CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It is the campus of Holden Preparatory Academy.
It is spring, but many another spring must pass before the ambitious ivyclimbs to smother the gray granite walls, before the stripling trees growstately, before the lawn is sturdy enough to withstand the crab grass andthe students. Anecdote and apocrypha have yet to evolve into hallowedtradition. The walks ways are bare of bronze plaques because there are noillustrious alumni to honor; Holden Preparatory has yet to graduate itsfirst class.
It is youth, a lusty infant whose latent power is already great enoughto move the world. As it rises, the world rises with it for the wholeconsists of all its parts; no man moves alone.
The movement has its supporters and its enemies, and between them lies avast apathy of folks who simply don't give a damn. It supporters deplorethe dolts and the sluggards who either cannot or will not be educated.Its enemies see it as a danger to their comfortable position of eminenceand claim bitterly that the honored degree of doctor is being degraded.They refuse to see that it is not the degradation of the standard butrather the exaltation of the norm. Comfortable, they lazily object to thenecessity of rising with the norm to keep their position. Nor do theyrealize that the ones who will be assaulting their fortress willthemselves be fighting still stronger youth one day when the mistakes arecorrected and the program streamlined through experience.
On the virgin lawn, in a spot that will someday lie in the shade of agreat oak, a group of students sit, sprawl, lie. The oldest of them issixteen, and it is true that not one of them has any reverence forcollege degrees, because the entrance requirements demand the scholasticlevel of bachelor in the arts, the sciences, in language and literature.The mark of their progress is not stated in grades, but rather in thenumber of supplementary degrees for which they qualify. The honors oftheir graduation are noted by the number of doctorates they acquire.Their goal is the title of Scholar, without which they may not attendcollege for their ultimate education.
But they do not have the "look of eagles" nor do they act as if they feltsome divine purpose fill their lives. They do not lead the pack in aneasy lope, for who holds rank when admirals meet? They are not dedicatednor single-minded; if their jokes and pranks start on a higher or lowerplane, it is just because they have better minds than their forebears atthe 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 tolay out a football play. "She's lending moral support to Holden. He'ssweating 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 vonJames is discoursing on the subjects of Medicine, Astronomy, andPsychology--that is if Dirk knows his stuff."
Tony Dirk looks down from his study of a fluffy cloud. "Anybody care tohazard some loose change on my ability?"
"But why?"
"Oh," replies Philips, "we figure that the first graduating class coulduse a professional _Astrologer_! We'll be the first in history to haveone--if M'sieu Holden can tie Medicine, Astronomy, and Psychology intosomething cogent in his impromptu."
It is a strange tongue they are using, probably the first birth-pains ofa truly universal language. By some tacit agreement, personal questionsare voiced in French, the reply in Spanish. Impersonal questions areItalian and the response in Portuguese. Anything of a scientific naturemust be in German; law, language, or literature in English; art inJapanese; 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 fromhis diagram long enough to invite her to the Spring Festival by recitinga low-voiced string of nuclear equations carefully compounded to makethem sound naughty unless they're properly identified with fullattention. She looks up and says, "What if he doesn't make theconnection?"
Philips replies, "Well, if he can prove to that tough bunch that thereis no possible advance in learning through a combination of Astronomy,Medicine, and Psychology, he'll make it on that basis. It's just asimportant to close a door as it is to open one, you know. But it's onerough deal to prove negation. Maybe we'll have James the Holden on ourhands for another semester. Martha will like that."
"Talking about me?"
There is a rolling motion, sort of like a bushel of fish trying to leapback into the sea. The newcomer is Martha Fisher. At fifteen, her eyesare bright, and her features are beginning to soften into the beginningof a beauty that will deepen with maturity.
"James," says Tony Dirk. "We figured you'd like to have him aroundanother 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, showingthe relationship between his three subjects and the solution for randomchoice figures which may or may not be shaded by known or not-knownagency. He's covered Mason's History of Superstition and--"
"Superstition?" asks a Japanese.
Martha nods. "He claimed superstition is based upon fear and faith, andhe 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 JamesHolden, too. He is a lithe sixteen. It is a long time since he formed hislittle theory of human pair-production and it is almost as long sincehe thought of it last. If he reconsiders it now, he does not recognizehis part in it because everything looks different from within the circle.His world, like the organization of the Universe, is made up of schoolscontaining classes of groups of clusters of sets of associations createdby combinations and permutations of individuals.
"I made it!" he says.
James has his problems. Big ones. Shall he go to Harvard alone, or shallhe go to coeducational California with the hope that Martha will followhim? Then there was the fun awaiting him at Heidelberg, the historicbackground of Pisa, the vigorous routine at Tokyo. As a Scholar, he hascontributed original research in four or five fields to attaindoctorates, now he is to pick a few allied fields, combine certain phasesof them, and work for his Specific. It is James Holden's determination toprove that the son is worthy of the parents for which his school isnamed.
But there is high competition. At Carter tech-prep, a girl is strugglingto arrange a Periodic Chart of the Nucleons. At Maxwell, one of hiscontemporaries will contend that the human spleen acts as an ion-exchangeorgan to rid the human body of radioactive minerals, and he will somedaydie trying to prove it. His own classmate Tony Dirk will organize aweather-control program, and John Philips will write six lines of oddsymbols that will be called the Inertiogravitic Equations.
Their children will reach the distant stars, and their children'schildren will, humanlike, cross the vast chasm that lies between oneswirl of matter and the other before they have barely touched their homegalaxy.
No man is an island, near or far on Earth as it is across the glowingclusters 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 YOURSELFMUST LIGHT THE FAGGOTSTHAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT
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