GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

“I have everything the emperor had and much more. Except, of course, millions of subjects and many wives and concubines. In fact, I have not one wife and so am poorer and more miserable than the lowliest peasant. Not for long, though.”

There was one woman whom the historians knew nothing of, though Li Po had written two hundred poems about her. These, however, were among his nine thousand lost works.

In Eastern Lu, a part of twentieth-century Shantung in north China, Li Po had built a house attached to a tavern owned by his fourth wife’s family. And in the tavern was a slave girl who served the patrons; her name was Hsing Shih. In English, Star Spoon.

“The most beautiful woman I have ever seen. You will pardon me, Alice, Aphra, when I say that. You two are indeed surpassingly beautiful, but you will surely agree with me, since you’re fair-minded for your sex, that you just possibly may not be the most beautiful.

“Star Spoon was quiet and soft-spoken and had elegant manners quite out of place in that tavern and unappreciated by the customers. She was no peasant girl. Her mother had been a concubine of the Glorious Monarch, and Star Spoon was supposed to be his daughter. That paternity, however, was questioned when Star Spoon’s mother was caught in adultery with a palace guard. The mother and the lover were beheaded, and Star Spoon, then nine years old, was sold to a wealthy merchant. He took her to his bed when she was ten. After he tired of her, his six sons took their turns with her as they became juveniles. When the merchant lost his fortune and died shortly thereafter, Star Spoon was sold to my father-in-law, the tavern owner. She became his concubine, and she was treated well, relatively speaking anyway, though she had to work in the tavern. After I married his daughter, I came to know Star Spoon well. I fell passionately in love with her. Of course, I do everything passionately. She had a child by me, but he died a few days after birth from a fever. Though I am afraid of nothing, I did not want to cause trouble under my roof. My wife was very jealous and prone to violence. I had a scar on my shoulder from her knife to prove it. So neither Star Spoon nor I ever told anyone who the father was.”

If it was only intimate companionship that Li Po wanted, he would have chosen a man. But he needed a female, and his thoughts turned to Hsing Shih. He would find his old comrades later for masculine warmth and uproariousness and mental stimulation.

The first question in locating Star Spoon was: Was she available in the Computer’s files?

These began in 97,000 b.c when the predecessors of the Ethi-cals had landed on Earth. (Loga had said that they started in about 100,000 b.c, but he was speaking loosely, rounding off the figure.) The Computer listed 97,000 b.c as Year One in its chronology. Thus, since Star Spoon had been born in a.d. 721, by Western reckoning, her birth year was 97,724 by computer reckoning.

Li Po had ordered that the search start in that year and in the area where she had been born. Since the Glorious Monarch’s palace was a very important place in China, it was probable that Ethical agents had photographed it and its tenants.

The recordings were far from complete, however. It was possible that there were very few films made at this place during the T’ang dynasty. Li Po had, however, reconstructed Star Spoon’s features with the aid of the Computer and his memory, which, like Burton’s and Nur’s, gripped like an eagle’s talon.

The Computer had then extrapolated the woman’s face backward, as it were, shaping her features as they would have been in childhood.

With this as a model, the Computer had scanned its files for this area and period. And it had located her, not just once but three times. Li Po had been very lucky—so far.

Her wathan was now identified from the films, which photographed more than her body. Using this as reference, the Computer scanned the eighteen billion plus wathans in the great central well of the tower. If Star Spoon was alive in The Valley, her wathan would not be in the well, and Li Po was out of luck. But the Computer found it. Fifteen minutes later, it delivered Star Spoon via the e-m converter to Li Po’s apartment.