Luke Rheinhart - The Diceman

`Such lovely ladies this evening, lovely ladies. I regret verking with chickens.'

He laughed.

`Dr. Krum, your loss is the world's gain.'

As I said this, Lil glanced briefly at me, raised her eyes ceiling-ward and turned to talk to Jake, who had edged to the outskirts of our group. Arlene was sunk into the couch smiling up at me and I smiled broadly back at her.

`You're terrific, Arlene, you really are. You look sexier every time I see you.'

She flushed prettily.

`Who are you tonight?' she asked nonchalantly, sitting up a bit straighter and inflating her balloons.

`Just terrific, Arlene, you really are. I don't understand, Dr. Krum, these women, why they try to distract us when we

want to talk about your work.'

Dr. Krum, an elderly has-been named Latterly and I were all looking with dazed grins at Arlene until I turned to Dr.

Krum and said: `Your ability to isolate variables amazes me.'

`My verk, my verk.'

He turned to me, shrugged his shoulders and stroked his tiny beard. 'I'm verking now with pigeons.'

`The whole world knows,' I said.

`Knows what?' asked Jake, joining us with a Scotch for me and some purple something for Dr. Krum.

`Dr. Krum, I trust you know my colleague, Dr. Ecstein.'

`Of course, of course, the accidental breakthrough. Ve met.'

`Jake is probably the finest theoretical analyst practicing in the United States today.'

`Yoah,' said Jake without expression. `What were you talking about?'

`Dr. Krum has moved to pigeons and the whole world knows.'

`Oh yeah. How's it going, Krum?'

`Good, good. We haven't induced schizophrenia complete yet, but the pigeons are nervous.'

He laughed again, a quick ratatat-tat hehheh-heh.

`Have you tried injecting 'em with that chicken stuff - that psychotic stuff - you discovered?' Jake asked.

`Oh no. No. It has no effect on pigeons.'

`What methods of inducing schizophrenia in your subjects have you tried after the failure of your cubical maze?'

I asked.

`Presently ve teach homing pigeons to find home. Then ve move pigeon long vay avay and move the home. Pigeon

gets very vorried.'

`What problems have you encountered?'

I asked.

`Ve lose pigeons.'

Jake laughed, but when I glanced at him he cut it short and squinted nervously at me. Dr. Krum stroked his beard,

focused his eyes intently on my knees and went on.

'We lose pigeons. It is nothing. Ve have many pigeons, but chickens could not fly. Pigeons are smart but ve may have

to remove their vings,' he frowned.

Dr. Mann joined us, glass in hand, Jake asked a question and I removed my watchcase and glanced at the single die for

a second role. The tall, gaunt Mr. Thornton arrived, dispensing tiny hors d'oeuvres, crackers with minute pearl-like deposits on them like fish eggs waiting to be fertilized. Each of my three colleagues mechanically took one, Jake downing his in a swallow, Dr. Mann briefly holding his under his nose and then chewing it for the next ten minutes and Dr. Krum taking an intense experimental bite, like a chicken pecking at seed.

`Dr. Rhinehart?'

Mr. Thornton asked, holding the silver tray and its obscene deposits up toward my chest where I could see it.

`Ununununun,' I vibrated noisily, my lower lip hanging sloppily and my eyes attempting an animal vacancy. With my

huge right paw I swept up and clutched six or seven crackers, almost upsetting the tray, and stuffed them into my

mouth, pieces falling in a splendid dry waterfall down my shirtfront to the floor.

A flicker of human surprise crossed for a millisecond the erased face of Mr. Thornton as he looked into my vacant

gaze and watched me chew ineptly, a bit of moist semi-chewed cracker dangling briefly from my lip before falling

forever to the deep brown rug below.

`Unununun,' I vibrated again.

'Thank you, sir,' said Mr. Thornton and turned to the ladies.

Dr. Krum was emphatically stabbing the air in front of Dr. Mann's stomach as if performing some magic rite before

making an incision.

`Proof! Proof! They do not know the meaning of the verd. They raise money with bribes, they are bankers, barbarians,

businessmen, beasts, they-'

`Shit, who cares?' interrupted Jake. `If they want to get rich and famous, let 'em. We're doing the real work.'

He squinted at me; or was it a wink? `That is true. That is true. Scientists like us and businessmen like them have

nutting in common.'

'un unun,' I said, looking at Dr. Krum, my mouth half open like a fish gasping wide-eyed on the deck of a ship. Dr.

Krum looked up at me seriously and respectfully and then stroked his beard three, four times.

`There are two classes of men: the creators and the - how you say - drudges. Is possible to tell immejetly creators.

Immejetly, drudges.'

`Ununununun.'

`I do not know your verk, Dr. Rhinehart, but from the moment you speak to me, I know, I know.'

`Unnh.'

`Dr. Rhinehart has the brains all right,' Dr. Mann said. `But he's got a writing block. He prefers to play games. He

expects every article to surpass Freud.'

`He ought, he ought. Is good to surpass Freud.'

`Luke's got a book in the works about sadism,' said Jake, `which may make Stekel and Reich read like Grandma

Moses.'

It was a wink.

They all three looked up expectantly at me. I continued to stare vacant-eyed, mouth agape, at Dr. Krum. There was a

silence.

`Yes, yes. Is interesting, sadism,' Dr. Krum said, and his face twitched.

`Unnnnnnnh,' I vibrated, but steadier.

Jake and Dr. Krum looked at me hopefully while Dr. Mann took a graceful sip of his wine.

`You have been verking lung on sadism?'

I stared back at him.

Dr. Mann suddenly excused himself and went to greet three more arrivals at the party, and Arlene took Jake's arm and

whispered something in his ear. He turned reluctantly to talk to her. Dr. Krum was still looking at me. I was only half

conscious of the conversation; I was focused on the crumb in his beard.

`Unununun,' I said. It was a little like a faulty transformer.

`Vunderful - I thought myself of experimenting with sadism in chickens, but is rare. Is rare.'

Dr. Mann returned with two other people, a man and a woman, and introduced them to us. One was Fred Boyd, a

young psychologist from Harvard I knew and liked, and the other was his date, a plump, pleasant blonde with a cream-

smooth complexion - a Miss Welish. She reached out her hand when she was introduced to me, and when I failed to

grasp it, she blushed.

Looking at her I said: `Ununununun.'

She blushed again.

`Hi, Luke, how's it going?' asked Fred Boyd. I turned to him blankly.

`How did Herder do with his grant application to Stonewall?' Dr. Mann asked Fred.

Not so good,' Fred answered. `They wrote that their funds are tied up this year and '

`Is that the Dr. Krum?' a voice asked at my elbow.

I looked down at Miss Welish and then over at Dr. Krum. The crumb was still in his beard, although better hidden

now.

'Blnnh,' I asked.

'Fred thinks so too,' Miss Welish said and she turned us aside from the other conversation. `He says one reason he

admires you is that you don't stand for any nonsense.'

Impulsively I lifted one great paw and dangled it loosely over her shoulder. She was wearing a silver, high-necked dress and the shimmering scales were rough against my wrist. `I beg your pardon,' she said, and when she backed away my paw slid down over a breast and swung briefly like a

pendulum at my side.

She blushed and glanced quickly at the three men talking nearby.

`Fred says that Dr. Krum is very good at what he does, but that what he does isn't really important. What do you think?