Like all ages, this one had its symbols and, conveniently, the symbols of the status quo were actual as well as symbolic forces in maintaining the Freeze. There were twelve of them--the Twelve Dukes, they called themselves, and they ruled the world between them. They had no power over the forgotten land of Antarctica, but otherwise they were virtually supreme. North America, South America, East and West Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, North Africa, Equatorial Africa, South Africa, China, India, Oceanica--each boasted its Duke. They were products of the great blast of 2062, and they had found their way to power tortuously. Most of them had lived ordinary lives, picking their way through the wreckage with the others in the first three confused decades after the great destruction. But the others had died and the Twelve had not. They had endured through forty, fifty, sixty years, themselves frozen indefinitely in middle life. And as the decades passed, each forced his way to control of a segment of the world. Each carved himself a Dukedom and, in 2162, the centennial of the Old World's death, they gathered together to divide the world among themselves. There was a bitter struggle for power, but from it emerged the world of the Twelve Empires, stable, sedate, unchanging, determined never to allow the technology-born nightmare of old to return. The picture was attractive: twelve immortals, guiding the world along an even keel to the end of time. Rumors filtered through the Twelve Empires occasionally that danger threatened from Antarctica. Man had redeemed Antarctica from the ice before the great cataclysm, and the polar land was known to be inhabited. But Antarctica remained detached from humanity, erecting an impassable barrier that cut itself off from the Twelve Empires as effectively as if it were on another planet. And so, the stasis held. The battered world rebuilt, on a more modest scale than of old, clinging to the simple ways, and froze that way. Here, there, an isolated city refused to participate in the Freeze. They, however, didn't matter. They intended to stay isolated, as did Antarctica, and the Twelve Dukes did not worry long over them. In ninety percent of the world, time had stopped. I Half an hour before the neat fabric of his life was to be shattered forever, Dale Kesley was thinking desperately, _This will be a good day for the planting._ He stood at the end of a freshly-turned furrow, one brown hand gripping the sharebeam, the other patting the scaly gray flank of his mutant plough-horse. The animal neighed, a long croaking wheeze of a sound. Kesley looked down at the fertile soil of the furrow.