Dreamer of Dune (45 page)

A
T THIS
point in writing
Dreamer of Dune
, I found myself unable to continue. For many weeks, the manuscript languished, untouched, while I busied myself with other things, with “make work projects” that were without substance. Ultimately a great depression set in over me, for I was not writing, and beyond that, far beyond that, I was not telling the story that had burned in my heart for so long.

One evening I sat down at my computer to resume work on the book. But my fingers were numb on the keyboard, moving sluggishly, stumbling over keys and producing misspellings. My brain and fingers refused to cooperate in the telling of something so terrible. Fatigue overwhelmed me, and I wanted nothing more than to sit in the soft side chair by my desk and nap. It was the large orange Naugahyde chair that had been my mother's favorite, one she said “leaped out and grabbed” her as she tried to walk by it in a department store. Maybe tomorrow I would be able to proceed. But not this evening. Not now. I settled into the chair and fell asleep.

Tomorrow arrived, but again I put the work aside. Three more days passed, and eventually I looked through the old notes again….

In December 1983, I set to work on an outline and some of the scenes for a new science fiction book that I hoped Dad and I might write together—a novelization that would include some of the
America
concepts we had been discussing. This was a book my mother very much wanted us to do, as she felt we might become like Irving Wallace and his son, David Wallechinsky. But as I got into the outline, many of the
America
concepts didn't seem to fit.

Instead, I envisioned a universe that was entirely dependent for its existence upon the imaginations of an alien race, called Dreens. They lived on the planet Dreenor and created entire worlds with the power of their imagination. Out of their imaginings, worlds came into existence. Earth was one of those worlds, and a situation would come to pass where the people of Earth would perceive a threat from aliens living on a distant planet, Dreenor, and a military mission would be sent to destroy that far off planet. Of course, such an act could destroy Earth as well if all the Dreens were killed, since our planet only existed by virtue of the imaginations of these beings. But the military people on Earth would have no knowledge of such an impending catastrophe.

The key character in our story would be a newspaperman, a young publisher who operated a paper owned by his business-mogul father, a number-cruncher who cared little about the newspaper industry and was more interested in his widespread, diversified enterprises, which were far more profitable than publishing. In many respects, our young protagonist would be modeled after William Randolph Hearst, who, like the character in our story, was left a newspaper by his wealthy father. The real-life newspaper owned by Hearst, the San Francisco
Examiner
, had been employer to both Frank Herbert and me in the 1960s—he as picture editor and me as a copyboy. And of course, I had in recent years been intrigued with the life story of Hearst, for the similarity he bore with my father when it came to ongoing construction projects.

Dad liked the concept when I described it to him over the telephone. He liked my title, too,
A Man of Two Worlds
—a reference to the character becoming split in his obligations between the worlds of Dreenor and Earth. Dad told me to go ahead and set the story up as much as I could.

Shortly after Christmas 1983, Jan flew to the international airport at Honolulu on the island of Oahu. From there she caught a Royal Hawaiian Air Service Cessna to the island of Maui. As she flew over the water, it was the most incredible aqua blue color she had ever seen, breathtaking in its beauty and brilliance. The plane skirted Maui and headed for its eastern shore, where she beheld spectacular vistas of waterfalls, cliffs, and jungle. Tiny settlements and ranches were carved out of the jungle that ran up the slopes of the massive inactive volcano Haleakala, the dominant topographical feature of the island.

It had been a cold winter in Seattle, with rain and snow and temperatures dropping into the teens. But when Jan stepped out of the plane at the Hana Airport, it was eighty degrees with trade winds blowing gently. Darkness was just beginning to blanket the island. The airfield was a strip of pavement between the jungle and the sea.

Dad greeted her at a little gate between the tarmac and a small terminal building, and helped her load luggage and Christmas gifts into his white Chevrolet Blazer. Jan hadn't known about this vehicle, and when she commented on it he said it was perfectly suited to their lifestyle in Hawaii. It was large, permitting them to fill it with groceries and other items during all-day shopping trips to the other side of the island, necessary because Hana had only two small general stores. The Blazer had four-wheel drive, enabling it to traverse rough roadways and off-road terrain.

In the gathering dusk, Jan saw tropical beauty she had never imagined, with lush jungle vegetation and bright flowers pressing in all around the highway, threatening to overwhelm civilization. Dad drove as if he didn't own the vehicle, too rapidly and with little respect for rough spots in the road. The Blazer wasn't that old, but already the shock absorbers were shot and it rocked crazily on every bump. He spoke of construction work at the house, and said, with great concern, “If we could only get the pool done, Bev could do her strokes. She'd be stronger then. Her heart would get better.”

Jan knew the unspoken, that he meant improvement of her whole cardiovascular system, including her lungs.

They passed the luxurious Hotel Hana Maui and the quaint, busy Hasegawa's General Store, about which a popular Hawaiian song had been recorded. Outside town were large green pastures, most of them the property of the Hana Ranch (owners of the hotel), with black lava rock, tumble-down fences and cattle grazing. There were outstanding vistas of the sea.

The road became worse on this side of town and seemed to have been paved in a prior century, so filled with potholes and washboards was it. The natives liked it that way, Dad said with a chuckle as they went over the eyeball-rattling, bumpy stretch known as the Molokai Washboard. It kept visitors to a minimum.

“I'm one of the natives now,” he said, proudly. “A
kama'aina.
We've been very well accepted by the community.”

Five miles down a road that seemed like much farther, by the second fruit stand out of town, Dad slowed and wheeled sharply left, rolling over a metal cattle guard that kept hoofed intruders off his property. The cattle guard, which rattled when they crossed it, had been installed after a Hana Ranch bull chased my mother around the yard.

From the parking area as Jan got out of the car she saw the hip roof of the main house just downhill and palm trees along the shoreline, swaying gently in trade winds. The sea, a darker shade of blue in receding daylight, stretched far into the distance. On the far right she could barely make out the outline of the island of Hawaii and its nearest volcano, Mauna Kea. A flower-lined walkway curved downhill to the entrance of the main house.

When Jan walked in the door, with Dad just ahead of her toting luggage, he called out, “Bev, I brought your sunshine!”

Mom rose from the gray sectional couch in the living room and walked slowly toward her eagerly awaited visitor, smiling broadly. My mother was thin, only 110 pounds on a 5'7" frame, and her skin was ivory, in striking contrast with her dark brown hair. A delicate whisper of a woman, she wore an exquisite red Polynesian muumuu, red with pink and white flowers.

“Oh finally!” she exclaimed, “Our breath of fresh air! Frank, everything will be all right now. Jan's here.”

To one of my parents, Jan was sunshine, and to the other fresh air.

Mom took Jan outside, and on the hill facing the kitchen showed her where she had planted poinsettias. “I planted them for you,” she said. And she expressed worry that the caretakers might not water them enough. Jan didn't ask about this, but wondered why anything in Hawaii needed extra watering. Maybe it had to do with how young the plants were, she thought, or the time of year.

An apartment wing had been completed, on the other side of the pool that was still under construction. But the apartments (two of them) were a good distance from the main house and only reachable by going outside and traversing a long, covered walkway. My mother thought Jan might be lonely out there, so they set her up on a Japanese futon folding mattress on the mezzanine of the main house.

“You'll be cozier here,” Mom said. Her voice was weak, filled with sickness.

The following morning, Jan saw beauty she had never imagined possible. Kawaloa, a five-acre piece of paradise, brimmed with flowers, breadfruit trees, palms, papaya trees and banana fronds—at the edge of an aquamarine sea with dancing whitecaps.

A few days later the poinsettias were not doing well and my mother became displeased with the caretakers, Bart and Sheila Hrast, saying they weren't watering the plants enough. Mom's displeasure reached the ears of her enforcer, my father, and he became very angry. He wanted everything to be perfect for her, didn't want her upset in the least, because of her precarious medical condition. Dad got on the phone to the caretakers, who were in a separate house on the upper level of the property (by the Hana Road), and said, “Get down here and water the poinsettias! We don't want them to die!”

Jan and Sheila became friends, and Jan learned that Sheila loved my mother dearly, and tried to do everything she could to please her. The poinsettias had been watered, she insisted. They just weren't adapting well. She showed Jan around the land, which was nearly five acres, with three hundred and thirty feet of oceanfront. The grounds were exquisitely kept.

After visiting Sheila one day, Jan returned by herself to the main house, where Mom made a surprising remark. “Don't ever get too close to the help,” she said. “It's best to keep your distance.”

Jan found this pretentious but didn't argue. It was one of my mother's few flaws that she had a tendency toward snobbishness, even when we had been poor. Subsequently Jan was more discreet when she visited Sheila, waiting until Mom was taking a nap.

My wife spent two weeks there, and in that time noticed that Dad hardly ever went anywhere, so worried was he about my mother. Any time he went to town without her, he couldn't stand to be away, and drove even faster than usual. The locals were learning to watch out for him on the road. On one occasion, he became impatient trying to get around another car and went up a shortcut by the Pu'uiki cliff, blew a stop sign and roared back onto the Hana Road just ahead of the other vehicle.

Each day, Dad spent time in his study, but when Jan passed his open door and looked inside, she could see he wasn't writing much. He would sit at his computer and stare at it, or move his fingers listlessly over the keyboard, where once they had danced across the keys with furious energy.

Dad was forever listening for Mom to be sure she was all right. If she so much as whimpered his name, he bolted out of the study to help her. He was overly attentive at times, to the point where Mom grew irritated with him and would say, “Jan's here. You can go back to work.”

Because of the heat in his upper-level study, a tropics-related design problem he hadn't contemplated, he regularly wrote with his shirt off. He looked so sad to Jan, rarely smiling or breaking into laughter, making her suspect he cried in private and that he was pretending to write or trying to write through tears. Whenever he came downstairs, he invariably looked sweaty and upset.

My mother tried not to disturb him, except when she had to. She liked him upstairs working. She wanted everything to be normal, the way it used to be. But she must have sensed that he was not writing wholeheartedly, and that he was way behind schedule on
Chapterhouse: Dune
.

With all the diuretics she had to take and her lack of energy, little accidents were inevitable, and embarrassing for Mom. She would try to make it to the bathroom, but after only four steps would be out of breath, leaning on the wall. One day Dad was away briefly and Jan tried to help her, but she wouldn't allow it, saying she only allowed Frank to help her. My mother could be stubbornly independent.

But Jan said to her, “After all the years you've helped me, won't you let me do this for you?”

The woman she knew as Bev, the woman who had become a mother to her, smiled gently at this and said, “All right.”

Mom relied on her more after that. At bedtime Dad normally came down from his study to help her. But this evening, while Dad worked in his study, Mom allowed Jan to assist her to bed, and told her how the oxygen was to be hooked up. This was a shock. Jan had seen two tanks in the bedroom, but hadn't known they were in constant use, thinking they were only there “just in case.”

Jan eased her into bed and connected the oxygen. Just before shutting out the light, Jan kissed her on the cheek, as I had done so many times. Her face felt cold.

On her night stand, my mother kept a Catholic rosary, given to her by the nuns from Tacoma when she had been close to death almost a decade before. Simple black beads and a brass cross bearing Jesus. She also had a scapular—two tiny pieces of rectangular woolen cloth connected by a string. The scapular bore pictures of Catholic saints, with the words “Have pity on us” and “Be our aid.” Each night before she went to sleep she held the religious artifacts and prayed.

My mother attributed her extra years of life in large part to a newfound faith in God. Not particularly in the Catholic version of God, or in anyone else's version of a deity. Instead, Beverly Herbert was a free thinker who did not easily accept the constructs of others.

Each morning Jan prepared breakfast, usually serving Mom in bed on a tray according to strict dietary requirements: a bowl of Cream of Wheat and banana slices, with fresh guava or papaya juice. Alongside, Jan placed a fresh hibiscus flower in a little crystal vase—a vase I had given my mother some years before.