GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

The Computer could also show what the citizens could not see. Frigate’s screen displayed in all their many-colored splendor the wathans attached to the heads and whirling just above them. He had had enough experience by now to tell at a glance when a wathan was shot with “bad” colors or had a “bad” structure, though “bad” did not necessarily mean “evil.” Broad bands of black or red could indicate character weaknesses as much as “evil” traits. Their waning and waxing and writhing— the three Ws, Frigate thought—reflected mental-emotional tensions and shifts in both the conscious and unconscious minds. In the entire nervous system, in fact. A sick person could have a lot of black in his or her wathan. That entity was not interpreted easily; it took a very skilled person or the Computer to read a wathan correctly and even then the reading could be in error.

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At this moment, his eye was caught by a man whose wathan was almost entirely black and red with a flicker of purple here and there. He was a Caucasian, about six feet tall, well-built, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and, if his face had not been so red and distorted, might have been passably good-looking. He was screaming in English at a woman who was much smaller and seemed frightened. She kept backing away, her eyes wide, while the man advanced with waving fists. Though he spoke so rapidly and in such a garbled way that Frigate could not understand him well, Frigate got the idea that the man was accusing the woman of being unfaithful. The people around the two were watching them warily but none was trying to interfere.

Suddenly, the man’s wathan became wholly black, and he grabbed the woman by her long hair and began hitting her with his right fist. She slumped to her knees and tried to put her hands over her face. Jerking at her hair viciously, he slammed his fist on top of her head, then punched her on the nose and mouth. She quit screaming and sagged, held up only by his grip on her hair. Blood ran from her gaping mouth; teeth fell out in the red pool on the grass.

Men jumped on him and pulled him, raving, away from her. The woman lay unmoving on the ground.

A man came running from a hut, stopped when he got to the woman, knelt down, moaning, and took the woman in his arms. He rocked her for a moment, then let her down gently, rose, and strode back to the hut. The man who had struck the woman was released, and now he was excusing himself for the attack. She was a slut, a whore, a fucking cunt, she was his woman, and no woman of his screwed another man. She deserved what she had gotten. More. As for Tracy, the man who had laid his woman, he, Bill Standish, would kill him in good time.

If you do, one of the men who had grabbed him said, you’ll hang. You may hang anyway.

The man who had gone into the hut charged out with a long stone-tipped spear in his hand. Standish saw him and started running for The River. The man who had threatened hanging yelled at Tracy to put the spear down, but Tracy ignored him. ; He ran by the group and hurled his spear, and its point went j into Standish’s back near the right shoulder-bone. Standish fell face forward into the shallow water but struggled up and reached back and managed to get hold of the far end of the spear butt. Tracy was on him then and had knocked him down.

Some of the men ran to the two and grabbed the screaming Tracy and pulled him away from Standish. By then, Standish, his skin very pale, his mouth hanging open, had wrenched the flint blade from his back. Before the others could stop him, Standish had plunged the stone tip into Tracy’s belly.

Frigate felt as if he were going to throw up, but he managed to watch the drama until its end. He had plans for Standish.

One of the men who had run after Standish had a big oak club. He slammed Standish over the head. Standish seemed to melt into his own flesh and slumped into the water. He was dragged out onto the shore, his head lolling. A man examined him. Looking up, he said, “You shouldn’t have hit him so hard, Ben. He’s dead.”