But most of these mutants had been sterile, carrying, like the Dukes, lethal genes. Others carried recessive characteristics only. Gradually, through the centuries, the mutant population had died out and dwindled away into scattered groups here and there in the biggest cities--and, word was, there was one city somewhere in Illinois populated only by mutants. This one was blind, Kesley saw now, but it moved with unerring accuracy. "Archbishop Santana!" the creature called, in a hoarse croak of a voice. "Wait for me, Archbishop!" "How does he know you?" Kesley asked. "Some of them have strange powers," Santana whispered. He nervously undid the crucifix that hung from the breast of his surplice and held it before him, as if to ward off the Devil. The mutant merely chuckled. "Put away your toy, Archbishop. I don't frighten so easily." "Stay back," Kesley snapped. "Keep away from us." To Santana he said, "Let's get out of here. Spur your horse and let's go. "No. Let's hear him out." The mutant stationed himself directly in their path and pointed a twisted, lumpy forefinger at Santana. "Behold the man of God," he croaked hoarsely. "_Ecce homo!_" "What do you want?" the Archbishop demanded. Kesley saw that Santana was sheet-white beneath his outward duskiness. "I want nothing. I merely came out here to laugh at the Archbishop of God who has come to Chicago on a mission of _murder_!" Kesley stiffened in the saddle, but Santana caught his arm just as he was about to go for his gun. "What is this talk of murder?" Santana demanded. Late afternoon clouds were dropping over the city now, and a cool wind came sweeping in from the lake. Kesley shivered as the mutant grinned, baring scraggly stumps of yellow teeth. "Murder? Did I say murder? But there will be no murder, milord. Merely betrayal--and betrayal again." * * * * * That night, in the rooms they had taken near the city's central marketplace, the image of the mutant haunted Kesley, imposing itself before his eyes with demonic insistence. Betrayal? No murder? The paradoxes and cloaked ambiguities the grotesque creature had uttered ground into Kesley's already sensitive consciousness, bringing with them the sharp image of the piebald spider of a man that was the mutant. Kesley looked across the room to Santana. The plump Archbishop, having divested himself of his traveling costume, wore a loose cassock without surplice. He was thumbing the pages of his breviary, flicking rapidly over matter long since committed to memory. "Padre?" "Eh?" "That mutant this afternoon--" "Don't speak of him," Santana said. "But he bothers me, Santana. I can't get him out of my mind, him or that crazy nonsense he was muttering." "That was not nonsense," the Archbishop said in a hollow voice. "He struck at the heart, that man." "I don't understand."