WAVE Orbiting Station
Now

Harmony

She was grumpy the next morning, this detective of mine. The purr in her voice was hidden behind loud barking that hurt my head.

"What did the PCC members do?" she demanded.

I shrugged. I suppose she thought if she got me talking, I'd let slip where the rest of them were hiding. Did she think I was that dumb? I told her instead: "I want to talk about Sila."

"Maybe later. Tell me about Omari, Bergen and Ng."

I shrugged again. It was hard to know where to look when I spoke to her. Do I look into the camera? It's just a flashing red eye. Do I look down at the scratches on the metal table? Do I look at the dirt underneath my fingernails? Do I look at the scuffed walls of this small room that once was white, but now not so much? I couldn't concentrate; I couldn't keep my mind from wandering.

"Answer the question," my detective barked again. I wondered what she looked like. I wondered why she was in such a bitchy mood—maybe she hadn't slept well—maybe she had had a bad dream.

"Commander, are you listening to me?"

I wished she wouldn't call me that. "Yes, I heard you." My instinct was not to tell her anything about the PCC. I had spent a lot of time keeping their secrets; it was second nature to me. But then I thought I don't have to do that anymore. So why not tell the detective? "Omari did the organizing. Bergen and Ng did the supply runs back and forth to the Plat."

"Yes, we know all about the black market the PCC ran." She sounded like such a cynic. How old was she? "What about Mancy?"

"You could ask him, you know. But, sure, okay—Mancy did a little of this and that. He's good at chatting up people. He can be charming when he wants. Before the blockade and the barricades went up, before the riot, he used to visit the rich matrons on the Plat, charm them in to helping us."

"You mean Mancy conned those women out of their money—conned them into supporting political terrorists."

"That's not who we were."

"You deny the PCC tried to drum up anti-WAVE sentiment?"

Where in the Hell did she get that from? "Look, Mancy flirted with those trophy wives so they'd use their digi-accounts to buy us stuff—basic stuff we needed to survive. We weren't lobbying anyone. And we didn't run a black market. We never sold the supplies to the Pitters; we were running a charity."

"An underground charity—without a license."

"Oh for fuck sake!" I threw up my hands and the handcuff pulled at my wrist. "Who would have given us a charity license? WAVE? Your bloody bosses just wanted all of us Pitters gone."

"Can you blame them? You're all trespassers and vandals."

"No, no, that's not true." God, she's thick-headed. There must be a way to get through to her. "You don't know what it's like to live in the Pit, to grow up there." I heard a gruff laugh. "Yes, some people grow up there. Some people don't want to leave. It's their home." Another gruff laugh. I pushed back. "Why is that so funny?" I yelled at the camera and my voice echoed around the empty off-white room. "There are people in the Pit whose ancestors were among the first colonists—who settled in this area over three hundred years ago. Did you know that? Then WAVE came and pushed them off the Plat—none of them ever got paid for their land. They're good people. They're just looking for a little justice."

"If they're such lovers of justice, why don't they give themselves up? Why don't the rest of the PCC members come forward and tell us what happened?"

Must be nice to see the world so black-and-white. "Because...because..." How do I explain this to her?

"What are you hiding?" The detective's voice was even harsher. "Don't you want to see justice?"

"Yes, but—"

"Then tell me where we can find the rest of the PCC—Bergen, Ng, Sharise, Olafsen."

"I can't."

"If we find out you're protecting a murderer, you'll never see your son again."

That cut me. I jerked forward and banged my hands on the table. "You want to talk about murder? People die in the Pit every day—every year during blizzard season dozens of people die in the Pit. That's murder from neglect. But does WAVE care? No, we're just squatters and rats, right? But twenty New Earth do-gooders disappear? Well, let's go fuckin' crazy about that. Oh, my God, it's such a tragedy!"

There was silence on the other end of the microphone, and a buzz in the air. I pushed my luck. "What a joke!" I spat at her through the microphone. "What a joke all you lazy ass Pit Pats are. You're never going to find out the truth. You're too stupid to figure it out."

Doric

"Fuck protocol," I muttered to myself. I was shaking. Harmony was just so goddam thick-headed. I could feel these barriers inside her, and in front of those barriers was anger. I could feel her rage—feel it through the camera, feel it pass through the wall that separated us. Then when she told me I was too stupid to figure out what happened to Raquel, I just couldn't sit there in that antiseptic control room anymore. So before Mac could stop me—before I could stop myself—I grabbed my work tablet and ran out of the control booth, two steps down the corridor, past the startled guard and slammed open the door to Harmony's interrogation room. I shoved the tablet on the table before her, grabbed her by the back of her head and pushed her face forward to see the images flashing on the screen.

"Look, look, damn you, look at these faces," I told her. "Twenty innocent people gone, disappeared." I pushed her head closer to the screen. "This one, look Commander, look! She was a doctor who ran a free clinic. And him, a teacher; he brought books and toys for the kids in the Pit, and her, a nurse, she left a wife and two small children, barely out of diapers, to come help. She was a mother, Commander, and the Pit Council ordered her dead. So, you're going to tell me where the fuck your co-conspirators are."

The guard was pulling me off her now, pulling me out of the room. My hand, where it had touched Harmony's hair, prickled. I wondered at that and the smile in Harmony's eyes as she looked at me being dragged away.

***

Mac told me off, and I got an official reprimand. They stopped the interrogation and we all cooled our heels until Management decided what to do. Three days later, we resumed and I was allowed back in the control booth, but now I had to observe while Mac took the lead and asked the questions.

"You're lucky you weren't taken off the case altogether or suspended," Mac told me. I was slumped on the chair beside him, rubbing the hand that had touched Harmony. I could still feel the weight of her head on my palm. "Stop sulking, Girlie."

He told WAVE-Sec to start recording and turn on the sound. Making his voice even and unemotional, he asked her: "Please tell me about Sharise and Olafsen."

At the sound of his voice, she jerked her head this way and that. "Where's the other one? She all right?"

Mac ignored her questions. "Tell me what they were responsible for in the PCC."

Harmony looked through the camera; her eyes thoughtful. She smiled. "You remind me of another man I met once. He also worked for WAVE—in Human Resources. I don't remember his name, but your name is ... Mac ... MacAndrew?"

Yup, right in with her telepathy act again. I shrugged off the shiver that ran through my limbs, knowing she could have heard his name from one of the guards.

Mac didn't react, but kept on going: "TELL ME WHAT THEY DID."

"I'm sorry you got into trouble, Detective ... Doric. May I call you ... Vestra?"

Mac looked at me, but all I could do was shrug and suppress another shiver. Again she could have heard my name in passing. But how she knew I was at that very moment in the control room with Mac I don't know. Have the guards been blabbing?

"It wasn't the guards," she replied, as if I had spoken out loud into the microphone and she had heard me. "They don't talk. They're very well trained."

Mac and I exchanged a glance, but before we could speculate more, Harmony moved on. "So Sharise, who by the way is from one of those families who've lived in the Pit forever, she and Olafsen and me did house calls. We'd go around to people in the Pit handing out food, and asking them what they needed. We tried to help in any way we could. So now you know what we all did. Where does that get you?"

"Can you get a message to them?" Mac asked with robotic equanimity.

"I don't know. Haven't tried.  I know you want someone to blame. WAVE Corp. wants someone to blame—a person to hand over to the New Earthers to lynch. So just pick one of us you've already captured—Omari, Mancy, me—anyone of us will do. Just leave the rest alone."

Mac countered: "Is that a confession? Are you saying the three of you are to blame, but not the others?"

"No."

"Than what are you saying? What's the truth?"

"The truth is ... the truth doesn't seem to matter."

"Of course it matters."

"Moses Caraq knows what happened. He told you the truth, didn't he? Why don't you believe him?"

She was right. Caraq had been debriefed, but what he said made no sense. He had blamed everything on the dust as if it had some supernatural powers. The transcript of his debriefing was full of supposition and nonsense really. Nothing that could be used in court.

Mac had started in again, low and methodical: "Caraq's account of what happened was lacking in certain details. Now, you've told us that Omari did most of the 'organizing.' Does that mean he was the head of the PCC?"

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes? Explain, please. Was he your boss? Did he give the orders?"

"I'm sleepy," she said, slumping forward to rest her head on the table and yawning. I yawned in reply.

But Mac was relentless. "Answer my question, and then you can rest. Who gave the order?"

We lifted our heads as she answered: "Orders are funny things, aren't they?" Was this another deflection?

"Stop changing the subject."

We shook our heads. "I'm not changing the subject," she said. "I'm answering the question. What are your orders, Detective MacAndrew?"

I watched Mac decide whether to play her game. Finally, he replied: "To get you to answer my questions."

"Do you agree with those orders, Detective?" This surprised me. No one ever asked us that.

"That's irrelevant," said Mac.

"No, it's not," she countered. "Your bosses count on you agreeing to follow their orders. If you said no, it wouldn't happen."

That is not how a command structure works, I thought.

"But it is how it works," she replied out loud.

I sat up in my chair; my breath catching in my throat. Had Harmony just read my thoughts?

She continued. "What if you stopped following orders, Mr. MacAndrew?"

Mac was oblivious to what had just happened. He answered her: "I'd be disciplined, and if I kept doing it, I'd be let go and someone else would take my place."

"And if your replacement refused to follow orders as well? And that replacement refused? And all the replacements refused? What if everyone in WAVE Security just stopped listening to the Board of Directors?"

Mac smiled, no doubt thinking that Harmony had confessed something. "Are you saying, Commander Harmony, that there was a rogue element within the Pit that carried out these murders? That this act was against the orders of the Pit Council?"

"No—well, sort of."

"Stop fucking around and speak plainly," I whispered to myself.

"I'm trying to, Vestra," Harmony said.

Mac turned to me astonishment, mouthing to me: "WHAT THE HELL?"

I shrugged, and pointed at the monitor, because Harmony was still talking: "You've got to understand we didn't agree about those volunteers. I mean they were supposed to be independent from WAVE Corp., but were they really? We didn't trust them. And you guys didn't trust them either. Many of you felt they didn't know what they were doing. That's what you thought, wasn't it Vestra?"

Mac and I looked at each other again. He replied to her: "Why would you say that about Detective Doric?"

"Some thoughts—strong thoughts have an odour that lingers."

"You can smell Detective Doric's thoughts?"

"Yes, because she's been in the Pit, not that morning when the volunteers disappeared; but she spent years as a Pit Pat."

My heart sounded in my chest. How Harmony knew that, I have no idea. When we went out on patrol, we wore helmets, visors, breathing masks; she couldn't possibly have recognized me.

Mac was just as confused as I was. He cut the sound and turned to me. "Do you think she paid someone to hack into the Sec Personnel files?"

I shook my head. "How? She's been in isolation this whole time. It must have been a guard who told her."

Mac turned on the sound again. "How do you know this, Commander?" he asked her.

Through the screen, Harmony smiled. "Detective Doric has a trace—what Omari called a telepathic signature—anyone who's been in the dust has it. The dust gets in even through all your helmets and armour. And it stays on you, no matter how much you wash or how far away from the Pit you are. When Vestra touched the back of my head three days ago, I felt it."

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