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 of you!
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, yes!"
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…"