Chapter XV

The Antarctican Duke lived well, Kesley thought. His private apartments were sprawling, luxurious, with more than one strange echo of Miguel's room. For one, a wall of paintings looked down--but they were not oil works such as Miguel had, but paintings done in some curiously realistic technique that hardly seemed to involve brushwork at all. They were more frozen images of life than paintings, he thought.

In the distance he could see television screens, reminding him of the closed-circuit battery taking up one wall of Miguel's study. The robot led him on, gliding him from room to room.

"This is the Duke's room," the robot said finally. "You may go in."

Kesley approached the dark, paneled-wood door. It swung open without his touching it.

A man stood there, dressed in the customary Antarctican costume, smiling, his arms folded. Kesley's eyes flickered in surprise; then he crossed the threshold.

"Van Alen," he said.

The noble grinned. "Hello, Dale. I owe you an apology. I found it necessary to flee, back there in the woods. But I've been following your subsequent adventures with great interest, Dale."

"I'll bet you have," Kesley said. He studied van Alen's powerful frame, meeting eyebrows, wide-set eyes. "I never thought I'd see you again, but here I am. I suppose you're here to take me to the Duke. Well, I'm ready."

Van Alen's smile grew broader. He extracted a jewel-studded, gold case from his tunic, pressed a stud. A tiny yellow filament licked forth. He touched it casually to his wrist; a fugitive tingle of pleasure passed over his face.

"Electrostimulator," he explained. "Sensory heightening. One of my favorite vices; one that I had to leave behind when I made my abortive journey to Iowa Province."

"I'd like to see the Duke," Kesley repeated impatiently.

Van Alen chuckled. "Look at my eyes, Dale."

Kesley glanced up from the electrostimulator in van Alen's hand; his gaze traveled up over the glossy, green fabric of the noble's tunic, over his stiff reddish beard, his firm lips, the jutting nose, to the eyes.

The eyes.

The deep, tired, weary, all-seeing eyes of an Immortal.

Oddly, it came as no surprise. Double identity was almost the rule in the world, it seemed. Daveen and Dawnspear, van Alen and the Duke, Kesley and--who?

Kesley groped unsteadily toward a chair; it sprang forward and settled itself beneath him. "You, yourself--"

"Antarctica is mine, Dale. I went north to bring you here, but I failed. My life was threatened in the forest. I ran. An Immortal is jealous of his life. Remember the scream of fear when you first drew the knife on me, after I shot your wolf? That was _fright_--naked crawling fright." The Antarctican shook his head bitterly. "I should never have left here."

"I've seen Daveen," Kesley said.

"I know. The otter sent him to me."

"Spahl?"

Van Alen nodded. "That's his name. You owe your life to him many times over, Dale."

"I owe my life to everyone at least six times, it seems," Kesley said sardonically. "It seems to be a game everyone likes to play--saving me."

"Spahl found out who Lomark Dawnspear really was and sent him here. Spahl was the one who arranged to have you sent here, by the only method that can penetrate our Barrier. It was Spahl also, I believe, who discovered you in the forest when you escaped from Miguel."

Kesley frowned. "Enough of Spahl. I've seen Daveen. I know I'm Immortal, now."

"Of course."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Van Alen spread his hands. "Would you have believed me?"

Kesley paused, thinking for a moment. "No," he said finally. "But when Daveen struck those notes on his instrument, I _knew_."

He rose and began to pace nervously. His booted feet sank deep into the glistening carpet that covered the entire room.

"I want to tell you why I came to see the Duke, van Alen. I mean that--I came to see the Duke as Duke, and the fact that he turned out to be you doesn't matter a damn to what I'm going to say."

Lazily van Alen touched the electrostimulator to his wrist again. "Go ahead. I'm most interested."

"From what little I've seen of Antarctica, it's a wonderful place. It's the only place in the world where science didn't die with the Great Blast--except Wiener, maybe, and there aren't any people in Wiener. You've got technology, here; you've got a working society. I've only been here a few hours and I don't know _what_ you have. But I do know this: you've got the power to knock Winslow and Miguel and the rest of them sprawling from their thrones, and break down the resistance to progress that the Twelve Dukes have so carefully built up."

The smile had left van Alen's face. The Duke was studying Kesley reflectively, his lips drawn into a tight scowl, his lean fingers knotted in the fringes of his beard.

Kesley moistened his lips. "For one reason or another, you've set up this impassable wall. You want to keep what you've got, and you don't want anything to do with the rest of the world to the north. Is this right?"

"This has been my policy," van Alen admitted.

Kesley glanced around uneasily. "Can you justify that policy?"

"I see no need to."

"All right," Kesley said. "Let me suggest an alternate policy: you step down from the throne and appoint me Duke. I'm an Immortal too, I've discovered lately; I'll take your job. And I'll break down all the barriers that keep the people of the world penned away from each other."

"Just how will you persuade me to allow this?" van Alen asked, with icy calmness.

_This is the moment_, Kesley thought. He stepped toward van Alen, seized the momentarily relaxed arm quickly, twisted it up behind the Immortal's back. At the same moment he drew his knife, touched it to van Alen's throat just below the beard.

"Miguel taught me that Immortals can be killed. He sent me off to kill one. I don't want to drive this knife home, van Alen, but I will if I have to. Get your robots in here and dictate a message of abdication."

"If I don't--"

Kesley twitched the knife slightly. Van Alen winced.

"I can break your hold, you know," the Duke pointed out.

"Probably." Kesley remembered the time van Alen had broken Kesley's grip in the Iowa farmhouse, had removed Kesley's hands from his throat as if he were a child. "But while you're doing that, I push the knife in. You don't have a chance. Will you dictate the abdication?"

"I've ruled here three hundred sixty years and more," van Alen said. "It's not easy to give up a throne in a moment after so long."

Again Kesley dug the knife in. This time, a few drops of blood trickled down, staining van Alen's broad collar. Immortal blood.

"Well?"

Sweat mingled with the blood droplets on van Alen's throat. "I agree to terms," he said hoarsely. "Snap on the recorder on my desk."

Kesley looked suspiciously at the knob mounted in the cabinet. "If this is a trick--"

"No trick," van Alen said.

Kesley backed across the room without releasing his grip on van Alen, and spun the noble around. "Reach down and snap on the recorder yourself. I'll be ready with the knife if anything strange happens. Then start to talk."

Van Alen shifted the position of the stud with an extended finger. A faint hum resulted; otherwise, nothing happened. Kesley relaxed just a trifle.

"Talk," he ordered.

Van Alen said: "People of Antarctica, hear and believe this message.

"Today, in the three hundred sixty-second year of my rule, I am giving up my throne.

"I turn it over to the man named Dale Kesley--like myself an Immortal. He will rule you wisely and well, I am sure, and will lead you to greatnesses I never dared to attain.

"Thank you."

Van Alen shut the machine off. "There," he said. "When I touch the spiral lever, the message will be beamed on wide circuit to the entire continent. The robots will shift allegiance to you at once; the place will be yours."

"Touch the lever," Kesley said hoarsely.

Van Alen reached out--but as he nudged the control, a bright green beam licked out suddenly. Acting instinctively, Kesley jabbed at the Duke's throat with the knife.

There was no knife.

The knife had been whisked from his hand the instant the beam had shot forth.

Van Alen turned, easily extricating his imprisoned arm from Kesley's numbed grasp. His fist crashed into Kesley's stomach, rocking him backward.

_Cheated!_ Kesley thought wildly. He recalled an earlier, forgotten resolution never to have dealings with Dukes again.

Mechanically he raised a fist to defend himself. Van Alen's attack drove through, and blows thudded against his face and chest. He tried to fight back; he hit van Alen glancingly on the shoulder, struck for his midsection. Another blow sent him staggering away.

Desperately Kesley leaped forward and flung himself on van Alen. They tumbled to the floor, rolled over several times, once with Kesley on top. Then van Alen began to get the upper hand. The Immortal was fantastically strong.

He rose to a sitting position atop Kesley, gripping both of Kesley's hands in one of his. He wiped flecks of perspiration from his chin and dabbed at the tiny cut on his throat.

"Sorry, Dale. In five hundred years I've learned a few tricks. That was a teleport beam; your knife's now somewhere in the main routing depot of my post office."

Kesley muttered a harsh, wordless curse. Then he said: "You'll kill me now, I suppose."

"For reacting the way I expected you would? Nonsense." Van Alen rolled off Kesley and stood up. Reaching to his desk, he pressed a buzzer and said, "Admit Daveen."

"Why do you want _him_?" Kesley asked.

"You'll see."

The panel glided open and Daveen stepped through, walking with uncanny assurance.

"Three," van Alen said.

Daveen began to play the same haunting melody he had played before. Kesley, lying on the floor, waited uncertainly for the moment when--

"_Three_," Daveen said.

One crushing fact rolled down on Kesley like a shock wave. _One_ fact.

He waited while its implications shuddered through him like subharmonics from Daveen's music-maker. His dazed mind evaluated the new datum.

"Of course," he said finally, standing up. "Why else would you have gone to Iowa Province looking for me? Why else would you be so interested in my whereabouts?"

"You see now?" van Alen asked.

"I see part of it. I see that _yours_ is the line of Immortals that breeds true, since I'm your son."

"I thought you would have guessed that when Daveen rolled back the very first layer of fog," van Alen said. "You didn't. But now you know _who_ you are."

"And why--why--"

"Four," van Alen ordered.

"_Four!_" Daveen cried.

And Kesley began to understand.