Michael's eyes widened. "Come now, Dale, I can't believe that."

  Stevenson pointed at the coffee table. "Then, Doctor, I suggest you break your rule and read something in biology! I think you'll find it has a lot to do with the history you've been teaching."

  "How?"

  "In that report is an outline for Manifest Destiny." Stevenson opened the door. "RMI is having us—you, me and the others—the company is having us teach an entire race to death!" Stevenson walked through the open door, slamming it behind him. Michael picked up the envelope, pulled the report from it, then sat down and turned to the first page.

  Jacob Lynn looked up in surprise as Michael Fellman burst into his office unannounced. Lynn's secretary followed in the historian's wake. "I'm sorry, Mr. Lynn, he just walked right past me, and—"

  Lynn waved a hand. "It's all right." The secretary scowled at Michael, then turned and left, closing the door. "Now, Fellman, what's this all about?"

  Michael took a bound sheaf of papers from under his arm and dropped it on Lynn's desk. "That."

  Lynn raised his eyebrows as he read the title on the report, then he looked at Michael. "Where did you get this?"

  "Transportation problems don't interest me, Lynn. What does interest me is are you aware of what's in that report?"

  Lynn leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes. "Of course."

  "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  Michael studied the project manager. With each sweep of his eyes, new information presented itself. "You knew all along about this."

  "Of course."

  "Why? This will mean the death of a race!"

  Lynn smiled and shook his head. "You're overstating things, Fellman. We're not doing this outside the claim area." He shook his head again, then fixed Michael to the floor with his eyes. "Let me introduce you to a few realities, Fellman. Developed planets with advanced populations already are exploiting their mineral resources. Uninhabited planets are many, but expensive to investigate. Therefore, we, that is, RMI finds itself in a position where it always has to deal with semi-barbaric populations. To maximize our profits, it is necessary that the local population cooperate."

  "And death is the ultimate cooperation."

  "You said it, Fellman. I didn't."

  "Which makes one Helluvalot of difference, Lynn."

  Lynn smiled. "Is your conscience bothering you, Doctor? Is the size of the cynicism beginning to gnaw at you? You must know that any principle that you thought worth preserving was tossed down the toilet when you signed your contract with RMI." Lynn held out his hands. "What is this performance, Fellman? Are you trying to manufacture a rationalization for your own purity?"

  "Lynn, you ought to be sporting a forked tail and red suit."

  Lynn frowned, then laughed. "Are you complaining because I made a better deal when I sold out than you did? Or are old ideals beginning to shake their coffin lids?"

  "You know, Lynn, you are the lowest form of life that ever crawled."

  Lynn, still smiling, shook his head. "No, Fellman. There we disagree. I know what I'm doing, and I accept it. You are doing the same thing and crying about it. At least I'm honest. What does that make you, Fellman? You and the rest of your ivory-tower crew?"

  "What does that make me?" Michael sat on the crude stone wall overlooking the encampments of five of the Benda families. Each family was removed from the others by distance and strict custom. The families had moved from their permanent sites in order that their males could attend his lecture at the local RMI auditorium. Michael pushed himself from the wall and began walking the rough path through the encampments back to his quarters. He thought of Stevenson's anger and Lynn's smugness, and the words Michael had uttered many years before when a young idealist at the university had sought his support in protesting some rights-diminishing law. "I am tired. Too tired to again break my back on the knee of another lost cause." A coldness had crept into his heart as he made his peace with uncontestable power; a coldness that allowed him to sweep together a few shards of career ruined by following impossible ideals.

  As he approached the first encampment, he saw twelve young females competing to see which of them would have the strength, courage and stamina to become males. Michael remembered a line from the report. The Benda cannot conceptualize of an organization beyond the family level. It appears, then, that the company must either treat with separate families—with the entailing impossible conflicts inherent in such arrangements—or devise apian that will enable the Benda to be either treated as a unity, or eliminated.

  Michael shook his head at the frigid sense of purpose implied by the report. The cynicism of pragmatics brought to the ultimate cynicism: the elimination of a race to achieve the kind of political stability that would attract investment capital to the RMI coffers. He watched one of the Benda females deliver a savage blow to another, sending the stricken child writhing to the dust. The victorious female whirled around on her four walking hands, motioning to her sisters to come and try their luck. Most of them hung back, but one reared up and charged. The two met with a bone-crunching thud, then were lost to view in a cloud of dust.

  Michael turned and saw the females of another family similarly engaged. Then, he saw the family male squatting at the edge of the clearing, studying his children at their combat. The male's burly arms and strong back showed patches of fine blond hair amidst the black shag of his coat. The male turned his head, saw Michael, then jumped up, startled. Michael smiled and nodded his head at the Benda male. The creature only stared at the human, then hung his head and walked slowly away from the encampment.

  Michael turned and hurried away.

  Armath waited at the auditorium door for the opening to clear. At a break in the ingoing traffic, Armath spaced himself behind the most recent entrant the customary four paces, then moved into the huge, vaulted structure. Its size was necessary to seat the Benda students in such a manner that no two of them came any closer than four paces apart. Armath moved down the ranks, spotted an open place, then walked to it and squatted, facing the tiny stage at the front of the room. He noticed blond patches on many backs, and that the smell of Tueh was in the air. Armath bowed his head, sighed and waited. After a few moments, the auditorium grew silent. The frail gray human called Fellman entered at the front of the room and climbed up on the stage.

  He placed his papers on the lectern, adjusted the microphone, then looked at the assembled males. "Humans will bury you." The words echoed throughout the auditorium. Armath frowned, for the human's style had changed. "If this were a classroom full of humans, there would be talking, laughing, playing about. But not with you." Armath could feel the scorn washing from the lectern across the students. "You can't talk with your neighbor, can you? Look at you. Look at yourselves squatting as though each one of you was an island unto himself." Armath looked and saw the other Benda males also looking around.

  "Do any of you know why you sit apart like that? I'm asking a question? Do any of you know?"

  Armath stood. "It is our custom."

  Fellman nodded. "And how is it that it became a custom? Can you answer that?"

  Armath held out his hands. "It has always been so."

  The human motioned with his hand. "Sit back down." He looked over the audience for a long moment, then fixed one of the males in the front row with its eyes. "You!" The student stood. "Why are we speaking my language—the language of humans?"

  The Benda frowned, then shrugged. "Our own language is not… it is not complex as is yours. Our only need of language is to care for our Dishah. We needed nothing more before the humans came."

  Fellman nodded. "And we are here, aren't we? And you will all die because we came—because we are better than you!"

  Armath swallowed as the last echoes of the human's challenge faded. Inside his chest he felt a tightening. The human walked from behind the lectern, then went from one end of the stage to the other, looking over the students. He returned to the lectern and leaned his arms on it. "The custom of separation dates back before the earliest memory of your oldest. Before the custom, a male chancing to meet another would enter combat to decide who was the stronger." Fellman nodded. "Of course you know what happened to the loser. You know because it's happening to all oiyouV

  The tightening in Armath's chest grew, and he recognized it to be anger. The human removed his arms from the lectern and held them behind his back. "Your ancestors were at least intelligent enough to see that this reduced an already small male population. Hence, it was agreed, long ago, that there was no challenge between males beyond four paces. This solved the problem, but it also eliminated the need for one male to talk to another. You cannot even talk to your own fathers if they can still reproduce, can you?" Fellman shook his head. "That's why you are nothing, and will remain nothing, until your race is extinct!"

  Armath snarled and stood, along with several other Benda. His fingers ached to rip the little man apart, but other Benda had him boxed in on all four sides and corners. Fellman pointed his finger at Armath. "You!"

  The growls among the Benda quieted. Armath held his head high, his eyes flashing. "Yes, human?"

  "You want to come up here, do you not?"

  Armath nodded and flexed his fingers. "Yes. Ah, yesl"

  Fellman moved a little to his left and pointed at the four-pace-wide path between Armath and the stage. "There is a clear path. Walk through there."

  Armath looked at the two Benda males flanking the entrance to the path. He saw the hair on one rise as the fellow stood. The male looked at Fellman, then back at Armath. He nodded. The male across from him nodded as well. The human screamed from the lectern. "Tell him it's all right! Tell him with words, damn it!"

  The male to Armath's right looked at the human, then back at Armath. He held out a fist, then opened his hand, pointing it toward the human. "Pass."

  The Benda male across from him nodded and held out his hand. "Pass."

  Armath moved forward, his body tense, as he passed between the two males, then approached the next pair. They held out their hands toward the stage.

  "Pass."

  "Pass."

  Armath walked between the two rows, stopping before each new pair, with each new pair holding out their hands toward the stage.

  "Pass."

  "Pass."

  As he left the last pair behind and stood before the stage, he discovered to his amazement that he was no longer angry. Instead, his mind was filled with the wonder of what had just transpired. The auditorium was silent. Fellman walked to the edge of the stage. "Come up here."

  Armath walked the five steps to the stage and moved to the lectern. He stopped four paces from the human. Fellman glared at him and pointed at a spot on the stage next to the lectern. Armath reared up a bit, blew in and out a few times, then stood next to the human. Fellman turned to the auditorium and folded his arms. To the Benda males seated in the ranks, he appeared foolish and small standing next to the tall, husky Armath. The odd couple stood together until the picture was firmly implanted in everyone's mind. Then the human spoke into the microphone.

  "All over this Universe there is life that has a special quality. Humans have this quality; the Benda has this quality. You are not creatures of instinct, Benda. You are not slaves to the Universe's whim. You are creatures of choice. What you are is by choice; what you will become is by choice—your choice." Fellman looked at Armath, then returned his gaze to the" assembled Benda males. "My job is to teach you about human history. That history has been one of expansionism, conquest and oppression." The little gray man rubbed his chin, then dropped his hand to his side. "But no race has a longer history of resisting human oppression, conquest, and expansion than do the humans themselves." Fellman tapped the papers on his lectern and spoke to Armath without looking at him. "Read this to the others." The man turned, left the stage, then left the auditorium.

  Armath moved to the lectern, his heart stopping as he realized that he was about to talk—to talk to a room full of males. He swallowed, looked down at the papers, and studied them to keep from looking at the sea of faces before him. His eyes dashed over the hand-printed lines, then he frowned and looked back at the faces. "The human… the human has left us a story." He looked back at the paper, swallowed, then looked back at the males. "In a land far away, in a time long ago, there was a man. He was a hard man among hard men; he was a solitary man among solitary men. In the midst of a powerful empire, he was a slave, and his name was Spartacus…"

  The winter closed, Bendadn saw its brief summer, then once again the winds brought the snow as two males met in the forest. Armath squatted in the field and turned to Januth. "Why do we meet here, Januth?"

  Januth raised his brows and held out his hands. "Armath, can you imagine us meeting in my camp, or yours? Think of the females."

  Armath nodded. "They would be disturbed." He rubbed his chin. "I wonder…about educating the females. What would Fellman think of that?"

  "Armath, you are closer to the human than any of us. That is why I would ask you a question."

  "What question?"

  Januth frowned and scratched at the new black hair on his arm. "This human, Spartacus, and the few humans who fought the Persians at that pass…"

  "Thermopylae."

  Januth nodded. "And the human Hale who hung, and all those others. Humans who faced impossible odds, it is true. But they all failed."

  "What is your question?"

  "I feel that Fellman would have us… become something different, something better, stronger." Januth held out his hands, then dropped them. "But the examples he gives us all fail. What is the purpose of this?"

  Armath studied the ground, then looked into Januth's eyes. "Can there be, Januth, something more important than the Dishahl We serve our own lives, and that of our Dishah. That is how it has always been, and it is good." Armath frowned, then held out a hand in Januth's direction. "But is there something more important? The humans Fellman talks of. They failed, but they… failed serving something more important than themselves. Perhaps that is the lesson Fellman would have us learn."

  Januth shrugged. "He would have us serve something more important?"

  Armath nodded. "It is what I think."

  "Well, what would he have us serve?"

  Armath shook his head. "I do not know. One thing I do know is that he teaches us that the contest with power is never won or lost until one side or the other breathes its last. Our contest is not over. Who is the stronger is still to be decided."

  Januth smiled. "Do you… do you mean… ?"

  Armath grinned and held out his arms. "Yes. Soon my home will be crawling with screaming, squabbling brats!"

  A month later, a strange human waited in the darkness at the back of the RMI auditorium furthest from the company administrative complex. He observed the Benda males, totally absorbed in talk, moving into the great room together and crowding toward the small raised stage where they squatted, shoulder to shoulder. When the auditorium was half-full, the Benda lowered their chatter, then became silent as a graying human entered and climbed up onto the stage. He moved to the lectern, placed some notes upon it, then adjusted the microphone. "Questions."

  Several hairy black hands rose. The man pointed at one of them and a huge Benda male stood. "Fellman, if the Benda is to serve something larger, more important, than any one of us, or any one Dishah, what is it that we should serve?"

  The human nodded. "I am a human. What makes me better than you is that I can devise and choose those things that I serve. You are Benda. It is not for me to devise and choose the things that you will serve. You are creatures of choice; then choose." The graying human looked to his notes. "Today I will talk of manifest destiny—"

  A moan rose from the assembled males. One male close to the front stood. "Fellman, we choose not to hear any more of that trash. It is trash, and you have said so yourself." The male's comment was greeted with growls of approval.

  The little gray man smiled. "You speak of a book; I speak of an ideal—the true destiny of humans, and of other intelligent races."

  The male standing cocked his head to one side. "Is this the destiny of the Benda as well?"

  Another male stood and spoke to the first. "Fellman said that such things are a matter of choice. We cannot choose until we listen and understand."

  Both males squatted on the floor. The human turned to his notes. "Intelligent life rules other life. But it is not the destiny of intelligent life to rule intelligent life. The destiny of intelligent life is not to be ruled. As creatures of choice, it is our nature to be free to choose. Rule is existence by the choice of others as instinct is existence by the choice of nature. Today we will begin a study of the history of human progress and revolution…"

  The Benda males, absorbed in thought, did not notice the other human at the back of the auditorium moving from the shadows, then walking rapidly out of the building.

  Jacob Lynn leaned back in his chair and nodded at the biologist. "All right, Hyman. You've had a look around. Now tell me why things are not following the projections in your report."

  Hyman pushed a thin wisp of brown hair from his watery blue eyes. "It's your boy Fellman."

  "Fellman?"

  Hyman nodded. "He's made the entire Manifest Destiny program into a laughingstock. In addition, he has the Benda males discussing matters that should be far beyond them. Dangerous matters."

  Lynn frowned. "Such as?"

  Hyman shrugged. "He's got them talking philosophy, politics, revolution—"

  "What?"

  Hyman nodded. "In addition, none of the males I've observed have reverted. By now they should have stopped reproducing altogether. Somehow, Fellman has convinced the Benda that they are, if not superior to humans, at least not to be dominated by humans. I'm afraid that simply removing Fellman and the other teachers who are helping him will not reverse the process. The damage is done."

  "What do you suggest?"

  Hyman sighed, then shrugged. "There appears to be little alternative. You must convince the Benda—once and for all—that they are inferior. And this must be done in a manner understandable to the Benda."

 

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