Journals of the Plague Years

by Norman Spinrad

  “What?”

  “That’s my price for silence. I want my salary raised to one million a year.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “Is it? You’ve said yourself that the survival of Sutcliffe is at stake. Cheap at twice the price!”

  “Cheaper and safer to eliminate the problem permanently,” Prinz said.

  “Ye Gods, Harlow, you’re talking about murder!” Feinstein cried. “Dr. Bruno’s suggestion is much more…rational. He’d hardly be about to talk while we’re paying him a million a year for his silence!”

  “He’s right, Harlow!”

  “The other’s too risky.”

  “I don’t like it, we can’t trust—”

  “He’ll have to agree to accept an appointment to the board,” Feinstein said. “Meaning that he knowingly accepts legal responsibility for our actions. Besides, we’re destroying the organism, aren’t we? Who would believe him anyway?”

  “Will you agree to Warren’s terms?” Prinz asked me.

  I nodded silently. In that moment, I would have agreed to anything that would let me get out of the building alive.

  Only later, driving home, did I ponder the consequences of what I had agreed to, did I consider what on Earth I was going to do next. What could I possibly tell Marge and Tod? How could I explain our sudden enormous riches?

  And what about my mission, my Hippocratic oath, my duty to suffering humanity? Those imperatives still existed, and the decision was still in my hands. For what the board fortunately did not know was that the dreadnaught virus had not been completely destroyed. The sovereign cure for the Plague was still alive and replicating in my body. I was immune to all possible Plague variants.

  And that immunity was infectious.

  >

  John David

  I made my way up the coast to the Bay Area, and there I was stymied, brothers and sisters. I kept on the move—San Jose, Oakland, Marin County, and back again in tight little circles. The SPs were everywhere, they were really paranoid, they were rounding up people at random on the street, and it wasn’t only the likes of me they were after.

  The Word had come down from the usual somewhere to put the heat on. The SPs around the meatbars were tighter than a ten-year-old’s asshole. Everyone they rousted got their cards run through the national data bank, I mean there were roadblocks and traffic jams ten miles long. People were disappearing wholesale. And the poop in the underground was that they were doing all this to come down as hard as they knew how on anyone “doing the work of Our Lady.”

  And that was me, brothers and sisters. I mean, I was determined to meatfuck anything I could anyway, and calling myself a “Lover of Our Lady” was not only the best come-on line anyone had ever invented, it was ready access to the safe houses that were opening up everywhere in response to the heat, to cheap and even free pallies, to the whole black-carder underground. For sure, I’m not saying that I bought any of that bullshit about sacred duty to evolve immunity into the species, but I sure dished plenty of it out when it made life easy.

  But why did I stick around the Bay Area in the middle of the worst Sex Police action in the country when sooner or later I figured to get caught in a sweep? When I did, and my phony blue card came up null, they’d run a make on my prints and come up with my Legion record, and then they’d for sure flush me down their toilet bowl, you better believe it!

  Well, for one thing, the marks were coming out again, I was beginning to get moldy and obvious, and here at least I had some chance of disappearing into the underground. And for another, I was getting weak and feverish and maybe not thinking too clearly.

  And there was San Francisco, clearly visible across the Bay. Where the SPs never went. The only safe place for a wanted zombie like me. The only place I could bop till I dropped. Sitting there staring me in the face. Somehow, getting there had become a goal in itself, something I just had to do before I went under. What else was left?

  But there was an impenetrable line of razor wire and laser traps and crack SP troops across the Peninsula behind it and a bay full of pig boats patrolling its coastline and enough gunships buzzing around it day and night to take Brazil. All designed to keep the meatfuckers inside. But just as effective in keeping the likes of me out.

  No one ever got out of San Francisco. And there was only one way in. Your card came up black, and the SPs loaded you into a chopper and dumped you inside from five feet up. But if the SP ever got its meathooks on me, they’d punch my ticket for sure, and not for San Francisco, you better believe it!

  The only other way in was a loner kamikaze run on the blockade, and that was even more certain death. Oh yeah, I knew I was deep into Condition Terminal now, but that spaced-out yet, I wasn’t!

  >

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  What I did, for the time being, was nothing. I banked my new riches in a separate account and told Marge nothing. I showed up at the lab every day and puttered around doing nothing.

  I staggered around in a trance like a moral zombie, hating myself every waking moment of every awful day. I had successfully performed my life’s mission. I had conquered the Enemy. I could have been the Savior of mankind. I should have been the Savior of mankind.

  Instead, all I could do was hide the secret from my wife and collect my blood money.

  Would I have done it on my own? Would morality finally have been enough? Would I have ultimately been faithful to the oath of Hippocrates? I would never know.

  My son Tod took the decision out of my hands.

  One night the Sex Police showed up at our house with Tod in custody. He had been caught in a raid on a meatbar. His card had come up blue against the national data bank and he had passed a spot genome test that I had never heard of before, so they really had nothing to hold him for.

  But they read Marge and myself the riot act. This kid was caught peddling his ass in a meatbar, we don’t know how long he’s been doing it, he claims it was his first time. He’s blue now, but you know what the odds are. Get the horny little bastard an interface and scare the shit out of him, or he’s gonna end up as Condition Terminal in San Francisco.

  While Marge broke down and wept, I had my awkward man-to-man with Tod, poor little guy. “Do you realize what you’ve been risking?” I demanded.

  He nodded miserably. “Yeah,” he said, “but…but isn’t it worth it?”

  “Worth it!”

  “Oh, Dad, you knew what it was like, flesh on flesh without all this damned metal and rubber! How could you expect me to live my whole life without ever having that?”

  “It’s your life we’re talking about, Tod!”

  “So what!” he cried defiantly. “We’re all gonna die sooner or later anyway! I’d rather live a real life while I can than die an old coward without ever knowing anything but interfaces and sex machines! I’d rather take my chances and be a man! I’d rather die brave than live like…like…like a pussy! Wouldn’t you?”

  What could I possibly say to that? What would he say if he knew my wonderful and awful secret? How could I even look my own son in the eye, let alone continue this lying lecture? What could I possibly do now?

  Only one thing.

  If I was still too much of a cowering creature to save the world at the expense of my own life, at least I could contrive to save my son, and without alerting the powers at Sutcliffe in the process. And at least covertly pass this awful burden off to someone else.

  Tod’s plight had shown me the way and given me the courage to act.

  A stiff dick might ordinarily know no conscience. But mine was the exception that proved the rule. It was my conscience now. Use me, it demanded. Use me and let a Plague of life loose in the world.

  >

  Linda Lewin

  “I may be a meatwhore, but I’m not a monster!” I told him indignantly. “What you’re asking me to do is the most loathsome thing I’ve ever heard!”

  He had approached me in a meatbar in Palo Alto.

  I had
been spending a lot of time in such places lately, for here the Work of Our Lady was doubly important. For here bitter and twisted black-carders came with their phony blue cards to take sexual vengeance on foolish blue-carders. Every time I could persuade one of these wretches to take their comfort in me, I saved someone from the Plague. And every time I could persuade him afterward to do the Work of Our Lady instead of infecting more blue-carders, the ranks of the Lovers of Our Lady grew.

  But Richard, as he called himself, was something different, the lowest creature I had ever encountered even in a place like this.

  He wanted me to have meat with him, and then, a week later, to have meat with his own teenage son! And I could name my own price.

  “What’s so terrible about that?” he said ingenuously. “Your card will come up blue, won’t it?” But his sickly twisted grin told me all too well that he knew the truth. Or part of it.

  I knew what a chance I was taking. He could be undercover SP. He could be anything. But if I just refused and walked away, he’d only find another meatwhore with a phony blue card more than willing to take his money to do this terrible thing.

  “I’m her,” I told him, “I’m Our Lady of the Living Dead.”

  He didn’t even know who Our Lady was or the nature of the Work we were doing. So I told him.

  “And that’s why I won’t do what you ask. I only have sex with black-carders. I’ve Got It. And I’ll give the Plague to you and your son. And so would any meatwhore you’re likely to find. Don’t you really know that?”

  “You don’t understand,” he insisted. “How could you? You can’t give me the Plague, no one can. I’m immune.”

  “You’re what?”

  And he told me the most outrageous story. He told me that he was Dr. Richard Bruno of the Sutcliffe Corporation, that he had developed an organism that conferred immunity to all Plague variants. That he could infect me with it and make me a carrier. That’s why he wanted me to have meat with his son, to pass this so-called dreadnaught virus to him.

  “You really expect a girl to believe a line like that?”

  “You don’t have to believe anything now,” he told me. “Just have meat with me now; you’ve already Got It, so you have nothing to lose. A week later, meet me here, and I’ll take you to a doctor. We’ll do a full workup. If you test out blue, you’ll know I’m telling the truth. I’ll give you fifty thousand right now, and another fifty thousand after you’ve had meat with Tod. Even if I’m lying, you’re still a hundred thousand richer, and you’ve lost nothing.”

  “But if you’re lying to me, I’ll have given you the Plague!” I told him. “I won’t risk that.”

  “Why not? I’m the one taking the risk, not you.”

  “But—”

  “You do know what I’ll do if you refuse, don’t you?” he said, leering at me. “I’ll just offer someone with less scruples the same deal. Even if I’m just a lying lunatic, you won’t have saved anyone from anything.”

  He had me there. I shrugged.

  “I’ve got a room just around the corner,” I told him.

  >

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  It was the best sexual experience I’ve ever had in my life, or at any rate since my teenage years, back before the Plague. Flesh on flesh with no intervening interface or rubber, and with no fear of infection either, the pure simple naked act as it was meant to be. And while some part of me knew that it was adultery, an act of disloyalty to Marge, a better and higher part of me knew that it was an act of loyalty to a higher moral imperative—to Tod, to suffering humanity—and that only sharpened my pleasure.

  But I did feel shame afterward, and not for the adultery. For this, this pure simple act of what was once quite ordinary and natural pleasure, was what I had the power to bring back into the world, not just for me and for her and for Tod, but for everyone everywhere. This was my victory over the Enemy. And what was I doing with it?

  Nothing. I was taking a million dollars a year’s blood money to hold my silence and, admittedly, to preserve my own life.

  But now that I had already taken the first step upon it, a way opened up before me. I could hold my silence and keep taking the money, but I could spread the dreadnaught virus far and wide, via this cult of Our Lady and my own clandestine action.

  The moral imperatives of the oath of Hippocrates and the fondest desire of any man coincided. It was my duty to have meat with as many women as I could as quickly as possible.

  >

  Linda Lewin

  I hadn’t even dared to let myself want to believe it, but oh God, it was true!

  The underground doctor to whom Richard Bruno had taken me ran antibody tests and viral protein tests and examined blood, mucus, and tissue samples through an electron microscope.

  There was no doubt about it. I was free of all strains of the Plague. Indeed, there was not a retrovirus of any kind in my body.

  “Do you know what this means?” I cried ecstatically on the street outside.

  “Indeed I do. The long nightmare of the Plague Years is coming to an end. We’re carriers of life—”

  “And it’s our duty to spread it!”

  “First to my son. Then to as many others as quickly as possible. We need to infect as many vectors as we can before…in case…so that no matter what happens to us…”

  I hugged him. I kissed him. In a way, in that moment, I think I began to love him.

  “When?” I asked him breathlessly.

  “Tonight. I’ll bring him to your room.”

  >

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Tod was all hot sweaty excitement when I told him I was taking him to a real human whore. “Oh Dad, Dad, thank you…” he cried. But then he hesitated, “This girl…I mean, you’re sure she’s…you know…”

  Now I hesitated. Between telling him the easy lie that I had found him a real blue-carder or telling him the whole improbable truth. I sighed. I screwed up my courage. I had lived too long with deception.

  “It’s really true?” Tod said when I had finished. “The dreadnaught virus? What they did at Sutcliffe? All that money?”

  I nodded. “Do you believe me, Tod?”

  “Well yeah…I mean I want to, but…but why haven’t you told Mom? Why haven’t you…you know, given it to her?”

  “Would she have trusted me?”

  “I dunno…I guess not…”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I want to…I mean…” He looked into my eyes for long moments. “I guess I trust you enough to take the chance,” he finally said. “I’m the one that did all the talking about being brave, huh, Dad…”

  I hugged my son to me. And I took him to Linda Lewin’s room. He entered tremulously but he stayed almost two hours.

  >

  Linda Lewin

  I longed to shout the glorious truth from the rooftops, but when Richard told me the whole horrible story of what had happened at Sutcliffe, I had to agree that I should continue the Work of Our Lady as before, spread the dreadnaught virus as far and wide as possible among the unknowing before those who would stop us could find out what was happening. It was hard to believe that such greedy evil was possible, but the fact that I was cured and the world knew nothing about the dreadnaught proved the sad truth that it was.

  Richard swore Tod to secrecy too, and together and separately the three of us began to spread the joyful infection around Palo Alto, telling no one.

  Why did I stay in Palo Alto for two weeks instead of resuming my usual rounds up and down California, when in fact spreading the cure around the state as quickly as possible would have probably been wiser and more effective?

  Perhaps I felt the need to be near the only two people who shared the glorious secret and the deadly danger of discovery. Perhaps I had fallen in love in a strange way with Richard, with this tormented, fearful, but oh so brave man.

  More likely that I knew even then in my heart of hearts that this couldn’t last, that sooner or later Sutcliffe wou
ld get wind of it and we would have to run. And when that happened, Richard and Tod would be helpless naïfs without me. Only Our Lady would have the connections and road wisdom to even have a chance to keep them one step ahead of our pursuers.

  >

  Dr. Richard Bruno

  Once again, what could I possibly tell Marge? The whole story, including the fact that my Hippocratic oath required me to have meat with as many anonymous women as I could? That I had our son similarly doing his duty to the species?

  Obviously I had been inexorably forced step-by-step into such extreme levels of marital deception that there was no way I could now get her to believe the truth, let alone accept its tomcatting moral imperative.

  Yet, tormented as I was by the monstrous series of deceptions I was forced to inflict upon my wife, I had to admit that I was enjoying it.

  After all, no other men in all the world had the possibility of enjoying sex as Tod and I did. Meat on meat as it was meant to be, and not only free of fear of the Plague, but knowing that we were granting a great secret boon with our favors, that we were serving the highest good of our species in the bargain.

  And I was cementing a unique relationship with my son. Tod and I became confidants on a level that few fathers and sons achieve. Swapping tales of our sexual exploits, but sharing the problem of how to recruit Marge to the cause too.

  Or, at the very least, infect her with the dreadnaught. But Marge would never have meat with me. Nor would she willingly abandon monogamy. Sexually, psychologically, Marge was a child of the Plague Years, and even if she were to be convinced of the whole truth, she would never condone the need for my profuse infidelities, let alone agree to spread the dreadnaught in the meatbars herself.

  In retrospect, of course, it was quite obvious that things could not really go on like this for long.