Over time they faded away, though she could still feel their presence, clustered in some other dimension separated from hers only by the thinnest possible membrane.
Dagmar found herself lying naked in the front room, her hand clutching the sheet up to her neck. The soft-voiced corporal squatted at her feet in his camouflage battle dress. Ismet, wearing only his trousers, stood guard by the door, keeping out the others who Dagmar sensed were clustered on the balcony.
The corporal smiled at her. He was dark and square headed, the sleeves of his battle dress peeled back from hairy arms.
“Are you feeling better, miss?” he asked.
Her heart was racing like the engine of a Ferrari.
“I think so,” she said. The words felt strange in her mouth, as if she’d never spoken before.
“If you have this problem again, miss,” he said, “you just concentrate on your surroundings. The furniture, the ceiling, your clothes-whatever you’ve got around you, right?”
“All right,” she said.
He winked a bright brown eye and grinned at her.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Poole, miss,” he said. “Roger Poole.”
“Thank you, Roger Poole,” Dagmar said.
“Perhaps you could do with a bit of refreshment,” Poole said. “A cup of tea, perhaps?”
“Yes. Why not?” She found herself willing to follow any suggestion at all.
Poole rose carefully to his feet, watching her carefully to make certain she didn’t see the movement as a threat. He walked to the kitchen. Ismet approached, watching from a carefully calculated distance.
“I think I’d like to wash my face,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. Ismet moved toward her to offer a hand, then stepped back. It was the first time Dagmar had ever seen him when he didn’t know how to behave. It was almost comical.
Dagmar wrapped the sheet more securely around herself and rose to her feet. A narcotic eddy seemed to swirl into her head, and for a moment she tottered on her feet. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself and then walked to the bathroom.
While she was washing she heard Poole make a report on his radio and Ismet open the door to tell everyone there that whatever happened was over, they could leave. Dagmar ignored this, toweled her face, and looked at herself in the mirror-she saw an older woman there, pale and prematurely aged, hair in disarray, skin sallow in the overhead light. She stared at herself for a moment, stared into her own bleak future, and then picked up her comb. She arranged her hair and then went to the bedroom to put on some clothes.
When she returned, she saw Poole and Ismet both looking at her with cautious anticipation.
“It’s over,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
Till next time, she thought. Which was probably what they were thinking as well.
Poole had the kettle on and had found teas on the kitchen counter. Dagmar picked a Darjeeling over something herbal-she didn’t want to be eased back into a sleep where the hallucination could strike again; she much preferred staying awake till dawn.
The three of them sat in the dinette and drank tea and chatted for an hour-chatted about nothing, because Poole proved an expert at harmless blather. He talked about football, pop stars, movies, anything airy and unlikely to send Dagmar back into whatever psychic mine field she’d stumbled into.
After it became obvious that Dagmar was unlikely to relapse into a raving, weeping maniac, Poole washed his cup in the sink, picked up his rifle, said his polite good-byes. He made sure they knew that he’d be on guard till six, then let himself out.
Dagmar looked in wonder at the closed door. “The kindness of strangers…” she murmured.
Ismet placed his cup carefully in his saucer.
“Has this happened before?” he asked.
“It wasn’t this bad, usually.”
“This bad? Like with police breaking down the door?”
Dagmar shook her head.
“No police,” she said.
“How long has it been going on?”
She looked down at her teacup.
“Three years. Since my friends were killed.”
He studied her through his spectacles for a long moment.
“Are you… in treatment?” he asked.
She ran her fingers through her gray hair. “I figured it would get better on its own. And it was, mostly, until I came here. And now, with people getting killed, it’s all coming back.”
“Do you think you should see a doctor?”
Dagmar shook her head.
“I have this job. I run a company.” She laughed. “I’m running a fucking revolution, for Christ’s sake! I can’t afford any downtime. And I’m often running my company on borrowed money-and there’s no way a bank is going to loan money to a crazy person. And-” She shook her head. “We can’t afford insurance to cover mental disorders, so I’d basically be on my own.”
He considered this, head tilted.
“I think you should see a doctor, anyway.”
She waved a hand. “After this is all over.”
Apparently Ismet decided not to press the point.
“I’m going to go on the balcony and smoke a cigarette, okay?” he said.
“By all means.”
He rose from his chair.
“I only smoke when I’m under stress,” he said.
She had already observed this. She offered a faint smile.
“No time like the present,” she said.
He collected his shirt and cigarette pack from the bedroom, then stepped out onto the balcony.
Poor man, she thought. He signed up a gaming genius and got a crazy person instead.
Dagmar sighed, rose, washed the tea things. When he returned, she waited on the living room couch. She looked at him, patted the cushion beside her.
He joined her, carrying with him a pleasantly sweet odor of tobacco. She kissed him and rested her head on his shoulder; he put an arm around her.
“It’s all right if I touch you now?” he said.
“You can touch me any time I’m not raving.”
“Okay.” He kissed her forehead. There was bristle on his chin. She nestled against his warmth.
“You don’t want to go to bed?” he asked.
“No.” The bed had betrayed her to the enemy; she didn’t want to lie in it again.
She didn’t want to fall asleep, so she talked. She told Ismet about her girlhood in Ohio, her drunken father, her passive but persistent mother. She told him about her time at Caltech, her marriage to an English chemistry professor, her life in England, and her divorce.
“I’m deeply flawed,” she said. “You should know that.”
Then she reflected that he’d probably worked that out on his own.
She spoke of her return to California to reunite with her friends and start a game company. She told him about being caught in the Indonesian revolt, about Austen’s and Charlie’s getting killed, about the Maffya hit man she’d tracked through the Briana Hall ARG. She stopped short of telling him how she resolved the problem-she wasn’t that crazy, not yet.
Maybe, toward dawn, she drowsed. She only knew that the daylight caught her by surprise and that she rose from the couch with her mind in a whirl, unclear how she got here, misplaced on Aphrodite’s Island, surrounded by the spirits of the dead, lost in the bright Mediterranean air.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FROM: Rahim
The following proxy sites are still unblocked. Please pass this on to anyone in Turkey.
97.107.137.80:3128
200.65.127.161:3128
202.94.144.73:80
129.82.12.188:3128