Dreamer of Dune (38 page)

In one conversation, she and I talked about Margaux, Kim, and Julie, and she said she wished she had the opportunity to know them better. I said she was doing fine as their “Nanna” and told her how much Julie and Kim appreciated receiving postcards and notes from her whenever she traveled. She sounded pretty good, all things considered, and nothing was mentioned about her trip to the hospital in Honolulu. She said she was sitting on the couch with a pair of binoculars on her lap, looking for whales.

“I saw two yesterday!” she exclaimed happily.

On a Sunday later in the month, Dad called, and as usual there was a moment of fuzzy static, followed by his voice: He said that
The White Plague
had finally been dispatched to New York after two rewrites, one of which was major, cutting more than a hundred pages from the manuscript. The hardcover edition was due out in September, and a paperback would be published the following year. “This one will make waves,” my father told me. “It's a real shocker.”

The book with Bill Ransom was also going well, and they would call it
The Lazarus Effect
. Dad told me he had been derailed from the work by the close attention he had to pay to Mom, and he still was not back on track. But Bill had been picking up the slack.

Early in March my father called very late at night to tell me that he and Mom were arriving in Seattle on March 26, and she was going to Group Health Hospital on the 29 for the correction of a faulty heart valve. Unaware of this specific condition until now, I'd been laboring under a general picture of degenerative heart disease stemming from radiation treatment, without understanding much about the details. It was unclear why such a serious-sounding procedure could be delayed for a month, but I hoped it would help her.

Dad asked me to make reservations at the Westin Hotel for the night of the 26. He specified a warm room on a lower floor, deluxe. In the past they had been in cold rooms on the upper floor of the tower, where “the wind blows right through.” Sixty-five degrees was cold for Mom.

O
N A
windy Sunday in March 1982, Mom called to make certain we had requested a warm room at the Westin. Nervously, she spoke of her upcoming hospital appointments here: “I don't know what's going to happen when they look me over.”

The following Friday, Jan called my office to say my author's copies of
Incredible Insurance Claims
had arrived. After work I saw my nine-year-old daughter Kim on the front porch of our house, excitedly waving a copy of the book. I signed copies for my family, using the autograph pen on a leather cord that my father had given me.

At 10:15
P.M
., we picked up Mom and Dad at SeaTac Airport. To my shock, she was in a wheelchair with him pushing her. The chair had a high aluminum bar overhead which must have been for intravenous fluids and other life support equipment, if they were needed.

“Don't let the wheelchair frighten you,” Mom said, smiling nervously. “I don't need it, really.”

They were bound for Port Townsend for the weekend, and Mom would go to the hospital in Seattle on Monday. She looked tan and cheerful, but too thin at 119 pounds on a 5'7" frame. In a little over a month she had lost 17 pounds on her new low-salt diet and had been feeling much more energetic—the weight loss reduced the workload on her heart and lungs. But she looked startlingly older to me, far beyond her fifty-five years. The skin of her face had always been full and rather smooth, and now it was much looser, with many more wrinkles.

Her doctor in Hawaii, Milton Howell,
^*
had thought oxygen might be necessary during the flight, so Dad had wanted to bring his own aboard. He discovered this was a violation of FAA regulations, however, so for an extra charge United Airlines provided the tank. Mom had sat in an area designated “Handicapped,” with her feet over an oxygen tank. Fortunately, she did not need to use it.

While Dad wheeled her to the elevator, I handed her a bouquet of red roses and a copy of my second book.

Mom and Dad were seeing Margaux, now almost four months old, for the first time, and we talked about the French spelling of her name. Mom enjoyed holding the baby, but only for a short while since in her weakened condition a sixteen-pound chunker was too heavy.

My father told of standing at the island in his kitchen and watching a humpback whale jump just offshore like a huge salmon. Whales did this to clear the barnacles off, and for other reasons. His manuscript of
The White Plague
had been well received by Putnam in New York City. Their editors had gone over it carefully, and it was, in my father's words, “ready to go.” I asked him how the
Dune
movie was going, and he looked a little blank, but said it was still on track as far as he knew.

The next day, a Saturday, we arrived in Port Townsend around 7:00
P.M
. It was fifty degrees, overcast. The bullfrogs in the pond below my parents' house were croaking loudly.

“Quite a crop this year,” Dad said. “How you doin', Number One Son?” He patted me on the back.

They were cooking a spaghetti dinner, with a big pot of outrageously good-smelling tomato sauce bubbling on the stove. After I kissed Mom on the soft skin of her cheek, she asked me to prepare one of my specialties, the garlic bread. As I worked she said she had read
Incredible Insurance Claims
the night before and thought it was much funnier than my first book.

Dad opened a bottle of white wine (1977 Gundlach-Bundschu Kleinberger) before dinner, and we sipped while talking in the living room. The south wall of the room looked bare, as the
Dune
paintings were still in storage. The three overhead skylights had been covered on the outside with Styrofoam to reduce heat loss, and looking out at the pool building I noticed some strips of tarpaper had been torn from the roof, probably by wind. It was nice to be with them in Port Townsend again, but things were not the same.

My father was suffering from jet lag,
^*
a recurring problem, and it would probably take him two days to recover. He seemed more tired than Mom, and looked haggard. As he was leaving the room for a moment, Mom called out something to him, but he kept walking. She explained what I already knew, that there were sounds in the upper ranges he could not hear, especially when tired.

At dinner, we had a rich red 1976 Hermitage with the pasta. Dad spoke of jongleurs, medieval entertainers who sang songs and told stories, traveling from castle to castle. Before the time of the Gutenberg Bible, when there were no efficient means of printing, people had to remember stories as they were passed down. Only the most essential elements of each tale continued.

Mom complained about the cold a couple of times, even though it must have been eighty degrees in the house. We closed all the drapes and kept turning the heat up. Everyone except my mother had their shoes and socks off, trying to cool down. Kim kept saying how hot it was, so I had to take her aside and tell her not to make Nanna feel bad.

Julie and Kim asked their grandfather for autographed books from the glass display case in the living room, so he presented each of them with a signed book—
Direct Descent
for Kim and a Del Rey gold seal edition of
Under Pressure
for Julie. A large and impressive cardboard poster of the Del Rey book jacket was leaning against one living room wall. Looking at it, I pointed out how much larger Dad's name was printed than the title. “That's when I knew I had really made it,” he said, beaming.

Dad said there had been competition and minor friction between the Kawaloa caretaker and the supervising contractor, both of whom wanted to be, in my father's words, “Frank Herbert's main man.” Both men were doing excellent jobs, Dad said, and he expected things to smooth out. He ordered some corned beef for each of them that day (in equal amounts!) and ordered it shipped back to Hawaii.

Surrounding my father there had been other similar tensions, involving friends and even family. Such competitions, I learned, were not uncommon around famous people, including those around President Reagan and certain religious leaders. It occurred as well among the associates of Oscar Wilde, and led to personal animosities that simmered for years after his death. Typically, subordinates jockey for position and attempt to undermine the positions of competitors, real or perceived. In Dad's case, much of it had to do with the force of his personality. He was extremely cordial with people he liked, to the point where each of them thought they were closest to him and found it difficult to believe anyone else could have any part of him that was comparable to what they had.

On Sunday, March 28, 1982, I was the first to rise, and jogged four miles. Shortly after I returned, Dad wandered out of the master bedroom in a striped blue and yellow caftan. With his long, neatly trimmed beard, he looked like a distinguished Muslim. Or a guru, which he often told his fans he didn't want to be, though they tried to build him into one.

He sat in one of four high wicker chairs at the kitchen counter, with a cup of coffee. Still perspiring, I sat by him with a glass of water and a banana.

Dad spoke of his love for snorkeling. He described many “dog pools” (tidal pools) on Maui, next to jungle and deserted stretches of beach. If he didn't take a spear gun in the water, parrot fish, flatfish and other sea creatures swam up to him and looked in his goggles. Since the Hawaiian fish had been hunted for centuries with spears and spear guns, Dad said they seemed to have developed an inbred fear of such weapons. He said the only danger in the dog pools was from moray eels, if he stuck his hand into a hole or stepped into one.

“Wear flippers,” he said with a smile. “Let 'em bite the hell out of your flipper.”

He said the eels fed on lobsters, so you could get bitten reaching into a hole for a lobster. If one of the lobster's antennae was pointing at you and the other was pointing back in the hole, you could bet a moray eel was in there. (A lobster's antennae are covered with sensory hairs that detect food and enemies, beyond what the eyes can see).

He wanted to get a cat-rigged Cape Cod dory for sailing in Hawaii, with an inboard/outboard motor and a centerboard keel that raised and lowered to get in and out of shallow areas where the most interesting dog pools were. Too often the best places could only be reached from the land after traversing treacherous cliff trails. Such a spot was within walking distance of the house, toward Kaupo village (away from Hana town).

Dad went up to his loft, and soon I heard the rhythmic pumping of his rowing machine. I thought of what he had told me that morning about Hawaii. He seemed to be adjusting well to life there, but was he, really? For years he had been attracted by the tropics, and now, ironically, he'd been forced to go there by my mother's medical condition, leaving family and friends on the mainland, isolating himself from other science fiction writers he had known.

I have never heard of a finer friend than my father. He loaned money to some and even bailed an advertising artist out of jail in the middle of the night, where he had been taken for unpaid parking tickets. Dad provided advice about writing, edited his friends' manuscripts, and arranged for publishers to see their writings.
^*
He had many good friends with a variety of backgrounds. They included the merchant seaman Howie Hansen, the authors Jack Vance and Poul Anderson, the artist Bernard Zakheim, the photographer Johnny Bickel, and our companion in Mexico, Mike Cunningham. One of Dad's closest friends was Russ Ladde, a California highway department employee who introduced him to the Zen writings of Alan Watts. Another who had appeared in recent years was the poet and author Bill Ransom. There were many more. My mother's close female friends were equally numerous, and all were strong, intellectual women, as she was. Sadly, with all the changes in the lives of my parents they lost track of some people over the years. The move to a distant tropical island put up one more barrier, and they would not see many of their dearest friends ever again.

Still, in the
Dune
series my father wrote of the importance of change and adaptation, and asserted that those who didn't do so grew stagnant. Frank Herbert was anything but stagnant. He decided to make the best out of the move to Hawaii, turning it into an adventure and filling his ever-curious mind with new, exciting information that one day would find its way into his stories.

Early that afternoon Dad and I were alone in the living room, and we talked about what it took for a marriage to work. He said it was a sharing experience, and that one party should be careful not to make all of the decisions, or the mate would stop growing and become dull in comparison. Or resentful. Even with his apparent dominance over Mom in many respects, she had her methods of persuasion, more subtle than his, less obvious. He didn't always dominate her. They had their niches. Mom managed to grow despite him, and had turned into a very interesting person in her own right. My father had become, to his credit, something of a benign dictator when it came to people he loved.

Jack Vance called just before we left, and I spoke with him, his wife Norma and Dad on an extension phone. Dad said he was going to do a fifth
Dune
book, and Jack quipped, “Did the publisher ask you to call it
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Dune?
”

“No,” Dad said without missing a beat,
“Gunga Dune.”

Jack congratulated Dad on his success. A few moments later, Mom came on the line and mentioned my three book sales. Jack congratulated me as well, and spoke a little about his own career. A modest, self-effacing man, Jack didn't boast. But I knew he was a science fiction superstar in Europe, where people lined up for blocks to obtain his autograph.

After the call, Mom said Dad was always telling publishers how excellent Jack's work was. Frank Herbert was like that about other writers, very generous with his compliments if he felt they were deserved. I never knew him to harbor any professional jealousy.

He looked at me and said, “I've praised you in New York, too.”

On the drive home with Jan and the kids, we encountered rain mixed with snow.

On the evening of the sixth of April, 1982, I received a telephone call. “This is Robert Heinlein,” a deep, distinguished voice said.

At first I thought it was a practical joke, and I darn near made a flippant remark. I had several friends and a father who had been known to do such things. But it really
was
Heinlein, and he proceeded to ask how my mother was doing. I told the science fiction author that she seemed better, but that she was going in for tests the following day. He sounded formal, but likable. I thanked him for showing concern.

“Bev is a very special person,” he said. He asked me to call and tell him how Mom was doing, and provided his unlisted telephone number. Heinlein also mentioned wanting to see Dad at the Science Fiction Writers of America convention later that month at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland.

I told Heinlein that Mom and Dad were in Port Townsend, but he did not seem to want to bother them. “Oh, they're stateside now,” he said. “I mean mainland…now that Hawaii's a state.”

After the call, I put two and two together. Heinlein was going through the back door to find out how my mother was doing. He'd had a falling out with my father, but still had feelings of affection for my parents. I picked up the distinct impression he was sad about what had happened to the friendship they once enjoyed. (They had gotten into a heated argument over a controversial literary agent, with the Heinleins and Herberts taking opposite sides of the issue).

The following day, Wednesday, was pleasant in the Pacific Northwest, with blue sky, few clouds, and temperatures in the low fifties. Late in the afternoon, I picked up my mother at Group Health Hospital in Redmond to take her to a family dinner engagement. She was in good spirits and said she felt pretty well, but she got a little winded going up a small hill in the parking lot. I helped her into the car, then gave her a large photograph of Margaux.