WAVE Orbiting Station
Now

DORIC

It was early, at least two hour before this morning's interrogation session was scheduled, when I buzzed Mac's door. After a long night of showing me her memories, Ann was dozing. I could still feel her presence, but I don't think she was conscious of what I was doing. She wasn't talking to me in my head. Come on Mac, answer. I buzzed the door again, looking up at the WAVE-Sec camera in the corridor—didn't matter, there was nothing suspicious about me talking to Mac before work. I buzzed his door again and kept buzzing until I heard his gruff voice on the other side calling, "Okay, okay, just a goddam minute."

He opened the door; he was half-dressed and bleary-eyed. "WHAT?" He said, pushing his hair away from his eyes. "What the hell, Girlie?"

I swept passed him into his neat-as-a-pin quarters. I waited for the door to swoosh close before I said: "How much time you think we have with Harmony?"

"What?"

"Before they stop this charade—it's obvious, she's not going to tell us where to find the other PCC members. Mac, are you awake?"

"I'm getting a mocha," he said, turning his back on me to head into his cubby-hole kitchen. "Want anything?" He pressed a button on his drinkmaker.

"No. How much time do we have?"

"Vestra, they don't tell me these things."

"Yeah, yeah, but what's your best guess?"

Pouring his cup full to the brim, Mac shrugged his shoulders. "One more session— maybe two. New Earth Sec will be here by the end of the week."

Crap! Frustration rose in me. I needed some straight answers. I just need to know what really happened—for Raquel's sake, for mine, and, yes, I guess for Anne's. When did I stop thinking for her as a murderer? I knew once New Earth Sec took over it would be much harder to get those answers. I muttered to myself, "So not much time to save—"

"To save?" Mac stopped in mid slurp; his face full of big brotherly concern. "Hold on, Girlie, what the hell are you talking about? You can't save Harmony. It's not your place to save Harmony."

"Not so loud!" I shushed Mac, as if his voice could wake Ann in the infirmary. I turned my attention inward for a second to see whether Ann was with us or not, but all I could hear was her steady rhythmic breathing. She was still asleep.

"Oh, come on, you don't seriously think—? It's against company privacy regulations for WAVE-Sec to record in employee quarters," said Mac, misunderstanding why I shushed him.

"I know, I know, I just meant calm down."

"Calm down? Vestra, that bitch's got some grade-A dust mojo. I've warned you, you can't get too close. The last person I heard talk about 'saving Ann Harmony' was Caraq and you know what happened to him."

"Yes, I know, he was shuffled out of WAVE Sec. But if you'd let me finish Mac, I meant save the interrogation—save our careers—you know, get her to talk." I said this forcefully, spitting it out at him, as if trying to convince both of us I hadn't fallen for Ann.

"You just admitted she's not going to."

"Snitch on her friends? No. But I think she'll tell us what really happened the day the aid workers disappeared."

The look on his face told me I had to convince him.

"Look, I know you, Mac. Despite what the bosses say, I know you would like to crack this case yourself—get a confession out of her—show up those arrogant pricks from New Earth Sec. And I think we can do it."

"Really? She won't snitch on her friends, but she's going to tell us what happened? You don't hear the contradiction there?"

"It depends on what really happened. It's not necessarily a contradiction."

But he still looked at me stone-faced. 

"Come on, she told us all that stuff about when her daughter died. She's opening up."

"She's playing with us. I've seen it before, Vestra. She'd dangle anything in front of Caraq, say anything he wanted to hear, like she was negotiating in good faith. Playing the simple, innocent country bumpkin; have you noticed how she changes how she talks? At first, it's all 'she goes,' and 'he goes,' and 'I never did nothing wrong,' but lately she's been talking like she has a degree."

Wait, was that true?

"It's all an act Girlie. Just like she pulled with Caraq—but all along behind our backs her crew on the Council was running the blockade, robbing WAVE Corp. blind, and the minute those aid workers went into the Pit, they were held hostage and when the Board would not give into their demands, they killed them. They killed those twenty people. So, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get dressed. I've got an interrogation session to lead." He turned away and stomped over to his closet.

But I'm too stubborn to give up. I reminded him: "That's not what the transcript of Caraq's debrief says. There's no mention of any demands being issued by the Pit Council after the aid workers' arrival."

"Caraq lied," he told me.

"But there are other reports and witness transcripts—none of them can definitively say how the aid workers died. Or even if they are dead." I went to stop him from pulling his clothes out of the closet, to force him to listen to me. "But we can find the truth."

"I know the truth, the Rats killed them. Ann Harmony is a murderer."

My face must have fallen, he must have seen uncertainty in my eyes, because Mac said: "I know you don't believe that, but it's true. You're just too close to Harmony to realize it. Don't make the same mistake you did on New Earth."

I took a step back. "What are you talking about?"

He shrugged. "Getting too close to a perp. What was her name—?"

I sat down on the bed. Did he also know Raquel had disappeared in the Pit along with her fellow volunteers? "How did you—?"

"I'm a detective, remember?"

"Do the bosses know?"

"Maybe. I didn't tell them."

I must have looked at him skeptically, because Mac added: "Look Girlie, you made a mistake then, but you corrected it by tipping off Campus Sec about the arson attempt. That's all I needed to know."

I wasn't going to enlighten him, but Mac was wrong. I didn't tip them off—not that Raquel believed me, not that anyone believed me.

"You did the right thing then, Girlie. So are you going to do the right thing now?"

"I'm trying to," I answered, "by finding out the truth."

"That's what New Earth Sec is going to do."

"Maybe, but I think we can do it first. Come on, Mac, if she's guilty—"

"If?" He said, putting on his shirt. "Don't tell me you've fallen for her—?"

"I haven't fallen for anything," I cut him off. "You think she's guilty? Let's proof it."

"How?"

Good question. There were so many pieces missing to this puzzle. What I needed was more first-hand information, which is exactly the reason I came to see Mac that morning. "You were on the barricades during the blockade. You served under Caraq. Why don't you tell me what happened? Tell me about Harmony and Caraq's conversations."

"It's all in transcripts."

"Fuck the transcripts! They're obviously incomplete. Maybe there's something that you can remember."

Mac sat down beside me on the bed and bent to put his shoes on. I waited. I knew him well enough to know that you had to wait for him to decide. When he finished with his shoes, he got up and went to pour himself another Mocha. He started pushing buttons on his drinkmaker. "I'm making you a chai. We've got about an hour and a half before the session starts. Put some toast on, and I'll tell you what I know."

I grabbed the bread out of the bag and popped a few slices in the toaster. "Do you remember Harmony going up to the barricade for the first time?"

Mac nodded and handed me a chai. "I knew there'd be trouble when Caraq asked her for a list of which Rats were missing from the Pit. He shouldn't have asked her that. He should have just sent her away."

"But surely," I said, "that was a reasonable question."

He sniffed. "It was the opening she was looking for."

Then over toast and tea, Mac proceeded to tell me that Harmony came back to the barricade the next day with her list—two hundred or so names of Rats who had been scooped up by WAVE Sec during the riot. Her son Travers was on that list. A trailer had been set up by the main barricade to act as a break room, and Caraq met her in there. "Before we let her in, we vacuumed her—trying at least to get rid of the surface dust. I watched her. She didn't flinch—just stood there rod-straight and calm, with this calculating look in her eyes. If she was upset about her son, I couldn't tell. Yes, she was beautiful, but like a statue is beautiful—cold and hard.

"But the minute I escorted her into the room and she saw Caraq she turned it on big time. It was like someone flipped a switch. Her voice began to wobble and her hands to shake. She made a big show of how scared she was for her son, how lost he was, how young, that he was really a good boy, how her husband had died over in the Little Etna mine. At one point, she even began to screech. She begged Caraq to take off his helmet and visor, told him she wanted to see the eyes of the person she was talking to. And the fool took off his helmet. From, that moment on, Caraq was a goner."

"A goner—really?" I scoffed at Mac. His reaction to Ann just seemed too melodramatic.

"Caraq was a career security officer with a stellar record," Mac explained. "He was a company man. I mean he's a member of  founding family, for shit's sake. He'd been working for WAVE for twenty-five years. He was loyal, and he did everything by the book—until her. He wasn't supposed to talk to her."

"Oh, come on, how do you negotiate if you don't talk?"

"We weren't supposed to negotiate, Girlie," he said, leaning towards me to make his point. "Caraq told us himself. He gave us strict instructions: nothing in, nothing out, no negotiations. Those were his orders. The Board of Directors was renting freighters; we were forcibly going to evict the Rats out of the Pit, put them on the freighters and ship them off world, but until the freighters arrived the place was to be in total lock down."

I shook my head at him. "That wasn't in any report I've read. And it's crazy, Mac. The freighters would have taken months to arrive from New Earth."

"That's not the point."

"What do you mean? Of course, it's the point." I scratched my head. "You're talking about a corporation that made a decision to starve 2,000 people. I can't believe you were okay with that."

"I was following orders, besides none of us thought it would come to that, we were told the freighters were already on route—that they'd arrive long before people starved."

"And you believed that?"

"This isn't about me; this is about Caraq." Mac was standing now—towering over me. "Listen to what I'm saying, Girlie. Caraq would never have questioned those orders before he met Harmony. He would never have fought for those detainees, for the Rats. She got inside his mind and twisted it."

I put my chai down on the counter and shook my head again, more confused than ever. "Maybe Caraq just decided the orders were wrong—reprehensible."

"No, Vestra, I knew Caraq. It was her."

I was disappointed by Mac's answer. I kept shaking my head, as if the movement would rearrange my thoughts, dislodge something nasty that was stuck in there. Was Caraq just another one of Ann's conquests? Was I?