WANTEDFor High TreasonAgainst His Highness,Duke Winslow of North AmericaDale Kesley, farmer, of Iowa Province, alsoknown under the false name of Ramon, Ambassadorfrom 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.
WANTED
For High TreasonAgainst His Highness,Duke Winslow of North AmericaDale Kesley, farmer, of Iowa Province, alsoknown under the false name of Ramon, Ambassadorfrom 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 hiscorpse; 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 turnmyselfin, 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 ifIwas the guy?" he asked suddenly.
"You?" The red-nosed man seemed to stiffen a little. "Why wouldyouwant 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 thesameroom 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'shere?"
"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. "Hebrought 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 believeyourodyssey 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 themutants?"
"Iwasa 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. "Theyhadto 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 afourteenthImmortal. 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 intohisbreast. 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 meyou'rethe 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 wasfright—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, Iknew."
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 knowwhatyou 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 wanthim?" 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.Onefact.
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 thatyoursis 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 knowwhoyou 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'mback 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 thinkyoucan 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 merehandwant 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—andthirteen 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'syes."
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.
"Butyoucan 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 Barrierwillcome 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.