Excerpt
A knock on the door interrupted them. The janitor came in. He was
a refugee who had escaped the communist regime in Czechoslovakia,
where he had been a professor of mathematics. His credentials were not
recognized in Canada and so he had taken a series of menial jobs. When
he discovered that he could use his skill and knowledge of mathematics
to become a formidable gambler he had started travelling from camp to
camp, where gambling was forbidden but proved to be the major source
of entertainment.
Ken asked him to teach him how to gamble. The man refused but said
he’d give him a few pointers on the understanding that he would never
gamble.
“Why not?” Ken asked.
“That’s the deal or there’s no deal,” the janitor said. He explained that
no matter how well Ken learned or how talented he was, he was not a
gambler. The same mania he had for the Arctic could easily translate into
anything he did – including gambling – and if he gambled seriously, he
would likely sell his soul.
“If you want to make a few bucks on the side I can help you,” he said.
“I can tell you what to do. So here’s the deal; I’ll tell you when to bet, who
to bet on, how much to bet, which games to bet on, and who to stay away
from. So, what are you trying to achieve? What’s your figure?”
Ken shrugged. “Forty thousand dollars!”
“Forty thousand dollars! That seems pretty definite. What do you want
forty thousand dollars for?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, why do you need it?”
“I don’t need it.”
The man thought about this for a minute. “Are you prepared to promise
me that after you’ve achieved what you want, you’ll never ever gamble
again?”
“Yes,” Ken said, and they shook hands.
He followed his mentor’s instructions with great care, and over the
next few weeks the money, in grubby tens and twenties, accumulated until
he reached his goal of forty thousand dollars.
He stashed the bills in waxed cardboard Sunoco tubes, used for testing
concrete samples, and labelled them radioactive.
With temperatures dipping far below freezing and staying there, most
outdoor work was curtailed but testing in the lab continued. The engineers
had left and John taught Ken how to use a slide rule and how to do
most of the routine jobs the trained professionals had done.
One night, as he walked back to his quarters from the lab, he heard a
crackling overhead and looked up. The heavens were on fire.
Libros Libertad 