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?"

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