Chapter 23

Mary had started to cough back in the dead of winter, but she didn't become really sick until well into the summer. She was the first of Doug's children to show any sign of serious illness, and Doug fretted over her until he drove her and Cactus Flower, her mother, to distraction. He sorely wished for x-rays and penicillin. Well, he could not do anything about the x-rays, but he sure as hell could do something about the lack of penicillin.

Mary grew weaker and weaker, and coughed more and more. Doug was afraid that she had TB, but he had no way to be sure. However, he couldn't afford to take a chance, so he had to keep her in isolation. At first, for obvious reasons, she was very unhappy with the quarantine, but later on she just did not care as she became too weak to be sociable. Mary lingered on, getting weaker and weaker, until she finally gave up the fight one night in the dead of winter. She was a favorite of the town, so everybody put on their warmest clothes so that they could attend her funeral. Doug broke down during the ceremony and had to be assisted to his apartment before the funeral pyre was lit. He was actually affected more than Cactus Flower, possibly because she was more accustomed to having people die as a result of illness.

Doug was indisposed for two weeks, a lot of that time was spent blaming himself for not doing more to fight sickness. When he finally broke from his blue funk, he attacked on two fronts: he went after a source of a penicillin-like medicine and the development of a workable microscope.

The search for a penicillin was begun by sacrificing some of their precious corn flour. Doug had 40 tortillas cooked and set out to mold in various parts of the caverns, and, especially, in the greenhouse. Doug made a point of examining every tortilla every day until the mold started to form. After a week, Doug saw some blue-green mold that appeared to be inhibiting the growth of other things around it, but he could not yet be sure that it was affecting bacteria. And he would not know until he had a working microscope.

The promising mold was harvested and fed more tortillas in an effort to get it to propagate into a mass large enough to experiment with. He searched among the younger women of the town and found two who were willing to work on the project with him. He put them to work on trying to grow the mold while he concentrated on getting a microscope working.

Doug had shown one of Charles' engineers what a working microscope looked like, and the man, Raging Fire, went to work on the job with a religious fervor. He had the mechanical parts ready long before a good set of lenses were available, but they were eventually able to make them. Raging Fire finally was able to deliver a workable microscope to Doug and the women working with the penicillin, and they were able to work out a way to stain and see the bacteria. Their technique could not compare with that of the 21^st century, but it did show what they needed.

The penicillin from bread has a limited range of uses, so they started looking at mold from other sources. Everybody in town got in on the program and started looking for new molds. They did find several promising new varieties of mold, so the project was looking up. Doug knew that a lot of luck went with finding drugs using their very primitive techniques, but anything they did find was an advance in the proper direction. He hoped that if they kept working, they would eventually find a useful range of drugs. Whatever they made had to be taken by mouth, since they did not have a working hypodermic syringe. Well, that was another item to be worked on. Dammit, they had such a long way to go!

They NEEDED raw materials and more people to work with them. The current population of Doug's Town was less than 3,000, counting the infants. That just was not the level of population needed to create the level of scientific and medical technology that Doug was looking for. He had become fanatical since the death of Mary. Intellectually, he knew that he could not have made a real difference to her, but, emotionally, he could not help feeling that if he had tried a little bit harder, he could have saved her. Therefore, he was damned well going to try harder.

They needed all kinds of things from heat-resistant glass to stainless steel, and plastics beyond the casein resin couldn't hurt, either. They had long since moved beyond what he knew how to do, and had begun probing into the realm of what he knew was possible, but had to learn how to do. After he spent some months flailing around in a kind of desperation, trying to do everything, Doug's wives decided that it was up to them to straighten things out.

As senior wife, Evening Star led the meeting of the wives with Doug. He knew that he was in for a lecture, and he knew that he deserved it. She said that he was trying to do things that simply were not possible at their present level of technology. She pointed out, "The people, out of love and respect for you, Doug, are working harder than they have ever worked before, and they are trying to do what you want, but they are just being worn out. You are asking for more than the people have the strength to give."

"I know it, dammit, I know it. I just know what can be done, and I'm trying to reproduce those things, here, as fast as I can. I've told you what life for the average person was like in my home country, and you know that I am just trying to reproduce that for the people in the here and now. I just get so damned frustrated when people suffer and I can't do anything to produce the stuff they need to improve things."

"Doug, Doug, please listen to yourself. You are pushing too hard at things beyond your reach. You are running around doing things almost at random; you have no coherent plan. We all, every one of us, understand what you are trying to do and how it will benefit us when you succeed. But you are diluting your effort by jumping around from project to project without truly finishing any of them. You need to take the attitude that Charles uses: set a goal and reach it before trying something else."

"Yes, you are absolutely right! We need a long range plan that will ultimately push us to the standard of living I want for the whole hemisphere. I won't cancel any of the current projects, because we might get lucky, but I will back off and outline a course for our journey into the future.

"Thank you, ladies, you have undoubtedly saved my sanity! Please consider yourselves a committee to keep doing that. I love you all! Evening Star, Cactus Flower, Mist of the Mountains, Big Tits, I need you all to keep me from going crazy. It would help no end if each one of you would take an area of need and specialize in helping me to keep on track within that area. Don't look so distressed! You don't have to become experts in your field. I just want you to be the one who acts as a filter for me, keeping the harebrained ideas at bay while I work on the big picture.

For example, and this is subject to change as you ladies see fit, suppose Evening Star takes on the question of population and how we can grow large enough to accomplish what we need to do. Cactus flower could take over questions of raw materials. We already know how to find copper and tin, but we need a new source of iron, and there are mountains of other things we need. Mist of the Mountains might work on transportation, since we need a network of roads and other stuff which will let us communicate and transport as our country grows. Big Tits, you could look after the food situation. We need more quantity and greater variety in our food. Those are just examples, and you ladies can decide how you really want to divide the work, but I desperately need the help. I have been stretching myself too thin, so that I have not really been able to accomplish as much as I should. Will you help me?"

A chorus of yeses was the reply to his last question, and the women immediately began to discuss among themselves just how they would handle all of Doug's problems. He smiled as he realized that they had already forgotten about his presence and were busy at the tasks he had asked them to assume. Oh, how he did love them!