The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  Why did the boy irritate Herity so? Time and again, John had seen Herity try to make the boy break that vow of silence. “What good is such a vow? It won’t bring back the dead!”

  There was never an answer. The boy withdrew farther into his silent armor. The way he pulled his head into the blue anorak begged comparison with a turtle, but the comparison failed. The turtle might withdraw its vulnerable parts, staring out fearfully until danger passed. This boy cowered in some far deeper place than the hood of his anorak. So deep it was that the eyes sometimes had not a glimmer of life in them. Everything the boy did at such times was transformed into a sullen patience far more stilled than mere silence. It was suspended animation, as though the life processes were put on hold while the flesh plodded along. The flesh remained merely the carrier of an inert spirit, a mass without internal direction.

  Except when he threw rocks at the rooks.

  Why did this boy hate the black birds so? Had he seen them settle onto beloved flesh? Perhaps that was the explanation. There could be bleached bones somewhere, cleansed by the birds, bones that once had carried someone this boy loved.

  John finished his soda bread and cheese, dusted his hand and crossed the bridge to where worn, irregular stone steps led down to the water. Beside the stream, he knelt and scooped the cold water into his palms, drinking it noisily, enjoying the coldness on his cheeks. The water tasted sweet and faintly of granite. John turned his head at a sound beside him. The boy had joined him on the ledge beside the flow and was drinking with his face plunged into the current.

  Face dripping water, the boy looked up at John, a solemn, studying expression. Who are you? Should I be like you?

  In a sudden feeling of confusion, John stood, shook the water from his hands and climbed back to the bridge. How could the boy speak so plainly without words?

  John stood at the bridge rail above the boy, not looking at him. There were low willows along the boggy ground beneath the elders. A cloud came over the sun then, throwing the world between the trees into a sudden chill gray. The river sounds were only river sounds, John told himself. Not people talking. Once this land might have been enchanted, but now the spirits were gone. It possessed only this emptiness, an absolute vitiation at one with the gnarled willows beneath the elders and the dank bog at the river’s edge. The river spoke to him, a blasphemous echo: “My spirits are gone. I am wasted.”

  The cloud passed and once more the sun beat down between the trees, sparkling on the water, but it was different.

  The boy joined John on the bridge. The priest came to them, carrying his pack in one hand, leaving Herity at the end of the bridge, staring off across the meadows.

  “This is desecration,” Father Michael said.

  The boy looked up at Father Michael, a question plain on the silent young face: What does that mean?

  The priest met the boy’s gaze. “It’s a terrible place.”

  The boy turned and looked all around, his expression clearly puzzled, saying that he thought this a pretty place – the trees, the river, a full stomach.

  He’s healing, John thought. Would he speak when he was fully healed?

  Herity, coming up to them, said: “Ahhh, the priest’s in one of his black moods. His faith is wavering in his mouth and it like a faucet that lets everything run out.”

  Father Michael whirled on him. “Would you destroy faith, Herity?”

  “Och! It’s not me destroys the faith, Priest.” Herity smiled at John. “This great tragedy is what kills the faith.”

  “For once, you’re right,” Father Michael said.

  Herity pretended surprise. “Am I now?”

  Father Michael inhaled a deep breath. “All the doubts that ever were are growing like weeds in the untended garden that was Ireland.”

  “What a poet you are, Father!” Herity turned and met the gaze of the silent boy. “It’s Shaw’s stony land you’ve inherited, poor lad, and you’ve not mind nor senses to see it.”

  A deep shuddering sigh shook Father Michael. “I think sometimes this must be a terrible nightmare, the white horse of all horrors. And we’ll wake soon enough, laughing at the night’s terrors, going on about our ways as before. Please, God!”

  The boy clutched his anorak around his throat and turned away from them, plodding off the bridge. Father Michael slung his pack onto his shoulders and followed.

  Herity glanced at John. “Shall we be going along now?”

  Almost imperceptibly at first, the road began to climb out of the valley. Herity, with John beside him, stayed closer to the priest and boy, no more than five paces behind.

  Was it safer here? John wondered. Herity was not keeping them spread out. Or was it the sharp turns in the road around which nothing could be seen? Did Herity want to be closer to the priest and see with him what next the road revealed?

  “D’ y’ know what happened to our Father Michael there?” Herity asked. “I can see he’ll not be telling you and him the best witness to it all.”

  The priest did not turn, but his shoulders stiffened.

  Herity addressed the stiff back, his voice loud. “In the first days of the plague’s terrible scything, a great maddened mob of men burned Maynooth in County Kildare – the whole place, even St. Patrick’s College where Fitzgerald Castle once stood and it a shrine to the old ways. The new block burned like a torch, it did. And the old block came tumbling down to the big machines pushing it and the explosives. It was a sight to see!”

  “Why did they do it?”

  “The terrible anger in them. God had abandoned them. They couldn’t get at God so they got at the Church.” Herity lifted his chin and called out: “Isn’t that what you told me, Father Michael?”

  The priest remained as silent as the boy walking beside him.

  “The smoke rose to heaven for three days,” Herity said, “and longer if you count the smoldering. Ahh, the flames so high and the mob capering about it and hunting priests to burn the while.”

  “They burned priests?”

  “Right into the fire with ’em!”

  “And Father Michael was there?”

  “Oh, yes. Our Father Michael was there to see all that capering. The priests had a fine store of drink in their cellars, they did.”

  John thought of the brand on Father Michael’s forehead. “Was that when they branded him?”

  “Oh, no! That was later. His own folk did that because they knew he’d been at Maynooth and him still alive. Ahh, no, it was death for a priest to be seen there during the whole time of the burning.”

  Herity fell silent. Only the sound of their footsteps echoed between the road’s rock boundaries and there was a faint, murmurous praying from Father Michael.

  “Listen to him pray!” Herity said. “Remember how it was, Priest? Ahhh, John, the burning of Maynooth could be seen for miles. The smoke of it went straight up, it did. I know a priest was there and I heard him say it was a signal to God.”

  Only the low droning of prayer came from Father Michael.

  “We saw the message to God, didn’t we, Father Michael?” Herity called. “And what did we say? God can lie! That’s what we said. God can lie to us.”

  John pictured the scene in Herity’s vivid words. O’Neill-Within could be sensed there, listening, but not attempting to come out. The fire, the shrieks… he could almost hear them.

  “You were there with Father Michael,” John said.

  “Lucky for him! Saved his mangy skin, I did.” Laughter bubbled from Herity. “Oh, he doesn’t like that, him owing his life to the likes of me. So many priests dying and him alive. It was a sight, I tell you! They kept no count but it was over two hundred of ’em burned, I’m sure. Into the fire and straight to hell!”

  Father Michael raised his fists to heaven, but did not turn. His voice continued its murmurous prayer.

  Herity said: “It was a fiery martyrdom the likes of which has not been seen in this land for many a century. But our Father Michael doesn’t have the stuff
of martyrs.”

  The priest fell silent. His movements looked weary. The pack on his back dragged at his shoulders.

  “Some say only twelve priests escaped,” Herity said. “In mufti, hidden by the few of us who kept our senses. I sometimes wonder why I helped, but then it was a terrible stench and the drink running out. No reason to stay.”

  Herity smiled secretly to himself, then turned and winked at John. “But the Madman would’ve loved the sight of it! Of that I’m sure.”

  John’s step faltered. He could sense O’Neill-Within, hysterical giggling.

  Why had Herity said that? Why tell me?

  Herity had lowered his attention to the road at his feet, though, and his expression was unreadable. It was steeper here, the road climbing around hills that, when they opened to a view ahead, showed the way rising toward the tree-framed notch at the top of the valley.

  There was a damp, almost tropical heat in the afternoon air. John’s senses wanted jungle and palms, not these green hills and this black, narrow roadway cutting like a sheep terrace into the land. The bracket of trees ahead was mostly European poplars, scrawny from fighting the winter storms that used the notch as their pathway into the forests and boglands to the east.

  The memory of Herity’s words in his ears, John was taken suddenly by the oddity of the Irish relationship with this landscape. Why had Herity saved the priest? Because Father Michael had been born of the same soil. Something happened in this marriage of people and land. The Celts had got under the skin of Ireland. They did not move just across the surface of the land like nomads. Even this tramp was more through Ireland than across it. Herity’s people had made themselves part of the very soil. There was never any question of them owning Ireland. Quite the contrary. Ireland owned them.

  John lifted his gaze to the path ahead. Behind the poplars could be glimpsed the deeper stain of evergreens clinging closely to the hillsides in neatly planted rows. There, within the deeper trees, lay the great house with its mansard roof: a French château appearing untouched above the ruins in the valley. Smoke lifted from its chimneys. The house nestled into the trees; it had been adopted by Ireland. No longer French. It was an Irish house. The smoke smelled of peat.

  And finally I tell the Irish to remember the Banshee of Dalcais Aibell, the Banshee warning Brian Boru that he would die at Clontarf. Listen for the Banshee, Ireland, for I will have my revenge upon all of you. No more can you evade personal responsibility for what you did to me and mine. I am the ultimate gombeen man come to make you pay – not just during the hard months but forevermore.

  – John Roe O’Neill, Letter Three

  SAMUEL BENJAMIN VELCOURT had come up through the ranks in the United States Consular Service and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Maverick tendencies had restricted his advancement but he had managed to make many military friends during his USAID days, a fact which helped him now. There were, also, his reports, often praised for their insights.

  At age sixty-one, seeing the way ahead finally blocked, he had quit USAID, where he had only been on loan from the Consular Service anyway, and he ran for the Senate from Ohio. His assets were formidable –

  An ability to make himself understood in almost any company and in four languages.

  A rich family willing to back his campaign.

  A wife, May, who appealed to both young and old feminists for her outspoken wit. (Older women liked her also because she looked what she was, a feisty, independent grandmother.)

  The back-room support of the Ohio Democratic Machine plus that maverick record gave him immediate appeal to Independents and Liberal Republicans.

  Finally, there were the crowning facts: a rich, compelling baritone voice coupled to a dignified appearance. He looked like a senator and he talked like one.

  On the platform, Samuel Benjamin Velcourt was a presence and he knew how to project himself on TV.

  The effect had been devastating – a landslide victory in a year when Republicans were making new gains everywhere except in the presidency.

  In an Akron columnist’s words: “Voters were saying they liked this guy’s style and they wanted him in the Senate to keep an eye on the bastards.”

  A British observer of the election had commented: “The wonder is he sat so long on the back benches.”

  Within two months of entering the Senate, Sam Velcourt pulled out of the ruck, proving that all those years in the ranks had really taught him how the system worked.

  He worked it with the hand of an impresario drawing the most from the talent available to him.

  It surprised very few to see him tapped for the vice-presidency in Prescott’s second campaign. They needed Ohio, someone with Republican appeal, an energetic campaigner with an attractive wife, who also was willing to campaign, a man with his own power base – all of those things which really determine how candidates are chosen. Only Velcourt’s maverick tendencies bothered the national organization.

  Adam Prescott had tipped the scales. “Let’s park him there and see how he works. Anyway, another term in the Senate and there’ll be no stopping him. We might as well get him in close where we can keep an eye on him.”

  “He scares the hell out of the State Department,” a presidential aide had said.

  This had amused Prescott. “It’s good for State to be scared. But he doesn’t strike me as one to use an axe. A little surgery here and there, maybe, but no big pools of blood.”

  Prescott’s assessment had proved correct on all counts and, when the plague struck late in that second term, they had worked like two halves of the same machine. Velcourt’s military friends had proved most invaluable then, an essential part of Prescott’s own authority.

  Velcourt thought of these things as he stood at the window of the Blue Room looking out toward the light traffic on Executive Avenue South. It was early evening and he had been sworn in as President less than three hours before, a quiet ceremony at the edge of the Rose Garden, minimal fuss and only pool coverage by the media – two reporters, one TV camera, two still cameras and one of those from the White House itself.

  Velcourt knew he was going to miss the pragmatic decisiveness of his predecessor. Adam had been a tough and experienced political in-fighter, a man who kept personal doubts carefully concealed.

  I tend to show my doubts, Velcourt thought. I’ll have to watch that.

  A Harvard professor had once told the younger Velcourt: “The uses of power require a certain measure of inhumanity. Imagination is a piece of baggage you often can’t afford to carry. If you begin thinking about people in general as individuals, that gets in your way. They are clay to be shaped. That’s the real truth of the democratic process.”

  In spite of such thoughts, or perhaps in contrast to them, Velcourt found the view in front of him pleasant. May was safe upstairs. One of their daughters had survived up in the Michigan Reserve and they had only grandsons.

  It was an evening made for love songs, he decided. One of those soft evenings after a cold spell and with the promise of more warmth to come. Pastoral, Velcourt labeled it – quietly pastoral: the cattle munching away at the tall pasture that had been the White House lawn. Guitar music, that was what it needed. Everything muted, not a hint of violence. Nothing to remind him of those ranked bodies burning at the capital’s eastern perimeter. He could see the orange glow when he looked in that direction.

  The fire’s pungent cleansing would end soon and enfolding darkness would erase the scene from sight – but not from memory.

  Clay, Velcourt reminded himself.

  No miracles kept Washington plague-free. It was simply that the area was occupied by people capable of brutal decisions. Manhattan was no different and it had the added advantage of a water perimeter no longer spanned by bridges, the tunnels blocked, and that outer buffer zone with its black fire lanes.

  All the “safe” places waiting out the plague had at least this thing in common and one other common characteristic as well: There were no mobs
inside.

  The mob that had assaulted Washington’s perimeter less than an hour after Adam’s death had thought a few pieces of armor and some automatic weapons might win them through the Washington Barrier. The attackers had been incapable of imagining the inferno effect from flaming splashes of Newfire, the hell temperatures and immunity to ordinary retardants. Although it provided no feelings of absolute security, Newfire was making a big difference in the landscape. Melted concrete tended to sober those who saw it. Velcourt did not try to fool himself, though: Individuals would still try to penetrate the barriers. All it took was one infected individual and the plague was past the barriers. A very tenuous way to survive, Velcourt thought.

  He turned toward the darkening room and the open door to the lighted hallway. Secret Service agents could be heard in low-voiced conversation out there. The sound reminded Velcourt that there were things to do, decisions to be made.

  There was a stirring in the lighted hallway, hurrying footsteps. A Secret Service agent leaned in and said: “Mister President?”

  “I’ll be out soon,” Velcourt said. “The East Room.”

  The Cabinet and the heads of the special committees had arrived with their reports for the new President. They would meet just down the hall where all the impedimenta of audiovisual presentation had been laid out. It promised to be a long session. There would be special emphasis on one particular problem – the new Jewish Diaspora. Only a handful of diehards had remained in Israel. The ones in Brazil would have to be fed and housed. It must be a madhouse down there in Brazil, Velcourt thought. God! When will the Jews ever find a home? The ones who had stayed behind had promised to fight their way across the desert and restore the flow of Saudi oil. Foolishness! The plague had driven energy requirements to a fraction of their former level. Who traveled anymore? A lot of the survivors lived communal lives. Only the Barrier Command needed great quantities of oil, and the Soviet Union was carrying most of that load.

  Velcourt could hear another voice in the hallway now, the voice for which he had been delaying, Shiloh Broderick. The aging Broderick had come over from his Washington town house with a request that he be allowed to “brief the President.” Along with the full-protocol request there had been a “Dear Sam” note recalling their past association. Without ever stating it openly, the note made clear who had sent Shiloh Broderick to “brief the President.”