Dreamer of Dune (41 page)

E
ARLY IN
January 1983, I finished
The Client's Survival Manual
, nearly five hundred pages, and dispatched it to Clyde Taylor in New York. I had heard my father speak of needing to get a manuscript out the door, getting it finished and out of sight for the sake of sanity, and now I knew what he meant.

I set to work on a new science fiction novel,
Sudanna, Sudanna
, about an alien planetoid where music was outlawed.

Around this time I spoke with Dad by telephone. He and Mom had just returned from a tiring trip to Carmel and San Francisco. Mom had gone in for medical checkups before and after the trip, and the deterioration of her heart muscle had slowed. This was bittersweet news, since it was still deteriorating.

While in San Francisco, my father wandered into a Market Street bookstore, as a customer. And, as he did occasionally, he began removing copies of his books from the racks and signing them. Suddenly the clerk, a huffy young man, rushed over and said, “Now see here! What do you think you're doing?”

“I'm autographing these books, of course,” came the response, in an erudite tone. And Dad pulled another book down from the shelf, a hardcover edition of
Children of Dune
. On the title page he drew a line through his name and scrawled his signature, with practiced strokes.

“You'll have to stop, sir!” the clerk exclaimed, believing him to be a pretender, perhaps even a megalomaniac.

“But I'm Frank Herbert.”

The clerk didn't believe him, not even when Dad held the photograph of himself on the back cover of
Children of Dune
next his face. It wasn't until the bearded man produced identification, including a raft of credit cards, that he was finally believed. Then the poor fellow became the most embarrassed, apologetic person on the face of the earth.

Dad told me he was ninety pages into the first draft of
Heretics of Dune
. He referred to it as “the one all the money's riding on,” since he was being paid so much for it.

He said Mom and one of the caretakers, Sheila, were planting poinsettias for Jan on the hillside just outside the kitchen window. Poinsettias had been important to my wife since childhood, when she placed them at the base of a statue of the Virgin Mary and prayed for her mother to recover from an illness. Reportedly a miracle had occurred. Over the years, my mother had given Jan poinsettia gifts in a variety of forms, from tablecloths and napkins bearing the design to live plants. Now Beverly Herbert wanted to present her daughter-in-law with fresh flowers when we went to visit. Mom had also been looking for information on cruise ships for me, and had found a couple that she was anxious to tell me about.

On Sunday, January 9, 1983, Dad called and told me angrily about an attempt by Chilton Books to assert an interest in the
Dune
movie, despite having waived all such rights when Putnam became the hardcover publisher of
Dune
. I asked him if there might be loopholes in the waiver, and he said there were none to his knowledge. “I'm going to put a Philadelphia lawyer in his place,” he said, referring to the attorney representing Chilton.

My father said he was putting in long hours on the new novel, pressing to complete it as soon as possible. That morning, as usual, he rose before dawn and worked out on a rowing machine and exercycle. Then a quick shower and a light breakfast of toast and guava juice, which he took to his study. He took a large number of vitamins each day.
^*

After writing for three hours, he helped Mom get ready for the day. He made her hot Cream of Wheat with sliced bananas on top, found books and knitting materials and art supplies and whatever else she needed, and by 9:30 he was back at his desk. He was using a Compaq word processor now instead of a typewriter, since it was much faster. Each night he put the computer away in a dry room, to prevent it from being damaged so quickly by salt air.

My mother was sitting outside in the sun as he spoke, with a sketch pad on her lap, painting lush flowers from their garden.

During this time, I performed the usual chores for my parents, involving insurance, maintaining their car, straightening out bank accounts and tracking down items that they could not locate in Hawaii. A number of telephone calls came in as well, from people looking for them. I played “moat dragon” by screening the inquiries, so that Mom and Dad would not be disturbed unnecessarily.

In mid-January I spoke with my parents, with each of them on an extension phone. After listening to Dad for several minutes, I asked my mother what she had been doing to keep busy.

“Checking up on your father,” she said with a chuckle. “It used to be easier when he wrote with a typewriter, but now he has a word processor and I have to listen carefully for the keys.”

Dad laughed.

“How are you feeling, Mom?” I asked.

“Oh fine, fine.” She sounded cheerful, with a hint of the giggly little-girl cuteness she could exude at times.

Dad spoke of a party they had been to, and how easy it was in Hawaii to eat and drink to excess and get too much sun. He suggested a book we might write together, in a year or so. It would be non-fiction, with a working title of
Looking for America
. The book would examine American myths, including reminiscences and comparisons…discussing how far off course we had drifted. I expressed interest, keeping in mind occasional discussions we'd had to do a humor book or cookbook together. Such discussions had petered out, but in retrospect I hadn't pressed them, and my father had to be the busiest man on the planet.

I learned later that Mom had been encouraging him to write a book with me. I discovered as well that she wanted to sell Xanadu, the Port Townsend house, and purchase a waterfront place on Mercer Island, near us. At her urging, they planned to begin looking for the house upon returning to the mainland. “I love the water,” she said.

It was all part of a secret and well-thought-out plan she had, one that would become increasingly evident to all of us.

In mid-February, after experiencing plot problems on my new novel, I was beginning to build up a head of steam. I was sitting at the typewriter when Mom called.

“I called for nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about you guys, missing you.”

We discussed
Sidney's Comet
. She was anxious to see it in book form. I told her I received a color proof of the cover art several days earlier, and would make a copy for her. Publication was scheduled for June.

Dad came on the line for a few moments, and said
he was
of
Heretics of Dune
out of a projected five hundred. This was only forty-six pages better than a month earlier, and he said he had run into plot problems, slowing him down. I learned later that Mom had not been feeling well in recent weeks, with nausea and loss of appetite, as well as abdominal pains from serious fluid accumulation in the peritoneal cavity. Dad had been required take her to the Hana Medical Clinic almost every day, and Dr. Howell, thinking her medications might be causing her discomfiture, reduced her medications. This, however, resulted in a severe loss of energy, and the medications were reinstituted. Dad didn't tell me these things with Mom nearby, as she didn't like him sharing too much detail about her condition, fearing it would make us worry.

But the next day, a Monday, Dad phoned me at work and said, “I don't want you to think this is a big medical emergency, Brian, but we may be back in three days.”

Dr. Howell wanted Group Health Hospital in Redmond (near Seattle) to monitor her blood condition and other vital signs to see how her body chemistry was reacting to medication. They had to balance it carefully. The doctor was checking with his mainland counterparts on this, and a flight was being arranged.

My father wanted me to pick them up at SeaTac Airport on Thursday, February twenty-fourth, and said they needed to stay with us. But he was rattled, and called me before knowing the flight schedule. I was worried about him, knowing how difficult it was for him to be pulled out of the middle of a book.

I heard my mother's voice in the background, rather a high tone, and Dad paused to listen to her. “I'll be right back,” he said to me. The receiver thumped as he set it down.

Presently Dad returned, saying Mom got a shot from Dr. Howell and was complaining that her thigh hurt. I heard her say something about not wanting to climb the stairs to the bedrooms in our house. She might stay in the hospital, Dad said, and he would stay with us. My mother was unhappy, too, about having to leave Kawaloa.

Afterward Jan and I spoke about how unfortunate it was that they had chosen to live in such a remote part of the world, with Mom needing so much medical care. Hana was good for my mother's soul, but the decision to live there had been emotional, not thought out well.

I didn't sleep well that night, and learned in the morning that Jan and I had said separate prayers for Mom.

On the evening of the twenty-fourth, we drove Mom straight to Group Health Hospital in Redmond. I had a color proof of the
Sidney's Comet
cover in the car, and showed it to them. It depicted a fiery orange and yellow comet against a starry backdrop of space. It was a comet composed of Earth's own jettisoned garbage, coming back to destroy the planet.

We checked Mom into the hospital. She had been experiencing abdominal pains, and according to tests performed in Hawaii had minor fluid accumulations in her abdomen and liver. One of the nurses asked her to list all the medications she was on, and Mom rattled off four or five.

Dad went with her to X-ray, made sure the phone in her room was hooked up, and explained details of her condition to the nurses and a doctor. It took over two hours, and we did not arrive home until nearly 1:30
A.M
.

On the drive to our house, Dad said the
Dune
movie should be completed by 1984, but perhaps not until late in the year. He said the dispute with Chilton over movie rights had been settled out of court, with Dad paying 37.5 percent and Putnam the balance. The problem was a clause in the contract that gave Chilton “three-dimensional reproduction rights.” Dad asked what it meant at the time and recalled being told that it referred to movie promotional items, such as pop-up books and tee-shirts. The Chilton lawyers used this clause, in my father's words, “to harass the movie production,” and he thought they might have to be paid around seventy-five thousand dollars under the settlement agreement.

We discussed the
America
book we were going to do. He spoke passionately about the blunders of existing governmental systems. Whenever he started talking about politics, he had a lot to say. Millions of readers knew this from the
Dune
sequels in particular, where the characters spoke at length about power and politics, didactically at times. Frank Herbert was, after all, a teacher.

He was a staunch believer in America and in democracy, but his active mind envisioned any number of improvements that might be made to the system. One of them involved what he called a “national jury democracy” or “national town meeting,” in which governmental power would be taken away from politicians and bureaucrats, in favor of the citizenry. The U.S. House and Senate, and similar state institutions, would be eliminated entirely, with their veto power transferred to the electorate. Under a nationwide “jury” system linked by computer, the electorate would be given the power to veto any decision, any policy made by their leaders. It didn't matter what governors or even the president of the United States said. The people would have a direct voice in everything.

My father went on to say that he wanted to remove entrenched functionaries, that the American bureaucracy needed to be radically overhauled. In an incredulous tone he told the story of a Washington, D.C., bureaucrat who had been ensconced in his position for more than four decades. Like many others, he could not be fired. Incredibly, the bureaucrat referred to members of the U.S. House and Senate as “transients.”

The morning after our brainstorming session, a Friday, Dad was up at dawn, on his way to the hospital to see Mom. She spent the day traveling between Redmond and Seattle by cabulance, for the various tests she needed. Her abdomen had flattened out, and she was feeling better. He'd gone to a department store at noon, skipping lunch, and bought her a warm robe.

At our house that evening Dad talked about his childhood and what he knew of Mom's, and frequently his eyes misted over. But he kept on, as if trying to recapture halcyon, simpler times.

Dad, Julie and I visited Mom that evening. She looked nice in the new light blue robe he had given her. On the way home, Dad gave us ominous news. He said she had “cardiomyopathy” and “pneumonitis,” linked to the radiation treatments of 1974, with only 60 to 65 percent of her normal heart and lung functions remaining. Most of the right side of her heart had collapsed. She would be checking out of the hospital soon, and he was arranging for her to have oxygen at home when she slept. A home-unit would convert ambient air to 95 percent pure oxygen. Since the heart produces oxygen for the body, he explained, Mom needed more oxygen to supplement the loss of function. He thought the best they could hope for was for the heart to remain stable, or eventually the condition would kill her.

“There are no guarantees in this life,” he told me.

“At least Mom has had a better life than many people,” I said.

He thought for a moment, then said, in a determined voice, “It's not over yet.”

On Saturday, February 26, 1983, Frank Herbert woke up at around 4:00 in the morning and telephoned the hospital to check on his wife. She'd had a good night's sleep, according to the nurse on duty.

When I saw him later that morning, he had a one inch gash on top of his forehead. He had been sleeping in our carriage house room under a low overhang, and whacked his head when he sat up too quickly.