"The strong should protect the weak," Zina said. "The Torah says so. It is a basic idea of the Torah; it is basic to God's law. As God protects man, so man should protect the disadvantaged, even down to animals and the nobler trees."

Belial said, "This runs contrary to the nature of life, the na- ture you implanted in it. This is how life evolves. I accuse you of violating your own biological foundations, the order of the world. Yes, by all means, free every prisoner; loose a tide of murder- ers on the world. You have begun with me. Again I thank you. But now I leave you; I have as much to do as you have- perhaps more. Let me down." The goat leaped from their arms and ran off; Zina and Emmanuel watched it go. And as it ran it grew.

"It will undo our world," Zina said.

Emmanuel said, "We will kill it first." He raised his hand; the goat vanished.

"It is not gone," Zina said. "It has concealed itself in the world. Camouflaged itself. We cannot now even find it. You know that it won't die. Like us it is eternal."

In the other cages the remaining imprisoned animals clamored to be released. Zina and Emmanuel ignored them; instead, they looked this way and that for the goat whom they had let out-let out to do as it wished.

"I sense its presence," Zina said.

"I, too," Emmanuel said somberly. "Our work is undone already."

"But the battle is not over," Zina said. "As it said itself, 'The battle now begins.'

"So be it," Emmanuel said. "We will fight it together, the two of us. As we did in the beginning, before the fall."

Leaning toward him, Zina kissed him.

He felt her fear. Her intense dread. And that dread lay within him, too.

What will become of them now? he asked himself. The people whom he wished to free. What kind of prison will Belial contrive for them with his endless ability to contrive prisons? Subtle ones and gross ones, prisons within prisons; prisons for the body, and, worse by far, prisons for the mind.