Chapter 23: Progress?

The specialists were assimilating very well with the ninth century Scots, but one of the things that had puzzled them in their first few weeks had been the absence of Christmas. Scott hadn't introduced that to Dalriada (or anywhere else) as he had found the whole experience had been commercialised until it was meaningless in his own time.

The newcomers approached Scott shortly after St Andrew's Day and asked for that to be rectified this year. Scott considered the request and then decided to agree, but with the stipulation that the monks should be heavily involved so that it truly was about celebrating the birth of Christ.

Carrier pigeons were sent out to all of the settlements that had such facilities, to share the plans. Many of these were now in fact becoming more and more like towns and villages, as populations increased and expanded outside the walls of the original camps (and from now on they will be described as such).

The Abbot at Kilchrennan was so excited at the prospect that he made the journey through the snows to Inveraray with some of his brethren. Of course the church had not as yet come to any firm decision on when Christ was actually born, but the Abbott seemed like a very practical man and anything that brought people closer to God, Christ and the Church was something to be encouraged and supported in his eyes.

The Abbot suggested he could supply more of his stores to help with another feast and Inveraray was able to supply some sleds and dog teams to ferry the produce from the Abbey to the town.

The women of the town worked with the monks to prepare religious trappings that could be affixed to wooden poles. Scott helped them by describing what a nativity scene should look like and they managed a fair recreation of that on one of the canvases. St Columba and St Andrew were also depicted.

Many candles were distributed and there was a candle-lit procession round the town and into the hall-house. Men carried the canvases between them and everyone followed behind solemnly, apart from the children who were just too excited at being allowed up so late.

The Abbot led a moving service recalling the birth of Christ and the populace sang to the accompaniment of the specialists with their guitars. After the service the food was brought out and everyone feasted. On this occasion alcohol was not taken as liberally as on other celebrations, and the children were allowed to remain with the adults late into the night.

While the Abbot was in the town Scott spoke to him on another matter that had been bothering him.

"My friend, I have a matter that has been on my conscience for some time now and I would like your views."

"What can I do to help your Grace?"

"You are aware that I have more than one wife."

Scott was surprised when the Abbot merely nodded and looked at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to get to the point.

"It bothers me that I have never taken vows with them. My only 'marriage' was to Fiona. I wanted to hear your views on this my friend."

"Well your Grace, it is becoming increasingly common for people to be in such relationships. The Church preaches love and so long as that is the basis for these arrangements; I can see nothing dreadfully wrong. Of course, the Church would prefer there to be proper marriages."

"You mean you would be prepared to conduct marriages in these circumstances? Would wed me to all of my wives?" Scott asked, his surprise obvious.

"I would be delighted to do so your Grace! When would you like this to happen?"

Scott discussed the possibilities of a summer wedding here at Inveraray, but asked the good Abbot to keep things a secret for the moment. After the Abbot left Scott searched for Gabrain and shared with him the somewhat surprising news as to the Church's views on pluralist marriages. Gabrain wasn't as surprised as Scott however, but he did agree that a ceremony for Mhairi, his second wife, would probably go down well in his household. He pointed out that the marriages would also legitimise some of Scott's children in the eyes of the Church.

From that point on Scott began to put a plan together in his head for a ceremony fitting for the women in his life. He had given all of them gold rings, but now he had the opportunity to do something beyond that.

As was Scott's normal routine in the ninth-century, he took the opportunity of the long dark winter nights to think, discuss and plan for the coming year. He expanded the people involved in this now to encompass the specialists too and of course he included David and Crinan to help their development.

His father was at Fortrenn so couldn't be included, which was a pity as power was central to so much that he wanted to achieve. There were other things to consider however, and he now started discussions covering a number of fronts.

"My friends, I feel we need to increase our capacity to produce the kind of oil based products that will become essential. I think you should prepare plans for a refinery somewhere in Fife to take advantage of the oil we are able to extract from the shale there. It need not be a huge refinery, we should start small and then gradually build it up."

"That will require specialist pipes and tanks to be manufactured your Grace." Said one of the engineers.

"What did you have in mind for these products your Grace? There are many directions we could go in." Contributed another.

"We will need fuels, for vehicles and for planes. I would like to see the first planes produced soon. Again these need not be too ambitious, basic biplanes would do as a start. But there is something else that we will soon find crucial to our development, particularly of machines that have engines in them. We need to be able to produce synthetic rubber. That will be required for gaskets, for sleeves, for tyres even."

MacKelvie's eyes lit up at Scott's reference to a plane. He liked the sound of that clearly. "To do that we will need to develop catalysts your Grace, some of which will require specialist metals and the like. Wouldn't it be easier to find a source of natural rubber?"

"Well, you tell me? How long and how difficult would it be to develop synthetic rubber?" Scott asked.

"To perfect the process with what we have available to us now might take a year or two your Grace. It might well be far quicker to sail to say South America and try to pick up some natural stuff. With the new ship that wouldn't take but a few months."

"What would be involved in processing natural rubber?" Scott asked.

"It would probably take some trial and error, but the basic process is simple enough in theory." Said the chemical engineer. "Tap the rubber tree for latex, mix it with formic acid to make the raw rubber then 'cure' it using sulphur and some other agents. The curing, or vulcanisation, is the tricky part as that's were you can control the qualities of the finished rubber."

"Well that might be a job for Sigurd and his men or maybe that could be a use for ships in our winter months if we got the timing right. Our ships largely sit idle for these months currently." Scot thought aloud, his business degree coming to the fore once more as he tried to 'sweat his assets'.

"How are we for labour?" Scott asked next.

"We've got more than enough for what we're able to do currently. That might change when we get power and begin to expand production and diversify into some of the other things we need." Said the civil engineer.

"I want you to begin to look at drawing up plans to begin to build everything underground." Said Scott. "All building work should be 'future-proofed' so that new technologies can be added easily as we develop them. I'm determined we shouldn't mar the natural beauty of our country.

"The hydroelectric plant should provide 'clean' power, all that we need for the moment given the scale we are working to, but I don't want you resting on your laurels. Plans for exploiting Scotland's other great power potential should also be developed - wind, wave and tidal energy should be foremost amongst these.

"Somebody also needs to take charge of logistics in relation to power. The priority should be hooking up production sites, but after that I want to ensure we distribute power throughout the country for domestic use. We shouldn't simply start with Dalriada and then go wider. I want to make a point of letting the people see that this is for all of them. That means hooking up places other than Inveraray in terms of domestic use."

There were nods round the room as people accepted Scott's view of how improvements should be shared.

"Okay, what about expansion, how are we getting on with training up new specialists?" Enquired Scott.

"You will have seen the new dormitory we've had put up? Well that's allowed us to bring in the brightest youngsters and we've been using these winter months to run 'sandwich courses', condensing the amount of time required to get them to degree level.

"When we add in the craftsmen and the apprentices that you have already and what we've been doing to bring them on, that's huge. Each of us has taken on twelve students and in those areas where we can, twelve craftsmen/apprentices. We believe that you'll have a growth in the number of qualified people by a factor of twenty or thirty by the time we get to spring. We all agree that the students will need a minimum of a year's experience before they can spread themselves around the country training up others, but that's still a massive expansion."

"Excellent!" Exclaimed Scott, impressed by these numbers. "Mac, what about the military position?"