Frank Herbert - The White Plague

The White Plague

Frank Herbert

1982

To Ned Brown

For his years of friendship

PRECEDE

There's a lust for power in the Irish as there is in every people, a lusting

after the Ascendancy where you can tell others how to behave. It has a

peculiar shape with the Irish, though. It comes of having lost our ancient

ways -- the simpler laws, the rath and the family at the core of society.

Romanized governments dismay us. They always resolve themselves into widely

separated Ascendants and Subjects, the latter being more numerous than the

former, of course. Sometimes it's done with great subtlety as it was in

America, the slow accumulations of power, law upon law and all of it

manipulated by an elite whose monopoly it is to understand the private

language of injustice. Do not blame the Ascendants. Such separation requires

docile Subjects as well. This may be the lot of any government, Marxist

Russians included. There's a peculiar human susceptibility you see when you

look at the Soviets, them building an almost exact copy of the czarist

regimes: the same paranoia, the same secret police, the same untouchable

military, and the murder squads, the Siberian death camps, the lid of terror

on creative imagination, deportation for the ones who cannot be killed off or

bought off. It's like some terrible plastic memory sitting there in the dark

of our minds, ready on the instant to reshape itself into primitive patterns

the moment the heat touches it. I fear for the shape of things which may come

from the heat of O'Neill's plague. Truly, I fear, for the heat is great.

-- Fintan Craig Doheny

May the hearthstone of hell be his bed rest forever!

-- Old Irish Curse

It was an ordinary gray British Ford, the spartan economy model with

right-hand drive customary in Ireland. John Roe O'Neill would remember the

driver's brown-sweatered right arm resting on the car's windowsill in the

cloud-filtered light of that Dublin afternoon. A nightmare capsule of memory,

it excluded everything else in the scene; just the car and that arm.

Several other surviving witnesses commented on a crumpled break in the Ford's

left front wing. The break had begun to rust.

Speaking from her hospital bed, one witness said: "The break was a jagged

thing and I was afraid someone would be cut if they brushed against it."

Two of those who recalled seeing the car come out of Lower Leeson Street knew

the driver casually, but only from his days in postal uniform. He was Francis

Bley, a retired postman working part-time as a watchman at a building site in

Dun Laoghaire. Bley left for work early every Wednesday, giving himself time

to run a few errands and then pick up his wife, Tessie. On that one day each

week, Tessie spent the morning doing "light secretarial" for a betting shop in

King Street. It was Tessie's habit to spend the rest of the day with her

widowed sister who lived in a remodeled gatehouse off the Dun Laoghaire bypass

"just a few minutes out of his way."

This was a Wednesday. May 20. Bley was on his way to pick up Tessie.

The Ford's left front door, although appearing undamaged by the accident that

had crumpled the wing, still required a twist of wire around the doorpost to

keep it closed. The door rattled every time the car hit a bump.

"I heard it rattling when it turned onto St. Stephen's Green South," one

witness said. "It's God's own mercy I wasn't at the Grafton corner when it

happened."

Bley turned right off St. Stephen's Green South, which put him on St.

Stephen's Green West, hugging the left lane as he headed for Grafton Street.

There were better routes for him to make his connection with Tessie, but this

was "his way."

"He liked to see all the people," Tessie said. "God rest him, that's what he

said he missed most when he quit the postal -- all the people."

Bley, slight and wrinkled, had that skin-stretched cadaverous look that is

common among certain aged Celts from the south of Ireland. He wore a soiled

brown hat almost the exact shade of his patched sweater, and he drove with the

patient detachment of someone who came this way often. And if the truth were

known, he rather liked being slowed by the heavy traffic.

It had been cold and wet through most of spring and, while it was still

cloudy, the cloud cover had thinned and there was a feeling that there might

be a break in the weather. Only a few of the pedestrians carried umbrellas.

The trees of St. Stephen's Green on Bley's right were in full leaf.

As the Ford inched along in the congested traffic, the man watching for it

from a fourth-floor window of the Irish Film Society Building nodded once in

satisfaction.

Right on time.

Bley's Ford had been selected because of this Wednesday punctuality. There

was also the fact that Bley did not garage his car where he and Tessie lived

in Davitt Road. The Ford was parked outside beside a thick yew hedge, which

could be approached from the street along a path shielded by a parked van.

There had been a van parked in this covering position the previous night.

Neighbors had seen it but no one had thought to comment at the time.

"There were often vehicles parked in that place," one said. "How were we to

know?"

The watcher at the Film Society Building had many names but he had been born

Joseph Leo Herity. He was a small, solidly fleshy man with a long, thin face

and pale, almost translucent skin. Herity wore his blond hair combed straight

back and hanging almost to the collar. His light brown eyes were deeply set

and he had a pugged nose with prominent nostrils from which hair protruded.

From his fourth-floor vantage, Herity commanded an overview of the entire

setting for the drama he was about to ignite. Directly across from him, the

tall trees of the green formed a verdant wall enclosing the flow of vehicles

and pedestrians. The Robert Emmet statue stood opposite his window and, to

the left of it, there was a black-on-white sign to the public toilets. Bley's

Ford had stopped with the traffic just to the left of Herity's window. A

white tour bus with blue-and-red stripes down its side loomed over the small

Ford. Traffic fumes were thick even at the fourth-floor level.

Herity checked Bley's license number to be certain. Yes -- JIA-5028. Then

there was the crumpled left front wing.

The traffic began to inch forward, then stopped once more.

Herity glanced left at the Grafton Street corner. He could see the signs of

the Toy World shop and the Irish Permanent Society on the ground floor of the

red brick building soon to be taken over by the Ulster Bank. There had been

some protest about that, one ragged march with a few signs, but it had died

out quickly. The Ulster Bank had powerful friends in the government.

Barney and his lot, Herity thought. They think we're ignorant of their scheme

to make a peace with the Ulster boys!

Again, Bley's Ford inched toward the corner, but once more was stopped. There

was heavy foot traffic where Grafton took off from St. Stephen's Green.

A bald-headed man in a dark blue suit had stopped almost directly beneath

Herity's window and was examining the cinema marquee. Two young men pushing

bicycles threaded their way past the bald-headed man.

The traffic remained stopped.

Herity looked down at the top of Bley's car. So innocent-looking, that car.

Herity had been one of the two-man team to emerge from the yew-shrouded van

near Bley's parking spot the previous night. In Herity's hands had been a

molded plastic package, which they had attached like a deformed limpet under

Bley's car. At the core of that package lay a tiny radio receiver. The

transmitter sat on the windowsill in front of Herity. A small black metal

rectangle, it had a thin wire antenna and two recessed toggle switches -- one

painted yellow, the other red. Yellow armed it, red transmitted.

A glance at his wristwatch told Herity that they were already five minutes

past Zero Time. Not Bley's fault. It was the blasted traffic.

"You can set your bloody watch by Bley," the leader of their selection team

had said. "The old bastard should be running a tram."

"What're his politics?" Greaves had asked.

"Who cares about his politics?" Herity had countered. "He's perfect and he'll

be dying for a grand cause."

"The street'll be full of people," Greaves had said. "And there'll be

tourists sure as hell is full of Brits."

"We warned 'em to stop the Ulster boys," Herity had said. Greaves could be an

old woman sometimes! "They know what to expect when they don't listen to us."

It was settled then. And now Bley's car was inching once more toward the

Grafton Street corner, toward the mass of pedestrians, including the possible

tourists.

John Roe O'Neill, his wife, Mary, and their five-year-old twins, Kevin and

Mairead, could have been classified as tourists, although John expected to be

six months in Ireland while completing the research called for under his grant

from the Pastermorn Foundation of New Haven, Conn.

"An Overview of Irish Genetic Research."

He thought the title pompous, but it was only a cover. The real research was

into the acceptance of the new genetics by a Roman Catholic society, whether

such a society had taken a position to cope with the explosive potentials in

molecular biology.

The project was much on his mind that Wednesday morning but necessary

preparations required his attention. High on his list was the need to

transfer funds from America to the Allied Irish Bank. Mary wanted to go

shopping for sweaters "to keep our darlings warm of an evening."

"There y' go," John teased as they left the Sherbourne Hotel, stepping into

the rush of tourists and businessmen. "Only four days in Ireland and already

you sound like a local."

"And why not?" she demanded. "And both my grandmothers from Limerick."

They laughed, drawing a few curious stares. The children tugged at Mary,

anxious to be off shopping.

Ireland suited Mary, John thought. She had pale clear skin and dark blue

eyes. Jet-black hair -- "Spanish Hair," her family called it -- framed her

rather round face. A sweet face. Irish skin and Irish features. He bent and

kissed her before leaving. It brought a blush to her face but she was pleased

at his show of affection and she gave him a warm smile as they parted.

John walked away briskly, humming to himself, amused when he recognized the

tune: "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'."

John's Wednesday appointment for "transfer of foreign funds" was at two P.M.

at the Allied Irish Bank, Grafton and Chatham streets. There was a sign just

inside the bank's entrance, white letters on black: "Non Branch Customers

Upstairs." A uniformed guard led him up the stairs to the office of the bank

manager, Charles Mulrain, a small, nervous man with tow-colored hair and pale

blue eyes behind gold-framed glasses. Mulrain had a habit of touching the

corners of his mouth with a forefinger, first left side then right, followed

by a quick downward brush of his dark tie. He made a joke about having his

office on the first floor, "what you Americans call the second floor."

"It is confusing until you catch on," John agreed.

"Well!" A quick touching of lips and tie. "You understand that we'd normally

do this at our main office, but . . ."

"When I called, they assured me it was . . ."

"As a convenience to the customer," Mulrain said. He lifted a folder from his

desk, glanced inside it, nodded. "Yes, this amount . . . if you'll make

yourself comfortable here, I'll just get the proper forms and be right back."

Mulrain left, giving John a tight smile at the door.

John went to the window and pulled back a heavy lace curtain to look down on

Grafton Street. The sidewalks were thick with people all the way up to the

arched gateway into St. Stephen's Green two short blocks up Grafton. The

motor traffic was two abreast filling the street and crawling along toward

him. There was a workman cleaning the parapet on the roof of the shopping

center diagonally across the street -- a white-coated figure with a

long-handled brush. He stood outlined against a row of five chimney pots.

Glancing at the closed door of the manager's office, John wondered how long

Mulrain would be. Everything was so damned formal here. John looked at his

watch. Mary would arrive with the children in a few minutes. They planned to

have tea, then John would walk down Grafton to Trinity College and begin work

at the college library -- the real start of his research project.

Much later, John would look back on those few minutes at the bank manager's

"first-floor" window and think how another sequence of events had been set in

motion without his knowledge, an inescapable thing like a movie film where one

frame followed another without ever the chance to deviate. It all centered

around Francis Bley's old car and a small VHF transmitter in the hands of a

determined man watching from an open window that looked down on that corner

where Grafton met St. Stephen's Green.

Bley, patient as always, eased along at the traffic's pace. Herity, in his

window vantage point, toggled the arming switch of his transmitter, making

sure the antenna wire dangled out over the sill.

As he neared the Grafton corner, the crush of pedestrians forced Bley to stop

and he missed the turn of the traffic light. He heard the tour bus gain clear

of traffic off to his right, trundling off in a rumble of its heavy diesel.

Barricades were being erected on the building to his left and a big

white-on-red sign had been raised over the rough construction: "This Building

to be Remodeled by G. Tottenham Sons, Ltd." Bley looked to his right and

noted the tall blue-and-white Prestige Cafeteria sign, feeling a small pang of

hunger. The pedestrian isthmus beside him was jammed with people waiting to

cross over to St. Stephen's Green and others struggling to make a way through

the cars stopped on Grafton and blocking Bley's path. The crush of

pedestrians was particularly heavy around Bley's car, people passing both

front and back. A woman in a brown tweed coat, a white parcel clutched under

her right elbow and each hand grasping a hand of a small child, hesitated at

the right front corner of Bley's car while she sought an opening through the

press of people.

John Roe O'Neill, standing at the bank manager's window, recognized Mary. He

saw her first because of her familiar tweed coat and the way she carried her

head, that sleek cap of jet hair. He smiled. The twins were screened from

him by the hurrying adults but he knew from Mary's stance that she held the

children's hands. A brief break in the throng allowed John a glimpse of the

top of Kevin's head and the old Ford with the driver's brown-sweatered elbow

protruding.

Where is that damned bank manager? John wondered. She'll be here any minute.

He dropped the heavy lace curtain and looked once more at his wrist-watch.

Herity, at the open window above and behind Bley, nodded once more to himself.

He stepped back away from the window and toggled the second switch on his

transmitter.

Bley's car exploded, ripped apart from the bottom. The bomb, exploding almost

under Bley's feet, drove him upward with a large piece of the car's roof, his

body crushed, dismembered and scattered. The large section of roof sailed

upward in a slow arc to come crashing onto the Irish Permanent Society

Building, demolishing chimney pots and slates.

It was not a large bomb as such things went, but it had been expertly placed.

The old car was transformed into jagged bits of metal and glass -- an orange

ball of fire peppered with deadly shrapnel. A section of the car's bonnet

decapitated Mary O'Neill. The twins became part of a bloody puddle blown

against the iron fencing across the street at St. Stephen's Green. Their

bodies were more easily identified later because they were the only children

of that age in the throng.

Herity did not pause to glance out at his work; the sound told it all. He

tucked the transmitter into a small and worn military green pack, stuffed an

old yellow sweater onto it, strapped the cover and slung the pack over his

shoulder. He left the building by the back way, elated and satisfied. Barney

and his group would get this message!

John O'Neill had looked up from his wristwatch just in time to see the orange

blast envelop Mary. He was saved from the window's shattered glass by the

heavy curtains, which deflected all but one of the shards away from him. One

small section of glass creased his scalp. The shock wave staggered him,

driving him backward against a desk. He fell sideways, momentarily

unconscious but getting quickly to his knees as the bank manager rushed into

the room, shouting:

"Good God! What was that?"

John stumbled to his feet, rejecting the question and the answer that rumbled

through his head like an aftershock of the blast. He brushed past the bank

manager and out the door. His mind remained in shock but his body found its

way down the stairs. He shouldered a woman aside at the foot of the stairs

and lurched out onto the street where he allowed himself to be carried along

by the crowd rushing toward the area of the blast. There was a smell of burnt

iron in the air and the sound of cries and screams.

Within only a few seconds John was part of a crush being held back by police

and uninjured civilians pressed into service to keep the area around the

explosion clear. John elbowed and clawed his way forward.

"My wife!" he shouted. "I saw her. She was there. My wife and our

children!"

A policeman pinned his arms and swung him around, blocking John's view of the

tangled fabric and bloody flesh strewn across the street.

The groans of the injured, the cries for help and the shouts of horror drove

John into insensate rage. Mary needs me! He struggled against the policeman.

"Mary! She was right in front of . . ."

"The ambulances are coming, sir! There's help at hand. You must be still.

You cannot go through now."

A woman off to John's left said: "Let me through. I'm a nurse."

This, more than anything else, stopped John's struggles against the policeman.

People were helping. There was a nurse.

"It'll be cleared up in a bit, sir," the policeman said. His voice was

maddeningly calm. "That's a bad cut on your head. I'll just help you across

to where the ambulances are coming."

John allowed himself to be led through a lane in the crowd, seeing the curious

stares, hearing the voices on his right ooing and the calling upon God to

"look over there" -- the awed voices telling John about things he did not want

to see. He knew, though. And there were glimpses past the policeman who

helped him to a cleared place against a building across from the green.

"There now, sir," the policeman said. "You'll be taken care of here." Then

to someone else: "I think he was hit by a flying bit; the bleeding seems

to've stopped."

John stood with his back against a scarred brick wall from which the dust of

the explosion still sifted. There was broken glass underfoot. Through an

opening in the crowd to his right he could see part of the bloody mess at the

corner, the people moving and bending over broken flesh. He thought he

recognized Mary's coat behind a kneeling priest. Somewhere within him there

existed an understanding of that scene. His mind remained frozen, though,

frigidly locked into limited thought. If he allowed himself to think freely,

then events would flow -- time would continue . . . a time without Mary and

the children. It was as though a tiny jewel of awareness held itself intact

within him, understanding, knowing . . . but nothing else could be allowed to

move.

A hand touched his arm.

It was electric. A scream erupted from him -- agonized, echoing down the

street, bringing people whirling around to stare at him. A photographer's

flash temporarily blinded him, shutting off the scream, but he could still

hear it within his head. It was more than a primal scream. This came from

deeper, from some place he had not suspected and against which he had no

protection. Two white-coated ambulance attendants grabbed him. He felt his

coat pulled down, shirt ripped. There came the prick of a needle in his arm.

They hustled him into an ambulance as an enveloping drowsiness overwhelmed his

mind, sweeping away his memory.

For a long time afterward, memory would not reproduce those shocked minutes.

He could recall the small car, the brown-sweatered elbow on the windowsill,

but nothing afterward. He knew he had seen what he had seen: the explosion,

the death. Intellectual awareness argued the facts. I was standing at that

window, I must have seen the blast. But the particulars lay behind a screen

that he could not penetrate. It lay frozen within him, demanding action lest

the frozen thing thaw and obliterate him.

Despair and grief suit the Celtic mind more than do joy and victory. Every

Celtic joy has its mixture of grief. Every victory leads to despair.

-- Fintan Craig Doheny

Stephen Browder read about the Grafton Street bombing while sitting on the

grass of the quad at the medical school of University College, Cork. As a

third-year student Browder had learned enough about school routine to provide

himself with a long lunch hour and a chance to crack the books and catch his

breath between classes. He had chosen this luncheon spot, however, because

some of the student nurses shared it and Kathleen O'Gara frequently was among

that lunching troupe.

It was a warm day and this had brought many others into the quad, all of them

preferring the green to the gothic stone monstrosity of the school, which

often seemed to partake more of the old jail that once had occupied this spot

than of a modern medical facility. The Cork Examiner in his hands was only a

prop but he had been caught by the picture of a screaming man -- "American

Tourist Loses Family" -- and he read the story, shaking his head now and then

at the horror of it.

Browder's attentions to Kathleen O'Gara had not gone without notice among the

student nurses. They teased her about it now.

"There he is, Katie. I'll loan you a handkerchief to drop in front of him."

Kate blushed, but could not keep herself from looking across the green at

Browder. He was a skinny, gawkish young man with sandy hair and widely set

blue eyes. His whole bearing gave promise of his becoming one of those

stoop-shouldered general practitioners who inspire so much faith among their

patients by their towering benignity. There was a persistent thoughtfulness

about him that she liked. The shyness was sure to become learned diffidence

and a down-the-nose austerity that would go well with his finely chiseled

features.

Browder looked up from his newspaper and met Kate's eyes. He looked away

quickly. He had been trying for two weeks to work up his courage, seeking a

way to ask her to go out with him. He berated himself now for not smiling

back at her.

He could not really define why she attracted him. She had a youthful figure,

a bit on the sturdy side, but comely. Her skin carried those fine surface

veins that gave a rosy hue to the complexion. Her hair now -- that was a

shining red-brown, part of the Viking legacy, and her dark brown eyes were set

rather deeply under a wide brow. He knew she was recognized as a good worker,

bright and cheerful, and he had heard another nursing student say about her:

"She's no beauty but good enough to get a husband."

She is beautiful in her own way, he thought.

Again, he glanced at her and their eyes met. She smiled and he forced himself

to smile before breaking the contact. His heart was beating strongly and he

bent over the newspaper for distraction. The picture of the screaming man

seemed to stare out at him, chilling him. The poor fellow's entire family

gone in that blast -- the wife and two children. For a moment, Browder had a

fantasy picture of himself married to Kate O'Gara -- children, of course. And

them gone like this. All of them. Without any warning. Everything that had

gone into Stephen Browder's choice of profession felt outraged by that

bombing.

Was anything worth it?

Even the reuniting of all Ireland, which he solemnly prayed for on holy days

-- could that justify this act?

A splinter group of the IRA, the Provos, was claiming credit, according to the

Examiner's story. Browder had friends in the IRA. One of his fellow students

made explosives for them. The sympathies of the University College student

body were not hard to discover. They wanted the Brits out.

Damn the Brits!

Browder felt torn by his Republican sympathies and his shock at what had been

done to those people in Dublin. Thirty-one dead; seventy-six maimed and

injured. And all because some people in the dail were reportedly wavering,

talking about an "accommodation." There could be no accommodation with the

Brits. Never!

But would the bombs ever solve anything?

A shadow fell on his newspaper. Browder looked up to see Kate O'Gara standing

there looking down at him. Hastily, he scrambled to his feet, spilling an

anatomy textbook from his lap, losing part of his newspaper. He looked down

at her, suddenly conscious that he was more than a head taller.

"You're Stephen Browder, aren't you?" she asked.

"Yes. Yes, I am."

She had a lovely soft voice, he thought. And he had an abrupt insight into

what a powerful asset such a voice would be to a nurse. It was a calming

voice. It gave him courage.

"And you're Kate O'Gara," he managed.

She nodded. "I saw you reading about that bombing, the one in Dublin. What a

terrible thing."

"'Tis that," he agreed. Then, before he lost courage: "Must you go back to

classes now?"

"I've only these few minutes."

"And what time do you finish?" He knew he was blushing as he asked.

She lowered her gaze. What long lashes she has, he thought. They lay like

feathers on her cheeks.

"I would like to see you," he said. And that was God's own truth. He

couldn't take his eyes off her.

"I'm expected home at half five," she said, looking up at him. "We could have

a tea perhaps on the way."

"Shall we meet here after classes then?" he asked.

"Yes." She smiled and hurried off to join her friends.

One of the other student nurses, having watched the two of them, whispered to

a companion: "God! I'm glad that's finally done."

Holy Ireland was just a name, a myth, a dream that had no connection with any

reality. It was our tradition, a part of our reputation, at one with the myth

that we have only the honor gained from glorious battle.

-- Father Michael Flannery

John Roe O'Neill awakened to see a priest standing beside him and a doctor

standing at the foot of his bed. He could feel the bed under him and smelled

antiseptics. This would be a hospital, then. The doctor was a tall, older

man with gray at the temples. He wore a green street jacket, stethoscope in

the pocket.

Why am I here? John wondered.

It was a hospital ward, he saw: other beds with figures in them. It was a

blankly impersonal room, a place designed with malice to negate the

personality of the occupant -- as though someone had worked consciously and

with a great deal of hate to create a place that would reflect no human

warmth. If this room uttered any statement it was: "You won't live long

here."

John tried to swallow. His throat hurt. He had been dreaming about Mary.

She had been swimming away from him in the dream, a great blue expanse of

water all around and no sound in her movements even when he saw the water

splashing.

"I'm going for the children," she said. He heard that, but still no sound of

swimming.

His dream self had thought: Of course. She must go for the children. Kevin

and Mairead will need her.

In the dream, he could sense Mary's mind as though it were his own. Her mind

conveyed an oddly crystalline quality like the aftermath of fever. "I can't

feel my body," she said. "Poor John. I love you."

Then he was awake, his eyes burning, and the priest and the doctor there. It

was a green place with a carbolic smell that separated it from the memories of

American hospitals. There were bonneted sisters bustling about and, when one

saw him awake, she hurried away. The shade was up on a single tall window to

the left of the doctor: darkness outside. It was night, then. Light came

from unshaded bulbs dangling on long wires from a high ceiling. The doctor

was examining a clipboard that was attached by a string and hook to the foot

of the bed.

"He's awake," the priest said.

The doctor let the clipboard fall back onto its string and looked down the

Frank Herbert - The White Plague

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