The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  His wallet contained the proper confirmations for the O’Day identity. The Social Security card had been the easiest forgery of them all. Before becoming a chunk of melted slag in the Ballard basement, the little letterpress had produced an assortment of calling cards and letterheads. His checkbook was a valid one from Seattle First National Bank, the home address one of his drops. Not much money there, but enough to establish the account’s validity. The bag next to his feet contained letters from invented friends and business associates, all addressed to the proper drop, stamps canceled. Everything agreed with his passport. John Garrett O’Day would stand up under any casual investigation, not that he expected such an occurrence.

  With the spare passports in the bag at his feet was his forger’s kit and $238,000 in United States currency. He had $20,000 in traveler’s checks, purchased in $5,000 blocks, in a leather pouch around his waist. His wallet held $2,016 U.S. and 2,100 French francs, neat and crisp bills from the Deak-Perera counter at Seatac Airport. He thought of this money as the “ready energy” to complete O’Neill’s revenge.

  At Charles de Gaulle Airport, he rode up through the rather dated plastic tubes to Baggage Claim, retrieved his other bag and strode out under the “Nothing to Declare” sign into a dark afternoon. The smell of diesel was thick under the concrete canopy covering the taxi and bus pickup lanes. The sounds of engines were loud and jangling. A darkly Romanesque woman with heavy features and thick lips stood directly ahead of him in the taxi queue surrounded by shopping bags and tattered luggage, shouting in harsh Italian at two teenage girls who apparently did not want to wait there. Her voice grated on John. His head felt clogged, thinking slowed. He ascribed this to the swift change of time zones. His circadian rhythms were wrong.

  He felt a positive relief when the Italian woman and her children climbed into a taxi and drove off. It was even better to enter his own taxi and lean back against the cool upholstery. The car was a shiny blue Mercedes diesel, the driver a thin, sharp-featured man wearing a black nylon jacket with a rip at the right shoulder from which white lining material protruded.

  “Hotel Normandy,” John said and closed his eyes.

  There was a pain in his stomach and he thought: I’m hungry. The hotel would have room service. And a bed. Sleep, that was what he needed.

  He did not actually sleep in the taxi, although he kept his eyes closed most of the way. There was a general awareness behind his eyes of the swift movement along the Autoroute. The occasional sound of a heavy truck intruded on his dozing. The driver uttered several low-voiced curses. Once, there was the screech of a high-pitched horn. He was aware when they pulled off the Peripherique onto the streets of Paris, the change of rhythm, more stops and starts.

  It was almost dark when they reached the hotel and it was beginning to rain, a light drizzle. He paid off the driver and added a generous tip, which elicited a growled “Merci, M’sieur.” There was no bellman. John picked up his bags and shouldered his way through the two swinging glass doors, to be met there by a hurrying older man in a red-piped beige uniform, who took the bags and greeted him in English.

  “Welcome, sir. Welcome.”

  The lobby smelled of a pungent insecticide.

  When he was in his room, a change of clothing laid out for morning, John put a hand on his stomach. Tender. And it felt hard and distended.

  I don’t have time to be sick.

  The room was oppressive, too warm, and it smelled musty. He closed the shades on the two tall windows, which looked onto the Avenue St. Honoré, turned to survey his quarters: a drab green-and-gray floral pattern in the wallpaper. He could hear the old-fashioned elevator grinding and clanking nearby. The room was not even square: it was a trapezoid with a double bed in the wide end. The door to a tiny bathroom opened off one corner of the narrow end, an entry achieved by skirting a heavy bureau. For a closet, there was a giant monstrosity of dark wood furniture beside the bed – drawers in the center, hanging space on each side behind creaking doors. The bottom drawer came out to reveal a thin space underneath. He put his wallet, passport and traveler’s checks there and returned the drawer to its proper place.

  I’ll call room service for some soup.

  He felt his gorge rising at this thought and barely made it to the bathroom, where he vomited into the toilet. He slipped to his knees beside the toilet, one hand clutching the washbasin, his stomach heaving and heaving.

  Damn! Damn! Damn!

  In the back of his mind lay the fear that he had picked up a “stray” from his lab, a random offshoot of his perfectly tailored plague, something unnoticed in the rush of success.

  Presently, he climbed to his feet, bathed his face in the washbasin and flushed the toilet. His legs trembled with weakness. He staggered out of the bathroom and threw himself face down on the bedspread. It smelled of caustic soap and his nose was surrounded by the stink of vomit.

  Should I call a doctor? The American Hospital would have a reliable doctor.

  But a doctor would be the most likely to remember him. And a doctor would prescribe antibiotics. John reflected on the fact that he had made his plague to feed on antibiotics.

  What if it is a stray from the lab?

  On will power alone, he climbed to his feet, put his precious carry-on bag on the floor of the clothes cupboard and closed the creaking door. He leaned against the cool wood for a moment to recover his strength. Pushing himself away from the cupboard, he fell back onto the bed and weakly pulled part of the bedspread over him. There was a switch beside the head of the bed. He reached it on the third try. Welcome darkness engulfed the room.

  “Not now,” he whispered. “Not yet.”

  He was not aware of falling asleep, but there was daylight around the edges of the window draperies when next he opened his eyes. He tried to sit up and his muscles would not obey. A surge of panic swept over him. His body was cold and drenched in perspiration.

  Slowly, by a concentrated focusing of his will, he got one hand out, groped for and found the telephone. The operator, thinking he wanted Housekeeping, sent a Spanish maid, a buxom elderly woman with dyed gray hair and thick arms, the muscles compressed by tight sleeves.

  Using her own key, she swept into the room, wrinkled her nose at the thick smell of vomit, took in John’s face pale and weak above the rumpled bedspread and said in thickly accented English: “You wish a doctor, Señor?”

  Gasping between each word, John managed: “They… are… too… ex… pensive.”

  “Everything is expensive!” she agreed, coming to stand beside his head. She put a cool palm on his forehead. “You have the fever, Señor. It is the terrible French sauces. They are bad for the estomach. You should stay away from the rich foods. I will bring you something. We see how you are in a little while, eh?” She patted his shoulder. “And I am not as expensive as the doctors.”

  He did not sense her departure, but presently she was there beside him again with a steaming cup of something hot in her hand. He smelled chicken soup.

  “A little broth for the estomach,” she said, helping him to sit up.

  The broth burned his tongue but felt soothing in his stomach. He drank most of it before sinking back against the pillows, which the Spanish maid fluffed for him.

  “I am Consuela,” she said. “I will come back when I have finished the other rooms. You are better then, eh? We get you into bed proper.”

  Consuela returned with more broth, awakening him and helping him to swing his feet off the bed. She had to steady him there.

  “You drink,” she said. She held his hand with the cup, forcing him to drink all of the broth.

  “You are better,” she said, but he did not feel better.

  “What time is it?” he asked.

  “It is time to make the bed and get you into clothing of the night,” she said. She brought a chair from outside, wedged it beside the head of the bed and lifted him into the chair, where he sat while she straightened the bed and folded back the covers.


  God, she’s strong, he thought.

  “You are a modest man,” she said, standing in front of him, the thick arms akimbo, hands on hips. “We remove only to the underclothing, eh?” She chuckled. “Do not have the face red, Señor. I have bury two husbands.” She crossed herself.

  Unable to resist, barely able to comment, John went passive while Consuela undressed him and muscled him into the bed. The sheets felt cool against his flesh.

  She left the draperies closed, but he still could see daylight around them.

  “What… time… is… it?” he managed.

  “It is time for Consuela to do much other work. I come back with more broth. You gotta hungry?”

  “No.” He shook his head weakly.

  A wide grin illuminated her face. “You are lucky man for Consuela, eh? I speak the good English, no?”

  He managed a nod.

  “It is lucky thing. In Madrid I am the maid for Americans. My firs’ husband is Mexican from Chicago in the U.S.A. He is teach me.”

  “Thank,” was all he could say.

  “Gracias a Dios,” she said and let herself out of the room.

  John slept.

  His sleep was tormented by dreams of Mary and the twins. “Please, no more O’Neill dreams,” he muttered. He turned and twisted in the bed, unable to escape the O’Neill memories – the twins playing in the backyard of their home, Mary laughing with joy at a Christmas present.

  “She was so happy,” he whispered.

  “Who has the happy?” It was Consuela standing beside him. Darkness framed the draperies of the windows.

  He smelled the chicken broth.

  A muscular arm slipped behind him and levered him upright. The other hand held the broth for him to drink. It was only lukewarm and it tasted even better than the first time. He heard the clunk of the cup as she placed it on the stand beside the telephone.

  “Escusado,” she said and snapped her fingers. “Bathroom! You wish to go to the bathroom?”

  He nodded.

  She half carried him into the bathroom and left him leaning against the washbasin. “I wait outside,” she said. “You call, eh?”

  When she had him back in the freshly made bed, he asked: “What… day?”

  “This day? It is the day after you arrive, Señor O’Day. It is the day O’Day is better, eh?” She grinned at her own joke.

  All he could give her was a twitching of the lips.

  “You do not wish the expensive doctor, Señor?”

  He shook his head from side to side.

  “We see tomorrow,” she said. She let herself out, pausing to give him a cheery “Hasta mañana!” before closing the door.

  Morning was identifiable by the return of Consuela. This time she brought a small bowl with a coddled egg in addition to the broth. She propped him up with pillows and spooned the egg into his mouth, wiping his chin as though he were a baby before giving him the broth.

  John thought he felt stronger but his brain remained fuzzy and there was this maddening inability to identify the day or the hour. Consuela frustrated him by responding to his question with quips.

  “It is the day O’Day eats two eggs in the morning.

  “It is the day O’Day has the bread and meat for dinner.

  “It is the day O’Day has ice cream with his comida.

  “… day O’Day… day O’Day…” Consuela’s cheerful face became an uncountable daily blur, but John could feel his strength returning. One day he took a bath. He no longer needed help getting to the bathroom.

  When Consuela took his breakfast dishes away, he lifted the telephone and asked for the manager. The operator said she would connect him immediately with Monsieur Deplais. And Deplais was on the line in almost two minutes, speaking with a pronounced British accent.

  “Ah, Mr. O’Day. I have been meaning to call you about your bill: We usually require weekly payment, and it has been nine days… but in the circumstances…” He cleared his throat.

  “If you will send someone, I will sign the necessary traveler’s checks,” John said.

  “Right away, sir. I’ll bring the bill myself.”

  John retrieved a packet of traveler’s checks from beneath the cupboard drawer and was waiting in bed with them when Deplais arrived.

  “Girard Deplais at your service, sir.” The manager was a tall, gray-haired man with pleasant, even features and a wide mouth with large teeth. He presented the bill on a small black tray, a pen placed neatly at one side.

  John signed ten checks and asked that the surplus be brought to him. “For Consuela,” he explained.

  “A jewel among jewels,” Deplais said. “Myself, I would have consulted a doctor, but all’s well that ends well. I must say you’re looking much fitter, sir.

  “Then you looked in on me?” John asked.

  “In the circumstances, sir.” Deplais picked up the tray and the signed checks. “But Consuela is often correct about the illnesses of guests. She has been with us for a long time.”

  “If I had my own establishment in France, I would steal her away from you,” John said.

  Deplais chuckled. “A constant hazard in our business, sir. Is it permitted to inquire of your business in Paris?”

  “I’m an investment consultant,” John lied. He favored Deplais with a speculative look. “And I’m overdue on an important project. I’m wondering if the hotel could get me a hire car with an English-speaking driver?”

  “For what day, sir?”

  John consulted his inner reserves – still very weak. But in only four days… Achill Island… the letters. There were things to be done before he dared take his next step. He could feel time pressing on him. Plans would have to be changed. He took a deep, trembling breath.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Is that wise, Mr. O’Day? You do look much better, thanks to Consuela’s excellent care, but even so…”

  “It’s necessary,” John said.

  Deplais lifted his shoulders in a pronounced shrug. “Then may I ask as to your destination, sir?”

  “Luxembourg. And then perhaps back to Orly. I am not sure. I’ll need the car for several days.”

  “By car!” Deplais was visibly impressed, then: “Orly? You would fly to some destination?”

  “I had thought when I was a bit stronger…”

  “There is talk of another strike by the air traffic controllers,” Deplais said.

  “Then I may have the car take me to England.”

  “So far!” Deplais’s tone said he thought his guest profligate.

  As did the rest of the hotel’s staff, especially Consuela.

  “These Americans! He will not pay the doctor. Too costly. But he hires a car and English-speaking driver for such a journey. My Americans in Madrid displayed the same species of madness. They scream about pesetas and then buy the television so big it cannot be moved except by the technician.”

  I think men have always been mostly a dense and unfeeling lot, their emotions covered with scar tissue. They resist the sensitivity and fulfillment that comes from women – the cement that holds everything together. When our keepers leave the speaker switch open, I hear Padraic out there mumbling about which man he’ll take into his Friendship Circle, worrying over the names, now this one and now that. Friendship Circle! They’re all looking for something that’ll put us back together, something to hold them and carry them through these terrible times.

  – The diary of Kate O’Gara

  BECKETT LAY stretched out, fully clothed, on the spartan cot in his tiny quarters at the DIC. His hands were behind his head and he could feel the lumpy pillow on his knuckles. The only light in the room came from the illuminated clock on the desk near his head: 2:33 A.M. He kept his eyes open, staring upward into the darkness. When he swallowed it was past a lump in his throat.

  Thank God my family’s still safe, he thought.

  That entire area of northern Michigan had been cordoned off by special troops.

  We’re going the way
of France and Switzerland.

  Fragmented.

  If he closed his eyes he knew his mind would be filled with memory pictures of Ariane Foss as she lay dying.

  “I’m freezing!” she’d kept complaining.

  Between the complaints, however, she had provided them with a clinical picture of her symptoms as seen from within by a mind finely tuned to medical details.

  The room in the hospital facility had light green walls, a hard plastic floor scored by the frequent applications of antiseptic. There were no windows, only an inset picture of peaks in the Cascades, a thing mostly of greens and blues designed to give the illusion of space beyond this sterile room. Lines of gray-clad wire ran from beneath Foss’s bedding, out over the head of her bed and into a console that linked them to the ivory box of the electronic system that monitored her vital signs. Only one transparent plastic tube ran down from an IV bottle into her right arm: sterile fluid.

  From his chair close beside her bed, Beckett could keep an eye on the monitor and on the patient. Her lips moved. No sound; eyes closed. Lips moved again, then:

  “There was that odd sort of disorientation at the onset,” she whispered. “You got that?”

  “I got it, Ari.”

  “With Dorena, too? What does she say?”

  Beckett moved a swing-arm lamp closer over the notebook in his lap, made a note. “We’ll have a report from Joe presently,” he said.

  “Presently,” she whispered. “What’s that mean?”

  “In an hour or so.”

  “I may not be here in an hour or so. This thing’s fast, Bill. I can feel it.”

  “I want you to think back,” Beckett said. “What’s the first thing you experienced that you suspect may have been a symptom?”

  “There was a white spot on the instep of my right foot this morning,” she said.

  “White spots on extremities,” Beckett wrote.

  “Nothing earlier?” he asked.

  She opened her eyes. They looked glazed and the eyelids were swollen. Her skin had the pale, bloodless look of death. Almost the color of the pillow beneath her head. Her baby-doll features were bloated, the curly hair tangled and sweaty.