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 Pr