“Juan Pico’ll take you around, won’t you, Juan,” Bor Maunch said by way of introduction. “I guess you know this is Czar Kennedy’s granddaughter, you take her around show her the works and I guess you know anybody is Czar Kennedy’s granddaughter they’re entitled to the run of the place.”

“My name is Christine Storm,” she said, with more empressement, perhaps, than the occasion called for. “I’m here with my Grandfather, Thor Storm.”

Juan Pico bowed. “It’s a privilege to take you around, Miss Storm,” he said. He then stabbed his needle into the heart of a violet, rolled up the canvas, tucked it into a corner, and looked critically at Christine’s feet. “Got any overshoes? Not mukluks, but galoshes or something?”

“That’s right,” Maunch said. “You don’t want to slip, it’s pretty slimy, places. And look out when you’re up on the catwalk.”

She must put the first question to him before they had crossed the dock between the dining room and the cannery.

“Mr. Pico—–”

“Juan.”

“Juan, what was that you were making—sewing, I mean?”

“Oh, that’s a carpet, a copy of a seventeenth-century Aubusson in an old French château. Chambord, I think it is.”

She could not help herself. “But why are you doing it? I mean, here?”

“To get away from the fish. And the food. And this stuff.” He made a gesture that included the cannery, sky, water, mountains.

“Then why are you here at all?”

“Money,” he said, and smiled, a flash of white teeth in the creamy face. Chris had thought him very attractive. Now she decided he wasn’t really handsome, after all. Something missing. She thought she would take that up later, with herself, when she had more leisure. The fishing boat.

“Do you live in Alaska?”

“God, no! San Francisco. This is my third summer, and money or no money, I can’t take it another stretch. Too depressing. Of course, in eight or ten weeks I earn enough to last me the rest of the year. There’s no way to spend money here. I get transportation and my meals and my room. Cigarettes, that’s about it. We’re not paid here at the cannery. They hand it to us in a lump when we get back Outside, see.… Up these stairs, Miss Storm. Watch it.”

As he talked they had passed through a dim cavernous warehouse. Boxes. Ropes. Nets. Floats. Now the top of the stairs brought them into a world that clanked and whirred and thudded and clattered and rattled. Over and through and under everything was the smell of fish. It was more than a smell; it seemed an actual tangible substance.

Juan Pico, momentarily removed from his violet-strewn world, was factual and detached. For the first time in her life Christine felt disembodied, without dimensions.

“This is the assembly line, see. Those girls are on piece work.… Those others there are patchers.… Those guys cleaners … cutters … stuffed in a can with salt … the air’s extracted that way, see … this machine spins the top on … the cans go into this high-pressure steam thing … this pastes the label on the can, it’s a real pretty label, and you buy the can, and that’s it. All this stuff used to be done by hand—anyway, that’s what they tell me—now it’s mostly machinery. Chinese used to do a lot of it, but not now since the War, and anyway the union won’t stand for it. Now they call this machine the Iron Chink, that’s kind of cute, don’t you think?”