Bergstrom found his voice. “No, ma’am, they’re hired Outside. Seattle. San Francisco.”

“My Grandfather says—–”

“You speak to him, miss.”

Bergstrom had vanished down the catwalk steps.

Juan Pico evidently considered the tour ended. He preceded her down the stairs, guided her across the hazards of the slimy floor into the outer air that came across mountain and water and that here smelled only faintly of fish. She stood on the dock, breathing deeply.

“Anything else you’d like to see?” Juan Pico asked, with the impersonal politeness of a formula.

“No. Thanks a lot. Uh, Juan, this is only one cannery. There are lots of others, aren’t there?”

“That’s right.”

“Hundreds and thousands of Outsiders working and getting the wages and taking the money—–”

Juan Pico raised a hand in a gesture of parting. “Well, be seeing you, Miss Storm. I’ve got to get back to work.”

Absurdly she threatened. “I’m going to tell my Grandfather.”

“You do that,” he said. Then, with an air of the most casual curiosity, “You a Commie?”

In an overwhelming flash of anger she reverted to a childhood phrase. “Would you like to have your face slapped?” she said, inadequately. But Juan Pico, too, vanished. All the Suewok Cannery employees, like jinns in mythology, seemed to have miraculous vanishing powers. One moment they stood before you, smiling, polite, even deferential. You asked a question. They vanished.

Thor would not vanish. You could turn a battery of questions on him, she thought, and he would sit there considering them and answering them, thoughtfully, as though you were a grownup. You are, you fool! she said to herself now, fiercely. You’ve been playing itsy-bitsy all your life, you’re spoiled, that’s what, by three people who made you think you were more important than anybody else in the world. Don’t make me laugh.

So now, as the little boat chugged its way across the waters, she began to discern the pattern that Thor Storm had etched so tirelessly all these years. You could say why why why endlessly. He never rebuffed you, he never vanished, he was there, solid, indestructible, towering over them all, like Mount McKinley.

In its own cosy way, the boat had turned out to be as unexpectedly comfortable as the Suewok Cannery suite, and much more to her liking. Squat as a plump middle-aged matron it bumped and waddled its way to the fishing grounds. The galley, with its small adjoining nook that passed for a mess room, was warm and snug. Her sleeping quarters were little more than a slit in the wall. A vast pot of hot coffee scented the air all day, all night. To step out on the wind-swept deck of the little tender into the clear brilliant daylight or the clear brilliant night light was, Chris thought, like stepping out of an air-borne plane into space. I must ask Ross about that. I must ask Grampa Thor when we’re going to Oogruk. I must ask Grampa Thor. I must ask Grampa Thor.