Kesley's horse moved forward, and they entered the Ducal capital of
Buenos Aires.
_Cities look pretty much alike_, Kesley thought, as they entered. His
short acquaintance with van Alen had made him more observant, more
analytical. And, looking around, he framed the generalization. He might
just as well have been in Galveston, or St. Louis.
There were differences, of course, but they were not fundamental ones.
The dirt was a constant, the litter and the smell, and the undercurrent
of noise. The crowds, too. And also the houses: squat, two- or
three-story affairs, in the universally accepted architectural design,
with gray whorls of greasy smoke spiralling up from their hearth fires.
Kesley wondered what cities had looked like in the Old Days, before
the rain of bombs had leveled the world. New York had had millions of
people in it. Buildings had towered to the skies. Kesley remembered
how old Lester described a visit he had made to New York forty years
earlier. The blistered hulks of the great towers still stood, jagged
shells clawing at the sky. Forty, fifty, eighty stories high--it was
unbelievable.
Cities were different now. The Twelve Dukes had laid down the unvarying
pattern for the cities during the Time of Rebuilding, four hundred
years before. The old names had been kept, and the old locations. But
a city of the Twelve Empires now had a certain prescribed shape, and a
city in Argentina Province looked much like one in Illinois Province,
or Capetown Province. There was the wall, first of all, high and thick
and protective. Within the wall, the radial spokes of streets, and the
circling network of avenues, lined with low houses. At the heart of
the city, the Building of Government or, as in Buenos Aires and eleven
other cities in the world, the Ducal Palace.
Markets, shops, houses, schools, meeting-halls--these were all provided
for, all according to plan.
"Why are you taking me to the Duke?" Kesley asked, as they trotted
toward the towering palace.
The bandit chief shrugged. "The Duke wants _norteamericanos_. He pay us
to bring them; he tell us where you and your friend are. We bring. See?"
Kesley nodded. It was the truth, he saw; the bandit had merely been
following instructions.
_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.
They reached the approaches to the Palace, now. It was an imposing,
almost breathtaking building. In seeing to it that the short-lived
peoples of the world remained properly close to the ground, the Dukes
had stressed their own grandeur. The milk-colored Palace swept upward
like a bright fang piercing the sky. It was perhaps three blocks square
at its base, and rushed upward for more than a hundred feet before its
firm lines were broken by as much as a window.
The building's facade was frosty white and immaculate, a solid wall of
irradiated polyethylene. Spotlights--even now, in the daytime--played
against its shining bulk. The building was awesome, magnificent, a
monolithic monument to a fortuitous mutation affecting but twelve
men--and, thought Kesley, its very grandeur was faintly ridiculous.
A row of blue-clad guards was arrayed before the main entrance.
Kesley's captors rode to the approach, and the bandit chief engaged in
a brief colloquy, at the end of which one of the guards vanished within.
He returned a few moments later, bearing with him a small brown leather
pouch. The bandit accepted the pouch eagerly, and tossed it to one of
his men.
_My price_, Kesley guessed in wry amusement.
He was right. The bandit undid him and hauled him down from his mount.
As Kesley gratefully flexed his numbed arms, the bandit shoved him
toward the waiting guard.
"_Adios, norteamericano!_" The six bandits grinned cheerfully,
pocketing their bounty. They remounted, and rode away.
"Come with me," the guard said stiffly. He drew a pistol, but Kesley
shook his head.
"I won't make trouble. You can put that thing away."
The great door swung open and Kesley was conducted into a vast
courtyard lined with flowering shrubbery. At the far end of the yard,
Kesley saw a small group of men standing in irregular formation.
"We go there," the guard said. He pointed, and Kesley started off in
the direction indicated.
There were about ten men waiting there, under the surveillance of one
of the Duke's guards, who watched them with drawn gun. As Kesley drew
near, he saw that the men were, like himself, North Americans.
"Where are you from?" a white-haired man called. "Up north?"
"Iowa Province," Kesley said, joining the group. "You?"
"Illinois." The other's voice was bitter. "I'm from the court of Duke
Winslow. He'll hear of this; he'll--"