Oh, dear, what are they talking about in there, Chris wondered, with their heads close together? Not Harper’s Bazaar. All this long flight up to Oogruk and now Harper’s Bazaar indeed! The wilds of Alaska. I didn’t come up here to eat ripe olives and ice cream with chocolate sauce and creamed mushrooms and turkey. Impulsively she walked into the dining room, pulled up a vacant chair, and simply sat there.

The men stopped talking.

“Something you want, Christine?” Thor asked.

“Yes. I want to know what you’re talking about.”

Only Thor appeared not to be startled by this statement. The other men smiled uncertainly; or their faces hardened in disapproval. They were silent a moment. Bob Shelikov, Territorial Senator up from Klawock, became jocular in the political tradition. “You fixing to run for Territorial Congresswoman, Miss Christine?”

“Not just yet,” Chris said, and as determinedly jocular as he. “But maybe by the time I’m old enough and know enough it’ll be United States Congresswoman I can try for.”

Bob Shelikov was one of the conservatives who contended that Alaska wasn’t ready for statehood. “Mmm, pretty girl like you will get married and have a family long before that, Miss Christine.”

She sensed that Thor was displeased with her. But now he answered her question briefly and soberly.

“We were talking about something that wouldn’t interest most women. You’ve heard it all a hundred times.” He turned to the men. “You know, Christine was raised by two newspaper-publishing grandfathers. So political talk and Territorial arguments were her Mother Goose. Uh, let’s see. It may sound pretty dry, just condensed. We were talking about Outside labor—you know—you’ve heard it all. From way up here, Seattle and San Francisco seem far away and not very important. Up here, if you can get a whale or a seal or two, or enough moose or reindeer meat, you’re set for the winter. Or it used to be true. So it didn’t matter, up here, if the big union heads in Seattle wouldn’t allow Alaska labor to do Alaska work, and brought in seasonal Outside labor instead, boatloads of them and now planeloads of them. Thousands. And paid them in one lump after they got back Outside at the end of the season. But now it has begun to matter, even up here, and it’s going to be more and more important. Alaskans like you, Christine, and the Raffskys, and Bob Shelikov here, and Czar for that matter, and those children yelling down there on the beach, we’ve all been Americans now for almost a hundred years. I’ve been trying to tell these young college men here”—he indicated the two young school-teachers—“that maybe the time has come for a Boston Tea Party right here in Alaska.”

A hubbub in the sitting room. “Ross!” shouted the Raffsky girls. He stood in the dining-room doorway, he was still in his pilot’s uniform.

“Anybody want to see the Eskimo dances?”

Bridie had had enough of the pink sitting room. “Sure do. Where?”