Read Online Changeling (Illustrated) by Roger Zelazny - Free Book Online Page A

into the night. Cars passed, but there were no other pedestrians in sight. Guitar case at his side, he began walking in the direction of Betty’s apartment.
    Fumes rose through a grating beside the curb, spreading a mildly noxious odor across his way. He hurried by. From somewhere across town came the sound of a siren.
    It was a peculiar feeling that had come over him earlier in the evening—as if he had, for a brief while, been the subject of an intense scrutiny. Though he had quickly surveyed all of the club’s patrons, none of them presented such a heavy attitude of attention. Thinking back, he had recalled other occasions when he had felt so observed. There seemed no correlation with anything but a warm sensation over his birthmark—which was what had recalled the entire matter to him: he was suddenly feeling it again.
    He halted, looking up and down the street, studying passing cars. Nothing. Yet . . . 
    It was stronger now than it had been back at the club. Much stronger. It was as though an invisible observer stood right beside him . . . 
    He began walking again, quickening his pace as he neared the center of the block, moving away from the corner light. He began to perspire, fighting down a powerful urge to break into a run.
    To his right, within a doorway—a movement!
    His muscles tensed as the figure came forward. He saw that it bore a big stick . . . 
    “Pardon me,” came a gentle voice, “but I’m not well. May I walk a distance with you?”
    He saw that it was an old man in a strange garment.
    “Why . . . Yes. What’s the matter?”
    The man shook his head.
    “Just the weight of years. Many of them.”
    He fell into step beside Dan, who shifted his guitar case to his left hand.
    “I mean, do you need a doctor?”
    “No.”
    They moved toward the next intersection. Out of the corner of his eye, Dan saw a tired, lined face.
    “Rather late to be taking a walk,” he commented. “Me, I’m just getting off work.”
    “I know.”
    “You do? You know me?”
    Something like a thread seemed to drift by, golden in color, and catch onto the end of the old man’s stick. The stick twitched slightly and the thread grew taut and began to thicken, to shine.
    “Yes. You are called Daniel Chain—”
    The world seemed to have split about them, into wavering halves—right and left of the widening beam of light the string had become. Dan turned to stare.
    “—but it is not your name,” the man said.
    The beam widened and extended itself downward as well as forward. It seemed they trod a golden sidewalk now, and the street and the buildings and the night became two-dimensional panoramas at either hand, wavering, folding, fading.
    “What is happening?” he asked.
    “—and that is not your world,” the man finished.
    “I do not understand.”
    “Of course not. And I lack the time to give you a full explanation. I am sorry for this. But I brought you this way years ago and exchanged you for the baby who would have become the real Daniel Chain. You would have lived out your life in that place we just departed, and he in the other, to which you now must go. There, he is called Mark Marakson, and he has become very dangerous.”
    “Are you trying to tell me that that is my real name?” Dan asked.
    “No. You are Pol Detson.”
    They stood upon a wide, golden roadway, a band of stars above them, a haze of realities at either side. Tiny rushes of sparks fled along the road’s surface and a thin, green line seemed traced upon it.
    “I fail to follow you. Completely.”
    “Just listen. Do not ask questions. Your life does depend upon it, and so do many others. You must go home. There is trouble in your land, and you possess a power that will be needed there.”
    Dan felt constrained to listen. This man had some power himself. The evidence of it lay all about him. And his manner, as well as his words, compelled attention.
    “Follow that green line,” the man instructed him. “This road will