Dreamer of Dune (14 page)

“Doctor Gus,” as he was known affectionately, stood under five feet tall, weighed a hundred pounds and wore large eyeglasses, giving him a scholarly appearance. He had a feisty, combative nature.

While I was playing on cobblestone streets, Dad was across town. He had encountered Señor Cura on the street, and was talking with him. The curate had his hand wrapped in a dirty rag. When Dad asked him about it, he was told it was only a small scratch caused by a thorn. Frank Herbert asked to see the hand.

Slowly, grimacing with pain, the holy man unwrapped it. My father nearly gagged when he smelled the putrid odor of gangrene, an odor he had smelled two decades before and had never forgotten. The hand was swollen to nearly double its normal size, with an ugly, infected gash running between the thumb and forefinger. Dad told the curate he was in danger of losing the hand and perhaps his life from infection, and that he needed immediate medical attention. The curate's condition, my father knew, was complicated by diabetes, which created a number of potential problems. Since Dr. Gus was in Mexico City, Dad offered to drive him to El Oro to see a doctor, or even to Toluca, farther away, where better medical care was available.

The offer was declined. “God will take care of me,” Señor Cura said.

Dad wondered if the curate considered the hearse an improper mode of conveyance under the circumstances, a sacrilege. In any event the elderly gentleman was adamantly opposed to getting in it. The curate also expressed an aversion toward doctors, which may in fact have been fear. Besides, he insisted, he wasn't convinced his wound was that serious. After all, it was only a little scratch from a thorn bush.

Señor Cura rewrapped his hand.

“Would you permit me to apply some medicines?” Frank Herbert asked. “I have a medical kit with antibiotics, to make you feel better.”

The old man thought for a moment, then consented. Something in the manner of this Norte Americano was reassuring.

My father was taking a tremendous risk, for he could be charged with negligence and sent to Mexican prison if the curate died. But he tried not to think about that. Señor Cura was brought to our house, and at the dining room table, Dad brought out his medical books and supplies. After comparing instructions in the books, he soaked the wound in hot water with Epsom salts. This reduced the swelling. He then covered the cut with sulfa and put on a clean bandage. He also administered a shot of penicillin, after calculating the necessary cc's based upon the curate's weight.

At the curate's house, Dad gave the housekeeper two bottles of Terramycin (oxytetracyclene) antibiotic pills, telling her to make absolutely certain the old man took the pills six times a day, with plenty of water.

Dad was so worried during ensuing days that he could hardly write. The first thing every morning, he hurried over to the curate's house. There he inspected the hand, applied more sulfa and changed the bandage. After two days, the swelling diminished substantially, and the wound showed definite signs of improvement.

When Dr. Gus returned and heard what happened, he went to Señor Cura and shouted, in Spanish, “Stupid man! I've told you about infections! Señor Herbert saved your life!”

The following day, my father was amazed to see me playing marbles in the street with several boys. When I looked up and saw him, I asked, “Is it true what they're saying, Dad? You saved Señor Cura's life?”

After a moment of astonishment, he broke into a broad smile and said, “Well, I did help out a little.”

Soon we learned that Dr. Gus had been telling everyone in town about the heroics of my father. In the middle of the night, someone reattached the mirrors to our hearse and returned the valve caps. For the first time my brother and I were invited inside the homes of neighbors to play with their children. Quite suddenly Frank Herbert became a renowned wise man in those parts. Villagers consulted him on important matters and referred to him affectionately as “Don Pancho.” We were invited to parties and picnics. Dad joined the village men's club. Just before dawn on his Saint's Day (a Roman Catholic feast day in honor of St. Francis of Paola), dozens of villagers carrying candles serenaded him from the street in front of our house with a cheerful good morning song, “Mañanita,” accompanied by a mariachi band. My family stood in the doorway in robes and pajamas, smiling and waving.

In her journal, my mother wrote:

With his background in farming and the assistance of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reference materials he'd mailed home under senatorial franking privileges while working in Washington, D.C., Dad showed Señor Cura the proper method of pruning and spraying his orange, lemon and peach trees. Word spread, and soon Dad began advising villagers on gardening and farming techniques. He became, as he wrote in one of his unpublished pieces, the “unofficial farm advisor” for the region, covering all the villages in the curate's jurisdiction.

Local nuns requested my father's expert assistance at their convent, where the fruit trees were barren. Mom was quite amused by them:

While he lived in Tlalpujahua, Frank Herbert translated key sections of USDA books and pamphlets into Spanish. The church mimeographed this information, stapled copies together and distributed them to farmers. The future author of an ecological masterpiece then visited farms to provide further advice, and wrote to the USDA for additional information.

Farm tracts in the region were known as
milpas
, which were jungle areas cleared by burning, then farmed for a few years and ultimately abandoned when the soil no longer contained the nutrients to sustain good crop yields. To inhibit soil erosion and control water runoff, Dad told the farmers to minimize the use of fire for land clearing, since that robbed the soil of important nutrients. He instructed them in contour plowing, terracing, water diversion systems, and in the planting of grasses, trees and shrubs. These methods were especially useful in a region of heavy tropical rains. Soils hit by deluges could not absorb water nearly as well as they did in slow rains. Soil instability caused by rains hitting inadequately planted areas had resulted in mud inundating the old village, and in continuous damage to planting areas over the years.
^*

Generally, Dad was in high spirits during our stay in Tlalpujahua, and my brother and I received less severe discipline from him than usual. I understood, as did the rest of my family, that my father did
not
like to be interrupted when he was writing. Others failed to get the message. This included our only American friend in town, Mike Cunningham. Frequently when Mike wanted to talk with Dad, he couldn't get through, since Dad was invariably in his study behind a closed door, connected to his typewriter as if it were an extension of him. When Frank Herbert was writing he was in a different universe, and no one could get through to him except my mother…his “moat dragon,” as he liked to say.

Our gardener, Beto, despite repeated warnings, interrupted my father once too often, and my mother reported the aftermath:

In punishment for his many interruptions, the gardener was forced to prepare a sign for the study door. The sign warned anyone who came near, in Spanish, not to touch the door while the master of the house was working.

One of the worst disruptions occurred late one afternoon while Dad was in his study reading his manuscript to Mom. She emerged to take care of the problem, and found several upset people, including our friends and the household help. The center of controversy was our cook, who was accusing the maid of purchasing inferior lemons from the market.

Dad was frustrated trying to write in Mexico, and not only about the lack of quiet time in which to work. He also became sick with dysentery on a number of occasions. Following one such attack, he commented to my mother, “Maybe it's cheaper not to come to Mexico—because of work days lost through illness.”

She reported other physical problems experienced by my father:

Late in 1955, under a contract of three hundred pesos a month from my father, Pepe Muñoz removed the gaudy chapel siding from the hearse and built plywood panels in their place. This reduced the vehicle weight by five hundred pounds, thus improving fuel efficiency. He then brush-painted the entire hearse a creamy tan color, further removing evidence of its somber past.

Dad finished his second novel,
Storyship
, and mailed it to Lurton. The agent said he liked it, particularly suspense elements and characterizations, but Doubleday turned it down. John Campbell didn't want it for
Astounding Science Fiction
, either, asserting it was more detective story than science fiction, a historically unsuccessful combination in the publishing world. Rejections followed from other publishers, some of whom thought the yarn had too many science fiction gimmicks, with an inadequately organized plot and too much preaching. He was being pedantic, having crossed the fine and dangerous line between moral instruction and entertainment.

Mom couldn't seem to overcome the problems with her own novel, primarily involving the organization of material. She found herself losing enthusiasm for it, with an increasing belief that she could never make it as a novelist.

Writing sales were supposed to finance our extended stay in Mexico, but now we were once again nearly out of money. Mom made arrangements to borrow from her Aunt Ruth and Uncle Bing, and Dad borrowed from his favorite aunt, Peg Rowntree. Just enough money came in to get us back to the Pacific Northwest.

One piece of good literary news reached us in Mexico.
The New York Times
ran an excellent review on
The Dragon in the Sea
in their book review section. This did not, however result in the instant funding we needed. A movie producer was still interested in the book, as he had been for several months, but thus far had made no offer.

My parents liked Pepe Muñoz so much that they wanted to sponsor him in the United States, bringing him into the country as a new citizen. Although Dad made repeated, glaring errors in raising his children, he could be extremely generous with friends. No idea was too wild for him. He was impulsive and childlike. The commitment to bring Pepe to the United States, so like Frank Herbert, was made on the spur of the moment, without considering details, without worrying about problems. No matter the red tape required to complete the task, and it was considerable, involving a number of delays and uncertainties in Mexico City. No matter our lack of funds and lack of prospects. No matter bald tires on the family car. We were about to drive more than three thousand miles north, on yet another adventure.

Just before we departed from Tlalpujahua in early 1956, the villagers staged a big daytime fiesta in honor of my father. In gratitude, Dad and Mom put on a big party of their own that evening, held in our courtyard. A mariachi band played from the covered walkway overlooking the garden.

A few days later we pulled out of Tlalpujahua and headed north, with Pepe sitting in the front seat between my parents. The tires on our hearse were in bad shape. We only had a little borrowed money, not enough for contingencies. Luck would have to be with us, or we wouldn't make it.

Pepe hung a silver Virgin of Carmen medal on the dashboard, a medal that had been blessed by Señor Cura. This, the curate said, would protect us on our long journey. Despite this, the tires on the hearse went flat constantly from rough road conditions, and Pepe and Dad used the jack and star wrench repeatedly. We limped from gas station to gas station, patching the beaten-up old skins and heading out again. I remember sitting in the back of the hearse as we drove along a high mountain road and looking out the window on my mother's right at a sheer drop-off. It was a long way down, at least a thousand feet.

I was only mildly concerned. The drop-off held my attention, but I was only a kid and hadn't lived long enough to really get frightened. I hadn't learned how many things could go wrong. As far as I was concerned, Dad was invincible. Nothing could overpower him. As long as he was at the wheel, we were okay. Of course I didn't know about suicide knobs on steering wheels then, how they could get caught in long shirt sleeves and cause terrible accidents. One day they would be made illegal for this reason.

Dad was a risk-taker—one of the features of his personality that made him interesting. But bald tires
and
a suicide knob on a dangerous mountain road? In a hearse? He had to be pushing his luck!

E
ARLY IN
1956, the Herbert hearse limped into Portland, Oregon, and we rented a tiny one-story house on the north side, not far from the St. Johns Bridge. Pepe Muñoz (known as Joe Muñoz now) stayed with us, and worked at a local cabinet shop as a carpenter. Money was tight. Dad and Mom set about trying to obtain “real” jobs. They were finding it too difficult to make ends meet as writers. Still, my father was on a course that would one day lead to success.

From an early stage of his writing, Frank Herbert was tuned-in to the problem of finite resources on this planet. At a time of increasing and wasteful consumer consumption in the United States, he saw, quite accurately, that it could not last forever. In
The Dragon in the Sea
he predicted the global oil shortage that would occur two decades later. One day in
Dune
he would make similar predictions about finite resources, particularly water.
^*
In creating these novels, he asked himself the question, “What if?” Extrapolating from conditions that existed at the time, he envisioned worlds of startling, frightening clarity.

Submariners contacted my father over the years and told him that
Dragon
accurately depicted the psychological pressures of undersea crewmen—despite the fact that the author had never served on a submarine. This ability to imagine conditions he had never experienced would serve Frank Herbert well later in the creation of
Dune
.

But Portland in 1956 was nearly a decade before
Dune
, and fifteen years before book sales would begin to take off for Frank Herbert. We were poor, a not-uncommon experience for artists and writers who are ahead of their time.

All in all,
Dragon
was doing fairly well for a first novel, although it was not earning the kind of money needed to support a family. Reviews, those few that appeared, were favorable. Based upon the book, Dad was nominated, but did not win, in the category of “Most Promising New Author” at the 1956 World Science Fiction Convention.
^*

No one wanted to publish his new 40,000-word novel
Storyship
, a book in which he had placed a lot of hope. For a while,
Amazing Stories
considered running a magazine serial on it, if Dad could trim it to 30,000 words. They were offering what Lurton referred to derisively as “salvage money”—only $400. Lurton was opposed to accepting this, and recommended instead
adding
10,000 words to the length, since 50,000 words would put it into a length preferred by pocket books. The pockets would pay more as well, he said, and there would be more prestige in publishing it as a novel than in a chopped-up serial form.

Dad was in a quandary. He went over the manuscript again and decided to go against Lurton's advice.
Amazing
's offer was a “bird in the hand,” Dad felt. Besides that, he said, the story didn't seem “stretchable” to him. He told Lurton to contact
Amazing
, and a verbal agreement was reached. If the required number of words were cut they promised to look at the story again, and in all likelihood would publish it.

My father set to work on the rewrite, and within a few weeks had it in the mail.
Amazing
delayed, and ultimately decided against publishing the story at all. Dad was furious, and tossed the butchered manuscript in the back of a closet. For many years, he refused to look at it again. Ultimately, it became part of his 1968 novel,
The Heaven Makers
.

Most of
Storyship
was written in Mexico, and the project's failure put a damper on future exotic trips. Thus far, neither tropical sojourn had worked out creatively, exposing the fallacy of such trips to him. He began to recognize them for the myths that they were.

Bits and pieces of the Mexican experience did find their way into Frank Herbert's writing over the years. In the short story “You Take the High Road” (
Astounding Science Fiction
, May 1958), the towns on an alien planet had cobblestone central marketplaces. A decade later, he would publish a non-fiction newspaper piece about shopping in Mexico, but most of all, Mexican scenes and descriptions appeared in unpublished stories—stories he couldn't sell for one reason or another.

In the 1950s, Dad didn't fully commit himself to science fiction. He displayed flashes of brilliance in the genre, earning accolades, but then withdrew or changed direction, turning instead to mainstream stories he hoped would sell to
Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, Life,
or
Reader's Digest
. Increasingly he tried to get away from science fiction, feeling it was dominated by the pulps and inane monster films. With his intellectual leanings, he didn't want to be identified with nonsensical non-literature, didn't want to have to keep explaining to people that he didn't write the trashy material known as “sci-fi,” that he wrote instead a more sophisticated, thinking-man's variety.

Still, deep in his heart, he loved the elbow room afforded by science fiction. It was a field where his imagination could stretch to the limits. And this was a man of remarkable imagination. In science fiction he could write allegories filled with symbolism.

In 1956 we owed money to the IRS that we were unable to pay. After receiving his advance on
The Dragon in the Sea
the year before, Dad didn't think of setting aside funds for the payment of taxes on this income. Naively, he and Mom just took off for Mexico, thinking only of the adventures ahead of them. Any thoughts of income taxes were only vagrant, soon slipping away. There would be future story sales anyway, they reasoned, and everything would take care of itself.

Now with that myth shattered, old bill collectors and their attorneys were contacting us, demanding money. Again, Flora wanted past due child-support payments. Around the house my father kept saying we were “broke,” or, even worse, “flat broke.” On those rare occasions when we had people over for dinner, Dad used a code phrase with us. If there was not enough food for us to have second helpings, he would say, “FHB, NMIK”—which meant, “Family hold back, no more in kitchen.” On the other hand, if we
could
have seconds, he would utter the much more blissful letters, “MIK”—“More in kitchen.”

Mom found a job as a fashion advertising copywriter for a large department store in town, Olds & King. Since it was an election year, Dad accepted a speech writer position with Phil Hitchcock, who was running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senator from Oregon. Hitchcock was a professor at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon and a state senator since 1948. He had been a Republican candidate for U.S. Senator in 1954, before Guy Cordon beat him in the Republican primary. Now it was two years later, with another primary election coming up, and he was facing former Secretary of the Interior Douglas McKay for the Republican nomination. McKay had also been an Oregon state senator and governor of the state. He was a formidable opponent. Unfortunately, Hitchcock lost the May 18, 1956, primary election to McKay, so once more Frank Herbert was out of a job.

Joe Muñoz was rarely around because of his job and busy social calendar. He was dating blonde American girls, and life was good for him. He smoked little black cigarettes. Every month he sent money back to his family in Mexico.

It was a time of stress for our family, and I was not getting along with my father. A pattern of severe discipline from Dad set in—a resumption of our relationship before the last Mexico trip. Now it was worse than ever. If Dad was writing when I arrived home from school, I had to tiptoe around the house. It wasn't a very big house, so I had to be especially careful.

Sometimes I came around the house and heard music playing from inside. Dad developed the habit of writing to music, played on a large reel-to-reel tape deck in his study. With this buffer of sound between him and me, I would open the front door quietly and creep into my room, or would lie on the floor in the living room with a book, listening to the music. It was powerful, vibrant material—Brahms, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Gershwin. Even “Peter and the Wolf,” which I especially enjoyed.

When
The Dragon in the Sea
was printed by Doubleday in hardcover, Dad entered my room and handed me a signed copy. A slender black volume with yellow lettering on the spine, it had a bright blue, yellow and black dust jacket and bore a $2.95 retail price. He dedicated the story to the men of the United States Submarine Service.

In reflection of the gap between us, perhaps, Dad penned this inscription to me on the flyleaf at the beginning of the book:

After he left my room, I glanced at the first page and noted something about an Ensign Ramsey who looked like “a grown-up Tom Sawyer,” but didn't read further for many years. Still, I kept his book on a little bookshelf in my room, in plain view.

Frank Herbert demanded truth in government, consumer affairs, and environmental issues. He did not tolerate evasiveness, omissions or half-truths. His blue eyes did not avert when he spoke to you. In the coming decade, in
Dune
, he would write of “Truthsayers,” remarkable witches who could determine truth or falsehood from watching and listening to a person.

Dad was, by his own admission, a man obsessed with “turning over stones to see what would scurry out”—with unmasking lies. This was evident in his dealings with his children.

He had a World War II lie detector, a U.S. Navy unit. A small black box with a dial, it had ominous wires and a gray cuff that he wrapped tightly around my arm. The first time he used the machine on me, he accused me of secretly hitting my brother, and he was going to get the truth out of me. He said the lie detector always revealed falsehood, which was not, as I would learn later, exactly the case.

Admittedly I was lying about hitting my brother, and the machine indicated this, so I got a licking. After that he used the lie detector on me regularly, and on Bruce. If anything came up, such as an item missing from his desk or questions about where I had been after school, he would say, in a clipped voice, “I'm putting you on the lie detector. Let's go in the other room.”

With that, he would grab my arm and lead me to the machine. On the way, I broke out in a sweat, rehearsing what I would say and how I would say it. Would he ask such and such? My mind was awhirl, full of terror.

The machine was kept in his study, and he only brought it out when I was in trouble. It was set up on a wooden table, with two straight-back chairs pulled up to it, one on each side.

He pointed to one of the chairs, and I slipped into it, shaking. Towering over me, he plugged the machine in and tapped it a couple of times for effect, ostensibly to free a sticky needle. A bare ceiling bulb threw his hulking shadow across the table.

“Roll up your left sleeve,” he said, gruffly.

Shaking, I complied, and he wrapped the sensor cuff around my arm. A stream of questions and accusatory statements ensued from him, and like a prisoner undergoing the tortures of Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, perspiration poured from my brow. Dad was too smart, and phrased every query in the precise way that put me in the worst possible light. After each question, he studied the machine intently and invariably pronounced me guilty of something. According to Howie Hansen, who disapproved of the use of the device on Bruce and me, Dad had a way of rigging the machine to indicate that we were lying, even when we were telling the truth.

One day my father would write of young Paul Atreides in
Dune
—ordered to place his hand into the blackness of a box in the ordeal of the gom jabbar. Paul was commanded not to withdraw the hand no matter how much pain he felt, on penalty of death from a poison needle held at his neck—the deadly gom jabbar. Terrified, the boy complied:

In
Heretics of Dune
, one of the sequels to
Dune
, Frank Herbert would describe a “T-probe,” a torturous memory detection device that absorbed every bit of information about a person:

It was my father's gift and curse that he noticed infinitesimally small details. This enabled him to become a great writer. He had a tendency, however, to be somewhat of a nit-picker in the household. He was extremely demanding.

The Bene Gesserit of
Dune
understood nuances of meaning, subtle shiftings of voice and intonation, So it was with my father. He understood, or thought he understood, shades of meaning in every word his children uttered. He picked our sentences apart.

“What do you mean you'll
try
to do it?” he would say to me, in a voice reaching crescendo. “Don't ever use the word
try
on me! That word signifies failure, the likelihood of defeat. You'll do it, god damn it, Brian, you won't
try
to do it!” Another intolerable word to him was “can't.” We didn't dare use that word or “try,” because they triggered something in the man and he would fly into blind rages.