"No gaudies?" Krysty said questioningly. "No drinkers, either?"

"Nope. Not like Mocsin, or some of the real heavy frontier pest holes. This is all clean and decent."

"Yeah. And they worship snakes, lover. Don't forget that."

Doc and Lori were just coming out of a clothes shop as Ryan and Krysty walked past them. The store was called Handmaid and featured a marvelous patchwork quilt in the window, made of hundreds of tiny pieces of colored satins and silks.

"Spend any of your Snakefish jack, Lori?" Krysty asked.

"Nice skirt in there, but old miserable Doc said it cost too many."

"It was beautiful," Doc admitted ruefully. "Segments of lace, some old and some new, all stitched together, and it was kind of transparent. I fear that it cost more jack than we got in total and I decided that the garment would have lasted about zero seconds in the brush."

"Wouldn't have worn it out in sand, would I?" she pouted. "It was so pretty, Doc. I don't wear anything pretty now."

"One day, my dearest and most cuddlesome little dear one."

"Dear one, dear one, dear one," she mimicked, half-angry. "When's that?"

"Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. But one day, I promise you, Lori, it willbe tomorrow. I shall allow you to make an honest man out of me."

She flounced away from him, head in the air, leaving Doc with Ryan and Krysty.

"Should tan her ass, Doc," Ryan suggested.

Doc sniffed. "She's just seventeen, if you know what I mean, and the way that... I'm sure that used to be a song, once. Or I'm a poet and I don't know it. No, the girl's growing up and she's growing away. You can't cage the wind, Krysty. And I would never try."

"Want to walk back to the rooming house, Doc?"

"Thank you, Ryan. Good friends are a consolation against the grievous rigors of this parlous world. And I do appreciate your great kindness toward me. But I must walk that lonesome highway by myself."

"Keep away from the snakes!" Krysty shouted as the old man wandered slowly away.

One place that fascinated Ryan was a store selling memorabilia. Predark was its name. The window was dusty and the interior badly lit, despite the ville's electrical power, all of it provided by a huge gas-fired generator on the edge of town.

"Let's go in."

There was a brass bell above the door, and it tinkled like Lori's spurs as they pushed it open. It was a warm day, with dark chem clouds stippling the tops of the Sierras. Inside the store it was humid and quiet, the silence broken only by the ticking of a tall grandfather clock in the corner.

"Good afternoon, strangers. Come into my little cave of riches with a good heart. Be at peace with all men. Gentle be the selling and the buying and could you shut that coil-bound door?"

The last seven words were uttered in a raised voice laced with anger.

Krysty hastily pushed it closed, making the bell jingle once more.

"Keeps out the scale-blasted flies, you understand. Can I help you outlanders to any small curio or other?"

"This stuff all come from before the long winters?" Krysty asked, brushing the dust of the street from her long, fiery hair.

"Indeed. Much of Southern California took the big plunge into the Cific, down the Andreas. Lot of neutrons around here. My father and me been collecting since then. I pay packies to go scouring the old gulches and ghost villes."

At last he stepped out from the darkness, sliding through a curtain of clear glass beads that clicked softly.

The man was in his late fifties and wore a loose shirt, hand-woven in varying shades of purple and green. He sported old-fashioned glasses with lenses tinted a very deep blue, and he held his head on one side like a querulous parrot.

"I do not see well. An accident in a warm spot that became hot without my noticing it. Corneal damage, I believe. That is why I keep my humble establishment a touch gloomy. It pains me less."

"Mind if we look around?"

"Course not, Mr. Cawdor."

"How'd you name my name, Mr?.."

"Zombie and his two-wheelers help me in finding items for my store. He described you very well. My name is Brennan. Yes, the same as Baron Edgar. He is my brother. His nephew, Layton, is my grandson."

It seemed like he was going to go on and say more. Maybe a lot more. But a shadow fell across the window and he turned like a startled hare, taking three steps back to the shelter of his beaded curtain.

"It's all right," Krysty reassured him. "Friend of ours. Rick Ginsberg. Hey, Ryan. Looks like he's been laying out some jack on clothes."

The bell chimed thinly as the freezie entered the shop cautiously. "That you, guys? Thought I saw you from the bedroom. I changed that old suit for something more practical. Laid out most of my cash... I mean jack."

He was wearing a pair of faded Levi's, tucked into ankle-high hiking boots with studded soles, a washed-out work shut in light brown and a heavy-duty quilted jacket.

"How do I look?"

"Hell of a lot better, Rick," Ryan said. "Could find the going warm in that coat. But, yeah, make life easier for yourself when we get moving again."

"Mr. Ginsberg," the shopkeeper said, "I'm Rufus Brennan. Welcome to my store. Browse around and hope that you will be guided to what is right and fitting for you."

"You never owned a jewelry store down near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, did you?" Rick asked.

"No. Those names are not familiar to me. Why do you ask?"

"Just the way you do the sales pitch. But let it pass."

"Let's look around some," Ryan suggested. "Then we can get back and see how J.B. and Jak have been doing. You feeling okay, Rick?"

"Sure. It's just that seeing all this stuff from... We'd have said most of this was plain junk. But it's a time warp. Walking down the street here with the houses and the stores... similar but not the same. No, not the same at all."

He took off his spectacles and began to polish them furiously.

Predark wasn't a very large store, but it was crammed with all manner of memorabilia. One corner was filled with childrens' toys and games. Creatures with names like Care Bears and Dumpyloves, and comp-controlled dolls that would do everything except make people love you. There were plastic figurines that you could move and place into stiff poses. They all had incomprehensible names such as Hutch and Fonzy and Indiana and most seemed to come from places with strange, Oriental names.

There were all sorts of souvenirs. Ryan guessed people must once have collected them to remind themselves of places they'd visited. Disneyland was one that he'd heard of. Tuckaluckahootchie Caverns was one that he hadn't.

One table held a dozen different kinds of telephones. Ryan picked up one that was made to look like a droopy white dog. "You got working transceivers in the ville?" he asked.

"No. Few years back my brother tried to get one installed. Not much interest. Folks figured that Snakefish is such a small ville you could lean out on your porch and shout to most everyone that you wanted."

Krysty was fascinated by an intricate metal tool with prongs, spikes and cogwheels. "Gaia! What's this do?"

Rufus Brennan sniggered. "That used to have a little box, but it was all raggedy. But I know what it was — for coring an avocado — and if you twist that button it will remove the seeds from grapes. Kind of useful, isn't it?"

Krysty laughed, tossing her hair back. Even in the gloom it danced and burned with a living fire. "Useful? I'd rate it about level with a glass scattergun on the useful scale."

"Hell's bloody bells!" Rick exclaimed from the side of the store, where small ornaments and books were piled.

"What've you found?" Ryan asked.

"My past, Ryan. This book. Poems and short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I had this given to me as a school prize when I was about eleven, around 1981. Scared the shit out of me with its pictures and the creepiness of..."