Dreamer of Dune (49 page)

Two of the passages in the dedication, in particular, reveal what my father did for my mother, and what they meant to one another:

I spent all day Sunday working on the accounts in Mom's office. Late in the evening, after Dad had gone to bed, I emerged and told Bruce, Penny and Jan that the list from the accountant, when added to the dismal paperwork involving my mother's death, was overwhelming. I could envision an impossible workload in the future, in addition to my responsibilities as an insurance agent, writer, husband and father. I could do the filing for Dad and write checks, but it was clear that he needed a bookkeeper in Port Townsend to help out. We all agreed to talk with him about it in the morning.

I didn't sleep well that night. At one point, around 5:30
A.M
., totally exhausted and nearly forgetting how much my father needed my help, I almost got in my car to drive home alone. Jan stopped me. Later we discussed the situation with Dad, and he agreed to bring in a bookkeeper to help me.

One day while working in his loft-study, Dad heard me downstairs and came down. “Did I hear footprints down here?” he said with a smile.

So that we might spend more time together, Dad and I went to a bicycle shop in Seattle one day, and each of us purchased new mountain bikes with fat tires. His was silver, a fifteen-speed with every gizmo the store could cram on the bike. Mine was bright red, a more practical twelve-speed. We broke the bikes in on a sunny day in Port Townsend at the end of February.

We cycled around North Beach—a six-and-a-half-mile trip from the house, over hilly roads. Dad walked up some of the hills, while I pedaled up and then waited for him each time at the top. On the first downhill stretch, he took off like a Kamikaze, going at a speed that left me far behind and apprehensive for his safety. He didn't touch the brakes at all, and said he thought he reached forty miles an hour. It looked like a lot more to me. Perhaps he was being competitive, showing me the old man still had it. But even more it revealed the risk-taker in him, and his youthful enthusiasm for life.

Before Penny returned to California, she asked several of his friends to be sure and spend a lot of time with him after we left. She was concerned about how he would feel being alone in the house for the first time.

I stayed with Dad until February 27, and as I loaded my luggage into my car, he thanked me for the help. He placed his right hand on top of my open car door, and I touched his hand. Then, when he pulled his hand free and extended it to shake mine, we couldn't get coordinated, and a clumsy, slapstick maneuver took place until finally we grasped hands in the manner of modern school kids…sort of a “hip” handshake achieved accidentally.

Dad gave me a slender briefcase during my stay, which I opened on the ferry while crossing from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. Inside I found a note in Dad's handwriting, probably forgotten by him there. It was the last stanza of “The Waking,” a poem by Theodore Roethke, one of the poets he most admired. The final lines read:

On the other side of the paper, my father had written the last line of another Roethke poem (“Four for Sir John Davies”), a work he had quoted more completely in
Heretics of Dune
. This last line was, I knew, one of his favorites in all of poetry:

P
ROCEEDING WITH
loving care, my father complied with each of the wishes on my mother's list. While doing so, he often said, as if she were still alive, “Bev is a white witch. I'm in big trouble if I don't do what I'm supposed to do.”

He gave advice to all of us, and told us to trust our instincts, our gut feelings. “If you feel sick to your stomach about something,” he said, “your body is talking to you. Listen to it.” This advice was similar to his writings, to the inner awareness of the Bene Gesserit of
Dune
and to the statements of Leto II in
Children of Dune
, when he said, “You have felt thoughts in your head; your descendants will feel thoughts in their bellies,” and, “It is time humans learned once more to live in their instincts.”

Dad developed a special relationship with Julie, who turned sixteen in April 1984. He took her to the American Booksellers Association Convention in Washington, D.C., where she was thrilled to meet entertainers Raquel Welch and Mr. T. She also watched my father deliver a speech at a big breakfast banquet. When Julie returned from the East Coast, she said her grandfather was referred to as “The Big Ragu” by New York publishing people.

Frank Herbert spent quality time with his other grandchildren, including a writing session with Kim, then twelve, critiquing stories she had written on a word processor at school. Margaux, only two, was too young for a heart-to-heart conversation, but she and her grandfather developed a close mutual affection. Initially he asked her to call him Panona, which had been my mother's request of Julie and Kim in the 1970s. Just as that name had not stuck in the earlier attempt, it failed again, as Margaux misunderstood and referred to him as “Banana.”

“No!” we would all exclaim, breaking up with laughter. “Panona!” She couldn't quite get it, and finally we encouraged her to call him “Grandpa.” This evolved in her young mind, and Margaux settled on calling him “Pop Pop,” which he loved. Every time we went to see Pop Pop, she became very excited and often took him drawings and colorings she had done. He particularly liked her depiction of a spaceship filled with aliens, which he put up on the kitchen bulletin board.

Based on our outline for
Man of Two Worlds
, G. P. Putnam's Sons made a substantial offer, which we accepted and split evenly. With this, another of the promises my father made to my mother was on track. However, since Dad was busy providing technical advice and promotional assistance on the
Dune
movie (scheduled for release in December 1984), and on the writing of screenplays for two of his other works in which producers had expressed recent interest (
The Santaroga Barrier
and
Soul Catcher
), I was left with the task of doing most of the work on our book during 1984. Dad thought we might be able to begin work on the project without distractions in the spring of 1985, with completion expected by the end of that summer.

On the same day that our Putnam offer came in, I received an offer from another publisher, Arbor House, to publish
Sudanna, Sudanna
in hardcover. A third publisher, Berkley Books, was making an offer on the paperback rights for this book. My agent, Clyde Taylor, said, in an understatement, “This is your day.” He also said my first United States hardcover contract was a breakthrough for me, a real boost to my career. I told Clyde to go ahead and accept the offers.

A few weeks later, I received and accepted offers from W. H. Allen to publish
Sudanna, Sudanna
in the United Kingdom, in hardcover and paperback.

In the spring of 1984, Jan and I spent every other weekend in Port Townsend, and she helped me with the accounts. A local bookkeeper had been selected, but her duties were limited to balancing the books monthly. Plenty of other work remained. Sometimes we handled things without asking Dad. On other occasions we accumulated items and asked him if he wanted to attend such and such a conference, or if he wanted to donate to particular causes, or if he wanted to deliver a speech in San Francisco, and the like. Occasionally he asked me to send signed copies of
Dune
or other Frank Herbert titles to people unsolicited, as a way of thanking them for favors.

Much of the time, if I asked him for financial information or the location of certain needed documentation, his eyes would glaze over and he would stiffen, unable to respond. He seemed to be wishing he were somewhere far away, or that I would just take care of it for him without asking. One weekend before leaving Port Townsend I told him it was necessary to transfer $100,000 between his accounts the following week. He made the withdrawals correctly, but two months later I found two cashier's checks for $50,000 apiece in a pile of papers he had delayed giving me. In his grief, other important documents were constantly misplaced as well, papers that had been sent to him by publishers, accountants, lawyers, and banks.

I also found a large Alaskan gold nugget in the bottom of a file drawer, which I made sure he put into his safety deposit box. In the glove box of his car, he had an envelope containing thousands of dollars in cash. And visiting the safety deposit box with him, I found thousands more in cash. I suggested that he deposit a lot of that cash to one of his bank accounts, which he did.

Prior to my involvement in my father's financial affairs, he had incurred a heavy debt load, with many items purchased on an installment basis, including motor vehicles, computer equipment, clothing and other articles. His credit cards were all at or near their limits. He owed a substantial amount of money on the Hana property and had refinanced the Port Townsend place in order to pay for construction at Hana. He had lines of credit at banks, which he dipped into frequently whenever he got in the hole and needed cash. He owed money to the Internal Revenue Service.

Frequently we heard him make insulting remarks about the IRS, which had hounded him throughout his writing career. My father had only paid lip service to financial planning without ever really understanding it, and now his tax problems were bigger than ever. As fast as money came in, he spent it on the heavy debt load, especially for ongoing construction at Hana. This left him behind on tax payments to the IRS, and caused him to write the sixth
Dune
book—
Chapterhouse: Dune
—at least two years sooner than he would have done otherwise.

While it is true that these books were the most lucrative of any that he wrote, it is not true that he didn't want to write
Dune
sequels, and that he only did so because he was forced to do so. He loved the
Dune
universe, and enjoyed exploring the many dimensions of the fantastic realm he had created. The classic first novel in the series had been complex and multi-layered, and in the sequels—particularly
God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune
, and
Chapterhouse: Dune
—he went on intellectual excursions through some of the layers, particularly those of religion, history, politics, and philosophy.

But he wanted to complete other projects in between the
Dune
books, other science fiction stories and novels in other genres. In 1972 he had published a mainstream novel,
Soul Catcher
. It was a story that touched a special chord in his heart, and he had been intending to write more about the Native American's mystical view of the universe. He told Bill Ransom he was looking for another “
Soul Catcher
-like story.”

Back in the late 1950s, Frank Herbert had attempted to depart from science fiction so that he could write mainstream stories. He did this despite the success of
Dragon in the Sea
, but could not accomplish the shift. Now, despite the phenomenal success of
Dune
and its sequels—and even of
The White Plague
—he longed for other pastures. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy science fiction. In fact, he often said he loved the “elbow room for the imagination” that the genre provided, and the
Dune
universe was the most challenging of all. But he wanted to stretch, longed to try new things. Frank Herbert was a risk-taker, an adventurer at heart.

On a visit to Port Townsend several weeks later, at the end of March, I found my father still working on
Chapterhouse: Dune
. It was taking longer than expected. “I've been polishing it,” he said, “making it primo.” He paused, and his eyes misted over. “For Bev.”

Around that time, I was reading a book about Alexander the Great. Dad mentioned a number of interesting facts about him, including a unique method Alexander had for timing the charges of his troops. Apparently Alexander learned of a chemical that could change a red rag to blue in thirty minutes, and he ordered that such chemically treated rags be placed on certain spear tops.

“Really?” I said. “I never heard about that.”

“Yeah. It was the beginning of Alexander's Ragtime Band!” He turned as deep a shade of purple as I've ever seen on him, and exploded into gleeful laughter. He got me pretty good on that one.

A short while later he completed
Chapterhouse: Dune
and mailed it to New York. A twelve-day, eight-city national book tour followed, for the new hardcover edition of
Heretics of Dune
. This book, like others before it, would rocket onto bestseller lists. A hardcover reissue of
Dune
appeared on bookshelves at the same time, and enjoyed brisk sales.

Dad took a copy of the work I had done on
Man of Two Worlds
with him on the tour and reviewed it in hotel rooms, making pencil notations in the margins. During the tour, his forehead was still scaly and blotchy from sunburn and medication, and he had to wear heavy makeup during interviews.

When he asked a mainland doctor to check this condition, shortly after returning to Port Townsend, he neglected to ask about the big mole on his back, first noticed by Jan. He'd had them before, and wasn't overly concerned about this one. It's “probably benign,” he assured us. But he was procrastinating on a biopsy, which would determine for certain how dangerous it was. Disturbed by this, Penny, Jan and I pressed him to get it taken care of quickly. No one could force my father to do anything however, except my mother. Dad said medical attention for the mole, or “benign tumor” as he called it, would have to wait until after the book tour.

Los Angeles was one of the cities on the tour, where he was met at the airport by a limousine and driver, and escorted to public appearances by a young woman who was the Putnam book representative for the area.

In mid-April, Dad saw a three-and-a-half-hour rough-cut version of the
Dune
movie at Universal Studios in Universal City, California. It was a private showing in Screening Room #1. This was part of a four-hour, fifty-minute film David Lynch had made, and the producers were ordering more cuts, to get it down to a little over two hours. Dad was not overly concerned about this, and when he returned home told me he was pleased with the production, that director David Lynch had created a “visual feast,” capturing the book remarkably well. Even more vividly than Dad had imagined when he wrote it. “I hear my dialogue all through it,” he said.

Dad also said Putnam wanted us to do a joint book tour on
Man of Two Worlds
sometime in late 1985 or early 1986, when the book was published.

While I was still grieving for my mother, I had lunch with Dad in an Italian restaurant in Seattle late in April 1984. He was just back from a triumphant
Heretics of Dune
book tour, and I was happy for him. He had worked hard to achieve such success. We were at a small window table, in the Capitol Hill district of the city. A street wound up the hillside outside our window, with cars rolling by. Dad's forehead was raw and scaly, worse in appearance than before, and he said he expected to be taking the skin medication for another two weeks.

We spoke of religion, and agreed that it seemed ridiculous for so many religious systems to contend that they had the “one and only” path to God. This was, of course, one of the subjects covered in an appendix of
Dune
, where the C.E.T. (Commission of Ecumenical Translators) was said to have held a meeting among representatives of the major religions, at which they set a common goal: “We are here to remove a primary weapon from the hands of disputant religions. That weapon—the claim to possession of the one and only revelation.”

Without a title yet, I had in mind a story about the terrible things religions could make people do to one another, purportedly in the name of God. In the beginning of the tale, God would announce his location on a planet far across the universe and would invite people to come and visit him—for an unexplained purpose. The competing religions would then race for God, stopping at nothing, including murder, to get there first.

“There's your title!” he exclaimed. “
The Race for God!
”

He was right. It was a good title. I added it to a file full of notes that I hoped to work on soon. We discussed two other story ideas, one of mine and one of his, with thoughts about collaborating on them some day, after the completion of
Man of Two Worlds
.

He said he was impressed with the work I had done on our collaboration, especially descriptive passages of the alien planet Dreenor and its people, through whose imagination the entire universe was sustained. He wanted to include those passages as I had written them, without revision.

Dad fell silent for a long while, then cleared his throat. Nervously, he told me he had fallen in love with the Putnam book representative he had met in Los Angeles while on his
Heretics
tour. “I hope you aren't going to be upset about this,” he said, “but she's only twenty-seven. She's an old twenty-seven, though.” He added that this was in reference to her maturity, not to the way she looked, and didn't reveal her name.