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.