"All right," said Mark, "watch!"
Flame gushed out of the rocks. Sulphur choked him. Pits of brimstone exploded, concussions rocked the cave. Heaving up, Saul coughed and blundered, burned, withered by hell!
Hell went away. The cave returned.
Mark was laughing.
Saul stood over him. "You," he said coldly, bending down.
"What else do you expect?" cried Mark. "To be tied up, toted off, made the intellectual bride of a man insane with loneliness--do you think I enjoy this?"
"I'll untie you if you promise not to run away."
"I couldn't promise that. I'm a free agent. I don't belong to anybody."
Saul got down on his knees. "But you'vegot to belong, do you hear? You'vegot to belong. I can't let you go away!"
"My dear fellow, the more you say things like that, the more remote I am. If you'd had any sense and done things intelligently, we'd have been friends. I'd have been glad to do you these little hypnotic favors. After all, they're no trouble for me to conjure up. Fun, really. But you've botched it. You wanted me all to yourself. You were afraid the others would take me away from you. Oh, how mistaken you were. I have enough power to keep them all happy. You could have shared me, like a community kitchen. I'd have felt quite like a god among children, being kind, doing favors, in return for which you might bring me little gifts, special tidbits of food."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Saul cried. "But I know those men too well."
"Are you any different? Hardly! Go out and see if they're coming. I thought I heard a noise."
Saul ran. In the cave entrance he cupped his hands, peering down into the night-filled gully. Dim shapes stirred. Was it only the wind blowing the roving clumps of weeds? He began to tremble--a fine, aching tremble.
"I don't see anything." He came back into an empty cave.
He stared at the fireplace. "Mark!"
Mark was gone.
There was nothing but the cave, filled with boulders, stones, pebbles, the lonely fire flickering, the wind sighing. And Saul standing there, incredulous and numb.
"Mark! Mark! Come back!"
The man had worked free of his bonds, slowly, carefully, and using the ruse of imagining he heard other men approaching, had gone--where?
The cave was deep, but ended in a blank wall. And Mark could not have slipped past him into the night. How then?
Saul stepped around the fire. He drew his knife and approached a large boulder that stood against the cave wall. Smiling, he pressed the knife against the boulder. Smiling, he tapped the knife there. Then he drew his knife back to plunge it into the boulder.
"Stop!" shouted Mark.
The boulder vanished. Mark was there.
Saul suspended his knife. The fire played on his cheeks. His eyes were quite insane.
"It didn't work," he whispered. He reached down and put his hands on Mark's throat and closed his fingers. Mark said nothing, but moved uneasily in the grip, his eyes ironic, telling things to Saul that Saul knew.
If you kill me, the eyes said, where will all your dreams be?
If you kill me, where will all the streams and brook trout be?
Kill me, kill Plato, kill Aristotle, kill Einstein; yes, kill all of us!
Go ahead, strangle me. I dare you.
Saul's fingers released the throat.