But the hair was the Dukeâsâcoal-colored and tousled. Long lashes concealed the lime-toned eyes. Jessica smiled, feeling her fears retreat. She was suddenly caught by the idea of genetic traces in her sonâs featuresâher lines in eyes and facial outline, but sharp touches of the father peering through that outline like maturity emerging from childhood.
She thought of the boyâs features as an exquisite distillation out of random patternsâendless queues of happenstance meeting at this nexus. The thought made her want to kneel beside the bed and take her son in her arms, but she was inhibited by Yuehâs presence. She stepped back, closed the door softly.
Yueh had returned to the window, unable to bear watching the way Jessica stared at her son. Why did Wanna never give me children? he asked himself. I know as a doctor there was no physical reason against it. Was there some Bene Gesserit reason? Was she, perhaps, instructed to serve a different purpose? What could it have been? She loved me, certainly.
For the first time, he was caught up in the thought that he might be part of a pattern more involuted and complicated than his mind could grasp.
Jessica stopped beside him, said: âWhat delicious abandon in the sleep of a child.â
He spoke mechanically: âIf only adults could relax like that.â
âYes.â
âWhere do we lose it?â he murmured.
She glanced at him, catching the odd tone, but her mind was still on Paul, thinking of the new rigors in his training here, thinking of the differences in his life nowâso very different from the life they once had planned for him.
âWe do, indeed, lose something,â she said.
She glanced out to the right at a slope humped with a wind-troubled gray-green of bushesâdusty leaves and dry claw branches. The too-dark sky hung over the slope like a blot, and the milky light of the Arrakeen sun gave the scene a silver castâlight like the crysknife concealed in her bodice.
âThe skyâs so dark,â she said.
âThatâs partly the lack of moisture,â he said.
âWater!â she snapped. âEverywhere you turn here, youâre involved with the lack of water!â
âItâs the precious mystery of Arrakis,â he said.
âWhy is there so little of it? Thereâs volcanic rock here. Thereâre a dozen power sources I could name. Thereâs polar ice. They say you canât drill in the desertâstorms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms donât get you first. Theyâve never found water traces there, anyway. But the mystery, Wellington, the real mystery is the wells thatâve been drilled up here in the sinks and basins. Have you read about those?â
âFirst a trickle, then nothing,â he said.
âBut, Wellington, thatâs the mystery. The water was there. It dries up. And never again is there water. Yet another hole nearby produces the same result: a trickle that stops. Has no one ever been curious about this?â
âIt is curious,â he said. âYou suspect some living agency? Wouldnât that have shown in core samples?â
âWhat would have shown? Alien plant matter . . . or animal? Who could recognize it?â She turned back to the slope. âThe water is stopped. Something plugs it. Thatâs my suspicion.â
âPerhaps the reasonâs known,â he said. âThe Harkonnens sealed off many sources of information about Arrakis. Perhaps there was reason to suppress this.â
âWhat reason?â she asked. âAnd then thereâs the atmospheric moisture. Little enough of it, certainly, but thereâs some. Itâs the major source of water here, caught in windtraps and precipitators. Where does that come from?â
âThe polar caps?â
âCold air takes up little moisture, Wellington. There are things here behind the
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