The White Plague by Frank Herbert
How do we come by what we are? Father Michael wondered. He remembered a basement room in his village church. Ballinspittle, a name the Yankees made joke of, but it was his own. The church with its plaster neatly applied by a local artisan as a service to God.
Remembering gave Father Michael an anchor in his past.
Clean and white the plaster had been. Framed pictures spaced along it – Sacred Heart of Jesus… Holy Mary, Mother of God… a whole row of popes, a blessed medal draped on its chain against red velvet, all in a heavy frame under glass and with a brass plate underneath telling whoever looked that it had been blessed by Pope Pius himself. There were benches in the basement room. Father Michael remembered sitting on a bench, his legs too short to reach the floor, his eyes fixed on a plaque nailed to the back of the bench ahead of him:
“To the sacred memory of Aileen Matthews (1896-1931). Presented by her loving children.”
How remote it all felt now.
John felt tormented by the silence of his companions and by their very presence. He wanted to run away, to dash off into the fields and bury his face in concealing grass, never to rise again.
But Herity was too dangerous!
Anything I do, he can see it and see through it,
“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t pry,” Herity said, his voice light, “that being a commandment of these times.”
John’s throat felt parched. He longed for a drink of water… or something stronger. What was it Herity carried in those small plastic jugs? He often had the smell of whiskey on his breath, but he wasn’t sharing it. John looked off to his right – a hill there, the barren silhouette of a dead pine on its flank with ivy climbing the wooden corpse. The ivy was a winding cloth on the stark witch-shape.
“We’ll be stopping here,” Herity said.
Obediently, they all stopped.
Herity was looking off to his left, a tiny cottage there only a few meters from the dirt road. There was a plaque on its closed door: “Donkey House.” A small stream ran past the door, no more than a handspan wide, flowing silently over black rocks.
“Donkey House,” Herity said. He shifted his gun to the ready. “Now wouldn’t that be a fine place for the likes of us to stop and rest? It being unoccupied of course.” He hopped the stream and peered in a corner of the one window beside the door.
“Dirty but empty,” he said. “And doesn’t that sound like a fitting description of some who’re known to us?”
The mothers are gone, for Crissakes! Like the man says, “The primal center of the family is no more in those regions. The keepers of the faith are gone.” It’s the end of the Romish Church in Ireland and a helluva lot of other places. Let ’em die off on their own, I say.
– Charles Turkwood
KATE HAD developed a mental game of her own for the times when she felt that Stephen wanted no more of her, those times when his attention submerged into his books and he refused to answer her simplest question.
She played it now in the morning quiet of their confinement, her eyes closed, her feet tucked under her on the chair. Stephen could be heard where he sat across from her, the pages of his book turning with an irritating rhythm.
Only a few minutes ago she had said: “My back aches, Stephen. Will you rub it, please?”
Stephen had grunted.
She hated that grunt. It said: “Don’t bother me. Get away from me.”
And she had no place to go except into her own mind.
It was a fascinating imaginative game.
What I will do when we have come through these times.
Safely into her own imagination, she could live without any doubts of her personal survival. The rest of the world might be reduced to rubble. One hand would emerge from that rubble, pulling a survivor out of the ruin. She would be that survivor.
They were changing the guard and servicing one of the compressors outside the pressure chamber. Metal clanged occasionally on metal. Voices exchanged bits of trivia. She tuned it all out of her awareness, sinking deeper and deeper into the world of her own creation.
I will wear fine jewels, she thought.
This avenue did not attract her now. She had played the possession game too many times: jewels, designer clothing, a beautiful home… Sooner or later, the retreat into future possessions found her in her own dream home but that was frustrating. She could not truly fill out such a home, not even furnish it in the way she knew it might be furnished. Her image of a perfect home had been fixed on Peard’s cottage at the lake. She knew there were grander homes. Films had let her glimpse mansions. She had visited the magnificent residence of a retired doctor near Cork once, going there with her mother to visit the housekeeper, who was an old friend. The friend had led them through quiet, unoccupied rooms – a library, a music room, a solarium… a great cavern of a kitchen with a massive peat stove.
The peat stove definitely would not do. It would have to be gas… just as in Peard’s cottage.
Poof! There went the entire dream fabric. She did not have enough experience upon which to construct an acceptable fantasy.
Whatever, it would be a home with Stephen, of course, because they were bound together now as surely as man and woman could be united.
Our children will be with us, she thought. And Stephen will…
No! She did not want that dream. Stephen was always there somewhere and she was angry with him now. He might die, though. That shocked her, but she held to it, feeling guilty and suddenly without roots. Stephen could be killed protecting her. She did not doubt that Stephen would give his life for her. How sad that would be, living with the memory of such a sacrifice.
I would be a lonely widow.
Nagging awareness interrupted: “A lonely widow? In a world with thousands of men for every woman?”
It was an exciting thought, making her gasp. Sad it might be… but the power in it! Who might she take as a second husband? Somebody important, certainly. She knew herself as no raving beauty, but still…
Abruptly, with part of her mind, she knew this was not merely idle speculation. This fantasy had touched something live and real. It was almost palpable and she found this both magnetic and terrifying. She knew then that she had opened up something more than just a dream. This was a channel where fantasy might educate… or at least prepare her against strange possibilities.
Kate focused hard on that external world then – that place outside the pressure chamber where new relationships were developing. It was a crucible out there with agony and wrenching loss. Any fantasy she attempted from now on would have to consider the strange realities that she saw only as reflections from the words of the guards and the images on the telly.
When they have found a cure, I will step out into that world, she thought.
This was a profoundly disturbing realization and she felt angry at her own fantasies for leading her into such a predicament. She still did not doubt that she would survive; fantasy protected her there. But right at the edge of her dreams there lay goblin actualities, which leered at her. Frantic, she grasped for a protective dream.
An island! That was it! She and Stephen would find their own island and…
“What’re you thinking, Kate? Your face is all screwed up as though you’d swallowed something bitter.”
Stephen’s voice intruded at the moment she found her fantasy breaking on more impossibilities – what island? How would they get to it? She found herself thankful for the interruption. Opening her eyes, she saw that Stephen had put down his book and was preparing to bake bread. Odd, how he liked to do that, a bit of domesticity in him that she had never suspected. All the ingredients came in sterilized cans, though, and he had fastened on this as a way to add interest to their lives.
“I was wondering what’ll become of us when we get out of here,” she said.
He turned a wide grin of pleasure toward her. “There’s my girl! Never doubt for a minute that we’ll make it, darlin’.”
“Will we, Stephen?”
Please, Stephen, tell me something reassuring.
“We’re perfectly safe here,” he said. But there was a ring of insincerity in his voice that she had come to recognize immediately.
“Oh, Stephen!”
Kate dissolved into sobs and all thought of bread baking was gone for the moment. His hands still dusted with flour, Stephen came across the room and knelt beside her, holding her tightly around the waist and his cheek pressed against her abdomen.
“I’ll protect you, Katie,” he whispered.
She clutched at him, holding his head against her. Oh, God! He might die trying to protect me!
* * *
The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.
– Dylan Thomas
HERITY FOLLOWED an even more circumspect route as they neared Dublin, leading his party in across the pasture lands to the northwest of the city and avoiding the traveled ways to the interior where, it was said, bands of land pirates still lurked.
John remained a mystery to him, but there was no doubt in Herity’s mind that the man concealed something dark. He might be the Madman. Then again, he might only be another lost one with his own sins on his mind, his own griefs and reasons for coming here. He might even be sincerely desirous of helping Ireland in its hour of testing.
As he marched across the fields toward Dublin, Herity prodded and listened to every word John uttered. It was maddening. How could this be the Madman? There was emotional betrayal in him, but betrayal of what?
Father Michael remarked on the absence of cattle as they neared the city.
“Men still eat,” Herity said.
“But they leave a lot for the birds,” Father Michael said.
The boy took on an intense look of concern as Father Michael mentioned the birds. An ancient stone ruin stood off to the side of their track, rooks soaring around it. Beyond it, they could see the hills to the south of the city. Barren trees devoid of all green fanged the heights. Somewhere over there lay Tara, Herity knew. There where kings had lived, not even cattle grazed now.
“Isn’t it strange,” Father Michael mused, “so many of the ancient lyrics mentioning the blackbirds.” He stared at the birds wheeling over the ruin.
John also watched the flock, thinking how those particular birds haunted this landscape, realizing that this must always have been the case. He said as much, noting how sharply the boy looked from one speaker to another when the birds were mentioned.
Herity kept his gaze roving over the landscape around them, a mounting tension in him. Green copses off there and burned houses, the meadows like moats with the weed-grown lanes through them. A burned patch in a meadow off to the left showed ugly mounds in it – suggestive shapes drawn there in charcoal and not yet washed away by the rains. Bodies?
A dark line of rain could be seen sweeping across the fields and copses – black as the wings of the soaring birds.
Seeing undamaged buildings ahead, they hurried to beat the storm. Their lane came out on a narrow paved road with an intact shed beside it, glass on the ends of the shed, a long bench at the rear, an empty wooden pocket there for timetables on a no-longer-existent bus line. The squall swept overhead as they reached this shelter and they were only dampened by it as they huddled in the rear. Rain pelted the roof and bounced off the macadam, bright pellets of water beating all around. The temperature dropped sharply.
As quickly as it had come, the storm passed. It left long lanes of blue in the sky. The hills to the south stood out clearly in the rain-washed air, ridges lighted by the lowering sun. Green there with patches of yellow furze, the trees clumped along the ridges like spears planted there by the ancient kings who had ruled from that place.
John stepped out of the shelter and stared around him. There was an emerald brilliance to the land, a beauty that he thought had been near enough to this for eons… something to ignite in the human breast a love of the earth beneath the feet. He felt that it was a thing deeper than patriotism, because it infected Gaelic descendants who had never seen this land. People caught up in that kind of love identified with it. They became bound to it in a way that could make them happy if they could only go into a grave covered by such beauty.
Was it possible, John wondered, to love a country without caring very much for the people who put their mark on it? Possession might not be nine points of that law, after all. When you considered it carefully, possession was transient, no more than the right to carve your initials in a length of cliffside… or to build a wall that eventually would melt back into the earth.
Herity came around from behind the shed zipping up his fly. “Let’s be moving along. We’ll not be in Dublin by nightfall but there’s shelter ahead and a bit more civilization. We’re inside the Dublin pale here at last.”
He strode off. John fell into step beside him. Father Michael and the boy brought up the rear.
“Despite what Joseph says, don’t expect civilization here,” Father Michael said. “This is a brutal place, John. It may be that the centers of government were always this way and now we’ve merely pulled off the mask, exposing the truth of the matter.”
“Brutal?” John asked.
“There’s stories of torture and madness and proof enough to confirm them.”
“Then why are we going here? Why aren’t we going directly to the Lab at Killaloe?”
Father Michael nodded toward Herity’s back. “Orders.”
John felt his palms wet against the machine gun, which hung from its neck strap next to his chest. One little flick of a finger to remove the safety the way Herity had showed him. He could run off by himself and find his own way to Killaloe. Or could he? Three bodies to dispose of… and no telling who might come to investigate the shooting. He glanced at the boy.
Could I do it?
He felt his fingers relaxing from the gun’s hard metal and that was answer enough. Something had changed among the four of them here on this road. O’Neill’s revenge had been accomplished upon these people. John knew then he could not bring his companions more agony.
“What do you mean… torture?” he asked.
“I’ll not speak more of it,” Father Michael said. “There’s things bad enough in this poor land.” He shook his head.
The road led into a tall stand of evergreens and they were almost into the trees now. John glimpsed buildings off to the right through the dark trunks of the evergreens – white stone and black roof. It was a large building with several chimneys. Smoke drew vertical lines from two of the chimneys.
Herity whistled as he walked. Abruptly, he stopped whistling and held up a hand for them to stop. He cocked his head, listening.
John grew aware of singing, the sound of choristers in the distance, toward the building. It was a lovely sound of harmony, reminding him of holidays. His memories began to play – Grampa Jack, firelight and stories, music from the radio. The singing grew louder, extinguishing the memories. Illusion vanished as he recognized the choristers’ words.
“Listen to the little bastards, will you?” Herity exulted. “Listen to ’em, Michael Flannery!”
The sweet young voices sang with inescapable clarity:
“Fucking Mary we adore,
Fucking Mary, Jesus’ whore.
And when we all ejaculate,
That is why we masturbate!”
Father Michael clapped his hands over his ears and failed to note that the singing stopped. Now, there was only a grunting chant from off in the trees, a Gregorian parody: “Hut, hut, hut, hut, hut…”
Herity threw back his head in laughter. “Now there’s memorable blasphemy for you! There’s blasphemy to conjure with, Priest.” He grabbed Father Michael’s right arm and pulled it away from the ear. “Ahhh, now, Michael, I w
“Somewhere you still have a conscience, Joseph,” Father Michael said. “I shall find it yet though it lie beyond the bottomless pit.”
“Conscience, you say!” Herity blared. “Is it your Church’s old guilt game again? Whenever will you learn?” He turned and strode off down the road, the others close behind.
Father Michael spoke in a conversational voice. “Why do you speak of guilt, Joseph? Is it something on that conscience you profess not to have?”
It was clear to John that the priest was maintaining better control. Herity’s anger mounted with every step. His knuckles were white on the stock of the machine gun. John wondered if the man might turn that weapon against the priest.
“Why will you not answer me, Joseph?” Father Michael asked.
“It’s you that has the guilt!” Herity raged. “You and your Church!”
“You keep harping on the Church,” Father Michael said, his tone reasonable. “If one person says you’re guilty, yourself saying it of yourself, that’s a sore problem, Joseph. But the collective guilt of a whole people – that’s another matter.”
“You’re a dirty, lying priest!”
“Hearing you rant has brought me to some hard thinking, Joseph.” Father Michael quickened his pace until he walked beside Herity. “It occurs to me, it does, that it’s hard for a collectivity of people to accept the awakening of its conscience.”
Herity stopped in the center of the road, forcing Father Michael to stop also. John and the boy halted a few paces back and watched the antagonists. Herity regarded Father Michael with a silent scowl, his forehead creased in thought.
“The Church could administer to the individual,” Father Michael said, “but not to the people. That was our failure. Where is a people’s conscience?”
A look of bland superiority erased the scowl from Herity’s face. He stared at the priest. “Has the mad priest finally come around to sanity? Do you see at last the world you’ve made?”