And the original code, the code he was modifying, was astounding. She had never seen anything so clean.
Dagmar looked up as she heard a noise outside the yurt. Sudden terror clutched her. Her heart crashed against her ribs.
Someone was outside.
As quietly as possible, she groped for the pistol at the small of her back. She failed on the first try and on the second managed to ease the Beretta from the holster. She stepped back, looked at the weapon, and remembered how to work it. She took the safety off and pushed the slide back, then let it go. She saw the shiny brass cartridge go into the breech as the slide snapped forward with a clack.
She saw Uruisamoglu jump. He spun around and saw the gun in her hand.
“Ananin ami!” he said. He sounded disgusted.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Don’t do that!” He was shaking a finger. “Don’t do that!”
Dagmar stepped around him, walking toward the door of the yurt. She wondered how long she had been watching Uruisamoglu at work, whether she’d become so absorbed in the coding that she hadn’t heard someone approach the tent.
Her feet seemed incredibly distant. She could barely feel them touch the carpets. The gun was heavy in her hand and somehow slippery. It wanted to fall out of her grip. She seemed to hear a thin keening on the air, a cry on the very edge of her hearing.
She was absolutely certain that she could hear someone creeping around outside. Someone who was very possibly waiting for her to come out, so that he could shoot her.
She moved closer to the yurt door.
Then Dagmar heard another noise, off to her right somewhere. She gave a cry and snapped the pistol up to aiming level, ready to fire.
She could fire right through the tent walls. But she couldn’t see out and didn’t trust herself to fire accurately at a sound.
“Did you hear that?” she said. Her voice came out as a husky whisper.
“Hear what?” Uruisamoglu asked.
Dagmar moved closer to the door. If she could fire out, she thought, they could fire in. They could gun her down right where she stood.
She tried to remember all the tactics she had learned playing first-person shooter games. She got down on her knees so as to make a smaller target of herself. She crawled slowly to the door, trying not to make a sound. She knew the enemy were there, waiting.
She thought they were off to the right. She put a hand on the wooden door. Her heart was crashing so loud that she couldn’t hear anything else.
Dagmar pushed the door open with her left hand and thrust the pistol out. Her finger was ready on the trigger. She saw only bare ground, with the view of the Kyzyl Kum beyond.
She shoved the door entirely open, swept the pistol around in an arc. Saw no one.
In a sudden murderous frenzy she ran out onto the wooden platform, then dropped from there onto the ground. She peered under the platform, ready to blast away the legs of anyone standing on the other side, but there was no one.
She ran clean around the yurt. No enemy appeared; no gunmen took shots at her. Wind keened through the tower.
Dagmar paused, the gun half-lowered, and listened. She heard nothing but the wind. Then she sagged as she realized what had happened.
She had been hallucinating. If she had actually seen any of the enemy, they would have been Indonesian rioters or maybe Maffya hit men.
She had nearly fired through the yurt wall at something that didn’t exist.
Well, she thought, that would have boosted Slash’s confidence.
Dagmar held out the gun, carefully lowered the trigger to the uncocked position, and slid the safety on. Her hands were trembling so savagely that she had a hard time getting the pistol back in its holster.
She went out onto the edge of the plateau and looked out. No vehicles were in sight. She returned to the yurt and tried to give Uruisamoglu a brave smile.
“Must have been an animal,” she said.
“Animal,” he repeated, disbelieving. He was still giving her that odd intense look, as if she were some specimen that he was examining under a magnifying glass.
“How’s the coding going?” she asked.
He seemed unhappy. “I could use some tea.”
There was a hot kettle already on the wood stove, giving off a trickle of steam. Dagmar found a teapot and black tea. A smoky aroma filled the yurt as she made the tea. She gave a cup to Uruisamoglu and took one for herself.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
He looked at her. “What are you, a musician like Gordon?”
She managed a smile. “No. I’m a game designer.”
He shook his head, skeptical.
“I designed the Stunrunner game,” she said. “Your friend Alaydin said you played it.”
Realization came. He rocked back a little. He pointed a finger at her.
“You’re that terrorist woman that Attila Gordon hired. I read about you in the Gazette.”
“I’m not a terrorist,” Dagmar said.
“My god,” he said. “No fucking wonder.” He sipped his tea. “This is a real mess.”
Dagmar could only agree. She looked down at the forearm crutches lying on the carpet beside him.
“Did you have an accident?” she said.
“A truck hit my car. Six months ago. A friend of mine got killed.” He looked up. “That’s when the Intelligence Section came to me with the project. I was able to work while I was in recovery.” He shook his head. “I should never have come out here.”
She looked around the yurt. “Why did you? This is a pretty primitive environment for someone who can’t get around very well.”
He rubbed the lip of the teacup against his chin. “I wanted to be by myself. I’d been in the hospital; I was in recovery for weeks, doing physical therapy.” He looked up at her. “I kept reliving the accident. Every time I saw a truck coming down the road I wanted to run and hide. I kept seeing my friend dead.” He looked down at the laptop screen. “I thought if I came up here, I could forget all that.”
“It’s not so easy,” Dagmar said. “I had some friends killed a few years ago and-it’s not something one forgets.”
Uruisamoglu said nothing, just sipped his tea.
“There are medications that can help,” she said. “You could see a doctor.”
Uruisamoglu pointed at his head, rotated the finger. “I don’t want to lose my edge,” he said. He seemed angry.
“There are anti-anxiety drugs and… and others,” Dagmar said. She waved a hand vaguely. “They’re not supposed to interfere with brain function.”
“Anxiety,” said Uruisamoglu, “is what keeps me going.” His dark eyes flashed beneath the unibrow. “Besides, I don’t want anyone thinking I’m crazy.”
“It’s not crazy; it’s supposed to be-”
Uruisamoglu looked up at her savagely. “Do you want me to do the job, or not?”
Dagmar looked at him.
“Do the job,” she said.
He put his hands on his keyboard and began to type. Dagmar sipped her own tea-it was deep and smoky, with a tang of the woodlands.
Anxiety is what keeps me going… I don’t want anyone thinking I’m crazy. Do you want me to do the job, or not? They were all her own excuses for living with her condition. On Uruisamoglu’s lips they sounded pathetic, defensive.
She began to suspect that the excuses didn’t sound any better coming from her.
Uruisamoglu began coding steadily. The tea provided a welcome warmth. Dagmar left the yurt again and walked to the edge of the plateau. If she was going to start hallucinating again, she figured it was best she do it out of Uruisamoglu’s sight.
Okay, she thought. I’ll see a doc. How much worse can it be?
The resolution, she thought, lacked a certain force. Possibly because the likely outcome of her current situation was that she would be killed and that she’d never see that doctor.
She huddled into her thin, useless jacket and shivered. Winds had raised a dust devil down in the sands. She watched it for a while, the swirling sand a silvery glitter in the sun, and then saw another trail of dust rising by the bluffs.