She swept her gaze around the room, studying each face: Stilgar, passive and waiting now; the ghola frozen at some inward place; Alia watching the ghola... and Paul - wrath beneath a shallow veneer.
"This is your only offer?" she asked.
"My only offer."
She glanced at the ghola, caught by a brief movement of muscles across his cheeks. Emotion? "You, ghola," she said. "Should such an offer be made? Having been made, should it be accepted? Function as the mentat for us."
The metallic eyes turned to Paul.
"Answer as you will," Paul said.
The ghola returned his gleaming attention to the Reverend Mother, shocked her once more by smiling. "An offer is only as good as the real thing it buys," he said. "The exchange offered here is life-for-life, a high order of business."
Alia brushed a strand of coppery hair from her forehead, said: "And what else is hidden in this bargain?"
The Reverend Mother refused to look at Alia, but the words burned in her mind. Yes, far deeper implications lay here. The sister was an abomination, true, but there could be no denying her status as a Reverend Mother with all the title implied. Gaius Helen Mohiam felt herself in this instant to be not one single person, but all the others who sat like tiny congeries in her memory. They were alert, every Reverend Mother she had absorbed in becoming a Priestess of the Sisterhood. Alia would be standing in the same situation here.
"What else?" the ghola asked. "One wonders why the witches of the Bene Gesserit have not used Tleilaxu methods."
Gaius Helen Mohiam and all the Reverend Mothers within her shuddered. Yes, the Tleilaxu did loathsome things. If one let down the barriers to artificial insemination, was the next step a Tleilaxu one - controlled mutation?
Paul, observing the play of emotion around him, felt abruptly that he no longer knew these people. He could see only strangers. Even Alia was a stranger.
Alia said: "If we set the Atreides genes adrift in a Bene Gesserit river, who knows what may result?"
Gaius Helen Mohiam's head snapped around, and she met Alia's gaze. For a flashing instant, they were two Reverend Mothers together, communing on a single thought: What lay behind any Tleilaxu action? The ghola was a Tleilaxu thing. Had he put this plan into Paul's mind? Would Paul attempt to bargain directly with the Bene Tleilaxu?
She broke her gaze from Alia's, feeling her own ambivalence and inadequacies. The pitfall of Bene Gesserit training, she reminded herself, lay in the powers granted: such powers predisposed one to vanity and pride. But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier... including one's own ignorance.
Only one thing stood paramount here for the Bene Gesserit, she told herself. That was the pyramid of generations which had reached an apex in Paul Atreides... and in his abomination of a sister. A wrong choice here and the pyramid would have to be rebuilt... starting generations back in the parallel lines and with breeding specimens lacking the choicest characteristics.
Controlled mutation, she thought. Did the Tleilaxu really practice it? How tempting! She shook her head, the better to rid it of such thoughts.
"You reject my proposal?" Paul asked.
"I'm thinking," she said.
And again, she looked at the sister. The optimum cross for this female Atreides had been lost... killed by Paul. Another possibility remained, however - one which would cement the desired characteristic into an offspring. Paul dared offer animal breeding to the Bene Gesserit! How much was he really prepared to pay for his Chani's life? Would he accept a cross with his own sister?
Sparring for time, the Reverend Mother said: "Tell me, oh flawless exemplar of all that's holy, has Irulan anything to say of your proposal?"
"Irulan will do what you tell her to do," Paul growled.
True enough, Mohiam thought. She firmed her jaw, offered a new gambit: "There are two Atreides."
Paul, sensing something of what lay in the old witch's mind, felt blood darken his face. "Careful what you suggest," he said.
"You'd just use Irulan to gain your own ends, eh?" she asked.
"Wasn't she trained to be used?" Paul asked.
And we trained her, that's what he's saying, Mohiam thought. Well... Irulan's a divided coin. Was there another way to spend such a coin?
"Will you put Chani's child on the throne?" the Reverend Mother asked.
"On my throne." Paul said. He glanced at wondering suddenly if she knew the divergent possibilities in this exchange. Alia stood with eyes closed, an odd stillness-of-person about her. With what inner force did she commune? Seeing his sister thus, Paul felt he'd been cast adrift. Alia stood on a shore that was receding from him.
The Reverend Mother made her decision, said: "This is too much for one person to decide. I must consult with my Council on Wallach. Will you permit a message?"
As though she needed my permission! Paul thought.
He said: "Agreed, then. But don't delay too long. I will not sit idly by while you debate."
"Will you bargain with the Bene Tleilaxu?" the ghola asked, his voice a sharp intrusion.
Alia's eyes popped open and she stared at the ghola as though she'd been wakened by a dangerous intruder.
"I've made no such decision," Paul said. "What I will do is go into the desert as soon as it can be arranged. Our child will be born in sietch."
"A wise decision," Stilgar intoned.
Alia refused to look at Stilgar. It was a wrong decision. She could feel this in every cell. Paul must know it. Why had he fixed himself upon such a path?
"Have the Bene Tleilaxu offered their services?" Alia asked. She saw Mohiam hanging on the answer.