the garage and started to dicker for the purchase of the house on
Martin's Hill. The "Hermit" who had returned before the wedding remained
temporarily. With a long-drawn plan, Charles Maxwell would slowly fade
out of sight. Already his absence during the summer was hinting as being
a medical study; during the winter he would return to the distant
hospital. Later he would leave completely cured to take up residence
elsewhere. Beyond this they planned to play it by ear.

James and Martha, freed from the housework routine, went deep into study.

Christmas passed and spring came and in April, James marked his eleventh
birthday.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

One important item continued to elude James Holden. The Educator could
not be made to work in "tandem." In less technical terms, the Educator
was strictly an individual device, a one-man-dog. The wave forms that
could be recorded were as individual as fingerprints and pore-patterns
and iris markings. James could record a series of ideas or a few pages of
information and play them back to himself. During the playback he could
think in no other terms; he could not even correct, edit or improve the
phrasing. It came back word for word with the faithful reproduction of
absolute fidelity. Similarly, Martha could record a phase of information
and she, too, underwent the same repetition when her recording was played
back to her.

But if Martha's recording were played through to James, utter confusion
came. It was a whirling maze of colors and odors, sound, taste and touch.

It spoiled some of James Holden's hopes; he sought the way to mass-use,
his plan was to employ a teacher to digest the information and then via
the Educator, impress the information upon many other brains each coupled
to the machine. This would not work.

He made an extra headset late in June and they tried it, sitting
side-by-side and still it did not work. With Martha doing the reading,
she got the full benefit of the machine and James emerged with a whirling
head full of riotous colors and other sensations. At one point he hoped
that they might learn some subject by sitting side-by-side and reading
the text in unison, but from this they received the information horribly
mingled with equal intensity of sensory noise.

He did not abandon this hope completely. He merely put it aside as a
problem that he was not ready to study yet. He would re-open the question
when he knew more about the whole process.