Robert Silverberg - The Changeling

In Memoriam: PKD

Just as the startling facade of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl came into view on the far side of the small pyramid, Hilgard felt a sudden touch of vertigo and swayed for a moment, as though a little earthquake had rippled through the Teotihuacan archeological zone. He leaned against a railing until the worst of the queasiness and confusion had passed. The heat? The altitude? Last nights fiery dinner exacting its price? Down here in Mexico a tourist learned to expect that some kind of internal upset could strike at any time.

But the discomfort vanished as quickly as it had come, and Hilgard looked up in awe, at the great stone staircase of the temple. The jutting heads of the feathered serpents burst like the snouts of dinosaurs from the massive blocks. Traces of the original frescoes, perhaps fifteen hundred years old, glinted here and there. Hilgard took eight or nine photos. But he was too hot and dusty and weary to explore the wondrous building with any real vigor, and he still felt a little shaky from that dizzy spell a moment ago. The pressure of time was on him also: he had promised to meet his driver at two oclock at the main parking lot for the return trip to Mexico City. It was nearly two now, and the parking area was at least a mile to the north, along the searing, shadeless thoroughfare known as the Avenue of the Dead. He wished now that he had started his tour here at the awesome Quetzalcoatl Temple instead of consuming his mornings energy scrambling around on the two huge pyramids at the other end.

Too late to do anything about that. Hilgard trudged quickly toward the parking lot, pausing only to buy a tepid beer from a vendor midway along the path. By quarter past two he was in the lot, sweaty and puffing. There was no sign of his driver and the battered black cab. Still at lunch, probably, Hilgard thought, relieved at not having to feel guilty about his own tardiness but annoyed by yet another example of Mexican punctuality. Well, now he had time to get a few more shots of the Pyramid of the Sun while he waited, and maybe

Seor? Seor!

Hilgard turned. A drivernot hishad emerged from a shiny little Volkswagen cab and was waving to him.

Your wife, seor, she will be here in two more minutes. She is taking more pictures on the top of the big pyramid, and she says to please wait, she will not be long.

I think you want someone else, Hilgard said.

The driver looked baffled. But you are her husband, seor.

Sorry. I am not anybodys husband.

Is a joke? I am not understanding. The driver grinned uncertainly. A blonde woman, dark glasses. I pick you and she up in front of the Hotel Century, Zona Rosa, ten oclock this morning, you remember? She said to me, ten minutes ago, tell my husband wait a little, I go take more pyramid pictures, just a few minutes. And

Im staying at the Hotel Presidente, Hilgard said. Im not married. I drove out here this morning in a black Ford cab. The drivers name was Chucho.

The Mexicans grin, earnest and ingratiating, stayed on his face, but it grew ragged, and something hostile came into his eyes, as though he was beginning to think he was being made the butt of some incomprehensible gringo prank. Slowly he said, I know Chucho, yes. He took some American people down to Xochimilco this morning. Maybe he was your driver yesterday.

He met me outside the Presidente. We arranged it last night. The fare was seventeen hundred pesos. Hilgard glanced around, wishing the man would show up before things got even more muddled. You must be mistaking me for a different American. Im traveling alone. I wouldnt mind meeting an interesting blonde, I guess, but I dont happen to be married to one, and I really am certain that youre not the driver I was with this morning. Im very sorry if

There is your wife, seor, said the Mexican coolly.

Hilgard turned. A trim, attractive woman in her late thirties, with short golden hair and an alert, open face, was making her way through the clutter of souvenir stands at the entrance to the parking area. Ted! she called. Here I am!

He stared blankly. He had never seen her before. As she drew closer he forced a smile and held it in a fixed and rigid way. But what was he supposed to say to her? He didnt even know her name. Excuse me, maam, Im not actually your husband. Eh? Was there a television program, he wondered, that went to elaborate lengths to stage complicated hoaxes with hapless, unsuspecting victims, and was he at the center of it? Would they shower him with home appliances and cruise tickets once they were done bewildering him? Pardon me, maam, but Im not really Ted Hilgard. Im just someone else of the same name and face. Yes? No.

She came up to him and said, You should have climbed it with me. You know what theyve been doing up there for the past half hour? Theyre celebrating the spring equinox with some kind of Aztec rite. Incense, chanting, green boughs, two white doves in a cage that they just liberated. Fascinating stuff, and I got pictures of the whole thing. Hold this for me for a minute, will you? she said casually, slipping her heavy camera bag from her shoulder and pushing it into his hands. God, its hot today! Did you have fun at the other temple? I just didnt feel like hiking all the way down there, but I hope I didnt miss

The driver, standing to one side, now said mildly, It is getting late, Missus. We go back to the city now?

Yes. Of course. She tucked a stray shirttail back into her slacks, took the camera bag from Hilgard and followed the driver toward the Volkswagen cab. Hilgard, mystified, stayed where he was, scanning the parking lot hopelessly for Chucho and the old black Ford and trying to construct some plausible course of action. After a moment the blonde woman looked back, frowning, and said, Ted? Whats the matter?

He made an inarticulate sound and fluttered his hands in confusion. Possibly, he told himself, he was having some sort of psychotic episode of fugue. Or perhaps that moment of dizziness at the Temple of Quetzalcoatl had in fact been a light stroke that had scrambled his memory. Could she really be his wife? He felt quite certain that he had been single all his life, except for those eight months a dozen years ago with Beverly. He could clearly envision his bachelor flat on Third Avenue, the three neat rooms, the paintings, the little cabinet of pre-Columbian statuettes. He saw himself at his favorite restaurants with his several lovers, Judith or Janet or Denise. This brisk, jaunty blonde woman fit nowhere into those images. But yetyet

He had no idea what to do. His fingers began to tremble and his feet felt like blocks of frozen mud, and he started to walk in a numbed, dazed way toward the Volkswagen. The driver, holding the door open for him, gave him the sort of venomous look of contempt that Hilgard imagined was generally given to gringos who were so drunk at midday that they were unable to remember they were married. But Hilgard was not drunk.

The woman chattered pleasantly as they zipped back toward Mexico City. Evidently they were planning to visit the Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park that afternoon, and tomorrow morning they would move on either to Cuernavaca or Guadalajara, depending on which one of them won a low-keyed disagreement that had evidently been going on for several days. Hilgard faked his way through the conversation answering vaguely and remotely and eventually withdrawing from it altogether by pleading fatigue, a touch of the sun. Before long, gray tendrils of smog were drifting toward them: they were at the outskirts of Mexico City. In the relatively light Sunday traffic, the driver roared flamboyantly down the broad Paseo de la Reforma and cut sharply into the Zona Rosa district to deposit there in front of the slender black-and-white tower of the Hotel Century. Give him a nice tip, darling, the woman said to Hilgard. Weve kept him out longer than we were supposed to.