CHAPTER NINE
The letter was a masterpiece of dissembling. It suggested, withoutpromising, that Charles Maxwell intended to send his young charge toboarding school along with his housekeeper's daughter. It asked theschool's advice and explained the deformity that made Charles Maxwell arecluse. The reply could hardly have been better if they'd penned itthemselves for the signature of the faculty advisor. It discussed thepros and cons of away-from-home schooling and went on at great length todiscuss the attitude of children and their upbringing amid strangesurroundings. It invited a long and inconclusive correspondence--justwhat James wanted.
The supposed departure for school went off neatly, no one in the town ofShipmont was surprised when Mrs. Bagley turned up buying an automobile ofseveral years' vintage because this was a community where everybody hadone.
The letters continued at the rate of one every two or three weeks. Theywere picked up by Mrs. Bagley who let it be known that these wereprogress reports. In reality, they were little tracts on the theory ofchild education. They kept up the correspondence for the information itcontained, and also because Mrs. Bagley enjoyed this contact with anouter world that contained adults.
Meanwhile, James ended his spurt of growth and settled down. Work on hismachine continued when he could afford to buy the parts, and his writingsettled down into a comfortable channel once more. In his spare timeJames began to work on Martha's diction.
Martha could not have been called a retarded child. Her trouble was lackof constant parental attention during her early years. With father goneand mother struggling to live, Martha had never overcome some of thebabytalk-diction faults. There was still a trace of the omitted 'B' hereand there. 'Y' was a difficult sound; the color of a lemon was "Lellow."Martha's English construction still bore marks of the baby. "Do you haveto--" came out as "Does you has to--?"
James Holden's father had struggled in just this way through his earlyexperimental days, when he despaired of ever getting the infant James outof the baby-prattle stage. He could not force, he could not even coerce.All that his father could do was to watch quietly as baby James acquiredthe awareness of things. Then he could step in and supply the correctword-sound to name the object. In those early days the progress of JamesHolden was no greater than the progress of any other infant. HoldenSenior followed the theory of ciphers; no cryptologist can startunravelling a secret message until he is aware of the fact that somehidden message exists. No infant can be taught a language until someawareness tells the tiny brain that there is some definite connectionbetween sound and sight.
* * * * *
For the next few weeks James worked with Martha on her speech, and hatedit. So slow, so dreary! But it was necessary, he thought, to keep herfrom establishing any more permanent errors, so that when the machine wasready there would be at least a blank slate to write on, not one allscribbled over with mistakes.
Time passed; the weather grew colder; the machine spread its scatteredparts over his workroom.
Janet Bagley knew that the machine was growing, but it had not occurredto her that it would be finished. She had grown accustomed to her life onMartin's Hill. By her standards, it was easy. She made three meals eachday, cleaned the rooms, hung curtains, sewed clothing for Martha andherself, did the shopping and had time enough left over to takeexcursions in her little car and keep her daughter out of mischief. Itwas pleasant. It was more than pleasant, it was safe.
And then the machine was finished.
Mrs. Bagley took a sandwich and a glass of milk to James and found himsitting on a chair, a heavy headset covering most of his skull, readingaloud from a textbook on electronic theory.
Mrs. Bagley stopped at the door, unaccountably startled.
James looked up and shut off his work. "It's finished," he said withgrave pride.
"All of it?"
"Well," he said, pondering, "the basic part. It works."
Mrs. Bagley looked at the scramble of equipment in the room as though itwere an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But shetrusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow oldand die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatuscould be functional and still be so untidy. "It--could teach me?"
"If you had something you want to memorize."
"I'd like to memorize some of the pet recipes from my cookbook."
"Get it," directed James.
She hesitated. "How does it work?" she wanted to know first.
He countered with another question. "How do we memorize anything?"
She thought. "Why, by repeating and repeating and rehearsing andrehearsing."
"Yes," said James. "So this device does the repetition for you.Electromechanically."
"But how?"
James smiled wistfully. "I can give you only a thumbnail sketch," hesaid, "until I have had time to study the subjects that lead up to thefinal theory."
"Goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Bagley, "all I want is a brief idea. Iwouldn't understand the principles at all."
"Well, then, my mother, as a cerebral surgeon, knew the anatomy of thehuman brain. My father, as an instrument-maker, designed and builtencephalographs. Together, they discovered that if the great waves of thebrain were filtered down and the extremely minute waves that ride on topof them were amplified, the pattern of these superfine waves went throughconvolutions peculiar to certain thoughts. Continued research refinedtheir discovery.
"Now, the general theory is that the cells of the brain act sort of likea binary digital computer, with certain banks of cells operating to storesufficient bits of information to furnish a complete memory. In theprocess of memorization, individual cells become activated and linked bythe constant repetition.
"Second, the brain within the skull is a prisoner, connected to the'outside' by the five standard sensory channels of sight, sound, touch,taste, and smell. Stimulate a channel, and the result is a certainwave-shape of electrical impulse that enters the brain and--sort of likethe key to a Yale lock--fits only one combination of cells. Or if noprevious memory is there, it starts its own new collection of cells tolinking and combining. When we repeat and repeat, we are deepening thegroove, so to speak.
"Finally comes the Holden Machine. The helmet makes contact with theskull in those spots where the probes of the encephalograph are placed.When the brain is stimulated into thought, the brain waves are monitoredand recorded, amplified, and then fed back to the same brain-spots. Notonce, but multifold, like the vibration of a reed or violin string. Thecircuit that accepts signals, amplifies them, returns them to the sameset of terminals, and causes them to be repeated several hundred timesper millisecond without actually ringing or oscillating is the realresearch secret of the machine. My father's secret and now mine."
"And how do we use it?"
"You want to memorize a list of ingredients," said James. "So you willput this helmet on your head with the cookbook in your hands. You willturn on the machine when you have read the part you want to memorize justto be sure of your material. Then, with the machine running, youcarefully read aloud the passage from your book. The vibrating amplifierin the machine monitors and records each electrical impulse, thenfurnishes it back to your brain as a successive series of repetitiousvibrations, each identical in shape and magnitude, just as if you hadactually read and re-read that list of stuff time and again."
"And then I'll know it cold?"
James shook his head. "Then you'll be about as confused as you've everbeen. For several hours, none of it will make sense. You'll be thinkingthings like a 'cup of salt and a pinch of water,' or maybe, 'sugar threeof mustard and two spoonthree teas.' And then in a few hours all of thismish-mash will settle itself down into the proper serial arrangement; itwill fit the rest of your brain-memory-pattern comfortably."
"Why?"
"I don't know. It has something to do with the same effect one gets outof studying. On Tuesday one can read a page of textbook and not grasp aword of it
. Successive readings help only a little. Then in about a weekit all becomes quite clear, just as if the brain had sorted it and filedit logically among the other bits of information. Well, what about thatcookbook?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Bagley, with the air of someone agreeing to have a toothpulled when it hasn't really started to hurt, "I'll get it."
* * * * *
James Holden allowed himself a few pleasant daydreams. The mostsatisfactory of all was one of himself pleading his own case before theblack-robed Justices of the Supreme Court, demolishing his detractorswith a flow of his brilliance and convincing them beyond any doubt thathe did indeed have the right to walk alone. That there be no question ofhis intellect, James proposed to use his machine to educate himself tocompletion. He would be the supreme student of the arts and the sciences,of law, language, and literature. He would know history and thehumanities, and the dreams and aims of the great philosophers andstatesmen, and he would even be able to quote in their own terms thedrives of the great dictators and some of the evil men so that he coulddraw and compare to show that he knew the difference between good andbad.
But James Holden had no intention of sharing this limelight.
His superb brilliance was to be compared to the average man's, not toanother one like him. He had the head start. He intended to keep it untilhe had succeeded in compelling the whole world to accept him with thefull status of a free adult.
Then, under his guidance, he would permit the world-wide use of hismachine.
His loneliness had forced him to revise that dream by the addition ofMartha Bagley; he needed a companion, contemporary, and foil. His mentalplaylet no longer closed with James Holden standing alone before theBench. Now it ended with Martha saying proudly, "James, I knew you coulddo it."
Martha Bagley's brilliance would not conflict with his. He couldstay ahead of her forever. But he had no intention of allowing someexperienced adult to partake of this program of enforced education. Hewas, therefore, going to find himself some manner or means of preventingMrs. Bagley from running the gamut of all available information.
James Holden evaluated all people in his own terms, he believed thateverybody was just as eager for knowledge as he was.
So he was surprised to find that Mrs. Bagley's desire for extendededucation only included such information as would make her own immediatepersonal problems easier. Mrs. Bagley was the first one of the mass ofpeople James was destined to meet who not only did not know how or whythings worked, but further had no intention whatsoever of finding out.
Instead of trying to monopolize James Holden's machine, Mrs. Bagley wassatisfied to learn a number of her pet recipes. After a day of thoughtshe added her social security number, blood type, some birthdays, dates,a few telephone numbers and her multiplication tables. She announced thatshe was satisfied. It solved James Holden's problem--and stunned himcompletely.
But James had very little time to worry about Mrs. Bagley's attitude. Hefound his hands full with Martha.
Martha played fey. Her actions and attitude baffled James, and evenconfused her mother. There was no way of really determining whether thegirl was scared to death of the machine itself, or whether she simplydecided to be difficult. And she uttered the proper replies with all ofthe 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 absolutely anythingexcept the educator.
Leaving the argument to Mrs. Bagley, James sat down angrily with a book.He was so completely frustrated that he couldn't read, but he sat thereleafing the pages slowly and making a determined show of not lifting hishead.
Mrs. Bagley went on for another hour before she reached the end of herown patience. She stood up almost rigid with anger. James never knew howclose Mrs. Bagley was to making use of a hairbrush on her daughter'sbottom. But Mrs. Bagley also realized that Martha had to go into thisprocess willing to cooperate. So, instead of physical punishment, sheissued a dictum:
"You'll go to your room and stay there until you're willing!"
And at that point Martha ceased being stubborn and began playing games.
She permitted herself to be led to the chair, and then went through aroutine of skittishness, turning her head and squirming incessantly,which made it impossible for James to place the headset properly. Thiswent on until he stalked away and sat down again. Immediately Martha satlike a statue. But as soon as James reached for the little screws thatadjusted the electrodes, Martha started to giggle and squirm. He stalkedaway and sat through another session between Martha and her mother.
Late in the afternoon James succeeded in getting her to the machine;Martha uttered a sentence without punctuating it with little giggles, butit came as elided babytalk.
"Again," he commanded.
"I don't wan' to."
"Again!" he snapped.
Martha began to cry.
That, to James, was the end. But Mrs. Bagley stepped forward with acommanding wave for James to vacate the premises and took over. Jamescould not analyze her expression, but it did look as if it held relief.He left the room to them; a half hour later Mrs. Bagley called him back.
"She's had it," said Mrs. Bagley. "Now you can start, I think."
James looked dubious; but said, "Read this."
"Martha?"
Martha took a deep breath and said, nicely, "'A' is the firstletter of the English Alphabet."
"Good." He pressed the button. "Again? Please?"
Martha recited it nicely.
"Fine," he said. "Now we'll look up 'Is' and go on from there."
"My goodness," said Mrs. Bagley, "this is going to take months."
"Not at all," said James. "It just goes slowly at the start. Most of thedefinitions use the same words over and over again. Martha really knowsmost of these simple words, we've just got to be dead certain that herown definition of them agrees wholly and completely with ours. After acouple of hours of this minute detail, we'll be skipping over everythingbut new words. After all, she only has to work them over once, and as wefind them, we'll mark them out of the book. Ready, Martha?"
"Can't read it."
James took the little dictionary. "Um," he said. "Hadn't occurred to me."
"What?" asked Mrs. Bagley.
"This thing says, Three-rd pers period sing periodic indic period of Be,'the last in heavy bold type. Can't have Martha talking in abbreviations,"he chuckled. He went to the typewriter and wrote it out fully. "Now readthat," he directed.
She did and again the process went through without a hitch. Slowly, butsurely, they progressed for almost two hours before Martha rebelled.James stopped, satisfied with the beginning.
But as time wore on into the late autumn, Martha slowly--oh, soslowly!--began to realize that there was importance to getting thingsright. She continued to tease. But she did her teasing before Jamesclosed the "Run" button.