George pointed at the doors. That‘s the admin offices. I‘ll be in the mess hall. He pointed again. The big building in the back. Come get me when you‘re ready to go. He vanished around a corner. Kate pushed one of the doors open and she and Mutt walked into a large room that took up most of the first floor of the building. There were desks interspersed with long flat gray folding tables. The walls were lined with four-drawer beige-enameled metal filing cabinets. A 1:10,000-scale map of Suulutaq dominated one wall, with a much smaller map of the Park tacked onto a corner, and a map of Alaska the size of a hardback book pinned as an afterthought to one side. A young woman, dark and plump and of Yupik descent if Kate was going to make a guess, was typing something into a computer. She looked up, exchanged glances with Mutt, and said with superb unconcern, May I help you?

Yes, Kate said. My name is Kate Shugak. I—

Yes, Ms. Shugak, just one moment, please. The young woman abdicated her desk with no undue haste and made a beeline for one of the tables, where a man and a woman Kate saw was Holly Haynes were hunched over a long strip of paper marked with a continuous, spiking graph. The young woman murmured into the man‘s ear, and all three looked across at Kate. He evidently found her attire—the usual blue jeans, sweatshirt, jacket, and sneakers—and perhaps her lack of entourage less than convincing. He looked back at the young woman for confirmation. She nodded. Holly Haynes said something. He straightened with a nearly audible snap of his spine and made brisk work of the office maze to arrive in front of Kate, where he could beam down at her with what she could not help but read as tremendous insincerity. Ms. Shugak! I‘ve heard a lot about you, it‘s so nice to meet you in person! Kate repressed the urge to step back from both the volubility and the slight spray of his greeting and recovered her hand before he broke any more bones in it. Thank you. And you are?

He gave out with a laugh that seemed to her even less sincere than his demeanor. Of course, of course, what was I thinking. I‘m Vernon Truax, Suulutaq superintendent. Come on, let‘s head on up to my office. Whoa, he said, noticing Mutt for the first time. That your wolf?

Only half, Kate said.

Truax, regarding Mutt with a healthy mixture of alarm and respect, said, Only half? Well, that‘s okay, then. It sounded more like a question than an assertion. Either way, Kate didn‘t answer. Uh, Holly, join us? Thanks, Lyda.

The plump young woman resumed her station at the desk near the door. Haynes abandoned the strip of graph paper they‘d been poring over to follow Truax, Kate, and Mutt upstairs to a corner room that, however prebuilt it looked, still had two large windows facing south and west. Executive offices were the same whether they were in Suulutaq or on Ninth Avenue in Anchorage.