He waited nervously for the door to open. He had been hired to kill Winslow; Miguel had begged him once to drive a knife into _his_ breast. And now he was about to see a third Duke--the first he had any real motive for killing. The door swung back. Another robot waited within. "Don't tell me _you're_ the Duke?" Kesley said, aghast. He had long since learned that anything was likely. "Hardly," the new robot replied, with as much of an ironic inflection as a robot voice could muster. "The Duke waits for you within. Come." Fingering the keen knife at his side, Kesley entered the Ducal chambers. XV The Antarctican Duke lived well, Kesley thought. His private apartments were sprawling, luxurious, with more than one strange echo of Miguel's room. For one, a wall of paintings looked down--but they were not oil works such as Miguel had, but paintings done in some curiously realistic technique that hardly seemed to involve brushwork at all. They were more frozen images of life than paintings, he thought. In the distance he could see television screens, reminding him of the closed-circuit battery taking up one wall of Miguel's study. The robot led him on, gliding him from room to room. "This is the Duke's room," the robot said finally. "You may go in." Kesley approached the dark, paneled-wood door. It swung open without his touching it. A man stood there, dressed in the customary Antarctican costume, smiling, his arms folded. Kesley's eyes flickered in surprise; then he crossed the threshold. "Van Alen," he said. The noble grinned. "Hello, Dale. I owe you an apology. I found it necessary to flee, back there in the woods. But I've been following your subsequent adventures with great interest, Dale." "I'll bet you have," Kesley said. He studied van Alen's powerful frame, meeting eyebrows, wide-set eyes. "I never thought I'd see you again, but here I am. I suppose you're here to take me to the Duke. Well, I'm ready." Van Alen's smile grew broader. He extracted a jewel-studded, gold case from his tunic, pressed a stud. A tiny yellow filament licked forth. He touched it casually to his wrist; a fugitive tingle of pleasure passed over his face. "Electrostimulator," he explained. "Sensory heightening. One of my favorite vices; one that I had to leave behind when I made my abortive journey to Iowa Province." "I'd like to see the Duke," Kesley repeated impatiently. Van Alen chuckled. "Look at my eyes, Dale." Kesley glanced up from the electrostimulator in van Alen's hand; his gaze traveled up over the glossy, green fabric of the noble's tunic, over his stiff reddish beard, his firm lips, the jutting nose, to the eyes. The eyes. The deep, tired, weary, all-seeing eyes of an Immortal. Oddly, it came as no surprise. Double identity was almost the rule in the world, it seemed. Daveen and Dawnspear, van Alen and the Duke, Kesley and--who?