Chapter 6

Green Leaf spent the whole following day talking to Moon Glow and Gentle Rain about her experience the night before. She had never before had a real orgasm and didn't know that she even could have one. She was not bragging to her co-wives, she was just marveling at the fact that it had happened to her. She was now convinced that I was truly favored by the gods.

I had to admit to Alice that all of this praise was making both my heads swell, but I was worried that I would not be able to live up to the hype. Alice assured me that all I had to do was to be myself. The women of this time had no standard to compare me to, except for the uncaring men they normally dealt with, so my natural tendency to be considerate of other people was all I needed.

These next two nights with Moon Glow and Gentle Rain were pretty much a repeat of the night with Green Leaf. They, too, had multiple orgasms, the first they had ever experienced, so my reputation was preserved.

Well, I was now a married man with 4 wives and 4 children. Of course, one of my wives was Alice, who was a special case, but my other wives didn't know that. We were in desperate need of a division of labor to take advantage of our pluses and to minimize our minuses.

Our assets were one adult male, 3 adult females, 2 male children, and 2 female children. But our biggest asset was the super machine commonly known as Alice. Alice was an army in one beautiful body.

Our minuses were the same as our assets, except for Alice. Normally, only one adult male simply could not feed 8 people for any length of time. Alice could easily feed all of us, and we probably would have to depend on her for that. One of the boys was old enough to help in the hunting, but he would be a liability until Alice could complete his training. Under normal conditions, no male would take hunting lessons from a woman, but I planned to use a combination of cigarette smoke and my abilities at persuasion to convince Strong Arm that it was not unmanly to learn from a woman.

The first thing we needed to do with Strong Arm was to make him an atlatl and spears sized to fit his arm. The day after my "marriage" to his mother, Green Leaf, Alice and I began training Strong Arm in the proper use of the atlatl. Strong Arm lived up to his name—he could launch a spear 35 yards without breaking a sweat. All he needed was practice to become an expert with the atlatl.

That afternoon, Alice took him on a short hunting expedition to look for elk. "Hunting" was almost a misnomer for Alice, since her AI could predict with considerable accuracy where to find any game she wanted. Alice didn't make it look too easy, because she wanted to develop good hunting habits in Strong Arm, but she made sure that they found their elk. She let him launch the first spear; to her surprise, he scored a hit, though it was not a fatal wound. Alice completed the kill, but made Strong Arm feel good about his efforts.

They constructed a travois and attached it to their spare horse. Strong Arm returned in triumph, albeit, barely able to stay on his horse. Green Leaf greeted him with tears of joy—her son had proved himself a capable hunter ready to contribute to feeding his family and friends.

While they were gone, I made an atlatl and spear for Sharp Eye, Moon Glow's son. He was not old enough to be a hunter for our family, but he would be valuable if we had to defend our home against animals or humans. Sharp Eye didn't have the range of Strong Arm, but he was as accurate. I thought that all he needed was practice.

They were harder to convince to try it, but I talked my new wives into learning to use the atlatl. The fact that they were not as strong as men was less important with the atlatl as a weapon, and they had Alice to use for an example. I insisted that if "she" could use the atlatl effectively, so could they. Again, I emphasized that they might be needed to help defend our cave from intruders, animal or human.

Alice and Strong Arm made two more hunting expeditions to get as much elk as they could bring home. We needed to stock up on jerky, because I wanted to send Alice on some errands, and we couldn't be sure what Strong Arm could come up with by himself. Once we had the meat, I sent Alice back to Wolfton to try to get at least 20 more bronze points for atlatl spears. I had a feeling that we were going to need them.

Strong Arm was a pleasant surprise—he turned out to be an excellent hunter. Before she left, Alice had suggested several places for him to hunt, and the atlatl let him bring down 2 or 3 elk each time he went out. As a safety measure, Sharp Eye went with him and managed to get some exposure to hunting, though Sharp Eye's main function was to be a safety lookout. On one occasion, Sharp Eye did spot a dire wolf in time to warn Strong Arm, so that they escaped a confrontation.

Alice returned with the requested spear points and reported that Big Foot was doing a good job of integrating the new people into Wolfton. Big Foot asked if we needed anything else besides the spear points. Alice told him that we were getting along fine right now and related the story of my 3 new wives. Big Foot said that he was happy that things were working out so well for us. She also reported that Big Foot had received word that the people with the strange feathered spears were becoming even more aggressive.

This latter news really bothered me. Even with the atlatls, I didn't think that either our group or Big Foot's could withstand a determined attack. I had wanted to put it off, but it looked like I was going to have to "invent" gunpowder if we were going to fight off invaders. I consulted Alice's AI for a source of bat guano. There was a cave near enough to us to be a good source, so I wanted to visit there as soon as we could arrange it.

While we were getting ready, I assigned Cool Breeze, Green Leaf's oldest daughter, the job of "manufacturing" cigarette lighter flints. I had discovered that I could remove the flint from my lighter and reassemble it. As soon as the lighter was reassembled, a new flint appeared in place, ready for use. One day, I hoped to duplicate the whole lighter, but right now I was happy to settle for the misch metal "flints." I planned to use these in the fuses for my gunpowder weapons. All Cool Breeze had to do was open the lighter, remove the flint, and reassemble the lighter. She was fast with her hands, so she had accumulated a good stock of flints in only a few days.

Gentle Rain was left in charge of the cave with the two girls and Sharp Eye to help her while the rest of us went to the cave to mine guano. We couldn't carry much in the packs we put on the three horses, but we got enough to get us started extracting the potassium nitrate oxidizing agent. When we got back home, I sent the rest of them back for more guano while I started the extraction process. After the fifth trip, I thought we had enough guano for our first batch of gunpowder.

It was a pain to extract the potassium nitrate with the crude tools I had to work with; thank God for the experience I'd had in my home chemistry laboratory! While I was working with the guano, Moon Glow made some charcoal. I sent Strong Arm and Alice to collect some of the sulfur; they were gone a week, but when they got back, I had all the ingredients I needed for the gunpowder.

I mixed up a small batch and tested it. There was a flash, a small bang, and lots of smoke. OK, I was in business! I mixed up all of the ingredients I had and did the necessary additional processing to make a usable blasting powder. This time I got a big bang when I tested a small batch!

OK, I had gunpowder, what should I do with it? I decided on hand grenades as the simplest choice. I thought that a copy of the German "potato masher" design was probably the best bet for something all of my people could use. Anybody could throw a stick, so that was the way I went.

Alice found us some usable clay and made crude pottery bottles we could attach to a stick. I was afraid of the traditional hand grenade fuse because of the inexperience of my people, so I went for a contact fuse. The heart of the fuse was a cigarette lighter flint, so I was pretty sure of a reliable spark.

I made up some dummy grenades for practice use, and we used these to learn how to arm and throw the grenade. I had been afraid that the girls would not be able to throw the grenades far enough to be safe, but they both wanted to be shown how, so I did. I figured that if they had to use a grenade, we were all dead anyway, so why not?

The live grenades were a surprise for those who were not familiar with gunpowder. The explosion was frightening to the thrower, so I hoped that it would be just as shocking for those on the receiving end. We had put some rocks in the grenade to try to get some fragmentation action, but I was mostly counting on the concussion to do the job. I made up 50 of the grenades, but I was sure that we would never need that many.

Out of curiosity, when I had Alice alone, I asked her how far she thought that she could throw a grenade. Alice answered, "I'm not sure, probably about a mile, but my accuracy would not be very good. I probably would be adequately accurate up to 500 yards." I didn't say anything; what could I say? I dropped all thought of building a trebuchet.

We settled into a pleasant routine of Alice going hunting with Strong Arm, Green Leaf doing the cooking, and Moon Glow and Gentle Rain, along with the girls, gathering greens, tubers, and whatever else they could find, with Sharp Eye providing security. Meanwhile, I acted as general foreman; obviously, I had the most difficult job!