Kesley wondered about van Alen. The Antarctican had run away, and presumably had been shot by a bandit. Was he dead, his corpse lying rotting on the plain? It didn't matter, now. Kesley was in the hands of Duke Miguel. His destiny was no longer bound to that of Dryle van Alen. "Get along, now," a voice drawled. The line moved up. Slowly, the long queue was passing through the great double doors and into the city. Kesley's six captors surrounded him, three before and three aft. Their conversation during the long trip north to the capital had been limited to occasional rapid-fire bursts of incomprehensible Spanish, and Kesley still had no idea of the fate that awaited him. "We go to the Duke," the taciturn bandit leader said as they reached the gatekeeper. He gestured at Kesley. "We bring him a prize." "_Norteamericano?_" "_Sí_." The gatekeeper flicked a thumb over his shoulder. "Go in." 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.