The Last Paladin

by Ward Wagher

  About two-thirds of the way down the hill his com unit erupted with its emergency signal. It was loud, distracting and he almost lost his balance. Trying to deal with the com on the slope was dangerous, so he would wait until he was at the bottom. He did glance around to try to identify any possible threats. He noticed Jones talking into his com unit, so things were under control.

  He skidded to a stop at the bottom and stepped out of the skis. He picked them up and walked over to Jones.

  “It is your Father. We need to leave right now. Smythe is warming up the bird.”

  Without saying anything, RWB began walking quickly to the pad where his shuttle was parked.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The shuttle screamed up out of Vale at full throttle almost as soon as RWB and the two guards had buckled into their seats. Since the shuttles were capable of interplanetary travel, a quick suborbital flight presented no problem. The trip would be much quicker than in one of the transonic air cars.

  “How could Pop be so sick?” RWB asked heatedly. “He was fine yesterday. People just do not get sick like that.”

  “That is a good question,” Jones commented. “I received no details and apparently you did not either.”

  RWB pulled out his com and punched the code for the Paladin’s office.

  “Yes, Ward?” Holden Palmer’s voice carried over the com.

  “What is happening with Pop?”

  “Your father is quite ill,” Palmer said. “It came on him suddenly this morning. Emergency Services took him to the hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” RWB demanded.

  “We do not know.”

  “Okay. Okay. Which hospital?”

  “The Upper Midwest Medical Center here in Chicago. Ward, I am sure they are doing everything they can.”

  “Holden, people just do not get sick like that.”

  “You are quite correct, Ward. We are very frightened.”

  “I am going to go directly to the hospital.”

  “Ward… if you discover anything please inform me. I cannot leave the office.”

  RWB hesitated for a moment to gather his thoughts. “I apologize, Holden. And yes, I will certainly keep you informed.”

  “Thank you, Ward. People here are praying.”

  “Right. Thank you, Holden.”

  RWB disconnected and then leaned forward in his seat. “Filip, can you get clearance to land at the Upper Midwest Medical Center?”

  “I believe so. I will work to make it so.”

  The young man looked over at Jones. “I do not understand what is happening.”

  “We are somewhat in the dark, RWB,” Jones replied. “All we can do right now is wait until Filip gets us on the ground in Chicago.”

  “I cannot believe this is happening,” RWB said, shaking his head.

  Jones said nothing. He now saw the human side of RWB and the young man looked frightened. Well, everyone was frightened. The Paladin was ill and no one seemed to know the cause. This led him to suspect it was an assassination attempt. People simply did not get sick from unknown causes.

  He looked out the window as the shuttle climbed steeply. The blue sky of the Rockies turned deep purple and then black as Smythe took them suborbital. After reaching the top of the climb, the shuttle tipped over into a steep descent towards Chicago. The leading edge of the wings began to glow as Smythe was bringing the shuttle in hot. As a matter of practice, the global flight controllers did not allow flight plans that approached the edges of the operating envelope. But RWB was aboard and word of the Paladin’s condition had spread rapidly.

  At twenty-thousand feet Smythe slammed on reverse power and brought the shuttle to a subsonic speed. That was one rule that nobody was allowed to break. It was very bad form to allow the sonic boom to disturb any cities on the planet. But Smythe held the shuttle right to the edge of what was allowed and used full reverse thrust as he brought the craft down to the landing pad at the hospital.

  A white-coated woman stood at the side of the pad and watched as the hatch opened. RWB jumped down before the stairs fully extended and walked quickly across to the woman.

  “I am Doctor Janeese Cridlow,” She held out her hand. “I will take you to your father.”

  He shook her hand as he walked by and she had to trot to catch up with him. They entered the doors of the hospital together. She was able to guide him through the usual maze of halls.

  “What can you tell me about Pop, Doc?”

  “We have no firm conclusions as yet, but we are strongly considering the possibility that he was poisoned.”

  He stopped walking and stared at her. “Poisoned?”

  “All the signs are pointing to that, Sir.”

  He shook his head and began walking again. “How could that be?”

  “I called Chaim Lewis and let him know what we were looking at,” she said. “He is investigating from Wilton House.”

  RWB bit his lower lip as he walked. “Lewis is our senior spook. I’m glad you talked to him.”

  “Mr. Palmer suggested it. I thought Arlen Senter was the Chief Investigator.”

  “Holden Palmer is an island of stability in a sea of insanity. Yes, he would still be thinking rationally. Senter works for Chaim. Is Pop awake?”

  “No, Sir. He slipped into unconsciousness shortly after he arrived, which was probably a blessing. He was in a great deal of pain.”

  RWB began pounding his fist into his palm as he walked. “I cannot believe this is happening. Things like this should not happen here.”

  She led him through the hospital and to the elevator. They rode up several floors. They stepped out of the elevator where two guards stood. He made his way down a hallway to where two more guards were posted in front of a door. At the end of the hallway, two guards controlled the entry from the stairwell. The guards in the doorway stepped out of the way when RWB walked up.

  He pushed the door open and walked into the hospital VIP suite. It looked no different from any other hospital room, except that it was much larger. A group of doctors and several nurses stood around the bed. He quickly walked over to the bed. The Paladin looked lost in the hospital bed with all the equipment connected to him.

  “What happened to him?” RWB cried out as he looked at the sunken wreck of a man. “He was fine when I talked to him yesterday.”

  “He decided to eat out last night,” one of the doctors commented. “He complained to his secretary about not feeling well this morning. Mr. Palmer checked on him forty-five minutes later and discovered him collapsed in his office.”

  “Why can you not put him in the tank?” RWB asked.

  “We do not dare until we can identify the problem,” the doctor replied. “A general protein bath would likely kill him.”

  “He is dying now, is he not?”

  “Do not give up hope, Mr. Baughman,” Dr. Cridlow said. “I think we can still beat this.”

  “But you do not even know what it is.”

  “I am confident we will find the cause,” she said. “We have the best doctors on Earth in this hospital. We are tied into the Global Net so we effectively have unlimited cyber power available. I cannot make promises, Mr. Baughman, but I do know my business.”

  He moved in closer to the bed and grasped the Paladin’s hand. “Pop. Pop, I am here. Listen, I know you can pull through this. We have the best medical care on the planet here. And I am pulling for you, Pop.”

  He stood for a minute watching the Paladin and waiting for a response. He then walked over and slumped into a sofa that sat in front of the windows. He put his head in his hands. A few minutes later he lowered his hands, and someone placed a cup of coffee in them. He looked up to see Jones.

  “Thanks, Sing.”

  “Richard and I are here if you need us, RWB. We will be outside the room.”

  “I… I understand. Thanks.”

  He sipped the coffee and watched the unmoving patient. The hours crept by. One of the nurses brought him a light lunch. H
e ate it without remembering what it was. He thought about his father and the prospect of life without him. His mother had died in an aircar accident when he was seven years old. The only family he had known was Pop. And at the age of 102, he was too young to die. He should live another fifty years.

  The winter afternoon darkened towards evening and soft lighting came up in the room. A nurse brought him dinner. RWB ate without really thinking about the food. Dr. Cridlow came into the room and sat down next to him.

  “We have isolated the poison, but it is something we have never seen before.”

  “But you can remove the poison, can you not?”

  “It is a systemic poison. It is attacking all the major organs. I think if we can maintain the current palliative regime, the poison will eventually leach out of his system.”

  “So, he is going to live?” RWB reached for hope as that last handhold on the cliff.

  “At this point, I just do not know. I do not want to have your confidence in something that might not come to pass. Have you prayed?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Prayer is for Christers, Doc. If there is a God, he would not have taken my mother away from me. And he would not have let this happen to Pop.”

  “Very well,” she replied. “I will pray then. There are times when as a doctor, you have to let the Master Healer do His work.”

  “Fine. You do that. It obviously would not hurt.”

  The things that people place their hope in, he thought. If Dr. Cridlow would just focus on doing her job, maybe she would find some way to help Pop. She was wasting her time praying as far as he was concerned.

  He visited the fresher and then walked back over to the sofa. He stood facing it and looked out the window. Snow blew past and obscured the lights of the city. He thought it was appropriate. He had heard someone once talk about the winter of a man’s soul. He decided what was going on inside of him was a blizzard. Softly and gently, it was entombing him.

  He sat down again and stared at the equipment. It chirped, whirled and sometimes gurgled. Yet nothing seemed to change. Perhaps the quack was right. If Pop could just hang on long enough, he would come out of it. Did he dare hope?

  A little later in the evening, Chaim Lewis eased into the room. RWB had always liked him. The little Jewish man had never lied to him. Yet, he had the capability to lead people to draw their own, obviously wrong, conclusions. This delighted RWB. He wished he could be that subtle.

  “It is a sad time,” Lewis said. The usual twinkle was absent from his eyes. There was only warm sympathy.

  “I do not understand what happened,” RWB moaned. “I cannot believe this is real.”

  “We do not have a clear suspect, Ward. Your father visited his favorite restaurant last night.”

  “He went to Sigbey’s?”

  Lewis nodded. “He had his usual plate of chicken and noodles.”

  “He loved that stuff,” RWB commented. “Somebody poisoned it?”

  “That is what I surmise. My people have taken apart the restaurant. Once Dr. Cridlow identified the poison, we were able to imprint the pattern on a sniffer. There was no trace of that poison in the restaurant.”

  “He walked to the restaurant?”

  “He did, and we, of course, reviewed that. Or rather Arlen’s people did. They are very good. Your father was a careful man and had six guards with him anytime he left Wilton House. We have ruled out an aerosol because none of the guards became ill.”

  “Chaim, what is going to happen?”

  The older man sighed. “You need to plan for the worst, my friend. Whoever did this did not intend for your father to survive. Observe. He has the best medical care in the Sphere of Man. And yet his life hangs by a thread. I will not mislead you; I do not see a good ending to this.”

  RWB placed his arms on the other man’s shoulders. “Chaim, I am delighted to meet an honest man in this sea of charlatans. The news is bad. I understand that. Thank you for not giving me false hope.”

  “I would that you have a faint hope, anyway. There is still some small chance. However, I fear the doctors have been reduced to throwing darts against the wall on the off chance that something will stick.”

  RWB laughed sourly. “As always, you are a master of the implicit. I wish I was half as good as you.”

  Lewis smiled at him. “Be careful what you wish for, Ward. My position is the result of any number of foolish and painful mistakes I have made over the years. I have learned from them. My wish is that you could learn from mine. Do not try to make your own.”

  RWB laughed more cheerfully. “It is probably too late for that.”

  “I must go now. This promises to be a long night.”

  “Thank you for stopping in.”

  Lewis waved his hand in an it is nothing gesture. He walked over to the bed and gazed at the stricken Paladin. After a moment, he turned and walked out of the room.

  RWB walked back over and sat down on the sofa. He watched and listened and eventually fell asleep. He felt a hand on his shoulder and sat up quickly, trying to clear the cobwebs of the mind. Dr. Cridlow sat down next to him.

  “It is eleven in the evening.”

  “What is going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Baughman. We did everything we could, but in the end, it was not enough.”

  RWB looked quickly over at the bed. The nurses and technicians were disconnecting the equipment. All that would soon remain would be a body. He stared for perhaps thirty seconds and then stood up.

  “I know you did your best, Doc. I guess it was not meant to be.”

  He walked dejectedly over to the door and then out into the hallway. He looked around and walked towards the elevators.

  “Where are we going?” Singman Jones asked, catching up with him.

  “I am going out to get stonkered.”

  Jones said nothing, rather just stayed with a grieving RWB.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Death was an intellectual exercise, RWB decided. He knew that he had caused his father a lot of pain in his attempts to lead his own life. But he had expected him to be there for decades yet. He admitted to himself that the thing he most dreaded in life was losing his father. And now it had happened. He was hurt and he was angry. He wanted to lash out but did not know who to blame.

  There was no doubt his father had been poisoned. He remembered Pop telling him that Chaim Lewis had an unparalleled record in solving mysteries. He was a superb intelligence operative for the Palatinate. That was the reason the Director of Internal Security, Arlen Specter, worked for him. If anyone could find the culprit, Chaim could. Yet that made RWB feel no better.

  Chicago, for its size and splendor, was a parochial place. Most of the businesses, including the bars, closed early in the evenings. The more open-minded Chicagoans knew where to find the places to party into the night, and RWB considered himself open-minded. With Singman and Richard in tow, he had made his way to one of his haunts that was within easy walking distance of the hospital.

  Singman noted the sign outside of the dive – The Speakeasy. He wondered where the name came from. He followed RWB inside while Richard waited outside the door. RWB ignored the greetings as he arrowed toward the far end of the bar. He was apparently known here, Jones thought.

  After climbing on a barstool, RWB caught the bartender’s eye and tapped with his index finger on the bar. The plump greasy-haired bartender nodded and within moments, a squat glass with two-fingers of amber liquid slid in front of him. He picked up the glass and downed the drink in one gulp.

  “Keep them coming, Harry,” RWB said.

  “Right you are,” the bartender replied, as he poured another.

  Jones slipped up to the bar a couple of chairs down from RWB, but between him and the rest of the bar. He heard one of the denizens coming over to see his charge.

  “Hey, RWB, long time.”

  Jones spun around and held up a hand. “RWB wants no company tonight, please.”

  The other stopped suddenly. He had
been drinking all evening, but immediately recognized the implicit threat in Singman Jones’ expression.

  “Sorry… just trying to be friendly.”

  Jones tilted his head in acknowledgment. When the man stumbled away, Jones spun back around to the bar.

  “Thanks, Sing,” RWB said. “I am really not ready to face people right now.”

  “No problem, Boss.”

  With the passing of the Paladin, Jones concluded that RWB was now the employer, and he would stay glued to the young man until he was dismissed. And he hoped that would not happen soon. He rather liked RWB and hoped he did not drink or drug himself to death.

  The bartender stepped over to where Jones sat.

  “I really need to have paying customers at the bar, Sir.”

  Jones nodded. “I understand. Caledon Fizz. Keep them coming whenever you think I need to pay the tariff.”

  The bartender raised an eyebrow. Caledon Fizz was a non-alcoholic carbonated drink from the eponymous planet.

  “I am on the job,” Jones explained.

  The bartender nodded and walked over to the shelf behind the bar and pulled a tumbler down. He scooped ice into it and then opened a bottle of the brown effervescent drink. He slid it in front of Jones.

  “That will be five, Sir.”

  It was Jones’ turn to raise an eyebrow.

  “Hey, that is the going price, Sir,” the bartender explained.

  “Put it on my tab, Harry,” RWB said. “I guess he is working for me, now.”

  He looked over at Jones with a wry grin. “Pop is not in any position to pay you now, Sing.”

  Jones was not certain how to reply so he picked up his glass and sipped at it. He felt very awkward, but RWB was comfortable with his presence, and it seemed to him that was what was important at that moment.

  About five Caledon Fizzes later, he looked over to see RWB slumped over the counter. The bartender walked over.

  “RWB really tied one on tonight.”