“That sounds very intelligent. That’s what we tried to do with Chris. We were lucky to have you around to help us.”

“Thor Storm, don’t you care what happens to Chris?”

“More than anything in the world. More than Alaska, even. And you know I’m considered not quite sane on the subject of Alaska.”

“Not quite sane isn’t what I think when it comes to your way of treating Chris. I don’t mean you’re a little goofy like most of us in Alaska. I mean downright peculiar. Chris has got to be guided. She’s got the whole world before her.”

“What kind of world? Nobody knows.”

“My beautiful wonderful Chris! Father of a boy six years old—and never even mentioned him before.”

“Bridie, dear girl, you’ve been helping so many of these Air Force boys and their little brides, you think every girl over sixteen is marrying every boy who buys her a Coke. Chris isn’t marrying anyone just yet. She’s going to Seattle for two years and she’s looking forward to it. You know that. After this Barrow trip I’d say she has seen her own Alaska from tip to tip. Very few girls of her age can say that. Or three times her age.”

“That’s fine. Maybe she’s enjoyed all this dog sledding and airplaning and being shifted around from the time she was a baby, you might say. But what’s a young girl want to see Barrow for! A Godforsaken wilderness sitting on the Arctic Ocean, why, men and women who’ve lived in Alaska sixty seventy years never saw Barrow and never wanted to.”

“A strange thing is going on in that Eskimo village. It has jumped in half a dozen years from an Arctic wilderness to a laboratory. It isn’t just seal fishing and whale harpooning and moose hunting any more. It’s a workshop full of scientists and engineers and Air Force men. Do you know there are Eskimos up there so naturally trained to sound and mechanisms that they can tell whether an unseen plane, miles up in the sky, is an American or a foreign plane? Don’t you think that’s uncanny?”

“I’ve been told a dog can hear sounds a human can’t.”

“Bridie.”

“I don’t know anything about scientific and mechanical. I only know she isn’t old enough to know what’s good for her. Do you think that Eskimo boy is good enough for our Chris! Do you?” He looked at her then, quizzically. Horrified at what she had said, she was filled with contrition. “Oh, Thor, I forgot I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I forgot.”

Quietly he said, “If I see Chris making a wrong turn, and she doesn’t see the mistake and therefore can’t correct it, I speak to her about it. But I suppose there are certain mistakes one has to make in order to learn. It’s better to learn by mistakes than never to learn at all.”

She could not stop herself, she had wanted, all these years, to know. “Was your marriage a mistake?”