The White Plague (54 page)

O’Neill-Within whispered in John’s mind:
They’ve found out about the long dormancy phase.

It came to John then that Doheny was still probing, subtly and expertly seeking after O’Neill. As he thought this, John felt O’Neill withdraw, deep within. Doheny was more dangerous than Herity. What had happened to Herity, the priest and the boy?

“Quarantine will not work forever,” Doheny said.

John found that he was taking short, shallow breaths. He tried to breathe deeper but his chest pained him.

“Have you confronted the fact that we may face an unsolvable problem?” Doheny asked.

John shook his head. “There has to be a… solution.” He thought about his own words. It had never occurred to him that O’Neill’s revenge might be an ultimate failure for mankind. Every problem could be solved! He knew how the plague had been created. The form of it lay there in his mind, an internal movie that he could play at will. No cure? That was insane!

“Have you noticed that we’re not creating any hopeful new myths here in Ireland?” Doheny asked.

“What?” Doheny’s words bounced around in John’s awareness. What was the man saying?

“Only the old myths of death and destruction,” Doheny said. “It’s fitting we should originate the Literature of Despair.”

“What has that to do with…”

“What greater proof of ultimate defeat?”

“Have you given up?”

“That’s not the point, John. May I call you John?”

“Yes, but… what are…”

“Recognizing ultimate defeat does terrible psychic damage, John. Bitter, bitter consequences…”

“But you yourself just suggested…”

“That we may have to swallow the bitter pill.”

John stared at the man. Was he insane? Was this a variation on the mad priest at the clothing hut?

“What do you say to this, John?” Doheny asked.

“Where’re Herity, Father Michael and the boy?”

Doheny looked startled. “What’s your concern about them?”

“I… just wondered.”

“They’re not Ireland, John.”

Yes they are!
John thought.
They’re my Ireland.

Revenge had created them, shaped them like clay on a potter’s wheel. The silent boy loomed large in his mind. What would the boy be if there were nothing fragile or pathetic about him? There must be strength in him somewhere. John tried to visualize the boy maturing – those faun’s eyes. A heart-breaker should any mature female ever get to know him. But that would never happen if Doheny’s suspicions proved true!

No more agony for that boy
, John thought.
It’s enough. O’Neill-Within is content.

“We’re not defeated,” John said.

“And that’s what I’m warning you about, John. Look around you. Defeated people always try to compensate with myths and legends.”

“We’re not talking about myths and legends!”

“Oh, but we are. We’re talking about the retrospective curtains that hide unacceptable facts. Not disaster but heroic tales! No people has ever been more accomplished at myth creation than we Irish.”

“No more hope,” John said, his voice low, remembering Grampa Jack and the magic stories beside the fireplace.

“The devil’s own truth,” Doheny said. “Imagine it, John. Everything in our history conspired to strengthen the Irish faculty for the heroic myth to soften defeat.”

“Tell that to Father Michael!”

“Michael Flannery? Aw, now, even the Church did stalwart duty with its myths. Defeat reduced to divine justice, God’s revenge for past misbehavior. The English even had a hand in this. With a kind of unwitting perversity, they outlawed our religion. Prohibition always strengthens what it bans.”

John’s thoughts whirled in confusion. What lay behind Doheny’s words?

Doheny patted his bulging stomach. “The starvations were a peculiar Irish trauma, a lesson we’ve never forgotten. Compulsive eating is our most common response to adversity.”

John decided this must be mad rambling. No real point in it, no reasoning behind it.

“I’m one of the few fat men in Ireland these days,” Doheny said.

“Then you haven’t given up.”

“I may be the only mythmaker left to us,” Doheny said. “Inspired research, that’s what we need right now.”

John shook his head, uncomprehending.

“I’ve been sitting here composing a myth about John Garrech O’Donnell,” Doheny said. “Garrech.” He rolled it out in that velvet voice. “John Garrech O’Donnell, a fine old Irish name. It demands a special myth, it does.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about John Garrech O’Donnell, a Yankee descendant of strong Gaelic stock. That’s what I’m talking about. You’ve come back to us, John Garrech O’Donnell. You’ve brought us a sensational new approach to the plague! You’re a vision of hope, John Garrech O’Donnell! I’ll put it about immediately.”

“Are you nuts?”

“People will admire you, John.”

“For what?”

“For your vision. The Irish always admire vision.”

“I’ll not be a party to…”

“Then I’ll have to turn you over to Kevin for immediate disposal. We’ve plenty of lab technicians. What we need is inspiration and hope.”

“And what happens if I don’t…”

“If you fail? Ahhh, then that’s the end of you right there. We’re not very tolerant of failure, we aren’t.”

“You mean you just kill off…”

“Oh, no! Nothing so bloody or simple. But Kevin has a short temper and a quick gun.”

“Then I’ll have to hide my mistakes.”

“Not from me, you won’t!” Doheny pushed himself away from his desk. “We’ll be sending you along to Peard at Killaloe. I suggest you work out your sensational new approach to the plague before you arrive.”

John’s gaze followed Doheny as the man arose. “Do or die?”

“Isn’t that the nature of our problem?” Doheny asked.

John forced his gaze away from Doheny. The way the man stood there, accusing!

“You see, John,” Doheny said, “there’s new pressure from the plague. The thing is mutating. It’s into the mammals of the sea: the whales, the porpoises, the seals and such. No stopping the spread of it now.”

John knew his face was a frozen mask. Mutation! There was something he had not considered. It had gotten out of hand. The thing was a wildfire.

“If you’ll just wait here,” Doheny said, “I’ll go and lay on your travel arrangements.”

He let himself out into the hall. Kevin already was there, emerging from the adjoining office.

“You’re a fool, Doheny!” Kevin whispered. “What if he tries to destroy our work at Killaloe?”

“Then you’ll have to kill him,” Doheny said. “Have they sent the fingerprints and dental charts, yet?”

“They’re playing it cautious!
Why do we want them? Do we have a suspect?
Why else do they think we’d ask?”

“It was dangerous to ask, Kevin.”

“It’s dangerous to live!”

“Kevin… if that’s O’Neill in there and if I’ve motivated him correctly, he’ll solve the thing for us.”

“You as much as told him it couldn’t be cured!”

“That surprised him, you know. He was shocked. Never thought about it before. Typical researcher. Eyes on the goal.”

“And what if you’re right?” Kevin asked. “What if it’s O’Neill and
he
fails?”

“Then hope is dead for sure.”

A doctor says: “Sir, it would be better to die according to the rules than to live in contradiction to the Faculty of Medicine.”

– Moliere, speaking to a patient who recovered with unorthodox treatment

W
ILLIAM
R
UCKERMAN’S
first meeting with his pilot was on the field at Hagerstown, Maryland. Dawn opened a thin crack of light along the eastern horizon. It was cold, it was misty wet and Ruckerman was nursing a nervous stomach. He had been staying in a military-run hotel near the field for two days before Weather said it was safe to make the trans-Atlantic flight. The two days had been a sniffly, headachy period in which he had experienced the growing certainty that he was suffering the benign symptoms of the plague, realizing with an empty feeling that he was now a carrier.

Someone from the Washington power elite had to do this, though, the long-term stakes being what they were. Beckett’s little cabal had really nailed down the potential but they were crazy if they thought they could control it by themselves.

Cranmore McCrae, the pilot, turned out to be a short and rather stout young man with an oversized head – a head so large that Ruckerman decided it must be the result of hormone imbalances. McCrae, standing just inside the plane, appeared deformed: small blue eyes set widely apart over a flat nose, long mouth with thick lips and blocky jaw which moved on a hinge far back against his neck.

The plane was a small twin jet of a model Ruckerman did not recognize. It looked like an expensive executive aircraft – sleek and fast with its nose jutting far out over the front gear. The door folded down to become stairs.

The sergeant who had driven Ruckerman to the field stood at the foot of the stairs, damp wind whipping his coat, until McCrae closed the door and sealed it. McCrae strapped Ruckerman’s bag into an empty seat, then led the way forward, beginning the oddest interrogation Ruckerman had ever experienced.

“Tell me, Doctor Ruckerman,” McCrae asked, “is there any reason Charlie Turkwood might want you dead?”

Ruckerman, who was seating himself in the right-hand side of the cockpit and beginning to fasten his seatbelt, stopped and stared at McCrae. What a strange question. Ruckerman wondered if he had heard it correctly.

“Fasten your seatbelt there,” McCrae said. “We’re getting the hell outa here.”

“Are you suggesting Charlie Turkwood might want me dead?” Ruckerman asked, clipping the lock of his seatbelt.

“That’s the general idea.” McCrae donned a headset and adjusted a microphone close to his lips. He thumbed a switch on the control wheel.

“This is Rover Boy,” he said. “Ready to taxi.”

“Clear to taxi, Rover Boy.” The metallic voice from the tower came from an overhead speaker. Ruckerman looked up at the grille.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. And he wondered what Jim Saddler had gotten him into – people wanting him dead! He mused on this as McCrae cleared for the runway, taxied into position and aimed the aircraft down the long field.

McCrae looked at him then. “I sure hope you’re right.”

He pushed the throttles to the firewall. The plane gathered speed, slowly at first, then pressing Ruckerman back into the cushions. Lift-off was smooth, followed by rapid climb out over the low overcast. Ruckerman blinked in the bright sunlight reflected off a fleecy ocean of clouds.

“About six and a half hours estimated flying time,” McCrae said.

“Why the devil did you ask that question about Turkwood?” Ruckerman demanded.

“I was a CIA pilot and I still have a few friends around who tell me things. Can I call you Will? I hear that’s what your friends call you.”

Ruckerman spoke stiffly: “Call me whatever you like, just so long as you explain this, this…”

“Well, Will, my friends say Turky is bad news. I’ve been nosing around, you know? Trying to find out if there might be some jokers in this deck… some other reason for our little trip.”

“What other reason could there possibly be?” Ruckerman looked out at the cloud cover, a changing landscape without any safe referents. He wondered if they had assigned him a mad pilot.

“You really think the Irish have that Madman O’Neill?” McCrae asked. “They want me to look into that after I drop you off.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say,” Ruckerman said.

“I know that sergeant who drove you out to the field,” McCrae said. “An odd-job man. What’d you two talk about during the drive?”

“He wondered who had arranged for me to do this. I… I told him I thought it originated with the President himself.”

“Christ on a crutch!” McCrae said.

“Will you tell me what this is all about?”

“Look, Will,” McCrae said, “we’re at thirty-two thousand right now and things look pretty smooth here. I’m going to put this bird on automatic while I go back and have a look around. You just sit tight and don’t touch anything. Sing out if you see any other planes. Okay?”

“Look around? For what?”

“I’d feel a lot better about this flight if I was sure we weren’t packing something that’ll go boom.”

“A bomb?” Ruckerman felt a tight sensation in the pit of his stomach.

McCrae had unbuckled his harness and slipped out of it. He stood bent over, looking back at Ruckerman.

“It could be just my native caution.” He turned away and left the compartment but his voice was still audible to Ruckerman. “Damn! I should’ve demanded to make my own inspection of this bird!”

Ruckerman turned and looked out the windscreen. Their flight path was taking them diagonally across a deep chasm in the clouds, a gray glimpse of ocean through the screening mists far below.

This was insane. This whole trip did not ring true, suddenly. He was tempted to tell McCrae to turn back. But would McCrae obey him? And even if McCrae agreed, would they be allowed to return?

“This is a one-way trip until we find the cure,”
Saddler had said.

Ruckerman thought of the deep banks of antiaircraft missiles around Washington. One MUSAM with its multi-headed heat-and-motion-seekers…

McCrae slipped back into his seat and buckled his harness. “I can’t find a damn thing.” He checked his instruments and looked then at Ruckerman. “How’d they rope you into this?”

“I was the obvious choice.”

“Yeah? For what?”

“I have the confidence of the President and his chief advisors. I have the scientific background to, well, assess… things.”

“My friends say you may be a patsy.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot of hate going around against science and scientists. How’d you get contaminated, anyway?”

Ruckerman swallowed. This was the tricky part. “I… it was a stupid thing. I went through a wrong door at one of the quarantine stations. They should not have left that door unlocked!”