Charles Sheffield - Dark as Day

And, like it or hate it, she felt a first faint stirring of sympathy for the Devil.

Seine-Day would be huge in the Jovian system, perhaps bigger yet at the L-4 and L-5 Trojan locations, and most important of all as a unifying influence on the expanding Outer System.

On Earth, however, huddled in close to the Sun and with old war wounds still unhealed even after thirty years, Seine-Day could not compete with other worries.

Worries such as the application. The written part had been submitted three weeks earlier. The oral examination would be held one hour from now, by an interviewer who had ridden a high-gee vessel all the way from Ganymede. Janeed Jannex stared east toward the rising sun and wondered if it would be worth showing up to meet the man. There must be tens or hundreds of thousands of applicants. Less than one thousand would pass the test and be allowed to head away from Earth for training in the Outer System. And most of those would be youngsters, early twenties or less, whereas Janeed and Sebastian were already well over thirty.

She was sitting at the extreme eastern edge of the GM platform, as far down its side as she could get without falling in. Her feet dangled in the cold salt water of the eastern Malvinas’ shelf. Behind her she could hear the gentle thrum-thrum-thrum of the great extractor. Its upper portion curved away to become a one-meter pipeline that headed arrow-straight south and west, past the Falkland Islands, across the full width of the Malvinas’ shelf, all the way to landfall at Punta Arenas.

The spine of the extractor plunged down through the middle of the Global Minerals’ platform and continued all the way to the seabed. Janeed and Sebastian were, according to their job description, “in charge” of the extractor operation during the remaining hour of the dawn shift. What that meant in practice was that any change in extractor performance, gas leak, or reduction in methane flow through the pipeline would be signaled by a klaxon loud enough to wake the dead. At that point the problem rose by definition above Jan and Sebastian’s authority and responsibility level. They would run at once to alert a more senior member of the GMS operations’ staff, assuming that by some miracle that person had slept through the din and was not already on deck.

The sun was well above the horizon, but here, in July at fifty degrees south, the wind off the winter ocean of the South Atlantic would remain brisk all day. Jan lifted her bare feet from the icy water, examined her long, near-prehensile toes that had chilled to a bluish-red, and dried them on the lower edge of her sweater. She had been sitting far too long, introspective and brooding in the glimmer of pre-dawn. She was supposed to be the optimist, the initiator, the “can-do” queen. But it was hard to be all those things when you felt sure that the next few hours would bring only disappointment. And if she reacted like this, how must Sebastian be feeling?

She put on her shoes, stood up stiffly, and climbed the ten-meter ladder to the main surface of the platform. Finding him should be no problem. He lacked her taste for minor masochism, and would be tucked in the warmest and most protected spot of the deck that still offered a broad-angled upward view.

This morning she found him on the western side of the extractor, well shielded from the breeze. He had spread an air mattress there — no hardships for Sebastian — and lay on his back, staring upward.

Janeed said, “Well?”

Without looking at her, or seeming in any way to acknowledge her presence, he said softly, “Formation to the northeast. Triple layer, alto-cumulus over strato-cumulus over cumulo-nimbus, all moving in different directions. Wind vectors different at each height. We’ll see rain within the hour, I’ll make bet.”

Jan didn’t want to bet, or look north-east or in any other direction. Clouds were clouds, and that was all. She moved to lean over him. “Not the weather, Sebastian. The interview.”

“What about the interview?”

“It’s less than an hour away. I’m nervous.”

He sat up, slowly. Sebastian did everything slowly, so slowly that Janeed often felt ready to scream at him. Sometimes she did. It made no difference.

“Jan, you’re nervous because you care.” His round moon face was smiling. “If we fail, we still have jobs.”

Jobs that could be done as well or better by machinery. Jobs that needed so little of your skills and energy that someone like Sebastian could spend all his days happily dreaming and staring at the ever-changing cloud formations of the South Atlantic, without any question from their superiors. Dead-end jobs for all of them, while the Outer System was desperately short of people, even if beyond the Belt they were so picky in their choosing from Earth that an applicant who lived here felt like a resident of an old leper colony applying for a position as a masseuse.

Jan didn’t say any of that. In fairness, she couldn’t. She had been the one who insisted, who did all the pushing and coaxing and persuading until Sebastian agreed that they would apply as a team. They were the same age, but ever since their rescue in the ruined northern hemisphere and transfer to a displaced persons’ camp, she had felt like his mother. Her chances would be better if she had applied alone, but she couldn’t do it. Who would look after Sebastian then? He was not stupid, no matter what others said, but he was undeniably strange. He had been rescued as a young child, and even at thirty-five he remained in many ways childlike.

She said carefully, “They’ll interview us together, as a team. Promise me one thing.”

“I promise.”

“You don’t know what it is yet. Promise me that you’ll talk. When we applied for these jobs you just sat there like a big dead fish.”

“But we got jobs.” He was smiling again, serene and gentle. “I’ll talk. Or try to.”

“Come on, then. Let’s at least try to make ourselves look presentable.” Janeed smiled back and reached out a hand to help him to his feet. She loved Sebastian, and she always would. Not in any sexual way, of course — she recoiled at the thought — but as the closest thing to family that she had ever known. Her parents, like Sebastian’s, were faceless and nameless, among the seventy percent of Earth’s eleven billion people who had died in the first few minutes of the Great War. Janeed should have been old enough to remember what her mother and father looked like, but her first memory was of a terrifying airplane ride followed by a hot meal at a displaced persons’ camp in Arenas. Before that: nothing.

The interviewer was a woman, not a man. She was a bone-thin redhead, with thin, tight lips. She wore the dark-green uniform of Outer System civilian government, and she appeared as confused by them as Janeed was nervous of her.

“Janeed Jannex and Sebastian Birch,” the interviewer said. “Miners.” She gave the word great emphasis. She frowned at the screen of her personal, and then peered around her at the hundred-meter floating platform of Global Minerals and the endless water beyond. She had chosen to sit out on deck for the interview, although the sky was growing darker and Sebastian’s prophecy of rain appeared more and more plausible. “You described your jobs as miners?”

“That’s right.” Janeed glared at Sebastian. Beyond a muttered greeting he had so far said not a word.

The woman, who had introduced herself as Dr. Valnia Bloom — Dr. Director Valnia Bloom, head of the Department of Scientific Research on Ganymede — said, “Would you care to explain that?”

“Certainly.” Jan looked at Sebastian, waiting. He said not a word, and finally she went on, “This will take a few minutes.”