The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  Damned greedy Danes!

  Prescott scribbled a note on the margin of the page: “Tell the Danes they’ve been outvoted. They comply or we’ll do it the hard way.” He signed it.

  The order would have to be expressed more diplomatically, of course, but the Danes were good at sensing the iron intentions behind diplomatic doubletalk. Small nations learned that sensitivity very early.

  England’s demands were even stranger at first glance. Although coming after the Irish broadcast and couched in more urbane terms, they were backed by a similar threat.

  Libraries.

  “When this time is only bitter memory, we wish to be the nation of published treasures – books, manuscripts, charts and religious documents, artists’ sketches and paintings. We want the originals from wherever they may now be. You will be allowed to make suitable copies.”

  His security analysts called this “canny.” Civilized nations would think long and hard before incinerating such treasures… should it come to that. The trouble was, this was no longer a civilized world.

  Prescott turned to the tribute section of England and at the top wrote a single word: “Comply.” He initialed it.

  Libya had not joined this new game, but there remained a question whether Libya had any sort of central government at all. Satellite observation said the country lay in ruins and the population might have been reduced to a scant fraction of its former numbers… and what had that been? Three million? All of North Africa was a shambles. Sterilization squads, “the new SS” they were being called, had put the torch to every population center bordering Libya and across the land from the Suez to Cap Blanc, moving in ahead of the cobalt barrier that now ringed the doomed land.

  And what about Israel?

  Prescott pushed the folder tabbed “Brazil” aside, deciding to take it with him to the dinner session. North Africa remained a primary concern. Survivors were massing in Chad and Sudan, their intentions obvious. There was a new jihad about to begin.

  Neutron bombs! Prescott thought. The only answer.

  The area was outside that proscribed by O’Neill. And what difference did it make now whether O’Neill prohibited atomics in Libya? That nation no longer existed.

  The anchorman on the previous night’s “final news” had not been privy to Prescott’s satellite information, but he had obviously heard.

  “We have only a terrible silence from that land.”

  Prescott put the tribute folder aside and stared sourly at the spread of tabs – words on paper. Could any of it really touch the core of this disaster?

  China appeared to have the India problem in hand but there remained that bitter schism between China and the Soviets. That had to be a key subject at this working session. He glanced at his watch: a half hour yet. A war in the Far East could be the final disaster – refugees, loss of central control, no way to impose a tight system of observation and quarantine on the movements of large groups.

  The fragility of the human condition felt overwhelming to the President. He experienced a tightness in his chest, his breathing short and quick. The tabs on the reports took on a life of their own, the letters large and burning, each one conjuring new potentials of extinction.

  “Denver… Ulan Bator… Peronne… Omsk… Tsienpo… Luanda…”

  Slowly, the tight feeling subsided. He considered calling in his doctor but another glance at his watch told him there wasn’t time before the dinner session. Blood sugar problem, probably.

  His eyes focused on a folder: “Success question.”

  Yes, that was one of the more serious concerns. What assurance did they have that Ireland or England would share any discovery? What if they found a cure and blackmailed the rest of the world? And if that Madman O’Neill were really hiding in England or Ireland…

  The question would have to be raised at this dinner. And the agents they had managed to place in both countries were not enough. Some other means of on-sight surveillance had to be found.

  The buzzer beneath the desk sounded: two peremptory calls. They would be standing out there, waiting.

  Putting both hands on the desk, he heaved himself to his feet. As he stood, a band of agony encircled his chest. The room wavered like a scene underwater, whirling and whirling around him. He heard a distant hissing ring that filled his awareness. There was no sensation of falling, only the blessed rise of unconsciousness that took away the terror, the agony and the view under the side table beside his desk, a brass-footed and fluted wood pillar deeply scratched where one of Andrew Johnson’s spurs had gouged the rosewood.

  Violence and piety cannot conjoin. They are not of the same stuff. Nothing binds the two: not joy, not suffering, not even the living death that some mistake for peace. The one comes from hell, the other from heaven. In piety you find grace; in violence you are forever graceless.

  – Father Michael’s sermon

  FEELING ODDLY displaced, John went to sleep that night in an upper bedroom of Gannon’s cottage, clean sheets and a lumpy mattress. He had one short stub of a candle to light him to the room, which smelled of soap and some flowery perfume. There was a single wooden chair, a low dresser and a standing wardrobe that reminded him of the one in the Hotel Normandy.

  O’Neill-Within had become quiescent, moving deeper, more remote and… John felt it: satisfied.

  He had seen what he had seen.

  While preparing for bed, John thought about the drinking session at the supper table. It had resumed in the kitchen after the herb tea in the parlor – Herity and Murphey seated across from each other, drinking glass for glass, staring at each other with strange intensity.

  Father Michael had sent the silent boy to bed and had taken a position at the end of the long table as far as he could get from the drinkers, but his eyes were on the glasses of poteen, not on the men. Gannon had sent the other children off to their beds and had busied himself cleaning up at the sink.

  John, bringing his cup from the parlor, had handed it to Gannon and seated himself near the priest. Looking at the branded forehead, he thought about the question of the priest’s family.

  “Where are your brothers, Father Michael?”

  Father Michael turned a hunted look toward John.

  “You said you have two brothers.”

  “I’ve not heard of Matthew since the plague, but he lived in Cloone and that’s a ways off. Timothy… Little Tim has built a hut beside his wife’s grave at Glasnevin and that’s where he sleeps now.”

  Murphey cleared his throat, his attention on the empty jug that Gannon was removing to the sink. “We’ll solve it, by God! I know we will!” He cast a bleary glance around the table. “Where’s my Kenneth?”

  “Gone to bed,” Gannon said.

  “I’ll yet dandle me grandson on me knee,” Murphey said.

  “Everyone clings to a dream such as that,” Gannon said, leaning against the drainboard. “Until something overwhelms them. It’s the dream of personal survival – a victory over Time. Some submit to religion or make a daring assault on ‘the secrets of the universe,’ or live in hope of genie-chance. It’s all the same thing.”

  John could visualize Gannon standing in front of a classroom delivering those portentous phrases, and in that same pedantic tone. Gannon had said that same thing many times and in those same words.

  Murphey looked admiringly at his brother-in-law. “The wisdom in that man!”

  Herity chuckled. “You know what the Yanks call your perfesser’s ‘genie-chance’? They call it… they call it the blond in the Cadillac automobile!” Laughter set his hand trembling, spilling some of the poteen from his glass.

  “It has other variations,” Gannon said. “The magic number, the winning ticket on the Sweeps, the treasure that you stumble upon in your own backyard.”

  “Such things happen,” Murphey said.

  Gannon smiled sadly. “I think I’ll go down to the graves. Where did you leave the lantern, Wick?”

  “On the back stoop.”


  “Would you care to accompany me, Father Michael?” Gannon asked.

  “I’ll wait for morning and bless them then,” Father Michael said.

  “He’s no mind to visit graves in the night, Father Michael hasn’t,” Herity said. “The ghosts now! And them ranging across the whole land in these parlous times.”

  “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Father Michael said. “There’s spirits…”

  “And sure and we all know there’s witches, don’t we, Father Michael?” Herity peered at the priest with owlish glee. “And the faeries, now! What about them?”

  “Dream of anything you like,” Father Michael said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “The first room to the right at the top of the stairs, Father,” Gannon said. “Sleep with the angels, God willing.”

  Gannon turned and let himself out the kitchen door.

  On impulse, John followed, finding Gannon there lighting a slender lantern with a kitchen match. Clouds covered the sky and there was a feeling of mist in the air.

  “Tell me, Mister O’Donnell, are you accompanying me because you fear I have other weapons hidden out here?”

  “Not me,” John said. “And don’t mind Herity. He lives by his suspicions.”

  “A soldier, that one,” Gannon said. “A Provo or I miss my guess. I know the type.”

  John felt an abrupt emptiness in his stomach. Herity… one of the Provisional IRA. There was the sound of truth in Gannon’s words. Herity was one of those who made the terrorist bombs and slaughtered innocents such as Kevin and Mairead and Mary O’Neill.

  “I will open my heart and pray as never before that you shall reach Killaloe safely and there find a cure for the plague,” Gannon said.

  In the morning when he awakened in the cold upstairs room, John went to the window and looked down on the stone enclosure around the graves. He could just see it past the corner of the other cottage.

  The night before, the stone enclosure had been a ghostly rath in the yellow light of Gannon’s lantern, the silence weighted. An owl had floated past and Gannon had not even looked up from his silent praying.

  Only Herity had been at the table when they returned to the house. He sat there still nursing a half glass of the poteen. It had occurred to John then that Herity was one of those Irish prodigies who could imbibe ruinous amounts of alcohol with only minimal evidence of it. That was a good thing to know. John realized he was seeing Herity in a new light since Gannon’s assessment – a Provo, no doubt of it.

  “It’s glad I am you’ve returned safely from the ghostly night,” Herity said. “There’s wild animals about, you know.”

  “A few pigs running loose,” Gannon said.

  “I was speaking of the two-legged kind,” Herity said. He drained his glass. Standing slowly, deliberately, Herity said: “To bed, to bed, the sleep of the dead. I’ll give you the dawn for an evening’s yawn and one small bullet of lead.” He patted the machine gun at his chest.

  As he stood at the upstairs window in the dawn, John became aware of someone walking up through the lower meadows and stopping at the graves. John was a moment recognizing Herity, and then by the machine gun, which became visible when he rounded the stone walls and peered up at the cottages. Herity was wearing a green poncho.

  Something from his pack, John thought.

  He hurried to dress, hearing the sounds of people moving downstairs, smelling lard heating in a pan. The odor of the tea herb mingled with peat smoke.

  Breakfast was a silent time – boiled eggs and soda bread. Murphey appeared bright-eyed, showing no effects of the night’s drinking. His eyes winked with delight at the food Gannon placed in front of him.

  After breakfast, they followed Father Michael down to the graves for the promised blessing. The air was still cold and misty, gray light through heavy cloud cover. John brought up the rear, the silent boy just ahead, clutching the blue anorak close around his neck.

  John found himself interested in the silent boy’s reaction to this ritual. These were women buried here. Had the boy attended the funeral of his mother? John felt no emotion as he wondered these things. There had been a coldness in him the previous night as he felt O’Neill receding. O’Neill had struck the ones who injured him; he had done it through his successors.

  Through me, John thought.

  Had O’Neill imagined such a scene as this?

  There was no memory of such a thing, no inner movie to recount it. Cold I was when I did the thing. Cold and murderous – not caring who I hurt.

  Nothing had mattered except the striking out.

  Father Michael finished his office of the dead. Looking at Gannon, he said: “I shall pray for you and for your loved ones.”

  Gannon lifted his right hand limply, dropped it.

  He turned and plodded toward the cottages, moving as though each step were painful.

  “Go along, Father Michael,” Herity said. “Mister Gannon has promised us provisions for the road. We must be getting Mister O’Donnell to Killaloe and it’s a long tramp over the hills.”

  Father Michael put a hand over the silent boy’s shoulders and followed Gannon. Murphey and the three other boys fell in behind.

  “Mister Murphey, how about a bit of that pig to take on the way with us?” Herity said.

  As Murphey stopped and turned, Herity took off at a trot up the hill. The two men headed at an angle for the byre.

  John followed the others into the cottage. What was Herity doing? He had not given in to a sudden urge for pork. It was something else.

  Gannon was already busy in the kitchen, Father Michael helping him, when John entered. It felt warm in the cottage after the outside chill. There was a pair of tall, military binoculars on the kitchen table.

  “I’ve given my binoculars to Father Michael,” Gannon said. “Wick brought his when he came from Cork and there’s no need for us to have two pairs.”

  Father Michael sighed. “It’s a sad truth, John, but the farther ahead we see, the safer we are in our going.”

  Gannon had found a small blue-and-yellow hiker’s pack with one patched shoulder strap. He put several chunks of soda bread around the outside and packed fresh eggs in the nest thus formed. “There’s a jar of sweet jelly and a bit of lard,” he said. “I’ve left room in the top for the pork when Wick brings it.”

  “You’re a kind man, Mister Gannon,” Father Michael said.

  Gannon nodded his head at this and turned to look at John. “Mister O’Donnell, I shall pray again that you gain safely to Killaloe and that your hand helps us there. You have come across the water in our time of need. I’ll not have you misunderstanding the way of us nor how much we appreciate your coming here.”

  Father Michael busied himself arranging the food in the pack, not looking at Gannon or John.

  “I’ve talked to Mister Herity this morning,” Gannon said, “and I’ve a better understanding of your party. He’s told me the sorry way you were treated by the Beach Boys. I think there’s a dispute among the soldiery about the way you were greeted, Ireland needing wisdom such as yours these days. I’m thinking Herity has come along to see you safely to Killaloe. He’s a rough man but there’s times such men are needed.”

  John rubbed at the stubble on his chin, wondering how he should respond to this pedantic outburst.

  Herity and Murphey entered then, Herity with his pack already slung over his left shoulder, the machine gun riding in the cradle of his right arm.

  “The pig’s already turning bad,” Murphey said.

  “It needs ice this time of year,” Herity said.

  John looked at the two men, sensing a subtle change in their behavior toward each other. There was some kind of an understanding between them.

  “It’s a long tramp,” Herity said. “Best be on our way.” He glanced at Father Michael, who was stuffing the blue-and-yellow pack into his larger pack, preparing to shoulder it. “Call the boy, Father, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “He’s welcome to sta
y here,” Gannon said. “If you…”

  Father Michael shook his head. “No, he’d best come along with us.”

  “The Father has formed a special attachment for the lad,” Herity said. He made it sound insinuatingly evil, grinning as he spoke.

  Scowling, Father Michael took up his pack and brushed past Herity out the door. They heard him calling the boy. John followed, feeling oddly put out by Herity’s manner.

  What do I care how he treats the priest? John wondered.

  He puzzled over this as they said their goodbyes and walked up the hill toward the farm track that led to the valley road.

  When they rounded a screen of trees and no longer could see the cottages, Herity called a halt. The sky was already brighter, even a few patches of blue overhead. John looked back the way they had come, then at Herity rummaging in his green pack. Herity pulled out a small, short-barreled revolver and a box of ammunition. The gun glistened with oil.

  “This is a gift from Mr. Murphey,” Herity said. “It’s only a Smith & Wesson five-shooter, but it’ll fit in your pocket, John. Best go armed these days.”

  John accepted the revolver, feeling the cold oiliness of it. “Into your hip pocket and pull the sweater over it,” Herity said. “There, that’s the way.”

  “Murphey gave this to you?” John asked.

  Herity handed him the box of ammunition. “Yes. Stuff this in your side pocket. There was two of ’em Gannon didn’t know about. T’other’s a big Colt monster y’ wouldn’t want to be carrying, it being heavy as a tub of lead and not as useful.” Herity returned his pack to his shoulder and started to turn but stopped as a shot sounded behind them.

  Father Michael whirled and would have run back to the cottages had Herity not stopped him with a firm grip on the arm. The priest tried to pry Herity’s fingers away. “They may need our help, Joseph!”

  “You haven’t thought it through, Father. What are the possibilities?”

  “What do you…”

  “Another pig?” Herity asked. “I’ve returned all their weapons and the ammunition. If it’s a pig, fine! They’ll be eating a grand meal tonight and Mister Gannon cooking it. If it’s intruders, our friends are well armed. And that was a pistol shot, I remind you.”