Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

`What happened?' she asked as we moved down the hall toward the living room.

`Red light,' I said.

`What are you going to do?'

I collapsed in total exhaustion on the couch. Jake was seated in the sand in a half-lotus position, staring into the red

glow of a fake fire in Wipple's early American fireplace and smoking lazily on a homemade cigarette. H. J. wasn't

around.

`They've got mad Lucifer really running,' I said. `Do you think, Lil, the Die intended you to remain married to a man

whom it may ask to spend the next two hundred and thirty seven years in prison?'

`Probably,' she said. `What happened?'

I began telling Lil and Jake about my conversation in the basement and all the options I suddenly found myself

confronted with. They listened attentively, Lil leaning against the boulder, Jake staring into the fire.

`If I betray Eric, it will seem,' I concluded wearily, `I don't know, as if I had betrayed someone.'

`Don't worry about it,' said Jake. `We never know what's good for us. Betrayal might be just what Eric's looking for.'

`On the other hand, two hundred and thirty-seven years in prison seems like an unduly long time.'

`The sage can fulfil himself anyplace.'

`I think I might feel confined.

'Dicedust,' Jake said. `You'd probably discover a whole new universe in prison.'

I'd like to try to escape from here, but I'm not sure there's a helicopter on the roof.'

Jake, cross-legged in the sand, staring into the red glow of the fake fire, smiled again like a child.

`Create the options, shake the dice,' he said. `I don't know why you keep talking.'

`But I like you people,' I said. `I'm not sure I'd like prison as much.'

`That's a hang-up, Luke baby,' he said. `You gotta fight it.'

'So give good odds for trying to escape,' said Lil. `Or good odds for hiring me as your lawyer. That'll keep you free.'

`I'm worried about my image,' I said. `The Father of dice living has an obligation always to shake true.'

`Dicedung,' said Jake lazily. `If you're worried about your image you're neither a Father or a child; you're just another

man.'

`But I have to help people.'

`Dicesnot. If you think you gotta help people, you're just another man.'

`But I want to help people.'

`Dicepiss,' said Jake. `If you want anything, you're just another man.'

`What's with these new obscenities?' I asked.

`Diced if I know.'

`You're being silly.'

`Not half as silly as you're being.'

He beamed into the fake fire. `Create the options. Shake the dice. All else is nonsense.'

`But I'm worried. It's me that may get two hundred and thirty-seven years.'

`Who're you?' Jake asked lazily.

There was a long pause and by now all three of us were staring into the redglow.

`Oh yeah, I keep forgetting,' I said, pulling out a green die, sitting up erect and becoming aware that I was sitting on

someone's snow. `I am

EPILOGUE

One day when Luke was being chased by two FBI men with .45's he came to a cliff and leapt off, just catching the

roof to a wild vine twenty yards below the ridge and dangling there. Looking down, he saw fifty feet below six policemen with machineguns, mace, tear gas canisters and two armored cars. Just above him he saw two mice, one white and one black, beginning to gnaw away at the vine to which he clung. Suddenly he saw just in front of him a cluster of luscious ripe, strawberries.

`Ah,' he said. `A new option.' from The Book of the Die