Chapter XIV

There was silence in the bare room for almost a minute. Idly, Daveen strummed his instrument; Kesley tensed, thinking another layer of his mind-block was to be stripped back, but Daveen was merely striking random notes.

"Well?" Kesley asked.

"The information you want is not mine to give."

"All right," Kesley said. He rose and stared down at the blind man. "I won't ask again."

He had asked too many people too many questions, without result. Now he would save his breath.

As he stood there, a door opened silently out of the wall.

"What's that for?" he demanded. Then, realizing the blind Daveen was unaware of the occurrence, he added: "A door just opened in the wall."

"Doors are for leaving rooms," Daveen observed.

"I'll take the hint." Kesley hesitantly stepped through--and saw Antarctica.

He was standing on a short, jutting balcony that hung a few feet out over the distant street below. Sudden vertigo gripped him as he looked down, down. It was five hundred--no, a thousand--feet to the ground!

Tiny dots of color moved rapidly far below on unceasing slide-ramps. Down the center of the street, graceful cars of blue and gold and red, topped with plastic bubbles, raced along. Buildings rose on each side of the street--towering edifices, mighty vaults of steel and plastic. Kesley sucked in his breath sharply.

The sky overhead was warm and bright, and just below the clouds, far in the distance, a curious, tingling, purplish light illuminated the sky. _That's the barrier_, Kesley realized. The intangible wall of force that separated Antarctica from the rest of the world.

It was a mind-numbing sight, this fantastic city. It was like no city he had ever seen in the Empires; it stretched to the horizon, tower after massive tower. A graceful network of airy flexibridges hung like gossamer in the air, linking building to building far above street level.

And the city was shining.

That was the only way to describe it. The sleek sides of the huge buildings gleamed brightly in the warm daylight.

As Kesley looked out, it seemed to him as if so many thousand-foot mirrors blinked back at him.

He stepped back inside. Daveen had not moved.

"You've never seen Antarctica, have you?" Kesley asked.

The poet smiled. "I know what it must be like. How do you feel?"

Kesley thought of the shining towers and compared them with the squat tenements of Chicago and Buenos Aires. "It's an incredible city."

"Yes," Daveen said.

With sudden bitterness Kesley said: "Why does the Antarctican Duke keep that barrier up? Why doesn't he invite the world down here to see what he has? Why must ninety percent of mankind live in squalor?"

"They want it that way," Daveen pointed out.

He fingered his instrument gently; a mocking note crept forth. Kesley remained silent in thought for a moment.

Then he nodded. "You're right. The Dukes see to it that nothing changes, that no progress is ever made. The Twelve Empires don't want any part of Antarctica, and Antarctica doesn't want any part of them."

Antarctica's Duke, for one reason or another, had raised an impregnable wall around his fantastic paradise. The Twelve Dukes of the war-blasted world had erected their own barriers. But who was to say those barriers could not be thrown down again? There was a _fourteenth_ Immortal. And he was free to act.

Ten minutes ago such thoughts would have been nothing more than bravado. Now, Kesley knew, he held power in his hands.

"Daveen?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to leave. I'm going to go looking for the Duke. Is there anything else you want to tell me, before I go?"

A calm smile spread over the tired face. "Not now," Daveen said.

* * * * *

Another panel in the wall opened as if at Kesley's request, and without hesitating he stepped through. He found himself in a small rectangular enclosure whose luminescent walls were inlaid with tiles of a glowing green plastic.

"Down," he said, and the enclosure sank.

It glided downward with no illusion of descent, drifted through a thousand-foot shaft and came to a silent halt. A wall opened. Kesley saw that he was at ground level, in the vestibule of the great building.

He saw the people: tanned, happy-faced people who did not seem to notice him. They wore smooth, free-flowing tunics of what seemed like an uncreasable fabric; it put the finest robes of the courtiers of the Americas to shame.

As he paused in the vestibule, not quite knowing which way to turn, he heard a familiar humming sound, turned, and saw a mechanical man near him. It might have been a twin of the ones he had seen at Wiener.

"I give information," the robot said.

"How can I get to the Duke's palace?"

"Duke's residence is reached by travelling on slidewalk eleven blocks north to crosspoint, transferring to eastbound slidewalk and continuing until destination. You will be aware when reaching Duke's residence."

"Thanks," Kesley said.

"Is any other information requested?"

"Not just yet," he said. He turned away and broke the photon beam that controlled the front door. It swung open. He stepped out onto the slidewalks.

There were five of them, he saw, running in a parallel series--five bright metal strips moving at different speeds. He was on the slowest of the five; it glided forward effortlessly, seemingly without friction. Carefully, he stepped to the adjoining strip, which was a little more crowded, and picked up speed. He became intrigued by the moving roadway and rapidly passed to the fastest of the slidewalks.

By that time, though, eight blocks had slipped past, and he hastily edged back to the slow walk. At the eleventh block, he cut off deftly onto the eastbound walk that intercepted the one he had been on.

Now he could see the Duke's Palace: a square, blocky edifice of lacy foamglass that was dwarfed by the towering buildings to either side. Remembering the awesome majesty of Winslow's and Miguel's palaces in comparison to the rest of Chicago and Buenos Aires, he thought it odd--and then not so odd--that Antarctica's Duke should affect a small, relatively unimpressive home.

The slidewalk brought him rapidly to the shining door that fronted the Ducal palace. Kesley formulated his plan, set forth his demands in his mind.

It was a bold, rash idea. If it failed, he had lost nothing. And if it succeeded--

He stepped off the slidewalk. The Duke's Palace seemed to beckon.

* * * * *

Inside, a robot attendant came humming up to him. Kesley confronted the featureless face calmly.

"I'd like to see the Duke."

"Certainly. Have you an appointment?"

"No," Kesley said. "Tell him--"

"Just one moment," the robot interrupted. "I'll arrange for an appointment. Your name, please?"

"Dale Kesley."

There was the momentary clicking of data-sorters over memory banks.

Then the robot said: "Confirmation requested. Was the name Dale Kesley?"

"That's right."

"The Duke will see you at once, Dale Kesley. I will escort you to him."

A little surprised, Kesley nodded. "That'll be fine."

The robot glided away on its treads toward a lift-ramp. Kesley followed, suppressing his impatience.

He wondered if the Duke of Antarctica would be surrounded by long rows of halberdiers. Somehow he doubted it.

A pulse tickled annoyingly in the side of his throat as the elevator rose. The trip was brief; the door-panel was sliding open almost before it had closed.

The robot rolled out first and started off down a long, bright corridor. Kesley followed.

The corridor seemed to be endless. Finally, the robot paused before a richly-panelled door and touched a stud. "Yes?" a deep voice said.

Inclining its speaking-grid toward a pickup embedded in the ornament of the door, the robot said: "Dale Kesley to see you?"

"_Kesley?_"

"Dale Kesley to see you," the robot repeated impassively.

Kesley heard stirring within. He tensed; this was suspicious. Was it this easy to gain audience with a Duke?

He waited nervously for the door to open. He had been hired to kill Winslow; Miguel had begged him once to drive a knife into _his_ breast. And now he was about to see a third Duke--the first he had any real motive for killing.

The door swung back. Another robot waited within.

"Don't tell me _you're_ the Duke?" Kesley said, aghast. He had long since learned that anything was likely.

"Hardly," the new robot replied, with as much of an ironic inflection as a robot voice could muster. "The Duke waits for you within. Come."

Fingering the keen knife at his side, Kesley entered the Ducal chambers.