Dreamer of Dune (36 page)

In the midst of Frank Herbert's worldwide fame, his son-in-law, Ron Merritt, asked of him, “Frank, what do you want out of life?”

The response, without equivocation: “First class.”

Dad was never made of patience, and with his success he was required to travel more and more, on book tours, to conventions, to meet with agents and publishers. This took him away from his study, where he really wanted to be, creating new stories. He decided that if he couldn't write he would demand the best services while he was on the road. In part this was from having experienced the finest hotels and restaurants in the world, so he was using them as standards of comparison. But increasingly he came to demand excellence for the sake of my mother's comfort and for her dietary requirements. He was extremely protective of her and attentive to her needs.

Thursday, May 28, 1981, was a beautiful seventy-degree day in Seattle, with blue skies and lazy, drifting clouds. My father had been on a local television show for half an hour the previous evening. This morning he was on
The Today Show,
taped earlier and broadcast nationally from New York. At the office of Stanley T. Scott & Company—the insurance agency where I worked—we watched him on the lunchroom television set. Later in the morning Dad was interviewed by a Seattle radio station.

The radio interview concluded at noon, after which my celebrity father was driven by limousine to a downtown delicatessen for a sandwich. Then he hurried to afternoon autograph parties at two Seattle bookstores, lasting until 5:30
P.M
. We made arrangements to meet at a restaurant that evening.

At dinner, Dad was a bit demanding, which he had a tendency to be at restaurants when he was hungry. Initially we were seated at a table where surrounding conversation was too noisy for us to converse comfortably. Dad went to the maître d' and demanded another table, which he received, but only after telling the maître d', “This is a disgusting way to treat a regular customer.” On other occasions Dad would stand at the front counter waiting for a table, positioning himself so that he interfered with the normal flow of patrons and employees. In this manner he was able to get seated sooner, as the restaurant wanted to get him out of the way. It was a trick he had learned from another science fiction writer.

Once we had our table, Dad was in fine form. He told such an amazing array of interesting stories and jokes that people at nearby tables were eavesdropping, even laughing at Dad's punch lines. Howie Hansen and his new wife, Joanne, were with us this evening, and on one occasion Howie said something about computers. Dad disagreed with the comment, and became very authoritative.

It was characteristic of my father that he never admitted he was wrong about anything. He was “super-knowledgeable,” as my mother put it. Everything he said came out as if it was supported by the entire research facility of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
.

This evening I found it all very amusing.

Dad filled us in for several minutes on
God Emperor of Dune
. It was number four on the
New York Times
bestseller list for hardcovers, number one on other lists, and even hotter than his biggest previous bestseller,
Children of Dune
. Berkley Books would come out with the paperback after the hardcover had run its course at around two hundred thousand copies, with one million first-edition paperback copies planned.

He gave me a colorful stand-up cardboard cutout with a spaceship on it, bearing the words “FRANK HERBERT
IS
SCIENCE FICTION.” It had been printed and distributed by B. Dalton Bookseller and used for promotion of his books.

He said the
Dune
movie looked like a “go” once more in its long and checkered history. Dino De Laurentiis was talking about a forty-million-dollar production, including a ten million dollar cost overrun guarantee from Universal Studios. Dad said with luck the movie might be completed in a year and a half, but added quickly that he would be surprised if it happened that soon.

“I'll believe it when I'm sitting in the theater with a box of popcorn,” he quipped.

My father and his longtime best friend, Howie, talked a lot about old times, and in the process told a number of great stories, some of which I had heard previously. Howie told some amusing jokes from the 1950s.

Howie also said when he heard his buddy was going to be on Seattle's KIRO Radio that morning, he called the show's producer and asked him to be certain that the moderator, Jim French, didn't ask the usual stupid questions my father had faced on other programs. “This man has something important to say,” Howie said. “Ask him something intelligent.” He went on to tell the producer that Frank Herbert was a member of a writing team when he created his great novels. My mother, Howie said, was the other member of that team.

“Tell French to ask about Bev,” Howie said.

And French did exactly that, eliciting an emotion-filled expression of gratitude from Dad for her contributions to his life and career.

When Dad felt it was time to leave the dinner table, he rose first, and the rest of us followed. I had seen this interesting phenomenon in my business career as well—the boss rising first and the rest following. The dominant person who knew he was in control.

On the way back to the room, I walked with Dad and noticed, for the first time, that he always walked half a shoulder ahead, never content to relax and fall in beside or behind another person. He was a man with an incredible energy source. A dynamo.

I realized as I got to know my father that he wanted it all. He wanted strong family ties, and he tried hard in that direction. But he wanted celebrity status, too, which left him less time to be with his family. Ironically, he had become a hero to millions of readers, despite his professed aversion to heroes—a key point of his most famous series of books. If he was ever asked whether he considered himself a guru, he invariably quipped that he was planning to open Herbertville in Guyana to house the inner circle of his cult, and he needed someone to handle the Kool-Aid concession for him. Or he might say, with disarming humility, “I'm nobody.”

The following morning, Mom and Dad caught a plane to Hawaii, where they checked on the progress of construction. After that they flew on to Australia, where Dad was guest of honor at a big science fiction convention. From Australia, Mom sent postcards to Julie and Kim with pictures of baby kangaroos in the pouches of their mothers.

They flew to Singapore, where they stayed at the famous Raffles Hotel, but for only one night. “The service has gone to pot,” Dad told me later. A new Raffles Convention Center was being built near the hotel, and they felt the area was becoming too tourist-oriented. They found another hotel.

Then on to Zurich, where they stayed in a second-floor suite in the elegant Dolder Grand Hotel. After that they spent a couple of days in Scotland touring castles and a week in Ireland, where Dad researched the setting of his new novel,
The White Plague
. He had contracted with Putnam to write this book under a package arrangement with
God Emperor of Dune
. In Ireland he obtained maps, coastline charts and other documents, and took hundreds of photographs, tracing the entire path he had in mind for characters in his book.

“When we were in Ireland,” Mom would report to me later, “I saw you everywhere.” This was in reference to my facial features, which she said were very Irish.

Ireland was followed by London, where Dad called upon his favorite tailor, Anderson & Sheppard, from whom he ordered a suit. He and Mom then took a one-day side trip to Birmingham for an autograph party, where hundreds of English fans queued around the block to purchase his books and obtain autographs.

Early in July, I completed
Sidney's Comet
and mailed it to an agent in New York City. His name was Clyde Taylor, and he had been recommended by my father after I'd experienced difficulty finding an agent. Following Dad's advice I set immediately to work on another novel, a sequel about a magical universe in which comets were sentient life forms. My new novel,
The Garbage Chronicles,
would resume the satirical ecology theme from
Sidney's Comet
, about garbage catapulted into deep space.

I
N THE
summer of 1981, Frank Herbert received the biggest science fiction book contract in history for
Heretics of Dune
(“
Dune
5”). Part of the deal was a high-limit accident insurance policy, to be paid for by the publisher. To reduce income taxes, he was receiving the funds over several years.

Mom kept saying she couldn't believe the size of the contract, but there was good reason for it.
God Emperor of Dune
was a phenomenal bestseller, and the sales of the entire
Dune
series, now at four books, were exploding. A full-page
Washington Post
article ran that year about the tremendous success of
God Emperor
. Putnam's hardcover edition of the book had a sphinx on the cover, but in the newspaper article the artist drew Frank Herbert's bearded face on the sphinx!

Soon, Dad's literary agent was in London negotiating for the book rights to
Dune
6,” as yet untitled. Dad expected to receive more than twice as much for it as he had received for
Heretics
.

During the next writing session with my father at Xanadu, I saw maps of Ireland displayed in the study—and Dad showed me several slides of Dublin and of the completed Kawaloa caretaker's house. His upcoming novel based in Ireland,
The White Plague
, would begin with a man's family being killed by a bomb explosion in Dublin. On the maps, Dad showed me the path of the story in detail, across the Republic of Ireland. He pointed out a place they visited in County Clare on the west coast—Spanish Point—where a large portion of Philip II's Spanish Armada ended up on the rocks in September 1588. He also showed me a burgee from the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Ireland that he intended to fly on his own sailboat. It was a triangular red banner with a harp maiden and a crown on it, based upon the burgee design of the first yacht club in the world, established there in 1720.

Dad and I played Hearts that evening, and he beat me soundly.

The next morning, Sunday, he was preparing hot chocolate and toast for us, with Hawaiian guava jelly, and I said to him in a mock-pitiful tone, “You didn't have to win every game of cards, did you? Couldn't you have lost just one to make me feel better?”

He smiled impishly and replied, “There are some things I don't do well.”

When we left to return home, Dad gave me a ball-point pen on a leather neck strap, a pen that he had used for autograph parties. I liked the gift very much, not only for its utility but for its symbolism. The writing instrument clicked in and out of a clip on a necklace that remained around the neck. He said he had a number of them in a variety of colors, purchased at a stationery store in London.

I was busy with my writing during this time. In addition to the novel, I was collaborating with an elderly friend, Walt Green. We were putting together a collection of aphorisms that had grown quickly to five books. A number of local stores were carrying my
Classic Comebacks
book, which buoyed my spirits—and Jan helped even more by asking other stores to order the book.

In mid-July, I learned that Mom had been coughing a little. She said it had begun some weeks before, after touring a damp and drafty Scottish castle. It was nothing, she assured us, and had been improved with medication prescribed by a Port Townsend doctor.

But on July 27, Dad called from Port Townsend and said in an unsteady voice that Mom had been diagnosed by a local doctor as having pericarditis, meaning the pericardium (the membranous sac containing her heart) had been filling with fluid, placing a strain on the heart. She was tiring easily, and was short of breath. Her lungs were congested. Dad said he would be taking her into Group Health Hospital in Redmond in two days. He assured me that it was a correctable condition, and that the recovery period on pericarditis was dramatic. “The prognosis is good for a full recovery,” he said. Still, I heard the strain in his voice.

The following day Mom telephoned Jan, and expressed concern that now she wouldn't feel well enough to help with our baby, which was due in October or November. There had been plans for my thirteen-year-old daughter Julie to stay in Port Townsend that summer as well, and now they would have to be canceled. Mom had been knitting a tiny white sweater for the baby, and doubted if she would have the energy to complete it.

On her first day in the hospital, Mom looked good, and told us she was feeling better than the night before, when she had been congested. I sat by the bed and held her hand for a moment. Her hand was warm, and she squeezed mine reassuringly.

In ensuing days I took a bag lunch and ate with her in her room, while she complained about the steamed hospital fare and picked at it. One day I brought along a file folder of cartoons from my office funny files, since Mom so enjoyed ones I had mailed to her in the past. Sometimes Jan and I brought her treats for her sweet tooth, such as a fluffy raspberry mousse in a glass dish. On other occasions we brought her balloons and boxes of Frango Mints, her favorite chocolate candy, and a chocolate milkshake. Mom drank the milkshake too quickly, and it caused a coughing spell that worried us. Maybe it was the temperature of the drink, or the milk. Dad sent the nurse to get Cepacol throat lozenges, but the coughing subsided before the lozenges arrived.

Mom was sent by cabulance to Seattle for tests at another facility, and then back to Redmond. After three days she was released from the hospital, but would have to return the following week for pericardial surgery, at which time surgeons would open the chest cavity and determine whether portions of the pericardium needed to be removed.

Back in 1974, Mom had received four thousand rads of radiation to her left lung, without shielding of the heart. The treatment had been administered through a single anterior port, according to the best technology of the day. Subsequent studies determined, however, that patients undergoing such a procedure had a high chance of sustaining damage to the pericardium such as pericardial effusion (the leaking of fluids into a body cavity). It would have been safer to have administered lower doses of radiation through multiple anterior and posterior ports, with shielding of the heart.

On Sunday, August 9, 1981, Dad checked Mom into Group Health Hospital in Redmond. She seemed to be much better, and we were told that the doctors planned to operate Monday or Tuesday. But late that afternoon her condition worsened. She was diagnosed with cardiac tamponade, a condition in which her heart was compressed due to an accumulation of fluids in the pericardium. Doctors were using pericardiocentesis to remove the excess fluids and stabilize her. We soon learned that she would need to have most of her pericardium removed surgically at University Hospital in Seattle, where they could give her more specialized heart treatment. She was taken to Seattle and placed in a Critical Care Unit.

Two days later, Mom underwent surgery. They removed approximately two-thirds of her pericardium, in what was called a pericardiectomy. I did not learn until later that she experienced cardiopulmonary arrest just as she was being transferred from the operating room. Her trauma involved an excessively rapid heartbeat and uncontrolled twitching and quivering of the heart ventricles, with low blood pressure. Medical personnel administered nearly twenty minutes of CPR on her, with the aid of drugs, and finally her vital signs improved.

She was in a glassed-in room, and over the next couple of days, Jan and I were not permitted inside. We could only look in, while she slept for much of the time. It was difficult for me to write anything about it. I scrawled some rough, often unintelligible notes on scraps of paper. We brought her cheerful balloons and a big pink rose. Mom had catheter tubes in her upper chest to drain fluids that might remain after the surgery. She was uncomfortable from the tubes, but reportedly was recovering well. She looked weak and thin, and had a tender, wan smile as she gazed at us. When we were finally able to squeeze her hand she squeezed back feebly, but there wasn't much said.

It wasn't a time for words. It was a time for prayers.

During most of the period that Mom was hospitalized, Dad stayed with us. He slept in the carriage house over our garage, on a Japanese futon. I recall seeing him in our bathroom in boxer shorts one morning, flossing his teeth. He had always taken care of his teeth. They were perfect, without a cavity. He said he didn't sleep well the night before, and that when he drifted off he snored more than usual, and it kept waking him up. His back was bothering him a little, too, though he propped a big pillow under the head of the mattress as he normally did. We offered him some aspirin for the pain, but he said he was all right.

Most mornings, by the time I got up, Dad had already gone to the hospital. Sometimes he was so tired when he got home that he climbed the separate stairway to the carriage house and went directly to bed. On other days he insisted upon cooking a gourmet meal for us. He even bought cooking utensils and left them for us, since he didn't like to cook with our comparatively primitive equipment. One evening when we arrived home we found a note from Dad. He had misplaced his key to our house, but got in by climbing through an unlocked laundry room window. He did his laundry and ours and then returned to the hospital. The note said he would make dinner for all of us when he returned.

Dad spent entire days in the hospital with Mom, except for errands, such as an hour and a half to get a haircut. One day he had to return to Xanadu for things they had forgotten, clothes, books and other articles that Mom wanted. It was no small task going back and forth to Port Townsend, with the main bridge being out of commission, but when it came to doing things for my mother, Dad knew no bounds.

In her hospital room they talked, read and played the two-hand version of Hearts that they had made up during their honeymoon. It seemed fitting to me that these people who loved one another so fiercely played a game called Hearts, and a special version of it no one else in the world knew.

When we visited Mom one evening, Dad was seated in his usual place beside her bed eating Cha Shu Bao—steamed Cantonese barbecued pork that he had picked up at a delicatessen near the hospital and heated in the nursing station's microwave. Another day when he went to a friend's house for dinner, he called the hospital every hour to check on Mom. Some nights he stayed with her in her room, sleeping in the chair by her bed. It was exhausting for him, and he wasn't able to write at all.

Late one evening Dad returned to our house with a
Dune
movie treatment under his arm. He said it arrived that morning, delivered to him at the hospital. It had been written by director and screenplay writer David Lynch. He was a third of the way through it, and I asked him his reaction. He made a circular “perfect” sign with his fingers, and said, “Beautiful. They've got it toned into shape and are saving the original.”

By the middle of August, Mom looked considerably stronger. She smiled a lot and said she was looking forward to returning home, and was worried about whether a pretty red-breasted nuthatch would ever return to the bird feeder outside her office window. It had been coming by for weeks, and had been a delight for her to watch. Now, with no seed in the feeder, it might not.

She was so much better and receiving such excellent care that Dad told us not to worry, and that we should go ahead and take a short trip out of town we had been planning. In our absence he stayed in our home, where he entertained David Lynch and a team of Hollywood writers, all working on the
Dune
movie script. They played volleyball in our backyard and created quite a stir among neighborhood children, who somehow got the idea that Lynch was George Lucas.

Soon Mom was released from the hospital, and she continued to improve. Within a month it was as doctors had hoped, and her tests showed rapid recovery from pericardial surgery, with improving checkups every week. Still, the doctor told her he wanted her to be more active. She was getting tired too easily.

We had dinner with my parents at a Seattle restaurant, and my mother had to ask the hostess to slow down as she led us to our table. That evening, Mom and Dad stayed in a nearby hotel, where we visited them. She sat on the bed with pillows propped behind her and a blanket over her lap, knitting a little white baby sweater. She said she really messed it up in the hospital while on medication, and now she was redoing much of it. Jan was due to deliver in two months.

When we were leaving I commented to Dad, “Congratulations on your book contract, and on the most important thing of all—Mom.”

“Doesn't she look great?” Dad said, looking at her as she sat on the bed with her knitting.

And she did look better to me, with good color in her face. She smiled at me, in a gentle way.

As we drove home, however, Jan and I agreed that Mom was acting as if she were on heavy medication—a little foggy and forgetful. Somewhat like an old person, breaking off in midsentence to speak about silly matters and not always returning to her original thought. We thought she might still be depressed. It was her second major health crisis.

We fell silent as we crossed the old Mercer Island floating bridge that spanned Lake Washington, with the lights of oncoming cars and houses along the shoreline ahead. Lately I had been having second thoughts about the Boswell role in which I had placed myself, chronicling the life of Frank Herbert and the people around him. It hadn't started out that way in September 1978, a halcyon time when I only jotted brief notes on the backs of wine labels. By 1980, however, the information gathering process had grown out of control, to the point where I was obsessed with a full-fledged journal.

Gradually the journal became a looking glass into the goodness of my father, which far and away was his most significant character trait. The things he did for my mother in her hours of need were beyond anything I could have imagined him capable of. Day after day he sat with her in hospital rooms, lifting her spirits, telling her he loved her, obtaining anything she needed or wanted.