Front matter (continued 2)

"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."