Название: The Search for the Dice Man
Автор: Luke Rhinehart
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Классическая проза
isbn: 9780007322251
isbn:
‘That’s right,’ agreed Kim. ‘Maybe you should take me instead. I’ll be Sancho Panza to your Don Quixote. And then maybe I’ll stay in Lukedom and become a cube or whatever you call your father’s followers.’
‘I call them jerks,’ I said.
‘Yes, take Kim,’ said Honoria, stiffening. ‘She won’t mind a little mud and diarrhoea and, fitting in, she might find out things you couldn’t.’
‘I’m not taking Kim,’ I said firmly, fighting the racing of my pulse at the prospect. ‘I want you to go – just for a few days. It’ll certainly be more interesting than another trek upstate.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Honoria. As she paused to reconsider, she finished the last of her drink. ‘Just until Sunday night. You promise?’
‘Hey, I either find my father or get a lead or I don’t. How long can it take to get an address?’
‘You don’t love me,’ moped Kim exaggeratedly. ‘You prefer your fiancée to me.’
‘It can take a long lime to get an address – as the FBI has discovered,’ commented Honoria, her mind on the business trip and ignoring Kim’s taunt.
‘Well?’ I persisted, still holding Honoria’s hand.
‘I suppose I’ll have to come along just to keep you out of trouble,’ sighed Honoria.
I smiled and released her hand.
‘Good,’ I announced, having managed to keep chaos again at bay.
Although also smiling, Kim shook her head.
‘Lukedom will be wasted on you two,’ said Kim. ‘It’ll be like sending two nuns to a Playboy mansion.’
‘Or two Kims to a meeting of securities analysts.’ countered Honoria, standing up to leave. ‘But duty calls.’
‘Says who?’ said Kim.
On our drive south, Honoria and I stayed that first night at a small motel in northern Virginia, arriving at about ten, Honoria a trifle irritated that we’d passed up a Holiday Inn a half-hour earlier and had to settle for something called ‘The Molvadian Motel’ on the outskirts of nowhere. Actually the room was indistinguishable from one in a Holiday Inn – except perhaps to the two architects involved – and the television offerings were absolutely identical.
Being young and engaged, and intelligent and well brought up, we got right to it after quick showers and made hot and horny love for forty minutes. Then we found our attentions wandering to a PBS special on the greenhouse effect. This led us naturally to a serious discussion of the investment possibilities inherent in Long Island and Miami being three feet under water and the Berkshires becoming the new sun belt – possibly the new east coast line as well. We were both annoyed that the greenhouse effect would apparently take effect only very slowly over the next half-century, thus minimizing the possibilities of dramatic short-term capital gains.
Nevertheless, we concluded that we should be bullish on the American midwest and sell short the south east, since the latter was likely to become either a desert or part of the Atlantic Ocean, either of which alternatives would decrease its value. We discussed ways of selling short the south east but could think of nothing better than shorting the stock of Disney whose Disney World in Orlando, unless convened to an underwater theme park, would suffer a pronounced decrease in both gross and net. Cotton prices would soar. Companies involved in building bridges would do well. Perhaps boat-building would make a comeback.
We were soon as deeply engrossed in our speculations about how to play the greenhouse effect as we had been earlier in our lovemaking, the only difference being we reached no climax in our discussion. Instead Honoria suddenly found our speculations the most boring and unproductive thing she’d done in weeks and announced she was going to sleep. I made a few tentative pokes with various parts of my anatomy at various parts of hers, but receiving nothing more encouraging than a rather unsexy mooing sound, I soon rolled over to go to sleep. However, I spent the next fifteen minutes daydreaming about cornering the market in sugar beets just before the millions of acres of sugar beet fields were flooded, thus becoming the richest man in the world since the Hunt family. Vaguely, just as I fell asleep, I remembered that the Hunt brothers had recently declared bankruptcy.
FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL
In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God: of this much we and sophisticated twentieth-century scientists are certain. While the old physics saw purpose, the new sees chance. When the old saw reassuring and ubiquitous causal nexus, the new sees ubiquitous randomness. When the old probed deeper they always found cause; when the modern physicist probes deeper he always finds chance.
‘Was God playing dice when he created the universe?’ The New York Times asked a Nobel Prize-winning biologist.
‘Yes,’ was the reply.
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 СКАЧАТЬ