him. James was not
even interested in the incidence of homosexuality among college students
as compared to religious groups, or in the comparison between premarital
experience and level of education. He knew the words and what the words
meant as defined in other words. But they were only words and did not
touch him where he lived.

So, because none of the texts bothered to explain why a woman says Yes,
when she means No, nor why a woman will cling to a man's lapels and press
herself against him and at the same time tell him he has to go home,
James remained ignorant. He could have learned more from Lord Byron,
Shelley, Keats, or Browning than from Kinsey, deLee, or the "Instructive
book on Sex, forwarded under plain wrapper for $2.69 postpaid."

Luckily for James, he did not study any of his material via the medium of
his father's machine or it would have made him sick. For he was not yet
capable of understanding the single subject upon which more words have
been expended in saying less than any other subject since the dawn of
history.

His approach was academic, he could have been reading the definitive
material on the life-cycle of the beetle insofar as any stir of his own
blood was concerned.

From his study he did identify a couple of items. Tim Fisher obviously
desired extramarital relations with Mrs. Bagley--or was it premarital
relations? Probably both. Logic said that Mrs. Bagley, having already
been married to Martha's father, could hardly enter into _pre_marital
relations, although Tim could, since he was a bachelor. But they wouldn't
be _pre_marital with Tim unless he followed through and married Mrs.
Bagley. And so they must be _extra_marital. But whatever they were
called, the Book said that there was about as much on one side as on the
other.

With a mind mildly aware of the facts of life, distorted through the eyes
of near-nine James Holden, he watched them and listened in.

As for Mrs. Bagley, she did not know that she was providing part of James
Holden's extraliterary education. She enjoyed the company of Tim Fisher.
Hesitantly, she asked James if she could have Tim for dinner one evening,
and was a bit surprised at his immediate assent. They planned the
evening, cleaned the lower part of the house of every trace of its
current occupancy, and James and Martha hied themselves upstairs. Dinner
went with candlelight and charcoal-broiled steak--and a tray taken aloft
for "Mr. Maxwell" was consumed by