The White Plague by Frank Herbert
On a whim (After all, I am the President!), Velcourt said: “Send Broderick in. Tell the others to get started without us. They can hash out some of their differences before I go in.”
Velcourt bent and turned on a single floor lamp over a comfortable chair and seated himself opposite it in the shadows. Broderick, when he entered, saw the setup and understood.
“Don’t get up, sir.”
Shiloh had aged greatly since they had last met, Velcourt noted. He walked with an old man’s limping gait, favoring the left leg. There were new and deeper wrinkles in his lean face, the wavy hair gone completely gray. The corners of his eyes looked moist. The narrow mouth was even more severe.
They shook hands while Broderick stood and Velcourt remained seated. Broderick took the chair under the light, its downward-pointing reflector bathing him in an unkind glare.
“Thank you, Mister President, for seeing me ahead of the others.”
“I didn’t move you ahead, Shiloh. I moved the others back.”
This brought an appreciative chuckle.
Velcourt could see Shiloh debating whether to address the President as Sam. All of that diplomatic training won out.
“Mister President, I don’t know if you appreciate the opportunity that has been presented to us of settling the Communist Question once and for all.”
Oh, shit! Velcourt thought. And I thought his people might come up with something new.
“Get it off your chest, Shiloh.”
“You realize, of course, that they still have some agents in place even here in Washington.”
“Immunity is a word without its old meanings nowadays,” Velcourt said.
Broderick sniffed, then: “You’re saying that we have our people over there, too. However, I was addressing a different situation. The Soviets and the United States are now confined to leopard spots of plague-free communities. A comparison of the relative vulnerability of these population centers shows us clearly at the advantage.”
“Is that so?”
“It certainly is, sir. We have more scattered communities of smaller population. Have you focused on that?”
Jesus Christ! Was he going to bring up old First Strike?
“My predecessor and I talked about this at some length.” Velcourt’s tone was dry. “But surely you’re not…”
“Not atomics, sir. Bacteriological!”
“And we blame it on O’Neill, of course.” Velcourt’s tone was even drier.
“Exactly!”
“What do Soviet agents have to do with this?”
“We give them a trail to follow, a trail that proves we are blameless.”
“How would you propose to infect the Soviets?”
“Birds.”
Velcourt suppressed a grin, shaking his head.
“Migratory birds, Mister President,” Broderick said. “It’s just the kind of thing this Madman…”
Velcourt no longer could suppress his laughter. His whole body shook with it.
“What is it, Mister President?”
“Right after I was sworn in, Shiloh, I called the premier and we had about a half hour of discussion – the commitments already made are still standing, what new options there may be – that sort of thing.’”
“Good move,” Broderick said. “Allay their suspicions. Who was your translator?” He coughed, realizing his faux pas. “Sorry, sir.”
“Yes, we spoke in Russian. The premier thinks I have a Georgian accent. He finds it very helpful that I speak his language. Minimizes misunderstandings.”
“Then why did you laugh just now?”
“The premier was at great pains to tell me about a recent proposal of his military. I leave it for you to guess the content of that proposal.”
“Infected birds?”
Another chuckle shook Velcourt.
Broderick leaned forward, his manner intense. “Sir, you know you can’t trust them to keep their word on a damned thing! And if they’re already –”
“Shiloh! The Soviet Union will follow its own best interests. As will we. The premier is a pragmatist.”
“He’s a lying son-of-a-bitch who –”
“All of that! And he knows, of course, that I have not always been fully candid with him. Didn’t you say one time, Shiloh, that this was the essence of diplomacy – creating acceptable solutions out of lies?”
“You have a good memory, sir, but the Communists mean to do us in. We can’t afford to relax for a…”
“Shiloh, please! I don’t need lectures on the dangers of communism. We all have a more immediate danger in front of us and, thus far, we’re cooperating well in the search for some way of preventing human extinction.”
“And what if they’re first to find a cure?”
“Some of our people are working in their labs, Shiloh, and some of their people are with us. We even have Lepikov and Beckett together in England. Communication is open. I talked to Beckett myself last week before… Well, we’re communicating. Of course, each of us listens to these communications. I don’t suppose this will lead to the millennium but it is one hopeful sign in a world beset by the threat of extinction. And if there’s an advantage to be gained, Shiloh, from this cooperation, an advantage gained without compromising our mutual efforts, I will take that advantage.”
“With all due respect, sir, are you assuming they don’t have research facilities that are kept completely secret from us?”
“With all due respect, Shiloh, are you assuming we don’t have similar establishments?”
Broderick sat back, steepled his fingers and put them against his lips.
Velcourt knew who Broderick represented – certain very powerful and very wealthy people, a large contingent in the bureaucracy and retired from it, people whose careers had been predicated on “being right even when they were wrong.” In a bureaucracy, Velcourt had learned early, the simple fact of being right did not win popularity contests, especially if someone higher up in the hierarchy was thus proven wrong. People who gained power in a bureaucracy, Velcourt had noted, tended to be media-minded. They wanted headline items, the more dramatic the better. Simple answers, no matter how wrong they might be proven later. Drama, that was the thing – a most powerful advantage in a conference room, especially when presented in the driest and most analytical terms. Broderick had made a career on this one fact.
Velcourt said: “You’ve been out of government for a long time, Shiloh. I know you have important contacts, but they may not be telling you everything they know.”
“And you are?” There was anger in the old diplomat’s voice.
“I have adopted a policy of increasing candor – not complete, but trending that way.”
Shiloh Broderick absorbed this in silence.
The plague had produced a new kind of consciousness in most powerful people, Velcourt had noted. It was not just adapting to a sequence of new political situations but a different level of awareness, more penetrating. It put survival first and political games second. Politics had been reduced to its most personal level: Who do I trust? Whenever that question was asked at a life-and-death level, there could be only one answer: I trust the people I know.
I know you, Shiloh Broderick, and I don’t trust you.
“Mister President,” Broderick said, “why did you invite me in here?”
“I’ve had some experience of trying to get through the political barricades, Shiloh, trying to reach the ear of someone who could ‘do something.’ I have some sense of your present situation.”
Broderick again leaned forward. “Sir, out there…” he pointed at the windows “. . . are people who know things you need to know. I represent some of the finest –”
“Shiloh, you’ve put your finger precisely on my problem. How do I find them? And having found them, how do I wade through and weed through what they bring?”
“You trust your friends!”
Velcourt sighed. “But, Shiloh, things presented to me… well, things excluded are ofte
Broderick heard dismissal in the President’s words and tone but refused to move.
“Mister President, I presume on past association. We go a long way back where –”
“Where I was often right and you were wrong.”
Broderick’s mouth drew into a tight line.
Velcourt spoke first: “Don’t assume that I hold grudges. We’ve no time for such nonsense. What I’m telling you is that I intend to rely on my own judgment. That’s the nature of this office. And the record shows that my judgment has been better than yours. You have one value to me, Shiloh – information.”
And Velcourt thought: Does Shiloh suspect the real nature of the information he brought me today? Broderick represented people who might act independently to endanger an extremely delicate balance. An upset in these times could lead to a planet empty of humans. Broderick’s people clearly were acting out of a context whose time had passed. Operation Backfire would have to be alerted.
Broderick’s lips moved against each other but did not part, then, he spoke in a tightly controlled voice: “We always said you weren’t a very good team player.”
“I’m glad to know you held such a high opinion of me. You’d do me a favor, Shiloh, if you went back to your people and told them that my opinion of our bureaucracy has not changed much.”
“I’ve never heard that opinion.”
“They made a fatal error, Shiloh. They tried to copy the Soviet model.” He raised a hand for silence as Broderick started to respond. “Oh, I know the reasons. But you take a better look at the Soviet example, Shiloh. They’ve created a bureaucratic aristocracy, recreated, I should say, because it’s patterned on the czarist model. You always did want to be an aristocrat, Shiloh. You just chose the wrong country in which to make the attempt.”
Broderick gripped the arms of his chair, knuckles white. His voice came out in barely controlled fury: “Sir, the intelligent ones must lead!”
“Who’s to be the judge of what’s intelligent, Shiloh? Was it intelligence got us into this mess? You see, aristocrats can bury their mistakes only so long as the mistakes are small enough.”
Velcourt lifted himself from the chair and spoke to the seated Broderick from the deeper shadows above the lamplight. “If you’ll excuse me, Shiloh, I have to go next door and see if I can detect what other mistakes we’re about to make.”
“And I’m no longer invited?”
“I’ve heard your argument, Shiloh.”
“So you’re not going to take advantage of…”
“I’ll take any and every advantage that I judge to be a real one! And that I judge does not endanger the primary concern – finding a cure for this plague. That’s why my door remains open to you, Shiloh, whenever time permits. Maybe you’ll bring me something useful.”
Velcourt turned and strode out of the room, unconsciously copying the purposeful stride he’d seen so many times in Adam Prescott. In the main hall, seeing one of his aides, Velcourt dictated a memo as they hurried toward the East Room.
The alternative to the Brodericks was not to bury himself in information, he thought. No, the alternative was to surround himself with people who used their powers of observation the way he did. He knew a few such. They might know of more. This memo was a first step. The aware people would have to be found… the bright ones who were not afraid to report unpopular things.
Analysis in depth was a thing that had to happen outside the President’s presence. Perhaps that had been the need for a long time. It had taken the plague’s immediacy to supress all the drama-pushers and make this approach so obvious.
Broderick had been right on one thing, though: Find the right people. But when he found them, when he had digested their information and acted upon it, he had to make sure his orders were carried out. It was clear that the power of the people Broderick represented often transcended that of the transients who occupied the Oval Office. It even transcended the power of people in other offices, in the corner offices or in the large spaces at the ends of long halls lined with portraits of past transients. Bureaucrats came to recognize early a simple truth about their powers: “We will be here after the transients have been replaced by the electorate.”
Time was on their side.
Velcourt paused at the door to the East Room. Well, the plague had changed that, too. Time had only one use now – find the path to survival.
’Tis I that outraged Jesus of old;
’Tis I that robbed my children of
heaven!
By rights ’tis I that should have gone
upon the cross.
There would be no hell, there would
be no sorrow,
There would be no fear if it were not
for me.
– “Eve’s Lament,” an old Irish poem
THE ROAD beneath John’s feet crested the ridge at the top of the valley much farther to the right of the slate-roofed mansion than he had expected. He could see a shallow swale on his right close with young pines, which thickened into taller pines at a higher crest beyond. At his left, a steep slope descended some fifty meters before gentling into a deep bowl perhaps a thousand meters across. The château, three stories high and with four levels to its roofline, nestled into a black rock elbow at the far side of the bowl. Sheep cropped the meadow grass in front of the building. A double line of poplars led in at an angle from far to the right, an overgrown lane between them. The poplars and a tall stand of evergreens partly concealed a deeper lawn beyond.
A wind from the west swayed the poplars and bent the tall grass growing up through the rock fence along the road beside John. He turned to look at his companions. Herity had put one foot on the rock fence and leaned forward on the upraised knee, listening. Father Michael and the boy stood near him, staring at the pastoral scene below them.
“Would you look at that now,” Herity said, his voice hushed.
Father Michael cupped a hand behind his left ear.
“Listen!”
John heard it then: the sounds of children playing – thin cries, excitement in the shouts. A game, he thought. He clambered onto the rock wall near Herity and stared off across the bowl toward the building. The sound came from beyond the poplars and the screening evergreens.
Herity removed his foot from the wall and trotted down the road until he was past the screening trees. John and the others hurried to follow.
Father Michael pulled Cannon’s gift binoculars out of his pack as he ran. He stopped and aimed them at the flat expanse of lawn revealed from this new position. The others stopped beside him.
John saw them now – children played on the lawn, kicking a ball. They wore white blouses and matching stockings, black shoes and… skirts! Dark skirts!
Herity reached a hand toward Father Michael. “Give me those binoculars!”
Father Michael passed them to Herity, who focused them on the players. His lips worked soundlessly as he looked, then: “Ahhh, the little beauties. The little beauties.” Slowly, Herity lowered the binoculars, then thrust them at John. “See what the Madman missed?”
With trembling hands, John focused the binoculars and aimed them at the lawn. The players were girls of about twelve to sixteen years of age. Their hair had been done into twin braids, which swung wide as they ran and twisted after the ball shouting, calling out to other players. Some of the girls, John noted, wore yellow armbands, some green. Two teams.
“A girls’ school?” John asked, his voice husky. He could sense the faint and distant stirring of O’Neill-Within, querulous movement that he knew had to be stilled.
“That’s Brann McCrae’s little dovecote,” Herity said. “Him as made this little place off limits to the Finn Sadal and others and, it being common knowledge that McCrae has at least five
The silent boy crowded close to Father Michael, his gaze intent on the lawn.
John lowered the binoculars and returned them to the priest, who proffered them to the boy, but the boy only shook his head.
“Is it really girls or is it boys dressed up as girls?” John asked.
“Girls and young women they are,” Herity said, “all preserved in Mister McCrae’s transplanted French château. Would you say that’s a French château, John?”
“It could be.” John was only conscious of his reply after he had spoken. He looked toward the building’s roof, visible over the treetops. Smoke trailed from four of the building’s chimneys. He could smell turf fires.
“Joseph, why have we come this way?” Father Michael asked, his voice trembling. “We must not go near that place. It’s certain sure we’re contaminated with the plague.”
“As are the soldiers guarding them,” Herity said. “But it’s isolation they have and we’ll see them through this patch alive. All the women of Ireland are not dead.”
“Who is this Brann McCrae?” John asked.
“The Croesus of imported farm machinery,” Herity said. “A rich man, himself as has big houses such as this and guns and, so I’m told, tough women to use them.” He turned away and, as he moved, a rifle shot sounded from the direction of the mansion. A bullet slammed into the rock wall beside him and went keening off in ricochet. Father Michael tumbled the boy to the road behind the wall. John ducked and found his arm gripped, Herity dragging him across the road. They rolled across the opposite wall as another bullet hit behind them. Father Michael and the boy squirmed across the road, crossed the wall and joined Herity and John. They lay in heavy grass above the shallow, pine-filled swale John had noted earlier.