Robert Silverberg

“ Kesley feinted with the stiletto and flicked it through the air past Miguel's head and into the center of the arms-bearing shield on the wall. The Duke, who had not so much as blinked, laughed heartily.
"A good man with a knife! A good man indeed." Serious again, he said, "But you could have killed me. Why didn't you?"
"Kill an Immortal?" Kesley replied listlessly. "I'd sooner try to harness a whirlwind. How could I possibly kill you?"
"By plunging the knife into my heart," Miguel said. "You obviously fail to understand the true nature of our immortality." ”

“ 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. ”

“ But what could Miguel's motive in upsetting the balance of the world possibly be? Surely, Kesley thought, the South American Duke knew what would happen once Winslow was removed. The taut framework of North American life would collapse inward on itself like a puffball that had discharged its dusty cloud of spores.
Who would profit? Miguel? Were assassins now drawing near the Ducal Palaces of Stockholm, of Johannesburg, of Canberra, readying themselves to rid the world of all Dukes but Miguel at one bold stroke? ”

“ But he knew one thing—the answer to his life's riddle lay in Antarctica, the once frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.
But how to get there? The only means of transportation were the spindly six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size rewards for his capture—dead or alive. But somewhere in the two continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to find. The future of the world depended on his success. ”

“ And how often did Miguel himself consider suicide? Had he had some hidden protection against Kesley's knife, moments ago downstairs, or had the Duke been half-hoping the blade would strike true?
Perhaps.
"Why do you keep me here?" Kesley asked.
Miguel looked up slowly. His eyes, deep and piercing, bored into Kesley's. "You amuse me," Miguel said. "When one is more than four centuries old, one is hard put to find amusement. I am amused by the possibility that you might strike me dead at any moment." ”

“ Winslow, Miguel, me. What do we have in common?" van Alen demanded suddenly.
Startled, Kesley stopped to think of their common characteristics. Nothing in common, he nearly answered. Then he saw he was wrong.
Physical vitality. Long life. These things were obvious.
The deepness of the eyes. Constant for all three.
And a deepness of personality, a strange complexity of behavior, a pattern of actions that appeared to be based on random selection. Yes, that was it. "You're unpredictable," Kesley said. "One never knows what to expect from you. It's as if you act without motivation sometimes." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kesley saw that he was at ground level, in the vestibule of the great building.
He saw the people: tanned, happy-faced people who did not seem to notice him. They wore smooth, free-flowing tunics of what seemed like an uncreasable fabric; it put the finest robes of the courtiers of the Americas to shame.
As he paused in the vestibule, not quite knowing which way to turn, he heard a familiar humming sound, turned, and saw a mechanical man near him. It might have been a twin of the ones he had seen at Wiener.
"I give information," the robot said.
"How can I get to the Duke's palace?" ”

“ He didn't belong in Iowa Province.
Somewhere, out there in the cities of the Twelve Empires, maybe in the radiation-blasted caves of the Old World, perhaps in the remote fastness of the unknown Antarctican empire, life was waiting for him.
Not here. Not in Iowa.
As always, a cold shudder ran through him and he let his head wobble as the sickness swept upward. He swayed, tightened his grip on the plough, and forced himself grimly back into the synthetic mood of security that was his one defense against the baseless terror that tormented him.
The farm is good, he thought. ”

“ Kesley remembered the time van Alen had broken Kesley's grip in the Iowa farmhouse, had removed Kesley's hands from his throat as if he were a child. "But while you're doing that, I push the knife in. You don't have a chance. Will you dictate the abdication?"
"I've ruled here three hundred sixty years and more," van Alen said. "It's not easy to give up a throne in a moment after so long."
Again Kesley dug the knife in. This time, a few drops of blood trickled down, staining van Alen's broad collar. Immortal blood. ”

“ Kesley glanced up from the electrostimulator in van Alen's hand; his gaze traveled up over the glossy, green fabric of the noble's tunic, over his stiff reddish beard, his firm lips, the jutting nose, to the eyes.
The eyes.
The deep, tired, weary, all-seeing eyes of an Immortal. ”

“ Everyone follows instructions, he thought suddenly. He had followed van Alen's orders; the bandits were puppets of Don Miguel. And Miguel?
Who, he wondered, pulled the Duke's strings?
Kesley smiled. Van Alen had tainted him with philosophy. Life would undoubtedly have been much simpler if he'd remained in Iowa Province, on the farm.
The contradiction followed at once: he hadn't been happy there, he realized. Life had never been simple—not even in a world where the benevolent Dukes tried manfully to avoid the fatal complexity of the Old Days. ”

“ Galveston was an encircled peninsula, guarded by land, open to the sea.
Men in the green-and-gold uniforms of Duke Winslow's guard rode alongside the line, keeping the jostling crowd in order.
"Better get your coins ready," van Alen muttered, as they drew near the gate.
"Coins?"
"This is a fee city. A dollar a head to enter the gate."
Kesley made a face and dug a golden dollar from his pocket. He looked at the tiny, well-worn coin almost wistfully. "The good Duke takes care that his subjects are never weighted with overmuch coinage," he observed. "The Duke's men relieve us of it joyfully." ”

“ Chicago, Tunis, Johannesburg, Stockholm, Canberra, Strasbourg, Kiev, Hankow, Calcutta, Manila, Leopoldville. They were strange and alien names; to him, abstract symbols of Ducal power rather than concrete geographical localities.
It was easy to see that this was Miguel's abode. The walls of the city bristled with dark-skinned riflemen in blue shorts and gold brocade, zealously guarding their Immortal's city against armed attack. Standing outside the city walls, Kesley could see, looming above the blocks of low, grubby buildings, the arching sweep of Don Miguel's palace. ”

“ All around him, swarthy men on burros or horses or stubby piebald mutant beasts waited patiently to be admitted. Most of them were clad in broad-brimmed sombreros and colorful serapes; Kesley grinned wryly at that. South America was an unchanging microcosm. Beneath the friendly sky, life, frozen always in a stasis of todays, moved on slowly, with manana never quite arriving.
Kesley wondered about van Alen. The Antarctican had run away, and presumably had been shot by a bandit. Was he dead, his corpse lying rotting on the plain? It didn't matter, now. Kesley was in the hands of Duke Miguel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Van Alen shook his head frowningly. "You're not the green boy you were when you left, you know. You've seen the courts of the Dukes; you've worked on a farm. You know what it is to flee for your life."
"And I've seen Mutie City and the Colony and Wiener," Kesley added. "I've really been around."
"And?"
"And I think the world's rotten at the core! I think you can save it—if you'll only lift your damned Barrier and give what you have here to the rest of the world!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wolf paused in mid-stride as if frozen, shuddered once, and dropped. There was the sickening smell of burning fur in the air.
Kesley felt a quick burst of hot anger. He looked down at the smouldering ruin of the wolf huddled darkly against the ground, then to the stranger, who was smiling as he reholstered the blaster.
"What the hell did you do that for?" Kesley demanded hotly. "Who asked you to shoot? What are you doing here, anyway?"
He raised his knife in a wild threatening gesture. The stranger moved tentatively toward his hip again, and Kesley quickly relaxed. ”

“ 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." ”

“ This idiot has ruined my robes."
Kesley allowed himself to be tied to a chair.
"You're a bold fool," the big man said, coming over to glower down at Kesley. He knotted his fingers in his thick, tangled dark beard, and smiled, baring stained yellow teeth. Kesley met the noble's gaze evenly.
The deep eyes were set in a network of fine wrinkles. They were not the eyes of an ordinary man. They were heavy with the shadow of a hundred thousand days gone by, and infinities of days to come. Kesley realized that the man before him was no mere noble. He could only be Don Miguel, Duke of South America. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Kesley remained silent in thought for a moment.
Then he nodded. "You're right. The Dukes see to it that nothing changes, that no progress is ever made. The Twelve Empires don't want any part of Antarctica, and Antarctica doesn't want any part of them."
Antarctica's Duke, for one reason or another, had raised an impregnable wall around his fantastic paradise. The Twelve Dukes of the war-blasted world had erected their own barriers. But who was to say those barriers could not be thrown down again? There was a fourteenth Immortal. And he was free to act. ”

“ I'm attached to the court of the Duke of Antarctica."
"So they've got a Duke, too," Kesley said. He smiled. "I never thought that they'd have one just like us. And I suspect the Twelve Dukes don't even know that. But this is crazy! If you're from Antarctica, what do you want with me?"
"All in good time," van Alen said calmly. "First: the Twelve Dukes are very much aware of the existence of their Antarctic confrere. He is, like them, an immortal. Unlike them, he is not interested in striving for power."
"Why does Antarctica cut itself off from the rest of the world?" ”