“I’ll fly you. I’d love to. It’s nothing. An hour or less.”

Buzzing along contentedly in the little plane, she asked, above the drone of the engine, “Is there anything wrong at the mine?”

“Not what you’d call critical.”

“It can’t be too bad if you can fix it in one day.”

“It’s management. Management. If you don’t watch it all the time the costs go up and the profits dwindle, you’ve got to be on the job yourself. Every little item. That new fella from Outside, he’s supposed to know coal mining—machinery—engineering—loading—the works. He couldn’t run a kiddy-car. He’s overloading, parts wear out quicker than we can replace them. Next thing they’ll be bringing coal in from Outside cheaper than I can sell it right here in the Territory.”

“Don’t let things like that upset you too much, Grampa Czar. They’re not worth it.”

“What d’you mean, not worth it! What’s more important than you get your work done right and run your business in first-class shape!”

“Well—–” and she pointed to the vast world below. “That, for example.”

“What about it?” Certainly this particular region was not the spectacular Alaska of mountain peaks and great gray waters. It was flatlands that they were approaching. Coal lands.

“It’s so exciting.”

“What’s exciting about it?”

“Being alive, for one thing. And knowing that all this used to be forest once upon a time.”

“Who says so?”

“The historians, the geologists. Books.”

“Oh—books.” He rejected this feeble source. “Thor talk.”

“Don’t!” she said, sharply. Then, reminding herself that this was an old man, this vital inwardly seething Czar Kennedy was an old man, “They say all this was tropical once upon a time. Millions of years ago. Enormous forests of trees. Because of course coal is just hardened trees and stuff. Carbonized trees.”

“I remember that,” he admitted, grudgingly. “I never thought about it again, that way. It’s interesting, though, real interesting to think about, like you said.”

“I can’t bear to think about all the things that are going to change in the next few million years—like trees into coal—maybe the coal will change back into trees. Who knows? And I won’t be here to see it. I wouldn’t so much mind dying if when I came back I’d—–”

“Came back!” he interrupted, sharply.

“You know—reincarnation.”

“You’re crazy.”

“How do you know? How do we know? If only we could remember at least some past lives. Perhaps we do, dimly, now and then. If only I could say, I remember that life five hundred years ago—a thousand—a million years ago. I won the Miss Troglodyte Beauty Contest.… I was a Viking’s bride.… I was a slave girl on the Nile.… I was an actress—a waitress—a champion ice skater—an Indian squaw.”

“Look, Christine, my girl, just get us down before you go clear off your head and start screeching. Lots of people go loony in Alaska, I never thought my own granddaughter would.”

Indulgently she laughed, they glided expertly down to the runway and the somewhat apprehensive miner manager from Outside who was awaiting Czar.