Chapter 16

Doug could never understand it. Why did his wives keep pushing him to take a new wife every 10 years? Hell, he didn't need another wife, but all three of them were no longer just hinting that he needed another wife, but now they were actually pushing him by offering a new candidate every few days. Every once in a while, he could take it no longer and asked them specifically why they wanted another wife. The only answer that he got that he could understand was that it was traditional. He thought that was a dumb reason, but it was a hard one to argue with. His people were strong on tradition, and he tried to go along with them when he believed that it made no real difference.

Finally, he gave in—what else could he do? Nag, nag, nag. There was no way a poor husband could stand against the pressure of three wives constantly after him to add another to his harem. The question now was: who would it be? All of the women offered as candidates by his wives were young, in the range of 13-17 years old. But Doug decided that, if he had to get married, he was damned well going to pick the wife! So he told his current wives to back off, and he would pick somebody.

Actually, Doug had become good friends with an older woman, a widow and mother of two, who was pushing middle age; why, she must be close to 30! The wives were horrified when he told them his choice, but they were hoist on their own petard. On top of everything else, this woman had very little social status in the community, though she did have a critical job. She was in charge of the production of tampons, and none of the other women wanted to see that operation jeopardized!

Tampons had become the major export item of Doug's Town, and that was why they never had any trouble with their trading partners. Absolutely nobody at the other end wanted to take a chance of shutting off that trade, and Doug had made sure that the manufacturing process was kept a trade secret. Despite a lot of pressure from outsiders, Doug had never passed around the secret of how tampons were made. In fact, a high percentage of the families that had joined Doug's Town recently, had come in because of the assured availability of tampons. The wives had said that they were joining, and the husbands could come along if they wanted to maintain the family. This seemed far fetched, but everybody understood, even the men, after they thought about the subject for a while.

The tampon trade had been the major instigator of the rise in the acceptance of money as a facilitator of trade. Villages that wanted tampons, but had nothing that Doug's Town wanted, traded with more fortunate communities to get money to use to buy the necessary tampons for cash, instead of barter. Money became the number two export of Doug's Town as people struggled to obtain the tampons. Of course, nobody was harmed by this as far as Doug could tell, and it had become a strong unifying force for the communities that Doug's traders could reach.

This rise in trade resulted in people in other towns also starting up trading operations to jump on the bandwagon. Doug did all he could to encourage this rise of other trading communities. Furthermore, when Doug let it be known that the trade in tampons depended on the safe conduct of his shipments between communities, there was a significant drop in the number of raids on trading caravans, whether from Doug's Town or from other communities. The women simply would not tolerate any interference with the supply of this necessary item, and the men got the word real fast!

Meanwhile, the woman, Soft Touch, was so thrilled that she fainted when she was informed by the other wives that Doug would like to marry her. She had no older living relatives, but her children, a man and a woman, were well off financially, and they provided the necessary dowry. Doug kept that to a minimum, but he was careful not to insult anybody by refusing to accept anything from the bride's family. The ceremony was held with much pomp and circumstance, and the reception dinner was spectacular for its variety and quantity. The newlyweds retired after an appropriate interval, and Doug made a point of giving Soft Touch the benefit of all of his sexual prowess. She fainted from orgasms several times during the evening. Doug certainly was pleased with her response, so a grand time was had by both of them.

Since cactus was the raw material for the tampons, and the cold weather was sure to cut back on their growth, Doug dispatched as many expeditions as he could to harvest cactus while it was still available. These excursions took people into areas where bubonic plague and hantavirus could be found, so special protective clothing was designed for their use. No problems were really expected, but no chances were taken.

Fortunately, there was still plenty of suitable cactus available, so several caverns were filled with the cactus in hope of weathering the coming cold period. Soft Touch had her workers processing the cactus as fast as possible, hoping that the processed material would be more durable than the raw cactus. Meanwhile, Doug sponsored experiments in trying to find a substitute raw material, such as camel hair. Nothing was found at first, but Doug did not give up hope.

Several villages were trying to resell the tampons to an even wider area, but were partially blocked by a relatively limited supply of the product. The tampons had become so popular and ubiquitous, that they threatened to become a second currency. Were it not that every tampon eventually got used, they probably would have rivaled the coins from Doug's Town in popularity.

They had started to run into people who were counterfeiting fingers and hands, but not very successfully, because they had no access to enough bronze, except by buying it from Doug's Town. Doug kept the criminals under control simply by pricing bronze items such that they cost more than they were worth when broken down and converted into coins. There were some frustrated crooks running around, but no successful ones.

They had access to large quantities of animal fat, so Charles undertook the task of trying to make a diesel-type engine to run on it. It took him about six months to come up with the parts for a small, 2-3 horsepower, engine. Most of the engine was made of bronze, mostly because it was possible to cast many of the parts almost directly to size, only allowing for a minimal amount of polishing to remove the rough spots. His biggest problem was getting the fuel injector to meter in the proper amount of fuel. Eventually he got it right, but he wore out two helpers who were assigned the job of spinning the flywheel to get the engine started.

He was only successful when it occurred to him to preheat the fuel to reduce its viscosity. Once the fuel was thinned out enough by warming, it atomized much more easily and was easier to squirt through the fuel injector. The engine was very powerful for its size, but was much too heavy to have a practical use beyond being a prototype.

About the time Charles started work on his engine, he also began making a lathe following the general guidelines set forth in the lathe Doug had earlier built to make wagon wheels. This machine took a little bit longer than the engine, because Charles was looking for as much precision as he could reach in the construction of the lathe. Most of the parts were lovingly hand-polished until they fit together with no slop or chatter. The bed of the lathe was rather short, since the bed components had to be hand-forged, but there was plenty of clearance for pieces being turned.

The most difficult part to make was the lead screw, but he finally got one made and installed. Finally, Charles was ready to start making some serious tools! The first thing he wanted to make was a trip hammer for the forge. They still could not get enough heat to make large batches of carbon steel by melting the iron, so they had to make it the hard way by pounding and folding billets to weld them together. His first goal was hardened steel for lath cutting bits. He also needed to make a few saws, both for metal and for wood. Charles was lucky to have a number of assistants and gofers, so he was able to delegate a lot of the routine work to someone else. Not only did these helpers work for the money they earned, but they truly enjoyed helping to make marvelous new machines that could do things nobody had ever heard of before. Thus, Charles' helpers were enthusiastic and eager to make suggestions which would make their work easier and improve whatever they were working on.

Doug had encouraged Charles in his quest for machine tools, because he wanted to make molds which could turn out more useful things like combs and buttons. These molds would be much more precise and durable than any mold made of clay or sand, so they could turn out large quantities of items made from the casein plastic. As an experiment, Doug asked Charles to build a mold which could produce six one-inch-diameter buttons at a time. The hard part of the mold making was having the thread holes molded into the button, rather than having to drill them later. The hardened steel drill bits were very difficult to make, but once they were available, the mold making went easily and quickly.