by Ward Wagher
The attendant looked down at his display. A privacy screen kept them from seeing it. The audio pickup heard the request and automatically adjusted the display. A block in the Paladin’s calendar blinked at him. It confirmed the appointment. It had unobtrusively scanned the couple and confirmed their identity.
“Everything is in order Mr. and Mrs. Riggs,” the attendant said. “Please take elevator number six. It will deliver you to the floor where the Paladin’s office is located.”
Riggs dipped his head. “Thank you for your kindness.”
“Oh, it was no problem at all, Sir. We wish you the best of days.”
“Oh, thank you,” Antonia responded. “And may you receive God’s blessings today.”
“Er… thank you.”
The attendant had clearly not expected a response. He watched as the couple made their way across the lobby to Elevator Six. The door slid open as they got there, so they immediately stepped in. The door slid closed and the elevator began its rapid rise to the one-hundred-fiftieth floor.
“You know, Trace, for a seat of government, that lobby wasn’t anything special.”
“True. The Baughman family is extraordinarily wealthy, but they don’t flaunt it. The government of the Palatinate is largely staffed by volunteers, and I suspect the plain lobby makes a statement to the citizens that the government doesn’t waste money.”
“That’s very nice, Trace. Are the people here really that selfless?”
Riggs shook his head. “People are the same everywhere, Luv. I think they tend to be more righteous here in the Palatinate. The Paladin is the exception, of course.”
“I pray for him, Trace. That man carries burdens and can’t seem to get rid of them.”
“He needs the Lord,” Riggs stated. “I think that is why we are here today.”
“So, I shall keep praying,” his wife said.
“As will I.”
Counter-grav elevators gave no sensation of acceleration or movement at all. So the doors slid closed and a few minutes later the opened again on another floor.
“Other than the change of scenery, Trace, you would never know we were on an elevator,” Antonia commented. “And they did not spend a lot of money on this floor either.”
“The carpet is new,” her husband observed.
They walked down the hallway and stopped at a small sign hanging from the ceiling that told them they were at the Paladin’s office. A pleasant-looking older lady sat at the desk when they walked in.
“May I help you?”
“Yes, thank you,” Riggs replied. “We have an appointment with the Paladin.”
The woman looked at her display. “Yes, and you would be the Riggs?”
They both nodded.
“Please have a seat over there. I will tell the Paladin you are here. If he is busy, you may have to wait for a bit.”
“That is fine,” Riggs said, and he led his wife over to the leather sofa along the wall.
“The furniture in here is new,” Antonia said, looking around. They have recently painted as well.”
“Mmmhmmm,” her husband replied.
Ellen Dwyer slipped into the Paladin’s office where RWB leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. He seemed intently interested in the ceiling.
“Your two o’clock appointment is here, Paladin,” Ellen said.
“Fine. Send them in,” RWB replied. Then he sat up suddenly. “Wait a minute, Ellen. There was no two o’clock meeting on my calendar. Did you add something?”
“I did not,” she stated firmly.
He leaned forward and squinted at the calendar on his display. “Tracy Riggs is here?”
“He and his wife are in the lobby,” Dwyer replied.
RWB jumped out of his chair and Dwyer had to jump aside as he headed towards the door, and it slid open.
“Trace, Antonia, what are you doing here?” he called.
The Riggs stood up and faced him.
“We had your invitation and round-trip tickets come to us, so here we are.”
RWB rebounded quickly in the confusion. “Well, come on in. I am glad to see you.”
Dwyer saw that everyone was supplied with coffee and rolls, and then she eased out of the room. RWB had not been this animated since Scout’s death. The conversation just flowed. He found it easy to invite the Riggs to share his evening meal.
“You know the Bible surprisingly well,” Tracy Riggs said as the sat around the table.
RWB shrugged. “I read quite a bit of it before, and my memory is good.”
“What have you read recently in the Bible?” Antonia asked.
“Nothing. Scout told me to quit reading the Bible, so I stopped. And now, all I have are the promises I made to Scout.”
Tracy and Antonia looked at each other uncomfortably. During the afternoon’s visit, RWB had told them about Scout and her death. Tracy then looked down at his plate and thought carefully.
“Do you believe the Bible, RWB?”
“You know, I think I do,” the Paladin replied. “There is too much that makes sense.”
“Did you happen to read the account of Nicodemus?” Tracy asked quietly.
“He visited Jesus by night.”
“And what did Jesus tell him?”
“That he needed to be born again.”
“Not exactly.”
RWB looked at Tracy quizzically. “What do you mean.”
“Jesus said to Nicodemus, you must be born again.”
“Well, yes. You are correct,” RWB said. “So what?”
“Jesus is telling us that there are no other options. Believing the Bible helps, but it is not the solution. Believing in the existence of God helps, but it is not the solution.”
“The solution to what?”
“The fact that without God, we have no hope of eternal life. We are under God’s judgment.”
“The wages of sin?” he asked.
Riggs nodded. “You have read that verse, I see. What does the rest say?”
“Sin is death. God gives life.”
“And it is a gift.”
RWB looked down at his plate and then looked up at the Riggs. “I just realized that you really are my friends.” He paused again. “How do we need to do this?”
§ § §
Kholishem Fraddi was a frustrated man. As the leader of the Caliph’s declaration of all-out war on the Palatinate, he coordinated and led the multiple Arabian teams who had smuggled themselves into the North American continent with the goal of bringing down the Paladin and his Allah cursed minions. Yet, despite some near successes, they had yet to achieve a victory in the ongoing campaign.
After suffering generations of humiliations at the hands of the Paladins, the current Caliph had spent his life studying the Palatinate and the Paladins and finally in his one-hundred-fifteenth year had finally devised a means to strike the hated infidels. The Caliph had uncovered an ancient djinn who was now advising the Caliph and his people on ways to evade the evil and insidious grip the Paladins had on Earth’s commerce and economy.
Fraddi himself was honored to sit under the teaching of the wise and clever djinn in a mosque in The Luminous City. Fraddi learned his lessons thoroughly and well. Fraddi was a descendant of the Great Caliph, Al Moussa Fraddi who had saved the people following the collapse of Earth’s civilization in the twenty-first century. The Great Caliph had finally stamped out the western infection and extended The Peace of Allah across all the Middle East and North Africa.
Yet, the Arabian renaissance had finally been confronted by the resurgent western infection of the Upper Midwestern Palatinate in North America and had been stymied from expanding further in the past four centuries. Now was the time to remove the infection once and for all. And Kholishem Fraddi was the man God had chosen to accomplish the task.
Fraddi had learned his lessons well. A key tenet of the djinn’s teaching was the importance of what was called living off the grid. The djinn taught that Shaitan roamed the
electronic web of the Global Net and frustrated the work of Allah and his Prophet. Fraddi and his teams carefully avoided contact with computational and communications facilities available to the citizens of the Palatinate, and most everyone else on Earth for that matter. Fraddi understood that any sniff of their presence in the systems that ruled the Palatinate would bring the wrath of Shaitan down upon them.
Fraddi lived by himself in a small cabin in the village of Naperville. Like the other inhabitants of the village, he subsisted by hunting and keeping a garden. The soil was rich and produced a profusion of vegetables during the short summers of the Palatinate. The forests of the northern Palatinate offered ample game for his larder. The inhabitants of the village mostly wanted to be left alone by the rest of the world. Some of the villagers remained connected to the tendrils of the Global Net, but most preferred their anonymity. The government of the Palatinate rarely bothered them, and Fraddi, of course, preferred it that way.
Yet, Kholishem Fraddi had not accomplished his mission. While it was true that terrorizing the infidels during their vile parties was satisfying, it failed in its primary purpose, which was to decapitate the Palatinate. While the death of the old Paladin was a signal victory, the resilience of Shaitan was plain to see when the new Paladin, the so-called RWB, immediately arose.
This RWB was even more of a reprobate than his father. Worse yet, the man seemed to have more lives than a cat. The Arabian teams had repeatedly arranged ambushes that not only brought overwhelming firepower against the beast but closed off avenues for escape. Yet, RWB had always managed to slip past the snares Fraddi had set.
Fraddi had a neighbor, Al Jeffries, who maintained a video connection to the Global Net. He would invite Fraddi over to share an evening of political news and apple cider. Jeffries was well-informed for a woodsman and shared insights into the government that often provided the seed to Fraddi’s plans. It was during one of these evenings where Fraddi saw the announcement that the Paladin would attend the Harvest Faire in Indianapolis at the end of the summer.
As he spent the next month weeding his garden and roaming the forests in search of his meals, he began developing his plan to finally succeed in his mission. It would involve the expenditure of his remaining teams and require assuming all-or-nothing risks to accomplish. Fraddi was confident, though, that with careful planning and a lot of effort, he would eliminate the curse of the Palatinate from the Earth. The Caliph could then take his rightful place as the Caliph over all the planet.
One of the quaint customs of the Palatinate was the transport of handwritten notes between the cities. Business communications traveled the skein of the Global Net, but entrusting a handwritten note to the ancient Postal Service was supposed to show concern and thoughtfulness. Because the medium was largely immune to surveillance by the Global Net, it was a reliable method for Fraddi to communicate with his teams, even though it was relatively slow.
Fraddi hand-wrote and posted encoded notes to his remaining five team leaders and outlined his plans for a final victory. He also encoded a message that would be forwarded to the Caliph’s embassy in Norleans, from where it would make its way to the Caliph. Perhaps the djinn would lend his influence to the action and heighten the opportunities for success.
Completing his activities, Fraddi packed for a journey and closed up his cabin. He told his neighbors he would be visiting a friend in Peoria and would return in a couple of weeks. Jeffries agreed to watch the place and keep the garden in his absence.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Are you sure you cannot stay longer?” the Paladin asked.
He stood on the rooftop shuttle pad at Wilton House talking to Tracy and Antonia Riggs as they prepared to board the shuttle.
“We must get on our way to Hepplewhite,” Tracy said. “I have delayed it twice and our belongings shipped a month ago. Supposedly they will be placed in a warehouse for us, but there is no way of knowing that it true, out on the frontier like that.”
“I suppose the people at the church there are eagerly awaiting your arrival,” RWB said.
Riggs raised an eyebrow. “I do not know. Usually, places like that become aware of the new priest’s arrival when he steps on the dais on Sunday.”
“That might be a rude surprise,” RWB replied with a crooked smile.
“Oh, thank you very much, RWB,” Tracy responded along with Antonia’s cackle.
“You really must come visit us,” Antonia added. “This really is a mission field we are heading for. It would be an adventure.”
The Paladin smiled at her. “I seem to have plenty of adventures here. But, yes, I would love to come for a visit. I regard you as my spiritual parents and I will miss you. I wonder though if it is realistic for me to expect to take a vacation from Earth for the two to three months it would take for me to travel to Hepplewhite and spend any time there at all.”
“I plan to stay in touch,” Riggs said. “I also took the liberty of contacting one of my colleagues here in Chicago. Gordon Coortz is the rector at All Saints Anglican. I asked him to help you in your walk with the Lord.”
“Not Howard Summy at the cathedral?” RWB had a glint in his eye.
Riggs began to speak and then stopped. “You have met him, I assume?”
“I have. He is a regular at the gatherings of the movers and shakers in the city.”
“Goodness, RWB,” Antonia interjected, “you would likely not find any help there.”
“Let us just say that Father Coortz would be of immense help. I would not venture to speak about Bishop Summy.”
“I would,” Antonia interrupted again. “Howard Summy is a political prelate. He is not a pastor.”
Riggs laid a hand on his wife’s arm. “Gently, Antonia.”
She looked at him and blushed. She turned back to the Paladin. “I must ask you to forgive me. I sometimes speak too soon and often.”
Now the Paladin looked uncomfortable. “Ah, do not worry, Antonia. I understand what you were trying to say. If you have any malice in you at all, I have not seen it.”
“Thank you again, RWB, for being such a generous host,” Tracy said. “It was deeply satisfying to visit you again. For a multitude of reasons.”
“There is one other thing,” the Paladin said. “Actually, two things.”
They looked at him expectantly as he bit his lower lip.
“First of all, I have concluded that going by the moniker RWB is an affectation. It was a part of my old life, which I gratefully leave behind. You can call me Ward. That really is my name.”
“We are honored to have you share that with us,” Tracy said.
“And the other, and I see the pilot is getting nervous about the time, is that I have deposited my contribution to your ministry in your accounts. You may use it for your living expenses, or as you see fit.”
“Paladin…,” Riggs stammered. “Ward, that was not necessary. You have already been most generous.”
“It is my contribution to your ministry. I do not think you can argue about that,” the Paladin said dryly. “And now you really need to get aboard the shuttle. I do not want you to miss your liner.”
Riggs reached out and shook the Paladin’s hand. “God bless you, Sir.”
Antonia threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “Take care of yourself, Ward.”
The Paladin turned and walked quickly back to the lounge on the shuttle deck. After his recent experiences on the roof of Wilton House, he had no desire to be blown off the roof in the jet wash of the shuttle.
He watched as the shuttle eased off the pad on gravs and then arrowed towards orbit and the waiting starship. He had a sad smile as he stepped into the elevator with two of the guards. He decided the Riggs were the best friends he ever had. And he knew he would probably never see them again. And they had introduced him to a gift that was literally without price.
There was one other problem to resolve on this day, he thought as he walked back into his office suite. One of the ad
vantages of the decentralized government of the Palatinate was that the Paladin could control his schedule somewhat. He knew from Chaim Lewis’s intelligence reports that the reason Tomas O’Bleck had delegated so much responsibility to his idiot son was that as the more or less absolute ruler of the Carolina Free State, he carried a crushing load of managing the minutia of one of the important nation-states on the planet.
“Anything that cannot wait, Ellen?” he asked as he walked past the secretary’s desk.
“No, RWB,” she answered. “You have your luncheon tomorrow with the City Council. And I am tentatively scheduling time in the morning so we can discuss plans for your trip to Indianapolis for the Harvest Faire.”
“Right,” he replied. “And, by the way, just call me Ward.”
He turned and walked into his office, leaving her open-mouthed. He grinned to himself. It probably was not very nice, but it was fun to keep people off-balance. So far Ellen Dwyer had worked out well as the Paladin’s Secretary. She had an intimate knowledge of the workings of the government. She also had quickly developed an instinctive grasp of which items she could make decisions on, and which the Paladin needed to see.
Once in the privacy of his office, the Paladin eased into the comfort of his glove-soft leather chair and picked up his hand-comm. He punched a button and made an immediate connection.
“Good afternoon, Ward,” Josiah said.
“I see you have picked up on that already,” the Paladin said. “I find that curious.”
Josiah chuckled in his warm, mellifluous voice. “Simply an accident on my part. Did I anticipate some action on yours?”
Ward Baughman shook his head. “You always seem to be a half-step ahead of me, Josiah. I wish I knew how you were able to do that.”
“My friends accuse me of being perceptive,” the voice replied.
“I wish you would agree to come and visit,” the Paladin stated. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“I am always willing to have conversations. Was there anything you particularly needed to know.”
