The White Plague

by Frank Herbert

  And why not? Beckett thought. A President in the family can be a powerful career advantage for a military officer.

  “I love you, Bill,” Marge said. And the girls squealing behind her: “Tell him about…”

  Again, it was lost, whatever the girls wanted told, as Marge said she would save the rest of it until he arrived. Then: “Oh, girls! All right! They want me to tell you about all the men who’re courting them, but they’re too young. They’ll have to wait until they’re at least fifteen. And that’s final!”

  He was going home to a very different world than the one he had left, Beckett realized.

  And so was Joe.

  Poor Hupp. His dreams of being a power broker dispensing the scientific largesse with a careful hand – all gone. A cruel awakening into this new civilization.

  “We are cows,” Hupp had said.

  This had brought shocked silence to the other members of The Team, all four of them holding their last meeting, parting finally in the impersonal crockery, tile and chromium of Huddersfield’s main cafeteria. There had been much noisy activity out beyond their corner table. Huddersfield had become a world crossroads, every facility overloaded.

  “Joe is upset because our old team is breaking up,” Lepikov explained.

  “Joe is right,” Danzas said.

  “You were not raised on the land as we were, Sergei,” Hupp said. “You would not understand about poor, dumb cows. You never walk up to your cow and abuse it with your anger.”

  Danzas nodded sagely.

  “You talk sweetly to your cow,” Hupp said. “You feed it well. You brush it and clean it and give it the best medical care. You treat it gently, but firmly, just the way Stonar and his friends treat us. They know about cows. When the cow’s head is in the stanchion, you lock the head there. Then you draw out the lovely, rich milk, being careful to strip out the last of the milk at the end lest the poor creature get sick on what is left in it.”

  Beckett had recounted this to General Monk during the first part of the flight, watching the amusement and speculation in the man’s eyes. How was a possible President of the United States taking to such an insight?

  This was one cow who was going to be bullish, Beckett thought. After Monk left him alone, Beckett began framing a campaign speech.

  “We need a scientist in the White House. We need someone who knows the real dangers facing our world. We need someone capable of assessing the true nature of what our scientific laboratories produce.”

  Yes – give them the idea that the plague might not have occurred had there been a scientist President. That would do it.

  “A woman for every man!”

  It was a good slogan and might be an attainable goal. The idea carried dangerous undertones of ownership, though. Were women to be hostages to a human future?

  Hupp had been absolutely right about one thing: They need us, damn them!

  There was mounting evidence that O’Neill had created more than he knew in that crude laboratory of his. Now that people were once more moving about, crossing the old borders and the new ones, diseases never before observed were beginning to crop up. O’Neill had probably been a walking factory of infections. They could trace his path by where the new diseases were appearing.

  God! One man had done this.

  Was O’Neill still wandering insane in Ireland? It was possible. A form of that primitive respect for madness had come over the Irish. They were perfectly capable of harboring him, feeding and protecting him. The stories coming out of Ireland could not be discounted – rumors, myths. Cottagers were putting out dishes of food the way they once had done for the Little Folk. But now it was for the Madman. And the stories they told, and the press repeating them:

  “I heard this screaming at night. Away down in the vale it was and not a human sound at all. It was the Madman sure! The milk I left out for him was gone in the morning.”

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  The objective of some who have proposed regulation of recombinant DNA research is to use the power of government for the suppression of ideas that may otherwise flow from such research. That would take us back to an era of dogmatism from which mankind has only recently escaped. And it would be a feckless task. In the long run, it is impossible to stand in the way of the exploration of truth. Someone will learn, somewhere, sometime.

  – Philip Handler, President, National Academy of Science