It was her sophomore year in high school when she finally cut a little too deep, nicking a vein and spraying blood around the girl's bathroom at Grantville High School. It had been a big scene, with paramedics, administrators cordoning off the hallway, everything. Only then, with Amy Kubiak's urging and the insistence of the school counselors, had she gotten the therapy she needed.
But there was no Amy Kubiak in Essen to help her now.
Nicki Jo watched the blood drip from the shallow cuts, feeling the pain, wanting it. She hadn't cried at Tobias' funeral. She never cried. Hadn't cried since she was five years old. She was getting ready for a good, deep cut when the bedroom door opened.
"Leave me alone," Nicki said.
"No," Katherine said, "I won't. I won't let you do this to yourself."
Katherine came over and took the dagger from Nicki Jo's hand. Nicki resisted at first but Katherine's grip was steady and unrelenting. Finally, Nicki Jo let go.
"It's my fault. I should never have let them do it."
Katherine shook her head. "God gives us free will, Nicki. Tobias knew what he was doing, knew it was risky. And Solomon bears as much guilt as you. He could have said something, stopped it early enough. He didn't."
"My fault, mine! I knew they weren't ready, I knew it! But I let my pride, my anger at being pushed into a corner take over. Don't you see?"
"What I see," Katherine said, "is my friend, my lover, letting guilt destroy her. I noticed when I was in Grantville that Americans seem to love guilt. But they don't love what should come from guilt."
Nicki Jo looked at Katherine, a puzzled expression on her face. "What should come from guilt? What do you mean?"
"Certainly not this," Katherine said, holding up the dagger and throwing it contemptuously across the room. "That is just indulging in self-pity. Penance, Nicki. You know that there will be pressure to keep making some kind of explosives. You know that if you don't get involved more of our friends may die. As difficult as it may be for you to accept, you have to get involved. Consider it your penance. It won't bring back Tobias, but at least you can say you did your best to keep others from making the same mistake."
"What if it's not good enough?" Nicki said. "What if other people still die?"
Katherine smiled sadly. "Then that is God's will. But at least you will have done your best to prevent it."
Katherine looked down at the cuts on Nicki Jo's arm. "I think we need to get a bandage on these. Not any worse than some of the glass cuts you've had, but we'll need to put some antiseptic on them."
Penance, Nicki thought, penance. With sudden resolve she went over to her bookshelf filled with chemistry books. Somewhere there had to be an explosive that would help the Republic and yet be easier and safer to make than TNT or picric acid.
"Go ahead and get the bandages, Katy. I've got work to do."
****
"Gelignite?" General De Vries said. "What is gelignite?"
The ordnance team for the Essen Steel Company, minus Franz Dubois, who was still in the hospital, was meeting with the Army of Essen's command group. Nicki Jo had temporarily taken over Franz's scientific advisory role.
"It's like dynamite, General, but safer. It doesn't sweat like dynamite does," Nicki Jo said. "A big percentage of it is potassium nitrate, so that will ease the feedstock burden for it. It requires some soluble gun cotton, but only a very small percentage. The main ingredient will be nitroglycerin. Up-time, Nobel patented Gelignite in about 1875."
"Nitroglycerin? I thought that was highly unstable?" De Vries said.
"That's why we'll turn it directly into gelignite, General. Now, you won't be able to use gelignite in artillery shells, but you can use it for satchel charges for your engineers, and for these." Nicki Jo pulled a short piece of wood with a metal cylinder on the top from beneath the table. "Even with the reduction in active ingredients for gelignite, the army can only afford about a ton a month. So the ordnance team and I came up with this."
De Vries took the club-like weapon from Nicki and waved it in the air. It was light, less than three or four pounds.
"What is it?"
"Well," Nicki said, "Up-time it was called a 'potato masher.' But I think down-time it needs a more martial sounding name, so I've suggested we call them 'warhammers.' It's a grenade, General. With half a pound of gelignite in the warhead, it should be a useful addition for the infantry for both defensive and offensive battles. Once the army has enough of these in inventory, along with whatever satchel charges it wants, we can use the gelignite in construction projects. For Essen Chemical Company's bottom line, making nitroglycerin will also be beneficial since we have to get a nice pure glycerin, which, up-time, had literally thousands of uses."
****
After the meeting, Katherine Boyle, Colette Modi and Nicki Jo Prickett walked back to the Essen Chemical Company laboratory.
"Well," Colette said, "General De Vries certainly seemed enthusiastic about your warhammers. And he even didn't think to bring up TNT again."
Nicki Jo laughed. "I know. But we give them some boom toys, and we get paid to develop a method for purifying glycerin, which will make us a pile of money, none of it related to explosives. Much better than that stupid old TNT."
****
Dueling Philosophers
September 11, 1635
Renato Onofrio slowly got up from the barber's chair like someone who had a bad back, which in fact he did. "Walt, something I've always wondered about. How's come you're letting that drunken scallywag Jimmy Dick steal your title as Grantville's greatest philosopher?"
"Well it's nice of you to ask," Walter Jenkins said. "And I don't mind you thinking I ought to have the title. But, you know the police gave it to him as a joke, don't you?"
Renato looked at the barber intently. When he didn't see any humor in the man's eyes, he asked, "Are you putting me on?"
"No, it's the gods' own truth."
"Well, it ain't funny. More philosophy gets talked about here in this shop than anywhere's else in town. People are taking Jimmy Dick seriously. You ought to speak up and take the title away from him. He don't deserve it. You've got to know more about philosophy than Jimmy Dick does. I've heard you quoting Augustine and I don't know who all else."
"Renato, it's kind of you to say so. But how would you go about proving something like that?"
"Challenge him to a duel."
"Pistols at dawn, or swords at high noon?" The waiting customers laughed at Walt's joke.
"No, you know what I mean, a verbal duel. What'a'ya call it?"
"A debate." Walt's son, Evan, answered from behind the second chair without looking up. When you've got scissors or a razor or even just clippers around someone's head, you really do need to pay attention and keep your eyes on the job.
"Yeah," Renato said. "That's the word. A debate. Walt, why don't you challenge that dickhead to a debate. Shoot, I bet you could even charge admission. I'd pay to see someone take the obnoxious little creep down a notch or two."
"Naw," Walt said.
"You think about it. You really should. I mean it. Seriously."
With these last words Renato went out the door. Joseph Daoud took his turn in the chair. "What's the burr under his saddle?"
"Renato?" Walt asked. "Two things. He used to rent a whole building downtown for little or nothing. They let him have it just to keep heat on in the winter, as long as he did the maintenance. After the Ring of Fire, they raised the rent and he had to move out of the store front on the ground floor. Then they raised the rent again and he had to move out of the upstairs apartment. Now he's living in the attic, and since Jimmy Dick owns the building, Jimmy is who he's mad at.