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began to believe, fitfully and nervously at first, but then with a great searing white flame of belief which overturned all previous beliefs, including the stupid one about the valley being pink, that somewhere down in the valley, about a mile from where he was sitting, there would shortly open up a mysterious doorway into a strange and distant world, a doorway through which he might enter.  An astounding idea.
    Astoundingly enough, however, on this one occasion he was perfectly right.
    The horse sensed that something was up.
    It pricked up its ears and gently shook its head.  It had gone into a sort of trance looking at the same clump of rocks for so long, and was on the verge of imagining them to be pink itself.  It shook its head a little harder.
    A slight twitch on the reins, and a prod from the Monk’s heels and they were off, picking their way carefully down the rocky incline.  The way was difficult.  Much of it was loose shale -- loose brown and grey shale, with the occasional brown and green plant clinging to a precarious existence on it.  The Monk noticed this without embarrassment.  It was an older, wiser Monk now, and had put childish things behind it.  Pink valleys, hermaphrodite tables, these were all natural stages through which one had to pass on the path to true enlightenment.
    The sun beat hard on them.  The Monk wiped the sweat and dust off its face and paused, leaning forward on the horse’s neck.  It peered down through the shimmering heat haze at a large outcrop of rock which stood out on to the floor of the valley.  There, behind that outcrop, was where the Monk thought, or rather passionately believed to the core of its being, the door would appear.  It tried to focus more closely, but the details of the view swam confusingly in the hot rising air.
    As it sat back in its saddle, and was about to prod the horse onward, it suddenly noticed a rather odd thing.
    On a flattish wall of rock nearby, in fact so nearby that the Monk was surprised not to have noticed it before, was a large painting.  The painting was crudely drawn, though not without a certain stylish sweep of line, and seemed very old, possibly very, very old indeed.  The paint was faded, chipped and patchy, and it was difficult to discern with any clarity what the picture was.  The Monk approached the picture more closely.  It looked like a primitive hunting scene.
    The group of purple, multi-limbed creatures were clearly early hunters.  They carried rough spears, and were in hot pursuit of a large horned and armoured creature, which appeared to have been wounded in the hunt already.  The colours were now so dim as to be almost non-existent.  In fact, all that could be clearly seen was the white of the hunters’ teeth, which seemed to shine with a whiteness whose lustre was undimmed by the passage of what must have been many thousands of years.  In fact they even put the Monk’s own teeth to shame, and he had cleaned them only that morning.
    The Monk had seen paintings like this before, but only in pictures or on the TV, never in real life.  They were usually to be found in caves where they were protected from the elements, otherwise they would not have survived.
    The Monk looked more carefully at the immediate environs of the rock wall and noticed that, though not exactly in a cave, it was nevertheless protected by a large overhang and was well sheltered from the wind and rain.  Odd, though, that it should have managed to last so long.  Odder still that it should appear not to have been discovered.  Such cave paintings as there were, were all famous and familiar images, but this was not one that he had ever seen before.
    Perhaps this was a dramatic and historic find he had made.  Perhaps if he were to return to the city and announce this discovery he would be welcomed back, given a new motherboard after all and allowed to believe -- to believe -- believe what?  He paused, blinked, and shook his head to clear a