The Search for the Dice Man (31 page)

When Larry warned Mr Mora that American FBI agents had followed them to Tokyo and that his father might be in danger of being arrested Mr Mora nodded as if this was old news and said simply: ‘We are taking care of the matter.’

‘May I ask how?’ said Larry.

‘We are preparing for them a grave,’ said Mr Mora.

Both Larry and Kim had protested that this seemed to be carrying things unnecessarily far, but Mr Mora had simply nodded and assured them that everything would be taken care of.

On the train to Kyoto the two of them tried to figure out what the implications were of all they’d learned. Were the Japanese involved in Lukedom because of Luke’s past association with the founder of DI, or because he still had influence in the company? But Mora had said Luke was retired. They agreed that it was DI’s money that must have created the hidden complex in the Lukedom mountain and the sophisticated television programming. Was their money also behind the things that the FBI had claimed were going on in the IRS, other government agencies and some banks? Was DI systematically introducing random factors throughout the world? Was this good or bad? Did his father know what was happening or not?

When they’d exhausted their speculation Kim suddenly looked at Larry mischievously and announced that it was exactly one week since the Battle party and that the day was Saturday. It took several repetitions before he grasped the significance.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I proposed to you and you said –’

‘Exactly!’

He casually took out a coin.

‘Heads I pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘Tails I ask you again to marry me.’

Larry flipped the coin in the air, grabbed it and opened his palm to look at the result.

‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.

‘Ask me again next Saturday,’ she said.

The monastery was in the hills on the outskirts of Kyoto, a lovely wooded area, seemingly remote but actually only a thirty-minute drive from the city.

A brown-robed monk greeted them as if they were expected. He led them from the gate through a lovely lush Japanese garden, then through a stone garden with seemingly randomly-placed boulders in the middle of raked pebbles, and finally into a wooden structure. They passed by the entrance to a meditation hall in which about thirty monks were walking about in a large circle chanting something in Japanese.

Their brown-robed monk passed them on to a second brown-robed monk, who smiled and nodded and seemed suspiciously like Mr Mora in disguise. In fact, in their discussions on the train Kim had raised the question as to whether this monastery might be a put-on, or Luke’s presence here a one-day show. But a guidebook they’d picked up in Kyoto indicated that this was a well-known Japanese Zen monastery that had been in existence since before the Second World War.

The second monk led them out of the wooden structure and on to a dirty path that began to wind upwards towards a ridge. After they’d hiked about twenty minutes, the monk smiled and nodded and indicated they were to proceed further upwards on the path on their own.

So they hiked on upwards; twisted small pines and some sort of Asian shrubbery closed in the path except where
occasional openings gave a vista of a small valley and

‘My God,’ Larry said after a while. ‘You don’t suppose my father’s gotten religion, do you?’

‘It looks that way.’

Finally they arrived at the top of the ridge and began to move along it. Ahead through the trees they soon saw a wooden roof. As they drew closer they saw it was simply a large roofed shelter.

Inside, seated cross-legged with a laptop computer, facing the open vista of the valley below, was a brown-robed monk.

They came to the edge of the shelter and paused. The monk, seen in profile, was Caucasian. His head slowly turned to look at them; Larry knew it was his father.

Luke Rhinehart had aged. He was greyer and had less hair, and was decidedly thinner than he’d been twenty years earlier. Without hesitation, he arose from his lotus position and approached. He stopped about five feet away and gazed at Larry. Larry was aware that, through the thick glasses his father wore, tears were forming in his eyes.

‘What took you so long?’ his father asked with a sudden smile that for some reason reminded Larry of Kim.

Larry was in a state of shock. If you’ve spent fifteen years visualizing a monster, and four months chasing a monster, an old man in monk’s robes with tears in his eyes was definitely a shock. When Luke now came up and put his arms around him and embraced him, he could only stand stiff and frozen.

‘But I’m glad you’re finally here,’ his father added. ‘And I thank you for coming.’ Then he released Larry and stepped back.

‘Hi,’ he said to Kim.

‘I’m Kim Castelli,’ she said, looking at this man in almost as much shock as Larry.

Luke nodded and looked back at his son. Then he suddenly broke into a big grin.

‘Arlene told me about that house party last weekend,’ he said, chuckling and shaking his head. ‘Ah, those were the days.’

Larry was still too frozen to speak.

‘She’s been in touch with you?’ asked Kim.

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘And I told her she owes you two an apology.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘She told me she’d considered it, but the dice had said no.’

‘What … are you doing here?’ asked Kim. Larry was still standing like a zombie.

‘As you see,’ said Luke. ‘I’m a monk.’

‘You don’t use the dice any more?’ asked Kim.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I stopped using the dice fifteen years ago.’

Kim looked at Larry, then back at Luke.

‘What’s your relationship to Ditonics?’ she asked.

‘I used to work for them. With Iko. He knew computers, I knew chance. We made a good team for a while.’

Larry recovered enough to look at Kim, then at the surrounding hills, finally at his father again.

‘Why did you never get in touch with me?’ he asked.

‘I did,’ said Luke. ‘You told me to go to hell.’

‘I mean before that,’ Larry said angrily. ‘Or after that.’

‘I didn’t do it before because you were doing fine with your mother,’ he answered. ‘I had nothing to offer you, and your mother did.’

‘Then afterwards! It’s been another ten years! You accepted one teenage “no” to last a lifetime?’

He sighed and moved away back into the shelter and over to the other side overlooking the valley.

‘You were doing well,’ he said, turning back to face Larry. ‘You continued to do well. You are still doing well.’

‘How could you know?’

‘I knew,’ he replied simply.

Larry strode past him to the overlook and then back into the centre of the shelter and then finally right up to him. He gazed at him and then slowly shook his head.

‘You’re a nobody,’ he finally said.

Luke smiled.

‘That’s right.’

‘For a few years twenty years ago you were a whirlwind wild man and now you’re a nobody.’

Luke nodded, still smiling.

‘If Ditonics is your legacy it’s the most rigid society I’ve ever been in,’ Larry went on. ‘No matter how it spends its money. It’s the exact opposite of Lukedom and everything you used to stand for.’

‘Could be,’ said Luke.

‘You’ve sold out!’

‘Ahh.’

‘You’ve sold out!’ Larry went on. ‘You stood for something … interesting, challenging, even enlivening twenty years ago, and now … you’re dead, a nobody, buried here on a mountaintop …’

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ he said, with that disconcerting Kim-like smile.

Mouth open and eyes blazing, Larry was shaking his

‘For twenty years I’ve been hating a man that no longer exists! You killed yourself off before I could get to you!’

Luke chuckled.

‘Good point,’ he said.

‘You’re a fraud. There are people all over the world who admire you as the great experimenter, the great risk-taker, the great son of Chance, and now all you are is a nobody monk in one of the oldest religions in the world.’

‘You can’t win ’em all,’ he said.

Larry again shook his head.

‘It’s sad,’ he said. ‘Real sad. You’ve given up the dice.’

Luke shrugged.

There’s a time and place for everything,’ he said. Larry looked up at him and now tears came into his eyes.

‘But still,’ he said. ‘You’re my dad.’ He came forward
and for the second lime the two men embraced, this time each hugging the other, both wet-eyed. As she watched, Kim was smiling.

Finally they awkwardly separated.

‘Can you forgive me for deserting you?’ Luke asked.

Larry nodded, wiping away the tears.

‘I forgive you, Dad,’ he said.

The three of them began to move out of the shelter and back down the path Kim and Larry had arrived on.

‘At least I forgive you for deserting me,’ Larry went on. ‘But Dad! You’ve got to get out of this monastery! You’ve sunk into a horrible rut! You’re stuck! Here you can only lead the most limited of lives! You’ve given up all the important truths you’ve discovered!’

He stopped on their downward trek and faced his father.

‘I’ve come to rescue you from the cage you’ve trapped yourself in!’ he announced joyfully.

Luke looked at him with a big grin.

That’s wonderful!’ he said.

The father and son put their arms around each other’s waists and continued on down the path, Kim trailing.

‘What you’ve got to realize, Dad,’ Larry went on earnestly, ‘is that the personality tends to get stale and you have to discover something to wake it up and keep it alive! Particularly as you grow older.’

Kim was walking along behind them, feeling joy for Larry and joy for the father. As she walked, she saw a single green die abruptly appear in the path behind the two men and in front of her. She looked up quickly but couldn’t tell where it had come from.

‘Thank God I got here in time,’ Larry said.

‘Saved at the last moment.’ said his father with a grin, and with a wink back at Kim, walked on.

It was raining hard in Tokyo that afternoon. In a graveyard in the outskirts of Tokyo, Agents Putt and Macavoy were trudging through the downpour, peering occasionally at a rain-blurred map Putt was carrying and then trudging on. They had neglected to bring raincoats to Tokyo and the single umbrella Macavoy tried to hold over them tended to funnel the water down each of their necks.

Finally, glancing once more at the map, Putt squinted through the rain off to his right and then slipped and slid in that direction. Finally the two men came to a halt and both stared through the rain at a gravestone. After a brief pause, Putt respectfully took off his hat. The rain poured down.

The gravestone was a simple slab three feet high. On it, etched in English, were these simple words:

LUKE RHINE HART 1932—1989

MAY CHANCE BE WITH HIM

The Search for the Dice Man

Between
The Dice Man
and this long-awaited sequel Luke Rhinehart wrote four other acclaimed novels:
Matari, Long Voyage Back, Adventures of Wim.
He has also written
The Book of the Die.
He lives in the United States.

The Dice Man
Matari
Long Voyage Back
Adventures of Wim
The Book of the Die

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollins
Publishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith. London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Publishers
1993

Copyright © Luke Rhinehart 1993

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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EPub Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007322251

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