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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.”
    Sebastian said, “It will rain hard in a few minutes.”
    Valnia Bloom seemed skeptical, and looked up at the cloud-barred sky. Janeed wondered, had the woman ever seen rain? It certainly didn’t rain water on Ganymede, or anywhere else in the Outer System. On Venus it rained sulfuric acid, and on Titan it rained droplets of hydrocarbons. On Triton, Janeed had read, there were geysers of liquid nitrogen, but they hardly counted as rain. Sebastian was staring vacantly at Valnia Bloom, who finally said, “We’ll see about the rain. Go ahead. Keep it short.”
    Jan stared daggers at Sebastian. Her look said, Talk! After a long silence, she felt that she had to go on. “Well, most of the onshore fossil fuels of Earth were always in the northern hemisphere, which is still uninhabitable. The coal under the Antarctic ice-cap is inaccessible, too. But the southern hemisphere is booming, and there’s a big need for energy and