Free Jericho Iteration by Allen Steele

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.)
    D ESPITE 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