“I don’t know why you want to drag in those people,” he said, after I had suggested Zoroaster as a possible point of beginning. “Most people have never heard of them either. And what I have to say is all my own. It doesn’t tie in with any of them or, if it does, it’s a coincidence because I never picked it up anywhere.” “I think, though, that it would help matters if we did provide a sort of family tree for you, to show....” “I don’t.” He gestured with his effigy-hands. “Let them argue about it later. For now, act like this is a new beginning, which it is. I have only one thing to give people and that is the way to die without fear, gladly ... to accept nothing for what it is, a long and dreamless sleep.” I had to fight against that voice, those eyes which as always, when he chose, could dominate any listener. Despite my close association with him, despite the thousands of times I heard him speak, I was never, even in moments of lucid disenchantment, quite able to resist his power. He was a magician in the great line of Simon Magus and the Faust of legend. That much, even now, I will acknowledge ... his divinity, however, was and is the work of others, shaped and directed by the race’s recurrent need. I surrendered in the name of philosophy with a certain relief, and he spoke in specific terms of what he believed and what I should write in his name. It was not until after dinner that we got around, all three of us, to a problem which was soon to absorb us all, with near-disastrous results. We had been talking amiably of neutral things and Cave had emerged somewhat from his earlier despondency. He got on to the subject of the farm where we were, of its attractiveness and remoteness, of its owner who lived in Spokane. “I always liked old Smathers. You’d like him too. He’s got one of the biggest funeral parlors in the state. I used to work for him and then, when I started on all this, he backed me up to the hilt. Lent me money to get as far as San Francisco. After that of course it was easy. I paid him back every cent.” “Does he get here often?” Cave shook his head. “No, he lets me use the farm but he keeps away. He says he doesn’t approve of what I’m doing. You see he’s Catholic.” “But he still likes John,” said Iris who had been stroking a particularly ugly yellow cat beside the fire. So it was John now, I thought. Iris was the only person ever to call him by his first name. “Yes. He’s a good friend.” “There’ll be a lot of trouble, you know,” I said. “From Smathers?” “No, from the Catholics, from the Christians.” “You really think so?” Cave looked at me curiously. I believe that until that moment he had never realized the inevitable collision of his point of view with that of the established religions.