'Am I on?' says someone's voice.

'Is he on?'

Dr. Rhinehart exhales.

`Where's Eric?'

`What the hell's the matter with you guys in there?' shouts someone.

[The image shifts to a shot of Rabbi Fishman's feet, which are wrapped around each other, and then to Arturo X, who

is standing tensely with his back to .the camera looking off at the control room.] `You're on,' comes a muffled shout.

Arturo turns to face the camera.

`Black brothers and white bastards of the world A gray-flanneled arm and white hand appear around his neck; the face

of Dr. Dart is seen tensely beside and behind that of Arturo.

`Drop your gun, you, or I'll shoot this man,' Dr. Dart says toward his right.

`Inside the control room there, you I' shouts Dr. Dart. `You! Throw down your gun and come out with your hands up.'

Arturo's face begins to show less, strain, and the viewer becomes aware of Dr. Dart's face taking on a strangled look. A

long blacksuited arm and huge white hand are seen now, firmly around his neck, and the face of Dr. Rhinehart, still

with the pipe in his mouth and still with the benign look on his face, appears beside that of Dr. Dart. Arturo breaks

away from Dart and the viewer sees a gun in Dr. Rhinehart's other hand sticking into the side of Dr. Dart.

`What do you want me to shoot now?' an off-screen voice says.

`Shoot me,' says Arturo's voice.

[The image pans slowly from the sedate wrestler's pose of the two psychologists past the terrified and bewildered faces

of Mrs. Wippleton and Rabbi Fishman, past the empty chair of Father Wolfe, to Arturo, still gasping for breath, but

looking intently and sincerely into the camera.]

`Black bastards and white brothers of the world…' begins Arturo. A pained, quizzical expression crosses his face. He

says: `Black brothers and white bastards of the world, we have taken over this television program this afternoon to

bring you some truths they won't tell you on any program except at gunpoint. The black man-'

[A tremendous explosion from the rear of the studio interrupts Arturo. Screams. A single `bang.']

'Fire!!'

[More screams, and several voices pick up the cry of fire. Arturo is staring off to his right and he yells: `Where's Eric?

']

`Let's get out of here!' someone shouts.

Arturo turns nervously back to the camera and begins speaking of the difficulties of being a black person in a white

society and. the difficulties of being able to communicate his grievances to the white oppressors. Smoke drifts across in front of him and coughs, which had come at isolated intervals, now cone from off-screen with machine-gun regularity.

`Tear gas,' yells a voice.

'Oh no,' screams a woman and begins crying.

Bang. Bang bang.

More screams.

`Let's go!' Arturo, glancing continually to his right and occasionally pausing, struggles on with his speech, staring,

whenever he finds the time, sincerely into the camera. ` .. Oppression so pervasive that no black man alive can breathe without seeming to have ten white men standing on his chest. No more shall we lie down before white pigs! No more shall we obey the laws of white injustice! No more

shall we-simper and fawn to watch out over there Ray! - There! to . . . ah . . . white men anywhere. We have abjected ourselves for the last time. No white, no white Ray! There! [Shots are being exchanged off-screen; Arturo is crouching, his face a tangle of terror and hatred, but he struggles on

with his speech.]

'. . . No white can deny us again our right to be heard, our right to say that WE STILL EXIST, that your efforts to

enslave us continue, and WE WILL NOT LIE DOWN FOR YOU any MORE! Ahhhh.'

The 'Ah' at the end of Ids speech was a gentle sound, and as he fell forward onto the floor the last glimpse the Sunday afternoon television audience had of his face showed a look not of fear or hatred but of bewildered surprise. The shouts and groans and shots continued sporadically, smoke or tear gas floating across in front of the 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.