The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  Doheny shot a glance at Father Michael. Raise the religious issue, would he?

  “Passion, the priest says,” Doheny intoned. “It is the ultimate passion of humankind. Can humanity show mercy to O’Neill? Can we face the obvious fact of his insanity, saying this was a mitigating circumstance? I say we cannot! There are crimes for which insanity is no plea! There are crimes, the very contemplation of which, demand that the insane be judged guilty!”

  Doheny turned to look at O’Neill. Why did the man stare so at the head of poor Alex? The Madman made no response to this trial other than a low hunching of the shoulders, but his gaze remained fixed on the head in the bottle.

  “The priest says: ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ A tempting quotation and one I expected to hear. But whose judgment do we deliver here? Are we to assume that God approves of O’Neill’s crimes?”

  Doheny glanced at Father Michael, thinking: Let him return to his insanity plea now!

  Still looking at the priest, Doheny said: “Only the devil himself could approve of O’Neill’s crime. And perhaps this is the devil’s seventh day when he rests to admire his work. I do not admire his work. I cannot say: ‘Let God judge this man because we mere humans cannot judge.’”

  Doheny returned his attention to the jurors, noting that they had lapsed into boredom. Had he already given them enough justification?

  “God knows best. Is that our judgment?” Doheny asked. “Do we assume that we, mere humans, cannot know what O’Neill has done? Have we no powers of observation?”

  One of the jurors, a man with a red scar down his right cheek, winked at Doheny.

  Doheny turned away, feeling that he had somehow joined in a crime. His voice was low when he continued, prompting Kevin to order: “Speak up, man!”

  “I say to you,” Doheny said, starting over, “that the judgment is ours. We are the survivors of outrage. It is up to us to clean the slate. It is not evil against evil in this room. We are warring against evil! War! This is a principle that we must recognize and apply!”

  In what he hoped was a dramatic gesture, Doheny pointed at John.

  “What denial does he make? His puny explanation is that it was not he but another who lives within him. But we here know the truth that we swore to uphold.”

  Again, John’s manacles rattled against the pipe that confined him. And the head in the jar spoke to him! The voice was surely O’Neill’s: “What are these fools doing? I did what I had to do. I was driven to it. And why do they have you here, John Garrech O’Donnell? Because no one was closer to me than you. Because you knew me best!”

  “Does the priest have anything to add?” Kevin asked. “I’ll have no man saying we silenced you.”

  Father Michael stood slowly, shot a glance at Doheny, then said: “Law and, presumably, this Irish court pretend to share an ethical principle with science. Truth! We must have the truth no matter what follows. Truth though hell should bar the way.”

  He turned and swept his gaze along the row of jurors. “All I’ve said to you is that if you once assume this principle, you abandon it at your peril. I am happy to hear Judge O’Donnell say he will not suppress any line of defense. Whenever we silence a line of Inquiry that might lead to unwanted disclosures, we do disservice to truth. We abandon law – Irish Law or any other moral law to which men should give allegiance. One breath of truth and a false edifice tumbles. We have embraced the principle of open disclosure and no legal excuse may be used against it.”

  Father Michael passed a mild gaze around the room. The jurymen still appeared bored. Well, they would not be bored in a moment! There was no telling what went on in Kevin O’Donnell’s muddled head. Doheny was listening carefully, as though he suspected where this might lead. And the Madman had looked up, staring around him with a confused expression.

  “War?” Father Michael asked. “Is this a principle that I have overlooked? Is there such a thing as a principle of war? If so, do we dare confine this principle only to nations? Or to political societies such as the Proves and the Finn Sadal? If such a principle exists – as Mister Doheny suggests – it must be able to stand by itself or it is no principle at all. Is it a principle? One man alone can embrace a principle. Any man can do that. May we rail against his choice or denounce his choice of weapon?”

  Kevin raised the length of Cashell roof timber, but lowered it gently.

  “Was the plague a weapon in a war?” Father Michael asked. “Do we dare rail against it? Well might he rail against the bomb!” Father Michael turned and stared up at Herity, who had just drained the last of his whiskey. “Joseph Herity’s bomb!” Father Michael thundered. “Can he sit there in judgment when it was his bomb that killed O’Neill’s wife and wains?”

  The jurors perked up, glancing from the priest to Herity. Kevin’s face held a look of secret glee. Herity appeared not to have heard. He stared at his empty bottle on the table in front of him.

  John glanced wildly around the room. He could feel the words still leaping about him, live things. The head in the jar spoke to him then, commanding: “Well, speak up! It was Herity who killed Mary and the twins!”

  John fixed his gaze on Herity. A voice came out of him, high-pitched and twittering: “How do you like your war now, Joseph Herity?” He giggled, rattling his manacles, his head weaving from side to side as though there were only infant muscles in the neck.

  Father Michael looked at John, then across the room at Peard. “Sane is it, Adrian?”

  Peard would not meet the priest’s eyes.

  Kevin brought his block of timber crashing onto the table. “Enough! We are not on trial here! The issue of sanity has been laid to rest.”

  “May I not speak about this question of war that Mister Doheny has raised?” Father Michael asked, his voice soft. He saw that some of the jurors were grinning. The grins disappeared as Kevin looked at them.

  When Kevin did not respond, Father Michael continued: “This man, O’Neill, wedded before God, lost his whole family to men who bragged that it was war, that they acted in the name of the people. War, the Provos called it.”

  Once more, Kevin brought the wood crashing onto the table. “I said that was enough!”

  “Ahhhhhh,” Father Michael said, smiling at Doheny, who was looking fixedly at the floor. “At last we find a line of inquiry which cannot be allowed. Here is a truth we dare not confront!”

  Kevin looked at Herity, who now lifted a bleary expression to the room. “Do you hear what he says, Joseph? Will you not speak up?”

  “It gnaws at you like a worm, Joseph,” Father Michael said. “You’ll not set that burden down.”

  Herity got unsteadily to his feet and leaned on the table. “We’ll foll-follow any… any lu-lunacy so long as it… it has dash! Dash is what we… we love.” His face solemn, Herity looked at Father Michael. “We don’t say… say aud-audacity. We say… we say audashity! That has… has both shit… shit and dash In it!” He began to laugh weakly, then sobered, turning his gaze to Kevin. “You put something in me drink, Kevin. What’d you put in me drink?”

  “You’re drunk, Joseph,” Kevin said, smiling.

  “Not so drunk that I’ve lost all reason.” He slumped back into his chair. “M-m-me legs! Th-they d-d-d-don’t w-w-work!”

  Abruptly, Herity’s head lolled to the right. His mouth opened. He gasped once and was still.

  Peard darted out from the side and mounted the platform. He pressed a hand against Herity’s neck, looked up at Kevin, then: “He’s dead!”

  “I knew the drink would get him eventually,” Kevin said. “Well, leave him be. The triumvirate is still present.”

  Father Michael moved to approach Herity.

  “Stay where you are!” Kevin shouted. He lifted a pistol from beneath the table.

  “Pistol justice is it?” Father Michael asked.

  “Back to your place, Priest,” Kevin said, waving the gun.

  Father Michael hesitated.

  “Do it,” Doheny said.
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br />   Father Michael obeyed, sinking into his chair. The boy pressed close to his side.

  Kevin put his pistol on the table in front of him and looked at Doheny. “Thank you, Mister Doheny. We must keep order. Will you speak now to O’Neill’s guilty knowledge?”

  Doheny swept his gaze past the dead figure of Herity. He gestured Peard off the raised platform. Peard returned to his place at the stacks.

  “O’Neill employed guilty knowledge of medical matters,” Doheny said, sounding as though he recited a memorized piece. “Guilty knowledge is anything that should have been suppressed at conception. When such things infiltrate our peaceable lives, the guilt is obvious.”

  Father Michael opened his mouth and closed it, realizing this was something Kevin had ordered Doheny to say. What devil’s pact had been signed between those two?

  Kevin was staring at the priest.

  Father Michael got to his feet, pushing the boy aside. “What was this guilty knowledge? A medical matter, perhaps? The sole province of medical doctors? Then why do doctors publish? Is it their illusion that only they understand the language of their discoveries?”

  “Anyone who uses guilty knowledge is guilty!” Kevin roared.

  “And O’Neill learning about such matters confirms his guilt?” Father Michael asked.

  Kevin nodded, grinning.

  That man should know better than to argue with someone trained by the Jesuits, Father Michael thought.

  He turned to the jurors and asked: “What happens when we suppress such discoveries? Think about the various means of suppression and who may be permitted to employ such means. Immediately, you must face a disturbing realization. Suppressors are required to know what it is they suppress. The censors must know! You have, in fact, suppressed nothing! You have only confined the knowledge to a special elite. I ask you: How do we select that elite?”

  Father Michael turned and smiled at Kevin.

  “It is an unanswerable question,” Father Michael said. “Do we suggest that O’Neill conspired with guilty knowledge to bring down our world?”

  “That’s it!” Kevin snapped. “He conspired!”

  Father Michael looked at Doheny, but the latter had turned away and was watching John. John had returned his attention to the head in the jar, cocking his ear toward it, nodding as though the head spoke to him.

  “Let us remind you of the Latin that you appear to have forgotten,” Father Michael said. “Conspire! That Latin which law loves so much says conspire means ‘to breathe together.’ There was no breathing together here! He did it alone!”

  Father Michael turned on his heel to face the jurors, giving them time to absorb this.

  His voice almost inaudible, Father Michael repeated it: “Alone.” Then louder: “Can you not grasp the awesome significance of that singular fact?”

  The jurors were looking at him now, no signs of boredom in their faces.

  Father Michael almost sang it to them: “He did it alone. How do we manage our affairs in the light of such knowledge? How do we judge our own behavior now? Where is the guiltless to hurl the first stone?”

  “This is bootless!” Kevin said. He rapped on the table with his pistol. “Mister Doheny, would you put these matters to rest?”

  Doheny looked at the pistol in Kevin’s hand, knowing that no mistake would be permitted now.

  His voice sad, Doheny said: “We have identified the author of our misery. We do not need his admission or denial. This is O’Neill.” Doheny pointed, then lowered his hand. “He makes all previous murderers appear amateur. Warfare becomes a minor affliction. The priest finds it interesting that I refer to the plague in terms of war? Is he saying that every Irish soldier who fired a shot in anger is guilty?”

  Shockingly, John tittered and shook an admonitory finger at the head in the jar.

  Doheny crossed to stand in front of the jurors, intensely aware that Father Michael was above and behind him. Why had Kevin done that, placed the priest at a higher level?

  “O’Neill is amused,” Doheny said. “He is not embarrassed. He is not penitent. He is defiant.” He turned and stared at John. “Look at him.”

  John’s gaze was fixed on the head in the jar. The head spoke: “How do you like Mister Doheny’s defense?” The head emitted a banshee scream that John felt echoing in his own skull. John pressed his palms against his ears.

  “He does not want to hear,” Doheny said. He turned back to the jury with what he hoped was a look of sincerity. This was not a pleasant role, but the need was great. “The priest says O’Neill did it with provocation. I agree. You find that surprising? The act says he was provoked. But how did he select the targets for his plague? The priest says we declared war on O’Neill. I do not recall such a proclamation, but no matter. Perhaps war needs no proclamation. The priest asks us to be clear-headed, though. What does he mean by this? Should we be remote, cool and, perhaps, detached about our misery? Are we to anticipate a defense on the issue of sweet reason?”

  The jurors chuckled.

  Doheny thought then about the points he and Herity and O’Donnell had gone over before assembling here. Had he touched them all? Insanity… reason… justified provocation. Doheny decided he had said enough. There remained only the confrontation with the boy. That could be held to the end. He walked back to his position near John, passing his gaze over Herity’s body. Why did no one question Joseph’s death? Was everyone terrified of Kevin and his killers? Poison, it must’ve been. Herity had been a man who could hold his drink.

  Doheny’s glance fell on John. The Madman was staring once more at the head in the jar. What did he find so fascinating about poor Alex’s head? It was just one more death in a room full of it!

  The head was speaking to John: “Why do they question? All the answers are in the letters.”

  “But I was only trying to silence O’Neill’s screaming,” John said. Father Michael leaped to his feet. “Did you hear that? He was trying to subdue O’Neill’s agony!”

  Silence settled over the room.

  Father Michael sighed. He turned and looked at the jurors. What was the sense talking to more death’s-heads? he wondered. Might just as well address Alex’s head there in that terrible jar. He had to try, though.

  “There is a pattern here,” Father Michael said. “A clear pattern woven inextricably into other patterns – into the Battle of the Boyne, into the Penal Laws, into Caesar’s heavy foot on Britain and even in the fact that the wind did not blow when Rome’s galleys met the Celtic fleet off Gaul.”

  These were Irishmen, Father Michael thought. They would know Celtic history.

  “Are you summing up?” Kevin asked.

  “If you want to call it that,” Father Michael said. He rubbed the side of his nose as he swept his gaze along the six jurors. “I speak of a pattern which ranges from Stalingrad to Antioch, from Bir-sin-aba to Mai Lai, and much farther because it is not always found in momentous battles, but sometimes in very small conflicts. Ignore this pattern and we slay this world finally with ignorance. Recognize it and our values change. We will know then what to preserve.”

  Father Michael fell silent for a moment and glanced back at the boy, who stood staring at him with a look of wonder. Could that young lad understand? Was this the only mind in the room worth addressing?

  Doheny felt himself deeply moved by the priest’s words. God! The man was an Irish orator from the old tradition. The jurymen were obviously disturbed by him. They had planned this so carefully. Bring in the boy at the end, put it to him: Would he kill O’Neill? There was justice in it. What had that boy ever done to O’Neill? Kevin said the boy had agreed privately: He would pull the trap and do it with a curse. He would light the match, pull the trigger… anything.

  The door behind Doheny burst open with a crash. A uniformed member of Kevin’s guard came rushing across the room. “Sir!” he called even before stopping in front of the table. “The word is out that we have O’Neill! We’ve had to close the gates! Thousands of p
eople – there must be ten thousand all around us! They want O’Neill! Listen.”

  They all heard it then, a sullen chant from outside the castle grounds:

  “O’Neill! O’Neill! O’Neill!”

  Abruptly, the Madman roared with laughter, then: “Why don’t you give them O’Neill?”

  Despair creates violence and the Brits were past masters at creating despair among the Irish. There’s a widespread belief in England, you know, that the Irish, like women and Negroes, are essentially children, incapable of governing themselves. But no people can be truly free until they rid themselves of their inherited prejudices. The English and their Ulster satellite have been slaves to their Irish prejudices.

  – Fintan Craig Doheny

  “HAVE THEY been contaminated?” Wycombe-Finch demanded.

  “It’s too early to tell,” Beckett said.

  It was almost midnight and both men spoke in loud voices to override the construction sounds in the big warehouse where they had brought the pressure chamber containing the Browders. The thum-thum-thum of the chamber’s air pump formed a background noise that intruded irritatingly on the other sounds.

  The chamber had been lowered onto a wooden cradle near the center of the warehouse and a space cleared all around it. Tall stacks of canned food and pallets of other supplies had been moved back against the walls. A swarm of carpenters and other volunteers labored near the chamber, building a plywood and plastic room to which the chamber could be attached.

  Wycombe-Finch and Beckett stood about six meters from all this activity but they could still smell vomit in the air being cycled out of the chamber. It was a repugnant odor, especially when mixed with the aromas created by the emergency welding, and that had been done hours ago on the landing stage at the coast near Ellesmere.

  “Are you sure acids will sterilize the larger chamber?” Wycombe-Finch asked.