GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

“One of Alice’s jokes,” he said.

He rose, looked at the dead features, and thought of how strange it was to see himself as a corpse. He gazed over the field between him and the foot of the hill. There were bodies everywhere, some in heaps. The only one standing in that direction was Alice, who was just pulling her rapier from a Humpty Dumpty. Her tears were washing the blood from her face.

Then he saw Star Spoon running down the hill with a beamer in each hand. She had fled, but only to get weapons from the house that would assure their victory, though she might be the only one left alive.

He turned. There were ten androids on their feet, not counting the Jabberwock. Three humans were still fighting, Li Po, a black man and a white woman, one of Aphra Behn’s friends. The woman went down under a rain of swordstrokes as he watched.

The Jabberwock, breathing in short unsteady gasps, waddled toward the cluster of battlers. It turned when it got near, and its tail whipped out, catching three androids and the black man. Li Po rapiered the White Queen in front of him and ran for the parking area. There were still three chairs there.

Frigate came from somewhere and also headed toward the chairs. The remaining androids hacked at the fallen black man before pursuing the two men.

The Jabberwock swung its head from left to right, saw Burton, and lumbered toward him.

The field was comparatively quiet now, but, suddenly, Burton heard a motor turning over. That was followed by a series of explosions, and Bill Williams, bloody but grinning, rode his cycle from behind the little house with the chimneys like rabbit’s ears and the fur-covered roof. Burton did not know what he had been doing there or how he had gotten his cycle there. Perhaps he had pushed it there during the fray, intending to get away at an opportune moment. Perhaps, and this was more likely, he was just waiting for a chance to use it. Or he might have gotten the machine hidden and then fainted from his wounds. Recovering, he had followed his original plan. Whatever had happened, and Burton was never to know, the fellow was now doing what only he could have thought of.

As the monster advanced toward Burton, not turning its head to find the source of the new noise, Williams speeded up the machine. Dodging around the bodies, sometimes driving over – an outstretched arm or leg, Williams sped straight at the side of Jabberwock, and he smashed his motorcycle into its ribs.

So great was the impact, the Jabberwock was moved a few inches to one side. Williams flew headlong over its back and slammed into the ground. The monster raised its head as high as the neck could reach, gave a great bawling cry, and died.

Burton ran to Willians and turned him over. He was dead, his face smashed and his neck broken.

Though doomed, the androids advanced toward Burton as programmed. They never reached him. Frigate’s and Li Po’s chairs smashed into them and knocked them down again and again until they could no longer get up. Then the two men got out of the chairs and finished their work.

Burton heard a gasp behind him. Turning, he saw that Star Spoon had slipped and fallen on her face. She had let the beamers loose to soften the fall with her hands. He walked up to her and picked her up. Sobbing, she went into his arms.

Except for the weeping of Alice, Star Spoon and Frigate, the field was silent. Only he, those three, and Li Po had survived. No. The Blue Caterpillar was sitting on the giant mushroom, and the rocking-horse-fly, a creature too fragile to have been programmed to kill, was alive. They did not, however, count.

He felt more weary, more emptied than he had ever felt in his long life. He was in shock, numb, the world around him seeming alien and drifting way.

“Who could have done this horrible thing?” Alice wailed.

Who, indeed?

At that moment, William Gull groaned and sat up from the dead.