The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  She longed for Maggie to talk to, a woman friend to understand and speak the common language of their concerns. But Maggie was gone with the rest.

  Hearing her sobs, Stephen had broken off the conversation with Peard. His arms around her helped some, but the sobs died off only when she grew too tired and lost in her misery to continue them.

  “I want us to be married,” she whispered finally.

  “I know, love. I’ve asked them to bring a priest. They’re trying.”

  Seated at the little desk against the cold steel wall, Kate wrote in her diary: “When will they bring a priest? It’s been fifteen days since Stephen asked.”

  She could hear Moone Colum and Hugh Stiles arguing outside her wall. A trick of the acoustics made the desk a focal point for overhearing the words of the two men out there. She often sat here listening to them. She liked old Moone in spite of his blasphemous attitude toward the Church. But he and Hugh kept up an argument about religion that had begun to bore her. They were at it again, she noted.

  “The system of birth and death has been broken, that it has,” Moone said.

  From behind her, she heard the page of a book turn and Stephen’s whisper: “Moone’s off again.”

  So he could hear them, too. She folded her arms on the desk and lowered her head to her arms, wishing the two men would take their argument someplace else.

  But Moone was ranting in that peculiar rasping whine of his, which Kate had come to identify as his angry sound: “This completes the process begun by the Catholic Church!”

  “Aw, you’re daft,” Hugh said. “Birth, death – how can such a thing be broken?”

  “Would y’ grant me, Hugh, that the work of bearin’ children was once part of a circle, part of an endless return?”

  “You sound like one of them heathen Indians,” Hugh protested. “Next thing you’ll be tellin’ me you’re the spirit of Moses himself come back to…”

  “I’m just talkin’ about the circle of birth and death, y’ old idiot!”

  Stephen came up behind Kate and put a hand on her shoulder. “They know out there that you’re pregnant.”

  Without lifting her head, she said: “Make them bring a priest.”

  “I’ll ask again.” He stroked her hair. “Don’t cut your hair, Kate. It’s beautiful when it’s long this way.”

  Hearing a bustle of movement outside, Kate lifted her head against his hand. She heard Peard’s voice commanding someone to ready the small airlock.

  Stephen went to the speaker phone and keyed it. “What is it, Adrian?”

  “I’m sending in a pistol, Stephen. We’re sterilizing it right now.”

  “A pistol? In the name of heaven, why?”

  “Fin told me to do it, in case someone tries to break in there.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “We’d not let them!” That was Moone Colum.

  “It’s just a precaution, Stephen,” Peard said. “But keep it handy.”

  He’s lying, Stephen thought. But he knew if he continued to question, it would upset Kate. She was looking up at him now, fear in her eyes.

  “Well, if Fin says it, I’ll do it,” Stephen said, “but I think it’s a damned foolishness with men like Moone and Hugh out there guarding us.”

  Kate’s mouth formed a silent question.

  Stephen nodded. “When’re you going to bring us that priest?” he asked.

  “We’re doing our best. There were so many of them killed at Maynooth and now, well, we must find one willing to come here and one we can trust, to boot.”

  “What do you mean trust?” Kate demanded.

  “There’re some strange goings-on in our world, Katie,” Peard said. “Don’t you worry your pretty head, though. We’ll find you a priest.”

  She hated it when Peard called her Katie. So damned condescending! But she felt so helpless in here, so dependent upon the good will of everyone out there. And such terrible things were happening.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Stephen and Peard began talking about her as a patient, then. Peard said he was bringing an obstetrician to brief Stephen. Kate tuned them out. She did not like being discussed as though she were a piece of meat. She knew Stephen had wanted this briefing, though. It was his loving concern about her and she was thankful for that, at least.

  When they were finished, Peard went away, but he left his phone key open and she could hear Hugh and Moone through the speaker. They were talking about the efforts to maintain a semblance of normalcy in the land.

  “There’s talk of restoring the canals,” Hugh said. “Why? What would they carry? From where and to where?”

  Moone agreed with him. “There’s no future in it, Hugh.”

  Kate put her hands over her ears.

  No future in it!

  Hardly a day went by without someone outside there using those awful words in just that way. No future in it.

  She lowered her hands to her abdomen, feeling for it to begin swelling with the new life, trying to feel the actual living presence there.

  “We must have a future,” she whispered.

  But Stephen had gone back to his medical books and did not hear her.

  She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,

  They are hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.

  Then since the color we must wear is England’s cruel red,

  Sure Ireland’s sons will ne’er forget the blood that they have shed.

  – Dion Boucicault, “The Wearing of the Green”

  WITHIN AN hour of the meeting at the lake, the road along which John walked with his new companions began to climb toward a notch at the top of the valley. It was still and hot on the macadam, the sunlight glinting off the leaves beside the road, reflecting glitter dazzles from minerals in the rock walls on both sides.

  Herity looked at the three backs ahead of him, thinking how easy it would be to eliminate them there – one short burst from the machine pistol in his pack. Someone would hear, though. And there’d be the bodies for Kevin’s people to find. Dirty son of a witch-whore, that Kevin. Of all the types in Ireland now, Kevin’s was probably the most dangerous: Creepies. No telling what they might do next. Those three up ahead, now: They were natural wanderers – even the Yank. No place could hold them for long. They weren’t like the coffin-sleepers waiting just to die. That Yank might be a hater, as well, though. There was steel in his eyes. And the priest could easily become a death-drinker, a Slobber. Lucky the boy didn’t talk. He’d be a wee whiner for sure. God save us from the moaners and the psalm singers and the professional patriots!

  John, glancing back at Herity, thought what an oddly silent lot they were: the boy who would not speak, the priest who made decisions without discussing them, and Herity back there – a dangerous man sunk in a sullen remoteness from which only his dark eyes probed occasionally at the passing landscape. Something about Herity disturbed O’Neill-Within, vexing John with unwanted flickers of other-memories, things better not recalled lest they awaken the screams. He looked at the priest for distraction and found a wild look there in eyes that did not flinch away. John was the first to break their locked gazes, putting down a surge of rage at this priest, this Flannery. It was easy to recognize the priest’s type – a man who early in life had discovered the violence and power in an absolutely arrogant belief. Oh, yes, that was this Flannery. He’d wrapped this belief around himself, put it on like armor… and now… now, his armor had been penetrated.

  Once more, John glanced at the priest and found the man looking back at Herity.

  No help there, Priest!

  Easy to see what Flannery was doing: he was desperately engaged in repairing the wreck of his armor. His life was pouring out through the holes and he was grasping at the old arrogance, trying to fit the broken pieces in place, trying to restore the armor behind which he could stand untouched by his world while he made others dance to his whims. He was like a virgin compromised and ther
e was something furtively dirty about him.

  John looked down at the boy. Where was the mother? Probably dead. Just as dead as Mary and the twins.

  Father Michael, seeing John look at the boy, asked: “How did you come to Ireland, Mister O’Donnell?”

  It was as though the name restored him to himself, setting up the genial pose that he knew would work best here. “Call me John.”

  “It’s a good name, John,” Father Michael said.

  John heard Herity quickening his pace to catch up.

  “I came to Ireland…” John said, “well, it’s a long story.”

  “We’ve all the time there is,” Herity said from John’s right. They were walking four abreast now up the steepening road.

  John thought a moment, then picked up his story where the warship’s launch left him in the bay at Kinsale.

  “They stripped you naked and left you to die on the road?” Father Michael asked. “Ahhh, those Beach Boys – violent men and full of rage. No appreciation of man’s goodness.”

  “They let him live,” Herity said.

  “They trade on our sorrows,” Father Michael said.

  The remotely unctuous tone grated on John. He asked: “Do the men of the warships come in to Kinsale regularly?”

  “They send in supplies and armaments on unmanned boats, which they sink afterwards. The Beach Boys repay this by guarding our shores, preventing anyone from trying to leave.”

  “And what else would you have them do?” Herity asked. “Would you send this madness into other lands? And you a man of the cloth!”

  “That’s not what I mean, Joseph Herity, and you know it!”

  “Then you don’t think our shores need guarding?”

  “That they do, but I’d take no pleasure in it. And I’d greet such as Mister O’Donnell with a more kindly reception than the one he describes.” Father Michael shook his head sadly. “The IRA come to this.”

  “What’s that you say?” John asked. He felt his heartbeat quickening. His face felt warm and flushed.

  Father Michael said: “The Finn Sadal, our Beach Boys, is mostly the IRA. They fell so easy into this, I wonder did they not always trade on our sorrow?”

  “There’s some would kill you for saying less,” Herity said.

  “And you among them, Mister Herity?” Father Michael asked. He sent a probing stare at Herity.

  “Aw now, Father,” Herity said, his tone smooth and placating. “I was only giving you the caution. Watch your tongue, man.”

  The boy, who had been looking from one speaker to the other during this exchange, his face expressionless, suddenly darted off to the edge of the road. He picked up a rock there and hurled it down into the trees at the head of the lake. A cloud of rooks rifted from the trees as the rock disappeared into the greenery. The birds’ harsh cries filled the air as they whirled in a black spiral that threaded out into a line winging southward across the lake.

  “There’s Ireland for you,” Father Michael said. “Shouts and cries when we’re disturbed, then off we go someplace else to wait for another disturbance.”

  “Is there no government then?” John asked.

  “Oh, there’s all the trappings,” Father Michael said. “But the real power’s with the army and that means the rule of guns.”

  The boy returned to Father Michael’s side where he took up his position, walking along as though he had never left there. His face was placid. John wondered if the boy might be deaf… but, no. He obeyed spoken orders.

  “It’s always been the rule of guns, I fear,” Father Michael said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Are the Beach Boys part of the government?” John asked. He felt O’Neill-Within waiting for the answer.

  “They’ve guns,” Father Michael said. “And they’ve men in the high councils.”

  Herity said: “Oh, some things has changed, Priest. Some things has changed very much.”

  “‘Tis a fact, I agree,” Father Michael said. “We’ve gone back to the feudal times. Futile, too, if you take my meaning.”

  “Ah, the priest’s a poet!” Herity said.

  John looked up as the light around them darkened abruptly. He saw that clouds had come in from the west, a dark scudding line of them carrying the hint of rain.

  “There’s no democracy,” Father Michael said. “Perhaps there never was, it being a precious jewel men steal when it’s left unguarded.”

  “But we’ve one government in Dublin for all of Ireland,” Herity said. “Tell me, Father Michael, isn’t that something we’ve always wanted?” He turned a sly grin toward the priest.

  “It’s the same old bickering and jealousies,” Father Michael said. “We’re still divided.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Mister O’Donnell,” Herity said. “He’s just a crazy old priest.”

  The boy scowled at Herity but only John noticed.

  “It’s a very ancient way with us,” Father Michael said, “part of the original Gaelic madness. We divide ourselves so others can conquer us. The Vikings found us easy because we were too busy fighting each other. If we’d once united against the Norsemen – be they white or black – we would’ve driven them into the sea.” He looked at Herity. “And there’d’ve been no blond Irishmen at all!”

  Herity glared at him, understanding the dig at his own ancestry.

  “The Norsemen mixed their blood with ours,” Father Michael said, looking at the tufts of blond hair poking from beneath Herity’s green cap. “One of the great calamities of history, the mix of the berserkers and the Irish! We became great self-slaughterers – ready to throw ourselves to death for any cause.”

  John glanced at Herity and was startled by the wild rage in the man’s face. Herity’s hands were clenching and unclenching as though he longed to choke the priest.

  Father Michael appeared not to notice.

  “It was a bad mix all around,” he said. “Rotting out the communal roots of the Irish, degrading as well what was best in the Norsemen – their sense of camaraderie.”

  “Be still, you mad priest!” Herity grated.

  Father Michael only smiled. “You will note, Mister O’Donnell, that the mixed breed was left only with a greedy loyalty to self and the swagger to take advantage of anything for personal glory.”

  “Are you quite through, Priest?” Herity demanded, his voice barely controlled.

  “No, I’m not. I was about to observe that there were ancient ties between us and the Northumbrians, and them right in the heart of the bloody Brits over the water there. The Vikings cut those ties, as well. And when you come back to it, Mister Herity, we did it to ourselves by refusing to be united, by letting the Vikings take us!”

  Herity no longer could contain himself. He jumped ahead, whirled and smashed a fist into the side of Father Michael’s head. The priest fell against the boy and both tumbled onto the roadway.

  The boy, fists clenched, tried to leap up, and it was apparent he would have attacked Herity, but Father Michael held him down.

  “Easy, lad, easy. Violence does us no good.”

  Slowly, the boy’s anger subsided.

  Father Michael climbed painfully to his feet, dusted the dirt of the road off his black clothing and smiled at John, ignoring Herity, who stood with fists clenched, but a blank and questioning look on his face, as though he listened for attack to come from any side.

  “An object lesson in what I was saying, Mister O’Donnell,” Father Michael said. He turned and helped the boy to stand, then looked at Herity. “Now that you’ve shown us all your power, Mister Herity, should we be going along?”

  Leading the boy by one hand, Father Michael stepped around Herity and set off up the road, which was now curving left through low conifers and growing steeper.

  John and Herity fell into step behind them, Herity glaring at the priest’s back. John had the feeling that Herity felt he had been beaten back there.

  “Now, as to the English,” Father Michael said, as though there had been
no interruption, “the wireless tells us, Mister O’Donnell, that they’ve the two parliaments there – one at Dundee for the Scots and one at Leeds for the Gall of the south.”

  “Knowing the Brits have the plague, too,” Herity muttered, “and them divided north and south – that’s one of the few joys we have left us.”

  “What’s the word from London?” John asked.

  “Bless me!” Herity said, brightening. “It’s still mob rule in London, so they say. As it’d be in Belfast and Dublin if the army let it happen.”

  “There’s no English army, then?”

  “As to that,” Herity said, “they say the mob’s allowed in London because no one cares to go in and clean it up. Isn’t that like the Brits, now?”

  “No word yet from Libya?” John asked. He found himself enjoying the sense of spiteful jockeying for dominance between the priest and Herity.

  “Who cares about the heathen?” Herity asked.

  “God cares,” Father Michael said.

  “God cares!” Herity sneered. “Y’ know, Mister O’Donnell, the furst things that went in Ireland was the Restriction Laws – licensed premises, consenting adults, speed limits, dress codes, the Sunday bans and all of it. The new law’s a simple one: If it feels good, do it.”

  Father Michael glanced back at Herity and spoke in outrage: “Men still have their immortal souls to preserve, and don’t you forget that, Joseph Herity!”

  “Mister Joseph Herity to you, Priest! And would y’ show me your immortal soul now? Show it me, you Papist pig! Show it!”

  “I’ll hear no more of such blasphemy,” Father Michael said, but his voice was low and stricken.

  “Father Michael did his priestly duties at Maynooth in County Kildare,” Herity said, glee in his voice. “Tell Mister O’Donnell what’s happened to Maynooth, Priest.”

  John looked at Father Michael, but the priest had turned away and walked now, head down, praying in a low, mumbling voice from which only a few words could be understood: “Father… pray… give…” Then, louder: “God help us find our brotherhood!”

  “The brotherhood of despair,” Herity said. “That’s the only brotherhood we have now. Some do it in the drink, Mister O’Donnell, and some in other ways. It’s all the same.”