"Fritz Leiber - Best of Fritz Leiber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

Rattling the dice now, he felt the power in his fingers and palm as never before.

He made a swift low roll, so that the bones ended up exactly in front of the white-gloved dice-girl. His
natural seven was made up, as heтАЩd intended, of a four and a three. In red-spot features they were like
the five, except that both had only one tooth and the three no nose. Sort of baby-faced skulls. He had
won a pennyтАФthat is, a dollar.

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 best of fritz leiber



тАЬRoll two cents,тАЭ said Joe Slattermill.

This time, for variety, he made his natural with an eleven. The six was like the five, except it had three
teeth, the bestlooking skull of the lot.

тАЬRoll a nickel less one.тАЭ

Two Big Mushrooms divided that bet with a covert smirk at each other.

Now Joe rolled a three and an ace. His point was four. The ace, with its single spot off center towards a
side, still somehow looked like a skullтАФmaybe of a Lilliputian Cyclops.

He took a while making his point, once absent-mindedly rolling three successive tens the hard way. He
wanted to watch the dice-girl scoop up the cubes. Each time it seemed to him that her snake-swift
fingers went under the dice while they were still flat on the felt. Finally he decided it couldnтАЩt be an
illusion. Although the dice couldnтАЩt penetrate the felt, her white-gloved fingers somehow could, dipping
in a flash through the black, diamond-sparkling material as if it werenтАЩt there.

Right away the thought of a crap-table-size hole through the earth came back to Joe. This would mean
that the dice were rolling and lying on a perfectly transparent flat surface, impenetrable for them but
nothing else. Or maybe it was only the dice-girlтАЩs hands that could penetrate the surface, which would
turn into a mere fantasy JoeтАЩs earlier vision of a cleaned-out gambler taking the Big Dive down that
dreadful shaft, which made the deepest mine a mere pin dent.

Joe decided he had to know which was true. Unless absolutely unavoidable, he didnтАЩt want to take the
chance of being troubled by vertigo at some crucial stage of the game.

He made a few more meaningless throws, from time to time crooning for realism, тАЬCome on, Little Joe.тАЭ
Finally he settled on his plan. When he did at last make his pointтАФthe hard way, with two twos-he
caromed the dice off the far corner so that they landed exactly in front of him. Then, after a minimum
pause for his throw to be seen by the table, he shot his left hand down under the cubes, just a flicker
ahead of the dice-girlтАЩs strike, and snatched them up.

Wow! Joe had never had a harder time in his life making his face and manner conceal what his body felt,
not even when the wasp had stung him on the neck just as he had been for the first time putting his hand
under the skirt of his prudish, fickle, demanding Wife-to-be. His fingers and the back of his hand were in
as much agony as ft heтАЩd stuck them into a blast furnace. No wonder the dice-girl wore white gloves.
They must be asbestos. And a good thing he hadnтАЩt used his shooting hand, he thought as he ruefully