Part 10

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.

XVI

"You know, now?" van Alen asked.

Kesley smiled wanly. "This isn't the first time we've had this discussion, then."

"No. The last time, though, you had no knife."

"If I had known who you were, I'd never--"

"Certainly," van Alen said. "You're not to be blamed."

"May I go?" Daveen interrupted suddenly.

Van Alen nodded. "Of course, Daveen. You've done splendidly."

"Thank you, sire," said the Singer gravely. Bowing, the blind man backed unerringly out into the adjoining elevator. Van Alen turned back to Kesley.

"You remember, now, the circumstances under which we last met in this room?"

"Yes," Kesley said. "I came to you--to ask you to abdicate in my favor, Father. You refused."

"And you ran away."

"What else could I do? You were Immortal; I was twenty-three, and you refused to leave the throne. I thought you were wrong in your ways."

"Twenty-three--and you wanted to rule," van Alen repeated reflectively. "Now, of course, you have the wisdom of mature years. Why, you must be nearly thirty, old man!"

"Twenty-eight. And I'm still aging. What was it Stohrbach said, your geneticist? That I'll continue to age until about the age of thirty and then stop?"

"Thirty-five. You haven't reached full maturity yet."

"But my cells show the regenerative pattern of an Immortal."

Kesley let the other newly-awakened memories filter through his mind.

"I left you," he said. "Angrily. I had myself teleported through your Barrier and into North America, where I intended to live under an assumed name and work for the overthrow of Winslow--as a start."

"Is that it?" van Alen asked. "I was never sure of your plan."

Kesley nodded. "I intended gradually to seize the Twelve Empires--and then ask you to lower your force-screen."

Van Alen smiled slowly. "Worthy of a Duke, son. But it didn't work. One of Winslow's mutant telepaths--now dead and out of circulation, happily--discovered your true identity. Word traveled fast among the Twelve Dukes that I had had a son who bore the Immortal traits. They resolved to kill you, hoping I would never have another. And you were caught, there in Winslow's own home yard. It was Daveen who rescued you. The rest you've already relearned."

Kesley nodded, calmly now. "I'm back home now, Father."

"At last. Daveen hid you so well I thought we'd never find you. Finally I decided to go myself. I found you--and lost you again."

"You're missing my point," Kesley said sharply. "I'm _back home_."

"And?"

"And I haven't changed my ideas."

Van Alen slipped the electrostimulator into his hand once again and let the minute voltage caress his nerves. "So?" he said quizzically.

"I still feel the force-screen ought to come down."

Van Alen shook his head frowningly. "You're not the green boy you were when you left, you know. You've seen the courts of the Dukes; you've worked on a farm. You know what it is to flee for your life."

"And I've seen Mutie City and the Colony and Wiener," Kesley added. "I've really been around."

"And?"

"And I think the world's rotten at the core! I 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!"

Pain filtered over van Alen's face. He stared sadly at Kesley for a moment, with the timeless expression in his eyes that Kesley knew he, himself, would one day acquire. "You still don't understand," van Alen said huskily, "why that Barrier is up."

"No. I don't."

"You've dealt with three Immortals: Winslow, Miguel, me. What do we have in common?" van Alen demanded suddenly.

Startled, Kesley stopped to think of their common characteristics. _Nothing in common_, he nearly answered. Then he saw he was wrong.

Physical vitality. Long life. These things were obvious.

The deepness of the eyes. Constant for all three.

And a deepness of personality, a strange complexity of behavior, a pattern of actions that appeared to be based on random selection. Yes, that was it. "You're unpredictable," Kesley said. "One never knows what to expect from you. It's as if you act without motivation sometimes."

"It seems that way, doesn't it? But look: you're lying in a tub of water, completely submerged. A hand suddenly breaks the surface of the water and plunges a knife into you. All you see is the hand; for all the evidence you have, that's all there is--just a hand.

"It's completely unmotivated, isn't it? Why would a mere _hand_ want to murder you? No reason at all. But suppose that hand is attached to the arm of your most deadly enemy? It's not so unmotivated then, is it?"

"You mean we only see segments of events; you see the entire happening. That it?"

"It comes with long life. You'll have it too," van Alen said. "It's a curse. You'll be living in three dimensions and everyone else in two. And no one will ever manage to understand you fully except another one like you."

"You're stalling. The Barrier," Kesley prodded.

"The Barrier. I put that up out of fear." Van Alen's strong head drooped; his ancient eyes looked bleak. "I'm safe, secure down here. We've continued to progress. No bombs were dropped on Antarctica. I don't want any bombs coming down."

"But there won't be! There can't be! They've virtually reverted to a pre-mechanical culture in the Twelve Empires. They've got as much chance of being able to build bombs as you do of sprouting wings."

A new thought occurred to Kesley. "When did you come to Antarctica? You said you'd only been ruling three hundred sixty-odd years. The Blast was more than four hundred years ago."

Van Alen seemed to be trembling. "I came to Antarctica in 2164, established control, and erected the barrier the following year." His voice wavered. "Do you want the rest of it?"

"I don't need it." Kesley jabbed a forefinger at the Duke. "You never told me this, but now I understand. 2162--that's the year the Twelve Dukes met and divided up the world, all except Antarctica. Right?"

"Yes," van Alen said tonelessly.

"Okay. In 2162, there were twelve Empires--and _thirteen Immortals_! You were the odd man out!"

Van Alen winced, and Kesley felt a surge of pity now that he finally had voiced the words. Van Alen had lived alone with these memories for hundreds of years.

"They cast you out," Kesley went on. "You were an Immortal--it was obvious, you were a hundred years old and still in the prime of life--and everyone else grabbed a Dukedom before you did. So you slunk off to Antarctica with your tail wrapped around your hind legs, and founded yourself an Empire down here."

"No more, please," van Alen said. "Please."

"I want to go on." Kesley's eyes flashed. "You built that barrier out of fear and hatred; you closed yourself away from the Twelve who rejected you! And now--"

"And now I'm very tired," said van Alen. He rose. "Five years ago you argued for overthrowing the Barrier. I refused without citing reason. Now you understand why."

"It was because you didn't dare face your twelve old enemies," Kesley said mercilessly. "Even though Antarctica had continued scientific development and they had shunned it, even though you now had the weapons and the techniques to blast the twelve of them off their thrones at long distance, you still kept thinking of yourself as the poor relation who got shunted away. That's why you ran away when the bandits caught me in Argentina; you dreaded going before Miguel. You had to escape even at the cost of leaving me behind."

"That's part of it." Van Alen seemed to recover some of his former poise. "If you'll remember, though, I couched my refusal of your ideas five years ago in such a way that you'd almost certainly react by running away."

"I remember. Why?"

"You've seen the world. You've seen other Dukes. You know what the world is like. You've matured. It was a sink-or-swim process, and you swam."

Kesley began to see what was coming. His fingers started to tremble.

"Five years ago," van Alen went on, "I said no. Today's answer is different. It's _yes_."

Van Alen laid his still powerful hand on Kesley's shoulder. "I can't take down the Barrier myself. I need it up there, as protection--protection against emotional fears that even I know, intellectually, are foolish.

"But _you_ can take it down, Dryle--as Duke of Antarctica!"

Kesley had seen it coming. He nodded. "I'm so used to thinking of myself as Dale Kesley that it's hard to remember my name's the same as yours--Dryle van Alen."

"_Dux et Imperator_," the older man added, grinning. "A little while ago I dictated an abdication. At knifepoint, to be sure, but I kept my voice calm. That message is still on the tapes. Any time you want, you have my permission to broadcast it."

Young van Alen stared evenly at his father. "The Barrier _will_ come down. The Dukes will fall. I'll get Narella back from Miguel."

"These things will happen. Remember, though, there will be others after Narella. It's one of the prices you pay for long life."

"I know," he said gravely. He grinned. "I'm still young, yet, and so is she. There's time for me to start learning how to take the long view later."

He turned away and extended a hand toward the control that would broadcast his father's message to all the continent of Antarctica.

His hand hovered for a moment.

Once, he knew, Antarctica had been covered with ice, a frozen, desolate land. Men had cleared the ice and built a garden continent.

Now, the new Duke thought, it was the other nine-tenths of the world that lay under an icy pall. That could be altered, too. The Twelve Dukes could be swept away; the walls around the cities and around men's minds could be destroyed. And it was not necessary that the tragedy of 2062 be repeated.

His finger brushed the stud and his father's words began to echo through the city and out over the entire continent.

"_People of Antarctica, hear and believe this message. Today, in the 362nd year of my rule, I am giving up my throne._"

As the abdication decree resounded through the halls of the Ducal palace, he turned and saw the robots rolling toward him, ready to give allegiance to their new lord.

He drew a deep breath. Plenty of work lay ahead. The years of the freeze were at their end; the great thaw was just beginning.