Simoom Rising

Chapter Twenty-three

WAVE Orbiting Station
Now

DORIC

I racked my brain, trying to remember seeing Travers up here at the station in the detention centre during those early days of the blockade. But I just couldn't. I must have seen him, but I never noticed him. Course, I was concentrating on controlling the troublemakers.

Mostly, I had the night shift, and in between dealing with the incorrigibles, I had lots of time to watch the newsfeeds. And those drones, they got everywhere. The Rats would shoo them out of their shacks, but those cameras are incredible. They'd just peek through a porthole or a crack in the roof. No sound, of course, too much background noise, but those images. Clear, crystal clear. Fuck, those images.

I got hooked—like everyone else—on those images, every hour, every day, every night. I watched walking skeletons collapse and die. I remember feeling appalled the Rats would let their kids starve other than co-operate. I shook my head as if I were looking at people not associated with me, that I had no connection to, even though they were locked up in the cells all around me. I never understood. I never thought and then, and then ... the feeds kept buzzing out.

"It wasn't like your classic grey blizzards," Harmony said to Mac into the camera, sitting in that sterile, dull-white interrogation room. "The dust was definitely directed to take out those drones."

Technical difficulties said the media networks, due to high winds and blinding dust. They put on talking heads instead, or repeated the same taped footage again and again.

"Okay, let's say for the moment that I believe you about the dust, tell me who was directing it to take out the cameras?" asked Mac.

"Everyone. No one. It's hard to say," Harmony answered. "So much rage and sadness and exhaustion. Despite it being the still season, the dust couldn't settle. It would go around picking up on these fits of temper, spiralling, feeding on the energy, flinging those drone cameras out of the sky. It would peter out just as quickly, and they'd send more drones in. Then the dust would turn into this thick fog, dark grey and yellow and green floating and heavy all around, blocking the sun, making the cameras blind. The dust couldn't make up its mind, because we couldn't make up our minds."

"After all that, you didn't want the aid workers to come?" said Mac, barking, always barking. "Why the hell did you ask for them on live media then?"

"I don't know, I don't know!" she barked back, pitching herself forward at the table, her arm and wrist straining against the cuff.

"Did Omari put you up to it? Did the Council tell you to say that?"

She shook her head. "No, I've already told you, they didn't know I was going to say it. I didn't know I was going to say it until I did. I wanted to push past the stalemate. I just wanted my son back." Harmony's voice cracked, and she began to tear up. Ann, Ann, please don't.

"Stop, Mac," I said. "You're pushing her too hard. It's too much for her." But what I really meant was it was too much for me. I was struggling to keep it together.

But the look on Mac's face told me there was no way he was stopping now. "How did the council react?"

She heaved her shoulders, wiping her nose on her sleeve, trying to get the words out: "We fought for days. Sharise and Mancy nearly came to blows over what I said; they flung dust at each other so thick we all began to choke, until Bergen stepped between them. Omari was red with fury not because of what I said, but because I had not consulted him first. He had lost control of the council and he knew it. Ng was trying to keep a lid on his temper—he had become as the blockade wore on, less hot-headed and more fatalistic. But Olafsen's daughter had just died, and she had no anger left in her, no hope, no nothing, just a deep dark hole."