"You chosen?"

"Sorry?"

The thin lips parted for a moment, then snapped shut once the sentence had been hissed out. "You been saved?"

Ryan shook his head. "Don't think so. How would we know?"

The narrow face of Ruby Rainer, owner of the Rentaroom, broke into an approximation of a beatific smile. "I guess you'd know. You ever feel an inner heat?"

"No, not often. Except..." He looked across at Krysty, who struggled to conceal a giggle.

"I have," Rick said. "And I've seen light in the darkness. Warmth in the middle of winter. Floods during a drought. Manna in the wilderness. And salvation in the darkest night of the soul. Amen to that."

"Amen," Ruby added, clasping her bony hands to her even bonier bosom. "I'm well pleased to see that at least one of you outlanders has some spark of the Lord's blessings lighted within the lamp of his innermost heart."

"Hallelujah, sister," the freezie shouted, clapping his hands together. "And?.."

"Yes, brother?"

"Was there not some talk of a dessert to follow that admirable bowl of spiced stew?"

"Oh, oh, yes. Course. Pecan pie or some iced cream with strawberries."

She got orders for five pies and two helpings of the fruit with iced cream.

After the dessert Ruby served them some acorn coffee, ground fine, with added herbs. "Best y'ever tasted," she boasted as she poured each of them a brimming cup.

Rick sipped suspiciously at his, pulling an appalled face. Fortunately Mrs. Rainer had left the dining room and didn't see, or hear, him.

"She call this coffee?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ryan said. "I've tasted better, but I've surely tasted worse."

"I recall once eating in a restaurant in some place like Bucksnort, Idaho. They served me a soup that was their special delicacy. I learned afterward it was made from dogs' spleens, with mustard added. Up till now that was the most foul thing that I ever tasted. Up till now..." He gently replaced the cup on the table.

After the meal Rick said he'd like to just go up to his room and rest. The others agreed that they'd split up and walk around Snakefish, checking the place out.

There was a minor spat when Lori tried to insist that she be allowed to go on her own.

"I'm not a shit-assed girly! I'm older enough to go without you having to hold my hand all the hours, Doc."

Ryan settled the argument. "Listen, Lori. Right now you're behaving like a double-stupe snotnose! In a strange ville like this nobody walks these streets alone. Not Doc. Not you. Not me. Stick together in pairs. Safest. Meet back here for the evening meal around six."

"But I don't..." she began, stopping herself when she saw the look of flaring anger on Ryan's face.

They went in the usual pairings: Lori with Doc, the sunnier side of her nature reappearing; J.B. and Jak wandering off together, intent on a recce of the gas-processing plant. And Ryan with Krysty.

"Snakefish," she said. "Prettiest little ville in the west."

It was just like walking into one of the small towns that Ryan had seen in old mags and vids. The lack of nuke damage was staggering. The sidewalk was clean, the shop fronts mostly looked like they had been painted fresh in the last month or so.

Uniquely there were several wags parked along the side of the street. Four pickups, one ordinary passenger vehicle, a blue VW and a panel van with a badly painted picture of a leaping salmon on its side.

"That's what living on top of your own gas supply does for you," Ryan said. "That's why they all look so damned jack-heavy. Everyone wants gas. You got it and you name your own price in the trading stakes. Good place to be."

They browsed along the sidewalk, staring in at the windows of the stores, amazed at the variety and quality of the various goods offered.

There weren't too many folks out and about — mainly women, with a few younger children. Everyone was polite and friendly in a distant, formal kind of way.

There was a sign in one window that read: Snakefish jack, one dollar to one dollar. Outsiders' jack, one-fifty to one Snakefish. Trade by agreement. Sorry, no credit. Don't even ask.

"Shows you how solid things are here," Ryan observed. "Two local dollars to three from outside the ville. Good trade rate."

Occasionally, if you found some isolated community that the nukes hadn't reached, you might find faded signs from before the big fires. In Snakefish it was different. The buildings were untouched, but everything they sold was new.

Practically everything. One establishment was retailing blasters. And most of those were rebuilds and recons from before sky-dark, like the handguns carried by the Angels.

The shop owner was a sharp-faced young man, and he came out to his doorway when he spotted them looking in his window.

"Hi there. You admiring the display? Some real good blasters there, huh?"

"No," Ryan replied, seeing no reason to lie about it.

"What? How d'you..."

"Cheap shit. Recons look like they'd blow your hand off first time you squeezed the trigger."

"I'll have you know that I engineered them myself and I..."

Ryan cut through the bluster. "Then you ought to try one out. Put the muzzle in your mouth and let the hammer down."

Krysty's fingers on his arm told Ryan that she thought he was going too far.

"They aren't that bad! Anyway, what are you carrying, stranger?"

Without speaking, Ryan unholstered the 9mm SIG-Sauer P-226 and showed it to the dealer.

"Hollow tooth! That's one... I could do you a real good trade on that, friend."

"I'm not trading, and I'm not your friend," Ryan replied.

"Two hundred Snakefish jack," the gun dealer offered eagerly.

"No."

"Three hundred?"

Ryan shook his head. "Not selling."

"Four hundred and any blaster out of my stock, and that's my last and best offer."

"I told you..."

"Let me see it?" He held out his hand. "I'll give you a great deal, or my name's not Honest John Dern. Gimme."

"Two people get to hold this blaster," Ryan said coldly. "Me, and the man that chills me. Nobody else. Right?"

"Right. Sure. If you change your mind..."

Krysty was laughing as they walked on. "Can't blame the stupe for trying, lover."

The wind had veered, and the smell of gasoline had weakened considerably. Ryan and Krysty quickly noticed that nearly every store and house in the small township seemed to carry some kind of a snake emblem in a window. Sometimes it was ornately carved from a twisted piece of wood, sometimes a more symbolic shape of plaited string or wool. Most of the totem figures carried a silver collar around the throat.

Apart from the town hall, the largest and most elegant building in the ville was at the farther end of the street. Through a coat of fresh paint it was still possible to make out the name: Rex Cinema and Video Palace. But it was put into the shade by the blaring and colorful lettering across the front.

Come One. Come All. Worship at the Shrine of the Blessed Serpents of the Apocalyptic Gospel of the Martyred Marcus the Peripatetic.

Beneath it was a sheet of card, under clear perspex, which listed the days and times of the services. There was one due the following morning at seven o'clock.

"Early bird gets the snake," Krysty observed.

"Unless it's the one we got first. Baron seemed to think we should go."

"Then we should," she agreed.

The last notice was on a wooden board, screwed to the front wall of the building: Guardians of the Sepulcher of the Sacred Snakes. Norman Mote. Marianne Mote. Apostolic Apprentice, Joshua Mote.

Beyond the old movie house the ville ended. The road just faded out into the semidesert, vanishing into a deeply rutted dirt trail.

They turned and looked behind them, from Main Street to the desert beginning, just past the elegant town hall. Snakefish wasn't more than a couple of straggling blocks wide.