The closure of the rival title could not have come at a better moment. For finally, and ignoring his own warning, Martin was going on holiday. Moreover, he was actually going to his beloved Mexico.
It was the first time he had taken such a journey. He had travelled extensively in Europe, or course, but that felt like next door. And he had been to the East Coast of America several times on business, but that felt sufficiently familiar - if only from all the films he had seen depicting it. What he was not ready for was the rather longer 11-hour flight to Mexico City, or for the scenes of controlled mayhem that greeted him at the airport.
He was exhausted when they landed: the flight had seemed interminable, a nightmare journey in a huge metal tube surrounded by hundreds of strangely stationary people. Once they had landed, he then had to walk for what seemed miles through corridors full of people shouting in a language he did not understand, despite his limited efforts to learn some Spanish before he left - he wondered whether they all spoke Aztec here. Similarly he found the chaos outside, where there was an endless succession of swarthy little men offering him taxis, rather frightening. The drive through the outskirts of Mexico City did not improve his mood: mile after mile of undistinguished dwellings, with dusty barefoot children everywhere.
Finally he reached his hotel in the very heart of the city, The Grand. His room faced out on to the Zócalo, the huge old market square of the Aztecs before the Spanish arrived and built their city on top of the old one. It had obviously seen better days, though at least the food in the rooftop restaurant seemed safe to eat. But the day after he arrived he was struck down with terrible pains in his guts, together with violent vomiting. His plans were ruined, for he had intended to fly out from Mexico City to Merida in the Yucatan peninsular to see the Mayan ruins there, notably the great pyramids at Uxmal and Chichen Itza. Such a voyage would clearly be unwise, so he would have to content himself with the sights in Mexico City itself, and with the nearby pyramids of Tenochtitlan.
But first he would have to build up his strength slowly, starting with small excursions. He went to the Archaeological Museum, which held the greatest collection of Aztec treasures in the world. The museum was everything he hoped it would be, but he found the journey there in the small taxi he had hailed - a Volkswagen with the front passenger seat removed to allow customers to enter and leave - disturbing. There was so much traffic, so many people. Going out by foot was even worse.
He had never felt so physically unsafe in all his life. He realised as he had never done before that he was a small defenceless human being, and that it would take very little to overpower him. As he lay sweating and sleepless on his bed each night, waiting for the ceremonial raising of the Mexican flag to the sound of trumpets in the square down below him each morning, he turned over these thoughts in his mind more and more, until his fears became paralysing.
He was unable to leave his hotel room. Instead he just sat there, trying to read his favourite True History of the Conquest of New Spain, the book written by a follower of Cortes in which are described his extraordinary feats in the kind of detail only eye-witnesses to events can provide. But now something terrible had happened: the book had lost its savour. Confronted with the reality of Mexico, and its silent, submerged Aztec people, he had the sense that Cortes had never really conquered them but simply pushed them down, just as the Great Conquistador had pushed down their palaces and temples under his new buildings.
He realised that Cortes had been nothing but an adventurer, somebody who had only destroyed, had created nothing. Somebody who had died forgotten and without honour in his twisted, lonely old age. And Martin realised that his own dreams, built on this shaky foundation, were equally misguided. He knew now that he would never write any screenplay on Cortes, even if he were capable of doing so, which he also doubted now.
Now that he had encountered this huge, bustling metropolis - had he read that its population was something like 20 million, and projected to grow to 30 million by the end of the century? - and had realised that there were worlds outside his own experience, he felt that his life back in Southdon was just a game, a joke. When he thought of his magazines, his management meetings, his wretched, carefully-honed budgets and plans, he felt even more sick. What did it matter when placed alongside all this? he thought as he watched the huge crowds milling around the Zócalo. How could it exist on the same planet? What have I done with my life so far, and what will I do with it now? What do I really want?
He had no answer to these questions, as he sat in his hotel room, drinking hot, sweet tea, the only thing that he had could stomach. He felt weak, but not just physically or in terms of courage. He felt as if everything had collapsed within, and there was nothing holding him up any more. He realised that he had already begun counting the days off until he could go home.
