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pur-doy-kor …”
    But the scare made him hurry.
    He filled the Coke bottle again and quickly doused the plastic bench seat and the entire interior of the cabin with gasoline. He used the remainder of the gas to lay a trail across the ground to the rear of the truck, then splashed the last of it onto the side near the fuel cap. He threw the bottle into the cabin and stepped back.
    He noticed Mario’s Houston Astros cap on the ground. He picked it up and threw it into the cab with the body.
    He took a book of matches from his jeans, struck one, and used it to light all the others; then he threw the blazing matchbook into the cab of the pickup and swiftly backed away.
    There was a whoosh of flame and a cloud of black smoke, and in a second the inside of the cabin was a furnace. A moment later the flames snaked across the ground to where the tube was still spilling gas from the tank. There was another explosion as the gas tank blew up, rocking the pickup on its wheels. The rear tires caught fire, and flames flickered around the oily chassis.
    A disgusting smell filled the air, almost like roasting meat. Priest swallowed hard and stood farther back.
    After a few seconds the blaze became less intense. The tires, the seats, and the body of Mario continued to burn slowly.
    Priest waited a couple of minutes, watching the flames; then he ventured closer, trying to breathe shallowly to keep the stench out of his nose. He looked inside the cabin of the pickup. The corpse and the seating had congealed together into one vile black mass of ash and melted plastic. When it cooled down, the vehicle would be just another piece of junk that some kids had set fire to.
    He knew he had not got rid of all traces of Mario. A casual glance would reveal nothing, but if the cops ever examined the pickup, they would probably find Mario’s belt buckle, the fillings from his teeth, and maybe his charred bones. Someday, Priest realized, Mario might come back to haunt him. But he had done all he could to conceal the evidence of his crime.
    Now he had to steal the seismic vibrator.
    He turned away from the burning body and started walking.
    *  *  *
    At the commune in Silver River Valley, there was an inner group called the Rice Eaters. There were seven of them, the remnants of those who had survived the desperate winter of 1972–73, when they had been isolated by a blizzard and had eaten nothing but brown rice boiled in melted snow for three straight weeks. On the day the letter came, the Rice Eaters stayed up late in the evening, sitting in the cookhouse, drinking wine and smoking marijuana.
    Song, who had been a fifteen-year-old runaway in 1972, was playing an acoustic guitar, picking out a blues riff. Some of the group made guitars in the winter. They kept the ones they liked best, and Paul Beale took the rest to a shop in San Francisco, where they were sold for high prices. Star was singing along in a smoky, intimate contralto, making up words, “Ain’t gonna ride that no-good train …” She had the sexiest voice in the world, always did.
    Melanie sat with them, although she was not a Rice Eater, because Priest did not care to throw her out, and the others did not challengePriest’s decisions. She was crying silently, big tears streaming down her face. She kept saying: “I only just found you.”
    “We haven’t given up,” Priest told her. “There has to be a way to make the governor of California change his damn mind.”
    Oaktree, the carpenter, a muscular black man the same age as Priest, said in a musing tone: “You know, it ain’t that hard to make a nuclear bomb.” He had been in the marines, but had deserted after killing an officer during a training exercise, and he had been here ever since. “I could do it in a day, if I had some plutonium. We could blackmail the governor—if they don’t do what we want, we threaten to blow Sacramento all to hell.”
    “No!” said Aneth. She was nursing a child. The boy was three years