"Or a subsistence fisherman," Old Sam said.

"Solidarity, anyone?" Jack said brightly. Nobody laughed, nobody even smiled, and he reflected on the foolhardiness of joking in Alaska about something as serious as salmon.

"Doesn't look like anybody'11 be delivering fish anytime soon," Kate said, "so I'll take the two of you up Amartuq in the skiff after breakfast." After an acid remark on the unreliability of wimmen and how a sure-enough boat jockey had only his fool self to blame if he hired one for a deckhand, Old Sam waved his assent.

"Is he mad?" Johnny said in a low voice as they cast off.

"Nah," Kate said as she started the kicker and the skiff pulled away from the Freya. "He's ecstatic. I'm living proof that all his worst suspicions about women in the workplace are true. The next time he gets together with Pete Petersen they can damn my whole sex without fear or favor."

"If he feels that way," Jack said, "how come he even lets you on board?"

She grinned. "If I didn't work summers on the Freya, I'd have to find another tender. Old Sam isn't about to turn me loose on the unsuspecting fishing population."

Probably, Jack thought, Old Sam wasn't about to allow the population to turn itself loose on an unsuspecting Kate. Probably Kate knew that, because nearly every summer Kate could be found weighing fish on the deck of the seventy-five-foot fish tender, at the beck and call of the crustiest, crankiest Alaskan old fart ever to wet a toe in the Gulf of Alaska. "I thought he liked women. You're always telling me stories about Old Sam's girlfriends. That nurse in Anchorage, for instance."

"He loves women," Kate said. "Just not on the deck of a boat, and in particular not on the deck of the Freya."

"How does he like them?" Jack said, pretty sure he already knew the answer but unable to resist.

"Naked and stretched out on a bed. It's our proper place in the cosmic scheme of things."

"I heard that."

So had Johnny, whose eyes were the size of dinner plates, but neither adult was paying any attention to him.

Jack looked at Kate, at the tilted hazel eyes bright with humor, the breeze generated by their passage pulling a strand of her hair loose from its braid and bringing a glow to her cheeks, and knew a mighty temptation to tackle her right there in the stern of the skiff.

Unfortunately, the presence of his son and heir was something of a hindrance, not to mention fifty fishermen who seemed to have gone collectively insane.

All around them salmon jumped and splashed, the school a dark swath beneath the water that cut back and forth between the boats riding at anchor. Cases of beer had appeared on every deck, and aluminum lawn chairs upholstered in plastic green plaid unfolded themselves in bows and on the tops of cabins. A skiff whizzed by, towing Tim Sarakovikoff water-skiing on his hatch covers. His face was split wide in a grin, and he swerved toward them. Kate ducked in time, but Jack was sprayed and Johnny was drenched.