THE CAVE AND THE ROCK

In the world of the tableland, the creek and the desert the great lizards despise the degenerate creekers, hold to the strictures of the sages and quail before their god, Sarass, The Unfathomable, The Mysterious, The Redoubtable. Young Frut, typical of his fraternity, makes a tremendous discovery which disproves basic beliefs and teachings and, in describing it, causes the death of many creekers. He is taken before the sages, given a chance to recant, but realizing that if his truth is surpressed other facts may be perverted, stands fast and is thrown to Sarass. The great snake reveals that Frut's discovery is Man, tells him how he may possibly escape across the salt flats to the Blue Cape and lets him go free. Frut makes the hazardous journey and finds another way of life with the Blue Cape lizards. In making the transitions of the refugee, he decides for unchallenged, dead level safety while regretting the vigor and vitality of his earlier life. More kinship here to Orwell's Animal Farm than the current Dog's Head in its mirroring of human practices and precepts in lizard communities, this is a fable of perpetuated inequalities versus the reasonable life and the individual torment of choice, which is vividly supplemented by lizard life and habitat.