TV image of Dr. Rhinehart, his pipe still emerging in its permanent erection from his mouth, and tears appearing in his eyes. The sound seemed sedate and repetitious compared to the earlier action and hundreds of viewers were about to switch channels when a boy appeared in front of the man with the pipe, longhaired, handsome, blue eyes glittering with tears, dressed in blue jeans and a black shirt open at the neck.
He looked into the camera with steady and serene hatred for about five seconds and then said quietly with only one partial chug spasm: - `I'll be back. Perhaps not next Sunday, but I'll be back: There's rottenness to the way men are forced to live their lives that poisons us all; there's a worldwide war on between those who build and work with the machine that twists and tortures us and those who seek to destroy it. There is a world-wide war on: whose side are you on?'
He evaporates from the screen, leaving only a smoke smudged image of Dr. Rhinehart, crying. He arises now and moves three paces closer to the camera. His head is cut off so that all the viewer sees is the black sweater and suit. His voice is heard, after a brief burst of coughing, quiet and firm: `This program has been brought to you by normal, earnest human beings, without whose efforts it would not have been.'
And the black body disappears, leaving on the screen only the image of an empty chair and a small table with a cup of un-drunk liquid and beside the cup a blurred white speck, like the compressed feather of an angel.
Chapter Ninety-three
In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Chance and without him not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men.
Them was a man sent by Chance, whose name was Luke. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of Whim, that all men through him might believe. He was not Chance, but was sent to bear witness of Chance. That was the true Accident, that randomizes every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of Chance, even to them that believe accidentally, they which were born, not of blood, nor of, the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of Chance. And Chance was made flesh (and we beheld his glory; the glory as of the only begotten of the Great Fickle Father), and he dwelt among us, full of chaos and falsehood and whim.
from The Book of the Die
Chapter Ninety-four
We know from tapes made on recording devices hidden by agents of the IRS, FBI, SS and AAPP in the apartment of
H. J. Wipple, the fuzzy-minded, deluded financier whose millions have helped Rhinehart's various diseased schemes, exactly what transpired the afternoon and evening of the Great TV Raid.
Much of it is not relevant to Rhinehart's desperate efforts to escape the law, but a summary is valuable as an indication of the sick structures and values being developed by him and his followers.
Wipple's living room contains a pleasant overstuffed Victorian couch, an oriental desk with a French provincial chair; two Danish-modern chairs, an upholstered navy-surplus raft, a large boulder, and a ten-foot area of white sand on one side of the early American fireplace. The living room is thus furnished in styles ranging from early Neolithic to what J.
E. has joshingly called Fire Island eternal. It is recorded that Wipple claims that everything was chosen by the Die. It seems probable.
A cube of Trustees meeting of the DICELIFE Foundation had been scheduled there for after Rhinehart's appearance on the television program. Such meetings occur in such random places and at such random times that few have ever been recorded. Present that afternoon were Wipple, an essentially conservative man whose keen capitalist mind has somehow been poisoned by the atmosphere of dicepeople; Mrs. Lillian Rhinehart, who had recently passed the New York State Bar Examination despite allegedly casting a die to choose answers to several of the multiple-choice questions; Dr. Jacob Ecstein, the deeply compromised associate of many of Rhinehart's ventures, who is reportedly acting in an increasingly eccentric and irresponsible manner (he is up for a Special Condemnation from the AAPP); Linda Reichman, Rhinehart's sporadic mistress and incorrigible whore; and Joseph Fineman and his wife, Faye, both active dice theorists. Attendance varies at these meetings, since apparently trustees determine whether they will attend by consulting their dice.
These six people had all gathered at Wipple's by 5 P.M. that afternoon an hour after the conclusion of `Religion for Our Time' - but only Mrs. Rhinehart appeared to have watched the Program; she informed the others about what had happened. A long discussion of the possible consequences of Rhinehart's behavior took place, some of it sickeningly frivolous (e.g., Ecstein suggested they hide Rhinehart by burying him in the sand). While Miss Reichman made phone calls trying to find out what had happened to him, Wipple indicated repeated concern over the effect Rhinehart's association with such dregs as Cannon and Jones might have on the public image enjoyed by the Dicelife Foundation, but he found little support from the others. Joe Fineman noted that since two green dice had been found in a prominent place near the bombing of the army munitions depot in New Jersey and Senator Easterman's attack in the Senate on Dice Centers and dicepeople, there had been a sudden flood of incompetent dicetherapists creating stupid and dangerous options for dicestudents; he suggested that the FBI might be infiltrating and trying to discredit the movement. Dr. Ecstein squashed this dangerous speculation by noting that dicepeople could do perfectly all right discrediting themselves without outside help. He went on to suggest perhaps ironically that The DICELIFE Foundation issue a formal statement dissociating itself from any and all bad acts of dicepeople throughout the earth and adjoining planets - to save the trouble of having to issue a new statement `every other day.'
Miss Reichman and the two Finemans left the apartment at this point to try to find out at the television studio and from the police what had happened to Rhinehart; it was almost two hours since the end of the program and no word had yet been received from or about Rhinehart.
The discussion continued in our desultory manner among the remaining three, Wipple doing most of the talking. He complained that the Internal Revenue -Service was trying to deny the DICELIFE Foundation its previously granted tax-exempt status on the grounds that the religion of the Die doesn't fall within the generally accepted continuum of religions, that their educational programs seem aimed at unlearning of generally accepted knowledge, that their scientific studies seem often to contain fictional material and fictional research as evidence (Ecstein remarked here, `Well, nobody's perfect'), and that their nonprofit Dice Centers can't be conceived of as therapeutic in any traditional sense since their successfully treated dicestudents, as they themselves claim, are often maladapted and subversive of the society.
When Mrs. Rhinehart and Ecstein indicated a lack of interest in what IRS did, Wipple noted that he deducted three hundred thousand dollars a year from his income, which partly accounted for his generous contributions to the foundation. He added that according to the latest treasurer's report, prepared by a reliable dice-accountant whom the dice had permitted to be accurate, the foundation's failure to charge reasonable fees for presence at the Dice Centers, for group therapy, for their children's dice games and for their various publications was meaning a net loss of over one hundred thousand dollars a month (Ecstein commented 'Right-on!').
[We begin our verbatim report at this point (HJW behavouralism: 4.17.71.7.22. 7.39)]
`[The voice of Wipple) Sooner or later we've simply got to start getting some more income. Don't you people realize that other businesses throughout the country are cashing in for incredible amounts on Diceboy and Dicegirl T-shirts, green-dice sports shirts, cufflinks, necklaces, tie clips, bracelets, bikinis, earrings, diaper pins, love beads, candy bars? That dice manufacturers have quadrupled their sales in the last year?'
`Sure,' said Jake Ecstein. `I bought a hundred shares of Hot Toys Co., Inc. at 21 about a year ago and just sold out
yesterday at 681. `But what about us?' Wipple exclaimed. `Other dicelife games, selling for four times what we charge for ours and, you tell me, totally missing the whole point of diceliving, are making millions, while we sell ours for less than cost. And bars and discotheques with a five-dollar cover charge, are advertising dice-dice girls who strip at random, while our Dice Centers Sodom and Gommorah are practically free. Everyone's making money out of the dice except us!'
