The White Plague by Frank Herbert
“This was Doctor Ariane Foss, who worked with Bill and the others before the plague killed her,” Wycombe-Finch explained to Stonar.
Stonar nodded, noting the pain in Beckett’s expression.
“Before she died, she gave us her own internal view of her symptoms,” Beckett said. “This plague kills with central nervous system breakdown and enzyme blockage. There is general degradation of functions and a final lapse into unconsciousness with death following quickly.”
“I’ve seen plague victims die,” Stonar said. His tone was brittle.
“The disease process does not extend long enough,” Beckett said, “for many symptoms to manifest. We’re forced to interpret from only the beginning traumata, but Ariane gave us a finely tuned assessment of those.”
Stonar spoke nervously. “Very interesting.”
Wycombe-Finch took a deep puff on his pipe and pointed the stem at Stonar. “Let’s not forget, Stoney, that the plague was tailored for a specific effect – to kill only women and to kill them quickly despite medical efforts to the contrary.”
Stonar’s tone was dry: “I’m aware of the selectivity.” “Remarkable achievement,” Wycombe-Finch said.
“If we can leave this meeting of the Madman Admiration Society for a moment,” Stonar said, “I must say my ignorance has not been removed.”
“We’re dealing with a remarkable code,” Beckett said. “Equivalent to a highly complex combination on an extremely sophisticated safe. O’Neill solved it, so we know it can be done.”
“It seems you’ve taken all this time to tell me you’re faced with an extremely difficult project,” Stonar said. “Nobody questions that. What we’re asking is: How close are you to a solution?”
“Perhaps closer than many suspect,” Beckett said.
Wycombe-Finch sat up sharply.
Beckett glanced out into the lounge where Hupp sat placidly behind his thick glasses, his chair slightly ahead of those occupied by Danzas and Lepikov. All three were watching Beckett carefully and, with this last utterance, attention of the entire staff was centered on Beckett.
That wild call from Browder to Hupp, Beckett thought. He could imagine the young man in the isolation chamber with his pregnant lady – then the idea! How had he come by it? Both accurate and inaccurate – but the insight it ignited!
Wycombe-Finch favored Beckett with a reserved stare.
Stonar leaned forward: “Closer than we suspect?”
“O’Neill demonstrated several things,” Beckett said. “The cell is not inviolate. He has shown that the cell’s chemical fragments can be refitted, reshaped to carry out extraordinary processes. The living organization in the cell, that system which mediates the cell’s operations, has been solved! We no longer can doubt whether this is achievable. The important thing, though, is that we also know now that genetically directed alterations in cell function need not stop with maturity. The neutropenia clue assures us that we can contract a new genetic disease as adults.”
Stonar blinked.
Wycombe-Finch continued to stare silently at Beckett. Was this what the Americans called a “snow job”?
“If some of the thousands upon thousands of chemical processes taking place continuously in each of our living cells are blocked, slowed or otherwise removed, development of the organism is specifically altered,” Beckett said. “O’Neill has demonstrated that this is just as true after the development of complex, higher organisms as it is of the simpler forms. Massive alterations can be achieved. And he has shown that the system is subject to fine tuning.”
“My word!” someone out in the lounge said.
Wycombe-Finch took his pipe out of his mouth, suddenly aware of what Beckett was implying. It was a two-way process! It was obvious, once stated. Did Stonar have the slightest idea of what he had just heard?
“I was briefed by a Home Office M.D.,” Stonar said. He sounded irritated and the chill had returned to his eyes. “It’s like a paper chase where not one scrap may be overlooked.”
Stonar did not understand the implications, Wycombe-Finch realized. It had gone over his head.
“You’ve implied that you’re close to the end of the chase,” Stonar said. “Is that what I tell the prime minister? He will ask me: ‘How close are we?’”
“We cannot tell yet,” Beckett said. “But we see the trail more clearly now. What O’Neill developed was a viral strain that carried a donor DNA message to the living human cell via an infected bacterial agent.”
“This spirochete thing the Canadians say they’ve detected,” Stonar said. “Is that the disease?”
“My guess is that it’s not. We think they’re seeing a remnant, a breakdown product of O’Neill’s plague. A mutation, perhaps.”
“Locked in the cell,” Stonar muttered.
“Like the overlappings of a Maypole,” Beckett said.
“Maypole!” Stonar said. He nodded, obviously liking the concept. It would make an impression at the Home Office.
“There’s obviously a genetic series that dictates that a fetus will be female,” Beckett said. “The plague locks into that sex-differentiated pattern and stays there long enough to create swift and general chaos.”
“Takes the old ball and carries it off the field,” Stonar said.
Forgot he was a soccer fan, Wycombe-Finch thought.
“Well put,” he said.
Beckett’s tone was puzzled. “The block, once formed, is remarkably strong. It must be associated with more powerful chemical bonds. O’Neill identified repetitive satellite-DNA processes in sufficient detail he could pick and choose among them.”
“You really think you’re close on his heels?” Stonar asked.
“I say what I believe,” Beckett said and he saw Hupp across the room nodding agreement.
Wycombe-Finch, his teeth firmly clamped on the stem of the pipe, which had gone out, managed to look sage and wished he felt as confident as Beckett sounded.
Stonar looked at the director, and there was suspicion in the look. “What do you say to all this, Wye?”
Wycombe-Finch removed the pipe from his mouth. He put it into the ashtray, bowl down, looking at it as he spoke. “We are convinced that O’Neill mated the two halves of specific portions within the DNA/RNA helix of the human genetic system. He did this in a binding way.” Here, Wycombe-Finch nodded at Beckett. “The two halves dovetail into an extremely powerful bond. Bill’s team believes there may be independently replicating systems within that helical chain to form this bond.”
“And what do you believe?” Stonar asked.
Wycombe-Finch looked at Stonar. “They may have produced the most promising insight yet achieved.”
“May have,” Stonar said. “You’re not convinced.”
“I’m a scientist!” Wycombe-Finch protested. “I must see the proof.”
“Then why do you think their approach is promising?”
“It indicts the viral DNA, for one thing. We all know that has to be part of it, but it also sketches clear steps into the cellular system.”
“I fail to see those steps,” Stonar said.
“The paper in this paper chase is the blocked enzymes,” Beckett said.
Stonar flicked a glance at him, then back to Wycombe-Finch. He had noted this comment, though, and it was obvious this would be replayed for the prime minister.
“Viral DNA can be associated with bacterial DNA in a quite straightforward process,” Wycombe-Finch said. “All progeny of the bacteria will contain the viral DNA and any messages written into that viral DNA.”
“Message,” Stonar said, his voice blank.
“It encounters that portion of the human DNA chain which dictates that the host be female,” Wycombe-Finch said. “The viral DNA, we believe, then locks into that cellular substratum and dissociates from its bacterial carrier.”
“Message delivered,” Beckett said.
“But do you know how it does this?” Stonar asked.
“We can follow its trai
“How soon, dammit?” Stonar glared at Beckett.
Beckett only shrugged. “We’re working on it as fast as we’re able.”
“We’re fairly certain of the conditions under which it reproduces,” Wycombe-Finch said. “Not to forget that it proliferates in the presence of antibiotics.”
“We’re getting impatient,” Stonar said.
“Right now, your impatience is keeping us from our work,” Beckett said. Stonar pushed his chair back and lifted himself to his feet. “Would someone tell my driver I’m ready to go?”
Wycombe-Finch lifted a hand and saw an assistant get up hastily and leave the room.
Stonar turned and focused on Wycombe-Finch. “You turn my blood to water, Wye. If I had my way we’d come in here and absolutely burn out all of you. We’d sterilize the ground you walk on and then we’d try to start over.”
“Making the same mistakes all over again,” Beckett said, coming around the end of the table.
Stonar turned his coldly observant stare on Beckett. “Perhaps not. We might make scientific research a lethal offense.” Turning away, he strode out of the room, not even glancing at the assistant who swung the door wide for him.
Beckett stood beside Wycombe-Finch, watching until the door closed behind Stonar.
“What do you suppose he’ll tell the prime minister?” Wycombe-Finch asked.
“He’ll say we have a new theory that may pan out, but the government must wait and see.”
“You really think that?” The director stared hard at Beckett, then bent to the table and retrieved the pipe.
“Very scientific,” Beckett said. “Wait to see the proof.”
Wycombe-Finch looked at his pipe while he spoke: “Tell me, Bill, was that what you chaps call a snow job?”
“Not a bit of it.”
The director looked up and met Beckett’s gaze. “Then I do wish you’d briefed me before dumping it out like that. Especially the two-way implications.”
“Surely you don’t question…”
“Of course not! I’m just not sure I would’ve shared it with Stoney.”
“It went right over his head.”
“Yes, I’m sure you’re right about that.” Wycombe-Finch glanced at the staff members, who were slowly filing out of the room, none of them meeting the director’s gaze. “But he’ll have his spies here and one of them’s sure to explain it.”
“Then he’ll know about the carrot as well as the stick.”
“Politicians don’t like sticks in other people’s hands. Carrots either, for that matter.”
“We’re quite excited by the implications,” Beckett said.
Wycombe-Finch glanced at Hupp, still seated in the big chair. The room was almost empty.
“I do believe,” the director said, “that Doctor Hupp is not as excited as you are, Bill. Doctor Hupp appears to be asleep.”
“Well, what the hell!” Beckett said. “We did work all night.”
Out of Ireland have we come,
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother’s womb
A fanatic heart.
– William Butler Yeats
AS THEY came down onto the central floor of the valley just before noon, John found it not as flat as it had appeared from the heights. Low hillocks lifted and fell beneath the road, some with cottages nestled into them. A few of the cottages had not been burned, but most of the windows were gone. Doors stood open. Not a sign of human life still here. The occasional barking of a dog fox could be heard back in the trees and, once, as they rounded a granite-girt corner, there was a frightened cackling of a hen, a glimpse of brown feathers darting into the roadside bushes. Jackdaws were nesting in many of the chimneys. One giant maple standing alone in a field was decorated with a flock of collared doves, spots of soft fawn-gray speckled throughout the green. Vernal grass had taken over in many of the fields.
Herity, walking beside John, sniffed the air and said: “There’s a certain smell to human occupation that’s gone from this valley.”
John stared at the backs of the boy and the priest walking about twenty paces ahead. They were separated by the width of the road, the priest on the left, his head bowed, the knapsack riding high on his shoulders. The boy sometimes darted to the middle of the road, glancing all around and occasionally bending his head to listen. The sound of their feet on the blacktop echoed between the road’s rock-fenced boundaries. He began to look more closely at the empty valley around them, the blacktop winding through it, over the hillocks and around them. There was a penetrating loneliness to this region, more empty by far than any wilderness. He sensed that it came from the fact people had lived here. The people had been and now they were gone. It was that kind of loneliness.
“What happened to this valley?” John asked.
“Who knows? A simple rumor can empty a village. Maybe there was a mob. Maybe they burned it and left. You hear stories now: a cure and women living in the next valley. Maybe men came here and found the rumor false.”
“Are we taking the shortest way to the Lab?”
“The safest.”
Ahhh! John thought. The safest! Then Herity has knowledge of such things. Where does he come by it?
The road wound its way around another hillock and the way was opened to a view of the trees along the river about a half mile ahead. Patchy cloud cover had let the sun shine through. A meadow glistened in the golden light on their left. Beyond it, elder trees stood thick along the riverbank, a tall hedge of them feeding on the flow of water. The elders swayed and beckoned in a soft breeze.
“Parnell came to hunt in this valley,” Herity said. “He had English manners, he did. His middle name, y’ know, was Stuart with the Frenchies’ spelling. Charles Stuart Parnell… the same as Jim Dung. James Dung Stuart!”
John marveled at the way history was preserved here. It was not just the broad sweep of historical events and the dates of battles, but the intimate details. Parnell had hunted in this valley! And when James Stuart abandoned the Irish to their foes, the Irish had renamed him “Jim Dung.” That was four hundred years ago and there was still venom in Herity’s voice when he uttered the name. And what of Parnell, whose dream of reform had been killed by English exposure that a mistress had borne him children? Parnell was reduced to “English ways!”
“Joyce wrote a poem about those hills ahead of us,” Herity said.
John turned a sly look on Herity. “He wrote about Parnell, too.”
“Ahhh, you’re a literary man!” Herity said. “You’d a grandfather who dreamed Irish dreams, or I miss my guess.”
John felt a hollowness in his breast. He heard Mary’s voice saying: “I still miss Grampa Jack.” There was confusion in his thoughts. Whatever I say, Herity hears and interprets.
“Wherever the Irish go, they take Ireland with ’em,” Herity said.
They walked in silence for a time. The river was audible now and they could see a stone bridge through a gap in the elders. Framed by the gap, there was a mansard roof and bits of stone walls far up ahead at the top of the valley.
Herity, seeing the green-framed mansion, thought: There’s Brann McCrae’s little dovecote! We’ll soon see what this John O’Donnell’s made of!
The priest and the boy stopped at the near abutment of the bridge and turned to watch their companions approach.
John walked out onto the bridge and looked downstream where water rippled over green rocks. The meadow visible through the trees sloped down to a narrow stretch of boggy ground beside the river. Valerian and yellow flags could be glimpsed in the marsh. Bees were working the meadow, but the river sounds masked their humming. The sun, the warmth, the river – a sense of relaxation settled over John. He accepted a slab of soda bread from the boy, a thin slice of white cheese on it. The boy put his elbows on the bridge’s stone rail and watched the water whi
What a strange child, John thought. A personality attempting to be transparent. Not here! But he was here. He ate the food Father Michael gave him. He called attention to things by looking sharply at them. He nestled against the priest at times, a hurt animal seeking such comfort as he could find. And the attention he called to himself by his silence – discordant! A protest louder than any scream.
“I do not speak!”
It was a thing repeated every time John looked at him. As a protest, it was remarkably irritating – especially to Herity.
John looked at Herity and Father Michael standing there beside their packs at the end of the bridge, eating silently, not looking at each other. Herity occasionally glanced at John and the boy. Herity, slowly eating his soda bread and cheese, keeping an eye on the road they had traversed, studying the land around them, looking for anything that moved, anything with a threat in it. Wary, that was the word for Herity. He was as isolated as the silent boy, but the wariness was different. There! He had his pocketknife out again! Always manicuring his fingernails with that knife – meticulous and purposeful, an action like a habit. Cleanliness by rote. He had handsome fingers, too – long and slender but with power in them. John had seen them flex like claws, the tendons standing out along the knuckles.
The priest beside him: tall and haggard. Very tall. A Hamlet in a dark suit, the black hat pulled low over his eyes. The features put John in mind of “horse face” – that protruding jaw, the forward thrust at the neck, the strong nose and the dark eyes beneath those heavy brows, those thick and powerful teeth slightly protruding. Not a handsome man but it was a face not easily forgotten.
The boy beside John coughed and spat into the river. John tried to imagine the boy happy, playing merrily, some fat on him. He had been a toddler once, animated with joy of life, running to his mother. Such things were back there somewhere. A sturdy lad. The flesh appeared healthy in spite of its emptiness. Dead but not dead.