The next day we ploughed on. Crossing the flat heartland of the central valley of Virginia I concluded that after you’d seen one cornfield you’d seen them all – unless of course I was long or short corn futures, in which case I’d have gotten out of the car every thirty miles to measure the height of the corn.
After two hours I took over the driving and Honoria settled back into the passenger seat. But I continued a silent brooding that had begun at breakfast and Honoria apparently noticed it.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘the reason you’re all hung up about your father is the old cliché that you’re probably more like him than you admit.’
‘I’m nothing like him,’ I said.
‘Not in any way?’ she persisted.
‘I suppose we both like the excitement of taking risks,’ I finally said. ‘That’s the only thing we have in common.’
‘Taking risks?’ said Honoria with a frown. ‘How so?’
‘That’s my job!’ I said with some exasperation. ‘You know that. There are two kinds of trading in futures. As you know, the whole purpose of hedging is to reduce risk – a kind of insurance policy against other positions one has in other markets. But I’m not a hedger. Jeff is our firm’s hedger. My job is to make money for clients by pure speculation.’
‘Gambling, you mean.’
‘It’s not gambling!’ I shot back, taking a hand off the wheel to gesture emphatically. ‘It’s intelligent risk-taking. I suppose you could call it loaded-dice risk-taking. Gamblers at something like roulette or craps rely totally on chance, whereas I rely on knowledge, skill and analysis to overcome chance.’
‘But if your knowledge always beats out chance then there’s no risk,’ said Honoria with annoying reasonableness.
‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘It’s still risk-taking! I sometimes lose millions in a week! It’s just that in the long run my knowledge and skill beat out the pure diceplayer – beat out chance.’
‘You don’t have to get so excited,’ Honoria said, reaching forward to retrieve a map that had fallen on to the floor.
‘Look at it this way,’ I said a little more calmly. ‘I like sailing in strong winds. That’s risk-taking. But I like to prepare my boat carefully, have a skilled crew member aboard with me. and carry all the latest safety equipment. But it’s still risk-taking – intelligent risk-taking.’ I frowningly thought of my father. ‘My father, on the other hand, also liked to sail. But he thought nothing of taking some junkheap out on to the ocean without charts or safety equipment or weather projections and with a crew that had never been further out to sea than a bathtub. That’s what I call stupid risk-taking – gambling, if you will. And of course his dice decisions were the stupidest gambling of all.
‘I see what you’re driving at,’ said Honoria. ‘But it seems to me that the whole meaning of risk-taking is that you subject yourself to …’ she hesitated to say the word, maybe fearing it would provoke a diatribe, ‘… letting chance into your life.’
I didn’t explode.
‘Well, maybe,’ I said. ‘I guess my futures speculation is a declaration of war against chance. But as you said, if chance were actually beaten, then the game and the risk and the fun would be over. Yeah, I see that, but my father somehow wants to turn that fact into some sort of worship of chance as the great liberator or life-enhancer. What he failed to admit was that too much chance is like too much order – it ruins the fun. The only thing worse than fascist order is total anarchy, and that’s what diceliving leads to.’
‘Well, I agree completely,’ said Honoria.
‘So,’ I concluded, hoping I’d won whatever argument we’d been having, ‘both my father and I enjoy risk-taking, enjoy – I admit it – the existence of chance, but I see it as an adversary that must be continually overcome while he saw it as a … as a …’
‘As a friend whom he liked playing with,’ finished Honoria.
‘Mmmmm,’ I muttered, feeling that somehow I hadn’t won the argument quite as convincingly as I would have liked.
When I finally turned my car off the last paved highway shown on Arlene’s map we were deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southern Virginia. The dirt road the sketchmap put us on was deeply rutted and narrow. It curved and climbed and dipped through spectacular fall scenery which neither Honoria nor I noticed in the least, both being too busy feeling annoyed at being lost and pummelled around by the ruts and potholes. My Mercedes bottomed out half a dozen times, was coated with a quarter-inch of dust, and hated going in low gear almost as much as I did. If I loved my car as much as did most healthy American men I’d have been in tears.
Finally the tortuous road spilled out on to a wider dirt road, and fifty yards from the intersection was a gate and a guardhouse with a tiny sign that said simply ‘Lukedom’. We had arrived.
When we came to a halt near the guardhouse a young man emerged dressed in a uniform of some kind – military cap, jacket, boots and trousers, but each apparently of some different military service. He approached the window on my side with a decidedly unmilitary amble. I was already feeling annoyed.
He leaned down and peered in at us.
‘Password?’ he asked.
‘Fuck the password,’ I shot back. ‘Just let us in.’
‘No problem,’ said the guard, amiably enough. ‘But you have to give me the password.’
Honoria leaned towards the guard.
‘Chance,’ she said.
The guard shook his head but continued to lean in.
‘Look, we don’t know the password,’ I said. ‘All we wan –’
‘You have to guess,’ said the guard.
‘Garbage, I said.
The guard shook his head.
‘You each get one more try,’ he added helpfully.
‘Dice,’ said Honoria.
‘Bullshit,’ I suggested.
The guard peered down at a small green notebook that appeared in one hand.
‘Close,’ he said, ‘but no cigar.’ He straightened. ‘The password is “February”,’ he said.
‘February,’ I echoed, wondering whether there was a method to the madness or if it was all a practical joke. ‘All right then, “February” I’ve said it. Let us in.’
The guard looked in at me neutrally.
‘I’m afraid there’s a new password now,’ he said, looking sympathetic.
It was some some of test. There must be some mad method behind it.
‘May I ask how you can change the password on a moment’s notice?’ I said. ‘How will people who know the old one now know the new one?’
The guard shook his head sympathetically.
‘A password isn’t something you know,’ he said. ‘It’s something you guess.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ muttered Honoria.
Honoria leaned across towards the guard.
‘We really have to get into Lukedom and speak to a few officials,’ she said with what I thought was remarkable composure. ‘It will only take an hour or two. Can’t you call someone who will let us in without our guessing a password?’
The guard shook his head.
‘The only way I can let you in is if you guess the password or pass the test,’ he said.
‘We’ll try the test,’ said Honoria impatiently. Then under her breath she whispered, ‘This is insane.’
‘Certainly,’ said the guard. Straightening, he leafed through the green book and finally settled on a page.
There are four questions,’ he said, and turned a page of his book as if checking for something. ‘First question,’ he went on. ‘What is the difference between order and chance?’
‘Order works and chance doesn’t,’ I shot back.
The guard peered in at Honoria. She was thinking hard.
‘Order is the work of divine law,’ she finally said. ‘And chance is the work of the devil.’
The guard checked his green book, scowling considerably and clucking to himself.
‘Well,’ he finally said. ‘I guess the foxy lady got that one,’ he announced, looking not too pleased, then frowned his official frown. ‘Second question: what is a human being?’
‘An asshole,’ I suggested.
After a pause Honoria echoed me: ‘An asshole,’ she said.
‘Hey, both right!!’ said the guard. ‘You’re doing good!’ He smiled down at his book. ‘Number three then: how can you tell when a man is really and truly being himself?’
‘When he has an erection,’ I said.
The guard nodded and peered in at Honoria.
‘When he or she is a child,’ said Honoria, looking as if she was getting into the quizzing game and even enjoying it.
The guard shook his head disappointedly. ‘I should have warned you that the last two questions are stinkers. “You can tell when a man is really and truly being himself when his self disappears.”’ The guard looked down doubtfully at Larry and Honoria. ‘A real bitch, huh?’
He went back to his book.
‘Last question, another stinker: “How many sides are there to a six-sided die?”’
‘Six,’ said Honoria.
‘Hold it!’ I shouted, suddenly remembering a riddle from high school. ‘Hold it! This baby is mine. I remember the answer from the ninth grade. A six-sided solid has two sides: an inside and an outside. Two! Two is the answer!’
‘Eight,’ said the guard. ‘Inside, outside and the other six sides.’
There was a rather profound and deadly silence.
‘OK, then,’ the guard went on, straightening. ‘The lady passes and the man fails. Welcome to Lukedom, Miss.’
‘Now, hold it,’ I said, managing against overwhelming odds to maintain my dignity. ‘This nonsense has gone far enough. I have to talk to some people in there and none of this Socratic gobbledegook is going to stop me.’
‘The lady can enter and you can’t,’ replied the guard indifferently.
‘Look, I have to see my father!’ I insisted. ‘I’ve just driven eight hundred miles! My father created this damn place!’
The guard frowned, then leaned down again to the window.
‘What are you talking about?’
Honoria answered him.
‘His father is Luke Rhinehart,’ she said. ‘The Dice Man.’
The guard looked suddenly very nervous.
‘You … You’re the son of Luke Rhinehart?’
I was distinctly annoyed that having Luke Rhinehart as my father might possibly do me some good.
‘Yes,’ I muttered irritably. ‘I’m the son of Luke Rhinehart.’
The guard straightened. ‘Wait here.’ he said.
He disappeared back into the small wooden guardhouse. While he was there, Honoria and I looked at each other and then Honoria sneered.
‘We’ve just driven eight hundred miles to be interviewed by an idiot, from a book written by an idiot, in order to get permission to enter a place undoubtedly populated by idiots.’ She paused. ‘I wonder what that makes us.’
I contributed a grimace.
The guard returned, marching towards the car with a newfound military bearing. He stopped by my driver’s side and, standing exaggeratedly erect, saluted smartly.
‘The son of Luke Rhinehart is welcome to Lukedom,’ he announced in a deep voice. ‘Enter.’
He turned and marched to the gate, gave both sides a gentle push and they swung open. Scowling, I pulled the car forward. As it moved by, the guard saluted smartly. Honoria shook her head in disbelief. I think we were both in a slight state of shock.
The road we were now on – smooth, wide and well-maintained – declined gently towards a large cluster of wooden houses nestled in a lovely valley, bursting with the yellows and reds of fall leaves. It ran alongside a mountain stream that made everything seem as sanely idyllic as the guard had seemed insanely demonic. Then we saw the first house.
It was a house. It was a two-storey clapboard rustic house. A woman in the yard was tending a flowerbed. She looked normal. We drove slowly by. How come she didn’t have two heads?
Further on there was a farmhouse and barns, with at least two dozen cows slopping around in some muck wailing to be fed. Further yet, a field with half a dozen big tents and teepees. Long-skirted women and long-haired men made it look like a hippie enclave from the seventies. A couple of children were flying a kite, a cluster of long-hairs seemed to be passing around a pipe, and rock music could be heard in the distance. There was everything but frisbees.
‘Oh, no,’ said Honoria. ‘I think we’re entering a time warp. I thought Reagan had outlawed teepees.’
‘That first house looked normal enough,’ I said.
‘Probably owned by one of the zoo-keepers.’ said Honoria, who looked as if she was assessing whom she might call on for help if needed.
The village itself at first glance seemed normal, but only at first. It had clearly been a mining town at some time in the past, and the buildings were of the most uninspired wooden construction, square and boxy and old, but most of them renovated and well kept. There was a drugstore and deli and bank and hardware store and bar and people in the streets. Honoria, who had herself never met a ‘hippie’, was suspicious of anyone who vaguely might have had something to do with drugs now or in the past. The streets of the Big Apple were enough evidence for her that those people were not to be trusted whatever they called themselves.
We pulled into an area designated ‘Parking’ and stopped. Except for a large unlabelled delivery truck outside a grocery store there had been no other cars on the street and were only two in the parking lot.
For a moment we just sat in the car.
‘What do we do?’ Honoria said. ‘Ask for the mayor?’
‘You don’t suppose it’s all a joke, do you?’ I asked. ‘Maybe that guard just ushered us through a gate that led through to some small town that everyone else approaches from a main road.
‘Welcome!’ boomed a voice from beside us, causing Honoria to jump and let out a small scream. ‘Welcome to Lukedom!’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I moaned.
‘Thank you,’ said Honoria. getting out of the car. ‘Isn’t there an easier way to get here?’
‘It’s always hard to get here,’ a large jovial man dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt replied. ‘But you made it. Let me take you to “Orientation”’
I got out too, slamming the car door shut.
‘We need some information,’ I said firmly. ‘Who here would know all about this place and … and about Luke Rhinehart?’
‘Got to go to “Orientation” first,’ said the man, moving off. ‘Maybe they’ll tell you.’ He ambled away, glancing back once with a smile of encouragement.
Honoria strode off after our greeter.
‘Come on,’ she said without looking back. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
As we followed our jovial greeter we began to notice that things were not as normal as they first appeared. Many of the stores had names playing on the words ‘dice’ or ‘chance’ or ‘Luke.’ A boutique was ‘Difashions’, a bar was the ‘Snakeyes’, the bank was the ‘Lukedom Bank & Chance Co.’ A wooden, very New Englandy church across the street from us looked charmingly nineteenth-century except for the steeple: on the top was a neon green die rotating in the wind like a weather vane.
And I began to realize that the people weren’t totally normal. They were dressed in too great a variety of styles for a simple country town. Some looked as if they’d just eaten at Luccis or Sardis while others looked as if they might be turned away from Burger King. Some women paraded down the sidewalk as if they were out on a fashion ramp in Paris while other women dressed like truck drivers or hippie retards.
When Honoria saw a fashionably-dressed woman walking sedately along the dirt path accompanied by a man in a business suit she paused to smile at me.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Either there are actually a few normal human beings living here or … tourists.’ She groaned lightly when she realized the second alternative was more likely.
‘Welcome Centre’ was the sign over the large wooden building that our greeter had brought us to. It looked as if it might have been a warehouse in an earlier incarnation. We followed him in.
‘Hi there!’ beamed a vigorous young woman with mannish blonde-streaked hair and snapping brown eyes. She didn’t quite smile but exuded a purposeful energy and control. ‘I’m Wendy. Have you done any diceliving before?’
‘I’m Larry Rhinehart,’ I said, halting. ‘We’re not here for any of that crap; we’re here to try to locate Luke Rhinehart.’
‘That’s wonderful!’ Wendy replied with barely a blink. ‘If you know it’s shit you must have tried it?’
‘We haven’t tried it,’ I snapped back. ‘We don’t want to try it. We just want to find someone who might help me locate my father.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Wendy, who seemed to find everything of a high quality. ‘That would be Rabbi Ecstein. But you really ought to try die-ing: you’d benefit.’
I gave Wendy my best glare and then said softly: ‘Where can I find Mr Ecstein?’
‘The church, usually,’ Wendy said brightly. ‘Of course, like everyone else he may be someone else today.’
‘Wonderful,’ commented Honoria.
When we were out of Wendy’s earshot, she whispered, ‘That is one scary female …’