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Title: The 13th Immortal

Author: Robert Silverberg

Release date: June 7, 2021 [eBook #65538]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 13TH IMMORTAL ***

                           The 13th Immortal

                         By ROBERT SILVERBERG

                               ACE BOOKS
                     A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
                23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.


                           THE 13th IMMORTAL

                 Copyright ©, 1957, by A. A. Wyn, Inc.

                          All Rights Reserved

      [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
  evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

                              To Barbara

                           Printed in U.S.A.




                 THE SECRET OF THE FORBIDDEN CONTINENT


"_Who was your father?_" the mutant asked Dale Kesley. And try as he
might, Kesley could not remember; his past was an utter blank. But he
knew one thing--the answer to his life's riddle lay in Antarctica,
the once frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an
impenetrable barrier.

But how to get there? The only means of transportation were the spindly
six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on
the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size
rewards for his capture--dead or alive. But somewhere in the two
continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to
find. The future of the world depended on his success.




                          CAST OF CHARACTERS


DALE KESLEY - He couldn't find the answers until he knew the right
questions.

DRYLE VAN ALEN - The South Pole was his summer resort.

NARELLA - She loved two men with one face.

DON MIGUEL - He was a childless sire, an impotent potentate.

DUKE WINSLOW - Once he had been wise; twice he had been fooled.

LOMARK DAWNSPEAR - In his blindness, he saw all things.




                               Prologue


Centuries later, men would talk of those years as the Years of the
Freeze. They would mean the years between 2062 and 2527, the years when
mankind, shattered by its own hand, maintained a rigid cultural stasis
while rebuilding.

Those were the years when what was, would be. The years when there
would be nothing new under the sun because mankind willed it so. The
century of war, culminating in the almost total global destruction of
2062, had taught lessons that were not soon forgotten.

The old ways returned to the world--ways that had held sway for
thousands of years, and which had regained ascendancy after the brief,
nightmarish reign of the machine. Mankind still had machines, of
course; life would have been impossible without them. But the Years of
the Freeze were years of primarily hand labor, of travel by foot or by
horse, of slow living and fear of complexity. The clock rolled back to
an older, simpler land of world--and froze there.

Like all ages, this one had its symbols and, conveniently, the symbols
of the status quo were actual as well as symbolic forces in maintaining
the Freeze. There were twelve of them--the Twelve Dukes, they called
themselves, and they ruled the world between them. They had no power
over the forgotten land of Antarctica, but otherwise they were
virtually supreme. North America, South America, East and West Europe,
Scandinavia, Australia, North Africa, Equatorial Africa, South Africa,
China, India, Oceanica--each boasted its Duke.

They were products of the great blast of 2062, and they had found their
way to power tortuously. Most of them had lived ordinary lives, picking
their way through the wreckage with the others in the first three
confused decades after the great destruction. But the others had died
and the Twelve had not.

They had endured through forty, fifty, sixty years, themselves frozen
indefinitely in middle life. And as the decades passed, each forced his
way to control of a segment of the world. Each carved himself a Dukedom
and, in 2162, the centennial of the Old World's death, they gathered
together to divide the world among themselves.

There was a bitter struggle for power, but from it emerged the world
of the Twelve Empires, stable, sedate, unchanging, determined never to
allow the technology-born nightmare of old to return. The picture was
attractive: twelve immortals, guiding the world along an even keel to
the end of time.

Rumors filtered through the Twelve Empires occasionally that danger
threatened from Antarctica. Man had redeemed Antarctica from the
ice before the great cataclysm, and the polar land was known to be
inhabited. But Antarctica remained detached from humanity, erecting
an impassable barrier that cut itself off from the Twelve Empires
as effectively as if it were on another planet. And so, the stasis
held. The battered world rebuilt, on a more modest scale than of old,
clinging to the simple ways, and froze that way. Here, there, an
isolated city refused to participate in the Freeze. They, however,
didn't matter. They intended to stay isolated, as did Antarctica, and
the Twelve Dukes did not worry long over them.

In ninety percent of the world, time had stopped.




                                   I


Half an hour before the neat fabric of his life was to be shattered
forever, Dale Kesley was thinking desperately, _This will be a good day
for the planting._

He stood at the end of a freshly-turned furrow, one brown hand gripping
the sharebeam, the other patting the scaly gray flank of his mutant
plough-horse. The animal neighed, a long croaking wheeze of a sound.
Kesley looked down at the fertile soil of the furrow.

He was trying to tell himself that this was good land, that he had
found a good place, here in the heart of Duke Winslow's sprawling
farmland. He was compelling himself to believe that this was where he
belonged, here where life held none of the uncertainty of the cities of
the Twelve Empires. Right here where he had lived and worked for four
years, here in Iowa Province.

But it was all wrong. Somewhere deep in the cloaked depths of his mind,
he was trying to protest that there had been some mistake.

He wasn't a farmer.

He didn't belong in Iowa Province.

Somewhere, out there in the cities of the Twelve Empires, maybe in
the radiation-blasted caves of the Old World, perhaps in the remote
fastness of the unknown Antarctican empire, life was waiting for him.

Not here. Not in Iowa.

As always, a cold shudder ran through him and he let his head wobble as
the sickness swept upward. He swayed, tightened his grip on the plough,
and forced himself grimly back into the synthetic mood of security that
was his one defense against the baseless terror that tormented him.

_The farm is good_, he thought.

_Everything here is good._

Slowly, the congealed fear melted and drained away, and he felt whole
again.

"Up, old hoss."

He slapped the flank and the horse neighed again and swished its bony
tail. It was a good horse too, he thought fiercely. Somehow, everything
was good now, even the old horse.

Experienced hands had warned him against buying a mutie, but when he'd
bought the half-share of the farm he had had to do it. The Old Kind
were few and well spaced in Iowa Province, and all too expensive. They
fetched upward of five thousand dollars at the markets; a good solid
mutie went for only five hundred.

Besides, Kesley had argued, the Old Kind belonged with the Old
World--dead five hundred years, and long covered with dust. Only the
distant towers of New York still blazed with radiation; the chain
reaction there would continue through all eternity, as a warning and a
threat. But Kesley wasn't concerned with that.

He started down a new furrow, guiding the plough smoothly and well,
strong arms gripping the beam while the horse moved steadily onward. In
front of him, the broad expanse of Iowa Province stretched out till it
looked like it reached to the end of the world. The brown land rolled
on endlessly, stopping only where it ran into the hard blueness of the
cloudless sky.

Suddenly, the horse whinnied sharply. Kesley stiffened. The old mutie
could smell trouble half a mile away. Kesley had learned to value the
animal's warning. He stepped out from behind the plough and looked
around. The horse whinnied again and raked the unbroken ground with its
forepaws.

Kesley shaded his eyes and squinted. Far down at the other end of the
field, near the rock fence that separated his land from Loren's, a
dark-blue animal was slinking unobtrusively over the ground.

_Blue wolf._

_And today I'll have your hide, old henstealer_, Kesley thought
jubilantly.

He patted the horse's flank once again and started to run, crouching
low, moving silently across the bare field. The wolf hadn't seen him
yet. The blue-furred creature was edging across the field down below,
probably heading past the farmhouse to rob the poultry yard.

A daylight raid? Times must be bad, Kesley thought. The blue wolf
normally struck only at night. Well, something had brought the old wolf
out in broad daylight, and this time Kesley would nail him.

He circled sharply, staying downwind of the animal, and stepped up his
pace. Without breaking stride, he unsheathed his knife and gripped it
tightly. The wolf was nearly the size of a man; if Kesley caught up
with him, it would be a bloody fight for both of them. But a wolf's
hide was a treasure well worth a few scratches.

The wolf caught the scent, now, and began to run up the path toward the
farmhouse. Kesley realized the animal was confused, was running into a
dead end.

So much the better. He'd kill the beast in the sight of Loren and the
farm wenches and old Lester.

He clenched his teeth and kept running. The wolf looked back at him,
bared its mouthful of yellow daggers, snarled. Its blue fur seemed to
glitter in the bright morning sunlight.

Kesley's breath was starting to come hard as he ascended the steep
hill that led to the farmhouse. He slackened just a bit; he'd need to
conserve his strength for the battle to come.

As he reached the crest of the hill, he saw Loren stick his head out of
the second floor of the farmhouse.

"Hey, Dale!"

Kesley pointed up ahead. "Wolf!" he grunted.

The animal was drawing close to the poultry yard now. Kesley stepped
up his clip again. He wanted to catch it just as it passed the door of
the farmhouse. He wanted to nail it there, to plunge the knife into its
heart and--

Abruptly, a strange figure stepped out of the farmhouse door. In one
smooth motion, the figure put hand to hip, drew forth a blaster, fired.
The wolf paused in mid-stride as if frozen, shuddered once, and
dropped. There was the sickening smell of burning fur in the air.

Kesley felt a quick burst of hot anger. He looked down at the
smouldering ruin of the wolf huddled darkly against the ground, then to
the stranger, who was smiling as he reholstered the blaster.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Kesley demanded hotly. "Who asked
you to shoot? What are you doing here, anyway?"

He raised his knife in a wild threatening gesture. The stranger moved
tentatively toward his hip again, and Kesley quickly relaxed. He
lowered his knife, but continued to glare bitterly at the stranger.

"A thousand pardons, young friend." The newcomer's voice was deep and
resonant, and somehow oily-sounding. "I had no idea the wolf was yours.
I merely acted out of reflex. I understand it's customary for farmers
to kill wolves on sight. Believe me, I thought I was helping you."

The stranger was dressed in courtly robes that contrasted sharply with
Kesley's simple farmer's muslin. He wore a flowing cape of red trimmed
with yellow gilt, a short stiff beard stained red to match, and a royal
blue tunic. He was tall and powerful looking, with wide-set black
eyes and heavy, brooding eyebrows that ran in a solid bar across his
forehead.

"I don't care if you _are_ from the court," Kesley snapped. "That wolf
was mine. I chased it up from the fields--and to have some city bastard
step out of nowhere and ruin my kill for me just as I'm--"

"_Dale!_"

The sharp voice belonged to Loren Harker, Kesley's farming partner, a
veteran fieldsman, tall and angular, face dried by the sun and skin
brown and tough. He appeared from the farmhouse door and stood next to
the stranger.

Kesley realized he had spoken foolishly. "I'm--sorry," he said, his
voice unrepentant. "It's just that it boiled me to see--dammit, you had
no _business_ doing that!"

"I understand," the stranger said calmly. "It was a mistake on my part.
Please accept my apologies."

"Accepted," Kesley muttered. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Say,
what kind of tax-collector are you, anyway? You're the first man out of
Duke Winslow's court who ever said anything but '_Give me_'."

"Tax-collector? Why call me that?"

"Why else would you come to the farmlands, if not for the tithe?
Don't play games," Kesley said impatiently. He kicked the worthless
wolf-carcass to one side and stepped between Loren and the stranger.
"Come on inside, and tell me how much I owe my liege lord this time."

"You don't understand--" Loren started to say, but the stranger put one
hand on his shoulder and halted him. "Let me," he said.

He turned to Kesley. "I'm not a tax-collector. I'm not from the court
of Duke Winslow at all."

"What are you doing in farm country, then?"

The stranger smiled evenly. "I came here because I'm looking for
someone. But what are _you_ doing here, Dale Kesley?"

The question was like a stinging slap in the face. For a moment, Kesley
remained frozen, unreacting. Then, as the words penetrated below the
surface, a shadow of pain crossed his face. His mouth sagged open.

_What are you doing here, Dale Kesley?_

The words blurred and re-echoed like a shout in a cavern. Kesley felt
suddenly naked, as the mask of self-deception and hypocrisy that had
erected itself during his four years in Iowa Province crumbled inward
and fell away. It was the one question he had dreaded to face.

"You look sick," Loren said. "What's wrong, Dale?" The older man's
voice was hushed, bewildered.

"Nothing," Kesley said hesitantly. "Nothing at all." But he was unable
to meet the stranger's calm smile and, worse, he had no idea why.

His thoughts flashed back to that moment at the plough earlier that
morning, when Iowa had seemed like the universe and he had made life
appear infinitely good.

_Lies._

Farm life was his natural state, he had pretended. He _belonged_ behind
the plough, here in Iowa.

_Lies._

But--where _did_ he belong?

He realized that he was acting irrationally. Loren's face hung before
him, uncomprehending, frightened. The stranger seemed almost gloatingly
self-confident.

"What did you mean by that?" Kesley asked, slowly. His voice sounded
harsh and unfamiliar in his own ears.

"Have you ever been in the cities?" the stranger asked, ignoring
Kesley's question.

"Once, maybe twice. I don't like it there. I'm a farmer; always have
been. I came down from Kansas Province. But what the hell--?"

The stranger raised one hand to silence him. An amused twinkle crossed
the cold black eyes, and the thin lips curved upward. "They did a good
job," the stranger said, half to himself. "You really believe you're a
farmer, don't you, Dale? Have been, all your life?"

Again the words stung; they bit deep into a hidden reservoir of fear,
and rose to the surface again, leaving Kesley strangely disturbed.
"Yes," he said stubbornly. "What are you trying to do?" Anger came over
him again, and he snapped, "Suppose I order you off my farm?"

The stranger laughed. "_Your_ farm?" His eyes probed searchingly. "How
can you call this _your_ farm?"

Kesley quailed at the incomprehensible pain this third attack brought.
_What is he after? Why can't he leave me alone?_

_This is my farm._

_I belong here._

He stood poised, swaying on the balls of his feet, staring mystifiedly
at his tormentor. _I belong here_, he thought fiercely--but without any
conviction, this time. Something within his mind kept insisting that it
was a lie, that he belonged elsewhere.

The glitter of the cities suddenly rose as an image in his mind.

Rage boiled over. "Let me alone!" he shouted, and jumped forward,
raising the knife high.

"_No!_"

The stranger's voice was almost a shriek of fear, but he was cool
enough to draw and fire. A bright spurt of flame nudged from the
muzzles of the blaster, and Kesley felt a sudden intolerable warmth in
his hand. He dropped the hot knife and stepped back, panting like a
trapped tiger.

"I wish you hadn't done that," the stranger said.

"I wish you had never come here," Kesley retorted. It was like a
nightmare. He felt blind, unable to defend himself, unable even to
understand the source of the attack.

Loren was watching the scene in utter horror, and Kesley noticed a
couple of the farm girls standing a short distance away, watching, too.
The stranger stood with arms folded.

"Let's go inside," he suggested. "We can talk better in there."

Kesley remained rooted, unable to think, unable to move. "This is my
farm," he said out loud, after a moment. "Isn't it?" It was nearly a
whimper.

The harshness vanished abruptly from the stranger's face. Kesley
watched uncomprehendingly as hard lines melted, sharp cheekbones no
longer seemed so austere. It was the eyes, he thought curiously. They
controlled the expression of the face. And now the cold eyes seemed to
radiate warmth.

"Of course this is your farm," the stranger said. He gripped Kesley's
arm. "They really did a job on you, didn't they?"

"They?"

"Never mind. I don't want to hurt you any more than I have already.
Let's go inside, and we can talk about it in there."

       *       *       *       *       *

Word had somehow travelled rapidly around the farm, and within minutes
the farmhouse living room was crowded with curious people. Kesley
looked around. He saw Loren, and toothless old Lester, who had owned
the farm once and sold it to Loren and Kesley. There were Lester's
three daughters, brawny, tanned girls who did the women's work on the
farm. There was Tim, the slow-witted hired hand.

And there was the stranger in the gilt-bordered red cloak.

The stranger glanced from one face to another, then at Kesley. "Can we
talk in privacy?"

"You heard what he said," Kesley snapped to the others. "Get about your
jobs."

"You sure you want us to leave you alone?" Loren asked. "You looked
pretty wobbly a minute ago out there, and--"

"Don't cross me, Loren!"

The older man shrugged. "You're the boss, Dale. Come on, Tim, let's
leave them alone."

"Pretty nice city clothes he's got," old Lester cackled.

Tina, Lester's oldest daughter, nudged him scornfully. "Let's get
moving, Lester. The _men_ want to talk." She indicated with a smirk her
disapproval of the exclusion order.

When the others were gone, Kesley turned to the stranger. "We're alone.
Now tell me who you are and what you want with me."

The stranger tugged at his stiff red beard for a moment. "I'm Dryle van
Alen. Does that enlighten you?"

"Not at all. Where are you from?"

"The Dukedom of Antarctica," van Alen said.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the second time in half an hour, Kesley did a double take. The
words sank in slowly, burrowed into his mind--and then exploded into
pinwheeling brilliance.

"_Antarctica!_"

"Why the surprise?" van Alen asked mildly. "There are people in
Antarctica too, you know. You'd think I had said Mars, or some other
impossible place."

"If this is a joke, van Alen, I'm going to feed you to the hogs with
tomorrow's swill."

"It's no joke. I'm attached to the court of the Duke of Antarctica."

"So they've got a Duke, too," Kesley said. He smiled. "I never thought
that they'd have one just like us. And I suspect the Twelve Dukes don't
even know that. But this is crazy! If you're from Antarctica, what do
you want with me?"

"All in good time," van Alen said calmly. "First: the Twelve Dukes are
very much aware of the existence of their Antarctic confrere. He is,
like them, an immortal. Unlike them, he is not interested in striving
for power."

"Why does Antarctica cut itself off from the rest of the world?"

"A matter of choice," van Alen said. "Our Duke doesn't care for the
company of his twelve colleagues, nor for that of their subjects. But
you're leading me astray with your questions. You're not letting me
explain why I came here to you."

"Go ahead, then." Kesley sat back, trying to conceal his tenseness.

It made no sense at all. The Twelve Dukes had ruled the world four
hundred years, and in that time no contact between men of the Twelve
Empires and the people of the continent of Antarctica had ever taken
place. A barrier had always surrounded that continent. Antarctica was
as unapproachable as frozen Pluto, or one of the stars.

And now the barrier had lowered long enough to let this Dryle van Alen
out into the world of the Twelve Dukes. Van Alen had made his way to
America, to Duke Winslow's land--merely to see Dale Kesley? It was
impossible.

Van Alen peered at Kesley. "You have lived in Iowa Province for four
years--is that right?"

Kesley nodded.

"And before that, where?"

"Kansas Province. I was a farmer there, too."

One of van Alen's heavy eyebrows twitched skeptically. "Oh? How long
did you live in Kansas Province, then?"

"All my life. I was born there. I lived there twenty-one years. I came
here four years ago."

Van Alen chuckled. "You cling to that story the way you would a straw
in a maelstrom." He leaned forward; his voice deepened. "Suppose you
try to tell me why you left Kansas Province to come here."

"Why, I--"

Kesley paused. A muscle began to throb painfully in one cheek, and he
looked down at his heavy work-boots in confusion. He had no answer. He
did not know.

Once again, the same malaise that had spread over him outside hit him.
He sucked in a deep breath, but said nothing.

"You don't know why you left Kansas?" van Alen asked gently. "Think,
Dale. Try to remember."

Kesley clenched his fists, fighting to keep back a cry of rage and
frustration and fear. Finally he said, "I don't know. I don't remember.
That's it--I don't remember." His voice was glacially calm.

"Very good. You don't remember." Van Alen tugged at his beard again, as
if to signify that he had won a telling point. "Next question: describe
in detail your life in Kansas Province. What your farm was like, what
your mother looked like, how tall your father was--little things like
that. Eh?"

The questions poured down on Kesley like an unstoppable torrent; they
seemed to wash his feet out from under him and leave him struggling
helplessly and impotently to regain his footing.

"My mother? My father? I--"

Again he stopped. The room was blurred; only the smiling, diabolical
face of the Antarctican seemed to be fixed, and all else was whirling.
Kesley elbowed himself up from his chair and crossed the room in two
quick bounds.

"Damn you, I don't remember! _I don't remember!_"

He grabbed van Alen roughly by the scruff of his cloak and hauled him
to his feet.

"Let go of me, Dale."

The sharp command was all but impossible not to obey, but Kesley,
shaking hysterically, continued to hold tight. He clutched for the
Antarctican's throat, burning to choke the life out of this torturer
before he could ask any more questions.

His hands touched the skin of the Antarctican's throat and then, quite
coolly, van Alen broke Kesley's grip. He did it easily, simply grasping
the wrists with his own long fingers and lifting.

Kesley struggled, but to no avail. The Antarctican was fantastically
strong. Kesley writhed in his grip, but could not break loose. Slowly,
without apparent effort, van Alen forced him to his knees and let go.

Kesley made no attempt to rise. He was beaten--physically and mentally.
Van Alen stooped, lifted him, eased him to the couch. Drawing forth
a scented handkerchief, he mopped perspiration first from Kesley's
forehead, then from his own.

"That was unpleasant," van Alen remarked.

Kesley remained slumped on the couch. "You shouldn't have tried to
attack me, Dale. I'm here to help you."

"How?" Kesley asked tonelessly.

"I'm here to show you the way back to your home."

"My home's in Kansas Province." Stubbornly.

"Your home is in Antarctica, Dale. You might as well admit it to
yourself now."

Strangely, the words had little effect on Kesley. He had already been
shocked past any point of surprise.

For four years, he had been persuading himself that he had come
from Kansas Province. He had gone on thinking that, all the while
subliminally aware that there was no rational reason for that belief,
that he had no memories of his earlier life whatever.

Kansas Province had seemed as likely a homeland as any, and he had
clung to the idea. As each year passed, it had seemed more and more the
truth to him--until van Alen came.

Now he was ready to believe anything. The barriers were down.

"Antarctica?" he repeated.

Van Alen nodded. "You've been the subject of the most intensive
manhunt in the history of humanity." That seemed to amuse him; he
stopped, chuckled. "A history, to be sure, that stretches back all of
four hundred years--but a history, nevertheless. Dale, we've searched
through every one of the Twelve Empires for you. You were finally
located here, in Iowa Province. The search is over; it took four years."

"I'm happy for you," Kesley said. "You must be pleased to have found
me." His voice was restrained, matter-of-fact. "So the search is over?"

"Partially," van Alen said. "We have the treasure, now; we lack only
the key to the box. Daveen the Singer, the blind man. The search for
him continues."

Kesley frowned impatiently. "What the hell is this all about, van Alen?"

Van Alen smiled warmly. "I'm sorry, Dale. I can't tell you anything,
not until Daveen has been found. But that can't take long, now that
we've located you."

"Who's this Daveen?"

"A poet," van Alen said. "Also a remarkably skilled hypnotist.
We'll find him soon, and then the search will really be over." The
Antarctican seemed to be gazing _through_ Kesley, as if he were staring
all the way to his distant homeland. His eyes had turned cold again;
his face had hardened.

"Suppose I tell you you're a lunatic?" Kesley asked.

"Suppose you do," van Alen said animatedly. "You'd have every right to
the opinion. Care to join me in lunacy?"

"Eh?"

"Will you come with me--to Antarctica?"

"I'm not _that_ crazy," Kesley said. He laughed. "You want me to drop
everything--the farm, my whole life, just to go off with you to--to
_Antarctica_?"

"This is not your life," van Alen said. "Antarctica is. Will you come?"

Kesley laughed contemptuously, but said nothing.

There was a knock on the door.

"Come on," he said roughly. "Enter."

Tina came in and looked defiantly at both of them. She was a tall,
red-haired girl in her late twenties, wide-shouldered and high-bosomed,
and her eyes held the flash and fire that must have belonged to old
Lester once. She and Kesley had been sharing a room for six months.

"Still talking?" Tina asked.

"Is there anything special you want?" Kesley snapped.

"Just wanted to tell you lunch is getting cold, that's all. And you
left your plough standing in the field. That crazy mutie horse of yours
looks like it's asleep on its feet."

Kesley frowned. "Tell Tim to go down there and finish the furrow, will
you? I'll be in for lunch in a couple of minutes."

Tina glanced curiously toward van Alen and said, "With or without
company?"

"I'll be leaving in a few minutes," van Alen told her. "You needn't
prepare anything for me."

"Sorry to hear that," Tina said acidly. "We were looking forward to
feeding you." She turned and flounced out.

"Who's that?" van Alen asked.

"Lester's daughter--Lester's the old man. Her name's Tina. She lives
with me."

There was a visible stiffening of van Alen's manner. Leaning forward
anxiously, he said, "You--have no children yet, have you?"

"You kidding? That's all I need. Things are complicated enough around
here without--"

Van Alen rose abruptly. "I see. Well, I'll have to be leaving now,
Dale." He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders tightly and walked
across the living room. "It's going to be a long hard journey to the
Pole; I must begin at once."

He put his hand to the door. Kesley watched him open it.

"Hold it, van Alen. Don't go."

"Why?"

Kesley shook his head without replying. Van Alen looked at him for a
moment, shrugged, and turned a second time to leave.

Without really knowing why he was doing what he was about to do, Kesley
cupped his hands. "_Tina!_"

The girl reappeared and confronted him quizzically.

"Get upstairs and pack my things," Kesley ordered her. "I'm leaving."

"Leaving?"

"Right this minute," he said. "I'm leaving with _him_." He pointed
squarely at van Alen.




                                  II


City noises--the dizzying chaos of the metropolis. Kesley and van Alen
reined in their mounts at the gates of the city of Galveston, capital
of Texas Province and a main bastion of Duke Winslow of North America.

It seemed to Kesley that they had been riding for months. Actually,
it had been only a matter of weeks for the long ride through the
farmlands, down through Texas to the Gulf.

They moved along now at a slow canter, guiding their horses into a line
that disappeared between the heavy copper gates surrounding the walled
city. Galveston was an encircled peninsula, guarded by land, open to
the sea.

Men in the green-and-gold uniforms of Duke Winslow's guard rode
alongside the line, keeping the jostling crowd in order.

"Better get your coins ready," van Alen muttered, as they drew near the
gate.

"Coins?"

"This is a fee city. A dollar a head to enter the gate."

Kesley made a face and dug a golden dollar from his pocket. He looked
at the tiny, well-worn coin almost wistfully. "The good Duke takes
care that his subjects are never weighted with overmuch coinage," he
observed. "The Duke's men relieve us of it joyfully."

They rode past the gate. A sleepy-eyed toll-keeper sat, impassively
watching, as each newcomer to the city deposited his dollar in the till.

As Kesley passed the tollbox, he flipped the coin in casually. It
clinked against several of the others, spun, and bounced out, rolling
some ten feet away. Kesley shrugged apologetically and continued ahead.

"Hey there!" The guard's voice was loud and harsh. "Get down there
and--"

The voice of the toll-keeper died away. Kesley looked around and saw
van Alen down on his knees in the well-trampled mud, rooting in the
filth for the coin. The nobleman seemed to show no compunction about
crawling before the toll-keeper.

"Here you are, sir." Van Alen obsequiously deposited Kesley's dollar
in the tollbox, added one of his own, and handed a third coin to the
toll-keeper.

"The boy is sick," van Alen murmured, gesturing significantly. "He does
not know what he does."

The toll-keeper nodded curtly and pocketed the dollar. "Get moving,
both of you," he snapped.

Kesley, who had trotted a few feet further, halted to let van Alen
catch up with him.

"That's a good way to assure a short life," the Antarctican said.
"Toll-keepers are notorious for their quick triggers. Don't make
needless trouble for yourself, boy."

"Sorry," Kesley said. "It riled me to see him sitting there so smug and
taking our money. I didn't really mean to throw the coin on the ground."

Van Alen shook his head sadly. "It riled you," he repeated, his voice
mocking. "You've been lucky so far--each time you've lost your temper,
you've survived. But better learn to curb it. These people are your
superiors, whether you like it or not, and if a Duke wants a dollar to
enter his city, you put down your dollar or you ride the other way."

"Superiors, hell! They've got no right--"

"You're just so much dirt, Kesley," the Antarctican said with sudden
force. Oddly, the words did not stir Kesley to anger. "Learn that
lesson now. Whatever you may think you are, that doesn't alter the fact
that you're nothing more than dirt."

Kesley swallowed hard, but said nothing. Van Alen was right, he was
forced to admit. The Twelve Dukes ruled supreme, and beneath them came
a complex and sharply-defined hierarchy in which, as a farmer, Kesley
was close to the bottom. He had no call to flare up at toll-keepers.

But yet--

He shook his head. The fact of his insignificance was one he could
accept intellectually, but he couldn't _believe_ in it. And he never
would. He had never been able to master the trick of lying to himself.

"What's on the schedule in Galveston?" Kesley asked, as they rode
into the town. They entered a wide, crowded thoroughfare; mechanical
transportation was forbidden in most parts of North America, but
there were plenty of horsecarts and carriages--most of them drawn by
variegated mutants of one sort or another, but a few by authentic
horses of the Old Kind.

"We'll stay here overnight," van Alen said. "Tomorrow we pick up the
steamer for South America. From there it's straight down to Antarctica."

"And then?" Kesley prodded.

"And then you'll be in Antarctica."

That was all the information van Alen would ever give. From time to
time on the trip down from Iowa, Kesley had found himself wondering
just why he had pulled up roots and struck off with van Alen.

It was probably a combination of factors. Curiosity, certainly.
Antarctica was the world's great mystery, keeping itself utterly aloof
from the doings of the Twelve Empires. And then there was the vague
unease he had felt during his stay in Iowa, the knowledge that he
belonged somewhere else. And there was a third factor, too--a kind of
randomness, a compulsive but seemingly unmotivated action whose nature
he did not understand. He had agreed to come--that was all. _Why_ never
entered into it for long.

He was being led. Well, he would follow, and wait for the threads to
untangle themselves.

Right now he was in a city for, supposedly, the third time in his life.
He had the biographical data down pat: three years ago he had gone to
market in Des Moines for his horse, and a year later he had made the
trek down to St. Louis to sell grain. Both times he had been repelled
by the bigness and squalor of the city. He felt the same emotion now.

But, as had happened the two previous times, there was also the feeling
that the city, not the farm, was his natural habitat.

The street before them seemed familiar, though he knew he had never
been in Galveston before. It stretched far out of sight, bordered on
both sides by low, square, old houses and brightly-colored shops.
Hawkers yelled stridently in the roadway, peddling fruits and
vegetables and here and there some comely wench's favors.

Van Alen pointed toward a rickety building on their right and said,
"There's a hotel. Let's room up for the night."

"Good enough," Kesley agreed.

The proprietor of the hotel was a short man in his early fifties,
chubby and prosperous-looking, with an oily stubble of beard darkening
his face. His bald head gleamed; it had been newly waxed.

"Hail, friends. In search of lodgings?"

"Indeed we are," van Alen said. "My friend and I are tired, and can use
some rest."

The hotelman chuckled. "One room?"

"Suitable," van Alen said.

A thick eyebrow lifted. "Will you boys be needing a double bed?"

"What the hell do you mean--" Kesley began hotly, but van Alen cut him
off and said in a calm voice, "Twin beds will be fine, if you've got
them."

"Of course," the proprietor said. "Beg pardon." He reached behind him
and fumbled on a board laden with keys, mumbling cheerfully to himself.
Finally he decided on an appropriate room and unhooked the keys.

"Three-fifty," he said.

Van Alen placed four one-dollar pieces face upward on the desk. The
hotelman looked at the coins, grinned, and scooped them up, putting
a fifty-cent piece in their place. Van Alen ignored it, and after a
moment the hotelman scooped that up as well.

"Come this way, please."

He showed them to a room on the third floor, which was the topmost. It
was a boxy, green-walled room with a single naked fluorescent running
along its ceiling. Kesley had vaguely hoped that the room would have
floor-to-ceiling luminescence, as some of the oldest city hotels were
reputed to have, but no such luck. This one had been built since the
Blast; no fancy trimmings here.

There were two beds, both without spreads. The part of the sheet that
was visible at the top was gray and frayed, though apparently clean. A
slatted screen stood folded between the beds.

"Cozy, isn't it?" the proprietor asked. He seemed to be oozing filth.
"It's one of our best doubles."

"Glad to hear it," van Alen said. "We've traveled far. We're tired."

"You'll rest well here," the hotelman said, and backed out the door.

"A greasy customer," Kesley commented when he was gone.

"No more so than usual," said van Alen. "They seem to be a breed. He
means well, though." The Antarctican shrugged out of his cloak and
draped it over a chair. Casually he unfolded the screen, dividing the
room in half.

"Economy calls for a single room," he explained. "But privacy is still
a fine thing."

Kesley shrugged. He had no intention of violating any of van Alen's
personal crotchets. Approaching his own bed, he turned down the sheet,
slipped off his clothing, and climbed in.

He discovered he had no desire to sleep. After tossing restlessly for a
while, he rolled over on his back and sat up. "Van Alen?"

"What is it, Kesley?"

"How big is Galveston?"

"About a hundred thousand people," van Alen said. "It's a very big
city."

"Oh." After a pause: "Bet New York was much bigger, wasn't it?"

"Cities were bigger in the old days. Too big. It drove people mad to
live in them. That's why the cities were destroyed. Your Dukes make
sure the same thing doesn't happen again by building walls around the
cities. Galveston won't ever get any bigger than it is."

"Is that the way things are in Antarctica, too?"

"You'll find out about Antarctica when you get there. Go to sleep--or
at least let me sleep."

Van Alen sounded irritated. The Antarctican was a queer duck, Kesley
thought, as he lay awake in the silence. Van Alen was a slick operator,
calm and self-assured, but there were strange chinks in his armor. He
blew up, occasionally, lost his temper--not often, but sometimes. And
there were many questions he would not answer, and others that seemed
to disturb him more than they should.

He conducted himself strangely, too--doing things almost without
motivation, it seemed, though Kesley felt that deep calculations lay
behind the seemingly gratuitous acts. Such things as picking the first
hotel they saw, or tipping the proprietor a needless half dollar. They
stood out sharply against the fabric of reality. They were unnecessary
actions--or were they?

Kesley didn't know. And Kesley resolved, in that moment, not to try to
find out. He would abrogate all responsibility, let happen what might.
It was the only way to ward off the terrors of unanswerable questions.
Away from his home, away from the farm, he simply was not equipped to
act independently--_yet_. He decided to sit tight, ask no questions,
and look for no answers.

       *       *       *       *       *

They left Galveston early the next morning, via the _Snowden_, a creaky
old second-class freight-steamer, carrying eight other passengers and
a small herd of cattle on their way to Cuba. Van Alen had made all the
traveling arrangements; Kesley, having no idea how such things were
managed, had done nothing.

The ship docked at Havana, discharged its load of kine, and moved
unsteadily southward. From Havana to Merida, in Yucatan; from Merida to
Panama. The charred wreckage of the old canal was gauntly visible as
they steamed past the Isthmus.

Skirting the east coast of South America, the _Snowden_ pulled into
port at Bahia Blanca, in Argentina Province--and here, van Alen and
Kesley disembarked.

"This is as far south as any ship goes," van Alen said, as the tug drew
them toward the dreary harbor. "The rest of the trip is overland."

"To Antarctica? How?"

Van Alen smiled. "Overland through Argentina, at any rate, and down
into Patagonia. There'll be transportation waiting for us there."

Fifteen minutes later, they were waiting at the customs shed for their
horses. A bored-looking little customs official in blue shorts and gold
brocaded jacket approached them, clutching a clipboard and a stubby
pencil.

"Where are you from?" His voice was thickly accented but understandable.

"North America," van Alen said. "We're vassals of His Liege Duke
Winslow."

The customs man scribbled something on his clipboard. "You are now in
the lands of His Highness Don Miguel, Sovereign Ruler and Duke of South
and Central America. Entrance fee to His Highness' lands is for you ten
dollar American. You have?"

Kesley scowled but produced the fee without question. Van Alen handed
money over as well. The customs officer smiled coldly and nodded.

"Very well. You may enter. There will be no inspection of your
belongings."

"Trusting fellow, isn't he?" Kesley asked, as they saddled their
animals. "No customs inspection."

"They're very trusting down here, especially when you give them ten
dollars too many. Don Miguel's Dukedom isn't particularly noted for its
high ethical standards, Kesley. Everyone's fantastically loyal to the
Duke, but they stay loyal to themselves as well. See?"

"You know, you've spent more cash in bribes on this trip than I've ever
seen in my life," Kesley said.

"A well-greased road makes for a smooth journey," van Alen intoned.
"Another important lesson for you."

Kesley smiled and goaded his horse on. The road out of Bahia Blanca was
a long and winding one; from this vantage-point, Argentina Province
looked limitless. The air was cold and clear, down in this continent
where winter came in July. Kesley let the constant rhythm of his
galloping horse lull him into a veiled patience; he rode impassively,
listening to the repeated _clickety-clack_ of well-shod hooves coming
from van Alen's Old-Kind horse, and the less distinct, thumping sound
of his own mutant steed's three-toed paws pounding the roadway. The
sounds tended to hypnotize him. At any rate, they kept him from
thinking too seriously about the unknown destination that lay ahead.

The journey continued. By evening of the next day they had left the
city far behind and had ridden into the heart of a broad, apparently
endless, green plain covered thickly with coarse, matted grass and
dotted with short, heavy-boled trees. Conversation between the two men
had long since dwindled to a mere interchange of grunts.

But the monotony of the journey was short-lived. Near midnight, from
over a slight rise in the plain, eight men appeared, riding lowslung
mutant ponies. They were heading straight for van Alen and Kesley.

Kesley saw them first. He nudged van Alen.

"Bandits," the Antarctican said immediately. "Let's split up. You go to
the east; I'll head the other way."

"And how do we get together again?"

"I'll find you afterward. Get going!"

Kesley dug in his spurs and the horse leaped forward. The bandits
bore down on them as the two men rode in opposite directions. And, to
Kesley's horror, he saw the bandit group splitting in two.

Instantly, van Alen doubled back and beckoned to Kesley to do the
same. If the bandits had detected the maneuver and were sweeping off
to intercept them, there was nothing gained by dividing. They stood a
better chance back-to-back.

Together, then, they struck out along a side-path toward a thick copse.
Kesley's hand slipped down from the bridle to feel the comforting hilt
of his knife at his waist. He glanced at van Alen, and saw that the
Antarctican's blaster gleamed dully, ready for use, in the man's hand.

The eight bandits drew up in a tight phalanx facing the copse. They
were swarthy, dark-skinned men with heavy mustaches.

"Off your horse," van Alen whispered.

Kesley slipped to the ground and began to tether the mutant to a
low-hanging branch.

"No," the Antarctican said harshly. "Let the animals roam free. Their
noise will confuse the bandits."

"Right."

He released his grip on the reins and slapped the beast affectionately.
The swaybacked mutant began to amble off into the depths of the copse,
crashing down on fallen branches as it went. Van Alen's horse struck
out in another direction. Kesley grinned suddenly; the sight of his
clumsy old horse thrashing away into the darkness was utterly ludicrous.

Then Kesley glanced back at van Alen. The Antarctican was kneeling in a
soft mossbank, aiming his blaster.

He squeezed the firing stud. A bright beam of light licked out. The
horse of the leading bandit whinnied and looked down in amazement at
the pastern that was no longer there, and then toppled, dropping its
rider.

Van Alen fired again and a second horse went down. At that the bandits
scattered. The two men on foot hit the ground; the other six rode off
around the copse.

A loud report sounded from the left, followed by an agonized neigh of
pain. Kesley stiffened. _They shot my horse_, he thought. For some
reason, hot tears of rage came to his eyes. The awkward-looking mutant
horse had been a good friend for four years. Kesley felt as if his last
bond with Iowa Province had just been severed.

He yanked out his knife. Pale moonlight flickered on the polished
blade. Van Alen tapped Kesley's arm, shook his head cautioningly.
Kesley saw the Antarctican aim the blaster.

Another spurt of light. The smell of singed leaves, sharp and
acrid--and then, the smell of singed human flesh. A dull groan.

"That's one," van Alen muttered. "Seven to go."

Branches rustled behind them. Kesley whirled and raised his knife, but
it was only van Alen's horse returning to its master. At a gesture from
van Alen, Kesley slapped the steed's rump and sent it roaming again.
Overhead, hoarse-voiced birds chattered their angry commentary on the
conflict below.

The blaster spurted again, and in its sudden light Kesley saw a
shadowed figure outside the copse char and fall.

Kesley began to perspire. There were still six bandits at large out
there, and eventually van Alen's blaster would run out of charges.

Another bullet came whistling through the woods and thunked into a tree
overhead.

"They've spotted the source of the beam," van Alen said. "Let's get
moving."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere. We've got to misdirect them. I've only got two charges left."

Again came the rustling of branches behind them. _Van Alen's horse
again_, Kesley thought, but this time he was wrong. The bandits were
upon them.

All six at once--making a suicide charge on the man with the blaster.
They came piling into the copse on foot, swarming around Kesley and van
Alen, leaping and clawing and punching.

Van Alen's blaster spurted once, and a sharp-featured bandit took the
charge in his stomach. He pitched forward on the Antarctican, who tried
desperately to wriggle out from under the corpse. He did--but not
before another bandit had seized the hand that held the blaster. There
was a bright flare overhead suddenly, and the birds shrieked wildly.
With an angry curse at having wasted the last charge, van Alen broke
free of the man and hurled the useless blaster away.

Meanwhile Kesley found himself busy. His knife dripped red; he had
slashed it into one man's arm, then ripped downward. Another had seized
his wrist as he drew back for a second thrust.

Kesley grimaced and groped for the other man's eyes. In the darkness of
the copse not even the moon aided vision; it was impossible to see more
than a foot or so, and Kesley contended with half-seen shapes rather
than men.

The bandit twisted upward sharply. A bolt of pain shot through Kesley's
arm. Numbed, he let the knife slip from his grasp. It vanished
underfoot.

"Dale?" The half-grunt came from van Alen, somewhere to the left. "The
blaster's dead."

"And I've lost my knife!"

"Try to get free. If we can slip through them and outside the copse, we
can grab their horses and--"

"We also speak English, _norteamericano_," a wry voice said suddenly.
"Your strategy is no secret."

Kesley turned and jammed a fist into someone's stomach. He felt arms
groping for his arms, and shrugged himself free. He stepped back,
kicking out with his heavy boot.

His foot struck--but as it did, someone else hit him from behind and
knocked him off balance. He slipped, rolled over and tried to pull
himself up. Three men were on him in an instant, pinioning him.

He heard the click of a gun's safety going off, and a quiet voice said,
"Hold fast or we will explode your head."

Instantly Kesley stiffened. "I'm holding fast," he said. He saw no
point in resisting, not with three men squatting on him and a gun
pointed at his head.

A short distance away the sound of struggle could still be heard. _Good
for van Alen_, Kesley thought.

A knife flashed suddenly. A man howled: "Ricardo, you have cut _me_!"
Angrily, in Spanish.

_Spanish? Where did I learn Spanish?_ Kesley wondered.

He heard van Alen's ironic chuckle. "How are you doing, Kesley?"

"I'm caught. They're sitting on me."

A pause. Then: "Too bad, Dale." Van Alen's deep voice sounded distant
and troubled now. "I'm going to have to--"

His voice broke off abruptly. After a moment of silence, Kesley heard
footsteps pounding rapidly away through the forest. Van Alen running
away? _Why?_

One of the bandits fired. The forest was illuminated briefly by the
flash of gunpowder, and Kesley thought he heard something like a grunt
of pain, followed by a frantic threshing in the underbrush.

"I got him," a voice said.

"What of the other one?"

"We have him here."

"_Muy bien!_ Don Miguel will be glad to see him."

Kesley was lifted to his feet. Dimly, he saw five men guarding him,
and a sixth crouched a few feet away with his hand clapped to a raw
knife-wound in his shoulder.

Efficiently, the bandits roped his arms to his sides.

"I have a safe-conduct from Duke Miguel," Kesley protested, as they
hustled him out of the copse.

One of the bandits snorted derisively. "Safe conduct? Pah! Don Miguel
gives no safe conducts!"

"But--"

They were in the open now. There was no sign of van Alen or of van
Alen's horse.

The six small ponies of the bandits were grazing in a wide circle; near
the edge of the copse lay the two horses van Alen's blaster had brought
down, and a few feet away were the sprawled, blackened corpses of the
two dead bandits.

The night was silent. Even the birds had ceased their harsh noise.
Kesley tensely allowed himself to be tethered to a pommel.

"Where are you taking me?" he demanded.

The bandit leader chuckled, showing a set of gleaming teeth.
"Buenos Aires. The capital of Duke Miguel, no? Miguel is collecting
_norteamericanos_ this week!"




                                  III


As well as being the chief city of Argentina Province, Buenos Aires was
a Ducal capital--the first such city Kesley remembered having entered.

He knew the names of the others: Chicago, Tunis, Johannesburg,
Stockholm, Canberra, Strasbourg, Kiev, Hankow, Calcutta, Manila,
Leopoldville. They were strange and alien names; to him, abstract
symbols of Ducal power rather than concrete geographical localities.

It was easy to see that this was Miguel's abode. The walls of the city
bristled with dark-skinned riflemen in blue shorts and gold brocade,
zealously guarding their Immortal's city against armed attack. Standing
outside the city walls, Kesley could see, looming above the blocks of
low, grubby buildings, the arching sweep of Don Miguel's palace. A
gleaming spire almost a hundred feet high topped the vaulted building,
which looked down upon the nest of small houses clustered around it as
a giant would upon worms.

There seemed to be a jam-up at the gates. Traffic was heavy at a Ducal
capital. All around him, swarthy men on burros or horses or stubby
piebald mutant beasts waited patiently to be admitted. Most of them
were clad in broad-brimmed _sombreros_ and colorful _serapes_; Kesley
grinned wryly at that. South America was an unchanging microcosm.
Beneath the friendly sky, life, frozen always in a stasis of todays,
moved on slowly, with _manana_ never quite arriving.

Kesley wondered about van Alen. The Antarctican had run away, and
presumably had been shot by a bandit. Was he dead, his corpse lying
rotting on the plain? It didn't matter, now. Kesley was in the hands of
Duke Miguel. His destiny was no longer bound to that of Dryle van Alen.

"Get along, now," a voice drawled. The line moved up. Slowly, the long
queue was passing through the great double doors and into the city.
Kesley's six captors surrounded him, three before and three aft. Their
conversation during the long trip north to the capital had been limited
to occasional rapid-fire bursts of incomprehensible Spanish, and Kesley
still had no idea of the fate that awaited him.

"We go to the Duke," the taciturn bandit leader said as they reached
the gatekeeper. He gestured at Kesley. "We bring him a prize."

"_Norteamericano?_"

"_Sí_."

The gatekeeper flicked a thumb over his shoulder. "Go in."

Kesley's horse moved forward, and they entered the Ducal capital of
Buenos Aires.

_Cities look pretty much alike_, Kesley thought, as they entered. His
short acquaintance with van Alen had made him more observant, more
analytical. And, looking around, he framed the generalization. He might
just as well have been in Galveston, or St. Louis.

There were differences, of course, but they were not fundamental ones.
The dirt was a constant, the litter and the smell, and the undercurrent
of noise. The crowds, too. And also the houses: squat, two- or
three-story affairs, in the universally accepted architectural design,
with gray whorls of greasy smoke spiralling up from their hearth fires.

Kesley wondered what cities had looked like in the Old Days, before
the rain of bombs had leveled the world. New York had had millions of
people in it. Buildings had towered to the skies. Kesley remembered
how old Lester described a visit he had made to New York forty years
earlier. The blistered hulks of the great towers still stood, jagged
shells clawing at the sky. Forty, fifty, eighty stories high--it was
unbelievable.

Cities were different now. The Twelve Dukes had laid down the unvarying
pattern for the cities during the Time of Rebuilding, four hundred
years before. The old names had been kept, and the old locations. But
a city of the Twelve Empires now had a certain prescribed shape, and a
city in Argentina Province looked much like one in Illinois Province,
or Capetown Province. There was the wall, first of all, high and thick
and protective. Within the wall, the radial spokes of streets, and the
circling network of avenues, lined with low houses. At the heart of
the city, the Building of Government or, as in Buenos Aires and eleven
other cities in the world, the Ducal Palace.

Markets, shops, houses, schools, meeting-halls--these were all provided
for, all according to plan.

"Why are you taking me to the Duke?" Kesley asked, as they trotted
toward the towering palace.

The bandit chief shrugged. "The Duke wants _norteamericanos_. He pay us
to bring them; he tell us where you and your friend are. We bring. See?"

Kesley nodded. It was the truth, he saw; the bandit had merely been
following instructions.

_Everyone follows instructions_, he thought suddenly. He had followed
van Alen's orders; the bandits were puppets of Don Miguel. And Miguel?

Who, he wondered, pulled the Duke's strings?

Kesley smiled. Van Alen had tainted him with philosophy. Life would
undoubtedly have been much simpler if he'd remained in Iowa Province,
on the farm.

The contradiction followed at once: he _hadn't_ been happy there, he
realized. Life had never been simple--not even in a world where the
benevolent Dukes tried manfully to avoid the fatal complexity of the
Old Days.

They reached the approaches to the Palace, now. It was an imposing,
almost breathtaking building. In seeing to it that the short-lived
peoples of the world remained properly close to the ground, the Dukes
had stressed their own grandeur. The milk-colored Palace swept upward
like a bright fang piercing the sky. It was perhaps three blocks square
at its base, and rushed upward for more than a hundred feet before its
firm lines were broken by as much as a window.

The building's facade was frosty white and immaculate, a solid wall of
irradiated polyethylene. Spotlights--even now, in the daytime--played
against its shining bulk. The building was awesome, magnificent, a
monolithic monument to a fortuitous mutation affecting but twelve
men--and, thought Kesley, its very grandeur was faintly ridiculous.

A row of blue-clad guards was arrayed before the main entrance.
Kesley's captors rode to the approach, and the bandit chief engaged in
a brief colloquy, at the end of which one of the guards vanished within.

He returned a few moments later, bearing with him a small brown leather
pouch. The bandit accepted the pouch eagerly, and tossed it to one of
his men.

_My price_, Kesley guessed in wry amusement.

He was right. The bandit undid him and hauled him down from his mount.
As Kesley gratefully flexed his numbed arms, the bandit shoved him
toward the waiting guard.

"_Adios, norteamericano!_" The six bandits grinned cheerfully,
pocketing their bounty. They remounted, and rode away.

"Come with me," the guard said stiffly. He drew a pistol, but Kesley
shook his head.

"I won't make trouble. You can put that thing away."

The great door swung open and Kesley was conducted into a vast
courtyard lined with flowering shrubbery. At the far end of the yard,
Kesley saw a small group of men standing in irregular formation.

"We go there," the guard said. He pointed, and Kesley started off in
the direction indicated.

There were about ten men waiting there, under the surveillance of one
of the Duke's guards, who watched them with drawn gun. As Kesley drew
near, he saw that the men were, like himself, North Americans.

"Where are you from?" a white-haired man called. "Up north?"

"Iowa Province," Kesley said, joining the group. "You?"

"Illinois." The other's voice was bitter. "I'm from the court of Duke
Winslow. He'll hear of this; he'll--"

The guard yelled: "Quiet down there!"

"What is all this?" Kesley whispered.

"I don't know. Miguel's evidently rounding up all the North Americans
in his territory. It's illegal! It's--"

The guard whirled suddenly and struck the Illinois man across the face
with his pistol. "Silence!"

Kesley felt a surge of anger, but restrained it. He bent and lifted the
older man to his feet. Dazed, the courtier wiped blood from his tunic
and dabbed gently at his gashed cheek. "Damn him," he muttered. He
groped at his hip for a sword that wasn't there.

"Hush," Kesley said. "They'll only knock you down again. Fall in line
and keep quiet. We'll find out what's going on later."

It was the only way to stay alive, he told himself. Fall in line; ask
questions later.

Another door opened, and they entered the palace of the Duke.

"This way," the guard called. "After me." Shepherding them with his
drawn pistol, he led the way, while three other guards closed in at
each side of the group. Kesley looked around. They were in a long
corridor which headed toward a descending staircase. The dungeons,
obviously.

They kept walking. _Fall in line; ask questions later._ Kesley repeated
it to himself.

Suddenly he stiffened. He had fallen obediently in line when van Alen
had appeared from nowhere--and the questions that arose had never been
answered. Now, perhaps, he was marching unquestioningly to his death.
_I won't do it_, he thought defiantly, and stepped out of line.

He yanked the pistol from the astonished guard near him and slid his
hand around the thick butt. The gun had an unfamiliar feel to it; it
was heavy and clumsy. But he raised it quickly to shoulder-level and
fired.

The guard at the front of the line yawped and clutched his shoulder.
Kesley fired again. A second guard dropped. The other men in the line
caught on, now, and charged the remaining pair of surprised guards.
Kesley heard a pistol crack, and saw that it was in the hands of a
North American.

_This_ was the way. Act, instead of being acted upon.

Guards were coming down the corridor now, waving pistols. "Over here,"
Kesley yelled. He started to run back the way he had come. Turning
the corridor, he collided with a surprised-looking fat man in reddish
velvet robes, who had been moving forward in stately fashion, oblivious
to the conflict ahead of him.

Kesley knocked the fat man off his legs and kept running. Behind him
came the sounds of pistol shots echoing down the halls, and the clatter
of feet. Guards were coming from all over. He turned, fired three more
times, and threw the useless gun away.

Four guards dashed toward him and, quickly, he backed into a dark
alcove. There was a door. Impulsively, he threw it open and stepped
inside.

A fist rocked him almost before he had crossed the threshold. Dizzily,
Kesley wobbled backward to get a view of his assailant.

He was a big, broad-shouldered, black-bearded man wearing embroidered
robes and a shimmering gold tiara. A _noble_, Kesley decided. _He packs
a mean punch._

The big man reached upward and yanked on a bell. Almost instantly,
the room was full of guards. Determined to do as much damage as he
could before being retaken, Kesley sprang forward. He clawed at the
embroidered gold robes, feeling gold inlay ripping away under his
fingernails. Then the noble hit him again, sending him staggering up
against the wall. Two guards seized him.

"One of the escaped prisoners, _señor_," a guard babbled. "How he got
in here we do not know. He--"

"Enough, _payaso_. Take him away. Kill him."

A tired frown crossed the big man's forehead. "No. Forget that. Tie him
to a chair, and leave him alone here with me."

The guard looked up doubtfully, but quickly concealed his misgivings.
"Of course, sire."

"Send in my clothier also. This idiot has ruined my robes."

Kesley allowed himself to be tied to a chair.

"You're a bold fool," the big man said, coming over to glower down at
Kesley. He knotted his fingers in his thick, tangled dark beard, and
smiled, baring stained yellow teeth. Kesley met the noble's gaze evenly.

The deep eyes were set in a network of fine wrinkles. They were not the
eyes of an ordinary man. They were heavy with the shadow of a hundred
thousand days gone by, and infinities of days to come. Kesley realized
that the man before him was no mere noble. He could only be Don Miguel,
Duke of South America.

An Immortal.




                                  IV


Kesley watched Miguel pace uneasily back and forth. The room he had
blundered into was evidently one of the Ducal offices; a broad desk at
the back was littered with a great many official-looking papers, and
on one wall hung a glossy shield bearing Miguel's coat of arms.

Suddenly Miguel turned. "Where are you from?" he asked. His voice was
deep, resonant, commanding.

"Iowa Province. I was a farmer."

"Oh? Then what might you be doing in my lands?"

Kesley saw that he had blundered. Farmers, normally, did not take
pleasure jaunts to South America. He tried to repair the damage. "I was
on a buying tour. I was down here for cattle, and grain, and--"

Miguel chuckled. "Enough, please. One does not have to be an Immortal
to see through your lies." He pulled out a chair and sprawled his big
form down. Smiling strangely, he said, "You can speak the truth. Why
are you here?"

"I--I--" Kesley's face reddened. He realized that he had no rational
answer to give. He was here only because van Alen had led him here--and
van Alen was dead or wounded now, far to the south.

Miguel sighed. "You assassins are all alike. At the moment of capture,
you lose the sacred fire." Swiftly he leaned over and undid Kesley's
bonds.

"There. You are free. Kill me, now. We're alone; this is your chance!"

Miguel slipped an ornamented stiletto from his sash and handed it to
Kesley. Opening his cloak, the Duke fumbled with buttons and pulled the
cloth aside, baring a broad, muscular chest covered with graying hair.
"Here! Plunge the dagger in--_now_!"

Kesley weighed the stiletto in his hand, balancing the haft on his
palm, fingering the weapon's keen point and well-honed blade. Miguel
waited patiently. One corner of the Duke's wide mouth was drawn up in
a cold smile; the other sagged almost uncontrollably into a drooping
sneer.

"Well?"

Kesley feinted with the stiletto and flicked it through the air past
Miguel's head and into the center of the arms-bearing shield on the
wall. The Duke, who had not so much as blinked, laughed heartily.

"A good man with a knife! A good man indeed." Serious again, he said,
"But you could have killed me. Why didn't you?"

"Kill an Immortal?" Kesley replied listlessly. "I'd sooner try to
harness a whirlwind. How could I possibly kill you?"

"By plunging the knife into my heart," Miguel said. "You obviously fail
to understand the true nature of our immortality."

"Which is?"

"Cell regeneration. Gradual rebuilding and replacement of decayed
cells. We remain as we are because the decays of age are counteracted
as rapidly as they occur. There are no organic defects to plague us.
This process, however, does not guard against a knife in the heart, or
a slit throat, or a bullet in the back."

"And yet you gave the knife to me. Why?"

"I knew you wouldn't use it," Miguel said. "You short-lived ones are so
terribly easy to understand. Only...."

The Duke's voice trailed off. "Only _what_?" Kesley prodded after a
moment.

"Only nothing," Miguel said. He rose. "Come upstairs with me, young
one, to my office. I am a slave to my duties ... more thoroughly
enslaved than the basest serf on my lands."

Miguel touched a panel in the wall and it slid back, revealing what
looked to Kesley like an adjoining room.

"My private elevator," Miguel explained. "Come."

The elevator rose silently. When it stopped, the door slid open and
Kesley found himself in an even vaster room, almost completely lined
with books on one wall from floor to ceiling. Another wall was bright
with paintings; on a third, strange lights flickered on a wide board,
and glowing above their multicolored glitter were eight rectangular
gray screens.

Seeming to forget Kesley, Miguel strode across the room and seated
himself in an imposing chair facing the screens. He covered the
flashing red light with his palm. The upper-most of the screens became
illuminated. Kesley gasped as the face of a man grew visible.

The man in the screen gesticulated humbly. "Your blessing, sire.
Mendoza of Quito reporting, Don Miguel."

"Speak, Mendoza." Miguel's tone was regally impatient. "It has not
rained here for sixteen days, sire," Mendoza said anxiously. "The
people are discontented. Crops are dying, and--"

"Enough." Miguel flipped a switch and a second screen came to life.
"Luis, take care of this fool from Quito, and explain to him that we
have no control over the weather. Then transfer all these other calls
to your own line. I'll be busy for the next fifteen minutes."

The screen went blank; the flickering lights died away.

"What is that thing?" Kesley asked.

"Closed-screen television. I use it to keep in contact with my
governors in the various provinces."

Miguel took a seat behind a desk; this one, like the other downstairs,
heaped high with papers. He lowered his great, bearlike head between
his hands and stared at Kesley for what must have been more than a
minute. Finally he said, "I offered you a chance to kill me. You
declined it."

"Perhaps if I got the chance again, I'd act differently," Kesley said.

"Perhaps. But the chance comes but once. I am not yet tired of
life ... I think." The Duke's eyes drooped wearily. They seemed to be
staring backward into yesterday--and ahead at the burden of an endless
tomorrow. "Four hundred years is many years, though. Are you married,
young man?"

Startled, Kesley said: "Huh--no. No, not yet."

"I have been married thirty-six--no, forty-one times. The longest was
the first: twenty-six years. We were both thirty when we met. When she
died, she was fifty-six; I was still thirty. I was just finding out,
then."

Miguel toyed with a sparkling, many-faceted gem on his desk. "Most of
the other marriages were short ones.... I couldn't bear to watch them
grow old. Now I do not marry at all."

"Do you have children?" Kesley asked.

Miguel flinched as if struck. His wide lips tightened in anger; then
his face softened again. "The gene is recessive," he said quietly. "And
lethal in early childhood, if not immediately after birth. My dynasties
have been short-lived. I have had eight children; seven lived less
than a year. The eighth reached the age of nine."

He laughed hollowly. "Out of eternal life, nothing but death. No, I
have no children, young one."

"I--see," Kesley said. He peered closely at the Immortal, feeling a
strange flow of pity for the timeless man. Immortality was a costly
gift, he saw. Suddenly, Kesley wondered how many other Immortals there
had been beside the Twelve--Immortals who, once they realized the
terrible nature of their breed, had taken their own lives. More than
one, he thought.

And how often did Miguel himself consider suicide? Had he had some
hidden protection against Kesley's knife, moments ago downstairs, or
had the Duke been half-hoping the blade would strike true?

Perhaps.

"Why do you keep me here?" Kesley asked.

Miguel looked up slowly. His eyes, deep and piercing, bored into
Kesley's. "You amuse me," Miguel said. "When one is more than four
centuries old, one is hard put to find amusement. I am amused by the
possibility that you might strike me dead at any moment."

"It's really very funny," Kesley said.

"I'm amused by the fact that you're not afraid of me. Awed, yes, but
not servile. How many times a day do you think I hear that hateful word
'Sire'? _Sire!_ Me, who has sired eight dead babes and nothing more."

Kesley looked away, embarrassed. "Sire also means ruler," he pointed
out in a muffled voice.

"That, too," Miguel said. "I rule, and it is my life to rule. I have
ruled four hundred years, and I will rule four thousand more--or four
thousand thousand, or four million. But I can never stop ruling. It is
a burden I can never put down. Who would fill the vacuum I would leave?"

"There were rulers before the Twelve Dukes."

"And they destroyed the world! Destroyed it--and in so doing, brought
_us_ into being. No, stranger, my Dukedom I can never put down. But it
wearies me to make always the petty decisions, to govern the lives of
petty--"

"Why are you telling me all this?" Kesley burst out.

"Mere amusement," Miguel said evenly. "I enjoy talking to you. What is
your name?"

"Dale Kesley."

"Dale Kesley," Miguel repeated. "A fine North American name, square-cut
and undistinguished. I like it."

The Duke gestured toward a communicator-tube on his desk. "Bring that
to me."

Shrugging, Kesley handed him the tube. Miguel switched it on. "Send
Archbishop Santana here at once," he barked, and cut the channel.

He glanced at Kesley. "The Archbishop will swear you to my service,
Dale Kesley."

"But I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow," Kesley protested.

Miguel chuckled heartily. "A vassal of Duke Winslow," he mimicked.
"Vassal, indeed. You turn down my offer? You throw Duke Winslow in my
face?"

"An oath is an oath, Don Miguel."

"Oaths? Who are you to talk of oaths? You're nothing but a paid
assassin--don't think I haven't overlooked that."

Kesley started to protest, but saw there was nothing to be gained by
arguing. Miguel would never believe him.

"His Holiness Archbishop Santana," the wall-announcer said.

The door slid open and the Archbishop entered. As the plump figure
waddled into the room, Kesley grinned in recognition. The Archbishop
was the fat man in velvet robes whom he had bowled over in his mad
flight downstairs.

Now the priest wore a simple black surplice and mitred hat and carried
the crook symbolic of his office. He was a small, rotund man with dark
olive skin and a thin, sharply-hooked nose that seemed highly misplaced
in his otherwise plumply rounded countenance. He paused at the door,
smiling benignly, and made the sign of the cross with two swift motions
in the air.

"Come on in, Santana," Miguel ordered.

The priest approached Miguel and bowed deeply, then glanced at Kesley.
Suspicion was evident on his smoothly-shaven face.

"This is Dale Kesley of North America," Miguel said.

"We have met," the priest said unctuously. "This young man knocked me
down while fleeing from your guards, sire."

Kesley grinned imperceptibly, catching Miguel's faint, involuntary
wince at the _sire_. "It was an accident, Father. I was fleeing
hastily; I didn't see you."

"Time wastes," Miguel said. "Santana, swear this young man quickly into
my service. I have work for him."

The priest began to raise his crook, but Kesley shook his head. "No,
Don Miguel. I told you I'm a vassal of Duke Winslow."

Miguel smiled. "But Duke Winslow's oath is no longer binding upon his
vassals, you know."

"I didn't know. When did this happen?"

"It hasn't, yet. But it will shortly--when Duke Winslow is
assassinated."

"But--when--"

"Soon," Miguel said. His cold smile was painful to watch. "And your
hand," the Immortal continued, "will be the one that strikes him down."

"You're crazy," Kesley said shortly.

Miguel paled, and Santana crossed himself rapidly several times.

"You don't talk like that to your Duke," the Archbishop said.

"_My_ Duke? But--"

Don Miguel regained his composure and put one hand on Kesley's
shoulder. "I ask you to join me and perform this service. I am prepared
to pay well for it."

"The price?"

"My daughter," Miguel said. "Kill Winslow, and she's yours."

"Your _daughter_? But I thought--"

"_Adopted_ daughter," Miguel said smoothly. "My ward. The girl is but
twenty-two, and lovely. Kill Winslow, and she's yours."

Kesley felt perspiration dripping down his body. Kill Duke Winslow?
Upset the balance of the Twelve Empires, break the fragile harmony on
which the world depended? It was impossible!

But--

He realized suddenly that he was a totally free agent, detached and
uninvolved. Van Alen had led him forth from Iowa Province, and van Alen
was dead. He owed nothing to van Alen, nothing to Iowa.

He stood alone, unknown and unwanted in the world of the Twelve
Empires, able to shape his own destinies. And Miguel was offering him a
title, a home, an allegiance, at the cost of an assassination.

_Well, why not?_ he asked himself. _My hand is free. Why not strike
down a Duke?_

He moistened his lips. "I'll consider it," he said. "But first--let me
see the girl."

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone, waiting for Miguel to return, Kesley tried to think.

Kill Winslow?

Kill a Duke--an Immortal?

The idea seemed incredible, almost obscene. It was like saying, "Snuff
out a star," or, "Destroy a world." The Dukes were centers of their
universes, and one did not kill them.

Yet--

Kesley's self-searching in the past few minutes had revealed one
jarring fact: he did not have the qualms he had supposed he would have.
Assassinating Winslow would not be star-snuffing; he knew he could do
it as casually as van Alen had blasted the blue wolf, back in Iowa
Province.

He knew he should be quaking at the thought of murdering his own Duke,
but the necessary quaking refused to come.

_What's wrong with me?_ he asked himself desperately. _Why am I
different?_

A man was supposed to feel loyalty to his Duke. Kesley did not. _Why?_

He had had a chance to kill Miguel. Perhaps that had all been illusion;
perhaps he would have been struck down by an invisible guard the moment
the knife's tip approached the Immortal's flesh. Perhaps not. He had
drawn back, only because he had nothing to gain by killing the Duke.

And now he was asked to kill another. _Dale Kesley, Hired Assassin. We
Kill Dukes._ He grinned mirthlessly.

The faint hum of the sliding panel sounded behind him. He turned.

"Have you reached any decision yet?" Miguel asked, stepping into the
room.

"You know what I'm waiting to see," Kesley said.

"Of course."

Miguel beckoned to someone standing beyond the panel. "My daughter," he
said to Kesley. "The Lady Narella."

No one appeared. Miguel scowled and reached through the open panel. He
yanked--and The Lady Narella appeared.

"Oh," Kesley said.

Narella was quite a woman.

She stood with her hands on her hips, smoky, violet-hued eyes blazing
in defiance of Kesley and even of Miguel. She was making it clear that
she was no one's pawn, not to be bandied about.

Narella wore an ermine wrap, and a low-cut tunic that clung tightly
to her high breasts and lean form. She was a tall girl with wide hips
and shoulders. Dark hair fell loosely about her face; she wore the
diamond-encrusted tiara of a Ducal Princess, and her full lips were
bright with a fluorescing cosmetic of some sort. Here and there--on
her forehead above the left eyebrow, on her right cheek, on the creamy
flesh where the base of her throat swelled into rising breasts--she
wore a scintillating dab of brightness, a dot of some chemical that
glittered radiantly from its own inner light.

Kesley had never seen a royal woman before. Strangely, or not so
strangely, he felt all the reverence for her that he had failed to feel
in the presence of the Immortal alone. Had Miguel not been there, he
probably would have knelt despite himself and begged to kiss the tip of
her cloak.

"Is this the man, sire?" she asked. Her voice was a fit complement to
her body, deep and warm, throbbing and throaty.

"It is," Miguel said. "Dale Kesley--the Lady Narella."

"Hello," she said coldly.

A muscle quivered in Kesley's cheek. He nodded curtly to the girl.
"Hello."

She ignored him and turned to Miguel. "Is this the man to whom you're
selling me, sire?"

Miguel grimaced. "You wound me, girl. I'll leave the two of you
together to talk."

"No!" she said imperiously, but it was too late. Miguel, with an
enigmatic smile, had bowed and stepped backward into the waiting
elevator. The panel slid shut. The wall was once again unbroken.

Slowly, she turned to face Kesley. "I won't have any part of this!
I don't belong to Miguel! He can't give me away like this--to a
_commoner_!"

Kesley smiled. "Your nostrils flare very nicely when you're angry,
milady."

She whirled and stalked across the room, where she stood, her back to
him. Kesley grinned amiably. This display of temper was enjoyable. The
girl had spirit. Kesley liked that.

"Miguel called you his _daughter_," he said loudly. "How come? That's
impossible, of course."

"How do you know?" she snapped, turning to face him. Her dark eyes
glittered angrily. "I'm Miguel's daughter. Who says I'm not?"

"Miguel. He told me you were adopted. He told me Immortals were
sterile, that their children didn't survive. Whose daughter are you?"

"What is it to you?"

Kesley shrugged. "Curiosity, I guess. You're quite lovely, you know."

She said nothing.

"You're supposed to thank people when they compliment you, milady. It's
hardly polite to--"

"Quiet!" She crossed the room and faced him across a desk. At close
range her faint perfume reached Kesley's nostrils; it was a delightful
odor. The violet of her eyes, he saw, was flecked lightly with gold.
"Why has Miguel promised me to you?"

"He wants me to carry out a job--an assassination. You're the price."

"Blunt, aren't you?"

"Would you rather have me lie?"

"No," she said, after a moment's thought. She threw back her shoulders
and glared defiantly at him. "Well, do I pass your inspection? Am I fit
for you?"

Kesley made no answer. Instead, he circled deftly around the desk, drew
her close, pulled her mouth up to his. He kissed her warmly without
eliciting any response. She remained passive in his arms, as if she
were a particularly lovely statue rather than a living woman.

He released her. "Are you through?" she asked acidly.

"You pass the test," he said. Then he shook his head tiredly. "No. This
is insane. Narella, who are you?"

Apparently his sudden sincerity, after the romantic pretense of the
minutes before, told upon her. "My father was a court singer in
Chicago, court poet to Duke Winslow. I was raised at the court. Four
years ago, my father disappeared. Then Duke Winslow gave me to Miguel
as a wife, but Miguel didn't want any wives. He adopted me instead.
I've lived here ever since, as his daughter. As for my father, I
suppose he's dead. He was blind, and--"

"_Blind?_" Kesley snapped instantly out of his mood of weariness as if
a bolt of electricity had seared through him. "Did you say your father
was a blind court singer?"

"Yes," she said.

Words came from nowhere and rumbled in Kesley's mind, words spoken on
an Iowa farm in the deep, booming voice of van Alen the Antarctican:

"_We have the treasure, now; we lack only the key to the box. Daveen
the Singer, the blind man. The search for him continues._"

Slowly Kesley raised his head. He blinked a little as his eyes
encountered the flashing glitter of the girl's jewelry; then he looked
at her eyes and at the lips whose cosmetic fluorescence remained in
neat array despite his kiss. "Your father's name--was it Daveen?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes! But how do you know?"

"I don't. It's a name I've heard mentioned, a name that has something
to do with me. Only ... have you ever seen me before?"

"I think so," she said slowly. "But I don't remember it. Were you ever
at the court of Duke Winslow?"

"Never. But I recall you from somewhere. I--"

Dizzily, he looked away as a burst of sudden pain flooded his mind. He
shuddered and felt sick.

"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.

"I--don't know."

"You look ill. You've gone completely pale." She put her arms around
him as if to steady him, and her warmth sustained him through the
moment of terror that had overtaken him. It was as if he had struck
some particularly sensitive nerve, and the resonances were carrying
agony through his body.

When it was over, he mopped the beads of cold sweat from his forehead.
He looked up at her and saw that her glacial remoteness had been
replaced by a sort of feminine warmth, almost a maternal solicitude.

"Would you like to find your father again?" he asked in a low voice.

She nodded.

"So would I. I don't know why, but I feel Daveen holds the key to the
hidden areas of my life, the inconsistencies. I'd like to find him for
myself. And for you."

"Would you?"

"First ask, _could you_? Your father may be dead, for all I know." He
took her hand. "Narella--you don't want to stay here with Miguel?"

"No," she said.

"Good. Listen carefully. Does Miguel have big ears?"

She frowned. "I don't understand."

"Never mind. Come here."

She came close and he pulled her up against him. This time her lips
rose willingly for the kiss, but he brushed her pale cheek instead
and let his mouth graze lightly along her face until it reached the
tip of her earlobe. "Does Miguel have this room wired for sound?" he
whispered. "Can he hear what we say?"

She nodded almost imperceptibly. "Probably," she whispered back.

"That's what I thought. Stay close to me, then, and hear what I have to
say. If he's watching he'll think we're making love."

"Go ahead," she said.

"I'm going to accept Miguel's commission and leave here to assassinate
Duke Winslow, as ordered."

She gasped. "Assassinate--"

"That's the terms of our agreement," he said. "One Duke more or less
doesn't matter to me. I'll go to Winslow's court and try to find out
what happened to your father. Somehow I'll give Winslow what's due him.
Then I'll return here and claim you as Miguel's agreed, and we'll go
looking for your father together. If you're willing, give me a kiss."

She hesitated for just a moment, then lifted his face from her ear.
Their eyes met. She was pale, he saw, and frightened; the aloof
haughtiness of the court lady had been almost completely replaced by an
appealing little-girl terror.

He looked past her to the brooding eyes of Don Miguel glowering down at
him from the row of paintings on the wall. _After Winslow--Miguel_, he
thought with sudden savagery. The unprovoked thought surprised him.

"Very well," she murmured. She touched her lips lightly to his,
and then gave herself to him with a sort of desperate abandon that
astonished Kesley.

After a moment or two, he slipped from her grasp and looked around the
room, wondering if he'd find a concealed television camera or something
similar. There was nothing. The battery of screens and lights on the
far wall seemed dead, as they had been since Miguel had shut them off.

Finally he cupped his hands. "Miguel!"

The Duke reappeared almost instantly, followed closely by the chubby
form of Archbishop Santana. The Archbishop once again performed the
sign of the cross piously as he entered.

"Well?" Miguel asked.

"State your terms once again," said Kesley.

Miguel frowned. "The room is crowded."

"I know, sire. Witnesses may be in order."

"Very well," Miguel said wearily. "In return for services to be
rendered, I do promise the hand of my ward, the Lady Narella, to Dale
Kesley of my vassalage."

"When?"

"Upon his return from the successful completion of his endeavors in my
behalf."

"Said endeavors being?" Kesley prodded mercilessly.

"The elimination of Duke Winslow of North America," Miguel said. "His
death by any means whatsoever."

"All right," Kesley said. He glanced from Miguel to the Archbishop--who
seemed somewhat pale beneath his olive skin--to Narella. "Now that
terms have been stated, we can talk business. Miguel, what assurance do
I have that I'll get the girl when I come back?"

"An Immortal is good to his word," the Duke said gruffly. "You have a
witness in the person of the Archbishop."

"Surely you will not require the Duke to swear an oath?" Santana
exclaimed in a shocked voice. "My presence will certify--as if
certification were necessary--that--"

"Enough, padre," Kesley said. There was nothing to be won by forcing
Miguel into an oath; he had already given his word as an Immortal, and
if he would break that, it was reasonable to suspect that no other oath
would bind him.

He looked at the girl again. _Daveen's daughter_, he thought. He
wondered what tangled relationship of cause and effect had brought him
to this place at this time, and where van Alen, who had set the whole
chain of events in motion, was now.

In a month's time Kesley had been transformed from an ignorant Iowa
farmer into a killer of Dukes and a wooer of noble ladies. It was
a strange progress, but it was hopeless, Kesley thought, to try to
account for the vagaries of fate.

"Will you accept and enter my vassalage?" Miguel asked.

Kesley met the Immortal's gaze squarely and this time, it seemed to
him, it was those dark, four-hundred-year-old eyes that gave ground
instead of his own.

"I accept," he said.

He forced himself to kneel and kiss the golden hem of Don Miguel's
jeweled cloak.




                                   V


The ducal capital of Chicago sprawled in a lazy ring on the banks of
Lake Michigan, in Illinois Province. As Dale Kesley and his small
retinue waited outside the city's walls before requesting admission,
the thought occurred to him once again that the world's cities were
similar. As he looked at Chicago, it seemed to him that he might never
really have left Buenos Aires.

Duke Winslow's palace, visible high in the background overlooking the
calm lake, might have been an exact replica of Don Miguel's, except
that its flat walls were hewn from broad slabs of flesh-red feldspar
instead of spun, as Miguel's were, from shimmering polyethylene. In the
stagnant, late-August air, the sun's rays hit the palace walls weakly,
giving them an oily glare that Kesley found displeasing. But still
he preferred the natural blockiness of the stone to the consistent
slickness of the plastic that formed the walls of Miguel's palace.
Polyethylene walls were the products of controlled hard radiation and,
controlled or no, Kesley, like all men, found the concept of radiation
repugnant. It jarred against ingrained taboos.

His eye, becoming city-familiar now, began to detect other differences
between Winslow's capital and Miguel's. The guards posted in Chicago's
outer walls lacked the tense urgency of the small brown men who
protected Buenos Aires; they stared outward with a sleepy complacency
that seemed to characterize the entire city and possibly, Kesley
admitted, the entire North American Empire. Here in the north, there
was none of the crackling atmosphere of tension that seemed to prevail
in Buenos Aires.

Kesley's horse, a firm-fleshed black thoroughbred of the Old Kind,
furnished by Miguel and transported with finicking care from South
America, pawed impatiently at the layer of fine ash that covered the
ground outside the city, and snorted. Kesley steadied the animal with
soothing pressures of his calves and thighs; the horse detected the
signals and subsided.

"Shall we go in?" Kesley asked.

"Why not?" came the reply from his left. Kesley glanced over at the
rider, Archbishop Santana. "We are here, and the time is proper," the
priest said.

Kesley turned in the saddle to gesture at his six men. They rode behind
at a respectful distance, six well-muscled members of Miguel's guard,
resplendent in their imperial blue shorts and flashing yellow jackets.
Kesley urged his horse forward; Santana, a surprisingly good horseman
despite his unathletic physique, did the same, and the six guards
followed. They advanced to the wall.

A toll-keeper waited there, a dried old man in Ducal uniform seated
beside an immense tollbox ornamented with Duke Winslow's arms. Kesley
reined in before him and drew out a jangling leather pouch.

The toll-keeper's lips moved silently as he counted the party. "Eight
dollars," he said.

"_Por cierto._" Kesley leaned far to the right and handed the man the
pouch. "Eight dollars of that is for toll, _amigo_."

Frowning, the old man undid the drawstrings, emptying the contents of
the pouch into his wrinkled palm. Eight tiny golden dollars rolled out,
followed by a massive imperial doubloon of Miguel's coinage. A faint
blink was the only acknowledgement the toll-keeper showed; nodding
curtly, he dropped the eight dollars in the till, pocketed the doubloon
as if by divine right, and gestured casually within with a quick toss
of his head.

As Kesley and his party proceeded through the heavy gate, Kesley
grinned quietly to himself. He wished van Alen could have seen the
strange metamorphosis of his one-time protege: here he was, clad
in the lustrous velvet robes of a Knight of the Empire of South
America, riding a full-blooded, spirited, Old-Kind horse instead of
a swaybacked, scaly old mutant, and distributing largesse with the
natural air of the high-born.

He entered the city proper at a slow canter, the Archbishop at his
side, his men behind. The streets were crowded. Chicago, built on the
very ashes of the Old City of that name, was the largest city of Duke
Winslow's territories, home to some three hundred thousand souls.
Kesley saw eyes brighten at the sight of his magnificent horse; men
in the streets cleared back, giving way, as the South American party
entered.

"We should find an inn first of all," the Archbishop advised.
"Tomorrow, you and I will try to seek audience with the Duke."

Kesley shook his head. "We announce ourselves to the Duke at once; we
tell him we'll have an audience tomorrow. None of this begging for an
appointment."

Santana shrugged. "As you wish, _Señor Ramon_." The sudden, hard,
sardonic inflection in the Archbishop's purring voice mocked the false
title Miguel had bestowed on Kesley for the purpose of the journey.

Kesley rode silently on, brooding over his mission. He had agreed
lightly enough, back in Buenos Aires, to the assassination of Winslow,
but now that he actually was in Winslow's own capital, with the rosy
bulk of the Ducal Palace towering ahead, he wondered how he could have
acceded so casually to so dangerous and so terrible a mission.

The looming palace ahead was the nerve-center of a continent, and one
man--_one man_--controlled the multitude of ganglia. The entire vast
spread of North America, from the dismal radiation-roasted Eastern
seaboard to the broad plains of the Middle-West farming country to the
open, relatively unscathed lands of the far West, depended for its
organization on Chicago and on Chicago's Duke.

For the first time, Kesley realized the immensity of the confusion that
would result when he struck down Winslow. He had no motive for the
crime, either; it would be a sheerly gratuitous act, performed as a
gesture of disengagement and nothing more.

But what could Miguel's motive in upsetting the balance of the world
possibly be? Surely, Kesley thought, the South American Duke knew what
would happen once Winslow was removed. The taut framework of North
American life would collapse inward on itself like a puffball that had
discharged its dusty cloud of spores.

Who would profit? Miguel? Were assassins now drawing near the Ducal
Palaces of Stockholm, of Johannesburg, of Canberra, readying themselves
to rid the world of all Dukes but Miguel at one bold stroke? If so,
why? Did Miguel want the crushing responsibility of the entire globe's
governance strapped to his shoulders for all eternity?

It seemed unlikely. Kesley thought of the Immortal's deep, weary eyes,
and of the moment of weakness when Miguel had let his heavy head sink
between his hands. No, Miguel had some other motive.

Amusement, perhaps.

Kesley nodded. That was it: amusement. Having long since exhausted the
pleasures of his power, having tasted everything human life had to
offer, the timeless man was searching desperately for a relief from
boredom.

For that reason he had bared his chest to Kesley's knife and, perhaps,
he had not cared whether Kesley struck or not. For the same reason, he
had chosen Kesley at random to remove Winslow, to upset the balance, to
_change things_.

Kesley shuddered. What a nightmare an Immortal's life must be, he
thought, once the first few centuries had passed.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, Kesley rode back from the palace with a little less lordliness
than he had had going forth.

"That major-domo had nerve," he remarked mournfully, as the little
band of South Americans trotted through the broad palace approaches
toward the gate leading back into the city. "An appointment next week!
Who does Winslow think he is? And what does he think of Miguel, if he
treats his ambassadors this way?"

"Peace, son," the Archbishop said. "Be philosophical. Duke Winslow is a
busy man and a proud one. I warned you this would happen."

"But we're _ambassadors_!"

"Exactly so. Had we been ragamuffins we would have had a better chance
of an immediate audience." Santana shook his head. "You fail to see
that Winslow is deliberately humbling us to stress his own superiority
over Miguel."

"I hadn't thought of it that way," Kesley admitted. "Of course. He was
just telling us to stand outside and wait around until he was ready to
let us kiss the Ducal robe."

"Precisely. And our course now is simple. We find lodging, and we allow
a week to pass. Then, Winslow will see us. And then, my friend, the
time will come for you to carry out our Duke's command."

"I know."

Kesley felt himself perspiring heavily beneath his ambassadorial
robes, and not entirely because of the humid air. He knew--and Santana
as well, evidently--that he had no plan for slaying Winslow. He was
counting on some random twitch of the Immortal's psychology to put the
Duke in his power. But would Winslow, as had Miguel, bare his chest
willingly to the blade?

Probably not, Kesley thought balefully. From what he had already
deduced of the workings of the Immortal mind, it was hardly likely that
any two Dukes would share a behavioral pattern. And that left Kesley in
an awkward position.

"A week is a long time," Kesley said, as they rode through the gates.
The double doors clanged shut behind them, sealing off Winslow's palace
from the city. "I'll be ready when the time comes, padre."

"I hope so. I will pray for your soul," the priest intoned.

"Fine," Kesley said savagely. "Pray for me sincerely, father. _Pater
noster_--"

"Don't mock what you don't understand," Santana said. He crossed
himself fervently. "Your soul is in danger, _Señor_ Ramon."

"_My_ soul? What about yours, you old windbag?"

Santana squirmed in the saddle, faced Kesley. The plump priest's sad
eyes gazed mournfully into Kesley's. "My soul?" Santana repeated. "My
soul is long since forfeit, but I pray constantly for my salvation."

Kesley reddened. "What do you mean by--"

He cut himself off in mid-sentence and pointed to the left. "What's
_that_?" he asked hoarsely. "Mutant?"

"Yes," the Archbishop said. "There are many of them in Chicago. I think
he plans to make trouble; be ready to defend yourself."

The creature was coming toward them out of a jumble of
clumsily-thatched huts strung in a wobbly circle around a gullied heap
of slag at the extreme left side of the road. It was tall--nearly seven
feet, Kesley estimated--with elongated spidery limbs and a bloated,
almost hydrocephaloid skull, devoid of hair. The mutant wore only a
rag twisted carelessly about its middle; the body thus revealed was
grotesquely piebald in color, blotched and spotted, the purpling skin
lying loosely and peeling away in great leprous flakes.

Kesley had seen mutants before: mutant horses, mutant wolves, other
products of ravaged genes, but he had never before been this close to
a _human_ sport, other than Miguel. Miguel was human in all physical
aspects save his life span; the creature shambling toward them now
could be called "human" only by the loosest of definitions.

As the mutant approached, a musty odor of decay drifted before him.
Kesley shuddered involuntarily.

Once, he knew, the cities of the world had been populated by almost as
many mutants as normals. That had been in the days immediately after
the great blast, before the Dukes had taken command of the world.

But most of these mutants had been sterile, carrying, like the Dukes,
lethal genes. Others carried recessive characteristics only. Gradually,
through the centuries, the mutant population had died out and dwindled
away into scattered groups here and there in the biggest cities--and,
word was, there was one city somewhere in Illinois populated only by
mutants.

This one was blind, Kesley saw now, but it moved with unerring accuracy.

"Archbishop Santana!" the creature called, in a hoarse croak of a
voice. "Wait for me, Archbishop!"

"How does he know you?" Kesley asked.

"Some of them have strange powers," Santana whispered. He nervously
undid the crucifix that hung from the breast of his surplice and held
it before him, as if to ward off the Devil.

The mutant merely chuckled. "Put away your toy, Archbishop. I don't
frighten so easily."

"Stay back," Kesley snapped. "Keep away from us." To Santana he said,
"Let's get out of here. Spur your horse and let's go.

"No. Let's hear him out."

The mutant stationed himself directly in their path and pointed a
twisted, lumpy forefinger at Santana. "Behold the man of God," he
croaked hoarsely. "_Ecce homo!_"

"What do you want?" the Archbishop demanded. Kesley saw that Santana
was sheet-white beneath his outward duskiness.

"I want nothing. I merely came out here to laugh at the Archbishop of
God who has come to Chicago on a mission of _murder_!"

Kesley stiffened in the saddle, but Santana caught his arm just as he
was about to go for his gun. "What is this talk of murder?" Santana
demanded.

Late afternoon clouds were dropping over the city now, and a cool wind
came sweeping in from the lake. Kesley shivered as the mutant grinned,
baring scraggly stumps of yellow teeth.

"Murder? Did I say murder? But there will be no murder, milord. Merely
betrayal--and betrayal again."

       *       *       *       *       *

That night, in the rooms they had taken near the city's central
marketplace, the image of the mutant haunted Kesley, imposing itself
before his eyes with demonic insistence.

Betrayal? No murder? The paradoxes and cloaked ambiguities the
grotesque creature had uttered ground into Kesley's already sensitive
consciousness, bringing with them the sharp image of the piebald spider
of a man that was the mutant.

Kesley looked across the room to Santana. The plump Archbishop, having
divested himself of his traveling costume, wore a loose cassock without
surplice. He was thumbing the pages of his breviary, flicking rapidly
over matter long since committed to memory.

"Padre?"

"Eh?"

"That mutant this afternoon--"

"Don't speak of him," Santana said.

"But he bothers me, Santana. I can't get him out of my mind, him or
that crazy nonsense he was muttering."

"That was not nonsense," the Archbishop said in a hollow voice. "He
struck at the heart, that man."

"I don't understand."

"You yourself made the same comment earlier, when you remarked that
I, a man of God, am with you to participate in this unholy mission.
Why, you ask. You asked me if I were not risking my immortal soul by
accompanying you."

"And you said--"

"I said that I had little to risk. Strange words, coming from an
Archbishop, but my soul is long since forfeit. God works in strange
ways, and so his servants follow."

"You're still talking in riddles," Kesley complained. "Why did you come
along, then, if you knew it would damn you?"

"I am _already_ damned for serving Miguel!" Santana cried. His doughy
face was taut with sudden animation. "Don't you see that Miguel and his
Dukes have overthrown Rome, have supplanted Christ with themselves? And
we continue to serve them, not because we desire it, but because we
must!"

Kesley frowned. A light of torment, almost of martyrdom, gleamed in the
Archbishop's eyes now.

"What difference does it make," Santana asked, "if I help you kill
Winslow? I cannot be any more damned than I am already--and possibly,
possibly the consequences of your act will--will--do you see?"

"Killing Winslow will topple the whole apple cart," Kesley said softly.
"You're gambling an already assured damnation against the chance that
knocking off one Duke will crush all the rest and restore your religion
to supremacy." He chuckled quietly. "I sometimes wonder just _whose_
catspaw I am," he said.

"Everyone's," the priest remarked. "Poor pawn, you've fallen fair of
everyone's scheming."

The priest continued to read for a while, then uttered a brief prayer
in rapid Spanish--perhaps it was even Latin, Kesley thought--and blew
out his candle. Kesley closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Sleep would not come. Brooding, he rolled and fidgeted, seeing over and
over again the loose-jointed, hideous figure of the mutant.




                                  VI


"I'll be back later," Kesley said in the morning. His eyes stung as if
they had been sandpapered during the long, sleepless night; his lips
were dry and cracking, and the oppressive city heat hung around him
like the caress of a giant velvet glove, smothering without actually
touching.

"Where are you going?" Santana asked, not looking up. It was a
mechanical question asked out of mere courtesy, and Kesley ignored it.

"Saddle my horse," he told one of the men. "I won't need any of you to
go with me."

The morning air was already steaming as he rode out into the city.
The market was crowded with sleepy-eyed Chicagoans haggling for the
fruit and vegetables that had been brought in while they slept. Kesley
traversed the marketplace in a wide circuit and struck out along the
broad cobbled road that led to Duke Winslow's palace.

About halfway there, he cut sharply and veered to the right, guiding
his horse down a steep hill and off onto a narrow, red-brown unpaved
road. Looking ahead, he could see his destination: the impossibly
untidy bramble of shanties that was the ghetto of the mutants.

Even at this distance, he could see bizarre creatures moving idly back
and forth down below, wandering from porch to porch in the isolated
colony. He whitened at the sight of some of them.

There was one round, orange, doughy mass of a man that looked like some
sort of giant fruit, except for the enlarged features and the tiny,
stick-like legs and arms that projected from it; nearby, walking in
confused circles, was a mutant with a pair of dissimilar writhing heads
and an uncountable number of busy legs.

Lazy curlicues of smoke hung wavering in the air above the shacks.
Kesley looked around.

_Great God_, he thought suddenly. _They're people!_

He rode down into the ghetto, feeling ashamed of his own bodily
symmetry and genetic heritage, which seemed abnormal here. He, alone,
of all the human beings within a half-mile radius, was untainted, and
the thought made him feel strangely humble.

"Who is it you want?" a man asked. _The toll-keeper_, Kesley thought
with sudden weird irony.

The "man" facing him was more nearly human than most; only a blob of
flesh dangling from his forehead and a wattled reddish dewlap swinging
pendulously below his chin qualified him for the ghetto. Kesley forced
himself to stare rigidly over the man's shoulder while he replied.

"I'm looking for ... I don't know his name. He's tall, very tall,
and--" He broke off, overwhelmed by self-conscious guilt, unable to
recite the catalogue of one mutant's alienness to another.

"Go ahead," the mutant said with surprising warmth. "Tell me what he
looks like and I'll see if I can find him. I'm not offended."

Kesley licked his lips and proceeded to describe the man he sought as
vividly as possible. When he was through, the mutant nodded.

"You look for Lomark Dawnspear, friend. Has he wronged you?"

"No," Kesley said hastily, beginning to wish he had never come. "I just
want to talk to him."

"Wait here. I'll try to bring him to you."

Kesley waited. The mutant vanished in the confusing tangle of
closely-packed shacks.

In the midst of this poverty and genetic horror, Kesley held himself
perfectly still, hoping not to call to himself the attention of some
unfortunate who might be jealous of his fine clothes or unscrambled
chromosomes. But no one approached him. The mutants held their
distance, eyeing him with unashamed curiosity from the cramped porches
of their huts.

It was a panorama of total ghastliness. Kesley could see now where the
horror with which men regarded the Old Days had arisen: the people
here were living reminders of the crime of the Old World--a crime,
Kesley thought, whose consequences were visited upon the tenth and the
twentieth generations.

"You seek me?" a harsh voice said.

Kesley snapped to attention and saw the hoarse-voiced Jeremiah of the
streets approaching him, escorted by the dewlapped one. Kesley nodded;
this was the man. In such profusion of mutation, there would hardly be
two so marked.

"Do you remember who I am?" Kesley asked.

The mutant chuckled. "Could I forget? You're the young killer from the
southlands, up here to do away with--but hush! I must not give it away!"

Kesley gripped the mutant by the baggy folds of flesh that hung loosely
on one spidery arm. "How do you know anything of who I am?"

The mutant shrugged. "How could I keep from knowing?" His voice was
mild and apologetic now, with little of its earlier raucous quality. "I
can no more keep from knowing, than you--than you can keep from needing
food, or seeing when your eyes are open. I ... _know_."

"How much do you know?"

"Why you are here, and where you are from ... and where you will go,
and what you will become." Lomark Dawnspear's voice had modulated into
a dull, almost ritualistic drone. "I see these things, and I do not
speak. I speak, but you do not see. Blind, I know you. Eyes open, you
march into treachery."

Kesley released the mutant and stepped back. He was shaking with inward
horror; his empty stomach seemed to be squirming. "What are you talking
about?"

The mutant smiled feebly. "Counter-question: who is your father,
handsome blond man?"

"My father? I--"

"You do not know?"

"All right--I don't know. Do you?"

"How could I not know? Can the maggot restrain its hunger? Can the
Earth forget its orbit?"

"You know, but you're not talking. Is that it?"

Dawnspear shrugged again. "You would not want me to tell you," he said
softly. "I see that, too."

"All right," Kesley said, irritated. "Forget all about that. Give me
some other answers."

"If I can."

"The man named van Alen--is he dead?"

"No."

"Where is he?"

"In his home. Antarctica."

"It was true, then," Kesley said. He stared into the mutant's dead
eyes. "Who is he?"

"A noble of the Antarctican land," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Forget van
Alen. Watch Miguel ... and Winslow. Watch everyone, youngster. Watch
Santana, the greasy prelate. Watch me. Watch the fool stealing up
behind you this very minute."

"The oldest trick in the world," Kesley said skeptically. But he felt
a sudden cold sensation between his shoulder-blades, and whirled
quickly. Another mutant stood there, a wide, slablike thing with four
arms pivoting off jointed shoulders. One of its thick-fingered hands
clutched a rock, jagged and heavy.

Moving instinctively Kesley grasped the arm holding the rock and
yanked it down, smashing a fist into the broad creature's stomach at
the same time. The rock thudded to the ground; the four arms windmilled
aimlessly for a moment or two, and then the mutant backed off mumbling
stertorous, incomprehensible curses.

"You'd better leave," Lomark Dawnspear said. "Some of the slower ones
are beginning to realize you're here. They're likely to make things
dangerous for you."

"But you haven't told me a thing," Kesley said.

"The answers lie ahead of you ... the answers and the questions. Now
go."

Scowling, Kesley drew his robe tighter around his sweating body and
remounted his horse. The mutant ghetto seemed like a nightmare world,
shifting in and out of reality almost at random, blurring into dream
and then focusing sharply on hideous actuality. Without looking back,
he spurred his animal and rode hastily out of the valley.

       *       *       *       *       *

Somehow, the long week passed, and somehow Kesley endured it. Each
day brought him closer to the audience with Winslow, when he would be
called upon to act as assassin.

And he still had not a shred of plan.

Kesley's imagination had throbbed in constant feverish play all week,
picturing and re-picturing the scene. Winslow--what did he look like?
Suave and bearded, with dark tired eyes like Miguel's? Thin, pallid?
Bloated?

It didn't matter. There was _a_ Winslow on the throne, faceless and
personalityless, and surrounding him were blurred shadows of courtiers:
a priest perhaps, a few generals in formal armor, men like that. Kesley
saw himself kneeling in the Duke's long hall, rising to advance on
nerveless legs to the throne--

Plunging a knife into the Ducal bosom.

Firing an echoing pistol shot as he rose from obeisance.

Leaping forward and throttling Winslow on the throne.

Actually, he knew, it would not be that way. A Duke had an eternity to
lose at an assassin's hands, and would be expected to surround himself
with protection. No one, not even Miguel, would place himself at the
mercy of anyone begging audience simply for the sake of "amusement."
There were too many years to be lost.

Yet Kesley's active mind continued to develop a multitude of
alternative methods for the killing, and always the picture ended with
the moment of death. He found himself unable to project the action past
the actual assassination; the sequel escaped his mind completely.

Seven days passed and, on the eighth, Kesley and Duke Winslow were to
come face to face.

On the morning of the final day, Kesley rose early. Sleep had been
intermittent during the just-ended night, and he left his quarters
wearily shortly after dawn. On foot, he wandered through the awakening
city, in full regalia.

By now it was generally known that ambassadors from Miguel's court
had been in Chicago for the past week, and he drew uneasy stares from
the curious early risers. He walked on, down one cobbled street after
another, smelling the early morning smells of fresh air and the fresh
food offered in the stalls.

The bright sunlight was glinting off Winslow's palace, sending down
showers of scattered light. _Winslow is awakening now_, Kesley thought.
_For his last morning. After four centuries he's come to his final day._

Suddenly hungry, Kesley turned into a food shop that appeared a few
feet away.

"Good morning," the proprietor said unctuously.

Kesley swung himself down into a booth without replying. After a
moment, he looked up. "Coffee," he said.

"Certainly, _señor_."

The white-uniformed counterman seemed delighted to be serving one of
the South Americans. He bustled out officiously from behind the counter
and put the cup before Kesley.

He tasted the coffee. The synthetic beverage was tepid, slightly oily.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to finish it, then sat broodingly in
the booth staring at the gray film of dinginess that overlay the empty
cup.

"Something else maybe, _señor_?"

"No--nothing," Kesley said. "I'm not very hungry."

"Too bad, _señor_. Has the trip north disturbed your appetite? The food
you're accustomed to--"

_Damned chatterbox_, Kesley thought, irritated.

"My appetite is fine." He dropped a coin ringingly on the counter and
walked out, into the warm, stale morning air.

Glancing around tensely, he let his hand slip to the hilt of his
dagger. He caressed it absently for a moment, scowling. The minutes
were crawling by like snails; the audience with Winslow would _never_
come.

Dispiritedly, he turned his steps back toward the hotel. The desk-clerk
looked up idly as he entered.

"_Señor?_"

"What is it?" Kesley snapped.

"The man from Duke Miguel--have you seen him?"

"What man?" Kesley asked, puzzled.

"He arrived while you were out--a small man with a heavy mustache. His
horse was nearly dead; he must have come in a great hurry."

Kesley frowned. He was expecting no one from Miguel. Hope flashed
brightly: perhaps it was a last-minute reprieve for Winslow, and
thus for Kesley. Perhaps, he thought, it was a cancellation of the
assassination order!

"Where is he?" Kesley asked hurriedly.

The desk-clerk jerked his head upward. "He went upstairs. Oh, about ten
minutes ago. I guess he's still there."

"_Gracias_," Kesley said. With sudden excitement he dashed up the
stairs, threw open the door, and looked around.

No one was in the outer room of the suite. From within came no
sound--not even the usual boisterous horseplay of his men. Cautiously,
Kesley opened the inner door. Within, he saw Santana huddling over his
breviary in his usual chair.

"Santana?"

There was no reply.

"Padre?"

The priest appeared to be totally absorbed in his reading. Annoyed,
Kesley crossed the room and grabbed Santana roughly by the shoulder.
The plump Archbishop spun limply, sagging backward as Kesley touched
him, and dropped heavily from the chair.

Kesley paled. The red velvet of the Archbishop's robes was stained
with a deeper red, already turning a crumbling brown. A knife had been
thrust through the folds of fat that covered the priest's heart, and
had found its mark. Santana had attained the martyrdom he coveted.

"Feliz! Domingo!" Kesley shouted. His voice sounded harsh, dry. "Luis!
Where are you?"

He strode to the adjoining door and threw it open--and his men, as if
they had been held back by a spillway, came pouring forth.

All six rushed out and, Kesley saw, there was a seventh with them, a
small dark man who was apparently the courier from Miguel's court.
Kesley leaped back and had his pistol and knife out almost before his
mind was aware that he was under attack.

The gun barked. One man fell. The courier leaped forward, knife-blade
high; Kesley sidestepped and ripped through the flesh of the man's back
with a fierce downstroke. Turning quickly, he kicked a third man in the
stomach, and backed toward the door.

They had no guns, but they outnumbered him six to one. Tossing his
mantle to one side for greater freedom, Kesley chopped downward with
the knife and drew blood again, while one of the grooms sidled toward
him and slit his arm shallowly with a rapid lick of his blade. Kesley
fired again, and the man fell.

Then he managed to bull out the door and down the stairs, with the five
remaining South Americans thundering after him. At the first landing
he paused to fire; a body tumbled toward him, and he caught the small
man and wedged him crossways in the stairwell just as the other four
approached. Kesley ducked as a thrown knife whizzed past his ear, and
kept running.

He dashed out past the astounded clerk and into the courtyard. The
hotel's ostler, a tall, bony old man with walrus mustaches, was
puttering around Kesley's horse, rubbing it down with the tenderness a
skilled groom would devote to a choice animal.

"Get out of the way, you idiot!" Kesley yelled as he entered the court.
Bewildered, the old man looked up, smiling mildly.

"Your horse is not yet curried, sir, and--"

"Out of the _way_!"

Kesley shoved the oldster to one side just as the four swarthy
assassins swept into the courtyard and swarmed toward him. The old man
tottered and took a couple of staggering steps that led him straight
into the path of the South Americans; Kesley, mounting the horse,
winced sympathetically as they collided with him and threw him roughly
to the ground.

But the delay allowed Kesley to mount his animal and, even without
spurs, he was able to bring the horse under quick control. He wheeled
it toward the onrushing assassins. The magnificent beast whinnied and
plunged forward.

Surprised, the South Americans yielded before this frontal attack;
one aimed a knife blow at the horse's flank, but Kesley's boot caught
the man's face and sent him reeling away. Kesley charged through the
straggling, disarrayed South Americans and out of the courtyard into
the main thoroughfare.

He rode three or four blocks, then pulled up, gasping for breath, and
guided the horse into a side-street for a moment. For the first time in
the last six minutes, he had a chance to evaluate the situation:

Point: Santana was dead.

Point: his six men had turned against him, and only their stupidity and
his agility had kept Kesley from sharing the Archbishop's fate.

Point: someone had arrived from Miguel's court shortly before.

Therefore, Miguel had changed his mind and had ordered the
assassinations of Santana and Kesley. Or _had_ Miguel changed his mind?
Perhaps this entire expedition had been a complicated way of wiping out
a troublesome Archbishop?

Kesley's fingers quivered. Anything was possible--_anything_--when
dealing with immortals.

"_Betrayal and betrayal again_," the mutant Lomark Dawnspear had
prophesied. And the mutant had been right.

For one reason or another--or perhaps none at all, Kesley thought
coldly--Miguel had betrayed him.

And the counter-betrayal? Kesley smiled. Fifteen minutes ago he had
been steeling himself for the work of assassinating Duke Winslow.
Now he would, rather, swear allegiance to him. The decision was made
quickly, for Kesley saw it was the only path open to him.

He rode out of the shadows and onto the main stem again, moving
cautiously as if expecting to see the four small Argentinians charging
madly out of nowhere toward him. But they were not to be seen; the
street was crowded with Chicagoans going about their morning business,
and a sickly aura of heat was starting to descend as the August day
edged toward noon.

Clamping together his tattered sleeve over his flesh-wound, Kesley
rode out and toward a mounted policeman who sat stiff and proud in his
green-and-gold uniform, looking down on the pedestrians.

"Officer?"

"Yes, _señor_?"

The title pleased Kesley; that meant he had been recognized. "There's
been a disturbance down at my inn. My men were drinking, apparently.
They've assassinated His Holiness, and attempted to kill me when I
returned from my morning walk."

"How many are there?"

"I killed three in escaping. There are four left still at large down
there."

The policeman drew a whistle and uttered a brief, sub-sonic blast.
Almost instantly, a second mounted man rode up, and at his request
Kesley repeated the story word for word.

"I'll go down there," the first officer said.

Kesley turned to the other. "Would you conduct me to the Palace? I
feel I should seek sanctuary with the Duke until affairs are more
stable."

"Of course."

Together they rode down the winding road that led to Winslow's Palace.
The policeman was a man of few words; once, he asked if Kesley had any
idea why he had been attacked. Kesley shrugged without replying.

For the first time, Winslow's rosy palace seemed to Kesley a place of
refuge rather than the place where he undoubtedly would meet his death.
He smiled grimly. Assassins had become assassins' victims; the wheels
had turned, and the positions on the board had altered. For Santana,
it had been check and mate; Kesley had escaped, through no fault of
Miguel's.

But what if Miguel's messenger had come too late? Suppose Kesley had
already seen and killed Winslow? Kesley frowned; it was impossible to
divine just what Miguel's real motive was. But now there would be no
more dealings with Don Miguel.

A phantom thought struck him, and his lips curled upward. What if
Winslow were to engage him in similar service and send him back to
assassinate _Miguel_?

It was possible. Anything was possible, Kesley thought dismally.
Anything was possible at all, in this chess game with all moves masked.

They drew near the palace. As usual, the guard at the gate inquired
what business Kesley had within.

"I have an audience with the Duke," Kesley told him.

With great punctiliousness, the gateman disappeared into his tower and
returned clutching a lengthy appointment sheet.

"The audience is at two," Kesley said impatiently, as the gateman's
eyes wandered all over the sheet.

"Indeed so," the guard replied after a moment. "And I believe it's no
more than ten now. Duke Winslow will see you in four hours, no sooner,
_señor_."

Kesley wiped away sweat and fought down an impulse to cut the guardsman
down with an impatient blow of his dagger. "It's an emergency. Tell the
Duke that. Tell him that the Archbishop's been assassinated, and that
I must see the Duke now!"

A flicker of interest crossed the guard's eyes. "I'll tell him that.
Wait here."

Ten minutes later the guard returned. "Go in," he said laconically.

"You need me any more?" asked the policeman at Kesley's side.

"No--thanks, you've been very helpful." He handed the man a coin; as an
afterthought, he gave one to the gatekeeper as well, and entered.

A _déjà vu_ emotion filtered through him at the sight of the interior
of Winslow's Palace grounds. There was the same broad courtyard as at
Miguel's, the same distant entrance. This time, though, a cold-faced
man in Imperial uniform was waiting for him.

"I'm here to see the Duke," Kesley said.

The guard nodded. "Certainly. Duke Winslow will see you at once,
_señor_. Please follow me."

Kesley followed. The great inner doors swung open, revealing a
brightly-lit throne room on the ground floor. A row of unblinking
retainers with halberds lined the room; there must have been
twenty-five on each side, Kesley thought. His throat parched at the
thought of the task he would have faced trying to escape from this room
after assassinating Winslow.

On a raised dais at the far end, beneath an immense figured shield and
between two dark columns of glossy, grained onyx, sat a man who could
only have been Duke Winslow. For the first time in his life, Kesley
approached the man who ruled all of North America--the man whose life
he had, not so long ago, pledged to take.




                                  VII


Winslow had none of Miguel's crisp, compact muscularity, Kesley saw, as
he hesitantly approached the throne. North America's Duke sprawled as
massively across his gleaming white metal throne as the broad continent
he ruled did across its hemisphere; he was an enormous, ponderous,
obese man. Winslow's sobbing intake of breath was plainly audible even
at the distance Kesley maintained.

"Your Highness," he said, and knelt.

"Rise," Winslow ordered. His voice, like Miguel's, was deep, but
Winslow's voice had a soft, throaty liquidity to it that was most
unlike Miguel's compelling boom.

Kesley rose and faced Winslow squarely. The Duke's features were
blurred and indistinct, misshapen by the billowing puffs of fat that
sagged from his cheeks. He wore a thin fringe of golden-red beard which
screened a thick, many-chinned throat.

"Our audience was scheduled for this afternoon," Kesley said, since
Winslow was evidently waiting for him to speak. "However, a change of
schedule was made necessary by--"

"I have heard," the Duke murmured lazily. "News travels swiftly here,
sir. The Archbishop lies dead in an inn, is that it?"

"Dead at the hand of his own servants, Duke Winslow. Betrayed."

"Indeed?" The sleepy eyes of the gross-bodied Duke stirred; Kesley
observed that behind the outward facade of sloth lay the nervous
reflexes of a cat-keen intellect. "Betrayed? And by whom, _señor_?"

Kesley glanced uneasily around the room. "May we be alone, Duke
Winslow?"

Chuckling, the Duke said: "Certainly not. My life is much too important
to me, young one. But you can speak freely here; the word of my court
is sacred."

"Very well, then. I'll begin at the beginning." Drawing a deep breath,
he said, "I was sent here to assassinate you."

Around Winslow, courtiers paled and reached for their weapons at
Kesley's flat admission, but Winslow himself showed no reaction
whatever. It was infuriating to see the slow smile finally spread over
his face. "How unfriendly," he observed at last.

"I had no intentions of actually carrying it out, of course."

"Of course." With biting sarcasm.

"I accepted the order in an attempt to free myself of Don Miguel's
power. I had every intention of swearing allegiance to you, and--"

It seemed to Kesley that some ugly thought had passed at that moment
through Winslow's mind and, disconcerted, he halted. Then, recovering,
he continued: "On the other hand, Archbishop Santana came here with the
definite intent of doing away with you.

"However, this morning a courier arrived from Miguel, instructing our
retinue to set upon us and kill us."

"A noteworthy aim," Winslow said. "One which, I take it, was only
partially accomplished."

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I want to expose Miguel's treachery. I want to make everything clear
to you, show you what's been going on." Kesley spoke with desperate
sincerity now.

Winslow laughed suddenly, his entire body quivering. "This is very
funny," he said, when he had subsided. "Miguel sending men here to
assassinate me--and then having his own assassins assassinated!" He
narrowed his eyes and peered curiously at Kesley. "Why do you suppose
he would do a thing like that?" he asked.

Kesley moistened cracking lips. "It is not for me to understand the
ways of Dukes, Sire."

"I hardly expect it of you."

"Then--"

"You wish to enter my service?" Winslow asked. "It is strange that a
former assassin would beg me to gather him to my capacious bosom. It is
an amusing idea."

Suddenly Kesley felt like an insect being toyed with before having
its wings plucked. Dizzily he glanced at the long rows of halberdiers
standing like carven images, at the wax-faced courtiers grouped about
Winslow's throne, and for a bewildering instant he thought that this
was all some kind of dream from which he would soon wake and find
himself back behind the plough, awaiting Tina's call to lunch.

"I never intended to strike a blow against you, Sire," Kesley lied
humbly. "You believe that, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Winslow said gently, and without any trace of
sarcasm. "Perhaps that's why Don Miguel decided to blot you out.
However," he said, sighing, "I'm afraid you represent as great a threat
to the Twelve Empires as has ever been born, my young friend."

He gestured to a hawk-faced man in somber robes standing to his left.
"Lovelette, take this man and convey him to the dungeons. Tomorrow,
he's to be executed. Is that clear?"

"Certainly, Sire."

It had happened so quickly that Kesley did not fully understand it. One
moment he had been on dangerously thin ice but managing to keep aloft;
the next, he had plunged through into utter cold.

He felt thin fingers bite into his bicep, and a low voice say, "Come
with me."

Two halberdiers advanced mechanically and took their posts at either
side of him. Numb, he allowed himself to be marched away from Winslow's
presence, with an infinite series of maddening _whys_ screaming at him
all down the long hall.

Why this sudden reversal on Winslow's part? Why the execution order?
This, not Kesley's switch of allegiance, was obviously the "_betrayal
again_" Lomark Dawnspear had foretold.

As Kesley was led from the Ducal presence, he heard Winslow's sardonic
chuckling coming from behind. Tomorrow, he thought bleakly, it would be
the headsman who would chuckle.

He had changed his coat once too often. Going to Winslow had proved a
fatal move.

Kesley resolved that if he ever escaped from Winslow he would stay as
far as he could from all the Dukes. Life was hard enough without making
one's self subject to the caprices of life-jaded Immortals.

But, as the dark corridor leading to the dungeon opened out before
him, he saw clearly that there was little chance of an escape this time.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the rest of the day and the long night that followed, Kesley,
alone in the darkness, had plenty of time to think.

He was in complete isolation, somewhere in the depths of Winslow's
palace. He had been thrust in; microrelays had clicked, and a heavy
metal door had whirred creakingly closed. Air came filtering in from
a dimly-visible grid in the ceiling, twelve feet above. There was no
furniture in the cell, not even a cot. He could stand, or he could lie.

He stood for a while, pacing the length and breadth of the cell until
that palled, and then he stretched out full length to wait for morning.
There was no point wasting energy in fruitless escape tries; he had
determined very quickly that his cell was proof to any attempts.

One dull gray thought flickered monotonously through his consciousness:
tomorrow his life would end. That wasn't so bad, he thought; everyone
dies--everyone but the Twelve. What hurt more was the rasping
realization that he had never really lived at all.

What had he done, in the twenty-four years he'd had? Twenty of them
were blank, cloaked by darkness more complete than the inkiness that
surrounded him in the cell. He had lived and farmed in Kansas, he told
people, but he knew it was false, and van Alen, whoever _he_ had been,
had known it was false.

Van Alen had confronted him with the naked lie he had been living, and
it had hurt. Probing the past caused pain. All right. Blot out twenty
years, begin life four years ago, ignore the mystery that cried to be
solved.

_What kind of world is this_, he asked himself, _where you never start
to live?_

He had never known the rules. He never knew who made the moves, who
played the game. Unseeingly, he had shunted from one pattern of action
to another, without ever understanding the world he was in. It was
ironic. A world carefully tailored for simplicity, a world scrupulously
designed by its proprietors to avoid the complexity that had destroyed
the previous civilization--and here he, after twenty-four years, was
going to his death uncomprehendingly.

Something was terribly wrong with a world like that, Kesley thought.
Perhaps its goals had been good, once. But as the Immortals had moved
timelessly on through the years, they had grown remote from the charts
and maps of society, and begun to play some inscrutable, unfathomable
game of their own.

"It isn't fair!" he said out loud. His protesting voice echoed weirdly
in the confines of the cell, bounced back grotesquely from the metal
walls. He knew that if there were a light in the cell he would be able
to see his own distorted image on their shining surfaces. It would be a
mocking clown-face, laughing at him for his own ignorance.

But there was no light. There was only darkness, and the silence of
solitude.

And then, after hours passed, there came the faint humming sound of
relays clicking in the massive door.

_Morning already?_ Kesley wondered.

Time had passed; he knew that. But so much time? Was so little left?

The door was undeniably swinging open.

He had remained alone for almost a day and a night, and had returned no
answers to his many questions. Shrugging, he waited for the Duke's men
to take him away. _Maybe there aren't any answers_, he thought dismally.

He heard soft padding footsteps in his cell, and felt a cool hand grasp
his.

"Stand up," a whispered voice said.

Wondering, Kesley pushed himself up from the floor. "You're not the
headsman," he said.

"No. The headsman waits for morning."

"Isn't it morning yet?"

"The hour is four," the strangely familiar voice whispered. "The Palace
lies asleep."

Dimly, Kesley realized that this was some sort of impossible
rescue--unless, that is, it was another hoax. Frowning into the
impenetrable darkness, he said: "Who are you?"

There was no answer. But gradually a faint glow enveloped the cell,
flickered warmly for a bare instant and died away.

"Dawnspear!"

"Speak quietly, friend. It was not easy persuading the guards to sleep."

Kesley rubbed his eyes, tried to peer into the darkness. The momentary
glow of light had revealed the bizarre, piebald mutant towering above
him. Cautiously, Kesley extended his hand and felt the rough, cool skin
of the mutant's bare chest as if to confirm his vision.

"What are you doing here, Dawnspear?"

"There are those who would not have you die," the mutant replied.
"Winslow and Miguel know you. Two Dukes are in league to take your
life, now. They can be dangerous enemies. Come."

Dawnspear grasped Kesley's hand firmly and guided him forward. As they
passed through the open door of the cell, the metal began to swing shut
again. Kesley heard a faint clang as the cell closed.

Outside, in the dim light of the dungeons, Kesley made out sleeping
forms lying here and there, slumped over their weapons. Guards.

"Did you drug them?" he asked.

"They were very sleepy," Dawnspear said ambiguously. "We must hurry,
now."

They glided through the dungeon together, the man and the mutant.
Kesley walked on tiptoe, moving delicately as if he were walking on
the fragile surface of a dream; at any moment he expected Dawnspear to
vanish and the entire illusion to drift into nothingness.

But then he smelled fresh air instead of dungeon mustiness, and he knew
he was free.

"The gate is open down there," Dawnspear said, pointing. "The guards
are lost in slumber."

Together they crossed the palace grounds and passed through the
gate. Kesley turned to the gaunt figure of the mutant to demand some
explanation, but Dawnspear had released his hand and was pointing
toward the distance.

"Within a minute they will all be awake. You will be missed. Flee now,
while you have the chance."

"Wait a second! How did--why--?"

Kesley's whispers died away impotently. Dawnspear had slipped away
silently into the night. "_Dawnspear!_" he called harshly. There was no
reply.

_There never are any answers when you call_, Kesley thought sourly. He
wheeled, looked back at the sleeping Palace. Lights were beginning to
flicker on here and there; the mutant's influence had ended, and the
sleepers were waking.

He was free to fly. Once again, he was his own master, bound to no one.

The guards stirred within the walls. He could imagine their dismay when
they found him gone. Wrapping his cloak tightly around him, he edged
off into the night.

A horse, first. Then, out the walls some way or other, and to freedom.

Both Winslow and Miguel would be hunting him, why, he could not say.
But both his fealties stood revoked; his Dukes sought his life.

Well enough, Kesley thought. He had no debts to either Miguel or
Winslow. Once again he stood alone. Where to, now?

He thought of Narella, in Buenos Aires. She would be waiting for him to
come back--or was she, too, only part of Miguel's scheming. He didn't
want to believe that.

Van Alen had told him he belonged in Antarctica. Suddenly the image of
the mysterious continent rose in his mind. He saw a vast wall. Nothing
more was visible.

It took only a moment to frame a resolution. Find Daveen. Find Narella.

_And then_, he thought, _to Antarctica. To Antarctica!_




                                 VIII


The sleep-wrapped city was dark and silent. Kesley raced down the
quiet streets, cutting laterally once to avoid the yellow glare of a
wandering patrolman's swinging sodium lamp.

He knew he had to move quickly. The city's gates would, of course,
be barred, and he had no desire to try the lakefront way of leaving
Chicago. He was no swimmer, and the lake, unguarded though it was,
seemed endless. There was only one way out.

Pulling his richly-brocaded cloak around him, he looked ahead for some
sign of the night patrolman who had just passed. Finally he found him,
far down the opposite street, swinging his lamp as he made his routine
rounds.

Cautiously, Kesley began to advance.

The watchman's broad back was turned; a heavy truncheon hung at his
side, and the butt of a pistol gleamed in a holster. His lamp cast long
shadows down the empty street.

Kesley sidled up behind him and clubbed downward efficiently with the
side of his hand just as the watchman noticed the advancing shadow
behind him. The man had half-turned when Kesley's hand cracked sharply
into the column of his neck below his left ear and jawbone, and the
watchman emitted a feeble gagging cry and fell. Kesley caught him
neatly, grabbing the all-important lamp.

Moving quickly and smoothly, he stripped the patrolman, donned his
clothes, and bound the unconscious man with his ambassadorial robes.
The guard stirred; Kesley stunned him with a blow of the truncheon and
dragged him into the courtyard of a small, private dwelling. Stuffing
him into a garbage bin that stood outside the door, he straightened
his clothing and stepped back into the street, swinging the lantern
nonchalantly.

Moments later, horses' hooves thundered down from the Palace, breaking
the quiet. Acting the part of a good watchman, Kesley ran out into the
darkened street, holding his lamp up so its brightness would blur his
face.

"What's going on? Where are you coming from?"

Two or three riders passed, ignoring him.

"I say, stop!"

A fourth rider leaned down from his horse. "Duke's guard, watchman.
We're chasing an assassin!"

"Assassin? The Duke dead?"

"Heaven forbid. No; it's one of those South Americans. The Duke ordered
him executed, but he escaped!"

"Dreadful," Kesley exclaimed, and released the bridle. The horse sped
away into the night as another wave of riders followed down. Winslow,
aroused, was probably sending his whole guard corps out to search for
the fugitive.

Lights were going on all over the city now. Sudden bright, yellow eyes
winked down from unshuttered windows. Kesley stepped back into the
shadows and let five more horsemen go by.

A sixth came down the road. Kesley flagged him down with his lantern.

"What's going on, friend?"

"Haven't you heard? We're chasing an escaped assassin."

"What's that?" Kesley assumed an expression of horror. "What did he
look like?"

"Big man in royal robes. One of those South Americans."

"No! I just saw one go into that house over there." He indicated a home
which had not yet awakened to the clamor of the streets. "I'm sure it
was the South American," Kesley continued. "I was going to ask him
where he was going, but then I saw he was an ambassador and--"

There was no need to chatter further. The horseman, his mind set on
medals, was dismounting.

"Which house?" he asked tensely. "That one?"

Kesley nodded. "Want me to help you?"

"That's all right," the guard said. "Stay out here and tend my horse.
I'll go in and look around."

"Good luck," Kesley said. He let the man take six steps toward the
silent house, then whipped out his truncheon and brought it down with
skull-crumpling force. Hastily he dragged the man behind a low, bunchy
shrub, ran back to the street, and clambered aboard the waiting horse.

As the animal began to move, yet another wave of guards swept down from
the Palace. Kesley fell in with them, peering grimly forward into the
night as they rode. They dashed on, clattering up the main street and
splitting off there to explore any byway where the fugitive might be
hidden. Atop his horse--a scale-covered, dusky mutant with many-jointed
legs--Kesley choked off a chuckle and forced his face into the solemn
mask of the dedicated pursuer.

In the morning, the elaborate, half-mythical tracking devices would
be brought into play: the needle-snouted, mechanized bloodhounds of
legendary dread, the whirling radar parabolas, the ingenious screens
and devices inherited from a culture long dead. It wasn't much of a
secret that the Dukes maintained many of the taboo devices of the Old
World, and used them for their private ends. Miguel's closed-circuit
TV, Kesley thought, was an example.

But the bloodhounds wouldn't be called out till later. Right now the
reaction was one of simple hysteria; heads would be rolling at the
Palace if Kesley were not found at once. And, he thought, riding atop a
Ducal horse, clad in Ducal uniform, it wasn't too likely that they were
going to find him.

He glanced ahead. The guards were riding together, forming an anxious
little circle. Evidently someone had called a halt and was about to
organize a systematic search.

Further ahead, the towers set in the wall ringing the city were
lit; the guards there had been roused as well, it seemed. Kesley
surreptitiously cantered out of line and cut off down a dark
side-alley, taking care that none of the guards were following him.

A few minutes later he reached the West Gate--smaller than the
other three, and lightly guarded. Drawing his horse up before the
guard-tower, he shouted: "Open the gate, you idiots! The assassin's
escaped, and he's heading west."

"What are you saying?"

"I said _open the gate_. I'm Duke's guard. You're holding things up.
The assassin's out there at large someplace!"

The door swung back.

"Thanks," Kesley yelled. He kicked the mutant's scaly hide to make the
beast spurt ahead. He raced through the open gate and out of Chicago.
The confused shouts of the guards echoed faintly in the distance as he
urged the horse on.

Breaking out into the flat country that ran westward, he rode hard
without any direction or destination in mind. Once he looked around
and saw three riders about two and a half miles back, pelting steadily
after him.

They were on to him then. He hadn't fooled them completely. But it had
worked well enough to get him clear of the city and, if he could put
more space between himself and Chicago before they turned the hounds on
him, he'd be all right.

The road veered suddenly and split into a network of forks. Almost
without thinking, he grabbed the south fork and urged the horse
on. He didn't know the country at all down there, but there were
cities--Peoria, St. Louis, Springfield, Cairo way down on the river.
Somewhere between those empty names, he had heard there was a Mutie
City--a regular refuge for mutants, a walled city of some sort where
not even Duke Winslow's hand could reach.

He bent low over his horse's stringy mane and urged the gasping beast
on. Glancing back, he saw his pursuers--and dim in the night was
something dull and metallic grinding toward him down the flat road.

Bloodhound.

They had the hounds out after him already. Winslow wasn't going to let
him escape lightly.

Shortly after sunup, his exhausted horse stumbled and fell, pitching
him to the ground. Kesley rolled to his feet, glanced once at the
animal's splintered leg doubled beneath its body, and looked back. No
sign of his pursuers now.

He destroyed the horse with a single bullet and started moving, on
foot, through the underbrush. He had no idea where he might be, except
that he was somewhere south of Chicago.

Through the rest of the morning he hacked his way through the wild
vegetation that had sprung up in this uncultivated area. Exhausted
finally, he stopped near noon to rinse some of the sweat from his face
at a clear blue brook.

Wearily, he scuttled away from the brook and started to get to his
feet, without success. He remained kneeling, staring at the quivering
tips of his fingers, smelling the warm morning air and listening to the
singing of the untroubled birds, and finally slumped forward, face down
in the fertile soil, and slept. He had been awake almost fifty hours.

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, Kesley felt gentle hands slide under his body and scoop him up.
Foggily, he opened one eye and fought to focus it. Deep in his mind,
he was struggling toward wakefulness, acutely aware he should flee but
unable to make his exhausted body respond.

"Let go of me," he murmured, clawing fitfully at the hands that held
him. He blinked. "Where are the hounds? Don't let the hounds near me."

"There are no hounds," a purring voice told him. "Winslow's men turned
back hours ago."

Some of the cobwebs cleared from his brain. "No hounds? You're not from
Winslow?"

"Look at me and see."

The hands released him and slowly Kesley turned. Standing behind him,
arms extended uneasily in case Kesley should topple, was a graceful,
seal-like creature with glistening, golden-brown skin. A slit-like
mouth was bent into a clumsy smile; narrow yellow eyes gazed warmly at
him.

"I'm ... very tired," Kesley said.

The mutant nodded gently. "You should be," he said. He took a step
forward, and caught the exhausted Kesley just as he began to fall.




                                  IX


Sanctuary--for a while.

"So I'm not to be allowed any rest," Kesley said bitterly. "Three days
here and you're tossing me out, is that it?"

He glared sourly at the little group of mutants facing him. "Well?"

"You've been here three days," Spahl pointed out. The seal-like mutant
shrugged sadly. "That's three days longer than any non-mutant's ever
spent in this city, Kesley. We can't keep you here much longer."

"Why do you want to stay here?" asked Foursmith, an angular,
knobby-looking mutant with a row of inch-long red nubbins protruding
through the flesh of his back. "You've got to get going, you know.
Daveen's not here."

"I don't know _where_ Daveen is!" Kesley said. "Can't you let me catch
my breath?"

"You'll have to leave tomorrow," Spahl said. "We'll give you a horse."

"Thanks."

This was the third day since Spahl had rescued him in the forest and
brought him to Mutie City; they had fed him and rested him, but now
they insisted that he leave.

He couldn't blame them; the city was a refuge for harried mutants,
not a harbor for escaped turncoats. They ran the risk of incurring
Winslow's displeasure by giving him sanctuary. Yet, he thought, as long
as they'd admitted him they might as well have let him stay long enough
to get his bearings, to have some of the furor over him die down.

Well, at least they'd taken him in. A small blessing, but a real one.

"I'm sorry," he said humbly, walking to the window of the room they had
given him. He looked out over the variegated city below--strange and
motley compared with the neat regularity of all Empire-built cities.

"I'm imposing myself, and I'm acting like a fool." He wet his lips.
"I'll go whenever you want me to."

"Don't misunderstand," Foursmith warned. The mutant with the extended
vertebrae was the current head of the mutie enclave. "We're not
throwing you out. We think you should leave, that's all. For your good
and ours."

"Agreed," Kesley said. In the street below, a two-headed woman was
making slow progress pushing a perambulator in which squirmed a
many-armed monster-baby. He shuddered. He still was not used to such
sights.

This was the world's genetic refuse heap, the city where the alien race
in mankind's midst could live in peace and security. Gradually, Mutie
City was enfolding in itself the mutants of the Ducal cities; here, the
grim souvenirs of the time-shadowed great war could walk unmolested.

He could see the logic behind the agreement of the Dukes granting Mutie
City total independence. The mutants came here and, gradually, the
contamination of their genes would be localized, the cancer of mutation
penned into one tiny area. Kesley wondered whether, on the day when the
last mutant had left the Twelve Empires and entered Mutie City, the
Dukes would bomb the city to shreds and thus restore mankind's genetic
homogeneity. It was a terrible thought.

He turned. There they were, Spahl and Foursmith and Ricketts and
Huygens and Devree, each one looking as if he had come down from a
different world. They ruled the city.

"Why did you take me in?" he asked.

"There were reasons," Huygens, the double-header, said resonantly.

_Always reasons_, Kesley thought. _And everyone knows them but me._

"This Daveen--he's not a mutant, is he?" Kesley asked.

"No," Foursmith said. "I saw him once, in the court of Duke Winslow. He
is very tall, without hair, and blind. He's not one of us."

"And you don't know where I could find him?"

"You might try the Colony," Foursmith suggested. "He might be in hiding
there, among the other artists. At any event, the Colony is safe from
Winslow, too. Perhaps you could stay there for a while."

"Good enough," Kesley said.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Colony sprang from the blue-green grass of Kentucky like a
sprawling, segmented worm. Its architecture bore no resemblance to that
of any city Kesley had ever seen; broad, rambling, almost ramshackle,
it presented an even more disorderly appearance than had Mutie City.

He wheeled the exhausted, six-legged horse the mutants had given him
up the final stretches of the roadway, looking around cautiously as he
rode. It had been a tense but, happily, uneventful journey down from
Illinois.

The Colony, like all other cities, was walled. But it was as if a
different architect had planned each segment of the wall. Here, it
was high and carved from blocks of pink granite; there, it was a lazy
stile of limestone. Towers of black basalt capped the wall at irregular
intervals.

He rode toward the gate--an open gate. Pulling his mount to a halt as
he approached, he turned toward the guard.

"Who are you?" questioned the guard, looking up from a notebook. Kesley
saw a series of interlocking doodles scrawled on the man's page.

"My name is Kesley. I'm here seeking sanctuary from Duke Winslow. I'm
also looking for a blind poet named Daveen. Is he here?"

"He has been," the guard answered. "You armed?"

"Pistol and truncheon," Kesley said.

"Leave 'em out here. You can pick them up when you're leaving."

Kesley didn't like the idea of parting with his weapons, but he seemed
to have little choice. Reluctantly, he surrendered them and rode
inside, into what seemed to be a park.

A fantastic array of houses was visible beyond the park. For a moment,
Kesley thought he had wandered into a lunatic's asylum. Then he
remembered it was simply an artists' refuge.

A nude girl stood unashamedly in the center of a lawn not far away, and
clustered about her, sketching furiously, was a group of painters.
Beneath a live-oak tree behind her, a fat, balding man squatted on the
ground, playing a wooden flute. Elsewhere, other members of the colony
seemed to be busying themselves at their various interests.

Kesley tethered his horse at a hitching-post just inside the main wall,
and looked around for someone who might be in authority.

After a moment, a girl in a brief halter and shorts approached him.
"Hello, friend. My name is Lisa. Where from?"

Her voice was clear and firm. Somewhat hesitantly, Kesley said,
"Chicago, mostly."

"Oh? What do you do?"

"I don't understand," Kesley said.

"Paint, sing, write? Light-sculpture? Architecture? Come on," she said
impatiently.

"I see. No, I'm not an artist. I'm ... just here visiting. Looking for
someone."

"That's nice. Who?"

"A poet. Daveen the Singer, they call him. Is he here?"

The girl frowned. "Daveen? I recall the name--but I don't think he's
living here now. You'll have to ask Colin about that. He remembers
everything."

"Where can I find this Colin," Kesley asked.

"Over there." She pointed to the group surrounding the nude girl. "The
old lecher's busy sketching Marla. He doesn't know any more about
sketching than I do, but he loves to look at a pretty body. He's the
bald one, right down in front. You'd better not bother him now."

"I'll wait," Kesley said. He could hold his own among assassins, but he
could see that he was going to be sadly out of his depth here in the
Colony.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Colony was even more grotesque and wonderful a place than Kesley
had imagined, in that first dazzling introduction in the park. After
the darkness of the world of the Twelve Dukes, and the different
darkness of Mutie City, the Colony stood forth as a land of beacon.

Total anarchy prevailed, for one thing. People lived where they liked,
ate as they pleased, worked or did not work. There was always enough
food. The Colony was self-sufficient, insular, smug in its seclusion.
And inscribed in deep-cut letters over the inside of the main gate were
four words:

                          _DO WHAT THOU WILT_

"The guiding motto of the Abbey of Theleme," Lisa explained, when
Kesley commented.

"Theleme?"

"A reference to Rabelais," she said. "Oh, I see you don't know that
either. It's a book--I mean, he was a writer. You don't read much, do
you?"

"No," Kesley said distantly, staring at the huge letters in the stone.
_Do What Thou Wilt._ They were shattering words; he wondered what Duke
Winslow's reaction would be if he ever had an opportunity to see them.

But there wasn't much chance of that. The Colony was even older than
the Twelve Empires, having been established back in the days of the
chaos by a group of artists and poets determined to preserve their
way of life while the rest of the world crumbled about them. They had
succeeded; and now, the outside world did without them. They had no
part in Empire doings, and the Empire kept its distance from them. It
was, Kesley was told, all part of the uneasy balance in which the world
was held. No one dared tip the scales.

He was welcomed to the Colony warmly, even though he was quick to make
clear that he himself was no artist and that he was here solely in
quest of Daveen. The night of his arrival they held an immense party,
supposedly in his honor.

He recognized a few faces. The girl named Lisa had appointed herself
his guardian; she stayed close by his side. Somewhere else in the huge
roomful of milling people, he spotted the man named Colin, looking like
an aging Silenus with his baggy eyes and fuzzy crown of graying hair.
He was engaged in animated conversation with the girl Marla, who had
modeled nude that afternoon. Now, she wore a transparent plastic blouse
and tights; it was an even more startling costume.

Finally, Kesley got to speak to Colin.

The balding man was very fat and very drunk, he noticed. He stared
curiously at Kesley for a few minutes, then said, "You're the newcomer,
aren't you? The one we're all here to honor?"

"I'm looking for a man named Daveen. You know him?"

"No," Colin said loudly. "Never heard of him. Want a drink?"

Kesley shook his head. He flicked a glance warily at Lisa, who was
smiling enigmatically. "He's a poet," Kesley said. "A blind man. Lisa
thinks she remembers him."

"Lisa will say anything. I don't remember any Daveen."

"Daveen? Who's talking about Daveen?" a deep voice asked. Kesley
glanced to his left and saw a tall, burly, blond man with long curling
hair. The big youth was smiling sweetly.

"I am," Kesley said. "I'm looking for him."

From somewhere in the background came the discordant shrill of a
strange musical instrument. Kesley winced.

"What do you want Daveen for?" the blond boy asked. "You from the
court?"

"I'm _running_ from the court. Winslow wants to kill me. I have to find
Daveen."

The tall youngster chuckled raucously. "Daveen hasn't been here in
years. You'll _never_ find him!"

An atonal blast of the weird music blended oddly with the harsh
laughter that suddenly surrounded him. Defeated, confused, Kesley
looked at the alien faces of the men and women in the room. It was as
if they wore masks of desperate gaiety, hiding a deep inward brooding.

He realized it had been a mistake to come here. In the middle of the
room, a lithe girl of about nineteen was taking off her clothes to the
accompaniment of an ecstatic chant from a ring of onlookers; a spindly
man of about forty was intoning what was probably poetry, and the blond
boy had gone into a frenzied solo dance.

Distortion upon distortion, darkness within darkness. Kesley felt cold
and alone. At his side, Lisa clung tightly to him, sliding her hands
playfully over the flat, hard muscles of his chest, giggling and
whispering. The party was reaching a peak of wild license now.

This was what happened when walls closed around people, he thought. The
mutants in their city; the poets in theirs. The Dukes in their Empires.
And somewhere, far to the frozen south, the Antarcticans behind their
blockade. They all interlocked, meshed in a tightly-geared procession
to nowhere. Grimly, Kesley watched the blond boy dance himself into
exhaustion, watched the girl in the middle of the room whip off her one
remaining garment and stand totally naked.

Lisa was chanting, "_This is the way the world ends, this is the way
the world ends._" It was probably a line from some poem. But it was
more than poetry, thought Kesley. It was truth.

Truth.




                                   X


When morning finally came, Kesley had long since decided to leave the
Colony.

As the first rays of dawn broke, he rose and made his way over the
huddling sleepers in the room. Lisa stirred; the poetess had slumped
over yawningly more than an hour before. On the floor, between the
sleepers, lay remnants of artistic achievement--strewn manuscripts,
curious statuettes, musical scores, musical instruments and such
things. Kesley carefully avoided stepping on them. He wanted no contact
here.

"Where are you going?" Lisa asked, looking up. Her eyes were red and
raw looking; the copper mesh of her blouse was stained with the thick
amber fluid of the drink she had laughingly poured between her breasts
at some wild moment of the night before.

"Outside," Kesley said.

"Wait a minute. I'll go with you."

Shrugging, he stepped outside and she followed him. The dawn was coming
up fresh and clear, with dew hanging brightly in the air. It would,
Kesley thought, wash away the pollution in the air from last night's
party. He tightened his lips nervously.

"Which way is the gate?" he asked.

"That way. Are you leaving? Why? Don't you like it here?" Impulsively,
she tugged on his arm. "Answer me, Dale."

He looked wearily down at her. "I don't like it here. This place is
poisoned. I want to get away, before I catch whatever all of you have."

"I don't understand you."

"Naturally not. Look, Lisa, you and your fellow esthetes have been
bottled up in here since--since--when? The year two thousand?"

"John Harchman came here to found his colony in 2059," she said as if
repeating a catechism.

"The year doesn't matter. You've been cooped up five hundred years. And
what do you have to show for it? Great works of art? No--just drunken
parties."

"We've produced wonderful things. Colin's done a glorious visomural,
and the sensotapes--"

"You've produced nothing," Kesley said inexorably. "You create for
yourselves--each other, at best. But not for the world outside."

"The world outside doesn't want us."

"Wrong. We don't understand you. And it's as much your fault as ours."
Kesley turned away. "Leave me alone, Lisa. I should never have come
here. I want to leave."

       *       *       *       *       *

The jagged, violet blades of knifegrass glinted strangely in the
morning sun. Kesley waited patiently while his hungry horse grazed.
Mutant horse, mutant grass, the cycle held firm. Spindly, six-legged
animal nibbling sharp-toothed, man-high grass. The purple blades
blended with the blue-green of the Old Kind.

There had been no bombs over Kentucky, but the wind had carried the
drifting seeds, brought the zygotes of the strange new grass down here
to this unruined land. Now, a tough network of roots dug into the turf,
and from them sprang the metal-sharp grass the atoms had made.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kesley rode south, his mind full of melancholy thoughts.

The trail had completely trickled out--if there had been a trail. He
was chasing phantoms, will-of-the-wisps.

Daveen, for instance. Who was he? A blind courtier who had vanished
some four years previously, whose name van Alen had happened to drop
and link with Kesley's. What relation did Daveen have to him? He didn't
know. What relation did van Alen have, for that matter?

But he was searching for Daveen. The search had led to the Colony, but
that was a dead end. Daveen had been there, and Daveen was no longer
there, and that was all anyone could or would tell him.

Then, Narella. A hauntingly lovely girl--but so, for that matter, was
the poetess Lisa. Narella was somewhere in Buenos Aires, at Miguel's
court. Would he ever see her again? Again, he didn't know.

The horse plodded onward toward the mysterious city of Wiener. Kesley
knew nothing about the city that lay ahead except that Lisa had
recommended that he go there. It was another island on the continent,
untouched by Winslow.

The picture of Winslow came to his mind, and immediately after, that
of Miguel. They were different and similar, the two Immortals: one fat
and gross, the other lean and hard, both complex and unfathomable, both
deep-eyed with the loneliness of the timeless man. Miguel had welcomed
him to his service, sent him off on a deadly errand, then reversed
himself and ordered his death. And Winslow had refused him sanctuary
and condemned him to death as well. Doubtless, there was now a price on
his head throughout all of North and South America.

That left Antarctica, a complete unknown. Vaguely, he recalled that
that had been his original destination when leaving Iowa, months
before. But Antarctica was about as accessible as the moon, Kesley
thought.

Then he thought of the mutants: Lomark Dawnspear, the blind one who had
unaccountably rescued him from Winslow's dungeon, and Spahl and Huygens
and Foursmith and the others of Mutie City, far to the north. What of
them?

Lisa. The Colony, shallow and desperate and decadent, rotten from
within and unable to see it.

Tiredly, Kesley rode on.

Above, the sky was warm and bright, and the rolling hills of southern
Kentucky were broad, beautiful, dotted heavily with the purple
grass and the strange golden-leaved trees the wars had brought. The
vegetation was the only hint here that there once had been devastation
in the world; today, in this place at this time, it seemed as if
everything had been perfect forever. But he knew that it hadn't.

He rode on. Wiener lay ahead.

       *       *       *       *       *

A week later, the city of Wiener rose before him from the wide
flatlands of Northern Texas. He paused, reined in his horse, looked at
the low sprawling wall of metal that rambled out over the desert.

He urged the tired mutie on. Hooves kicked up dry bursts of yellow sand.

As he drew near he could see that the wall was solid from side to side.
This was no encircled city; it was one huge building, probably sunk
deep into the earth.

Sunlight glinted flashingly off the metal wall. Kesley squinted, saw
a dot of brightness detach itself from the city and come humming
across the sands toward him. The City of Wiener was taking no chances,
apparently; they were going to intercept him before he got too close.

He waited for the vehicle to approach. As it drew near, he saw that
it was unmanned, merely a hollow shell made of some bright metal,
teardrop-shaped and empty.

"Please get inside," a dead-sounding voice requested. "We will take you
to the city."

Shrugging, Kesley rode forward; the teardrop split into halves. He
guided his mount inside; the great door dropped closed again, and a
moment later he was heading at a terrifying speed toward the metal
city.




                                  XI


The humming teardrop sped across the empty wastes; within, through a
clear plastic window, Kesley watched the metal building loom larger.

Then they were almost next to it, and abruptly a section of the
building's gleaming wall opened. The teardrop shot in without reducing
speed, slid along a banked incline that swung it in a wide curve
through a vast enclosed area and gradually brought it to a halt. The
teardrop split open again and, somewhat shaken, Kesley and his mount
left it.

He looked around. The place was brightly lit despite the total absence
of windows; the ceiling was some fifty feet above his head, and he
could see stairwells spiraling down deep into the earth. Along one
wall rose a shining mass of dials and meters, switches and complex
instruments which seemed to be moving rapidly from one position to
another sheerly of their own accord.

All around him were machines. He felt a strange queasiness. Machines
were things to fear; they had destroyed the world, once. The sight of
them, clicking and humming and carrying out their unknown functions,
disturbed him immensely.

Hesitantly, he began to walk.

A long corridor sprang into being not far from where he stood, winding
narrowly away and downward. He decided to follow it. But after he
had proceeded no more than twenty yards into it, he discovered a
brightly-lit, little glass cubicle set into the wall, a small room
with a chair, a clock on one wall, and a coppery-looking grid set into
the other. He decided to investigate. Tethering his horse to a bracket
along the corridor wall, he pushed open the cubicle door, entered, and
placed himself in the chair.

Instantly a voice said: "Welcome to Wiener. May we have your name for
benefit of our memory banks?"

Alarmed, Kesley glanced around. The voice had seemed to come from the
wall-grid. "Dale Kesley," he stammered.

"Welcome to Wiener, Dale Kesley." The voice was unemotional,
dead-sounding. Kesley frowned.

"What sort of city is this?" he asked.

There was silence for a long moment; he heard strange cracklings and
rumblings coming from the grid. Then:

"The City of Wiener was officially founded on August 16, 2058, by Darby
Chisholm, C. Edward Gronke, H. D. Feldstein, David M. Kammer, and
Arthur Lloyd Canby, professors of cybernetics at Columbia University,
Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Colby
Institute and Swarthmore College. The avowed aim of the five founders
was to create a completely self-sufficient, automated cybernetic
community in a relatively nonstrategic area of the United States, where
experiments in non-limited automational control could be put into
practice.

"The building of the City of Wiener was implemented by a government
grant of three billion dollars and private contributions. Four sites
were chosen: Juntura, Oregon; Lodge Grass, Montana; Wanblee, South
Dakota; Wilder, Texas. It was the original plan of the founders to
utilize all four sites and build identical cities at each, but the
precipitation of war in 2059 made it unwise to divert energies to so
large a project at that time, and the decision was made to limit the
experiment to the Texas site alone. This later proved to have been
wise, in view of the unexpected attacks on the three rejected sites in
the apparently mistaken impression that they had been the ones chosen.

"The City of Wiener was completed on April 11, 2061, and the switch
feeding the first input was thrown by Dr. Chisholm of Columbia. A
series of cybernetic governors powered by a fusion-breeder reactor then
took full control of operations, and the City of Wiener was officially
born. It has--"

"All right," Kesley interrupted suddenly, realizing he was about to
receive a detailed history of the City's activities over the past four
centuries. "I'd like to see whoever's in charge here. The Mayor, or
whatever."

"Question has no cognitive referent," the dry voice said.

"'_Seeing_' the controlling body is out of the question, as no human is
to be permitted access to the cybernetic governors under terms of the
original City contract established between the City of Wiener and its
five founders in--"

Dumbstruck, Kesley said: "You mean a _machine_ runs this City?"

"The question is inaccurate. The City _is_ a machine. There are no
human inhabitants."

Suddenly chilled, Kesley looked up at the grid at which he had been
directing his words, and realized he had been holding conversation with
a mechanical brain, not some remote City official. Moistening his lips,
he said: "What does the City _do_?"

"Question is unclear."

_The precision of the mechanical mind_, he thought in amused
irritation. He rephrased the question. "What functions does the City
carry out, aside from the normal routine of--of self-repair?"

"The City maintains a record of happenings in the Outer World; this
record is not completely available for examination at the moment, due
to unsettled conditions without. The City supplies manufactured goods
to those who request them, as prescribed by its founders. The City
endeavors to supply information within the bounds of self-safety,
likewise as prescribed. The City--"

"Does the City know of a poet named Daveen?" Kesley broke in.

"Question will have to be referred to Answering Banks."

A pause, then, in a somewhat altered voice: "Information incomplete
on poet Daveen, no other name recorded, member of court Duke Winslow
Chicago North America 2504-2521, left court 2521, current whereabouts
unknown. Is full biography requested?"

"No." Kesley crossed his legs and stared broodingly at his boots for a
moment. The entire City a vast sentient machine, then! No wonder the
Dukes left it alone; they knew they would never have the strength to
destroy Wiener, and so they preferred that the machine-hating populace
never learned of the City's existence.

He found himself greatly curious about the City. His imagination was
engaged by the implications of a city-sized mechanical mind; he who
had never dealt with any machine more complex than a pistol, who had
had only fleeting acquaintance with the remnants of the Old Days, was
fascinated by this mightiest machine of all.

"What can you tell me about Dale Kesley?" he asked on a sudden impulse.

Again silence--silence while photon-tracers raced over cryotronic
circuits searching for information. Then: "Dale Kesley, farmer, entered
Iowa Province June 21, 2521, no previous record, left Iowa Province
undetermined time in spring of this year. Entered City of Wiener
unaccompanied except by one mutant horse Type VX-1342 on October 8 of
this year. Further information is lacking."

"Thanks," Kesley said hoarsely. His first twenty years were blank to
the City, too. "Mind if I look around the place a little?"

"Limited examination of City of Wiener is permitted," the metal voice
said. "Your animal has been removed for care and will be returned to
you upon request."

He glanced through the thick glass window of the cubicle and saw that
it was indeed so. While he had talked, unseen hands--_hands?_--had
taken the horse away. Led it to pasture, Kesley wondered?

       *       *       *       *       *

He wandered through the silent halls of the complex city, observing
with a sort of quiet horror the chill efficiency with which the robot
mind carried out its daily routine.

The City _was_ populated. Kesley came across the inhabitants
immediately after leaving the glass-walled cubicle. They were man-sized
robots of blue metal, rolling on noiseless treads, equipped with
opposable-thumbed hands and filament-ended tentacles and wiry grippers,
seeing out of bright electrophotic eyes and gazing evenly ahead with
expressionless, shiny faces.

One of them was squatting over an immense heap of coiled tape which was
growing almost as fast as he could scoop it up and feed it into the
chittering maw of some glossy data-eater in one wall.

Another was repairing a mass of tangled circuits in an exposed ganglion
behind a section of wall.

Still another of the mechanical men stood at some distance away,
holding a segmented tube to the mouth of Kesley's horse. The horse had
its jointed scaly lips pressed tight against the tube, and was eating
or drinking with evident contentment.

Air-conditioners hummed gently in the background, keeping the
atmosphere pure and dustless. From the floor came the throbbing of some
mighty engines far below. Kesley wondered just how deep in the ground
the City penetrated.

All around, computers chattered and whistled. Kesley felt his
astonishment growing with each moment. And beneath the astonishment,
there was a mounting resentment at the Ducal philosophy that had
blanked such achievements as this from the world.

_Machines have destroyed civilization_, people said. But had they? No;
not the machines. It was man's _use_ of the machines; the machines
themselves were impartial, as disinterested in the currents of human
affairs as the moon and the stars.

Yet the Dukes had risen to power on a program of throttled
technological development. Fleetingly, the thought went through
Kesley's mind that the Dukes had made a mistake. If only--

He stopped, feeling a shiver of pain. Once again he had touched some
reverberating rawness in the deep layers of his mind; once again, a
forbidden thought.

In sudden inspiration he turned toward a grid set in the wall near him.

"Can I get information from you?" he asked.

"Answering circuits are functioning."

"Can you tell me anything about Antarctica? Anything at all?"

Silence for a moment. "Do you mean Antarctica before or after removal
of the ice?" the voice asked.

"Afterward--I guess."

"We have no information on Antarctica after 2062," the machine said.
"Ice removal was completed in 2021, and settlement proceeded along with
rapid technological development. In 2062 Antarctica ceased all contact
with the rest of the world."

2062 was the year of the Great Blast, Kesley thought. And Antarctica
had drawn the curtain.

He shrugged and walked away, taking a seat on a curved metal stanchion
projecting from the floor. Somewhere, locked in the obstinate memory
banks of this computer-city, might be the information he needed to
orient himself in the world, the missing data that everyone maddeningly
withheld from him. But where to find it? How to get it?

Suddenly the City's voice said: "Dale Kesley!"

"I'm here. What do you want?"

"You will have to leave at once. We will tolerate a delay of no more
than five minutes, plus or minus one."

"How come? Why can't I stay?"

"The City of Wiener faces armed attack if you remain here. Therefore,
you must leave."

_Very logical_, Kesley thought coldly. "Armed attack from whom?"

A section of the wall near him rolled away, revealing a mammoth screen
that showed the outside desert with startling clarity. Kesley saw
figures huddled along the horizon, marching forward. An army. Duke
Winslow's army.

"They're from the Duke, aren't they?"

"Yes. They've come to get you."

"And you're just going to turn me over to them?" Kesley asked
horror-stricken.

"We simply are requesting that you leave. We do not wish to risk an
armed attack upon ourself."

"You can defend yourself, can't you?"

"We are not afraid of the Duke. We simply wish to avoid any conflict
as unnecessary expenditure of material and effort. You now have three
minutes, plus or minus one, in which to leave freely."

Sweat began to pour down Kesley's back. He glanced at the screen, saw
Winslow's advancing forces. They had somehow tracked him to Wiener.

But the City _couldn't_ throw him out now! It just wasn't fair!

Grimly, he started to run.

He charged forward toward the long shadowed corridor and heard his
footsteps ringing loudly as he ran. The corridor was a helix that wound
deeper and deeper into the Earth; Kesley ran, feeling the pure cold air
whipping past.

Gleaming blue mechanical men turned to look at him as he went by.

"Two minutes, plus or minus one," the machine warned. Its voice seemed
to be everywhere. Kesley saw the familiar grids studding the wall at
regular intervals.

He had to hide. He had to avoid the City's commands, avoid Winslow,
stay here where he was safe. He found a dark alcove and stepped in.
There was a door; he opened it, stepped through, and found himself in
the midst of an intricate network of machinery, row on row of relay and
stud.

"One minute, plus or minus one," the ubiquitous voice said. Kesley
scowled. There wouldn't be any escape, it seemed. He kept running.

"We have requested that you leave. Your time is now exhausted, and we
must remove you."

Kesley whirled desperately and saw four of the metal men coming toward
him. They seized him gently, grasping him in the thick paws of their
upper arms. His fists thudded against the solid metal of their chest,
bruising his knuckles but failing to stop their advance.

They lifted him and began to move, sliding forward at an incredible
pace up the long corridor and toward the beckoning iris of an opening
door.




                                  XII


Once again, he was fleeing.

_Always on the run_, he thought bitterly, as the mutant horse flashed
over the prairie, its six legs pistoning as it drew away from Winslow's
men.

The City had been considerate; the City had been kind. The
teardrop-vehicle had not deposited him sprawling at Winslow's feet, and
for that mercy Kesley had to be grateful.

The four implacable robots had carried him effortlessly toward the
opening door; the uncomplaining horse had already been led through the
opening and into the waiting vehicle. Still yelling, Kesley had been
crammed into the silvery vehicle, and it had started away from the
confines of the City.

Winslow's men were advancing steadily. The City had ejected Kesley to
save its own titanium skin, its own guts of transistors and cryotrons.

He was ejected from the vehicle and left in the midst of the hot sands,
with Winslow's men still a distant green-and-gold blur on the horizon.
For a moment Kesley had stood there uncertainly, staring back at the
City that had cast him forth; then, mounting his wobbly-legged horse,
he began to ride.

He headed north, back the way he came. Winslow had obviously pursued
him through Illinois, perhaps tracked him from Mutie City to the Colony
to Wiener--but the City had avoided disaster by ejecting him.

Now, northward.

Returning to the Colony was out of the question for many reasons.
Returning to Iowa would probably be fatal--Loren and Lester, good
subjects of the Duke, would turn the fugitive in without giving the
matter a minute's thought. South America was as dangerous a place as
Winslow's lands, and the Empires beyond the sea were impossible to
reach. There was little traffic between the Americas and either Asia,
Europe, Africa, or Australasia, and none whatsoever with Antarctica.

If he allowed Winslow to catch up with him, it would mean sure death.
But one solution presented itself. _I'll return to Mutie City_, he
thought, spurring the bony beast on. _That's one place where Winslow
won't dare to come in after me._

Kesley squirmed in the saddle and peered around. Men were breaking off
from the column of horsemen and were starting to follow him.

He gave the reins another tug. Whatever it was the City had fed the
animal, it was propelling the beast like gasoline. The mutant was
covering ground in a rocketlike fashion. But Kesley knew the pace could
never last.

And, sure enough, the mutie began to falter after another half mile,
to drop back and lose ground. Four of Winslow's men were still on the
trail; Kesley computed that he was somewhere near the Oklahoma border,
and hoped no border guards would trouble him as he passed into the
adjoining province.

He had a knife and a truncheon; the pursuers probably had pistols. He
wouldn't last long once they caught him. They'd gun him down on the
spot.

And he'd never know why.

       *       *       *       *       *

The horse gave out shortly after high noon. Kesley managed to guide the
winded beast into a thicket off the main road, and dismounted there,
crouching in hiding while the mutie gasped for breath and shook its
sweating sides.

Before long the four pursuers arrived on the scene. For an instant
Kesley thought they would simply keep riding past, but he heard voices
commenting that the trail of hoof-prints ended up here. He tensed,
knowing they would soon be searching the bushes for him.

"You go that way," someone said.

Kesley tethered his tired horse and backed away a little deeper into
the underbrush. Several minutes passed.

Then a figure in the green-and-gold Ducal uniform appeared, a tall,
dark-complected man with bare, burly arms. He clutched a drawn pistol
in one hand.

"Hey, here's his horse--" he started to say, and Kesley leaped. His
attack was the sudden, quick strike and withdrawal of the forest
serpent; he sprang from the bushes, clubbed downward with the
truncheon, withdrew again as the man fell. He waited a minute; then,
seeing none of the other three approaching, Kesley quietly stole out
and seized the fallen man's pistol. Now he was armed.

Cupping his hand over his mouth to muffle his voice, he shouted, "I
got him in here!" Then he ducked back behind a thick-boled tree.

"We're coming, Gar!"

Three more uniformed figures stepped into the clearing. Kesley squeezed
the trigger three times and they fell, their faces frozen in utter
astonishment. Kesley felt suddenly unclean; he had murdered three men,
injured a fourth. And those three did not know why _they_ had died,
either.

He freed his own horse and slapped the weary mutant on the flank. "Go
ahead, fella. You're free. You've done your job." He could take his
pick from the four Ducal thoroughbreds waiting on the highway.

Sadly he stepped over the fallen bodies. The man he had clubbed was
still breathing; he lay in a sticky pool of his companions' mingled
blood. Kesley knelt, saw the ugly, raw wound on the man's skull, the
welling blood matting the dark hair. Wedged in the soldier's sash was a
grimy, folded piece of thick paper. Kesley drew it forth.

It was on Ducal stationery, with the familiar heraldic watermark
that he had seen on so many tax vouchers in his farming days. The
inscription, in large, dark, slightly smudged type, was a simple one:

                                WANTED

                           For High Treason
                         Against His Highness,
                     Duke Winslow of North America
              Dale Kesley, farmer, of Iowa Province, also
            known under the false name of Ramon, Ambassador
                  from Duke Miguel of South America.

    The said Kesley, having entered His Highness' court on the pretext
    of an embassy from the Court of Buenos Aires, did make an attempt
    on our Duke's life. Kesley is sought urgently. A reward of fifty
    thousand dollars is offered for his corpse.

    The said Kesley is six-feet-two in height, with closely-trimmed
    blond hair, full lips, nose set somewhat unevenly on his face. He
    will probably be wearing stolen clothing and riding a stolen horse.

       *       *       *       *       *

That was all. Kesley whistled; fifty thousand dollars was a staggering
sum of cash to offer. And they wanted his _corpse_; Winslow had no
interest in anything but a dead Kesley, then.

He would have to look sharp. With fifty thousand riding on his head,
every loyal subject from Texas to Maine Province would be ready to sell
him to the Duke.

       *       *       *       *       *

He lived a hazardous existence on the way north, eating off the forest
and staying out of the way of anyone official-looking. He travelled
mostly by night, creeping along cautiously during the day and making up
the delay by galloping furiously once the sun had set.

Generally he had no difficulties. Crossing from Arkansas into Missouri
nearly caused trouble, when he blundered into a border patrol searching
for someone else. He never found out who it was they really wanted;
two of the guards stopped him, stared at his face in the light of a
flickering match, and, after a tense moment or two, incredibly sent him
along his way.

In central Missouri he wandered into a hobo camp. Four
bedraggled-looking men were squatting around an iron pot in which
bubbled some sort of stew. Kesley had not eaten all day; he rode up to
them and dismounted, keeping a hand hovering near his weapons in case
they should recognize him.

They didn't.

"Come join us, brother," one of them invited. He was a heavy man with a
bulbous red nose.

"Thanks. Don't mind if I do." Kesley lowered himself into the circle
round the fire.

"You from hereabouts?" a lean man of perhaps sixty asked grudgingly.
"Don't spot your face."

"I'm an Illinoiser," Kesley said. "Spent some time down in Texas. Now
I'm heading home again."

He helped himself to a potful of stew. The stuff was hot and
bubbling--too hot, really, to taste, which perhaps was a sort of
blessing, Kesley thought.

"Have any trouble with the border guards?" someone asked.

"Little squabble down near Arkansas, that's all. They were hunting
someone or other, and took me for him."

"They do that, sometimes," the red-nosed man agreed. "Times are tough
now. The woods are full of Winslow's men."

"Oh? Something up?"

"Seems someone tried to kill the old bird," the red-faced man said.
"Guess he got fed up after all these years."

"I suspect it was that Duke from South America," the lean one remarked.
"Them Dukes are out for each other, mark my words!"

The fire flickered and sent a spiral of smoke curling into the trees.
Staring at it, Kesley found the sight oddly soothing. He took another
sip of the stew.

Chuckling, he said, "They must be chasing this guy all over the
country. I'll bet there's a nifty price on his head."

"Seventy-five thousand, that's what it is!"

Kesley frowned. Had the reward increased so fast--or was this just the
exaggeration of ignorance? It didn't much matter.

"I'd like to catch some of that money myself, you know. Seventy-five
thousand, huh?"

The red-nosed man laughed raucously. "You know, if I was the guy, maybe
I'd turn _myself_ in, for that kind of dough!"

Maybe you would, Kesley thought, watching the ghostly shapes the fire
took. Anybody would do anything these days.

"What would you do if _I_ was the guy?" he asked suddenly.

"You?" The red-nosed man seemed to stiffen a little. "Why would _you_
want to go killin' Dukes?"

"Yeah," Kesley said. "That's right, I guess."

       *       *       *       *       *

He moved on later that night, leaving his newfound companions behind.
They seemed happy there in the forest. He toyed with the idea of
telling them the truth before he left, but rejected the idea. There
was no telling how they'd react to the confession--but seventy-five
thousand was a lot of money, and he didn't want four more deaths to his
score.

He kept riding. He passed through Missouri and up into Illinois,
following the Mississippi up from Cairo. The year was well into late
October and the evenings were chilly. He rode quickly; the horse he had
captured was a smoothly-functioning, full-blooded traveling machine.

Up through Illinois, until finally the broad expanse of Mutie City was
visible through the dawn haze. For the first time since being cast out
of Wiener he had the feeling that he was approaching safety. Flight was
over--for now.

Of course, the mutants had told him not to return. But this was an
emergency; surely they'd let him in.

He entered the city shortly after morning. The mutants were stirring,
going about their early-day business. It seemed a savage parody of a
normal city's routine. The shops were crowded, and what difference did
it make if shopkeepers' heads were of spongy blue flesh and shoppers
had the arms of lizards?

He felt terribly weary. As he entered the city, he was not surprised to
see Spahl coming toward him.

"Hello," he said, dismounting.

"We expected your return," the seal-like creature said without preamble
of formality. "We knew when we asked you to leave that you would be
back."

"I want to rest," Kesley said. "This time don't throw me out."

He allowed Spahl to lead him to the room he had occupied on his earlier
visit. A group of mutants congregated; he recognized Foursmith and
Huygen. There were some others, stranger and more bizarre than any he
had yet seen.

It was odd, Kesley thought, that the one place on Earth he could go for
sanctuary was to this repository of freaks. Angrily, he brushed the
thought away. The mutants were--well, _people_.

"I've been to the Colony and to Wiener," he explained. "I couldn't stay
there. Winslow's hunting me all over the country."

"We know these things," Spahl said quietly. "We have followed your
path, Kesley."

"And--?"

"We have decided the time has come for you to go home. You've been long
awaited and we'll make sure you get there safely."

"Home?"

"Now your life is in danger. You endanger anyone you come in contact
with. Obviously you must not remain in Winslow's territories any
longer--or Miguel's."

"And therefore," Foursmith added when Spahl ceased, "we will send you
forth. For your sake and ours."

Huygens, the man of two heads, said: "Besides, Daveen has been found."

"What? Where?"

"He is in Antarctican hands now. We sent him there but recently. He
waits for you. Spahl, is it time?"

"Not just yet," said the seal-man. "Kesley, will you remember what
we're doing--_later_? We're buying our lives from you. Will you
remember that?"

"I don't understand a thing," Kesley said wearily. "I don't even think
I want to understand. But yes, I'll remember. Sure." He rocked forward
on his chair, dizzy, confused.

The mutants gave way, and a new one entered the room--a small, very
pale man, normal except for the huge circumference of his skull.

"Edwin is a teleport," Spahl remarked casually.

"What--"

Suddenly Kesley felt himself struck by a blinding bolt of force; it
spun him around, whirled him as if he were in a maelstrom, lifted
him up. He saw the smiling faces of Spahl and Foursmith, saw all the
mutants dwindle behind him. He rose, higher and higher, spinning
vertiginously, frozen in an instantaneous moment of time. Space hung
beneath him.

Then he began to fall.




                                 XIII


For a moment, after the spinning stopped, Kesley imagined he was back
on the sands outside Wiener. Then, gradually, his eyes began to shift
into focus. He looked around.

He was in a room. That was the first thing to grasp.

His senses told him he was in a room, high, with bare walls that glowed
of their own inner luminescence.

Good. He was in a room.

He was no longer in the _same_ room that he had been in in Mutie City.
He was sure of that, too. The big-skulled mutant named Edwin had lifted
him--_teleport_, Spahl said?--and had sent him somewhere.

He was somewhere else than Mutie City.

Patiently, his quivering mind reassembled the world of sense-constructs
and data from which he had been hurled.

He was not alone.

He made out the other figure clearly: a tall, old man, sitting upright
in a webwork chair halfway across the room. The old man's eyes were
closed; he grasped a small object, unfamiliar looking, in one hand. His
skull was hairless.

Kesley assembled the data.

"The mutants finally found you," the other said. His voice was deep and
musical, a rich basso with an underlying harmonic tremolo. "They were
searching quite diligently, you know."

"Yes, they found me," Kesley said. "I'm here. Where's _here_?"

"Antarctica," the old man said.

Nodding, Kesley absorbed the fact and added it to those he had already.
The jolting shock of the teleportation was beginning to wear off now;
having been plucked from the spatial framework, he was returning to it,
somewhere else. His mind emerged from its numbness.

"You're Daveen the Singer," he said calmly.

"I am Daveen," the other admitted.

Kesley studied the old man, realizing with a shock that he had almost
forgotten the contours of Narella's face until seeing the girl's
features mirrored here on Daveen's untroubled face.

A tense silence prevailed in the room.

Finally Daveen said: "Five years has changed you, young friend. You've
lost your youthful face; I see beginning wrinkles where smoothness once
was."

Kesley frowned. "How do you know? You're blind, aren't you?"

"The blind have ways of seeing. Besides, it's not a difficult matter to
guess that after what you have been through--"

"Just what do you know about me?" Kesley interrupted. "Who are you,
anyway?"

"I was," Daveen said softly, "for many years, poet and singer to the
Court of Duke Winslow. Five years ago I participated in the first
of your many rescues--the first time Winslow attempted to have you
killed." He chuckled musically. "Poor slovenly Winslow. Every time you
fall in his clutches, some blind man comes along to lead you to safety."

"You rescued me? From what?"

"That I cannot tell you yet. The Duke warns me that I must be very
careful with you, that I must not swamp your mind with too much
information at once."

Kesley looked around at the bare, luminescent walls, at the smiling
figure of the gaunt-faced, old, blind man sitting opposite him. "Which
Duke?"

"The Antarctican Duke. The man who has searched so long and patiently
to bring both of us together. You see?"

"Yes," Kesley said faintly. "_He_ brought us here. But where were you?"

"I fled from Winslow, five years past, after doing what I did. I sought
refuge in Scandinavia and sang for the Duke there until Winslow's men
found me and forced me to fly. I returned to North America, lived for
a while at the Colony--I believe _your_ odyssey brought you there as
well--and when life there became unbearable, I vanished."

"Where? How?"

"There are ways," Daveen said. "When one knows the arts of the mind,
one can do many things. I went into hiding. It was the only way for me
to remain alive. Winslow sought me with desperate urgency, for I had
betrayed him. Miguel had my daughter."

"I know."

"I continued to live in North America under Winslow's very nose. It was
a good joke; now that I'm free, I must let Winslow know about it. He
has a fine sense of the ironic."

"Where did you stay?" Kesley prodded.

"I lived in the ghetto."

"Among the _mutants_?"

"I _was_ a mutant. You knew me as Lomark Dawnspear."

For a moment Kesley rocked crazily in his chair; things seemed to wheel
in a dizzy arc around him.

"What?" he finally asked, recovering himself.

"Mental projection, complete; constant hypnosis."

"Dawnspear was blind, too," Kesley recalled suddenly.

"Yes. It pleased me to retain the image of the blind man who saw so
well. Dawnspear was blind. Otherwise, he was a complete fabrication.
I invented a false background for him, persuaded people that he had
always lived in that house in that part of Chicago. And they believed
it. Unable to do anything else, I lived camouflaged, not knowing how
urgently I was sought."

"And then I came to Chicago."

"Then you came. And stumbled into Winslow's grasp exactly as you
had done before. And once again reached the dungeons. Again, it was
necessary for me to rescue you."

"I did it once before, as Daveen. Five years ago. You came to Winslow's
court, and he delivered you to the headsman. I intervened."

"Why? How?"

"You loved my daughter. Furthermore, I thought you should not die."

"I loved her even then?" Kesley asked, astonished.

"Yes. She does not remember, nor do you--but you loved each other. When
Winslow ordered you killed, I determined to save you. I hypnotized your
jailers, slipped into the dungeon, freed you, led you out. It was a
gross violation of my oath to Winslow."

Daveen paused, and Kesley stared intently at him, waiting for him to
go on. There was something grotesque about this calm, matter-of-fact
relation of actions he had been involved in and yet remembered nothing
about. Reality seemed to slide yawingly from moment to moment. He had
loved Narella five years ago? He had been at Winslow's court, and been
sentenced to death?

Possibly. But it was as if those things had happened to someone else.

"Go on," Kesley said hoarsely. "What was I doing at Winslow's court?
For God's sake, Daveen, _who am I_?"

The singer shook his head slowly. "No. Not yet. Let me go on, and
you'll learn the rest in proper time."

"Very well," Kesley said, mollified.

"I took you from the prison, as 'Dawnspear' did just recently. I
attempted to contact those who would receive you safely, but could not.
Failing this, I had to make provision for your safety. I therefore
placed you in full hypnosis, wiped out all knowledge of your past
background, and substituted a pseudo-biography in which you had been
born in--Kansas Province, I believe. It was a slipshod job, but I was
in a hurry. Were there inconsistencies?"

"Yes," Kesley said. "There were."

"I feared as much. But it was the best I could do, at the time. I took
the precaution of webbing in a pain-threshold that would keep you from
probing your own past too deeply. Then I had you transported to Iowa
Province, safely out of Winslow's way, and established you as a farmer
there. It was a secure, rhythmic life; tied to the soil, you would
remain healthy and unmolested. Later, perhaps, I would be able to take
you from the farm and restore your identity.

"I returned to Chicago. My daughter asked where you were; I found it
necessary to block her memories of you to prevent unhappiness. They can
be restored as well, when the time comes. Curiously, you and she came
together again later, neither knowing who the other was--and the result
of the meeting was the same as before." Daveen smiled. "This, I think,
should amply prove the strength of your love, at any rate."

Kesley coughed. Nervously he said: "So you left me in Iowa. You never
came to get me--or were you van Alen, too?"

"No. I was not van Alen. My plans were interrupted; Winslow discovered
how you had been freed, and in anger ordered my execution. I fled;
Narella was given to Miguel as a plaything."

"He calls her his daughter," Kesley pointed out.

"Fortunately. Miguel is going through a paternal cycle; for the
moment, he no longer feels fleshly desires. Narella was sent to be his
mistress--but became his adopted daughter instead. Dukes are difficult
to fathom in advance."

"I know that well."

"To continue: I fled. You remained in Iowa Province. Those who loved
you sought you, finally found you."

"You mean van Alen? He tried to bring me here--to Antarctica."

"Yes. He failed; you and he were separated. Once again you drifted into
dealings with the Dukes--and when they realized who you were, they
immediately desired your death, both Miguel and Winslow."

"_Why?_ Why'd they turn on me like that?"

"For that," Daveen said, "the simplest answer involves the lifting of
the first of the psychic blocks I laid upon you. Are you ready?"

"I've been waiting for this since you started talking."

Again Daveen chuckled melodiously. "In all your wanderings you've
learned but little patience. Now you will begin to understand."

He held forth the object he had been holding. Kesley now saw that it
was a musical instrument of some kind, fashioned of a dark-hued, glossy
plastic. It had three hair-fine strings running its length; at the top,
above the bridge, were three white buttons.

"My music-maker," Daveen said. "My constant companion always. It holds
the keys to your mind, my friend."

"What do you mean?"

"Listen."

Daveen touched the three buttons lightly with his long fingers, and
a tone appeared, shimmering delicately, followed by a second and a
third. They hung in the air, meshing their subharmonics, quivering and
blending. It was, thought Kesley, like no music he had ever heard.

Daveen began to play--a slow, mournful, lingeringly lovely melody.
Melodic lines intertwined in complex polyphony; Kesley found himself
following the music with breathless excitement. It soothed and tensed
him at the same time.

Daveen sang a deep, lulling, wordless chant. Beneath his voice the
music swept to a gentle crest of subdued excitement, and Kesley felt
his nerves quivering with expectation.

The music, strange, atonal now, shifting keys with impossible rapidity
of modulation, held suddenly.

Daveen stopped.

There was complete silence.

In that silence, Daveen said, "_One!_"

And Kesley felt light flash numbingly through him.

He huddled in his chair while the frozen brain-cells at last discharged
the information they had stored for nearly five years. The words went
rumbling over his synapses, repeating themselves endlessly.

Finally it stopped. Hesitantly, he looked up at the calmly smiling
Daveen.

Then he looked down at his hands--his own hands, the hands he had
farmed with and killed with.

The hands of an Immortal.

"Me?"

It was almost impossible. But he knew it was true.

"You will never die," Daveen said.

"I will never die."

"_Two!_" said Daveen suddenly.

Kesley was thrown back in his seat by the unexpected, second
data-release. When it was over, he looked up again, smiling.

"An Immortal and the son of an Immortal. Small wonder Miguel and
Winslow wanted to kill me!"

The words of Winslow's sentence came drifting back now: "_... you
represent as great a threat to the Twelve Empires as has ever been
born, my young friend._"

Of course! Twelve sterile Dukes, blessed with eternal life but cursed
with the inability to reproduce--what would they do, how would they
react when they knew that one line of Immortals, somewhere in Earth,
bred true? That they were faced with the prospect of a gathering race
of Immortals threatening their powers as the years rolled on?

"You see?" Daveen asked.

"I understand now," Kesley said. "They _had_ to try to kill me. I was a
menace--an Immortal who wasn't a Duke, and whose children could breed
true!"

He stared at his hands as if they were covered with suddenly alien
flesh. "I wasn't a Duke, was I?" He asked cautiously. Anything was
possible now.

"No," Daveen told him. "You were never a Duke."

Kesley smiled, thinking now of the centuries stretching endlessly
ahead. "A king without a kingdom, then. Well, there's plenty of time
for me to find one. But you still haven't told me who I am, Daveen."




                                  XIV


There was silence in the bare room for almost a minute. Idly, Daveen
strummed his instrument; Kesley tensed, thinking another layer of his
mind-block was to be stripped back, but Daveen was merely striking
random notes.

"Well?" Kesley asked.

"The information you want is not mine to give."

"All right," Kesley said. He rose and stared down at the blind man. "I
won't ask again."

He had asked too many people too many questions, without result. Now he
would save his breath.

As he stood there, a door opened silently out of the wall.

"What's that for?" he demanded. Then, realizing the blind Daveen was
unaware of the occurrence, he added: "A door just opened in the wall."

"Doors are for leaving rooms," Daveen observed.

"I'll take the hint." Kesley hesitantly stepped through--and saw
Antarctica.

He was standing on a short, jutting balcony that hung a few feet out
over the distant street below. Sudden vertigo gripped him as he looked
down, down. It was five hundred--no, a thousand--feet to the ground!

Tiny dots of color moved rapidly far below on unceasing slide-ramps.
Down the center of the street, graceful cars of blue and gold and red,
topped with plastic bubbles, raced along. Buildings rose on each side
of the street--towering edifices, mighty vaults of steel and plastic.
Kesley sucked in his breath sharply.

The sky overhead was warm and bright, and just below the clouds, far in
the distance, a curious, tingling, purplish light illuminated the sky.
_That's the barrier_, Kesley realized. The intangible wall of force
that separated Antarctica from the rest of the world.

It was a mind-numbing sight, this fantastic city. It was like no city
he had ever seen in the Empires; it stretched to the horizon, tower
after massive tower. A graceful network of airy flexibridges hung like
gossamer in the air, linking building to building far above street
level.

And the city was shining.

That was the only way to describe it. The sleek sides of the huge
buildings gleamed brightly in the warm daylight.

As Kesley looked out, it seemed to him as if so many thousand-foot
mirrors blinked back at him.

He stepped back inside. Daveen had not moved.

"You've never seen Antarctica, have you?" Kesley asked.

The poet smiled. "I know what it must be like. How do you feel?"

Kesley thought of the shining towers and compared them with the squat
tenements of Chicago and Buenos Aires. "It's an incredible city."

"Yes," Daveen said.

With sudden bitterness Kesley said: "Why does the Antarctican Duke keep
that barrier up? Why doesn't he invite the world down here to see what
he has? Why must ninety percent of mankind live in squalor?"

"They want it that way," Daveen pointed out.

He fingered his instrument gently; a mocking note crept forth. Kesley
remained silent in thought for a moment.

Then he nodded. "You're right. The Dukes see to it that nothing
changes, that no progress is ever made. The Twelve Empires don't want
any part of Antarctica, and Antarctica doesn't want any part of them."

Antarctica's Duke, for one reason or another, had raised an impregnable
wall around his fantastic paradise. The Twelve Dukes of the war-blasted
world had erected their own barriers. But who was to say those barriers
could not be thrown down again? There was a _fourteenth_ Immortal. And
he was free to act.

Ten minutes ago such thoughts would have been nothing more than
bravado. Now, Kesley knew, he held power in his hands.

"Daveen?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to leave. I'm going to go looking for the Duke. Is there
anything else you want to tell me, before I go?"

A calm smile spread over the tired face. "Not now," Daveen said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Another panel in the wall opened as if at Kesley's request, and without
hesitating he stepped through. He found himself in a small rectangular
enclosure whose luminescent walls were inlaid with tiles of a glowing
green plastic.

"Down," he said, and the enclosure sank.

It glided downward with no illusion of descent, drifted through a
thousand-foot shaft and came to a silent halt. A wall opened. Kesley
saw that he was at ground level, in the vestibule of the great building.

He saw the people: tanned, happy-faced people who did not seem to
notice him. They wore smooth, free-flowing tunics of what seemed like
an uncreasable fabric; it put the finest robes of the courtiers of the
Americas to shame.

As he paused in the vestibule, not quite knowing which way to turn, he
heard a familiar humming sound, turned, and saw a mechanical man near
him. It might have been a twin of the ones he had seen at Wiener.

"I give information," the robot said.

"How can I get to the Duke's palace?"

"Duke's residence is reached by travelling on slidewalk eleven blocks
north to crosspoint, transferring to eastbound slidewalk and continuing
until destination. You will be aware when reaching Duke's residence."

"Thanks," Kesley said.

"Is any other information requested?"

"Not just yet," he said. He turned away and broke the photon beam that
controlled the front door. It swung open. He stepped out onto the
slidewalks.

There were five of them, he saw, running in a parallel series--five
bright metal strips moving at different speeds. He was on the slowest
of the five; it glided forward effortlessly, seemingly without
friction. Carefully, he stepped to the adjoining strip, which was a
little more crowded, and picked up speed. He became intrigued by the
moving roadway and rapidly passed to the fastest of the slidewalks.

By that time, though, eight blocks had slipped past, and he hastily
edged back to the slow walk. At the eleventh block, he cut off deftly
onto the eastbound walk that intercepted the one he had been on.

Now he could see the Duke's Palace: a square, blocky edifice of lacy
foamglass that was dwarfed by the towering buildings to either side.
Remembering the awesome majesty of Winslow's and Miguel's palaces in
comparison to the rest of Chicago and Buenos Aires, he thought it
odd--and then not so odd--that Antarctica's Duke should affect a
small, relatively unimpressive home.

The slidewalk brought him rapidly to the shining door that fronted the
Ducal palace. Kesley formulated his plan, set forth his demands in his
mind.

It was a bold, rash idea. If it failed, he had lost nothing. And if it
succeeded--

He stepped off the slidewalk. The Duke's Palace seemed to beckon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Inside, a robot attendant came humming up to him. Kesley confronted the
featureless face calmly.

"I'd like to see the Duke."

"Certainly. Have you an appointment?"

"No," Kesley said. "Tell him--"

"Just one moment," the robot interrupted. "I'll arrange for an
appointment. Your name, please?"

"Dale Kesley."

There was the momentary clicking of data-sorters over memory banks.

Then the robot said: "Confirmation requested. Was the name Dale Kesley?"

"That's right."

"The Duke will see you at once, Dale Kesley. I will escort you to him."

A little surprised, Kesley nodded. "That'll be fine."

The robot glided away on its treads toward a lift-ramp. Kesley
followed, suppressing his impatience.

He wondered if the Duke of Antarctica would be surrounded by long rows
of halberdiers. Somehow he doubted it.

A pulse tickled annoyingly in the side of his throat as the elevator
rose. The trip was brief; the door-panel was sliding open almost before
it had closed.

The robot rolled out first and started off down a long, bright
corridor. Kesley followed.

The corridor seemed to be endless. Finally, the robot paused before a
richly-panelled door and touched a stud. "Yes?" a deep voice said.

Inclining its speaking-grid toward a pickup embedded in the ornament of
the door, the robot said: "Dale Kesley to see you?"

"_Kesley?_"

"Dale Kesley to see you," the robot repeated impassively.

Kesley heard stirring within. He tensed; this was suspicious. Was it
this easy to gain audience with a Duke?

He waited nervously for the door to open. He had been hired to kill
Winslow; Miguel had begged him once to drive a knife into _his_ breast.
And now he was about to see a third Duke--the first he had any real
motive for killing.

The door swung back. Another robot waited within.

"Don't tell me _you're_ the Duke?" Kesley said, aghast. He had long
since learned that anything was likely.

"Hardly," the new robot replied, with as much of an ironic inflection
as a robot voice could muster. "The Duke waits for you within. Come."

Fingering the keen knife at his side, Kesley entered the Ducal chambers.




                                  XV


The Antarctican Duke lived well, Kesley thought. His private apartments
were sprawling, luxurious, with more than one strange echo of Miguel's
room. For one, a wall of paintings looked down--but they were not
oil works such as Miguel had, but paintings done in some curiously
realistic technique that hardly seemed to involve brushwork at all.
They were more frozen images of life than paintings, he thought.

In the distance he could see television screens, reminding him of the
closed-circuit battery taking up one wall of Miguel's study. The robot
led him on, gliding him from room to room.

"This is the Duke's room," the robot said finally. "You may go in."

Kesley approached the dark, paneled-wood door. It swung open without
his touching it.

A man stood there, dressed in the customary Antarctican costume,
smiling, his arms folded. Kesley's eyes flickered in surprise; then he
crossed the threshold.

"Van Alen," he said.

The noble grinned. "Hello, Dale. I owe you an apology. I found it
necessary to flee, back there in the woods. But I've been following
your subsequent adventures with great interest, Dale."

"I'll bet you have," Kesley said. He studied van Alen's powerful frame,
meeting eyebrows, wide-set eyes. "I never thought I'd see you again,
but here I am. I suppose you're here to take me to the Duke. Well, I'm
ready."

Van Alen's smile grew broader. He extracted a jewel-studded, gold case
from his tunic, pressed a stud. A tiny yellow filament licked forth. He
touched it casually to his wrist; a fugitive tingle of pleasure passed
over his face.

"Electrostimulator," he explained. "Sensory heightening. One of my
favorite vices; one that I had to leave behind when I made my abortive
journey to Iowa Province."

"I'd like to see the Duke," Kesley repeated impatiently.

Van Alen chuckled. "Look at my eyes, Dale."

Kesley glanced up from the electrostimulator in van Alen's hand; his
gaze traveled up over the glossy, green fabric of the noble's tunic,
over his stiff reddish beard, his firm lips, the jutting nose, to the
eyes.

The eyes.

The deep, tired, weary, all-seeing eyes of an Immortal.

Oddly, it came as no surprise. Double identity was almost the rule in
the world, it seemed. Daveen and Dawnspear, van Alen and the Duke,
Kesley and--who?

Kesley groped unsteadily toward a chair; it sprang forward and settled
itself beneath him. "You, yourself--"

"Antarctica is mine, Dale. I went north to bring you here, but I
failed. My life was threatened in the forest. I ran. An Immortal is
jealous of his life. Remember the scream of fear when you first drew
the knife on me, after I shot your wolf? That was _fright_--naked
crawling fright." The Antarctican shook his head bitterly. "I should
never have left here."

"I've seen Daveen," Kesley said.

"I know. The otter sent him to me."

"Spahl?"

Van Alen nodded. "That's his name. You owe your life to him many times
over, Dale."

"I owe my life to everyone at least six times, it seems," Kesley said
sardonically. "It seems to be a game everyone likes to play--saving me."

"Spahl found out who Lomark Dawnspear really was and sent him here.
Spahl was the one who arranged to have you sent here, by the only
method that can penetrate our Barrier. It was Spahl also, I believe,
who discovered you in the forest when you escaped from Miguel."

Kesley frowned. "Enough of Spahl. I've seen Daveen. I know I'm
Immortal, now."

"Of course."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Van Alen spread his hands. "Would you have believed me?"

Kesley paused, thinking for a moment. "No," he said finally. "But when
Daveen struck those notes on his instrument, I _knew_."

He rose and began to pace nervously. His booted feet sank deep into the
glistening carpet that covered the entire room.

"I want to tell you why I came to see the Duke, van Alen. I mean
that--I came to see the Duke as Duke, and the fact that he turned out
to be you doesn't matter a damn to what I'm going to say."

Lazily van Alen touched the electrostimulator to his wrist again. "Go
ahead. I'm most interested."

"From what little I've seen of Antarctica, it's a wonderful place. It's
the only place in the world where science didn't die with the Great
Blast--except Wiener, maybe, and there aren't any people in Wiener.
You've got technology, here; you've got a working society. I've only
been here a few hours and I don't know _what_ you have. But I do know
this: you've got the power to knock Winslow and Miguel and the rest of
them sprawling from their thrones, and break down the resistance to
progress that the Twelve Dukes have so carefully built up."

The smile had left van Alen's face. The Duke was studying Kesley
reflectively, his lips drawn into a tight scowl, his lean fingers
knotted in the fringes of his beard.

Kesley moistened his lips. "For one reason or another, you've set up
this impassable wall. You want to keep what you've got, and you don't
want anything to do with the rest of the world to the north. Is this
right?"

"This has been my policy," van Alen admitted.

Kesley glanced around uneasily. "Can you justify that policy?"

"I see no need to."

"All right," Kesley said. "Let me suggest an alternate policy: you step
down from the throne and appoint me Duke. I'm an Immortal too, I've
discovered lately; I'll take your job. And I'll break down all the
barriers that keep the people of the world penned away from each other."

"Just how will you persuade me to allow this?" van Alen asked, with icy
calmness.

_This is the moment_, Kesley thought. He stepped toward van Alen,
seized the momentarily relaxed arm quickly, twisted it up behind the
Immortal's back. At the same moment he drew his knife, touched it to
van Alen's throat just below the beard.

"Miguel taught me that Immortals can be killed. He sent me off to kill
one. I don't want to drive this knife home, van Alen, but I will if I
have to. Get your robots in here and dictate a message of abdication."

"If I don't--"

Kesley twitched the knife slightly. Van Alen winced.

"I can break your hold, you know," the Duke pointed out.

"Probably." Kesley remembered the time van Alen had broken Kesley's
grip in the Iowa farmhouse, had removed Kesley's hands from his throat
as if he were a child. "But while you're doing that, I push the knife
in. You don't have a chance. Will you dictate the abdication?"

"I've ruled here three hundred sixty years and more," van Alen said.
"It's not easy to give up a throne in a moment after so long."

Again Kesley dug the knife in. This time, a few drops of blood trickled
down, staining van Alen's broad collar. Immortal blood.

"Well?"

Sweat mingled with the blood droplets on van Alen's throat. "I agree to
terms," he said hoarsely. "Snap on the recorder on my desk."

Kesley looked suspiciously at the knob mounted in the cabinet. "If this
is a trick--"

"No trick," van Alen said.

Kesley backed across the room without releasing his grip on van Alen,
and spun the noble around. "Reach down and snap on the recorder
yourself. I'll be ready with the knife if anything strange happens.
Then start to talk."

Van Alen shifted the position of the stud with an extended finger. A
faint hum resulted; otherwise, nothing happened. Kesley relaxed just a
trifle.

"Talk," he ordered.

Van Alen said: "People of Antarctica, hear and believe this message.

"Today, in the three hundred sixty-second year of my rule, I am giving
up my throne.

"I turn it over to the man named Dale Kesley--like myself an Immortal.
He will rule you wisely and well, I am sure, and will lead you to
greatnesses I never dared to attain.

"Thank you."

Van Alen shut the machine off. "There," he said. "When I touch the
spiral lever, the message will be beamed on wide circuit to the entire
continent. The robots will shift allegiance to you at once; the place
will be yours."

"Touch the lever," Kesley said hoarsely.

Van Alen reached out--but as he nudged the control, a bright green beam
licked out suddenly. Acting instinctively, Kesley jabbed at the Duke's
throat with the knife.

There was no knife.

The knife had been whisked from his hand the instant the beam had shot
forth.

Van Alen turned, easily extricating his imprisoned arm from Kesley's
numbed grasp. His fist crashed into Kesley's stomach, rocking him
backward.

_Cheated!_ Kesley thought wildly. He recalled an earlier, forgotten
resolution never to have dealings with Dukes again.

Mechanically he raised a fist to defend himself. Van Alen's attack
drove through, and blows thudded against his face and chest. He tried
to fight back; he hit van Alen glancingly on the shoulder, struck for
his midsection. Another blow sent him staggering away.

Desperately Kesley leaped forward and flung himself on van Alen. They
tumbled to the floor, rolled over several times, once with Kesley
on top. Then van Alen began to get the upper hand. The Immortal was
fantastically strong.

He rose to a sitting position atop Kesley, gripping both of Kesley's
hands in one of his. He wiped flecks of perspiration from his chin and
dabbed at the tiny cut on his throat.

"Sorry, Dale. In five hundred years I've learned a few tricks. That was
a teleport beam; your knife's now somewhere in the main routing depot
of my post office."

Kesley muttered a harsh, wordless curse. Then he said: "You'll kill me
now, I suppose."

"For reacting the way I expected you would? Nonsense." Van Alen rolled
off Kesley and stood up. Reaching to his desk, he pressed a buzzer and
said, "Admit Daveen."

"Why do you want _him_?" Kesley asked.

"You'll see."

The panel glided open and Daveen stepped through, walking with uncanny
assurance.

"Three," van Alen said.

Daveen began to play the same haunting melody he had played before.
Kesley, lying on the floor, waited uncertainly for the moment when--

"_Three_," Daveen said.

One crushing fact rolled down on Kesley like a shock wave. _One_ fact.

He waited while its implications shuddered through him like
subharmonics from Daveen's music-maker. His dazed mind evaluated the
new datum.

"Of course," he said finally, standing up. "Why else would you have
gone to Iowa Province looking for me? Why else would you be so
interested in my whereabouts?"

"You see now?" van Alen asked.

"I see part of it. I see that _yours_ is the line of Immortals that
breeds true, since I'm your son."

"I thought you would have guessed that when Daveen rolled back the very
first layer of fog," van Alen said. "You didn't. But now you know _who_
you are."

"And why--why--"

"Four," van Alen ordered.

"_Four!_" Daveen cried.

And Kesley began to understand.




                                  XVI


"You know, now?" van Alen asked.

Kesley smiled wanly. "This isn't the first time we've had this
discussion, then."

"No. The last time, though, you had no knife."

"If I had known who you were, I'd never--"

"Certainly," van Alen said. "You're not to be blamed."

"May I go?" Daveen interrupted suddenly.

Van Alen nodded. "Of course, Daveen. You've done splendidly."

"Thank you, sire," said the Singer gravely. Bowing, the blind man
backed unerringly out into the adjoining elevator. Van Alen turned back
to Kesley.

"You remember, now, the circumstances under which we last met in this
room?"

"Yes," Kesley said. "I came to you--to ask you to abdicate in my favor,
Father. You refused."

"And you ran away."

"What else could I do? You were Immortal; I was twenty-three, and you
refused to leave the throne. I thought you were wrong in your ways."

"Twenty-three--and you wanted to rule," van Alen repeated reflectively.
"Now, of course, you have the wisdom of mature years. Why, you must be
nearly thirty, old man!"

"Twenty-eight. And I'm still aging. What was it Stohrbach said, your
geneticist? That I'll continue to age until about the age of thirty and
then stop?"

"Thirty-five. You haven't reached full maturity yet."

"But my cells show the regenerative pattern of an Immortal."

Kesley let the other newly-awakened memories filter through his mind.

"I left you," he said. "Angrily. I had myself teleported through your
Barrier and into North America, where I intended to live under an
assumed name and work for the overthrow of Winslow--as a start."

"Is that it?" van Alen asked. "I was never sure of your plan."

Kesley nodded. "I intended gradually to seize the Twelve Empires--and
then ask you to lower your force-screen."

Van Alen smiled slowly. "Worthy of a Duke, son. But it didn't work.
One of Winslow's mutant telepaths--now dead and out of circulation,
happily--discovered your true identity. Word traveled fast among the
Twelve Dukes that I had had a son who bore the Immortal traits. They
resolved to kill you, hoping I would never have another. And you were
caught, there in Winslow's own home yard. It was Daveen who rescued
you. The rest you've already relearned."

Kesley nodded, calmly now. "I'm back home now, Father."

"At last. Daveen hid you so well I thought we'd never find you. Finally
I decided to go myself. I found you--and lost you again."

"You're missing my point," Kesley said sharply. "I'm _back home_."

"And?"

"And I haven't changed my ideas."

Van Alen slipped the electrostimulator into his hand once again and
let the minute voltage caress his nerves. "So?" he said quizzically.

"I still feel the force-screen ought to come down."

Van Alen shook his head frowningly. "You're not the green boy you were
when you left, you know. You've seen the courts of the Dukes; you've
worked on a farm. You know what it is to flee for your life."

"And I've seen Mutie City and the Colony and Wiener," Kesley added.
"I've really been around."

"And?"

"And I think the world's rotten at the core! I think _you_ can save
it--if you'll only lift your damned Barrier and give what you have here
to the rest of the world!"

Pain filtered over van Alen's face. He stared sadly at Kesley for a
moment, with the timeless expression in his eyes that Kesley knew he,
himself, would one day acquire. "You still don't understand," van Alen
said huskily, "why that Barrier is up."

"No. I don't."

"You've dealt with three Immortals: Winslow, Miguel, me. What do we
have in common?" van Alen demanded suddenly.

Startled, Kesley stopped to think of their common characteristics.
_Nothing in common_, he nearly answered. Then he saw he was wrong.

Physical vitality. Long life. These things were obvious.

The deepness of the eyes. Constant for all three.

And a deepness of personality, a strange complexity of behavior, a
pattern of actions that appeared to be based on random selection. Yes,
that was it. "You're unpredictable," Kesley said. "One never knows what
to expect from you. It's as if you act without motivation sometimes."

"It seems that way, doesn't it? But look: you're lying in a tub of
water, completely submerged. A hand suddenly breaks the surface of the
water and plunges a knife into you. All you see is the hand; for all
the evidence you have, that's all there is--just a hand.

"It's completely unmotivated, isn't it? Why would a mere _hand_ want to
murder you? No reason at all. But suppose that hand is attached to the
arm of your most deadly enemy? It's not so unmotivated then, is it?"

"You mean we only see segments of events; you see the entire happening.
That it?"

"It comes with long life. You'll have it too," van Alen said. "It's a
curse. You'll be living in three dimensions and everyone else in two.
And no one will ever manage to understand you fully except another one
like you."

"You're stalling. The Barrier," Kesley prodded.

"The Barrier. I put that up out of fear." Van Alen's strong head
drooped; his ancient eyes looked bleak. "I'm safe, secure down here.
We've continued to progress. No bombs were dropped on Antarctica. I
don't want any bombs coming down."

"But there won't be! There can't be! They've virtually reverted to
a pre-mechanical culture in the Twelve Empires. They've got as much
chance of being able to build bombs as you do of sprouting wings."

A new thought occurred to Kesley. "When did you come to Antarctica? You
said you'd only been ruling three hundred sixty-odd years. The Blast
was more than four hundred years ago."

Van Alen seemed to be trembling. "I came to Antarctica in 2164,
established control, and erected the barrier the following year." His
voice wavered. "Do you want the rest of it?"

"I don't need it." Kesley jabbed a forefinger at the Duke. "You never
told me this, but now I understand. 2162--that's the year the Twelve
Dukes met and divided up the world, all except Antarctica. Right?"

"Yes," van Alen said tonelessly.

"Okay. In 2162, there were twelve Empires--and _thirteen Immortals_!
You were the odd man out!"

Van Alen winced, and Kesley felt a surge of pity now that he finally
had voiced the words. Van Alen had lived alone with these memories for
hundreds of years.

"They cast you out," Kesley went on. "You were an Immortal--it was
obvious, you were a hundred years old and still in the prime of
life--and everyone else grabbed a Dukedom before you did. So you slunk
off to Antarctica with your tail wrapped around your hind legs, and
founded yourself an Empire down here."

"No more, please," van Alen said. "Please."

"I want to go on." Kesley's eyes flashed. "You built that barrier
out of fear and hatred; you closed yourself away from the Twelve who
rejected you! And now--"

"And now I'm very tired," said van Alen. He rose. "Five years ago you
argued for overthrowing the Barrier. I refused without citing reason.
Now you understand why."

"It was because you didn't dare face your twelve old enemies," Kesley
said mercilessly. "Even though Antarctica had continued scientific
development and they had shunned it, even though you now had the
weapons and the techniques to blast the twelve of them off their
thrones at long distance, you still kept thinking of yourself as the
poor relation who got shunted away. That's why you ran away when the
bandits caught me in Argentina; you dreaded going before Miguel. You
had to escape even at the cost of leaving me behind."

"That's part of it." Van Alen seemed to recover some of his former
poise. "If you'll remember, though, I couched my refusal of your ideas
five years ago in such a way that you'd almost certainly react by
running away."

"I remember. Why?"

"You've seen the world. You've seen other Dukes. You know what the
world is like. You've matured. It was a sink-or-swim process, and you
swam."

Kesley began to see what was coming. His fingers started to tremble.

"Five years ago," van Alen went on, "I said no. Today's answer is
different. It's _yes_."

Van Alen laid his still powerful hand on Kesley's shoulder.
"I can't take down the Barrier myself. I need it up there, as
protection--protection against emotional fears that even I know,
intellectually, are foolish.

"But _you_ can take it down, Dryle--as Duke of Antarctica!"

Kesley had seen it coming. He nodded. "I'm so used to thinking of
myself as Dale Kesley that it's hard to remember my name's the same as
yours--Dryle van Alen."

"_Dux et Imperator_," the older man added, grinning. "A little while
ago I dictated an abdication. At knifepoint, to be sure, but I kept my
voice calm. That message is still on the tapes. Any time you want, you
have my permission to broadcast it."

Young van Alen stared evenly at his father. "The Barrier _will_ come
down. The Dukes will fall. I'll get Narella back from Miguel."

"These things will happen. Remember, though, there will be others after
Narella. It's one of the prices you pay for long life."

"I know," he said gravely. He grinned. "I'm still young, yet, and so is
she. There's time for me to start learning how to take the long view
later."

He turned away and extended a hand toward the control that would
broadcast his father's message to all the continent of Antarctica.

His hand hovered for a moment.

Once, he knew, Antarctica had been covered with ice, a frozen, desolate
land. Men had cleared the ice and built a garden continent.

Now, the new Duke thought, it was the other nine-tenths of the world
that lay under an icy pall. That could be altered, too. The Twelve
Dukes could be swept away; the walls around the cities and around men's
minds could be destroyed. And it was not necessary that the tragedy of
2062 be repeated.

His finger brushed the stud and his father's words began to echo
through the city and out over the entire continent.

"_People of Antarctica, hear and believe this message. Today, in the
362nd year of my rule, I am giving up my throne._"

As the abdication decree resounded through the halls of the Ducal
palace, he turned and saw the robots rolling toward him, ready to give
allegiance to their new lord.

He drew a deep breath. Plenty of work lay ahead. The years of the
freeze were at their end; the great thaw was just beginning.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 13TH IMMORTAL ***


    

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