The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  O’Donnell glanced left and right at his companions and once more Herity sensed that flare of near panic. Who was it? What was it? He studied O’Donnell’s companions behind the table.

  Alex Coleman, seated on O’Donnell’s left, would not have been recognized by many of his old newspaper contemporaries in the preplague Dublin. Since the deaths of his wife and children at the hands of a Spanish mob, Coleman had devolved into a simmering container of rage. His hands often trembled with it or with the aftermath of drink, which he had taken to as a man come back to the Church driven by the whip of his sins. Coleman’s thin features, still as dark as an Armada castaway’s, had acquired a questing, thrusting look, something almost furtive, as though he were a hunting animal stalking its prey. The most dramatic change was the removal of the hair from his head. Once thick and black with a deep wave across the crown, it now was kept shaved to no more than a shadowy stubble.

  There was rage in Coleman and perhaps something else, Herity thought, as he shifted his attention to O’Donnell’s other side. Now Herity focused because this was the most important member of the trio – Fintan Craig Doheny. None of the three would admit that importance, Coleman because he did not care, O’Donnell out of pride, and Doheny because it was not his nature to lift his head out of the pack.

  Herity had made it a point to learn something about Doheny when the man had been made secretary for plague research in the new Government of All Ireland. Doheny had been born to an Athlone family that had produced many priests and nuns but no medical doctors “until Fin came along.” Right now, he had the look of a beardless but still jolly Father Christmas in mufti. His face was round and benign, framed in a curly fuzz of light blond hair. Widely set blue eyes stared out of this face at a world that he appeared to find amusing.

  It was a mask, Herity decided. Doheny had flat lips with smile creases at the corners and a rather short, narrow nose with flaring nostrils that two generations of medical and nursing students at Dublin College had learned to read for their own survival. Jolly as he might appear, Fin Doheny was notoriously savage to “slackers” and the flaring of his nostrils was an infallible signal of the wrath near eruption.

  The fear came from Doheny, Herity realized. And from O’Donnell as well. What was it?

  These three constituted the Regional Committee for the Southeast Coast, originally an ad hoc emergency group that had become formalized by use and recognition that they held the power and knew how to use it. Kevin O’Donnell had assumed the chairmanship early in their association, on the presumption that he “had the guns” – which indeed he did because the power in the new government was divided between the Beach Boys and the Regular Army. Herity knew this suited Doheny. It allowed him to sit back and “maneuver the pieces.”

  Alex Coleman did not care who directed the committee as long as actions were being taken that might eventually destroy the murderers of his family. There were some who claimed Coleman might try to escape Ireland and “infect every last unholy bastard still living in Spain.”

  It was all three of them afraid of something, Herity sensed – but was it the same thing they all feared?

  Kevin O’Donnell, having looked to his companions for agreement with what he was saying, and taking their silence for that agreement, now favored Herity with a predator’s grin, a pouncing look of sadistic pleasure.

  Herity recognized the look, having suffered from it on previous occasions. Since setting off the bomb at the Grafton Street corner, Herity had lived a rabbit’s life, blamed by those who knew of his hand in the bombing for “bringing down the wrath of God upon us all.” Since the plague, he had lived in constant fear that his role might become general knowledge.

  To anyone he trusted to listen, Herity protested: “How was I to know?” O’Donnell, who had been area commander of Herity’s group, had refused to accept this excuse. Singling out Herity as a special target, O’Donnell had seized on any opportunity for bedevilment. Herity suspected that something worse than any previous punishment was about to come. He tried to draw into himself, preserving his energies for an opportunity to escape. This made him appear more solid, more tightly coiled. Herity was one of those people many called “well knit,” as though God had sat there with a pair of long needles doing up the substance of Herity in a workmanlike fashion until the whole persona was finished.

  Misinterpreting Herity’s posture, Kevin O’Donnell thought: That Herity! He acts like he owns every place he’s in!

  “This is no Easter Week Rising!” Kevin O’Donnell said. He passed a look of scorn down the length of Herity’s body and back up to his face.

  “Some of us will come through it,” Alex Coleman said, as though he had been holding a private conversation within himself and only now felt that this much of it should be made public.

  Kevin O’Donnell looked at Coleman. “What’s that you’re saying, Alex?”

  “If only one of us gets through,” Coleman said, “he can spread the plague among ’em, give them a taste of this White Death!” He spat on the floor beside him and looked around, hoping there might be a bottle somewhere near to soothe his sudden thirst.

  “Ah, yes,” Kevin O’Donnell said, thinking that sometimes Coleman sounded a bit around the twist. Returning his attention to Herity, O’Donnell said: “I’m still looking to your past mistakes, Joseph.” His voice low and sad, O’Donnell added: “They should be erased, completely gone, as though they were no more.”

  “We have no past, none of us,” Coleman said.

  “Alex speaks the truth,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “There’s only the four of us here and we’re still Irishmen.”

  Fin Doheny cleared his throat. “God knows where that man might have got to by now, Kevin.”

  Herity came to full alert. Ahhh, there was the fear. It had something to do with all of that material on John Roe O’Neill they had required him to memorize before this meeting – that profile from America, the history, and then the Finn Sadal report on someone called John Garrech O’Donnell.

  “Joseph, you’ve studied all of that material we gave you?” Kevin O’Donnell asked.

  There’s the fear, right enough! Herity thought. Something in this terrifies them.

  Herity nodded.

  “That Yank who calls himself O’Donnell has been many days in our land since we passed him through at Kinsale,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “Until we’re certain of him, no harm can come to the man.”

  His nostrils flaring but his voice even, Doheny leaned forward. “You’ve seen the description of him. It’s verrry suggestive in light of the American profile on O’Neill.”

  “It’s a shame it is that you didn’t share that description with the Finn Sadal,” Kevin O’Donnell said, and there was a bitter spite in his tone.

  “We asked you to keep a special eye out for anyone claiming to be a molecular biologist,” Doheny said. There was a sharpness in his voice that any of his students would have recognized.

  “We thought it was only the Yank making his brag,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “He’s come to Ireland out of goodness!”

  “And where is he right now?” Coleman demanded.

  “Wandering the hills above Youghal,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “Him being an O’Donnell like myself, so he says, I thought he should have his own chance. He’ll not be hard to find.”

  “But is he alive?” Coleman asked.

  “As to that, perhaps Joseph can discover.”

  “But you claim he’s been seen,” Doheny said.

  Herity, homing in on the committee’s fear, said: “You really think this John O’Donnell is…”

  “It’s not for you to question what we think!” Kevin O’Donnell snapped. “You’re here to follow orders!”

  “As I’ve followed your orders in the past,” Herity said.

  “Exceeding them on occasion, as well!” Kevin O’Donnell’s tone said he was not about to share blame for that Grafton Street bomb fiasco.

  “But you’re suggesting this Yank could
be the Madman,” Herity insisted.

  “And him wandering around where he could be killed,” Doheny said.

  “That’s not my doing,” Herity protested. And he saw it now: the fear… yes, the panic. The Madman here in Ireland. And what was he doing here? Had he brought an even more terrible plague to exterminate the survivors? They did not have to spell it out for Joseph Herity! If that wandering Yank was the Madman, he could have wired himself for something more devastating than his plague.

  “I didn’t pass him through like a visiting tourist,” Herity said.

  “Keep a civil tongue in your head!” Kevin O’Donnell flared. “You’re only a soldier!” A wolfish smile spread across his features.

  Herity glowered at the smiling O’Donnell, then looked out the window at the cloudy sky: full daylight now. It was going to rain. That dirty bastard, Kevin O’Donnell! All the O’Donnells are bastards!

  Doheny filled the tense quiet with a low, calming voice. “Joseph, we want you to go out there and find him. See that no harm comes to the man. You’re not to let him know what we suspect. Only watch him and report. Is he O’Neill?”

  “And how am I to know that?” Herity stared back at that fearful light in Doheny’s eyes.

  “Get him to give himself away.”

  “He cannot be interrogated, more’s the pity,” Coleman said. He trembled and looked away, wondering if they would object should he leave for a moment to find a drink.

  “God knows what other nastiness he may have in his kit,” Doheny said.

  “He has no kit at all,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “We stripped him bare.”

  “And threw away his papers!” Doheny said, nostrils flaring.

  “Are we to save every scrap brought in by the folk of the coffin ships?” Kevin O’Donnell asked.

  “You shared out his food and kept his money, I’m sure of that,” Doheny said. “It’s God’s own luck you haven’t spread another plague among us.”

  “I’ll wager he’s just another vagabond Yank,” O’Donnell said, but there was fearful defensiveness in him now.

  “Paaaah!” Doheny waved a hand as though clearing the air of smoke. “If it’s O’Neill, it’s the style of the man to set a fuse burning. He’s the kind to have a dead-man switch ready. Do we annoy him, the switch closes and we’re in the boiling oil for sure.”

  “Mind that, Joseph,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “A most dangerous man. We’re sending you to shepherd a cobra.”

  Doheny shook his head. “But if he’s O’Neill, he’s the most valuable man in our world – simply because of what’s in his head.”

  “And what if he isn’t the Madman?” Herity asked.

  Kevin O’Donnell shrugged. “Then you’ll have a fine tramp across the hills and vales of our lovely land. And mayhap there’ll be evenings of grand conversation around a fire. You’re to make friends with him, you understand?”

  “And how long do I carry on this little journey?”

  “All winter if need be,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “The decision has been made at the highest levels not to tip over this applecart.”

  “Perhaps the Americans can get us O’Neill’s dental charts or his fingerprints,” Doheny said. “But you’re to keep him out there and alive until we’ve positive identification.”

  “So we don’t dare turn him loose and we don’t dare bring him in until we know,” Herity said. “But is it wise to let the Yanks know we may have O’Neill here? What might they do if they learn that?”

  “We think they’ll fear O’Neill more than we do,” Doheny said.

  “And himself maybe having set a nasty dead-man trap in his homeland,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “Another plague to be let loose on everyone, men as well as women.”

  Alex Coleman glared at Herity. “You’re not to make any more mistakes, you hear?”

  “You’re to be his leech,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “Not a word he speaks, not a shit he shits, must go without your notice. And all of it must come back to us.”

  “We’ve arranged for you to be met along the way,” Doheny said. “Couriers and written reports.”

  Herity grimaced. There were no secrets in this company. All of them knew he had set the Grafton Street bomb. “You’re handing me this dirty sack because of that bomb,” he said.

  “You’re the one blew away O’Neill’s wife and wains,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “There’s a kind of poetry in it, you going out there to see if it’s really him. You’ve a special motivation.”

  “I’m told you know that country above Youghal,” Doheny said.

  “It’s dangerous there,” Herity said. “Your report says that mad priest almost put a knife in him.”

  Kevin O’Donnell smiled. “Two of my boys camped in the ruin across the way for the night. They heard the Yank call out. They thought it amusing.”

  “It gives me palpitations just to think about it,” Doheny said.

  “And it may not be the Madman,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “There’s other suspects wandering around. The Brits are watching two of them this very instant. The heathens in Libya aren’t saying, but that’s hardly a likely place for the man to hide. This John Garrech O’Donnell, he could be the prize.”

  Alex Coleman focused on Herity, his look anxious. “You be careful of him, Herity! O’Neill dead and they learn of it Outside, they may just give us a quick dose of atomic sterilization.” Coleman grimaced, a brittle movement of his lips.

  Herity’s mouth went suddenly dry.

  “The possibilities have been discussed at some length, Joseph,” Kevin O’Donnell said. “It has been suggested that certain powers outside our land, finding a cure for this devil’s plague, may keep that fact to themselves. Then, learning the whereabouts of the Madman, they give us a touch of the atom, killing all the birds in one blow, as Alex so kindly reminds us.”

  Herity could only blink at the problem they had dumped on him.

  “Who do we suspect out there?” Herity asked. “Would it be the Yanks or the Russians doing this thing if they could?”

  Doheny shook his head. “Does the ant care whose foot squashes it?”

  When all the tourists had gone for the day, we used to piss on the Blarney Stone. It gave us a strange feeling of superiority when we saw tourists kissing that place where we had seen our own piss, and it splashing off so pretty and yellow.

  – Stephen Browder

  IT WAS a picture out of prehistory, a lake absolutely untouched by wind, black and flat under a layer of morning fog that hovered about a meter off the surface. A green mountain, only its top gilded by sunlight, anchored the background of lake and fog layer.

  John huddled in a copse of Scots pines near the western shore, listening. He could hear a faint splashing, rhythmic and ominous, from somewhere off in the mist. Shivering in the cold, he rubbed the arms of the rough yellow sweater. He had been six weeks without seeing another human, although he thought he could feel people watching him from every shadow, from the distances and, at night, pressing close to kill him.

  What was that rhythmic splashing?

  He had spent three weeks in a tiny cottage of neatly fitted stones, huddled there indecisively until the stored food in the place ran out. The cottage nestled in a hollow west of the lake, not another habitation in view from it. There had been a notice board on the door.

  “These premises which once knew life and love have been abandoned. There is food in the larder, bedding on the bed, linen in the cupboard and utensils in the kitchen. I have left it clean and neat. Please do the same. Perhaps there will be love here again someday.”

  No signature.

  John had found the cottage at the end of a narrow, grass-clogged lane. Its thatched roof had been shielded by a thick stand of conifers. He had been startled to see it sitting there untouched after all the miles punctuated by ashes and ruins. The thatch had been recently patched and the cottage was a picture of tranquility sitting neatly in a field of ferns and weeds colored by tiny pink flowers. There had been b
lackberries beside the lane, fruit ripe on the vines. Hungry and thirsty, he had picked and eaten berries until his fingers and lips were stained with the juice.

  Approaching the entrance of the cottage, he had stopped at the notice board, neatly burned letters in a pale plank. He had read the words over several times, alarmed in some way he could not define. A stirring from O’Neill-Within upset him and anger threatened to engulf him. A desire to rip the board off the door swept over him. He even reached for the board but his fingers stopped short of it, groping instead for the latch. It clicked beneath his hand and the door creaked open.

  Inside was the smell of mildew, old ashes and tobacco mixed with old cooking. The mixed odors permeated a small sitting room with an oval hooked rug on the tiled floor between two rocking chairs that sat facing a small fireplace. Bricks of peat were stacked with a dish of matches to one side on the hearth. He noted the afghans on the chair backs: crochet work. A knitting basket sat beside one of the chairs, a green mound of knitted fabric, apparently unfinished, protruding from it and two long red knitting needles sticking up out of the work like markers on a place where someone would return to the clicking progress of the yarn.

  John closed the door. Was there anyone here? Surely they would come to investigate the creaking of the door.

  He skirted the rockers and went through a narrow doorway into a tiny kitchen with a water-stained drainboard around a diminutive sink. It was like a doll house: clean dishes neatly stacked beside the sink. Flies buzzed somewhere. Canned goods lay in neat rows behind one of the cupboard doors. He found the mildew in an open bin of flour.

  It felt damp in the cottage. Did he dare make a fire? Would someone come to investigate the smoke?

  The bedroom on the other side of the sitting room contained a bed, the covers neatly laid back, inviting someone to enter them and sleep. The sheets were clammy to his touch. He dragged the blankets off the bed and draped them over the rocking chairs in the sitting room before stooping to build a fire. He would chance it, he decided. This place was made to order for a confused wayfarer. Ireland was not at all what he had expected.