Chapter 4

Four copies of "Venus' Joy" were under construction and would be ready for the summer trading season. I planned to send two to the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea to trade for olives, one to Egypt to trade for grain, and one to Cyprus to trade for copper. We could get all of the copper we needed from the "special" mine in France right now, but I could see a time in the none too distant future when we would need more than one source. The following year, I hoped to go to the British Isles to look for tin.

I plan to send The Venus' Joy back to Greece to keep up our trade with that region. Eventually. I wanted Ruma to become in this time line what the Phoenicians were in my former time line. I figured that trade was the secret to advancing civilization, which was our ultimate goal. Of course, I figured our sex cult of Venus worship would advance civilization and, at the same time, drag women up to the level of men in the importance of daily living.

One thing I wanted to do was to give the Egyptians an incentive to become the bread-basket of the known world a few thousand years earlier than it had happened in my time line. I figured that tying everybody together in an interdependent trade exchange, and using a common language, would prevent the rise of conquerors such as Alexander the Great. Furthermore, I wanted our people to have guns that could defeat the hoards of conquerors destined to move in from the East. We needed the people, but not the death and destruction they brought with them. It was going to be a tricky balancing act to control them, but I sure planned to try.

One way to advance our sex cult was to have the ship's crews equally mixed on gender. By having women trained to be qualified sailors and warriors at the same time, we could keep the sailors sexually satisfied and spread the cult by example, particularly since the ship's crews could proselytize whenever they were in port. We planned to rotate any pregnant women back to the temple where they would be cared for until they delivered. The temple would care for any children who were not wanted and for those whose parents were out on trading missions. Alice had worked out a psychologically acceptable program which would keep everybody happy and further promote our cult. The resident priests would be of both genders and would be selected as the most qualified to be substitute parents. Our biggest problem was going to be spoiling the kids while the parents were away at sea!

Capt. Osus and his new wife had been granted a short rest and then sent to Wolfton to negotiate for guns. I wanted both pistols and rifles, and the people at Wolfton were already trained in the manufacture of guns. Our inducement to cooperate was that Ruma was now the only source of replacement misch metal "flints" which were crucial to the operation of the guns. I sent Capt. Osus out with a few thousand flints as a down payment on the guns. He was to negotiate the exchange rate; I figured that he could be trusted to get us a good price. Meanwhile, I had people in the temple working around the clock to "make" as many flints as they could; this was a read bottle neck with only one cigarette lighter as the source of the flints.

Capt. Osus returned with 6 pistols and 2 rifles, so we were able to start marksmanship training over the winter for the ship's crews. The people of Wolfton had promised to supply us with a minimum of 50 rifles and 46 pistols when he returned to Wolfton in the spring. I wasn't worried about anybody capturing the weapons, because they would be useless very soon to anybody who didn't have a ready source of gunpowder or flints. ( Authors note: Natural flint is not the same as misch metal "flints." The use of the word "flint" for cigarette lighters is an advertising gimmick.)

The ships would still be armed with hand grenades and the ballista missiles, the guns would just be icing on the cake. By the time a ship sailed with a trained crew, Ruma would have the most powerful fleet on the high seas. Though I wasn't expecting miracles, hopefully, this would discourage rampant pirating of ships flying the erect penis logo!

We were ready when spring rolled around, and Capt. Osus returned to Wolfton with his load of flints to pay for the guns. His crew was carrying the few guns we already had, and he had an opportunity to try them out four days out of Ostia. A rather large ship, nearly 40 feet long, rowed up beside him as he was anchored while a portion of the crew went ashore for water. He had sent one pistol and one rifle ashore as protection for the water crew, so he was well armed and alert when his ship was approached.

The pirates demanded that he surrender, or they would kill all of the men and take the women as slaves. Capt. Osus knew that the pirates would do that anyway, so he immediately refused. An order was given on board the pirate vessel, and a man stood up and began to swing a sling shot. Before he was able to get the sling up to speed, Capt. Osus drew his pistol and shot the slinger dead. Several crewmen on The Venus' Joy tossed some hand grenades into the pirate boat and the confrontation was over as the pirates sank beneath the waves. As usual with sailors, they couldn't swim, so every man on board was drowned. The crew who had gone for water was really pissed off that they had missed all the fun!

The trading expedition reached Wolfton a few days later, and the trade was consummated. Furthermore, an additional 100 rifles and pistols were ordered for delivery in the fall. The citizens of Wolfton helped transport the guns to the ship and carried the flints back to Wolfton. Capt. Osus made his best speed on his trip back to Ruma and he was congratulated on a fine job. The guns were divided among the ships and they made ready to depart over the next three days.

The two ships headed for Palestine planned to stay together, since they were traveling through one of the areas most heavily infested with pirates. All five ships regrouped at Ostia and stayed together until they reached Greece. Capt. Osus led them around Sicily, rather than risk the whirlpool in the Straits of Messina. Once in Greecian waters, Capt. Osus dropped out of the fleet, and the rest of the ships went on without him. The trade goods carried this time by all of the ships were lead ingots, also serving as ballast, and the special tinder boxes using the lighter flints.

Capt. Osus made his first port of call the same sea-side village where he had gotten the grape vines on his first trip. The sailors were welcomed with surprise, they had never seen women as part of a ship's crew, before. All of the cult members took this opportunity to sell the merits of belonging to the Venus cult, and, after supper, demonstrated to the village elders the joys of Venus worship. They made a number of converts that night with the novel sex acts and positions they were able to demonstrate. The next three days of trading and nights of proselytizing were very profitable all round. There was talk of building a local temple to Venus over the next few months.

They picked up some breeding pairs of goats and sheep in exchange for tinder boxes and lead, which was replaced by rocks for the necessary ballast. They left amid shouts of friendship and were looking forward to their next visit. The next three towns they visited had pretty much the same result, but this time they traded mostly for wine. The fifth town they visited was the one that caused the trouble.

As had become their habit, they anchored off shore and the captain, with his wife along as translator, and two other crew members, one male and one female, rowed up to the beach with samples of their trade goods. They were met by about 20 surly men brandishing weapons and demanding to know what they wanted at the town. Sugra carefully explained their trade and cultural mission and asked to see the town elders.

One man stepped forward and announced that he was the ruler of the town, and they wanted nothing to do with filthy foreigners. He made it clear that "filthy foreigners" was one word! Before Sugra could comment, they heard shooting and explosions coming from the ship. The four Rumans pulled and cocked their pistols when they heard this, so they were prepared when the natives charged at them with raised clubs and spears. Everybody on board the little boat, as they had not even been allowed to set foot on land, began shooting at the natives and killed or wounded several of them. The loud noise and smoke was enough to discourage the attackers, so they turned and ran. As soon as they started running away, Osus jumped out of their boat and pushed it back into the water. They rowed quickly to their ship to see what damage had been done.