Harris Richard - Hellraisers: the life and inebriated times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter OToole, and Oliver Reed

*A Plague of Life* by Robert Reed

A Novelette

Robert Reed reports the following news: "My latest novel is _Sister Alice_, and she just came out from Tor. My two-year-old knows everything, and most questions deserve a 'No' answer. I bought my first new car in fourteen years, thanks in part to _Asimov's_. And I now have a website, which was built by a local SF club. You can reach it by going to starbaseandromeda.com. 'A Plague of Life' is the indirect result of watching a couple of million slides taken by my wife's father's family --the pictorial renderings of an important dynasty. They owned a black lab, and though long dead, he is still much loved, and his adventures are the stuff of legend."

-------It was a remarkable year, my mother has always told me. After a decade of nagging drought and bitter winters, our district found itself immersed in the mildest weather of the century. Wet blankets of snow melted with an early spring that brought nightly rains and warm sunny days free of hail and windstorms, and the following summer was warm as blood and perfectly damp, coaxing every dormant seed and spore to erupt into something green and happy. It was a year where every female hawk laid that second egg, every doe had her little fawn, and our cattle produced veritable lakes of milk and sweet blood. Even Lady dropped two pups in the same miraculous morning, and we kept one of the pups, while the other were sold at a good price to neighbors who knew about Lady's excellence. I was conceived during that exceptional summer. Mother always implied that I was planned, while my older half-siblings preferred to joke about wine and my father's youth and the interdiction of the Almighty. Whatever the reason, I was born the following year --a final blessing from a spendthrift time. My father very much adored me. People have always said so, and in the photographs and grainy films, he seems very much the doting father, and I am his giggling little girl, each smiling at the other in almost every surviving scene. Father was big and handsome, with the sharp features that only the youngest men possess. He was a teaser and a joker, and he could work hard from dawn to dark, which I suppose was one reason why my grandfather allowed the marriage. Father was a good man, too. I can't remember anyone saying otherwise, at least in my presence. He had a voice born for singing. He had a jolly attitude that I failed to inherit. He was smart in certain ways, particularly with machines. I wish there were more photographs and films showing him, but in our extensive family archives, for that particular period, the one who garnered the most attention was Lady.

A wonderful dog is a treasure. Grandfather says so, and it's hard not to believe him. In those times, our daily newspaper was delivered by airplane. A local man named Bergen --fearless and foolish in equal measure --would fly over each of the scattered farmsteads, dropping a tightly bound paper through a slot cut through the cabin floor. I don't know how many times the camera caught a glimpse of wings and then focused on Lady as she galloped across the yard, returning moments later with the paper in her mouth, bringing her prize up to the main house, always wagging her long stiff tail. But that was just a minor trick in her repertoire. Lady was old enough and smart enough to understand a fair portion of what she heard, and she was extremely skillful in killing rats and rabbits In season, she was a champion bird dog, and in every season, her loyalty to my grandfather and the rest of our family was a subject of unalloyed pride. One day, while Lady and my father were walking near the highway on the east edge of our farm, strangers drove up, dressed to hunt. They had come all the way from the city. There were two or three or four of them, depending on who tells it. But everyone agrees that they were from that portion of the city that people such as us don't frequent. My father, being good-natured, spoke to them for a while. They asked about Lady. He told a few stories. They asked if they could hunt the land, and Father allowed that it wasn't his decision to make, waving them up to the main house. My grandfather stepped out onto the porch and looked at them and politely told them, "No." Mostly, that's the way the story is told. He told them, "No," and then the disappointed men drove away, a tail of dust rising high into the bright autumn air.

A day later, Lady turned up missing.

She had never run away, and never would. Own a dog for as long as Grandfather had Lady, and there is no way the animal can surprise you. Of course she could have been hurt or killed somewhere on the property, but one of her gifts was a lifelong capacity to evade harm. Her mostly grown pup, Precious, did his best to find her. But there was nothing to find but some mysterious tire tracks on a dirt lane. Accompanied by my father and uncles, Grandfather journeyed to the city for the first time in years. The actual details of their adventures have always remained mysterious and intriguing. Whatever happened, they were gone for two days and nights, and when they came home again, Lady was riding on the seat beside the old man. Unharmed and perhaps a little wiser, the grateful dog ran between the houses for most of the afternoon, and according to my mother's telling, I chased after her until I was exhausted, collapsing into a soft stack of hay and sleeping past dinner.

The world settled down for the next weeks. Autumn turned to winter, and one cold morning, my father went out by himself to check on our blood cattle. From the physical evidence, he must have been standing within sight of the highway, and someone armed with a deer rifle put a slug into his exposed neck, and then as he lay on the ground, bleeding to death, they shot him just beneath his armored vest, in the guts, making certain that his last moments would be exceptionally miserable. The murderer was never caught.

"We tried," Mother tells me on occasion. Speaking with a philosophical resignation, she says, "The police did their best. But those people, that neighborhood ... it's very difficult to learn anything ... the kinds of people they are, and so clannish too...."

About the murder, I remember nothing.

Except for everything that I have been told, of course, and everything that I can see for myself. Lady is still a wonderful dog. Her son died long ago, the victim of too much bravery and some very thin ice. But Lady remains healthy and happy. More than a century has passed, but on those rare occasions when I come home, I make a point of looking into those golden eyes, wondering: Do you remember your adventure? What did you think about the city and those strange people? And do you know, Lady ... can you remember ... what were the exact words Grandfather used when he told the strangers to get off his land...?

* * *

I return home only for the best reasons. At this point, it takes three reasons to compel me to make the considerable journey.

My mother isn't well, which is the perennial motivation. Despite a robust bloodline, she suffers from a slow decay of function --mostly in her muscles, but increasingly in her mind too. She claims that she needs me. I am her only surviving daughter, and nobody else understands or has patience when it comes to an ancient woman. She suffers from tenacious fears and enduring panics. Modern medicines help -antioxidants and tailored enzymes --and if you chart her decay against the growth of biochemical knowledge, I suspect that she will pass out of this crisis in another five or six decades. But a daughter can take nothing for granted, and she is my mother. Of course I will come visit her. It is my duty to hold her hand and listen dutifully while she repeats stories that have been repeated too many times, and in exactly the same way, acquiring a stone-like reality of their own, immune to questions or the tiniest doubt. Usually my family supplies my second reason to visit. On a world increasingly tiny and crowded, they have maintained possession over an exceptionally rich expanse of soil and water. The farm is a business. The business supplies food for thousands of city-trapped souls. As a minor shareholder, I am required on rare occasions to show my face, casting my little vote in some officious matter that keeps the legal machinery of the farm running smoothly. As a token of his appreciation, my grandfather usually pays for my journey home. But his charity has limits, and leaving the farm will always be an insult directed at him. I am required to find my own way back, whether it is a brief ride, or like now, a very long flight. Finally, I need some personal reason to make the journey. Perhaps I'll bring a new man, or maybe some personal success has come to me. Success still finds me, although not nearly as often as when I was young. What matters --what is essential here --is that I bring along something about which I can brag. My self-esteem demands it. If I have to sit with my half-brothers and uncles and aunts, plus my endless cousins and nephews and nieces, then I need some good reason to be prideful and self-assured.