The Fourth R

by George O. Smith

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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

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

  Later, the judge committed to memory the entire book of Bartlett's FamousQuotations despite the objection of young Holden that he was clutteringup his memory with a lot of useless material. The Judge learned (as Jameshad learned earlier) that the proper way to store such information in thememory was to read the book with the machine turned in "stand-by" untilsome section was encountered that was of interest. Using this method, thejudge picked and pecked at the Holy Bible, a number of documents thatlooked like important governmental records, and a few books in modernhistory.

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

  White had a huge blackboard installed on the cellar wall opposite themachine, and he proceeded to fill the board with block outlines filledwith crabbed writing and odd-looking symbols. The whole was meaninglessto James Holden; it looked like the organization chart of a largecorporation but it contained no names or titles. The arrival of each newvisitor 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 ofracetrack touts clocking their favorite horses. Where James had simplytaken what he wanted or what he could at any single sitting, then letit settle in his mind before taking another dose of unpremeditatedmagnitude, these fellows ascertained the best effectiveness of eachapplication to each of them. They tried taking long terms under themachine and then they measured the time it took for the installedinformation to sink in and settle into usable shape. Then they triedshorter and shorter sittings and measured the correspondingly shortersettling times. They found out that no two men were alike, nor were anytwo subjects. They discovered that a man with an extensive educationalready could take a larger sitting and have the new informationavailable for mental use in a shorter settling time than a man whoseeducation had been sketchy or incomplete.

  They brought in men who had either little or no mathematics and gave themcourses in advanced subjects. Afterwards they provided the foundationmathematics and they calibrated and measured the time it took for thehigher subject to be understood as it aligned its information to thewhole. Men came with crude English and bluntly read the dictionary andthe proper rules of grammar and they were checked to see if their earlybad-speech habits were corrected, and to what degree the Holden machinecould be made to help repair the damage of a lifelong ingrained set oferrors. They sent some of these boys through comparison dictionaries inforeign tongues and then had their language checked by specialists whowere truly polylingual. There were some who spoke fluent English but noother tongue; these progressed into German with a German-to-Englishcomparison dictionary, and then into French via a German-to-Frenchcomparison and were finally checked out in French by French-speakingexaminers.

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

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

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

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

  We shall not go into the details of this midnight introduction to thearrival of manhood, for the simple reason that if we dwell on thesubject, someone is certain to attempt a dream-analysis and come up withsome flanged-up character-study or personality-quirk that really hasnothing to do with the mind or body of James Holden. The truth is thathis erotic dream was pleasantly stirring, but not entirely satisfactory.It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last very long. It awakened himto the realization that knowledge is not the end-all of life, and that afull understanding of the words, the medical terms, and the biologyinvolved 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 apartial understanding of why Jake Caslow had entertained late visitors ofthe opposite sex, but he still could not quite see the reason why Jakekept the collection of calendar photographs and paintings hung up aroundthe place. Crude jokes and rude talk heard long years before and dimlyremembered did not have much connection with the subject. To JamesHolden, a "tomato" was still a vegetable, although he knew that somebotanists were willing to argue that the tomato was really a fruit.

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

  He remembered the joking parry-and-thrust of that midnight talk betweenTim Fisher and Janet Bagley but it made no sense to him still. But as hepondered the multitude of puzzlements, some of the answers fell partlyinto place just as some of the matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle may lieclose to one another when they are dumped out of the box. Very dimlyJames began to realize that this sort of thing was not New, but to thecontrary it had been going on for a long, long time. So long in fact thatneither Tim Fisher nor Janet Bagley had found it necessary to statedesire and raise objection respectively in simple clear sentencescontaining subject, verb, and object. This much came to him and itbothered him even more, now that he understood that they were bandyingtheir meanings lightly over a subject so vital, so important, so--socompletely personal.

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

  With a brand new and very interesting subject to study, James lostinterest in the program of concentrated research. James Holden
found thatall he had to do to arrange a trip to Shipmont was to state his desire togo 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 suchas a coat of paint and some needed repair work. The grounds had beenworked over, but it was going to take a number of years of concentratedgardening to de-weed the tangled lawn and to cut the undergrowth in thethin woodsy back area where James had played in concealment.

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

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

  The professionals studying the case did not know yet whether Martha wouldremain ahead of her age group, or whether to let her loaf it out untilher age group caught up with her, or whether to give Martha everythingshe could take as fast as she could take it. This would make a femalecounterpart 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 upMrs. Janet Fisher as much as James thought it should. Yet as he watchedher, he could not say that Tim Fisher's wife was _unhappy_.

  Tim, on the other hand, looked fine. James watched them together ascritically curious as he'd been in watching the Judge and Mrs. Carter.Tim was gentle with his wife, tender, polite, and more than willing towait 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 wordthat--in cold print--would appear to have no bearing on the originalsubject. This sort of thing told James nothing. Judge Carter and his wifedid the same; if there were any difference to be noted it was only in thebasic subject materials. The judge and his wife were inclined more towarddiscussions of political questions and judicial problems, whereas Tim andJanet Fisher were more interested in music, movies, and the general trendof the automobile repair business; or more to the point, whether toexpand the present facility in Shipmont, to open another branchelsewhere, or to sell out to buy a really big operation in some sizablecity.

  James saw a change in Martha, too. It had been months since he came backhome to supervise the removal of his belongings. Now Martha had filledout. She was dressed in a shirt-and-skirt instead of the little jumperdresses James remembered. Martha's hair was lightly wavy instead oftrimmed short, and she was wearing a very faint touch of color on herlips. She wore tiny slippers with heels just a trifle higher than thealtitude recommended for a girl close to thirteen.

  Ultimately they fell into animated chatter of their own, just as theyalways had. There was a barrier between the pair of them and Martha'smother and stepfather--slightly higher than the usual barrier erectedbetween children and their adults because of their educational adventurestogether. They had covered reams and volumes together. Martha's motherwas interested in Holden's machine only when something specific came toher attention that she did not wish to forget such as a recipe or apattern, and one very extensive course that enabled her to add a columnof three-digit numbers by the whole lines instead of taking each columndigit by digit. Tim Fisher himself had deeper interests, but nearly allof them directed at making Tim Fisher a better manager of the automobilerepair business. There had been some discussion of the possibility thatTim Fisher might memorize some subject such as the names of all baseballplayers and their yearly and lifetime scoring, fielding, and playingaverages, training for him to go as a contestant on one of the big moneygiveaway shows. This never came to pass; Tim Fisher did not have anyspectacular qualities about him that would land him an invitation. SoTim's work with Holden's machine had been straightforward studies inmechanics and bookkeeping and business management--plus a fine repertoireof bawdy songs he had rung in on the sly and subsequently used atparties.

  James and Martha had taken all they wanted of education and availableinformation, sometimes with plan and the guidance of schoolbooks andsometimes simply because they found the subject of interest. In the pastthey'd had discussions of problems in understanding; they'd talked ofthings that parents and elders would have considered utterly impossibleto discuss with young minds. With this communion of interests, they fellback into their former pattern of first joining the general conversationpolitely and then gradually confining their remarks to one another untilthere were two conversations going on at the same time, one betweenJames and Martha and another between Janet and Tim. Again, the vocalinterference and cross-talk became too high, and it was Tim and Janet wholeft 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 youngJames Holden.

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

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

  It did not occur to James Holden that Martha Bagley might entertain theidea of physical contact of some mild sort on an experimental basis. Hedid not even consider the possibility that he might _start_ her thinkingabout it. So instead of closing the distance between them like a gentlewolf, watching with sly calculation to ascertain whether her response waspositive, negative, or completely neutral, he sat like a post and frettedinwardly because he couldn't control the direction of their conversation.

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

  In silence, J
ames Holden sat there sinking deeper and deeper into his ownmisery.

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

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

  Then Martha's mother took James out of his misery by coming in toannounce dinner. Regretfully, James sighed for his lost moments andhelplessness, 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 bypulling. The first contact did not stir him at all, though it was warmand pleasant. Once the pulling pressure was off, he continued to holdMartha's hand, tentatively and experimentally.

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

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

  None of which solved James Holden's problem. But during dinner hispersonal problem slipped aside because he discovered another slightchange in Janet Fisher's attitude. He puzzled over it quietly, butmanaged to eat without any apparent preoccupation. Dinner took about ahalf hour, after which they spent another fifteen minutes over coffee,with Janet refusing her second cup. She disappeared at the first shuffleof a foot under the table, while James and Martha resumed their years-oldchore 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 ifsomething's bothering her that she can't stop."

  "That all?"

  "No," he went on. "She hiked upstairs like a shot right after dinner wasover. 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 exaggeratedflourish. "And I'm going to have a half-sibling."

  "But look--"

  "Don't _you_ go getting upset," said Martha. "It's a natural processthat'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 observationthat marriage is responsible for the population because it provides themaximum opportunity with the maximum temptation. But it was beginning tofilter slowly into his brain that the ways and means were alwaysavailable and there was neither custom, tradition, nor biology thatdictated a waiting period or a time limit. It was a matter of choice, andwhen two people want their baby, and have no reason for not having theirbaby, 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 atit right along."

  James thought some more. He'd come to see if he could detect anydifference between the behavior of Judge and Mrs. Carter, and thebehavior of Tim and Janet Fisher. He saw little, other than the standarddifferences that could be accounted for by age and temperament. Tim andJanet did not really act as if they'd Discovered Something New. Tim, heknew, was a bit more sweet and tender to Janet than he'd been before, butthere was nothing startling in his behavior. If there were any differenceas compared to their original antics, James knew that it was undoubtedlydue to the fact that they didn't have to stand lollygagging in thehallway for two hours while Janet half-heartedly insisted that Tim gohome. He went on to consider his original theory that the Carters werechildless because they occupied separate bedrooms; by some sort ofdeduction he came to the conclusion that he was right, because Tim andJanet 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 wasmore 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 alonewith Martha Bagley, discussing the very delicate subject. But he wasactually no closer to his problem of becoming a participant than he'dbeen an hour ago in the living room. It was one thing to daydream thesuggestion when you can also daydream the affirmative response, but itwas another matter when the response was completely out of your control.James was not old enough in the ways of the world to even consideroutright asking; even if he had considered it, he did not know how toask.

  * * * * *

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

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

  And James, still floundering, mentally meandered back to his wish that itwere Christmas so that mistletoe would provide a traditional gesture ofaffection, and came up with a new and novel idea that he expressed in avoice 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 butmaking no move, no gesture, no change in her expression. He looked at herand realized that he was not sure of how to take hold of her, how toreach 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-brilliantconversation between Janet and Tim on the homecoming after their firstdate. He chuckled.

 
"What's so funny?"

  "Nothing," he said in a slightly strained voice. "I'm thinking that herewe 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, howdoes a guy grow up? How does a guy learn these things?" His voice wasplaintive, it galled him to admit that for all of his knowledge and hiscompetence, 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 knowwhere to look to find it. I've tried. All I know," she said with aquickening voice, "is that somewhere between now and then I'll learn howto toss talk back and forth the way they do."

  "Yes," he said glumly.

  "James," said Martha brightly, "we should be somewhat better than a pairof 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. Lordknows 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 oureducation, we had to learn, didn't we?"

  "Why, yes. In a--"

  "Now, let's not get involved in another philosophical argument. Let's runthis 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 wholeworld who have studied everything we know together, and when we hitsomething we can't study--you want to go home and kiss your old machine,"she finished with a remarkable lack of serial logic. She laughednervously.

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

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

  She leaned forward holding her face up, her lips puckered forward ina tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly andhesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own.It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristicsmack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of theemotional charge of a mother-in-law's peck, but it served its purposeadmirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another fromfour inches of distance. Then they tried it again and their second was alittle longer and a little warmer and a little closer, and it ended withless 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 toassemble themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen inmovies and on television. It didn't quite work that way. There seemed tobe too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when theyfound 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 minutesof this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort toreturn to the original routine of kissing. By more luck than goodmanagement they succeeded in an embrace that placed no strain and whichmet them almost face to face. They puckered again and made contact, thenpressure came and spread out the pair of tightly pursed rosebuds. Marthamoved 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, butjust at the point where James should have relaxed to enjoy the long kisshe began to worry: There is something planned and final about the quicksmacking kiss, but how does one gracefully terminate the long-term,high-pressure jobs? So instead of enjoying himself, James planned anddiscarded plans until he decided that the way he'd do it would be toexert a short, heavy pressure and then cease with the same action as inthe quick-smack variety.

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

  They came up for air successfully again, and then spent some timewriggling around into another position. The figure-fitting went easierthis time, after threshing around through three or four near-comfortsthey came to rest in a pleasantly natural position and James Holdenbecame nervously aware of the fact that his right hand was cupped overa soft roundness that filled his palm almost perfectly. He wonderedwhether to remove it quickly to let her know that this intimacy wasn'tintentional; slowly so that (maybe, he hoped) she wouldn't realize thatit had been there; or to leave it there because it felt pleasant. Whilehe was wondering, Martha moved around because she could not twist herneck all the way around like an owl, and she wanted to see him. The movesolved his problem but presented the equally great problem of how hewould try it again.

  James allowed a small portion of his brain to think about this, and putthe rest of his mind at ease by kissing her again. Halfway through, hefelt warm moistness as her lips parted slightly, then the tip of hertongue darted forward between his lips to quest against his tongue in acaress so fleeting that it was withdrawn before he could react--and Jamesreacted by jerking his head back faster than if he had been clubbed inthe face. He was still tingling with the shock, a pleasant shock but nonethe 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 readit 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 movedback 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 primaryways of concluding, namely: 1, physical satisfaction; 2, physicalexhaustion; and 3, interruption. We need not go into sub-classificationsor argue the point. James and Martha were not emotionally ready toconclude with mutual defloration. Ultimately they fell asleep on thedivan with their arms around each other. They weren't interrupted;they awoke as the first flush of daylight brightened the sky, and withone more rather chaste kiss, they parted to fall into the deep slumber ofcomplete physical and emotional exhaustion.