The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  Herity headed for the first open gate into the wagon track. They passed the ashes of what probably had been a small byre with a pile of manure beside it. Grass grew thick on the manure and bushy weeds already were sprouting in the burned area. The wagon track sloped up to the right along the rock walls of the terraces, which stepped down from twice a man’s height to only waist height about two hundred meters ahead. As they passed the second terraced step, the view was opened across stone-walled meadows and the road they had abandoned, then up the far side of the road to a castle ruin on the opposite ridge less than a mile away.

  Herity stopped. “Ahhhhh,” he said.

  John stopped beside him. There was no sound of the priest and boy behind them. All were looking at the castle. It stood in a haze of trees and bushes with only the crenellated battlements fully exposed. Behind the screening growth, splotches of color could be glimpsed on the walls. Ruined turrets and buttresses stood out against the morning sky like illustrations in a tourist brochure. John found himself thinking how sure it was that castles, even ruined ones, transformed a skyline into something cruel – as though fangs had been exposed.

  “I’ll have the binoculars,” Herity said, his voice hushed. He reached back toward Father Michael while keeping his attention on the castle.

  Father Michael pressed the binoculars into Herity’s outstretched hand. “What is it?”

  Herity did not answer. He focused on the castle, sweeping his attention across it, then stopping. “Well, now,” he whispered. “Slowly, all of you, back up into the shelter of the wall.”

  “What is it?” Father Michael insisted.

  “Do as I say!”

  Keeping his attention on the castle, Herity pressed them back up the wagon track until the terrace wall concealed them. He lowered the glasses then and smiled at Father Michael.

  “It’s Liam yonder with the mate to my little beauty.” He patted the machine gun on its sling against his chest. “Now, I ask you, why would Liam Cullen be looking along that road with such a weapon in his hands? Ahhh, that sneaky man.”

  “What do you intend?” Father Michael asked.

  “Well now, as to that – since he hasn’t seen us, him being too intent on the road where he expects us to appear, I think I’ll be coming up behind Liam to ask what he’s doing there away from his post at Mister McCrae’s fine house.” Herity cleared his throat and spat on the ground. “Discouraging, it is. I expected a better quality of soldiering from Liam.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Father Michael said.

  “You’ll wait here,” Herity said. “You’ll wait as a corpse or as a living man able to guide Mister John O’Donnell into Dublin should anything harmful happen to me.”

  Father Michael started to protest but stopped when Herity produced a long knife from his right boot. “And should I be forced to silence you, Michael Flannery, I’ll have to treat the boy the same, him being without a protector then.”

  Father Michael stared wide-eyed at Herity. “I believe you’d do it!”

  “Ahhh, it’s wisdom you’re getting at last. Now, you’ll wait here where you cannot be seen.” He looked at John. “Attend to it, if you please, John.”

  Herity crouched, turned and scuttled along the low notch of the terrace, straightening only when the wagon track dipped far enough to conceal him from the castle.

  “A terrible man,” Father Michael whispered. “Sometimes I think he’s the devil incarnate.” He looked at John. “Would he really have…” The priest broke off and shook his head. “I think he would.”

  “He’s capable of it,” John agreed and wondered why he found this thought pleasing.

  “Capable, yes. A fine word. And I keep forgetting that it’s you who’re the important one here, John O’Donnell. You must be brought safely to Killaloe. We must think always of the Lab and the lives to be saved. But what of their souls? I ask you that: What of their souls?”

  John felt uncomfortable with this question. The priest’s voice – so gentle, but the violence under it. There was that absolute arrogant certainty once more, the thing cemented in belief that could not be questioned. How hesitant he sounded, though, as though these words were spoken only out of a remembered role.

  “Then why are we going to Dublin?” John asked.

  “They’ve a wireless back there.” He nodded in the direction of McCrae’s château. “I suppose orders was passed along. They’ll be taking you to Killaloe in a motor car, no doubt.”

  John felt for the pistol in his pocket but did not withdraw it. What if it was Liam up there intent on murder? What if Herity got himself killed? John peered around them: open meadows with only a few stone walls behind which to hide.

  “These are hard times,” Father Michael sighed. “It’s difficult to make decisions.”

  John looked to his right along the wagon track. Herity no longer could be seen there. Could I risk looking around the terrace wall at the castle? But Herity had taken the binoculars.

  The boy slid into a sitting position with his back against the wall beside John.

  Father Michael spoke in a hushed voice as though he had been carrying on a long conversation with himself and only now decided to share it. “I blame the English, I do. How can we blame the Madman? Poor soul crying out against outrage, and him here on holiday not wanting to hurt even a fly.” The priest shook his head. “Why did the English ever come here? What good have they ever done?”

  John spoke absently, his mind elsewhere. “They’d say they gave you law and constitutional government.” Where was Herity? Should they wait here, exposed like this? Was Liam really up there intent on murder?

  “English law!” Father Michael said. “Them speaking of tolerance! When were the English ever tolerant? Look at their bloody riots against the Pakies! They’ve always been bigots. It’s them I blame for all of this.”

  John spoke dryly, trying to conceal amusement. “You were all forgiveness at breakfast.”

  “It’s a Flannery family failing,” Father Michael said. “We’re full of the blather before the head’s awake.” He stared down the track where Herity had gone. “What’s keeping the man? He’s had time enough.”

  “Slow and silent,” John said, but he felt his own stomach knotting at the question.

  “More murder,” Father Michael muttered. “I wonder did Joseph bring any of the poteen from Gannon’s?”

  John merely looked at him.

  The priest sighed. “No people ever had better cause for turning to the drink than the Irish.” Tears sprang from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. “My own little brother, little Timmy, telling me: ‘The bottle is my salvation.’ Him speaking the words of Jimmy Joyce: ‘Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.’ Ahhhh, my blessings on y’ anyway, little Timmy.”

  Another great sigh shook him. He brushed the tears from his cheeks and looked back the way they had come, his attention on a corner of the ruined cottage, the only part of it visible from this position.

  “No one builds,” he whispered. “Not anymore. Until the plague, we didn’t realize why we built. It was for the children. Without the children there’s nothing left of ourselves.”

  He fell silent, then: “Och! Where is that…”

  The peculiar rippling burst of a machine gun sounded across the valley, the sound silencing the priest. John stiffened. Which machine gun? Herity’s or Liam’s? The boy stirred and looked up at them. John thought he might break his silence but he only wet his lips with his tongue.

  Father Michael looked at John. “Was that…”

  “It was.”

  “Which of them?” Father Michael whispered.

  John stepped over the seated boy, noting the haunted gaze which followed him. The edge of a terrace wall lay directly in front of John. A weedy vine grew between the stones. Would there be more shooting? He eased his head out of the rocky shelter until one eye could look up at the castle.

  “What is it?” Father Michael whispered.

  John moved farther out, both e
yes looking up at the ruin on the height. Nothing moved there except a gentle breeze stirring the screen of trees and bushes. No birds… nothing. He felt the stillness, a waiting for life to reveal itself. It seemed utter foolishness to be peering around the stone shelter this way.

  Father Michael tugged at John’s sweater. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” John whispered.

  “But that was a machine gun.”

  “It was, but which one of… Wait!”

  Something had emerged on the eastern parapet of the castle ruin – a vague movement fuzzed by the intervening growth. Damn Herity for taking the binoculars!

  “What do you see?” Father Michael demanded. He started to move around John but John pressed him back.

  Something waved from the parapet. John recognized it abruptly – Herity’s green jacket whipping back and forth in semaphore and… yes, Herity’s straw hair below the arms that held the jacket up like a triumphant banner.

  “It’s Herity,” John said. “He’s waving for us to come up.”

  John stepped out of the concealment and waved his arms. The jacket on the castle described one more arc and was lowered. Father Michael came up beside John.

  “What is that strange coloring on the castle’s walls?”

  “Let’s go up and see,” John said.

  Father Michael hung back, reluctant to move. “It’s blood,” he said.

  “Then you’ll be needed,” John said.

  He led the way down the lane past the second open gate, hearing the priest and boy behind him. The track curved around a wall to another open gate and then up to the paved road. A paved drive directly opposite went up to a low wall below the castle, turning right there and up onto a flat parking area where the burned wreckage of a bus could be seen with one wheel over the wall. The whole vehicle, faded red-and-black, tipped at an impossible angle. Why didn’t it fall? John saw it then: The front was wedged against a tree on the parking terrace. The tops of the trees grew tall, rising over a second terrace where the plantings had been allowed to run wild.

  Father Michael came panting up beside John, dragging the boy by one hand. “I don’t see him. Where’s Joseph?”

  “He’s up there,” John said.

  Me held his silence until they reached the road, where he stopped and looked left and right, then laughed at himself for the habit that had made him do this – as though a car might run him down here!

  The drive up to the castle was paved with stones as black as the walls that lined the way. Moss and lichen grew on the stones. Grass straggled from beneath the stones and along the tops of the walls.

  Herity’s voice called to them from the concealment above. “Up here!”

  John led the way across the parking terrace and into what revealed itself as a covered stone passage up to the castle yard. They emerged and saw the castle itself close up without its haze of trees and bushes. Someone had painted the keystones of the window arches in red-orange, the artificial color of plastic, of cheap hair dye.

  “There’s your blood,” John said.

  He lifted his gaze to the wall above the windows. The same paint had been used to write a scrawling message across the entire visible stretch of stone wall, crudely spattered letters in a child’s block capitals:

  “FUCK THE PAST!”

  Herity emerged from a postern gate at the base of the wall. He carried two machine guns now and another pack, military green. Herity stopped when he saw John, the priest and the boy staring at the castle wall above him. Turning, he read the words. A roaring laugh escaped him. “There’s the new Irish poetry!” He swiveled on one heel and strode across to John, thrusting the second machine gun into John’s hands. “There! Now, we’re both properly armed and we may even win through to Dublin.” He slipped the new green pack off his arm and pressed it into John. “Liam had the foresight to bring extra clips and plenty of ammo.”

  “It… was Liam?” Father Michael asked.

  “Such a grand view from up there,” Herity said, hooking his chin toward the castle parapet above them. “The entire road open to him. He brought too much ammo, though. He’d’ve needed only one short burst and we’d have been pig meat.”

  Father Michael shook his head from side to side like a wounded animal. He opened his mouth but did not speak, then, it was forced out of him: “Damn them!”

  “That’s right, Priest, a good curse now and then helps things along.” Herity grinned conspiratorially at John.

  “It… was… Liam?”

  Father Michael demanded, tears in his voice. “You’re using the proper past tense,” Herity said. “Was! Liam is past imperfect.” Herity chuckled at his jest.

  “Dead?” Father Michael insisted.

  “Haven’t I said it? I crept up the back way and himself watching the road so close over that little weapon there he didn’t hear me until it was too late.”

  “Where’s the body?” Father Michael asked. He sounded infinitely tired.

  “Save your empty praying for when we’ve more time,” Herity said. “Unless you’ve a mind to bless the castle privy.”

  Father Michael stared at Herity. “What?”

  “I tipped him in with the rest of the shit,” Herity said. “It’ll take ’em a little time to find him, should they come hunting.” Herity took one of the priest’s arms and turned him around, holding him where he was forced to look down at the burned bus. “It was full of people when it burned,” Herity said. “A heavy military-type machine gun made those little holes below the windows. You can say a few words as we pass it on our way… Father. We’re in a bit of a hurry just now and we’ll have to be watching our backs for Jock as we go.”

  Herity released his grip on Father Michael’s arm and strode past him toward the steps down to the parking terrace. As he moved away from them, he exposed a dark stain down his back – the kind of stain that could have come from carrying a body from which blood still ran.

  For as long as they continue to control life and death, aristocrats understand correctly that their power depends mostly on their families, and much less on the people who must be kept subservient. This is why marriage remains so important to the aristocratic clan structure. Power marries power. In this trait, aristocrats recognize each other immediately. They share a common behavioral pattern. Here is the clan-economics where the real bargaining occurs – in the still vital dower exchange.

  – Jost Hupp, M.D.

  BILL BECKETT stood looking out the window of Wycombe-Finch’s posh office at the Union Jack whipping from its staff in front of the Huddersfield Administration Building. The smartly uniformed color guard who raised the flag every morning could be seen marching away toward their barracks at the perimeter station near the main entrance. A flock of wagtails flew across the marching men, turning to flash their white belly patches against the gray morning sky.

  He could see his reflection in the window, a blurred shape much thinner than once it had been.

  It’s going to rain, Beckett thought. He heard the door open behind him, Wycombe-Finch’s rasping voice, Joe Hupp’s softly accented response. Joe was raising the issue of computer time. That was vital.

  Beckett could still taste breakfast – oatcakes with a rasher of bacon. One thing to be said for Huddersfield: They ate solidly. It seemed to put no fat on him, though. Danzas obviously detested local food but had resigned himself to it. Beckett could hear Danzas and Lepikov entering the office.

  Turning, Beckett affirmed that they were all here. The director had stopped beside the door. He closed it, turned his pale, veined face toward Beckett and nodded. The others were busy moving chairs up to the narrow table at one side of the office where the small conferences were held.

  Beckett moved across the room slowly, thinking about the sales pitch he had to make. Some things did not have to be reaffirmed, he knew. Nucleic acids were the molecules upon which the genetic coding was written. They directed the manufacture of proteins. They held the key to heredity. Heavy polymers, like pr
oteins. The DNA was actually a doubled molecule with one chain twined around the other in helical form, but they knew now that it was not merely a two-part structure written in four-letter code. Was Hupp right? Did the two dominant parts require the presence of an igniter, which interposed itself much like a snake crawling into a hole? That would fit with Browder’s Maypole concept. It would require partial matches at each bonding point that would relax in the newly created medium and jiggle onward to the next step and so on and on until the moment of completion: total ignition. Contact!

  But understanding such complexity required a sophisticated computer approach. And if Wycombe-Finch wouldn’t give them the computer time, perhaps Ruckerman could pry it out of the new President. They were never going to break this code without such help.

  Beckett took his seat beside Danzas, looking across the table at Lepikov and Hupp. The director pulled a chair up to the end of the table and rested his elbows there.

  “We must make this decision today,” Lepikov said. His full lips barely moved as he spoke but the heavy eyebrows compensated, lifting and falling with each word.

  The director turned his head and looked at the stack of bifold computer printouts that Beckett had dumped on his desk earlier.

  “That’s about a third of last week’s run,” Hupp said. “But it’s the important third.”

  Beckett said: “Wye, you must give us access to a great deal more computer time. It’s slowing us down, this standing in line for –”

  “You really think you’re reproducing the structure?” Wycombe-Finch asked. He brought his pipe out of the side pocket of his tweed jacket, a sure signal that he was prepared to stand firm and make this a long session.

  “We have a toe in the door,” Beckett said.

  The director knew this expression, but wondered at its accuracy. He filled his pipe and lighted it, watching the coal as it glowed under his lighter.

  “Are we certain there are no women available for tests in all of England?” Danzas asked.