“The precious Rakian project is no longer our project,” Bellonda said. “It may never have been.”
All of her considerable mental powers in hard focus, Taraza reexamined the implications of this familiar argument. It was a thing spoken frequently in the wrangling session they had concluded earlier.
Was the ghola scheme something set in motion by the Tyrant? If so, what could they do about it now? What should they do about it?
During the long dispute, the Minority Report had been in all of their minds. Schwangyu might be dead but her faction survived and it looked now as though Bellonda had joined them. Was the Sisterhood blinding itself to a fatal possibility? Odrade’s report of that hidden message on Rakis could be interpreted as an ominous warning. Odrade emphasized this by reporting how she had been alerted by her inner sense of alarm. No Reverend Mother could treat such an event lightly.
Bellonda straightened and folded her arms across her breast. “We never completely escape the teachers of our childhood nor any of the patterns that formed us, do we?”
That was an argument peculiar to Bene Gesserit disputes. It reminded them of their own particular susceptibility.
We are the secret aristocrats and it is our offspring who inherit the power. Yes, we are susceptible to that and Miles Teg is a superb example.
Bellonda found a straight chair and sat down, bringing her eyes level with Taraza’s. “At the height of the Scattering,” she said, “we lost some twenty percent of our failures.”
“It is not failures who are coming back to us.”
“But the Tyrant surely knew this would happen!”
“The Scattering was his goal, Bell. That was his Golden Path, humankind’s survival!”
“But we know how he felt about the Tleilaxu and yet he did not exterminate them. He could have and he did not!”
“He wanted diversity.”
Bellonda pounded a fist on the table. “He certainly got that!”
“We’ve been through all of these arguments over and over, Bell, and I still see no way to escape what Odrade has done.”
“Subservience!”
“Not at all. Were we ever totally subservient to one of the pre-Tyrant emperors? Not even to Muad’dib!”
“We’re still in the Tyrant’s trap,” Bellonda accused. “Tell me, why have the Tleilaxu continued to produce his favorite ghola? Millennia, and still that ghola keeps coming out of their tanks like a dancing doll.”
“You think the Tleilaxu still follow a secret order from the Tyrant? If so, then you argue for Odrade. She has created admirable conditions for us to examine this.”
“He ordered nothing of the kind! He merely made that particular ghola deliciously attractive to the Bene Tleilax.”
“And not to us?”
“Mother Superior, we must get ourselves out of the Tyrant’s trap now! And by the most direct method.”
“The decision is mine, Bell. I still lean toward a cautious alliance.”
“Then at the very least let us kill the ghola. Sheeana can have children. We could –”
“This is not now and never was purely a breeding project!”
“But it could be. What if you’re wrong about the power behind the Atreides prescience?”
“All of your proposals lead to alienation from Rakis and from the Tleilaxu, Bell. ”
“The Sisterhood could weather fifty generations on our present stockpiles of melange. More with rationing.”
“You think fifty generations is a long time, Bell? Don’t you see that this very attitude is why you are not sitting in my chair?”
Bellonda pushed herself back from the table, her chair scraping harshly against the floor. Taraza could see that she was not convinced. Bellonda no longer could be trusted. She might be the one who would have to die. And where was the noble purpose in that?
“This gets us nowhere,” Taraza said. “Leave me.”
When she was alone, Taraza once more considered Odrade’s message. Ominous. It was easy to see why Bellonda and others reacted violently. But that showed a dangerous lack of control.
It is not yet time to write the Sisterhood’s final will and testament.
In an odd way, Odrade and Bellonda shared the same fear but came to different decisions because of that fear. Odrade’s interpretation of that message in the stones of Rakis conveyed an old warning: