one like him. He had the head start. He intended to keep it until
he had succeeded in compelling the whole world to accept him with the
full status of a free adult.

Then, under his guidance, he would permit the world-wide use of his
machine.

His loneliness had forced him to revise that dream by the addition of
Martha Bagley; he needed a companion, contemporary, and foil. His mental
playlet no longer closed with James Holden standing alone before the
Bench. Now it ended with Martha saying proudly, "James, I knew you could
do it."

Martha Bagley's brilliance would not conflict with his. He could
stay ahead of her forever. But he had no intention of allowing some
experienced adult to partake of this program of enforced education. He
was, therefore, going to find himself some manner or means of preventing
Mrs. Bagley from running the gamut of all available information.

James Holden evaluated all people in his own terms, he believed that
everybody was just as eager for knowledge as he was.

So he was surprised to find that Mrs. Bagley's desire for extended
education only included such information as would make her own immediate
personal problems easier. Mrs. Bagley was the first one of the mass of
people James was destined to meet who not only did not know how or why
things worked, but further had no intention whatsoever of finding out.

Instead of trying to monopolize James Holden's machine, Mrs. Bagley was
satisfied to learn a number of her pet recipes. After a day of thought
she added her social security number, blood type, some birthdays, dates,
a few telephone numbers and her multiplication tables. She announced that
she was satisfied. It solved James Holden's problem--and stunned him
completely.

But James had very little time to worry about Mrs. Bagley's attitude. He
found his hands full with Martha.

Martha played fey. Her actions and attitude baffled James, and even
confused her mother. There was no way of really determining whether the
girl was scared to death of the machine itself, or whether she simply
decided to be difficult. And she uttered the proper replies with all of
the promptness--and intelligence--of a ventriloquist's dummy:

"You don't want to be ignorant, do you?"

"No."

"You want to be smart, like James, don't you?"

"Yes."

"You know the machine won't hurt, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then let's try it just once, please?"

"No."

Back to the beginning again. Martha would agree to