by Allen Steele
And there were two or three minor quakes, the largest one being a 5.2 temblor in 2006 that enabled the city to save a few dollars from having to tear down some condemned buildings in the central west end. Nothing serious. But the gun was still cocked and one day in early summer, when no one was paying attention, the hammer finally came down.
That was the day my son was taken from me.
My reverie ended as the train lurched to a halt at another station. The doors slid open and the skinny black guy, the strange fat lady, and a few others stood up to shuffle off the train. No one got on; except for the old dude who continued to stare at me with doleful contempt, the strung-out teenager, and the guy who was reading, I was alone in the car.
As the train got moving again, the old codger rose from his seat and walked unsteadily down the aisle. “The train is now in motion,” a pleasant female voice said to him from the ceiling speakers, its metronomic cadence following him as he staggered from seatback to seatback. “Please return to your seat immediately. Thank you.”
He ignored the admonition until he found the seat next to mine and lowered himself into it. He watched me for another moment, then leaned across the aisle, bracing his chapped hands on the edge of my seat.
“Repent your sins,” he hissed at me. “Jesus is coming.”
I stared back at him. “I know,” I said very softly, “because I am Jesus.”
Okay, so maybe it was a little blasphemous. I was worn out and pissed off. But I’m Jewish and Jesus was Jewish, and that made us closer kin than with some crazy old dink with a grudge against anyone who didn’t share his hateful beliefs. At any rate, it worked; his eyes widened and his chin trembled with inchoate rage, then he glared at me and, without another word, got up and made his way to the front of the train, putting as much distance between us as possible.
Good riddance. “Go forth, be fruitful and multiply,” I added, but I don’t think he got that old Woody Allen joke. Alone again, I recalled my conversation with the nameless black woman at the Muny.
I was supposed to tell John to meet her at eight o’clock tomorrow night at Clancy’s; that would be Clancy’s Bar and Grill, a bar just down the street from the paper’s offices. Since she didn’t bother to tell me her name, she must already be known to John … but certainly not by sight, considering how she had mistaken me for my colleague.
Therefore, how was John to recognize her? Not only that, but why didn’t she simply call him herself, instead of relying on a near-total stranger to pass the word?
Tell him not to trust any other messages he gets, she had said. I had to assume she meant IMs or e-mail through his PT.
I recalled the terrified look in her eyes when she discovered that the message she had received had been bogus, and what she had said.
Oh my God, it’s started …
What had started?
There was only one clue, those two words she had whispered to me before she fled from the ERA troopers. “Ruby fulcrum,” I repeated aloud. It sounded like a code phrase, although for all I knew it could be the name of a laundry detergent or a cocktail-hour drink. New, improved Ruby Fulcrum, with hexachloride. Yeah, bartender, I’ll take a ruby fulcrum with a twist of lemon. Make it a double, it’s been a bitch of a night …
I pulled Joker out of my inside pocket and opened it on my knee, exposing its card-size screen and miniature keypad. After switching to video mode, I typed, Logon data search, please.
Certainly, Gerry, Joker responded. What are you looking for?
314 search mode: ruby fulcrum, I typed.
An hourglass appeared briefly on the screen; after a few moments it was replaced by a tiny pixelized image of the Joker from the Batman comic books cavorting across the screen, maniacally hurling gas bombs in either direction. I smiled when I saw that. Bailey’s son, Craig—who was now going through a Rastafarian phase and insisted that we call him Jah instead—had recently swiped my PT while I was out to lunch and had reprogrammed it to display this Screensaver during downtime. For a while, the gag had gone even further; Joker had spoken to me in a voice resembling Jack Nicholson’s until I had forced Jah to ditch the audio gimmick, although I allowed him to leave Batman’s arch-nemesis intact. It could have been worse; Jah had done the same to Tiernan’s PT, and Dingbat had spoken like Lucille Ball until John had threatened to wring his neck.
After a while the Joker began turning cartwheels for my amusement. Behind the scenes, though, I knew that there was some serious business going on. “314 search mode” meant just that; Joker was accessing every public database available within the 314 area code, searching for any references to the phrase “ruby fulcrum.” The job was enormous; I was mildly surprised when the timer passed the thirty second mark.
I was just glad that Joker hadn’t been damaged during the events of the evening. If I had broken the little Toshiba, Pearl would have eviscerated my liver and deep-fried it, with onion rings on the side. Joker was far more than a semiretarded palmtop word processor; its neural-net architecture enabled it to answer questions posed to it in plain English, and its cellular modem potentially allowed it to access global nets if I cared to pay some hefty long-distance bills.
The train began to slow down again as it prepared to come into my station. The Clown Prince of Crime abruptly vanished from the screen and Joker came back on-line.
No reference to the phrase “ruby fulcrum” has been located. Do you wish me to continue the search?
Rats. It had been a long shot, but I had been hopeful that Joker could turn up something. The train’s brakes were beginning to squeal; glancing through the windows, I could see the streetlights of I-55 coming into view. My stop was approaching.
No thanks, I typed. Discontinue search. Logging off now.
Logoff. Good night, Gerry.
I switched off the PT, folded its cover, and slipped it back into my jacket as Busch Station rolled into sight. It had been a long night, and I was ready to go back to what now amounted to home. I stood up and made my way toward the front of the car, ignoring the train’s admonitions to take my seat until it had come to a full stop.
“Repent, sinner,” the old man hissed at me as I walked past him toward the open door. I was too exhausted to make another smart-ass reply.
Besides, if I had any sins to repent, it would be those against the ghost of a small boy who still rode these narrow-gauge rails.
4
(Wednesday, 10:45 P.M.)
DESPITE THE LATE HOUR, my regular ride home was waiting for me at the station. Tricycle Man sat astride his three-wheeled rickshaw at the cab stand beneath the platform, reading the latest issue of the Big Muddy Inquirer. He barely looked up as I climbed into the backseat.
“Did you see this one?” he asked.
“Which one?” I didn’t have to ask what he meant; it was the same question each Wednesday when the new issue came out. There was only one section of the paper to which he seemed to pay any attention.
“‘SWF,’” he read aloud. “‘Mid-twenties, five feet eight, blonde hair, blue eyes, good natured, looking for SWM for dancing, VR, poetry readings, and weekends in the Ozarks. Nonsmoker, age not important. No druggies, rednecks, or government types ….’” He shrugged. “Guess I qualify, so long as I don’t mention my Secret Service background.”
Tricycle man was a trip: a fifty-five-year-old hippie, right down to the long red beard, vegetarian diet, and vintage Grateful Dead stickers on the back of his cab, whose only real interests in life seemed to be sleeping with a different woman each week and telling grandiose lies about himself. At various times he claimed to be a former Secret Service agent, an ex-NASA astronaut, an Olympic bronze medalist, or a descendant of Charles A. Lindbergh. I didn’t know his real name, although I had been riding in the back of his homemade rickshaw ever since I had moved downtown eight months ago. Nor did anyone else; everyone in Soulard simply called him Tricycle Man.
I searched my memory, trying to recall all the women I had spotted visiting the personals
desk in the last week. “Yeah,” I said, “I saw someone like that.” Trike’s face lit up until I added, “I think she had an Adam’s apple.”
His face darkened again. “Damn. Should have figured.” He folded up the paper and tossed it on the passenger seat next to me, then pulled up the hood of his bright red poncho. “Going to the office or do y’wanna head home?”
I shrugged. “Home, I guess.” It didn’t make any difference; they were one and the same, and Trike knew it. He laughed, then stood up on the pedals and put his massive legs to work, slowly hauling the rickshaw out from under the platform and onto rain-slicked Arsenal Street, heading northeast into Soulard.
As we crossed the I-55 overpass, an ERA Apache growled low overhead, following the traffic on the interstate’s westbound lanes. Another helicopter. My city had been invaded by space aliens, and they rode helicopters instead of flying saucers. Trike glanced up at the chopper as it went by. “Heard there was some kinda riot in the park tonight,” he said. “Lot of people got their heads busted. Know anything about it?”
“A little,” I said. “Enough to know it’s true.” It didn’t surprise me that Trike had heard about the ERA raid at the Muny; word travels fast on the street, especially where the feds were concerned, but I wasn’t about to contribute to the scuttlebutt. Besides, everything I had to say about the Muny riot would be in my column in next week’s issue, and a good reporter doesn’t discuss his work in progress.
Trike glanced over his shoulder at me. “Not talking much tonight, are you?”
“Too tired.” I settled back against the seat, letting the cold drizzle patter off the bill of my cap. “All I want right now is a cold beer and a hot shower.”
“Okey-doke.” He turned left onto 13th Street. “I’ll have you home in ten minutes.”
We passed by the front of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, a compound of giant factory buildings which, like almost everything else in the city these days, were surrounded by scaffolds. Even at this time of night there was a long line of men and women huddled on the brick sidewalk outside the entrance gate, braving the weather and the curfew for a chance to be interviewed tomorrow morning for a handful of job openings. The brewery had reopened just four weeks ago, following a long effort to rebuild after the extensive damage it had suffered during New Madrid. Through the wrought-iron fence, I could see one of the replacements for the gargoyles that had adorned the cornices of the main building before they toppled from their perches during the quake: a wizened little stone man with a beer stein in his hand, sitting in the parking lot as he waited for a crane to hoist him into place. His saucy grin was the only happy face to be seen; everyone else looked wet and miserable. This Bud’s for you …
As he pedaled, Trike reached between his handlebars and switched on the radio. It was tuned to KMOX-AM, the local CBS affiliate. After the usual round of inane commercials for stuff no one could afford to buy, we got the news at the top of the hour.
U.S. Army troops continue to be airlifted to the northern California border, following the formal announcement last week by the state governments of Washington and Oregon that they are seceding from the United States. A spokesman for the newly established government of Cascadia, based in Seattle, says that former National Guard troops have sealed all major highways leading into Washington and Oregon. No hostile actions have yet been reported from either side, but White House press spokesperson Esther Boothroyd says that President Giorgio does not intend to recognize Cascadia’s claim to independence.
Just past Anheuser-Busch, Tricycle Man paused at the three-way intersection of 13th, 12th, and Lynch. A half-block away on 12th Street was the Ninth Ward police station; across the street from the cop shop, in what used to be a parking lot, was SLPD’s south end helicopter pad. A big Mi-24 HIND was idling on the flight line, getting ready for air patrol over the Dogtown neighborhoods in the southern part of city. Beneath the blue-and-white paint job and the familiar TO PROTECT AND TO SERVE slogan could still be seen, as ghostly palimpsests, the markings of the Russian Red Army. ERA got American-made helicopters and LAVs, while the local cops had to settle for secondhand Russian choppers and rusty old BMP-2s left over from Afghanistan, sans armaments and held together by baling wire and paper clips. A couple of officers hanging around outside the police station waved to Tricycle Man and he waved back; he was harmless and familiar, so the cops didn’t bother him.
Countdown continues for tomorrow’s launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, set for lift-off at one P.M. Eastern time. Aboard the shuttle are the final components of the Sentinel 1 orbital missile defense system. Although antiwar protesters are holding a candlelight vigil outside the gates of Cape Canaveral, the demonstrations have been peaceful and no arrests have been made.
Trike continued pedaling down 13th Street, entering the residential part of Soulard. It would have been quicker to use 12th Street, but too many houses on 12th had collapsed during the quake, and the street itself was full of recent sinkholes, many of them large enough to swallow his rickshaw whole. Even then, 13th was a scene of random destruction. Two-story row houses, some dating back to the late 1800s, stood erect next to the rubble of others that had fallen flat.
The derailment of the Texas Eagle bullet train outside Texarkana, Arkansas, has left three people dead and several others injured. Spokesmen for Amtrak say that the derailment may have been caused by failure of the train’s satellite tracking system, sending the nine-car train onto a siding instead of the main line. Investigators are now probing through the wreckage to see if deliberate sabotage was involved.
We passed tiny Murph Park overlooking the interstate—where a small shantytown stood next to a sign: CHICKENS 4 SALE, MONEY, OR TRADE—and crossed Victor Street, heading uphill where 13th became more narrow, the streetlights less frequent. An old black man sat on the front steps of his house, a 12-gauge shotgun resting across his knees. Across the street was the ruin of a half-collapsed Victorian mansion, where a bunch of street punks sat smoking joints beneath its front porch. Trike pedaled faster, avoiding the standoff between the two forces.
And in Los Angeles, the jury is out on the rape trial of filmmaker Antonio Six. His accuser, Marie de Allegro, claims that Six used telepathic powers to invade her mind two years ago during the filming of the Oscar-winning Mother Teresa, in which de Allegro played the title role. The sixteen-year-old actress says that Six was able to use ESP abilities to seduce her. Jurors are considering expert testimony offered in the director’s defense by several psychics.
We reached the top of the hill, then coasted the rest of the way down to Ann Street, where Trike took a hard right that threatened to overturn the rickshaw. He was clearly enjoying himself, although I had to hang on for dear life. A block later we reached 12th Street, where Trike took a left past St. Joseph Church.
The storefronts of convenience markets, laundromats, and cheap VR arcades lay on this block. Some were open for business, some closed and boarded up, all spray-painted with now-familiar warnings: “YOU LOOT, WE SHOOT”; “NOTHING LEFT 2 STEAL SO GO AWAY”; “IN GOD WE TRUST, WITH SMITH & WESSON WE PROTECT”; “IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU’D BE DEAD BY NOW,” and so on.
For the CBS Radio Network News, I’m—
“In sore need of a blow job.” Trike changed to one of the countless classic-rock stations that jammed the city’s airwaves. An oldie by Nirvana pounded out of the radio as he turned right on Geyer. I checked my watch. True to his word, barely ten minutes had elapsed since Trike had left Busch Station, and we were almost to my place.
Geyer had withstood the quake fairly well, considering the amount of damage Soulard had suffered during New Madrid. Although many of the old row houses on this block were condemned or outright destroyed, most of them had ridden out the quake. These old two-and three-story brick buildings were built like battleships: chimneys had toppled, windows had shattered, porches had collapsed, but many of them had stayed upright. It only figured. Soulard was one of the oldest parts of the city; it had too much goddam
n soul in its walls to be killed in fifty seconds.
Trike coasted to a stop at the corner of Geyer and 10th. A couple of happy drunks were hobbling up the sidewalk across the street, making their way home from Clancy’s. I crawled out of the backseat, fished into my pocket, and pulled out a fiver and a couple of ones. “Thanks, man,” I said as I extended the bills to him. “You’re a lifesaver.”
Tricycle Man took the money, stared at it for a moment, then carefully pulled out the two ones and handed them back to me. “Here, take ’em back.”
“Hey, Trike, c’mon—”
“Take it back,” he insisted, carefully folding up the five and shoving it into his jeans pocket. “You’ve had a bad night. Go down to the bar and have a beer on me.”
I didn’t argue. Trike knew I was on lean times. Besides, I was a regular customer; I could always bonus him later. Soulard was a tough neighborhood, but it looked after its own.
“Thanks, buddy.” I wadded up the dollars and stuck them in my jacket pocket. Trike nodded his head and started to stand up on the pedals again. “And by the way … about the blonde?”
Trike hesitated. “Yeah?”
“She didn’t really have an Adam’s apple. I was just shitting you.”
He grinned. “I knew that. Good looking?”
I shrugged, raising my hand and waving it back and forth. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ve done better. Did I ever tell you about the time I was in London back in ninety-two and fucked Princess Di in the back of a limo? Now that was—”
“Get out of here,” I said, and he did just that, making a U-turn in the middle of the street and heading back up Geyer to ask the drunks if they needed a lift home. Leaving me on the brick sidewalk, alone for the first time that night.
The Big Muddy Inquirer was located in a century-old three-story building that had been renovated sometime in the 1980s and turned into offices for some law firm; before then it had been yet another warehouse, as witnessed by the thick reinforced oak floors and long-defunct loading doors in the rear. The law firm that had refurbished the building had moved out around the turn of the century, and the property had remained vacant until Earl Bailey purchased it early last year.