha was separated from the establishment, she could not long conceal her advanced information, and revealing that would reveal its source.

And so, as they talked together with soft voices, James Holden decided that he could best buy time by employing logic, finance, and good common sense. He walked into the living room and sat across the coffee table from them. He said, "You'll have to live here, you know."

The abrupt statement stunned them both. Tim sat bolt upright and objected, "I'll see to it that we're properly housed, young fellow."

"This isn't charity," replied James. "Nor the goodness of my little heart. It's a necessity."

"How so?" demanded Tim crossly. "It's my life--and Janet's."

"And--Martha's life," added James.

"You don't think I'm including her out, do you?"

"No, but you're forgetting that she isn't to be popped here and there as the fancy hits you, either. She's much to be considered."

"I'll consider her," snapped Tim. "She shall be my daughter. If she will, I'll have her use my name as well as my care and affection."

"Of course you will," agreed James. The quick gesture of Mrs. Bagley's hand towards Tim, and his equally swift caress in reply were noticed but not understood by James. "But you're not thinking deeply enough about it."

"All right. You tell me all about it."

"Martha must stay here," said James. "Neither of you--nor Martha--have any idea of how stultifying it can be to be forced into school under the supervision of teachers who cannot understand, and among classmates whose grasp of any subject is no stronger than a feeble grope in the mental dawn."

"Maybe so. But that's no reason why we must run our life your way."

"You're wrong, Mr. Fisher. Think a moment. Without hesitation, you will include the education of Martha Bagley along with the 'care and affection' you mentioned a moment ago."

"Of course."

"This means, Mr. Fisher, that Martha, approaching ten years old, represents a responsibility of about seven more years prior to her graduation from high school and another four years of college--granting that Martha is a standard, normal, healthy young lady. Am I right?"

"Sure."

"Well, since you are happy and willing to take on the responsibility of eleven years of care and affection and the expense of schooling the girl, you might as well take advantage of the possibilities here and figure on five years--or less. If we cannot give her the equal of a master's degree in three, I'm shooting in the dark. Make it five, and she'll have her doctor's degree--or at least it's equivalent. Does that make sense?"

"Of course it does. But--"

"No buts until we're finished. You'll recall the tales we told you about the necessity of hiding out. It must continue. During the school year we must not be visible to the general public."

"But dammit, I don't want to set up my family in someone else's house," objected Tim Fisher.

"Buy this one," suggested James. "Then it will be yours. I'll stay on and pay rent on my section."

"You'll--now wait a minute! What are you talking about?"

"I said, 'I'll pay rent on my section,'" said James.

"But this guy upstairs--" Tim took a long breath. "Let's get this straight," he said, "now that we're on the subject, what about Mr. Charles Maxwell?"

"I can best quote," said James with a smile, "'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!'"

"That's Shakespeare."

"Sorry. That's Sir Walter Scott. The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto Six, Stanza Seventeen. The fact of the matter is that we could go on compounding this lie, but it's time to stop it. Mr. Charles Maxwell does not exist."

"I don't understand!"

"Hasn't it puzzled you that this hermit-type character that never puts a foot out of the house has been out and gone on some unstated vacation or business trip for most of the spring and summer?"

"Hadn't given it a thought," said Fisher with a fatuous look at Mrs. Bagley. She mooned back at him. For a moment they were lost in one another, giving proof to the idea that blinder than he who will not see is the fellow who has his eye on a woman.

"Charles Maxwell does not exist except in the minds of his happy readers," said James. "He is a famous writer of boys' stories and known to a lot of people for that talent. Yet he is no more a real person than Lewis Carroll."

"But Lewis Carroll did exist--"

"As Charles L. Dodgson, a mathematician famous for his work in symbolic logic."

"All right! Then who writes these stories? Who supports you--and this house?"

"I do!"

Tim blinked, looked around the room a bit wildly and then settled on Martha, looking at her helplessly.

"It's true, Tim," she said quietly. "It's crazy but it works. I've been living with it for years."

Tim considered that for a full minute. "All right," he said shortly. "So it works. But why does any kid have to live for himself?" He eyed James. "Who's responsible for you?"

"I am!"

"But--"

"Got an hour?" asked James with a smile. "Then listen--"

At the end of James Holden's long explanation, Tim Fisher said, "Me--? Now, I need a drink!"

James chuckled, "Alcoholic, of course--which is Pi to seven decimal places if you ever need it. Just count the letters."

Over his glass, Tim eyed James thoughtfully. "So if this is true, James, just who owns that fabulous machine of yours?"

"It is mine, or ours."

"You gave me to believe that it was a high-priority Government project," he said accusingly.

"Sorry. But I would lie as glibly to God Himself if it became necessary to protect myself by falsehood. I'm sorry it isn't a Government project, but it's just as important a secret."

"Anything as big as this should be the business of the Government."

"Perhaps so. But it's mine to keep or to give, and it's mine to study." James was thoughtful for a moment. "I suppose that you can argue that anything as important as this should be handed over to the authorities immediately; that a large group of men dedicated to such a study can locate its difficulties and its pitfalls and failures far swifter than a single youth of eleven. Yet by the right of invention, a process protected by the Constitution of the United States and circumvented by some very odd rulings on the part of the Supreme Court, it is mine by inheritance, to reap the exclusive rewards for my family's work. Until I'm of an age when I am deemed capable of managing my own life, I'd be 'protected' out of my rights if I handed this to anybody--including the Government. They'd start a commission full of bureaucrats who'd first use the machine to study how to best expand their own little empire, perpetuate themselves in office, and then they'd rule me out on the quaint theory that education is so important that it mustn't be wasted on the young."

Tim Fisher smiled wryly. He turned to Janet Bagley. "How do you want it?" he asked her.

"For Martha's sake, I want it his way," she said.

"All right. Then that's the way we'll have it," said Tim Fisher. He eyed James somewhat ruefully. "You know, it's a funny thing. I've always thought this was a screwy set-up, and to be honest, I've always thought you were a pretty bumptious kid. I guess you had a good reason. Anyway, I should have known Janet wouldn't have played along with it unless she had a reason that was really helping somebody."

James saw with relief that Tim had allied himself with the cause; he was, in fact, very glad to have someone knowledgeable and levelheaded in on the problem. Anyway he really liked Tim, and was happy to have the deception out of the way.

"That's all right," he said awkwardly.

Tim laughed. "Hey, will this contraption of yours teach me how to adjust a set of tappets?"

"No," said James quickly. "It will teach you the theory of how to chop down a tree but it can't show you how to swing an axe. Or," he went on with a smile, "it will teach you how to be an efficient accountant--but you have to use your own money!"

* * * * *

In the house on Martin's Hill, everybody won. Tim Fisher objected at first to the idea of gallivanting off on a protracted honeymoon, leaving a nine-year-old daughter in the care of a ten-year-old boy. But Janet--now Mrs. Fisher--pointed out that James and Martha were both quite competent, and furthermore there was little to be said for a honeymoon encumbered with a little pitcher that had such big ears, to say nothing of a pair of extremely curious eyes and a rather loud voice. And furthermore, if we allow the woman's privilege of adding one furthermore on top of another, it had been a long, long time since Janet had enjoyed a child-free vacation. So she won. It was not Hawaii by air for a ten-day stay. It was Hawaii by ship with a sixty-day sojourn in a hotel that offered both seclusion and company to the guests' immediate preference.

James Holden won more time. He felt that every hour was a victory. At times he despaired because time passed so crawlingly slow. All the wealth of his education could not diminish that odd sense of the time-factor that convinces all people that the length of the years diminish as age increases. Far from being a simple, amusing remark, the problem has been studied because it is universal. It is psychological, of course, and it is not hard to explain simply in terms of human experience plus the known fact that the human senses respond to the logarithm of the stimulus.

With most people, time is reasonably important. We live by the clock, and we die by the clock, and before there were clocks there were candles marked in lengths and sand flowing through narrow orifices, water dripping into jars, and posts stuck in the ground with marks for the shadow to divide the day. The ancient ones related womanhood to the moon and understood that time was vital in the course of Life.

With James, time was more important, perhaps, than to any other human being alive. He was fighting for time, always. His was not the immature desire of uneducated youth to become adult overnight for vague reasons.

With James it was an honest evaluation of his precarious position. He had to hide until he was deemed capable of handling his own affairs, after which he could fight his own battles in his own way without the interference of the laws that are set up to protect the immature.

With Tim Fisher and his brand-new bride out of the way, James took a deep breath at having leaped one more hurdle. Then he sat down to think.

Obviously there is no great sea-change that takes place at the Stroke Of Midnight on the date of the person's 21st birthday; no magic wand is waved over his scalp to convert him in a moment of time from a puling infant to a mature adult. The growth of child to adult is as gradual as the increase of his stature, which varies from one child to the next.

The fact remained that few people are confronted by the necessity of making a decision based upon the precise age of the subject. We usually cross this barrier with no trouble, taking on our rights and responsibilities as we find them necessary to our life. Only in probating an estate left by the demise of both parents in the presence of minor children does this legal matter of precise age become noticeable. Even then, the control exerted over the minor by the legal guardian diminishes by some obscure mathematical proportion that approaches zero as the minor approaches the legal age of maturity. Rare is the case of the reluctant guardian who jealously relinquishes the iron rule only after the proper litigation directs him to let go, render the accounting for audit, and turn over the keys to the treasury to the rightful heir.

James Holden was the seldom case. James Holden needed a very adroit lawyer to tell him how and when his rights and privileges as a citizen could be granted, and under what circumstances. From the evidence already at hand, James saw loopholes available in the matter of the legal age of twenty-one. But he also knew that he could not approach a lawyer with questions without giving full explanation of every why and wherefore.

So James Holden, already quite competent in the do-it-himself method of cutting his own ice, decided to study law. Without any forewarning of the monumental proportions of the task he faced, James started to acquire books on legal procedure and the law.

* * * * *

With the return of Tim and Janet Fisher matters progressed well. Mrs. Fisher took over the running of the household; Tim continued his running of the garage and started to dicker for the purchase of the house on Martin's Hill. The "Hermit" who had returned before the wedding remained temporarily. With a long-drawn plan, Charles Maxwell would slowly fade out of sight. Already his absence during the summer was hinting as being a medical study; during the winter he would return to the distant hospital. Later he would leave completely cured to take up residence elsewhere. Beyond this they planned to play it by ear.

James and Martha, freed from the housework routine, went deep into study.

Christmas passed and spring came and in April, James marked his eleventh birthday.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

One important item continued to elude James Holden. The Educator could not be made to work in "tandem." In less technical terms, the Educator was strictly an individual device, a one-man-dog. The wave forms that could be recorded were as individual as fingerprints and pore-patterns and iris markings. James could record a series of ideas or a few pages of information and play them back to himself. During the playback he could think in no other terms; he could not even correct, edit or improve the phrasing. It came back word for word with the faithful reproduction of absolute fidelity. Similarly, Martha could record a phase of information and she, too, underwent the same repetition when her recording was played back to her.

But if Martha's recording were played through to James, utter confusion came. It was a whirling maze of colors and odors, sound, taste and touch.

It spoiled some of James Holden's hopes; he sought the way to mass-use, his plan was to employ a teacher to digest the information and then via the Educator, impress the information upon many other brains each coupled to the machine. This would not work.

He made an extra headset late in June and they tried it, sitting side-by-side and still it did not work. With Martha doing the reading, she got the full benefit of the machine and James emerged with a whirling head full of riotous colors and other sensations. At one point he hoped that they might learn some subject by sitting side-by-side and reading the text in unison, but from this they received the information horribly mingled with equal intensity of sensory noise.

He did not abandon this hope completely. He merely put it aside as a problem that he was not ready to study yet. He would re-open the question when he knew more about the whole process. To know the whole process meant studying many fields of knowledge and combining them into a research of his own.

And so James entered the summer months as he'd entered them before; Tim and Janet Fisher took off one day and returned the next afternoon with a great gay show of "bringing the children home for the summer."

Even in this day of multi-billion-dollar budgets and farm surpluses that cost forty thousand dollars per hour for warehouse rental, twenty-five hundred dollars is still a tidy sum to dangle before the eyes of any individual. This was the reward offered by Paul Brennan for any information as to the whereabouts of James Quincy Holden.

If Paul Brennan could have been honest, the information he could have supplied would have provided any of the better agencies with enough lead-material to track James Holden down in a time short enough to make the reward money worth the effort. Similarly, if James Holden's competence had been no greater than Brennan's scaled-down description, he could not have made his own way without being discovered.

Bound by his own guilt, Brennan could only fret. Everything including time, was running against him.

And as the years of James Holden's independence looked toward the sixth, Paul Brennan was willing to make a mental bet that the young man's education was deeper than ever.

He would have won. James was close to his dream of making his play for an appearance in court and pleading for the law to recognize his competence to act as an adult. He abandoned all pretense; he no longer hid through the winter months, and he did not keep Martha under cover either. They went shopping with Mrs. Fisher now and then, and if any of the folks in Shipmont wondered about them, the fact that the children were in the care and keeping of responsible adults and were oh-so-quick on the uptake stopped anybody who might have made a fast call to the truant officer.

Then in the spring of James Holden's twelfth year and the sixth of his freedom, he said to Tim Fisher. "How would you like to collect twenty-five hundred dollars?"

Fisher grinned. "Who do you want killed?"

"Seriously."

"Who wouldn't?"

"All right, drop the word to Paul Brennan and collect the reward."

"Can you protect yourself?"

"I can quote Gladstone from one end to the other. I can cite every civil suit regarding the majority or minority problem that has any importance. If I fail, I'll skin out of there in a hurry on the next train. But I can't wait forever."

"What's the gimmick, James?"

"First, I am sick and tired of running and hiding, and I think I've got enough to prove my point and establish my rights. Second, there is a bit of cupidity here; the reward money is being offered out of my own inheritance so I feel that I should have some say in where it should go. Third, the fact that I steer it into the hands of someone I'd prefer to get it tickles my sense of humor. The trapper trapped; the bopper bopped; the sapper hoist by his own petard."

"And--?"

"It isn't fair to Martha, either. So the sooner we get this whole affair settled, the sooner we can start to move towards a reasonable way of life."

"Okay, but how are we going to work it? I can't very well turn up by myself, you know."

"Why not?"

"People would think I'm a heel."

"Let them think so. They'll change their opinion once the whole truth is known." James smiled. "It'll also let you know who your true friends are."

"Okay. Twenty-five hundred bucks and a chance at the last laugh sounds good. I'll talk it over with Janet."

That night they buried Charles Maxwell, the Hermit of Martin's Hill.

BOOK THREE:

THE REBEL

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

In his years of searching, Paul Brennan had followed eleven fruitless leads. It had cost him over thirteen hundred dollars and he was prepared to go on and on until he located James Holden, no matter how much it took. He fretted under two fears, one that James had indeed suffered a mishap, and the other that James might reveal his secret in a dramatic announcement, or be discovered by some force or agency that would place the whole process in hands that Paul Brennan could not reach.

The registered letter from Tim Fisher culminated this six years of frantic search. Unlike the previous leads, this spoke with authority, named names, gave dates, and outlined sketchily but adequately the operations of the young man in very plausible prose. Then the letter went on in the manner of a man with his foot in a cleft stick; the writer did not approve of James Holden's operations since they involved his wife and newly-adopted daughter, but since wife and daughter were fond of James Holden, the writer could not make any overt move to rid his household of the interfering young man. Paul Brennan was asked to move with caution and in utter secrecy, even to sending the reward in cash to a special post-office box.

Paul Brennan's reaction was a disappointment to himself. He neither felt great relief nor the desire to exult. He found himself assaying his own calmness and wondering why he lacked emotion over this culmination of so many years of futile effort. He re-read the letter carefully to see if there were something hidden in the words that his subconscious had caught, but he found nothing that gave him any reason to believe that this letter was a false lead. It rang true; Brennan could understand Tim Fisher's stated reaction and the man's desire to collect. Brennan even suspected that Fisher might use the reward money for his own private purpose.

It was not until he read the letter for the third time that he saw the suggestion to move with caution and secrecy not as its stated request to protect the writer, but as an excellent advice for his own guidance.

And then Paul Brennan realized that for six years he had been concentrating upon the single problem of having James Holden returned to his custody, and in that concentration he had lost sight of the more important problem of achieving his true purpose of gaining control of the Holden Educator. The letter had not been the end of a long quest, but just the signal to start.

Paul Brennan of course did not give a fig for the Holden Estate nor the welfare of James. His only interest was in the machine, and the secret of that machine was locked in the young man's mind and would stay that way unless James could be coerced into revealing it. The secret indubitably existed as hardware in the machine rebuilt in the house on Martin's Hill, but Brennan guessed that any sight of him would cause James to repeat his job of destruction. Brennan also envisioned a self-destructive device that would addle the heart of the machine at the touch of a button, perhaps booby-traps fitted like burglar alarms that would ruin the machine at the first touch of an untrained hand.

Brennan's mind began to work. He must plan his moves carefully to acquire the machine by stealth. He toyed with the idea of murder and rejected it as too dangerous to chance a repeat, especially in view of the existence of the rebuilt machine.

Brennan read the letter again. It gave him to think. James had obviously succeeded in keeping his secret by imparting it to a few people that he could either trust or bind to him, perhaps with the offer of education via the machine, which James and only James maintained in hiding could provide. Brennan could not estimate the extent of James Holden's knowledge but it was obvious that he was capable of some extremely intelligent planning. He was willing to grant the boy the likelihood of being the equal of a long and experienced campaigner, and the fact that James was in the favor of Tim Fisher's wife and daughter meant that the lad would be able to call upon them for additional advice. Brennan counted the daughter Martha in this planning program, most certainly James would have given the girl an extensive education, too. Everything added up, even to Tim Fisher's resentment.

But there was not time to ponder over the efficiency of James Holden's operations. It was time for Paul Brennan to cope, and it seemed sensible to face the fact that Paul Brennan alone could not plot the illegal grab of the Holden Educator and at the same time masquerade as the deeply-concerned loving guardian. He could label James Holden's little group as an organization, and if he was to combat this organization he needed one himself.

Paul Brennan began to form a mental outline of his requirements. First he had to figure out the angle at which to make his attack. Once he knew the legal angle, then he could find ruthless men in the proper position of authority whose ambitions he could control. He regretted that the elder Holden had not allowed him to study civil and criminal law along with his courses in real estate and corporate law. As it was, Brennan was unsure of his legal rights, and he could not plan until he had researched the problem most thoroughly.

To his complete surprise, Paul Brennan discovered that there was no law that would stay an infant from picking up his marbles and leaving home. So long as the minor did not become a ward of responsibility of the State, his freedom was as inviolable as the freedom of any adult. The universal interest in missing-persons cases is overdrawn because of their dramatic appeal. In every case that comes to important notice, the missing person has left some important responsibilities that had to be satisfied. A person with no moral, legal, or ethical anchor has every right to pack his suitcase and catch the next conveyance for parts unknown. If he is found by the authorities after an appeal by friends or relatives, the missing party can tell the police that, Yes he did leave home and, No he isn't returning and, furthermore he does not wish his whereabouts made known; and all the authorities can report is that the missing one is hale, happy, and hearty and wants to stay missing.

Under the law, a minor is a minor and there is no proposition that divides one degree of minority from another. Major decisions, such as voting, the signing of binding contracts of importance, the determination of a course of drastic medical treatment, are deemed to be matters that require mature judgment. The age for such decisions is arbitrarily set at age twenty-one. Acts such as driving a car, sawing a plank, or buying food and clothing are considered to be "skills" that do not require judgment and therefore the age of demarcation varies with the state and the state legislature's attitude.

James was a minor; presumably he could repudiate contracts signed while a minor, at the time he reached the age of twenty-one. From a practical standpoint, however, anything that James contracted for was expendable and of vital necessity. He could not stop payment on a check for his rent, nor claim that he had not received proper payment for his stories and demand damages. Paul Brennan might possibly interfere with the smooth operation by squawking to the bank that Charles Maxwell was a phantom front for the minor child James Holden. And bankers, being bankers, might very well clog up the operation with a lot of questions. But there was the possibility that James Holden, operating through the agency of an adult, would switch his method. He could even go so far as to bring Brennan to lawsuit to have Brennan stopped from his interference. Child or not, James Holden had been running a checking account by mail for a number of years which could be used as evidence of his good faith and ability.

Indeed, the position of James Holden was so solid that Brennan could only plead personal interest and personal responsibility in the case for securing a writ of habeas corpus to have the person of James Holden returned to his custody and protection. And this of itself was a bit on the dangerous side. A writ of habeas corpus will, by law, cause the delivery of the person to the right hands, but there is no part of the writ that can be used to guarantee that the person will remain thereafter. If Brennan tried to repeat this program, James Holden was very apt to suggest either the rather rare case of Barratry or Maintenance against Brennan. Barratry consists of the constant harassment of a citizen by the serial entry of lawsuit after lawsuit against him, each of which he must defend to the loss of time and money--and the tying up of courts and their officials. Maintenance is the re-opening of the same suit and its charges time after time in court after court. One need only be sure of the attitude of the plaintiff to strike back; if he is interested in heckling the defendant and this can be demonstrated in evidence, the heckler is a dead duck. Such a response would surely damage Paul Brennan's overt position as a responsible, interested, affectionate guardian of his best friends' orphaned child.

Then to put the top on the bottle, James Holden had crossed state lines in his flight from home. This meant that the case was not the simple proposition of appearing before a local magistrate and filing an emotional appeal. It was interstate. It smacked of extradition, and James Holden had committed no crime in either state.

To Paul Brennan's qualifications for his henchmen, he now added the need for flouting the law if the law could not be warped to fit his need.

Finding a man with ambition, with a casual disregard for ethics, is not hard in political circles. Paul Brennan found his man in Frank Manison, a rising figure in the office of the District Attorney. Manison had gubernatorial ambitions, and he was politically sharp. He personally conducted only those cases that would give him ironclad publicity; he preferred to lower the boom on a lighter charge than chance an acquittal. Manison also had a fine feeling for anticipating public trends, a sense of the drama, and an understanding of public opinion.

He granted Brennan a conference of ten minutes, and knowing from long experience that incoming information flows faster when it is not interrupted, he listened attentively, oiling and urging the flow by facial expressions of interest and by leaning forward attentively whenever a serious point was about to come forth. Brennan explained about James Holden, his superior education, and what it had enabled the lad to do. He explained the education not as a machine but as a "system of study" devised by James Holden's parents, feeling that it was better to leave a few stones lying flat and unturned for his own protection. Manison nodded at the end of the ten-minute time-limit, used his desk interphone to inform his secretary that he was not to be disturbed until further notice (which also told Paul Brennan that he was indeed interested) and then said:

"You know you haven't a legal leg to stand on, Brennan."

"So I find out. It seems incredible that there isn't any law set up to control the activity of a child."

"Incredible? No, Brennan, not so. To now it hasn't been necessary. People just do not see the necessity of laws passed to prevent something that isn't being done anyway. The number of outmoded laws, ridiculous laws, and laws passed in the heat of public emotion are always a subject for public ridicule. If the state legislature were to pass a law stating that any child under fourteen may not leave home without the consent of his parents, every opposition newspaper in the state would howl about the waste of time and money spent on ridiculous legislation passed to govern activities that are already under excellent control. They would poll the state and point out that for so many million children under age fourteen, precisely zero of them have left home to set up their own housekeeping. One might just as well waste the taxpayer's money by passing a law that confirms the Universal Law of Gravity.

"But that's neither here nor there," he said. "Your problem is to figure out some means of exerting the proper control over this intelligent infant."

"My problem rises higher than that," said Brennan ruefully. "He dislikes me to the point of blind, unreasonable hatred. He believes that I am the party responsible for the death of his parents and furthermore that the act was deliberate. Tantamount to a charge of first-degree murder."

"Has he made that statement recently?" asked Manison.

"I would hardly know."

"When last did you hear him say words to that effect?"

"At the time, following the accidental death of his parents, James Holden ran off to the home of his grandparents. Puzzled and concerned, they called me as the child's guardian. I went there to bring him back to his home. I arrived the following morning and it was during that session that James Holden made the accusation."

"And he has not made it since, to the best of your knowledge?"

"Not that I know of."

"Hardly make anything out of that. Seven years ago. Not a formal charge, only a cry of rage, frustration, hysterical grief. The complaint of a five-year-old made under strain could hardly be considered slanderous. It is too bad that the child hasn't broken any laws. Your success in collecting him the first time was entirely due to the associations he'd made with this automobile thief--Caslow, you said his name was. We can't go back to that. The responsibility has been fixed, I presume, upon Jake Caslow in another state. Brennan, you've a real problem: How can you be sure that this James Holden will disclose his secret system of study even if we do succeed in cooking up some legal means of placing him and keep him in your custody?"

Brennan considered, and came to the conclusion that now was the time to let another snibbet of information go. "The system of study consists of an electronic device, the exact nature of which I do not understand. The entire machine is large and cumbersome. In it, as a sort of 'heart,' is a special circuit. Without this special circuit the thing is no more than an expensive aggregation of delicate devices that could be used elsewhere in electronics. One such machine stands unused in the Holden Home because the central circuit was destroyed beyond repair or replacement by young James Holden. He destroyed it because he felt that this secret should remain his own, the intellectual inheritance from his parents. There is one other machine--undoubtedly in full function and employed daily--in the house on Martin's Hill under James Holden's personal supervision."

"Indeed? How, may I ask?"

"It was rebuilt by James Holden from plans, specifications, and information engraved on his brain by his parents through the use of their first machine. Unfortunately, I have every reason to believe that this new machine is so booby-trapped and tamper-protected that the first interference by someone other than James Holden will cause its destruction."

"Um. It might be possible to impound this machine as a device of high interest to the State," mused Manison. "But if we start any proceeding as delicate as that, it will hit every newspaper in the country and our advantage will be lost."

"Technically," said Paul Brennan, "you don't know that such a machine exists. But as soon as young Holden realizes that you know about his machine, he'll also know that you got the information from me." Brennan sat quietly and thought for a moment. "There's another distressing angle, too," he said at last. "I don't think that there is a soul on earth who knows how to run this machine but James Holden. Steal it or impound it or take it away legally, you've got to know how it runs. I doubt that we'd find a half-dozen people on the earth who'd willingly sit in a chair with a heavy headset on, connected to a devilish aggregation of electrical machinery purported to educate the victim, while a number of fumblers experimented with the dials and the knobs and the switches. No sir, some sort of pressure must be brought to bear upon the youngster."

"Um. Perhaps civic pride? Might work. Point out to him that he is in control of a device that is essential to the security of the United States. That he is denying the children of this country the right to their extensive education. Et cetera?"

"Could be. But how are you going to swing it, technically in ignorance of the existence of such a machine?"

"Were I a member of the Congressional Committee on Education, I could investigate the matter of James Holden's apparent superiority of intellect."

"And hit Page One of every newspaper in the country," sneered Brennan.

"Well, I'm not," snapped Manison angrily. "However, there is a way, perhaps several ways, once we find the first entering wedge. After all, Brennan, the existence of a method of accelerating the course of educational training is of the utmost importance to the future of not only the United States of America, but the entire human race. Once I can locate some plausible reason for asking James Holden the first question about anything, the remainder of any session can be so slanted as to bring into the open any secret knowledge he may have. We, to make the disclosure easier, shall hold any sessions in the strictest of secrecy. We can quite readily agree with James Holden's concern over the long-range effectiveness of his machine and state that secrecy is necessary lest headstrong factions take the plunge into something that could be very detrimental to the human race instead of beneficial. Frankly, Mr. Brennan," said Manison with a wry smile, "I should like to borrow that device for about a week myself. It might help me locate some of the little legal points that would help me." He sighed. "Yes," he said sadly, "I know the law, but no one man knows all of the finer points. Lord knows," he went on, "if the law were a simple matter of behaving as it states, we'd not have this tremendous burden. But the law is subject to interpretation and change and argument and precedent--Precedent? Um, here we may have an interesting angle, Brennan. I must look into it."

"Precedent?"

"Yes, indeed. Any ruling that we were to make covering the right of a seven, eight, or nine year old to run his own life as he sees fit will be a ruling that establishes precedent."

"And--?"

"Well, up to now there's no ruling about such a case; no child of ten has ever left home to live as he prefers. But this James Holden is apparently capable of doing just that--and any impartial judge deliberating such a case would find it difficult to justify a decision that placed the competent infant under the guardianship and protection of an adult who is less competent than the infant."

Brennan's face turned dark. "You're saying that this Holden kid is smarter than I am?"

"Sit down and stop sputtering," snapped Manison. "What were you doing at six years old, Brennan? Did you have the brains to leave home and protect yourself by cooking up the plausible front of a very interesting character such as the mythical Hermit of Martin's Hill? Were you writing boys' stories for a nationwide magazine of high circulation and accredited quality? Could you have planned your own dinner and prepared it, or would you have dined on chocolate bars washed down with strawberry pop? Stop acting indignant. Start thinking. If for no other reason than that we don't want to end up selling pencils on Halstead Street because we're not quite bright, we've got to lay our hands on that machine. We've got to lead, not follow. Yet at the present time I'll wager that your James Holden is going to give everybody concerned a very rough time. Now, let me figure out the angles and pull the wires. One thing that nobody can learn from any electronic machine is how to manipulate the component people that comprise a political machine. I'll be in touch with you, Brennan."

* * * * *

The ring at the door was Chief of Police Joseph Colling and another gentleman. Janet Fisher answered the door, "Good evening, Mr. Colling. Come in?"

"Thank you," said Colling politely. "This is Mr. Frank Manison, from the office of the State Department of Justice."

"Oh? Is something wrong?"

"Not that we know of," replied Manison. "We're simply after some information. I apologize for calling at eight o'clock in the evening, but I wanted to catch you all under one roof. Is Mr. Fisher home? And the children?"

"Why, yes. We're all here." Janet stepped aside to let them enter the living room, and then called upstairs. Mr. Manison was introduced around and Tim Fisher said, cautiously, "What's the trouble here?"

"No trouble that we know of," said Manison affably. "We're just after some information about the education of James Holden, a legal minor, who seems never to have been enrolled in any school."

"If you don't mind," replied Tim Fisher, "I'll not answer anything without the advice of my attorney."

Janet Fisher gasped.

Tim turned with a smile. "Don't you like lawyers, honey?"

"It isn't that. But isn't crying for a lawyer an admission of some sort?"

"Sure is," replied Tim Fisher. "It's an admission that I don't know all of my legal rights. If lawyers come to me because they don't know all there is to know about the guts of an automobile, I have every right to the same sort of consultation in reverse. Agree, James?"

James Holden nodded. "The man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client," he said. "I think that's Daniel Webster, but I'm not certain. No matter; it's right. Call Mr. Waterman, and until he arrives we'll discuss the weather, the latest dope in high-altitude research, or nuclear physics."

Frank Manison eyed the lad. "You're James Holden?"

"I am."

Tim interrupted. "We're not answering anything," he warned.

"Oh, I don't mind admitting my identity," said James. "I've committed no crime, I've broken no law. No one can point to a single act of mine that shows a shred of evidence to the effect that my intentions are not honorable. Sooner or later this whole affair had to come to a showdown, and I'm prepared to face it squarely."

"Thank you," said Manison. "Now, without inviting comment, let me explain one important fact. The state reserves the right to record marriages, births, and deaths as a simple matter of vital statistics. We feel that we have every right to the compiling of the census, and we can justify our feeling. I am here because of some apparent irregularities, records of which we do not have. If these apparent irregularities can be explained to our satisfaction for the record, this meeting will be ended. Now, let's relax until your attorney arrives."

"May I get you some coffee or a highball?" asked Janet Fisher.

"Coffee, please," agreed Frank Manison. Chief Colling nodded quietly. They relaxed over coffee and small talk for a half hour. The arrival of Waterman, Tim Fisher's attorney, signalled the opening of the discussion.

"First," said Manison, his pencil poised over a notebook, "Who lives here in permanent residence, and for how long?" He wrote rapidly as they told him. "The house is your property?" he asked Tim, and wrote again. "And you are paying a rental on certain rooms of this house?" he asked James, who nodded.

"Where did you attend school?" he asked James.

"I did not."

"Where did you get your education?"

"By a special course in home study."

"You understand that under the state laws that provide for the education of minor children, the curriculum must be approved by the state?"

"I do."

"And has it?"

Waterman interrupted. "Just a moment, Mr. Manison. In what way must the curriculum be approved? Does the State study all textbooks and the manner in which each and every school presents them? Or does the State merely insist that the school child be taught certain subjects?"

"The State merely insists that certain standards of education be observed."

"In fact," added James, "the State does not even insist that the child learn the subjects, realizing that some children lack the intellect to be taught certain subjects completely and fully. Let's rather say that the State demands that school children be exposed to certain subjects in the hope that they 'take.' Am I not correct?"

"I presume you are."

"Then I shall answer your question. In my home study, I have indeed followed the approved curriculum by making use of the approved textbooks in their proper order. I am aware of the fact that this is not the same State, but if you will consult the record of my earlier years in attendance at a school selected by my legal guardian, you'll find that I passed from preschool grade to Fourth Grade in a matter of less than half a year, at the age of five-approaching-six. If this matter is subject to question, I'll submit to any course of extensive examination your educators care to prepare. The law regarding compulsory education in this state says that the minor child must attend school until either the age of eighteen, or until he has completed the standard eight years of grammar school and four years of high school. I shall then stipulate that the suggested examination be limited to the schooling of a high school graduate."

"For the moment we'll pass this over. We may ask that you do prove your contention," said Manison.

"You don't doubt that I can, do you?" asked James.

Manison shook his head. "No, at this moment I have no doubt."

"Then why do you bother asking?"

"I am here for a rather odd reason," said Manison. "I've told you the reservations that the State holds, which justify my presence. Now, it is patently obvious that you are a very competent young man, James Holden. The matter of making your own way is difficult, as many adults can testify. To have contrived a means of covering up your youth, in addition to living a full and competent life, demonstrates an ability above and beyond the average. Now, the State is naturally interested in anything that smacks of acceleration of the educational period. Can you understand that?"

"Naturally. None but a dolt would avoid education."

"Then you agree with our interest?"

"I--"

"Just a moment, James," said Waterman. "Let's put it that you understand their interest, but that you do not necessarily agree."

"I understand," said James.

"Then you must also understand that this 'course of study' by which you claim the equal of a high-school education at the age of ten or eleven (perhaps earlier) must be of high importance."

"I understand that it might," agreed James.

"Then will you explain why you have kept this a secret?"

"Because--"

"Just a moment," said Waterman again. "James, would you say that your method of educating yourself is completely perfected?"

"Not completely."

"Not perfected?" asked Manison. "Yet you claim to have the education of a high-school graduate?"

"I so claim," said James. "But I must also point out that I have acquired a lot of mish-mash in the course of this education. For instance, it is one thing to study English, its composition, spelling, vocabulary, construction, rules and regulations. One must learn these things if he is to be considered literate. In the course of such study, one also becomes acquainted with English literature. With literature it is enough to merely be acquainted with the subject. One need not know the works of Chaucer or Spenser intimately--unless one is preparing to specialize in the English literature of the writers of that era. Frankly, sir, I should hate to have my speech colored by the flowery phrases of that time, and the spelling of that day would flunk me out of First Grade if I made use of it. In simple words, I am still perfecting the method."

"Now, James," went on Waterman, "have you ever entertained the idea of not releasing the details of your method?"

"Occasionally," admitted James.

"Why?"

"Until we know everything about it, we can not be certain that its ultimate effect will be wholly beneficial."

"So, you see," said Waterman to Manison, "the intention is reasonable. Furthermore, we must point out that this system is indeed the invention created by the labor and study of the parents of James Holden, and as such it is a valuable property retained by James Holden as his own by the right of inheritance. The patent laws of the United States are clear, it is the many conflicting rulings that have weakened the system. The law itself is contained in the Constitution of the United States, which provides for the establishment of a Patent Office as a means to encourage inventors by granting them the exclusive right to the benefits of their labor for a reasonable period of time--namely seventeen years with provision for a second period under renewal."

"Then why doesn't he make use of it?" demanded Manison.

"Because the process, like so many another process, can be copied and used by individuals without payment, and because there hasn't been a patent suit upheld for about forty years, with the possible exception of Major Armstrong's suit against the Radio Corporation of America, settled in Armstrong's favor after about twenty-five years of expensive litigation. A secret is no longer a secret these days, once it has been written on a piece of paper and called to the attention of a few million people across the country."

"You realize that anything that will give an extensive education at an early age is vital to the security of the country."

"We recognize that responsibility, sir," said Waterman quietly. "We also recognize that in the hands of unscrupulous men, the system could be misused. We also realize its dangers, and we are trying to avoid them before we make the announcement. We are very much aware of the important, although unfortunate, fact that James Holden, as a minor, can have his rights abridged. Normally honest men, interested in the protection of youth, could easily prevent him from using his own methods, thus depriving him of the benefits that are legally his. This could be done under the guise of protection, and the result would be the super-education of the protectors--whose improving intellectual competence would only teach them more and better reasons for depriving the young man of his rights. James Holden has a secret, and he has a right to keep that secret, and his only protection is for him to continue to keep that secret inviolate. It was his parents' determination not to release this process upon the world until they were certain of the results. James is a living example of their effort; they conceived him for the express purpose of providing a virgin mind to educate by their methods, so that no outside interference would becloud their results. If this can be construed as the illegal experimentation on animals under the anti-vivisection laws, or cruelty to children, it was their act, not his. Is that clear?"

"It is clear," replied Manison. "We may be back for more discussion on this point. I'm really after information, not conducting a case, you know."

"Well, you have your information."

"Not entirely. We've another point to consider, Mr. Waterman. It is admittedly a delicate point. It is the matter of legal precedent. Granting everything you say is true--and I'll grant that hypothetically for the purpose of this argument--let's assume that James Holden ultimately finds his process suitable for public use. Now, happily to this date James had not broken any laws. He is an honorable individual. Let's now suppose that in the near future, someone becomes educated by his process and at the age of twelve or so decided to make use of his advanced intelligence in nefarious work?"

"All right. Let's suppose."

"Then you tell me who is responsible for the person of James Holden?"

"He is responsible unto himself."

"Not under the existing laws," said Manison. "Let's consider James just as we know him now. Who says, 'go ahead,' if he has an attack of acute appendicitis?"

"In the absence of someone to take the personal responsibility," said James quietly, "the attending doctor would toss his coin to see whether his Oath of Hippocrates was stronger than his fear of legal reprisals. It's been done before. But let's get to the point, Mr. Manison. What do you have in mind?"

"You've rather pointedly demonstrated your preference to live here rather than with your legally-appointed guardian."

"Yes."

"Well, young man, I suggest that we get this matter settled legally. You are not living under the supervision of your guardian, but you are indeed living under the auspices of people who are not recognized by law as holding the responsibility for you."

"So far there's been no cause for complaint."

"Let's keep it that way," smiled Manison. "I'll ask you to accept a writ of habeas corpus, directing you to show just cause why you should not be returned to the custody of your guardian."

"And what good will that do?"

"If you can show just cause," said Manison, "the Court will follow established precedent and appoint Mr. and Mrs. Fisher as your responsible legal guardians--if that is your desire."

"Can this be done?" asked Mrs. Fisher.

"It's been done before, time and again. The State is concerned primarily with the welfare of the child; children have been legally removed from natural but unsuitable parents, you know." He looked distressed for a moment and then went on, "The will of the deceased is respected, but the law recognizes that it is the living with which it must be primarily concerned, that mistakes can be made, and that such errors in judgment must be rectified in the name of the public weal."

"I've been--" started James but Attorney Waterman interrupted him:

"We'll accept the service of your writ, Mr. Manison." And to James after the man had departed: "Never give the opposition an inkling of what you have in mind--and always treat anybody who is not in your retainer as opposition."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The case of Brennan vs. Holden opened in the emptied court room of Judge Norman L. Carter, with a couple of bored members of the press wishing they were elsewhere. For the first two hours, it was no more than formalized outlining of the whole situation.

The plaintiff identified himself, testified that he was indeed the legal guardian of the minor James Quincy Holden, entered a transcript of the will in evidence, and then went on to make his case. He had provided a home atmosphere that was, to the best of his knowledge, the type of home atmosphere that would have been highly pleasing to the deceased parents--especially in view of the fact that this home was one and the same house as theirs and that little had been changed. He was supported by the Mitchells. It all went off in the slow, cumbersome dry phraseology of the legal profession and the sum and substance of two hours of back-and-forth question-and-answer was to establish the fact that Paul Brennan had provided a suitable home for the minor, James Quincy Holden, and that the minor James Quincy Holden had refused to live in it and had indeed demonstrated his objections by repeatedly absenting himself wilfully and with premeditation.

The next half hour covered a blow-by-blow account of Paul Brennan's efforts to have the minor restored to him. The attorneys for both sides were alert. Brennan's counsel did not even object when Waterman paved the way to show why James Holden wanted his freedom by asking Brennan:

"Were you aware that James Holden was a child of exceptional intellect?"

"Yes."

"And you've testified that when you moved into the Holden home, you found things as the Holdens had provided them for their child?"

"Yes."

"In your opinion, were these surroundings suitable for James Holden?"

"They were far too advanced for a child of five."

"I asked specifically about James Holden."

"James Holden was five years old."

Waterman eyed Brennan with some surprise, then cast a glance at Frank Manison, who sat at ease, calmly watching and listening with no sign of objection. Waterman turned back to Brennan and said, "Let's take one more turn around Robin Hood's Barn, Mr. Brennan. First, James Holden was an exceptional child?"

"Yes."

"And the nature of his toys and furnishings?"

"In my opinion, too advanced for a child of five."

"But were they suitable for James Holden?"

"James Holden was a child of five."

Waterman faced Judge Carter. "Your Honor," he said, "I submit that the witness is evasive. Will you direct him to respond to my direct question with a direct answer?"

"The witness will answer the question properly," said Judge Carter with a slight frown of puzzlement, "unless counsel for the witness has some plausible objection?"'

"No objection," said Manison.

"Please repeat or rephrase your question," suggested Judge Carter.

"Mr. Brennan," said Waterman, "you've testified that James was an exceptional child, advanced beyond his years. You've testified that the home and surroundings provided by James Holden's parents reflected this fact. Now tell me, were the toys, surroundings, and the home suitable for James Holden?"

"In my opinion, no."

"And subsequently you replaced them with stuff you believed more suitable for a child of five, is that it?"

"Yes. I did, and you are correct."

"To which he objected?"

"To which James Holden objected."

"And what was your response to his objection?"

"I overruled his objection."

"Upon what grounds?"

"Upon the grounds that the education and the experience of an adult carries more wisdom than the desires of a child."

"Now, Mr. Brennan, please listen carefully. During the months following your guardianship, you successively removed the books that James Holden was fond of reading, replaced his advanced Meccano set with a set of modular blocks, exchanged his oil-painting equipment for a child's coloring books and standard crayolas, and in general you removed everything interesting to a child with known superiority of intellect?"

"I did."

"And your purpose in opening this hearing was to convince this Court that James Holden should be returned by legal procedure to such surroundings?"

"It is."

"No more questions," said Waterman. He sat down and rubbed his forehead with the palm of his right hand, trying to think.

Manison said, "I have one question to ask of Janet Fisher, known formerly as Mrs. Bagley."

Janet Fisher was sworn and properly identified.

"Now, Mrs. Fisher, prior to your marriage to Mr. Fisher and during your sojourn with James Holden in the House on Martin's Hill, did you supervise the activities of James Holden?"

"No," she said.

"Thank you," said Manison. He turned to Waterman and waved him to any cross-questioning.

Still puzzled, Waterman asked, "Mrs. Fisher, who did supervise the House on Martin's Hill?"

"James Holden."

"During those years, Mrs. Fisher, did James Holden at any time conduct himself in any other manner but the actions of an honest citizen? I mean, did he perform or suggest the performance of any illegal act to your knowledge?"

"No, he did not."

Waterman turned to Judge Carter. "Your Honor," he said, "it seems quite apparent to me that the plaintiff in this case has given more testimony to support the contentions of my client than they have to support their own case. Will the Court honor a petition that the case be dismissed?"

Judge Norman L. Carter smiled slightly. "This is irregular," he said. "You should wait for that petition until the plaintiff's counsel has closed his case, you know." He looked at Frank Manison. "Any objection?"

Manison said, "Your Honor, I have permitted my client to be shown in this questionable light for no other purpose than to bring out the fact that any man can make a mistake in the eyes of other men when in reality he was doing precisely what he thought to be the best thing to do for himself and for the people within his responsibility. The man who raises his child to be a roustabout is wrong in the eyes of his neighbor who is raising his child to be a scientist, and vice versa. We'll accept the fact that James Holden's mind is superior. We'll point out that there have been many cases of precocious children or child geniuses who make a strong mark in their early years and drop into oblivion by the time they're twenty. Now, consider James Holden, sitting there discussing something with his attorney--I have no doubt in the world that he could conjugate Latin verbs, discuss the effect of the Fall of Rome on Western Civilization, and probably compute the orbit of an artificial satellite. But can James Holden fly a kite or shoot a marble? Has he ever had the fun of sliding into third base, or whittling on a peg, or any of the other enjoyable trivia of boyhood? Has he--"

"One moment," said Judge Carter. "Let's not have an impassioned oration, counsel. What is your point?"

"James Holden has a legal guardian, appointed by law at the express will of his parents. Headstrong, he has seen fit to leave that protection. He is fighting now to remain away from that protection. I can presume that James Holden would prefer to remain in the company of the Fishers where, according to Mrs. Fisher, he was not responsible to her whatsoever, but rather ran the show himself. I--"

"You can't make that presumption," said Judge Carter. "Strike it from the record."

"I apologize," said Manison. "But I object to dismissing this case until we find out just what James Holden has in mind for his future."

"I'll hold Counsel Waterman's petition in abeyance until the point you mention is in the record," said Judge Carter. "Counsel, are you finished?"

"Yes," said Manison. "I'll rest."

"Mr. Waterman?"

Waterman said, "Your Honor, we've been directed to show just cause why James Holden should not be returned to the protection of his legal guardian. Counsel has implied that James Holden desires to be placed in the legal custody of Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. This is a pardonable error whether it stands in the record or not. The fact is that James Holden does not need protection, nor does he want protection. To the contrary, James Holden petitions this Court to declare him legally competent so that he may conduct his own affairs with the rights, privileges, and indeed, even the risks taken by the status of adult.

"I'll point out that the rules and laws that govern the control and protection of minor children were passed by benevolent legislators to prevent exploitation, cruelty, and deprivation of the child's life by men who would take advantage of his immaturity. However we have here a young man of twelve who has shown his competence to deal with the adult world by actual practice. Therefore it is our contention that protective laws are not only unnecessary, but undesirable because they restrict the individual from his desire to live a full and fruitful life.

"To prove our contention beyond any doubt, I'll ask that James Holden be sworn in as my first witness."

Frank Manison said, "I object, Your Honor. James Holden is a minor and not qualified under law to give creditable testimony as a witness."

Waterman turned upon Manison angrily. "You really mean that you object to my case per se."

"That, too," replied Manison easily.

"Your Honor, I take exception! It is my purpose to place James Holden on the witness stand, and there to show this Court and all the world that he is of honorable mind, properly prepared to assume the rights of an adult. We not only propose to show that he acted honorably, we shall show that James Holden consulted the law to be sure that whatever he did was not illegal."

"Or," added Manison, "was it so that he would know how close to the limit he could go without stepping over the line?"

"Your Honor," asked Waterman, "can't we have your indulgence?"

"I object! The child is a minor."

"I accept the statement!" stormed Waterman. "And I say that we intend to prove that this minor is qualified to act as an adult."

"And," sneered Manison, "I'll guess that one of your later arguments will be that Judge Carter, having accepted this minor as qualified to deliver sworn testimony, has already granted the first premise of your argument."

"I say that James Holden has indeed shown his competence already by actually doing it!"

"While hiding under a false façade!"

"A façade forced upon him by the restrictive laws that he is petitioning the Court to set aside in his case so that he need hide no longer."

Frank Manison said, "Your Honor, how shall the case of James Holden be determined for the next eight or ten years if we do grant James Holden this legal right to conduct his own affairs as an adult? That we must abridge the laws regarding compulsory education is evident. James Holden is twelve years and five months old. Shall he be granted the right to enter a tavern to buy a drink? Will his request for a license to marry be honored? May he enter the polling place and cast his vote? The contention of counsel that the creation of Charles Maxwell was a physical necessity is acceptable. But what happens without 'Maxwell'? Must we prepare a card of identity for James Holden, stating his legal status, and renew it every year like an automobile license because the youth will grow in stature, add to his weight, and ultimately grow a beard? Must we enter on this identification card the fact that he is legally competent to sign contracts, rent a house, write checks, and make his own decision about the course of dangerous medical treatment--or shall we list those items that he is not permitted to do such as drinking in a public place, cast his vote, or marry? This State permits a youth to drive an automobile at the age of sixteen, this act being considered a skill rather than an act that requires judgment. Shall James Holden be permitted to drive an automobile even though he can not reach the foot pedals from any position where he can see through the windshield?"

Judge Carter sat quietly. He said calmly, "Let the record show that I recognize the irregularity of this procedure and that I permit it only because of the unique aspects of this case. Were there a Jury, I would dismiss them until this verbal exchange of views and personalities has subsided.

"Now," he went on, "I will not allow James Holden to take the witness stand as a qualified witness to prove that he is a qualified witness. I am sure that he can display his own competence with a flow of academic brilliance, or his attorney would not have tried to place him upon the stand where such a display could have been demonstrated. Of more importance to the Court and to the State is an equitable disposition of the responsibility to and over James Quincy Holden."

Judge Norman L. Carter leaned forward and looked from Frank Manison to James Holden, and then to Attorney Waterman.

"We must face some awkward facts," he said. "If I rule that he be returned to Mr. Brennan, he will probably remain no longer than he finds it convenient, at which point he will behave just as if this Court had never convened. Am I not correct, Mr. Manison?"

"Your Honor, you are correct. However, as a member of the Department of Justice of this State, I suggest that you place the responsibility in my hands. As an Officer of the Court, my interest would be to the best interest of the State rather than based upon experience, choice, or opinion as to what is better for a five-year-old or a child prodigy. In other words, I would exert the control that the young man needed. At the same time I would not make the mistakes that were made by Mr. Brennan's personal opinion of how a child should be reared."

Waterman shouted, "I object, Your Honor. I object--"

Brennan leaped to his feet and cried, "Manison, you can't freeze me out--"

James Holden shrilled, "I won't! I won't!"

Judge Carter eyed them one by one, staring them into silence. Finally he looked at Janet Fisher and said, "May I also presume that you would be happy to resume your association with James Holden?"

She nodded and said, "I'd be glad to," in a sincere voice. Tim Fisher nodded his agreement.

Brennan whirled upon them and snarled. "My reward money--" but he was shoved down in his seat with a heavy hand by Frank Manison who snapped, "Your money bought what it was offered for. So now shut up, you utter imbecile!"

Judge Norman L. Carter cleared his throat and said, "This great concern over the welfare of James Holden is touching. We have Mr. Brennan already twice a loser and yet willing to try it for three times. We have Mr. and Mrs. Fisher who are not dismayed at the possibility of having their home occupied by a headstrong youth whose actions they cannot control. We find one of the ambitious members of the District Attorney's Office offering to take on an additional responsibility--all, of course, in the name of the State and the welfare of James Holden. Finally we have James Holden who wants no part of the word 'protection' and claims the ability to run his own life.

"Now it strikes me that assigning the responsibility for this young man's welfare is by no means the reason why you all are present, and it similarly occurs to me that the young man's welfare is of considerably less importance than the very interesting question of how and why this young man has achieved so much."

With a thoughtful expression, Judge Carter said, "James Holden, how did you acquire this magnificent education at the tender age of twelve-plus?"

"I--"

"I object!" cried Frank Manison. "The minor is not qualified to give testimony."

"Objection overruled. This is not testimony. I have every right in the world to seek out as much information from whatever source I may select; and I have the additional right to inspect the information I receive to pass upon its competence and relevance. Sit down, counsel!"

Manison sat grumpily and Judge Carter eyed James again, and James took a full breath. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

"Go on, James. Answer my question. Where did you come by your knowledge?"

* * * * *

James Holden stood up. This was the question that had to arise; he was only surprised it had taken so long.

He said calmly: "Your Honor, you may not ask that question."

"I may not?" asked Judge Carter with a lift of his eyebrows.

"No sir. You may not."

"And just why may I not?"

"If this were a criminal case, and if you could establish that some of my knowledge were guilty knowledge, you could then demand that I reveal the source of my guilty knowledge and under what circumstance it was obtained. If I refused to disclose my source, I could then be held in contempt of court or charged with being an accessory to the corpus of the crime. However, this is a court hearing to establish whether or not I am competent under law to manage my own affairs. How I achieve my mental competence is not under question. Let us say that it is a process that is my secret by the right of inheritance from my parents and as such it is valuable to me so long as I can demand payment for its use."

"This information may have a bearing on my ruling."

"Your Honor, the acquisition of knowledge or information per se is concomitant with growing up. I can and will demonstrate that I have the equivalent of the schooling necessary to satisfy both this Court and the State Board of Education. I will state that my education has been acquired by concentration and application in home study, and that I admit to attendance at no school. I will provide you or anybody else with a list of the books from which I have gleaned my education. But whether I practice Yoga, Dianetics, or write the lines on a sugarcoated pill and swallow it is my trade secret. It can not be extracted from me by any process of the law because no illegality exists."

"And what if I rule that you are not competent under the law, or withhold judgment until I have had an opportunity to investigate these ways and means of acquiring an accelerated education?"

"I'll then go on record as asking you to disbar yourself from this hearing on the grounds that you are not an impartial judge of the justice in my case."

"Upon what grounds?"

"Upon the grounds that you are personally interested in being provided with a process whereby you may acquire an advanced education yourself."

The judge looked at James thoughtfully for a moment. "And if I point out that any such process is of extreme interest to the State and to the Union itself, and as such must be disclosed?"

"Then I shall point out that your ruling is based upon a personal opinion because you don't know anything about the process. If I am ruled a legal minor you cannot punish me for not telling you my secrets, and if I am ruled legally competent, I am entitled to my own decision."

"You are within your rights," admitted Judge Carter with some interest. "I shall not make such a demand. But I now ask you if this process of yours is both safe and simple."

"If it is properly used with some good judgment."

"Now listen to me carefully," said Judge Carter. "Is it not true that your difficulties in school, your inability to get along with your classmates, and your having to hide while you toiled for your livelihood in secret--these are due to this extensive education brought about through your secret process?"

"I must agree, but--"

"You must agree," interrupted Judge Carter. "Yet knowing these unpleasant things did not deter you from placing, or trying to place, the daughter of your housekeeper in the same unhappy state. In other words, you hoped to make an intellectual misfit out of her, too?"

"I--now see here--"

"You see here! Did you or did you not aid in the education of Martha Bagley, now Martha Fisher?"

"Yes, I did, and--"

"Was that good judgment, James Holden?"

"What's wrong with higher education?" demanded James angrily.

"Nothing, if it's acquired properly."

"But--"

"Now listen again. If I were to rule in your favor, would Martha Fisher be the next bratling in a long and everlasting line of infant supermen applying to this and that and the other Court to have their legal majority ruled, each of them pointing to your case as having established precedence?"

"I have no way of predicting the future, sir. What may happen in the future really has no bearing in evidence here."

"Granted that it does not. But I am not going to establish a dangerous precedent that will end with doctors qualified to practice surgery before they are big enough to swing a stethoscope or attorneys that plead a case before they are out of short pants. I am going to recess this case indefinitely with a partial ruling. First, until this process of yours comes under official study, I am declaring you, James Holden, to be a Ward of this State, under the jurisdiction of this Court. You will have the legal competence to act in matters of skill, including the signing of documents and instruments necessary to your continued good health. In all matters that require mature judgment, you will report to this Court and all such questions shall be rendered after proper deliberation either in open session or in chambers, depending upon the Court's opinion of their importance. The court stenographer will now strike all of the testimony given by James Holden from the record."

"I object!" exploded Brennan's attorney, rising swiftly and with one hand pressing Brennan down to prevent him from rising also.

"All objections are overruled. The new Ward of the State will meet with me in my chambers at once. Court is adjourned."

* * * * *

The session was stormy but brief. Holden objected to everything, but the voice of Judge Carter was loud and his stature was large; they overrode James Holden and compelled his attention.

"We're out of the court," snapped Judge Carter. "We no longer need observe the niceties of court etiquette, so now shut up and listen! Holden, you are involved in a thing that is explosively dangerous. You claim it to be a secret, but your secret is slowly leaking out of your control. You asked for your legal competence to be ruled. Fine, but if I allowed that, every statement made by you about your education would be in court record and your so-called secret that much more widespread. How long do you think it would have been before millions of people howled at your door? Some of them yelping for help and some of them bitterly objecting to tampering with the immature brain? You'd be accused of brainwashing, of making monsters, of depriving children of their heritage of happiness--and in the same ungodly howl there would be voices as loudly damning you for not tossing your process into their laps. And there would be a number trying to get to you on the sly so that they could get a head start over the rest.

"You want your competence affirmed legally? James, you have not the stature nor the voice to fight them off. Even now, your little secret is in danger and you'll probably have to bribe a few wiseacres with a touch of accelerated knowledge to keep them from spilling the whole story, even though I've ruled your testimony incompetent and immaterial and stricken from the record. Now, we'll study this system of yours under controlled conditions as your parents wanted, and we'll have professional help and educated advice, and both you and your process shall be under the protection of my Court, and when the time comes you shall receive the kudos and benefits from it. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now, as my first order, you go back to Shipmont and pack your gear. You'll report to my home as soon as you've made all the arrangements. There'll be no more hiding out and playing your little process in secret either from Paul Brennan--yes, I know that you believe that he was somehow instrumental in the death of your parents but have no shred of evidence that would stand in court--or the rest of the world. Is that, and everything else I've said in private, very clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, be off with you. And do not hesitate to call upon me if there is any interference whatsoever."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Judge Carter insisted and won his point that James Holden accept residence in his home.

He did not turn a hair when the trucks of equipment arrived from the house on Martin's Hill; he already had room for it in the cellar. He cheerfully allowed James the right to set it up and test it out. He respected James Holden's absolute insistence that no one be permitted to touch the special circuit that was the heart of the entire machine. Judge Carter also counter-requested--and enforced the request--that he be allowed to try the machinery out. He took a simple reading course in higher mathematics, after discovering that Holden's machine would not teach him how to play the violin. (Judge Carter already played the violin--but badly.)

Later, the judge committed to memory the entire book of Bartlett's Famous Quotations despite the objection of young Holden that he was cluttering up his memory with a lot of useless material. The Judge learned (as James had learned earlier) that the proper way to store such information in the memory was to read the book with the machine turned in "stand-by" until some section was encountered that was of interest. Using this method, the judge picked and pecked at the Holy Bible, a number of documents that looked like important governmental records, and a few books in modern history.

Then there came other men. First was a Professor Harold White from the State Board of Education who came to study both Holden and Holden's machinery and what it did. Next came a Dr. Persons who said very little but made diagrams and histograms and graphs which he studied. The third was a rather cheerful fellow called Jack Cowling who was more interested in James Holden's personal feelings than he was in the machine. He studied many subjects superficially and watched the behavior of young Holden as Holden himself studied subjects recommended by Professor White.

White had a huge blackboard installed on the cellar wall opposite the machine, and he proceeded to fill the board with block outlines filled with crabbed writing and odd-looking symbols. The whole was meaningless to James Holden; it looked like the organization chart of a large corporation but it contained no names or titles. The arrival of each new visitor caused changes in the block diagram.

These arrivals went at their project with stop watches and slide rules. They calibrated themselves and James with the cold-blooded attitude of racetrack touts clocking their favorite horses. Where James had simply taken what he wanted or what he could at any single sitting, then let it settle in his mind before taking another dose of unpremeditated magnitude, these fellows ascertained the best effectiveness of each application to each of them. They tried taking long terms under the machine and then they measured the time it took for the installed information to sink in and settle into usable shape. Then they tried shorter and shorter sittings and measured the correspondingly shorter settling times. They found out that no two men were alike, nor were any two subjects. They discovered that a man with an extensive education already could take a larger sitting and have the new information available for mental use in a shorter settling time than a man whose education had been sketchy or incomplete.

They brought in men who had either little or no mathematics and gave them courses in advanced subjects. Afterwards they provided the foundation mathematics and they calibrated and measured the time it took for the higher subject to be understood as it aligned its information to the whole. Men came with crude English and bluntly read the dictionary and the proper rules of grammar and they were checked to see if their early bad-speech habits were corrected, and to what degree the Holden machine could be made to help repair the damage of a lifelong ingrained set of errors. They sent some of these boys through comparison dictionaries in foreign tongues and then had their language checked by specialists who were truly polylingual. There were some who spoke fluent English but no other tongue; these progressed into German with a German-to-English comparison dictionary, and then into French via a German-to-French comparison and were finally checked out in French by French-speaking examiners.

And Professor White's block diagram grew complex, and Dr. Persons's histograms filled pages and pages of his broad notebooks.

It was the first time that James Holden had ever seen a team of researchers plow into a problem, running a cold and icy scientific investigation to ascertain precisely how much cause produced how much effect. Holden, who had taken what he wanted or needed as the time came, began to understand the desirability of full and careful programming. The whole affair intrigued him and interested him. He plunged in with a will and gave them all the help he could.

He had no time to be bored, and he did not mark the passage of time until he arrived at his thirteenth birthday.

Then one night shortly after his birthday, James Holden discovered women indirectly. He had his first erotic dream.

We shall not go into the details of this midnight introduction to the arrival of manhood, for the simple reason that if we dwell on the subject, someone is certain to attempt a dream-analysis and come up with some flanged-up character-study or personality-quirk that really has nothing to do with the mind or body of James Holden. The truth is that his erotic dream was pleasantly stirring, but not entirely satisfactory. It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last very long. It awakened him to the realization that knowledge is not the end-all of life, and that a full understanding of the words, the medical terms, and the biology involved did not tell him a thing about this primary drive of all life.

His total grasp of even the sideline issues was still dim. He came to a partial understanding of why Jake Caslow had entertained late visitors of the opposite sex, but he still could not quite see the reason why Jake kept the collection of calendar photographs and paintings hung up around the place. Crude jokes and rude talk heard long years before and dimly remembered did not have much connection with the subject. To James Holden, a "tomato" was still a vegetable, although he knew that some botanists were willing to argue that the tomato was really a fruit.

For many days he watched Judge Carter and his wife with a critical curiosity that their childless life had never known before. James found that they did not act as if something new and strangely thrilling had just hit the known universe. He felt that they should know about it. Despite the fact that he knew everything that his textbooks could tell him about sex and copulation he still had the quaint notion that the reason why Judge Carter and his wife were childless was because they had not yet gotten around to Doing It. He made no attempt to correlate this oddity with its opposite in Jake Caslow's ladies of the night who seemed to go on their merry way without conceiving.

He remembered the joking parry-and-thrust of that midnight talk between Tim Fisher and Janet Bagley but it made no sense to him still. But as he pondered the multitude of puzzlements, some of the answers fell partly into place just as some of the matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle may lie close to one another when they are dumped out of the box. Very dimly James began to realize that this sort of thing was not New, but to the contrary it had been going on for a long, long time. So long in fact that neither Tim Fisher nor Janet Bagley had found it necessary to state desire and raise objection respectively in simple clear sentences containing subject, verb, and object. This much came to him and it bothered him even more, now that he understood that they were bandying their meanings lightly over a subject so vital, so important, so--so completely personal.

Then, in that oddly irrational corner of his brain that neither knowledge nor information had been adequate to rationalize nor had experience arrived to supply the explanation, James Holden's limited but growing comprehension arrived at a conclusion that was reasonable within its limited framework. Judge Carter and his wife occupied separate bedrooms and had therefore never Done It. Conversely, Tim and Janet Fisher from their midnight discussion obviously Knew What It Was All About. James wondered whether they had Done It yet, and he also wondered whether he could tell by listening to their discussions and conversations now that they'd been married at least long enough to have Tried It.

With a brand new and very interesting subject to study, James lost interest in the program of concentrated research. James Holden found that all he had to do to arrange a trip to Shipmont was to state his desire to go and the length of his visit. The judge deemed both reasonable, Mrs. Carter packed James a bag, and off he went.

* * * * *

The house on Martin's Hill was about the same, with some improvement such as a coat of paint and some needed repair work. The grounds had been worked over, but it was going to take a number of years of concentrated gardening to de-weed the tangled lawn and to cut the undergrowth in the thin woodsy back area where James had played in concealment.

But the air inside was changed. Janet, as Mrs. Bagley, had been as close to James Holden as any substitute mother could have been. Now she seemed preoccupied and too busy with her own life to act more than pleasantly polite. He could have been visiting the home of a friend instead of returning to the domicile he had created, in which he had provided her with a home--for herself and a frightened little girl. She asked him how he had been and what he was doing, but he felt that this was more a matter of taking up time than real interest. He had the feeling that somewhere deep inside, her soul was biting its fingernails. She spoke of Martha with pride and hope, she asked how Judge Carter was making out and whether Martha would be able to finish her schooling via Holden's machine.

James believed this was her problem. Martha had been educated far beyond her years. She could no more enter school now than he could; unwittingly he'd made Martha a misfit, too. So James tried to explain that part of the study undertaken in Judge Carter's program had been the question of what to do about Martha.

The professionals studying the case did not know yet whether Martha would remain ahead of her age group, or whether to let her loaf it out until her age group caught up with her, or whether to give Martha everything she could take as fast as she could take it. This would make a female counterpart of James Holden to study.

But knowing that there were a number of very brilliant scientists, educators, and psychologists working on Martha's problem did not cheer up Mrs. Janet Fisher as much as James thought it should. Yet as he watched her, he could not say that Tim Fisher's wife was unhappy.

Tim, on the other hand, looked fine. James watched them together as critically curious as he'd been in watching the Judge and Mrs. Carter. Tim was gentle with his wife, tender, polite, and more than willing to wait on her. From their talk and chit-chat, James could detect nothing. There were still elisions, questions answered with a half-phrase, comments added with a disconnected word and replied in another word that--in cold print--would appear to have no bearing on the original subject. This sort of thing told James nothing. Judge Carter and his wife did the same; if there were any difference to be noted it was only in the basic subject materials. The judge and his wife were inclined more toward discussions of political questions and judicial problems, whereas Tim and Janet Fisher were more interested in music, movies, and the general trend of the automobile repair business; or more to the point, whether to expand the present facility in Shipmont, to open another branch elsewhere, or to sell out to buy a really big operation in some sizable city.

James saw a change in Martha, too. It had been months since he came back home to supervise the removal of his belongings. Now Martha had filled out. She was dressed in a shirt-and-skirt instead of the little jumper dresses James remembered. Martha's hair was lightly wavy instead of trimmed short, and she was wearing a very faint touch of color on her lips. She wore tiny slippers with heels just a trifle higher than the altitude recommended for a girl close to thirteen.

Ultimately they fell into animated chatter of their own, just as they always had. There was a barrier between the pair of them and Martha's mother and stepfather--slightly higher than the usual barrier erected between children and their adults because of their educational adventures together. They had covered reams and volumes together. Martha's mother was interested in Holden's machine only when something specific came to her attention that she did not wish to forget such as a recipe or a pattern, and one very extensive course that enabled her to add a column of three-digit numbers by the whole lines instead of taking each column digit by digit. Tim Fisher himself had deeper interests, but nearly all of them directed at making Tim Fisher a better manager of the automobile repair business. There had been some discussion of the possibility that Tim Fisher might memorize some subject such as the names of all baseball players and their yearly and lifetime scoring, fielding, and playing averages, training for him to go as a contestant on one of the big money giveaway shows. This never came to pass; Tim Fisher did not have any spectacular qualities about him that would land him an invitation. So Tim's work with Holden's machine had been straightforward studies in mechanics and bookkeeping and business management--plus a fine repertoire of bawdy songs he had rung in on the sly and subsequently used at parties.

James and Martha had taken all they wanted of education and available information, sometimes with plan and the guidance of schoolbooks and sometimes simply because they found the subject of interest. In the past they'd had discussions of problems in understanding; they'd talked of things that parents and elders would have considered utterly impossible to discuss with young minds. With this communion of interests, they fell back into their former pattern of first joining the general conversation politely and then gradually confining their remarks to one another until there were two conversations going on at the same time, one between James and Martha and another between Janet and Tim. Again, the vocal interference and cross-talk became too high, and it was Tim and Janet who left the living room to mix a couple of highballs and start dinner.

The chatter continued, but now with a growing strain on the part of young James Holden.

He wanted to switch to a more personal topic of conversation but he did not know how to accomplish this feat. There was plenty of interest but it was more clinical than passionate; he was not stirred to yearning, he felt no overwhelming desire to hold Martha's hand nor to feel the softness of her face, yet there was a stirring urge to make some form of contact. But he had no idea of how to steer the conversation towards personal lines that might lead into something that would justify a gesture towards her. It began to work on him. The original clinical urge to touch her just to see what reaction would obtain changed into a personal urge that grew higher as he found that he could not kick the conversational ball in that direction. The idea of putting an arm about her waist as he had seen men embrace their girls on television was a pleasing thought; he wanted to find out if kissing was as much fun as it was made up to be.

But instead of offering him any encouragement, or even giving him a chance to start shifting the conversation, Martha went prattling on and on and on about a book she'd read recently.

It did not occur to James Holden that Martha Bagley might entertain the idea of physical contact of some mild sort on an experimental basis. He did not even consider the possibility that he might start her thinking about it. So instead of closing the distance between them like a gentle wolf, watching with sly calculation to ascertain whether her response was positive, negative, or completely neutral, he sat like a post and fretted inwardly because he couldn't control the direction of their conversation.

Ultimately, of course, Martha ran out of comment on her book and then there fell a deadly silence because James couldn't dredge up another lively subject. Desperately, he searched through his mind for an opening. There was none. The bright patter between male and female characters in books he'd smuggled started off on too high a level on both sides. Books that were written adequately for his understanding of this problem signed off with the trite explanation that they lived happily ever afterwards but did not say a darned thing about how they went about it. The slightly lurid books that he'd bought, delivered in plain wrappers, gave some very illuminating descriptions of the art or act, but the affair opened with the scene all set and the principal characters both ready, willing, and able. There was no conversational road map that showed the way that led two people from a calm and unemotional discussion into an area that might lead to something entirely else.

In silence, James Holden sat there sinking deeper and deeper into his own misery.

The more he thought about it, the farther he found himself from his desire. Later in the process, he knew, came a big barrier called "stealing a kiss," and James with his literal mind provided this game with an aggressor, a defender, and the final extraction by coercion or violence of the first osculatory contact. If the objective could be carried off without the defense repulsing the advance, the rest was supposed to come with less trouble. But here he was floundering before he began, let alone approaching the barrier that must be an even bigger problem.

Briefly he wished that it were Christmas, because at Christmas people hung up mistletoe. Mistletoe would not only provide an opening by custom and tradition, it also cut through this verbal morass of trying to lead up to the subject by the quick process of supplying the subject itself. But it was a long time before Christmas. James abandoned that ill-conceived idea and went on sinking deep and feeling miserable.

Then Martha's mother took James out of his misery by coming in to announce dinner. Regretfully, James sighed for his lost moments and helplessness, then got to his feet and held out a hand for Martha.

She put her hand in his and allowed him to lift her to her feet by pulling. The first contact did not stir him at all, though it was warm and pleasant. Once the pulling pressure was off, he continued to hold Martha's hand, tentatively and experimentally.

Then Janet Fisher showered shards of ice with a light laugh. "You two can stand there holding hands," she said. "But I'm going to eat it while it's on the table."

James Holden's hand opened with the swiftness of a reflex action, almost as fast as the wink of an eye at the flash of light or the body's jump at the crack of sound. Martha's hand did not drop because she, too, was holding his and did not let go abruptly. She giggled, gave his hand a little squeeze and said, "Let's go. I'm hungry too."

None of which solved James Holden's problem. But during dinner his personal problem slipped aside because he discovered another slight change in Janet Fisher's attitude. He puzzled over it quietly, but managed to eat without any apparent preoccupation. Dinner took about a half hour, after which they spent another fifteen minutes over coffee, with Janet refusing her second cup. She disappeared at the first shuffle of a foot under the table, while James and Martha resumed their years-old chore of clearing the table and tackling the dishwashing problem.

Alone in the kitchen, James asked Martha, "What's with your mother?"

"What do you mean, what's with her?"

"She's changed, somehow."

"In what way?"

"She seems sort of inner-thoughtful. Cheerful enough but as if something's bothering her that she can't stop."

"That all?"

"No," he went on. "She hiked upstairs like a shot right after dinner was over. Tim raced after her. And she said no to coffee."

"Oh, that. She's just a little upset in the middle."

"But why?"

"She's pregnant."

"Pregnant?"

"Sure. Can't you see?"

"Never occurred to me to look."

"Well, it's so," said Martha, scouring a coffee cup with an exaggerated flourish. "And I'm going to have a half-sibling."

"But look--"

"Don't you go getting upset," said Martha. "It's a natural process that's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, you know."

"When?"

"Not for months," said Martha. "It just happened."

"Too bad she's unhappy."

"She's very happy. Both of them wanted it."

James considered this. He had never come across Voltaire's observation that marriage is responsible for the population because it provides the maximum opportunity with the maximum temptation. But it was beginning to filter slowly into his brain that the ways and means were always available and there was neither custom, tradition, nor biology that dictated a waiting period or a time limit. It was a matter of choice, and when two people want their baby, and have no reason for not having their baby, it is silly to wait.

"Why did they wait so long if they both want it?"

"Oh," replied Martha in a matter-of-fact voice, "they've been working at it right along."

James thought some more. He'd come to see if he could detect any difference between the behavior of Judge and Mrs. Carter, and the behavior of Tim and Janet Fisher. He saw little, other than the standard differences that could be accounted for by age and temperament. Tim and Janet did not really act as if they'd Discovered Something New. Tim, he knew, was a bit more sweet and tender to Janet than he'd been before, but there was nothing startling in his behavior. If there were any difference as compared to their original antics, James knew that it was undoubtedly due to the fact that they didn't have to stand lollygagging in the hallway for two hours while Janet half-heartedly insisted that Tim go home. He went on to consider his original theory that the Carters were childless because they occupied separate bedrooms; by some sort of deduction he came to the conclusion that he was right, because Tim and Janet Fisher were making a baby and they slept in the same bedroom.

He went on in a whirl; maybe the Carters didn't want children, but it was more likely that they too had tried but it hadn't happened.

And then it came to him suddenly that here he was in the kitchen alone with Martha Bagley, discussing the very delicate subject. But he was actually no closer to his problem of becoming a participant than he'd been an hour ago in the living room. It was one thing to daydream the suggestion when you can also daydream the affirmative response, but it was another matter when the response was completely out of your control. James was not old enough in the ways of the world to even consider outright asking; even if he had considered it, he did not know how to ask.

* * * * *

The evening went slowly. Janet and Tim returned about the time the dishwashing process was complete. Janet proposed a hand of bridge; Tim suggested poker, James voted for pinochle, and Martha wanted to toss a coin between canasta or gin rummy. They settled it by dealing a shuffled deck face upward until the ace of hearts landed in front of Janet, whereupon they played bridge until about eleven o'clock. It was interesting bridge; James and Martha had studied bridge columns and books for recreation; against them were aligned Tim and Janet, who played with the card sense developed over years of practice. The youngsters knew the theories, their bidding was as precise as bridge bidding could be made with value-numbering, honor-counting, response-value addition, and all of the other systems. They understood all of the coups and end plays complete with classic examples. But having all of the theory engraved on their brains did not temporarily imprint the location of every card already played, whereas Tim and Janet counted their played cards automatically and made up in play what they missed in stratagem.

At eleven, Janet announced that she was tired, Tim joined her; James turned on the television set and he and Martha watched a ten-year-old movie for an hour. Finally Martha yawned.

And James, still floundering, mentally meandered back to his wish that it were Christmas so that mistletoe would provide a traditional gesture of affection, and came up with a new and novel idea that he expressed in a voice that almost trembled:

"Tired, Martha?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, why don't I kiss you good night and send you off to bed."

"All right, if you want to."

"Why?"

"Oh--just--well, everybody does it."

She sat near him on the low divan, looking him full in the face but making no move, no gesture, no change in her expression. He looked at her and realized that he was not sure of how to take hold of her, how to reach for her, how to proceed.

She said, "Well, go ahead."

"I'm going to."

"When?"

"As soon as I get good and ready."

"Are we going to sit here all night?"

In its own way, it reminded James of the equally un-brilliant conversation between Janet and Tim on the homecoming after their first date. He chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he said in a slightly strained voice. "I'm thinking that here we sit like a couple of kids that don't know what it's all about."

"Well," said Martha, "aren't we?"

"Yes," he said reluctantly, "I guess we are. But darn it, Martha, how does a guy grow up? How does a guy learn these things?" His voice was plaintive, it galled him to admit that for all of his knowledge and his competence, he was still just a bit more than a child emotionally.

"I don't know," she said in a voice as plaintive as his. "I wouldn't know where to look to find it. I've tried. All I know," she said with a quickening voice, "is that somewhere between now and then I'll learn how to toss talk back and forth the way they do."

"Yes," he said glumly.

"James," said Martha brightly, "we should be somewhat better than a pair of kids who don't know what it's all about, shouldn't we?"

"That's what bothers me," he admitted. "We're neither of us stupid. Lord knows we've plenty of education between us, but--"

"James, how did we get that education?"

"Through my father's machine."

"No, you don't understand. What I mean is that no matter how we got our education, we had to learn, didn't we?"

"Why, yes. In a--"

"Now, let's not get involved in another philosophical argument. Let's run this one right on through to the end. Why are we sitting here fumbling? Because we haven't yet learned how to behave like adults."

"I suppose so. But it strikes me that anything should be--"

"James, for goodness' sake. Here we are, the two people in the whole world who have studied everything we know together, and when we hit something we can't study--you want to go home and kiss your old machine," she finished with a remarkable lack of serial logic. She laughed nervously.

"What's so darned funny?" he demanded sourly.

"Oh," she said, "you're afraid to kiss me because you don't know how, and I'm afraid to let you because I don't know how, and so we're talking away a golden opportunity to find out. James," she said seriously, "if you fumble a bit, I won't know the difference because I'm no smarter than you are."

She leaned forward holding her face up, her lips puckered forward in a tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly and hesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own. It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristic smack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of the emotional charge of a mother-in-law's peck, but it served its purpose admirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another from four inches of distance. Then they tried it again and their second was a little longer and a little warmer and a little closer, and it ended with less of the noise of opening a fruit jar.

Martha moved over close beside him and put her head on his shoulder; James responded by putting an arm around her, and together they tried to assemble themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen in movies and on television. It didn't quite work that way. There seemed to be too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when they found a contortion that did not create interferences with limb or corner, it was a strain on the spine or a twist in the neck. After a few minutes of this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort to return to the original routine of kissing. By more luck than good management they succeeded in an embrace that placed no strain and which met them almost face to face. They puckered again and made contact, then pressure came and spread out the pair of tightly pursed rosebuds. Martha moved once to get her nose free of his cheek for a breath of air.

At the rate they were going, they might have hit paydirt this time, but just at the point where James should have relaxed to enjoy the long kiss he began to worry: There is something planned and final about the quick smacking kiss, but how does one gracefully terminate the long-term, high-pressure jobs? So instead of enjoying himself, James planned and discarded plans until he decided that the way he'd do it would be to exert a short, heavy pressure and then cease with the same action as in the quick-smack variety.

It worked fine, but as he opened his eyes to look at her, she was there with her eyes still closed and her lips still ready. He took a deep breath and plunged in again. Having determined how to start, James was now going to experiment with endings.

They came up for air successfully again, and then spent some time wriggling around into another position. The figure-fitting went easier this time, after threshing around through three or four near-comforts they came to rest in a pleasantly natural position and James Holden became nervously aware of the fact that his right hand was cupped over a soft roundness that filled his palm almost perfectly. He wondered whether to remove it quickly to let her know that this intimacy wasn't intentional; slowly so that (maybe, he hoped) she wouldn't realize that it had been there; or to leave it there because it felt pleasant. While he was wondering, Martha moved around because she could not twist her neck all the way around like an owl, and she wanted to see him. The move solved his problem but presented the equally great problem of how he would try it again.

James allowed a small portion of his brain to think about this, and put the rest of his mind at ease by kissing her again. Halfway through, he felt warm moistness as her lips parted slightly, then the tip of her tongue darted forward between his lips to quest against his tongue in a caress so fleeting that it was withdrawn before he could react--and James reacted by jerking his head back faster than if he had been clubbed in the face. He was still tingling with the shock, a pleasant shock but none the less a shock, when Martha giggled lightly.

He bubbled and blurted, "Wha--whu--?"

She told him nervously, "I've been wanting to try that ever since I read it in a book."

He shivered. "What book?" he demanded in almost a quaver.

"A paperback of Tim's. Mother calls them, Tim's sex and slay stories." Martha giggled again. "You jumped."

"Sure did. I was surprised. Do it again."

"I don't think so."

"Didn't you like it?"

"Did you?"

"I don't know. I didn't have time to find out."

"Oh."

He kissed her again and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally he moved back an inch and said, "What's the matter?"

"I don't think we should. Maybe we ought to wait until we're older."

"Not fair," he complained. "You had all the warning."

"But--"

"Didn't you like it?" he asked.

"Well, it gave me the most tickly tingle."

"And all I got was a sort of mild electric shock. Come on."

"No."

"Well, then, I'll do it to you."

"All right. Just once."

Leaping to the end of this midnight research, there are three primary ways of concluding, namely: 1, physical satisfaction; 2, physical exhaustion; and 3, interruption. We need not go into sub-classifications or argue the point. James and Martha were not emotionally ready to conclude with mutual defloration. Ultimately they fell asleep on the divan with their arms around each other. They weren't interrupted; they awoke as the first flush of daylight brightened the sky, and with one more rather chaste kiss, they parted to fall into the deep slumber of complete physical and emotional exhaustion.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

James Holden's ride home on the train gave him a chance to think, alone and isolated from all but superficial interruptions. He felt that he was quite the bright young man.

He noticed with surreptitious pride that folks no longer eyed him with sly, amused, knowing smiles whenever he opened a newspaper. Perhaps some of their amusement had been the sight of a youngster struggling with a full-spread page, employing arms that did not quite make the span. But most of all he hated the condescending tolerance; their everlasting attitude that everything he did was "cute" like the little girl who decked herself out in mother's clothing from high heels and brassiere to evening gown, costume jewelry, and a fumbled smear of makeup.

That was over. He'd made it to a couple of months over fourteen, he'd finally reached a stature large enough so that he did not have to prove his right to buy a railroad ticket, nor climb on the suitcase bar so that he could peer over the counter. Newsdealers let him alone to pick his own fare instead of trying to "save his money" by shoving Mickey Mouse at him and putting his own choice back on its pile.

He had not succeeded in gaining his legal freedom, but as Ward of the State under Judge Carter he had other interesting expectations that he might not have stumbled upon. Carter had connections; there was talk of James' entering a comprehensive examination at some university, where the examining board, forearmed with the truth about his education, would test James to ascertain his true level of comprehension. He could of course collect his bachelor's degree once he complied with the required work of term papers written to demonstrate that his information could be interwoven into the formation of an opinion, or reflection, or view of some topic. Master's degrees and doctor's degrees required the presentation of some original area of study, competence in his chosen field, and the development of some facet of the field that had not been touched before. These would require more work, but could be handled in time.

In fact, he felt that he was in pretty good shape. There were a couple of sticky problems, still. He wanted Paul Brennan to get his comeuppance, but he knew that there was no evidence available to support his story about the slaughter of his parents. It galled him to realize that cold-blooded, premeditated murder for personal profit and avarice could go undetected. But until there could be proffered some material evidence, Brennan's word was as good as his in any court. So Brennan was getting away with it.

The other little item was his own independence. He wanted it. That he might continue living with Judge Carter had no bearing. No matter how benevolent the tyranny, James wanted no part of it. In fighting for his freedom, James Holden's foot had slipped. He'd used his father's machine on Martha, and that was a legal error.

Martha? James was not really sorry he'd slipped. Error or not, he'd made of her the only person in the world who understood his problem wholly and sympathetically. Otherwise he would be completely alone.

Oh yes, he felt that he was quite the bright young man. He was coming along fine and getting somewhere. His very pleasant experiences in the house on Martin's Hill had raised him from a boy to a young man; he was now able to grasp the appreciation of the Big Drive, to understand some of the reasons why adults acted in the way that they did. He hadn't managed another late session of sofa with Martha, but there had been little incidental meetings in the hallway or in the kitchen with the exchange of kisses, and they'd boldly kissed goodbye at the railroad station under her mother's smile.

He could not know Janet Fisher's mind, of course. Janet, mother to a girl entering young womanhood, worried about all of the things that such a mother worries about and added a couple of things that no other mother ever had. She could hardly slip her daughter a smooth version of the birds and the bees and people when she knew full well that Martha had gone through a yard or so of books on the subject that covered everything from the advanced medical to the lurid exposé and from the salacious to the ribald. Janet could only hope that her daughter valued her chastity according to convention despite the natural human curiosity which in Martha would be multiplied by the girl's advanced education. Janet knew that young people were marrying younger and younger as the years went on; she saw young James Holden no longer as a rather odd youngster with abilities beyond his age. She saw him now as the potential mate for Martha. And when they embraced and kissed at the station, Janet did not realize that she was accepting this salute as the natural act of two sub-adults, rather than a pair of precocious kids.

At any rate, James Holden felt very good. Now he had a girl. He had acquired one more of the many attitudes of the Age of Maturity.

So James settled down to read his newspaper, and on page three he saw a photograph and an article that attracted his attention. The photograph was of a girl no more than seven years old holding a baby at least a year old. Beside them was a boy of about nine. In the background was a miserable hovel made of crude lumber and patched windows. This couple and their baby had been discovered by a geological survey outfit living in the backwoods hills. Relief, aid, and help were being rushed, and the legislature was considering ways and means of their schooling. Neither of them could read or write.

James read the article, and his first thought was to proffer his help. Aid and enlightenment they needed, and they needed it quickly. And then he stopped immediately because he could do nothing to educate them unless they already possessed the ability to read.

His second thought was one of dismay. His exultation came down with a dull thud. Within seconds he realized that the acquisition of a girl was no evidence of his competent maturity. The couple photographed were human beings, but intellectually they were no more than animals with a slight edge in vocabulary. It made James Holden sick at heart to read the article and to realize that such filth and ignorance could still go on. But it took a shock of such violence to make James realize that clams, guppies, worms, fleas, cats, dogs, and the great whales reproduced their kind; intellect, education and mature competence under law had nothing to do with the process whatsoever.

And while his heart was still unhappy, he turned to page four and read an open editorial that discussed the chances of The Educational Party in the coming Election Year.

* * * * *

James blinked.

"Splinter" parties, the editorial said, seldom succeeded in gaining a primary objective. They only succeeded in drawing votes from the other major parties, in splitting the total ballot, and dividing public opinion. On the other hand, they did provide a useful political weathervane for the major parties to watch most carefully. If the splinter party succeeded in capturing a large vote, it was an indication that the People found their program favorable and upon such evidence it behooved the major parties to mend their political fences--or to relocate them.

Education, said the editorial, was a primary issue and had been one for years. There had been experimenting with education ever since the Industrial Revolution uncovered the fact, in about 1900, that backbreaking physical toil was going to be replaced by educated workers operating machinery.

Then the editorial quoted Judge Norman L. Carter:

"'For many years,' said Judge Carter, 'we have deplored the situation whereby a doctor or a physicist is not considered fully educated until he has reached his middle or even late twenties. Yet instead of speeding up the curriculum in the early school years, we have introduced such important studies as social graces, baton twirling, interpretive painting and dancing, and a lot of other fiddle-faddle which graduates students who cannot spell, nor read a book, nor count above ten without taking off their shoes. Perhaps such studies are necessary to make sound citizens and graceful companions. I shall not contest the point. However, I contend that a sound and basic schooling should be included--and when I so contend I am told by our great educators that the day is not long enough nor the years great enough to accomplish this very necessary end.

"'Gentlemen, we leaders of The Education Party propose to accomplish precisely that which they said cannot be done!'"

The editorial closed with the terse suggestion: Educator--Educate thyself!

James Holden sat stunned.

What was Judge Carter doing?

* * * * *

James Holden arrived to find the home of Judge Norman L. Carter an upset madhouse. He was stopped at the front door by a secretary at a small desk whose purpose was to screen the visitors and to log them in and out in addition to being decorative. Above her left breast was a large enamelled button, red on top, white in the middle as a broad stripe from left to right, and blue below. Across the white stripe was printed CARTER in bold, black letters. From in back of the pin depended two broad silk ribbons that cascaded forward over the stuffing in her brassiere and hung free until they disappeared behind the edge of the desk. She eyed James with curiosity. "Young man, if you're looking for throwaways for your civics class, you'll have to wait until we're better organized--"

James eyed her with cold distaste. "I am James Quincy Holden," he told her, "and you have neither the authority nor the agility necessary to prevent my entrance."

"You are--I what?"

"I live here," he told her flatly. "Or didn't they provide you with this tidbit of vital statistic?"

Wheels rotated behind the girl's eyes somewhere, and memory cells linked into comprehension. "Oh!--You're James."

"I said that first," he replied. "Where's Judge Carter?"

"He's in conference and cannot be disturbed."

"Your objection is overruled. I shall disturb him as soon as I find out precisely what has been going on."

He went on in through the short hallway and found audible confusion. Men in groups of two to four stood in corners talking in bedlam. There was a layer of blue smoke above their heads that broke into skirls as various individuals left one group to join another. Through this vocal mob scene James went veering from left to right to avoid the groupings. He stood with polite insolence directly in front of two men sitting on the stairs until they made room for his passage--still talking as he went between them. In his room, three were sitting on the bed and the chair holding glasses and, of course, smoking like the rest. James dropped his overnight bag on a low stand and headed for his bathroom. One of the men caught sight of him and said, "Hey kid, scram!"

James looked at the man coldly. "You happen to be using my bedroom. You should be asking my permission to do so, or perhaps apologizing for not having asked me before you moved in. I have no intention of leaving."

"Get the likes of him!"

"Wait a moment, Pete. This is the Holden kid."

"The little genius, huh?"

James said, "I am no genius. I do happen to have an education that provides me with the right to criticize your social behavior. I will neither be insulted nor patronized."

"Listen to him, will you!"

James turned and with the supreme gesture of contempt, he left the door open.

He wound his way through the place to Judge Carter's study and home office, strode towards it with purpose and reached for the doorknob. A voice halted him: "Hey kid, you can't go in there!"

Turning to face the new voice, James said calmly,

"You mean 'may not' which implies that I have asked your permission. Your statement is incorrect as phrased and erroneous when corrected."

He turned the knob and entered. Judge Carter sat at his desk with two men; their discussion ceased with the sound of the doorknob. The judge looked up in annoyance. "Hello, James. You shouldn't have come in here. We're busy. I'll let you know when I'm free."

"You'd better make time for me right now," said James angrily. "I'd like to know what's going on here."

"This much I'll tell you quickly. We're planning a political campaign. Now, please--"

"I know you're planning a political campaign," replied James. "But if you're proposing to campaign on the platform of a reform in education, I suggest that you educate your henchmen in the rudimentary elements of polite speech and gentle behavior. I dislike being ordered out of my room by usurpers who have the temerity to address me as 'hey kid'."

"Relax, James. I'll send them out later."

"I'd suggest that you tell them off," snapped James. He turned on his heel and left, heading for the cellar. In the workshop he found Professor White and Jack Cowling presiding over the machine. In the chair with the headset on sat the crowning insult of all:

Paul Brennan leafing through a heavy sheaf of papers, reading and intoning the words of political oratory.

Unable to lick them, Brennan had joined them--or, wondered young Holden, was Judge Norman L. Carter paying for Brennan's silence with some plum of political patronage?

* * * * *

As he stood there, the years of persecution rose strong in the mind of James Holden. Brennan, the man who'd got away with murder and would continue to get away with it because there was no shred of evidence, no witness, nothing but James Holden's knowledge of Brennan's actions when he'd thought himself unseen in his calloused treatment of James Holden's dying mother; Brennan's critical inspection of the smashed body of his father, coldly checking the dead flesh to be sure beyond doubt; the cruel search about the scene of the 'accident' for James himself--interrupted only by the arrival of a Samaritan, whose name was never known to James Holden. In James rose the violent resentment of the years, the certain knowledge that any act of revenge upon Paul Brennan would be viewed as cold-blooded premeditated murder without cause or motive.

And then came the angry knowledge that simple slaughter was too good for Paul Brennan. He was not a dog to be quickly released from misery by a merciful death. Paul Brennan should suffer until he cried for death as a blessed release from daily living.

James Holden, angry, silently, unseen by the preoccupied workers, stole across the room to the main switch-panel, flipped up a small half-concealed cover, and flipped a small button.

There came a sharp Crack! that shattered the silence and re-echoed again and again through the room. The panel that held the repeater-circuit of the Holden Educator bulged outward; jets of smoke lanced out of broken metal, bulged corners, holes and skirled into little clouds that drifted upward--trailing a flowing billow of thick, black, pungent smoke that reached the low ceiling and spread outward, fanwise, obscuring the ceiling like a low-lying nimbus.

At the sound of the report, the man in the chair jumped as if he'd been stabbed where he sat.

"Ouyeowwww!" yowled Brennan in a pitiful ululation. He fell forward from the chair, asprawl on wobbly hands and knees, on elbows and knees as he tried to press away the torrent of agony that hammered back and forth from temple to temple. James watched Brennan with cold detachment, Professor White and Jack Cowling looked on in paralyzed horror. Slowly, oh, so slowly, Paul Brennan managed to squirm around until he was sitting on the floor still cradling his head between his hands.

James said, "I'm afraid that you're going to have a rough time whenever you hear the word 'entrenched'." And then, as Brennan made no response, James Holden went on, "Or were you by chance reading the word 'pedagogue'?"

At the word, Brennan howled again; the pain was too much for him and he toppled sidewise to writhe in kicking agony.

James smiled coldly, "I'm sorry that you weren't reading the word 'the'. The English language uses more of them than the word 'pedagogue'."

With remarkable effort, Brennan struggled to his feet; he lurched toward James. "I'll teach you, you little--"

"Pedagogue?" asked James.

The shock rocked Brennan right to the floor again.

"Better sit there and think," said James coldly. "You come within a dozen yards of me and I'll say--"

"No! Don't!" screamed Paul Brennan. "Not again!"

"Now," asked James, "what's going on here?"

"He was memorizing a political speech," said Jack Cowling. "What did you do?"

"I merely fixed my machine so that it will not be used again."

"But you shouldn't have done that!"

"You shouldn't have been using it for this purpose," replied James. "It wasn't intended to further political ambitions."

"But Judge Carter--"

"Judge Carter doesn't own it," said James. "I do."

"I'm sure that Judge Carter can explain everything."

"Tell him so. Then add that if he'd bothered to give me the time of day, I'd be less angry. He's not to be interrupted, is he? I'm ordered out of my room, am I? Well, go tell the judge that his political campaign has been stopped by a fourteen-year-old boy who knows which button to push! I'll wait here."

Professor White took off; Jack Cowling smiled crookedly and shook his head at James. "You're a rash young man," he said. "What did you do to Brennan, here?"

James pointed at the smoke curling up out of the panel. "I put in a destructive charge to addle the circuit as a preventive measure against capture or use by unauthorized persons," he replied. "So I pushed the button just as Brennan was trying to memorize the word--"

"Don't!" cried Brennan in a pleading scream.

"You mean he's going to throw a fit every time he hears the word--"

"No! No! Can't anybody talk without saying--Ouwwouooo!"

"Interesting," commented James. "It seems to start as soon as the fore-reading part of his mind predicts that the word may be next, or when he thinks about it."

"Do you mean that Brennan is going to be like the guy who could win the world if he sat on the top of a hill for one hour and did not think of the word 'Swordfish'? Except that he'll be out of pain so long as he doesn't think of the word--"

"Thing I'm interested in is that maybe our orator here doesn't know the definition thoroughly. Tell me, dear 'Uncle' Paul, does the word 'teacher' give--Sorry. I was just experimenting. Wasn't as bad as--"

Gritting his teeth and wincing with pain, Brennan said, "Stop it! Even the word 'sch-(wince)-ool' hurts like--" He thought for a moment and then went on with his voice rising to a pitiful howl of agony at the end: "Even the name 'Miss Adams' gives me a fleeting headache all over my body, and Miss Adams was on--ly--my--third--growww--school--Owuuuuoooo--teach--earrrrrrr--Owwww!"

Brennan collapsed in his chair just as Judge Carter came in with his white mane flying and hot fire in his attitude. "What goes on here?" he stormed at James.

"I stopped your campaign."

"Now see here, you young--"

Judge Carter stopped abruptly, took a deep breath and calmed himself with a visible effort to control his rage. "James," he said in a quieter voice, "Can you repair the damage quickly?"

"Yes--but I won't."

"And why not?"

"Because one of the things my father taught me was the danger of allowing this machine to fall into the hands of ruthless men with political ambition."

"And I am a ruthless man with political ambition?"

James nodded. "Under the guise of studying me and my machine," he said, "you've been using it to train speakers, and to educate ward-heelers. You've been building a political machine by buying delegates. Not with money, of course, because that is illegal. With knowledge, and because knowledge, education, and information are intangibles and no legality has been established, and this is all very legal."

Judge Carter smiled distantly. "It is bad to elevate the mind of the average ward-heeler? To provide the smalltime politician with a fine grasp of the National Problem and how his little local problems fit into the big picture? Is this making a better world, or isn't it?"

"It's making a political machine that can't be defeated."

"Think not? What makes you think it can't?"

"Pedagogue!" said James.

"Yeowwww!"

The judge whirled to look at Brennan. "What was--that?" asked the judge.

James explained what had happened, then: "I've mentioned hazards. This is what would happen if a fuse blew in the middle of a course. Maybe he can be trained out of it, and maybe not. You'll have to try, of course. But think of what would happen if you and your political machine put these things into schools and fixed them to make a voltage twitch or something while the student was reading the word 'republican'. You'd end up with a single-party system."

"And get myself assassinated by a group of righteously irate citizens," said Judge Carter. "Which I would very warmly deserve. On the other hand, suppose we 'treated' people to feel anguish at thoughts of murder or killing, theft, treason, and other forms of human deviltry?"

"Now that might be a fine idea."

"It would not," said Judge Carter flatly. James Holden's eyes widened, and he started to say something but the judge held up his hand, fingers outspread, and began to tick off his points finger by finger as he went on: "Where would we be in the case of enemy attack? Could our policemen aim their guns at a vicious criminal if they were conditioned against killing? Could our butchers operate; must our housewives live among a horde of flies? Theft? Well, it's harder to justify, James, but it would change the game of baseball as in 'stealing a base' or it would ruin the game of love as in 'stealing a kiss'. It would ruin the mystery-story field for millions of people who really haven't any inclination to go out and rob, steal, or kill. Treason? Our very revered Declaration of Independence is an article of Treason in the eyes of King George Third; it wouldn't be very hard to draw a charge of treason against a man who complained about the way the Government is being run. Now, one more angle, James. The threat or fear of punishment hasn't deterred any potential felon so far as anybody knows. And I hold the odd belief that if we removed the quart of mixed felony, chicanery, falsehood, and underhandedness from the human makeup, on that day the human race could step down to take its place alongside of the cow, just one step ahead of the worm.

"Now you accuse me of holding political ambition. I plead guilty of the charge and demand to be shown by my accuser just what is undesirable about ambition, be it political or otherwise. Have you no ambition? Of course you have. Ambition drove your folks to create this machine and ambition drove you to the fight for your freedom. Ambition is the catalyst that lifts a man above his fellows and then lifts them also. There is a sort of tradition in this country that a man must not openly seek the office of the Presidency. I consider this downright silly. I have announced my candidacy, and I intend to campaign for it as hard as I can. I propose to make the problem of education the most important argument that has ever come up in a presidential campaign. I believe that I shall win because I shall promise to provide this accelerated education for everybody who wants it."

"And to do this you've used my machine," objected James.

"Did you intend to keep it for yourself?" snapped Judge Carter.

"No, but--"

"And when did you intend to release it?"

"As soon as I could handle it myself."

"Oh, fine!" jeered the judge sourly. "Now, let me orate on that subject for a moment and then we'll get to the real meat of this argument. James, there is no way of delivering this machine to the public without delivering it to them through the hands of a capable Government agency. If you try to release it as an individual you'll be swamped with cries of anger and pleas for special consideration. The reactionaries will shout that we're moving too fast and the progressives will complain that we aren't moving fast enough. Teachers' organizations will say that we're throwing teachers out of jobs, and little petty politicians will try to slip their political plug into the daily course in Civics. Start your company and within a week some Madison Avenue advertising agency will be offering you several million dollars to let them convince people that Hickory-Chickory Coffee is the only stuff they can pour down their gullet without causing stomach pains, acid system, jittery nerves, sleepless nights, flat feet, upset glands, and so on and on and on. Announce it; the next day you'll have so many foreign spies in your bailiwick that you'll have to hire a stadium to hold them. You'll be ducking intercontinental ballistic missiles because there are people who would kill the dog in order to get rid of the fleas. You'll start the biggest war this planet has ever seen and it will go on long after you are killed and your father's secret is lost--and after the fallout has died off, we'll have another scientific race to recreate it. And don't think that it can't be rediscovered by determined scientists who know that such a thing as the Holden Electromechanical Educator is a reality."

"And how do you propose to prevent this war?"

"By broadcasting the secret as soon as we can; let the British and the French and the Russians and the Germans and all the rest build it and use it as wisely as they can program it. Which, by the way, James, brings us right back to James Quincy Holden, Martha Bagley, and the immediate future."

"Oh?"

"Yes. James, tell me after deliberation, at what point in your life did you first believe that you had the competence to enter the adult world in freedom to do as you believed right?"

"Um, about five or six, as I recall."

"What do you think now about those days?"

James shrugged. "I got along."

"Wasn't very well, was it?"

"No, but I was under a handicap, you know. I had to hide out."

"And now?"

"Well, if I had legal ruling, I wouldn't have to hide."

"Think you know everything you need to know to enter this adult world?"

"No man stops learning," parried James. "I think I know enough to start."

"James, no matter what you say, there is a very important but intangible thing called 'judgment'. You have part of it, but not by far enough. You've been studying the laws about ages and rights, James, but you've missed a couple of them because you've been looking for evidence favorable to your own argument. First, to become a duly elected member of the House of Representatives, a man must be at least twenty-five years of age. To be a Senator, he must be at least thirty. To be President, one must be at least thirty-five. Have you any idea why the framers of the Constitution of the United States placed such restrictions?"

"Well, I suppose it had to do with judgment?" replied James reluctantly.

"That--and experience. Experience in knowing people, in understanding that there might be another side to any question, in realizing that you must not approach every problem from your own purely personal point of view nor expect it to be solved to your own private satisfaction or to your benefit. Now, let's step off a distance and take a good look at James Quincy Holden and see where he lacks the necessary ingredients."

"Yes, tell me," said James, sourly.

"Oh, I intend to. Let's take the statistics first. You're four-feet eleven-inches tall, you weigh one-hundred and three pounds, and you're a few weeks over fourteen. I suppose you know that you've still got one more spurt of growth, sometimes known as the post-puberty-growth. You'll probably put on another foot in the next couple of years, spread out a bit across the shoulders, and that fuzz on your face will become a collection of bristles. I suppose you think that any man in this room can handle you simply because we're all larger than you are? Possibly true, and one of the reasons why we can't give you a ticket and let you proclaim yourself an adult. You can't carry the weight. But this isn't all. Your muscles and your bones aren't yet in equilibrium. I could find a man of age thirty who weighed one-oh-three and stood four-eleven. He could pick you up and spin you like a top on his forefinger just because his bones match his muscles nicely, and his nervous system and brain have had experience in driving the body he's living in."

"Could be, but what has all this to do with me? It does not affect the fact that I've been getting along in life."

"You get along. It isn't enough to 'get along.' You've got to have judgment. You claim judgment, but still you realize that you can't handle your own machine. You can't even come to an equitable choice in selecting some agency to handle your machine. You can't decide upon a good outlet. You believe that proclaiming your legal competence will provide you with some mysterious protection against the wolves and thieves and ruthless men with political ambition--that this ruling will permit you to keep it to yourself until you decide that it is time to release it. You still want to hide. You want to use it until you are so far above and beyond the rest of the world that they can't catch up, once you give it to everybody. You now object to my plans and programs, still not knowing whether I intend to use it for good or for evil--and juvenile that you are, it must be good or evil and cannot be an in-between shade of gray. Men are heroes or villains to you; but I must say with some reluctance that the biggest crooks that ever held public office still passed laws that were beneficial to their people. There is the area in which you lack judgment, James. There and in your blindness."

"Blindness?"

"Blindness," repeated Judge Carter. "As Mark Twain once said, 'When I was seventeen, I was ashamed at the ignorance of my father, but by the time I was twenty-one I was amazed to discover how much the old man had learned in four short years!' Confound it, James, you don't yet realize that there are a lot of things in life that you can't even know about until you've lived through them. You're blind here, even though your life has been a solid case of encounter with unexpected experiences, one after the other as you grew. Oh, you're smart enough to know that you've got to top the next hill as soon as you've climbed this one, but you're not smart enough to realize that the next hill merely hides the one beyond, and that there are still higher hills beyond that stretching to the end of the road for you--and that when you've finally reached the end of your own road there will be more distant hills to climb for the folks that follow you.

"You've a fine education, and it's helped you tremendously. But you've loused up your own life and the life of Martha Bagley. You two are a pair of outcasts, and you'll be outcasts until about ten years from now when your body will have caught up with your mind so that you can join your contemporaries without being regarded as a pair of intellectual freaks."

"And what should I have done?" demanded James Holden angrily.

"That's just it, again. You do not now realize that there isn't anything you could have done, nor is there anything you can do now. That's why I'm taking over and I'm going to do it for you."

"Yes?"

"Yes!" snapped Judge Carter. "We'll let them have their courses in baton twirling and social grace and civic improvement and etiquette--and at the same time we'll give them history and mathematics and spelling and graduate them from 'high' school at the age of twelve or fourteen, introduce an intermediary school for languages and customs of other countries and in universal law and international affairs and economics, where our bookkeepers will learn science and scientists will understand commercial law; our lawyers will know business and our businessmen will be taught politics. After that we'll start them in college and run them as high as they can go, and our doctors will no longer go sour from the moment they leave school at thirty-five to hang out their shingle.

"As for you, James Holden, you and Martha Bagley will attend this preparatory school as soon as we can set it up. There will be no more of this argument about being as competent as an adult, because we oldsters will still be the chiefs and you kids will be the Indians. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes sir. But how about Brennan?"

Judge Carter looked at the unhappy man. "You still want revenge? Won't he be punished enough just hearing the word 'pedagogue'?"

"For the love of--"

"Don't blaspheme," snapped the judge. "You'd hang if James could bring a shred of evidence, and I'd help him if I could." He turned to James Holden. "Now," he asked, "will you repair your machine?"

"And if I say No?"

"Can you stand the pressure of a whole world angered because you've denied them their right to an education?"

"I suppose not." He looked at Brennan, at Professor White and at Jack Cowling. "If I've got to trust somebody," he said reluctantly, "I suppose it might as well be you."

BOOK FOUR:

THE NEW MATURITY

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It is the campus of Holden Preparatory Academy.

It is spring, but many another spring must pass before the ambitious ivy climbs to smother the gray granite walls, before the stripling trees grow stately, before the lawn is sturdy enough to withstand the crab grass and the students. Anecdote and apocrypha have yet to evolve into hallowed tradition. The walks ways are bare of bronze plaques because there are no illustrious alumni to honor; Holden Preparatory has yet to graduate its first class.

It is youth, a lusty infant whose latent power is already great enough to move the world. As it rises, the world rises with it for the whole consists of all its parts; no man moves alone.

The movement has its supporters and its enemies, and between them lies a vast apathy of folks who simply don't give a damn. It supporters deplore the dolts and the sluggards who either cannot or will not be educated. Its enemies see it as a danger to their comfortable position of eminence and claim bitterly that the honored degree of doctor is being degraded. They refuse to see that it is not the degradation of the standard but rather the exaltation of the norm. Comfortable, they lazily object to the necessity of rising with the norm to keep their position. Nor do they realize that the ones who will be assaulting their fortress will themselves be fighting still stronger youth one day when the mistakes are corrected and the program streamlined through experience.

On the virgin lawn, in a spot that will someday lie in the shade of a great oak, a group of students sit, sprawl, lie. The oldest of them is sixteen, and it is true that not one of them has any reverence for college degrees, because the entrance requirements demand the scholastic level of bachelor in the arts, the sciences, in language and literature. The mark of their progress is not stated in grades, but rather in the number of supplementary degrees for which they qualify. The honors of their graduation are noted by the number of doctorates they acquire. Their goal is the title of Scholar, without which they may not attend college for their ultimate education.

But they do not have the "look of eagles" nor do they act as if they felt some divine purpose fill their lives. They do not lead the pack in an easy lope, for who holds rank when admirals meet? They are not dedicated nor single-minded; if their jokes and pranks start on a higher or lower plane, it is just because they have better minds than their forebears at the same time.

On the fringe of this group, an olive-skinned Brazilian co-ed asks: "Where's Martha?"

John Philips looks up from a diagram of fieldmatrics he's been using to lay out a football play. "She's lending moral support to Holden. He's sweating out his scholar's impromptu this afternoon."

"Why should he be stewing?"

John Philips smiles knowingly. "Tony Dirk put the triple-whammy on him. Gimmicked up the random-choice selector in the Regent's office. Herr von James is discoursing on the subjects of Medicine, Astronomy, and Psychology--that is if Dirk knows his stuff."

Tony Dirk looks down from his study of a fluffy cloud. "Anybody care to hazard some loose change on my ability?"

"But why?"

"Oh," replies Philips, "we figure that the first graduating class could use a professional Astrologer! We'll be the first in history to have one--if M'sieu Holden can tie Medicine, Astronomy, and Psychology into something cogent in his impromptu."

It is a strange tongue they are using, probably the first birth-pains of a truly universal language. By some tacit agreement, personal questions are voiced in French, the reply in Spanish. Impersonal questions are Italian and the response in Portuguese. Anything of a scientific nature must be in German; law, language, or literature in English; art in Japanese; music in Greek; medicine in Latin; agriculture in Czech. Anything laudatory in Mandarin, derogatory in Sanskrit--and ad libitum at any point for any subject.

Anita Lowes has been trying to attract the attention of John Philips from his diagram long enough to invite her to the Spring Festival by reciting a low-voiced string of nuclear equations carefully compounded to make them sound naughty unless they're properly identified with full attention. She looks up and says, "What if he doesn't make the connection?"

Philips replies, "Well, if he can prove to that tough bunch that there is no possible advance in learning through a combination of Astronomy, Medicine, and Psychology, he'll make it on that basis. It's just as important to close a door as it is to open one, you know. But it's one rough deal to prove negation. Maybe we'll have James the Holden on our hands for another semester. Martha will like that."

"Talking about me?"

There is a rolling motion, sort of like a bushel of fish trying to leap back into the sea. The newcomer is Martha Fisher. At fifteen, her eyes are bright, and her features are beginning to soften into the beginning of a beauty that will deepen with maturity.

"James," says Tony Dirk. "We figured you'd like to have him around another four months. So we gimmicked him."

"You mean that test-trio?" chuckles Martha.

"How's he doing?"

"When I left, he was wriggling his way through probability math, showing the relationship between his three subjects and the solution for random choice figures which may or may not be shaded by known or not-known agency. He's covered Mason's History of Superstition and--"

"Superstition?" asks a Japanese.

Martha nods. "He claimed superstition is based upon fear and faith, and he feared that someone had tampered with his random choice of subjects, and he had faith that it was one of his buddies. So--"

Martha is interrupted by a shout. The years have done well by James Holden, too. He is a lithe sixteen. It is a long time since he formed his little theory of human pair-production and it is almost as long since he thought of it last. If he reconsiders it now, he does not recognize his part in it because everything looks different from within the circle. His world, like the organization of the Universe, is made up of schools containing classes of groups of clusters of sets of associations created by combinations and permutations of individuals.

"I made it!" he says.

James has his problems. Big ones. Shall he go to Harvard alone, or shall he go to coeducational California with the hope that Martha will follow him? Then there was the fun awaiting him at Heidelberg, the historic background of Pisa, the vigorous routine at Tokyo. As a Scholar, he has contributed original research in four or five fields to attain doctorates, now he is to pick a few allied fields, combine certain phases of them, and work for his Specific. It is James Holden's determination to prove that the son is worthy of the parents for which his school is named.

But there is high competition. At Carter tech-prep, a girl is struggling to arrange a Periodic Chart of the Nucleons. At Maxwell, one of his contemporaries will contend that the human spleen acts as an ion-exchange organ to rid the human body of radioactive minerals, and he will someday die trying to prove it. His own classmate Tony Dirk will organize a weather-control program, and John Philips will write six lines of odd symbols that will be called the Inertiogravitic Equations.

Their children will reach the distant stars, and their children's children will, humanlike, cross the vast chasm that lies between one swirl of matter and the other before they have barely touched their home galaxy.

No man is an island, near or far on Earth as it is across the glowing clusters of galaxies--nay, as it may be in Heaven itself.

The motto is cut deep in the granite over the doorway to Holden Hall:

YOU YOURSELF MUST LIGHT THE FAGGOTS THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT