Chapter 22

It was Sidra and Elizabeth who took over the reporting.

“We found bigger nuggets today than we did yesterday, Fiona,” said Sidra. Elizabeth added, “And we found more nuggets as well, so our total take was much more than yesterday.”

Sidra concluded with, “But we are tired, with all that bending and digging. We ought to invent a digging machine to excavate the gold, but locating a small nugget with a machine is not easy.”

Elizabeth put in what she deemed important.

“The trouble is that a machine to dig up gold has to be complicated as it is not easy to tell what depth the nugget is at; and the exact metal content due to mixtures of metals in a lump, so you don’t know how much gold there is in the lump. On top of that, the market for such expensive machines is not great. Using hand labour is much more efficient, if you ask me.”

Sidra mused, “You may be right at that, Elizabeth. Good thinking, girl.”

As Elizabeth grinned at the praise from her sister, she said, “I did the same estimate for a new cycling cape, Sidra, when I was thinking about rain showers. I worked out the best design, where it clipped to the back of the saddle, and also onto the handlebars, to keep the wind from whipping it up, but when I checked the prices for normal cycling capes, I realised that the existing ones were good enough for most purposes, and not as expensive as what I was working out, so no real market. Don’t re-invent the wheel, I told myself.”

Erika, overhearing this, stepped by and congratulated them.

“Good on you for thinking about new ideas, girls. Even better is determining what won’t work as a commercial product. Not everything works right when it is invented. Everyone thinks that only Edison in the US and Swan in the UK invented the electric light bulb, but dozens more folk made the same invention. The difference was that these two made bulbs that worked, commercially: able to survive use long enough to justify the purchase price.”

Elizabeth commented, “So it was not just the ancient Egyptians that invented the light bulb?”

“Oh, you have read that old claim about the Dendera Light, have you? It was a misunderstanding of what the image showed, Elizabeth. The carving showed a lotus flower with the Egyptian snake god inside. If you look closely at the photographs, you’ll see that the so-called ‘light filament’ is a snake with a snake’s head at the end. Other nearby images show the same snake with no signs of a ‘glass tube’. A functional light bulb needed the invention of a vacuum pump, and that didn’t happen until the mid-17th century. Filling the bulbs with an inert gas such as argon came later.

Thus an ancient Egyptian light bulb is mere fancy; with the image being all magical symbolism, just like all the other animal-headed gods the ancient Egyptians carved on stone walls and pillars. It was like middle-ages depictions of angels as human bodies with wings: imaginary and completely impractical for flying.”

“Oh,” said Elizabeth.”How disappointing.”

“Yeah. Fantasy, using the imagination, is always more exciting than real life. It is like these interpretations of bright lights moving in the sky as extraterrestrial spacecraft, with no more evidence for that conclusion than seeing things that don’t act like we expect them to do. When we really did meet extraterrestrials, The Personalia were provably solid, and didn’t go stupidly flashing lights in the sky; no sensible entity would do that.”

Fiona now told her,” I remember Reginald telling me about claims that as ancient Egyptians didn’t have iron tools, they couldn’t bore holes in granite, or polish granite, and so therefore it had to be aliens doing it for them. It was all another example of stupid thinking. The Egyptians didn’t need iron tools, for they had copper tools that they used with a hard abrasive. You see, it is the abrasive that does the cutting or polishing, not the tool. Their primary abrasive was desert sand - mostly quartz - which is slightly harder than granite. That could do the job over time, but they also imported corundum, which is almost as hard as diamond. A scientist analysed the residue at the bottom of a borehole, and found it to be a mixture of quartz sand and corundum. No aliens were involved in the boring of the hole!”

Elizabeth giggled. “People are so willing to imagine that aliens came down to Earth to solve all our problems, when it was clever tradesmen that solved the problems.”

“There are still a few questions unresolved, Elizabeth, but that is simply because no-one has come up with the practical solution yet.”

Fiona was thinking and now said to the younger girls, “Sometimes solutions come about by accident. Have you heard of Epsom Salts?”

Sidra and Elizabeth looked blank, but Erika said brightly, “Used in a bath to help you relax?”

“Exactly. We sell the stuff in our pharmacies, as it has some claimed health benefits. Epsom salts are a descriptive term for magnesium sulfate, and often the body is low in magnesium, so a small amount taken orally can help. The interesting thing about Epsom salts, and how it got its name, is one of these accidental discoveries. A farmer near the town of Epsom had a number of local natural ponds available to water his herd, but he observed that his cattle curiously never drank from one of the ponds. He contacted someone to analyse the water, and the analyst found a high concentration of magnesium sulfate. The bitter taste of it was what put off the cattle. The crystals obtained by evaporating the water became known as Epsom salts, as they looked something like common salt. A few medical benefits were observed, though not fully proved, and the compound became marketed as Epsom salts.”

Erika asked, “So what is the difference between an Epsom salts bath and bath crystals?”

“Nothing. They are identical, just given a different name. And I suppose I shouldn’t reveal this, as a pharmacy owner, but there is no evidence that magnesium or sulfur ions get through the skin to cause any benefit. It is the hot bath that gives the relaxation benefit, with the salts making you feel better and the perfume added to bath crystals make the bath and you smell nice.”

Elizabeth looked ambivalent, so Fiona asked her, “What is it, Elizabeth?”

“I almost never have a bath, Fiona. I take showers, as it is quick and easy to get clean that way.”

“Then you can go with the fact that bath crystals won’t actually do anything for you, and enjoy your showers.”

“Thanks, Fiona. It is great having so many Mums that all want to help me, even with silly questions.”

“It is simply what we would want for ourselves, Elizabeth. Learn to do that and you’ll be a great Mum yourself some day.”

“You think so? I don’t know any man that I would want as a husband. He would have to be someone like Dad.”

Fiona snorted. “Girls always want a man like their Dad, if he has been a good father to them. You might simply change a possible candidate into someone similar to your Dad. Today I met my new shop manager, and he is surprisingly like Reginald in so many ways. I had to nudge our two new shop assistants to start teaching him about dating and preparation for marriage. Frances, Erika and Freda did the same with Reginald: taught him what he needed to know about girls, dating, and even sex!”

“You mean your shop manager doesn’t know about sex?”

“Oh, he probably knows about sex as a subject, but his experience with girls is very limited, I gather. He seems almost scared of females as sex partners, much less as wives. I think the two girls will take him in hand, even though, like Frances and the others, their own experience is almost nil. It will be like the blind leading the blind!”

“But it wasn’t like that with Frances, Erika and Freda, was it?”

“Not quite, but I gather it was pretty much learning by doing, if you get me.”

“Fiona, is that an example of too much information?”

“Probably is, Elizabeth, but you girls should gather as much genuine knowledge and information as you can, before you have to deal with boys or men; whichever takes your fancy. Neither of you is into girls, I gather?”

“Yeuch! No thanks,” Sidra exclaimed. Elizabeth nodded her agreement.

At last Reginald arrived, looking thoughtful. Frances noticed and asked him about it.

“What has you thinking, my love?”

“I got a call from Governor Kempe,” he said. “He was so interested in the aerial drone metal detector that he got another one from The Personalia for testing. If it works as he expects, he plans to have a fleet of these in operation, looking for gold, silver, iron and copper deposits that would be of benefit to the Colony. With this planet never having been exploited for minerals, the chances are that many of these deposits will be found near the surface, or as much as to encourage more excavation at the sites. he has ordered a squad of searchers to use the machine in areas where the geology would suggest metal deposits might be found. In German South West Africa, when diamonds were first found, you could sweep the loose soil into a heap, and sift the diamonds out of it: it was that easy at the time.”

“Wow. That sounds good, so why were you pondering?”

“Some mineral locations may be within the boundaries of possible National Parks, so I wanted to get my point over to him that the National Parks should be protected from any mineral extraction, as the site of the mineral assets may be tremendous scenic spots or even viewpoints if they were on a hill. He was not enthusiastic about protecting the possible Park sites, until I mentioned that he had a whole planet for exploitation, so why ruin a Park before you really investigate the many possible places that could offer metal assets?

He grudgingly accepted my argument, and said that when I and my technical staff identified a new possible Park location, the suggested boundaries would be deemed out of bounds for mineral exploration. He did suggest that individual prospectors might be allowed to work in the Parks, purely as a hobby activity, and I agreed that such a use would be fine, provided there was only a small amount of the mineral allowed to be removed. Anything more would be confiscated by the Colony. The Park has to be protected; it is that important.”

“You are still not very happy, are you?”

“Not entirely. I realise that the Governor has a lot of pressures on him to develop the Colony as swiftly as possible, but development is not all economic development. There is social and moral judgments involved in decision-making, so I wanted to remind him of these factors. I think I got through to him, for he is an honourable man, but even an honourable man may be persuaded to loosen his powers of judgment at times. We need to keep reminding him of that possibility, if we get the chance.”

Frances nodded as she accepted the premise, but Reg hadn’t finished.

“The Governor also told me that the geologist he sent to assess the marble under our land made another comment. Apparently there are a number of wide seams of quartz through the marble, and the guy reckons that there is a quantity of gold to be found among the quartz, if what he saw was enough to suggest the rest. On that basis, Governor Kempe reckons that this whole area is a gold-bearing province, so he suggests we run the drone over our farmland too.”

“Okay. I am fine with preserving any possible Park areas, and we can scan our land for gold later, but for now, we have family matters to attend to. First of all, I will ask Jessica to get your food for you while you sit down in the dining room. She just has to reheat it. Okay?”

“Right. How did Fiona get on with her business venture?”

Frances glared at him. “First things first, Reg. Food. And you haven’t asked about Jemima and her jaw abscess.”

“Right. I’ll go see her after I have eaten.”

He went off to sit down for his meal, knowing he could query someone else in the meantime. Perhaps Fiona would be handy to ask. The woman herself came through to ask him if he a nice day ‘at the diggings’.

He laughed. “Nice one, Fiona love. A fairly profitable one, I believe. Charles and I found another large nugget. What about you and your manager, meeting your staff arrivals?”

“That went well, dear. John is much like you were at first: very capable but inept when it comes to social converse with the ladies; no experience to speak of. He will make a good pharmacist and shop manager, but the two girls will most likely actually run the shop, customer-wise, for most of the time. They seemed pretty competent for teenagers, but of course they already had some pharmacy shop experience in England.”

“You think he will be able to cope with them as colleagues at the shop, if he is so poor at the chit-chat with girls?”

“Oh, he can do that. He will just treat them as staff, and ignore their femininity as much as he can when they are at work.”

Reg paused in munching his stew to regard her speculatively. “I feel that there is more, the way you phrased that; ‘when they are at work’.”

“Quite so. I did a bit of matchmaking, as all three are more or less virgins. I suggested that John take each of the two out on a date, to get some practice at dating, and later, when he was more comfortable, take them both out to dinner as if they were his wives.”

Reg chuckled, “I see where this is going. You reminded them that polygamy is legal here, and almost standard practice, didn’t you? And probably suggested that most single women don’t remain single for long, making it more difficult for a single man to find a wife among those that remain.”

Fiona shrugged.

“I may have said something along these lines, but it is up to themselves. As their employer, it would suit me if all three were married to each other, as I would be less likely to lose my assistants to other shops looking for staff.”

“A very practical way of thinking about your staff, Fiona, but a trifle mercenary at the same time. How did they take all your suggestions?”

He returned to his stew as he waited for her to reply. She allowed him time to have a few spoonsful, then replied, “I got the impression that the girls liked the idea of ‘practising’ dating with John, but I seriously think they are viewing him more now as a possible catch as a husband. We’ll see how it works out, but it is NOT mercenary on my part, my darling. I just want them to have the type of love we have, and talking of which, can I make love to you tonight, or are you too busy with other girls? I think it is time I got pregnant again, Reg.”

“Oh,” he uttered. “I get the impression a fair number of you have elected for a second child, now that we are fairly settled in the Colony. Remember we may have to move house again before long,” he warned.

“Darling, we will always be busy, here or elsewhere. Having the experience of my Thomas, I am sure I’ll be able to deal with all the ups and downs of pregnancy as and when we move house. Women have always had to cope with such moves in history, so what’s new?”

“True. Okay. See if Frances can fit you in this evening, if you are so enthusiastic about trying to get pregnant again. Maybe one of those scheduled is on her period or isn’t feeling great at the moment, but I always have to be fair to everyone in the family. I am sure you take the same view, Fiona.”

“I do, love, but that doesn’t stop me from seeking what we all seek: your loving.”

She leaned forward and kissed Reg on the lips, causing him to respond with the same enthusiasm.”

“I always like making love to my girls, Fiona; you and all the others. You know that.”

Fiona sighed.

“I do, love.”

Reg finished the last of his bowl of stew, and checked the casserole to see if there was more, but the dish was empty: he had eaten the last of it. He sighed, and went looking for Jemima. He was directed to an upholstered chair in the living room, where she was sitting looking uncomfortable.