Twins: 3/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
Two-and-a-half hours later, Superman followed her as she drove back to her apartment, flying six hundred feet above her so that neither she nor any chance passerby would notice that Superman seemed to be paying any unusual amount of attention to Lois Lane, but even as he guarded his partner's safety he was thinking hard. Lois was the best investigative reporter at the Daily Planet, even better than he was, and without the advantage of his super-human abilities. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if Superman dropped by and asked for her help. If anyone could figure out what was going on, it would be Lois Lane.
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And now, Part 3:
Lois shut the door behind her and had fastened the first lock when she heard the soft tapping on the window. Unless there was a sparrow or something trying to get in, there was only one thing that could be. Her heart leaped and began to beat faster at the thought. Superman hadn't come around at all since the pheromone episode back in November, and her meetings with him since had been short and unsatisfactory. She had begun to seriously wonder if he was subtly trying to avoid her.
Sure enough though, when she turned quickly, she could dimly see the famous figure in red and blue outlined against the pale glow of Metropolis's night skyline. She crossed the room at once to open the window, and Superman stepped through.
"Superman! I didn't expect to see you!"
She thought he looked faintly worried. "Have I come at a bad time?"
"No, of course not," she hastened to assure him. "It's just that I haven't seen you much lately and I was starting to wonder if you were avoiding me."
He shook his head. "No, of course not. I've just been busy. I'm a little ashamed to say though, that the reason that I came by tonight was to ask for your help."
"*My* help?"
He nodded and slid the window closed behind him. "Can we sit down? I have a problem and the only person that I could think of that might be able to help me was you."
"Sure." She gestured to the sofa, wondering peripherally if Superman would think it was as uncomfortable as Clark always said. But Superman was invulnerable. Wouldn't that make a difference? "How can I help?"
"I'm not sure if you can," he said, "but since you're the best investigative reporter I know, I hoped you'd have some ideas."
She was the best investigative reporter he knew? She tried not to let her pleasure at the compliment show on her face. The early gushing that she had done over Superman wasn't something of which she was particularly proud, but it felt good to know that her hero thought that way about her. "Well, why don't you tell me what it is and we'll go from there?" she inquired.
He took a seat on the couch, frowning a little and she sat beside him. "I'll try to explain," he said. "It's kind of strange, but ..." He hesitated for a second. "I imagine you've seen the news story that was on LNN this morning," he said. "The one about the 797 that nearly crashed."
She nodded. "I watched it from the newsroom. That was wonderful, how you saved all those lives."
His scowl deepened. "Yeah. The trouble was, Lois, that I didn't."
"What?"
"I didn't save the plane. I was nowhere near Paris when that happened."
She was conscious of complete bewilderment. "But we saw you there. All of us in the newsroom did."
"I know. *I* saw me there, too. Only I wasn't there. I was in Metropolis. Someone or something else that looked a lot like me saved that plane. That wasn't the only thing, either. He saved a cruise ship in Rio, rescued some mountain climbers, and saved a school bus in Surinam. I don't know who or what he is, but he wears my clothes and has my powers, judging from what I saw this morning."
Lois stared at him while her brain slowly processed that information. Superman hadn't made those rescues. Someone or something else who was apparently masquerading as him had performed the feats.
"Oh wow," she said, faintly. "I can see why you're worried."
He nodded. "Exactly. I don't know who or what he is, where he came from, why he's wearing my suit or how he could possibly have my powers but everybody else thinks he's me. I've been worrying about it all day and I finally decided that I needed help from someone that I can trust. You're the one person I could think of who best qualifies."
"Is it possible that there's another person like you here on Earth?" The fact that he trusted her was flattering, of course, but now her curiosity was aroused. "I mean, you came here; I guess it's possible that someone else could have come from Krypton, too, couldn't they?"
He shook his head. "I don't think so. When I gave you that interview not long after I arrived, I didn't tell you all of it, mostly because I didn't know all of it, either."
"What do you mean?"
He hesitated again. "This can't go any farther," he said, finally. "It has to be completely off the record. Do you understand?"
She nodded. "Anything you tell me in confidence stays that way, Superman. You have to know that."
There was a faint smile on his lips. "I appreciate that. If this information got out there are some people who might figure out things about me that mustn't be known. You see, Lois, I've been on Earth a long time. A lot longer than I've let anybody think. Do you remember the globe that Jack stole from Clark's apartment?"
Her heart jumped. "Sure."
"I didn't tell you what it was, and I probably should have, but I've been afraid to let anyone know anything about me that wasn't necessary. Someone else -- and I don't know who he is -- does know, however, and it's probably just as well that someone I trust does too. Besides, you need to know to help figure out what's going on now. That globe told me about my history. Why I was sent to Earth. Before that ..." He hesitated.
"You didn't know?"
"No."
"Why?" she blurted. "Was it some kind of amnesia or something? Do people from your planet even get amnesia? I mean, you can't be hurt, and I don't think you get sick, at least from Earth germs, do you? So how can ..."
Superman had the same expression on his face that Clark got when she launched into one of her monologues. With difficulty, she cut herself short. "Sorry."
The faint smile on his lips widened slightly. "That's all right. It's one of the unique things about you. No, it wasn't amnesia. You see ..." He hesitated and took a deep breath. She waited, holding her own breath. Superman was *nervous*.
"Go on," she said at last, when the silence had stretched to several seconds.
He took another deep breath and then a third one. "I came to Earth as a baby, nearly twenty-eight years ago. I don't remember my parents or anything about my home world. The globe was the navigation device for my ship, and my father left me a message in it."
"A *message*!"
"That's right. In it, he told me why he and my mother sent me off into space, alone. They sent me to Earth on purpose because the people here look like me and I could survive here. You see, Krypton was going to explode -- *did* explode. As far as I know, I'm the only survivor."
She was silent while she absorbed that. The man sitting beside her and asking for her help, was the last of his kind. And someone -- probably whoever took the globe and had it in that room that Superman had found beneath the Metropolis Museum -- had found out these things. That wasn't good.
Superman was silent, waiting for her reply. What must it be like, she wondered irrelevantly -- to know that there was no one else like you anywhere? To be completely alone, even with millions of people around you. It was almost frightening to think of such a thing.
But maybe that wasn't true. Maybe this mystery person was another Kryptonian like him. "Is it possible that some other family from Krypton sent their baby here, too?" she ventured. "Could you tell if he looks exactly like you, or just sort of?"
"The television picture wasn't good enough for me to tell for sure," he said, "but from what I could see he looks a lot like me. I went over to France a while ago and checked the plane, too. His handprints were in the underbelly. They match mine."
Lois frowned, all her investigative instincts aroused now. "I'll be glad to help you figure this out, Superman, but do you mind if I have Jimmy help me, as long as I don't tell him any of this?"
"Of course not."
"And I don't know how I'm going to do this and not tell Clark some of it," she pursued. "How much do you want him to know, if anything? I'll keep it secret from him if you want, but you can trust him too, you know."
"Tell him whatever you want," Superman said. There was a slightly surprised expression on his face. "I trust him as much as I do you. In fact, it was Clark that recommended that I ask you for help, if I needed the best investigator around. I'd pretty much already decided that, though."
She was really finding out a lot of things tonight -- about Superman, and about her partner, too, she thought. It was good to know that he really respected her abilities as a journalist. That was as flattering to know as the fact that Superman apparently thought she was the best as well. Her ego was getting a major boost this evening.
"All right," she said. "I'll start on it first thing in the morning. If there's anything I can find that won't give anything away about you, I can have that, can't I?"
He grinned. She hadn't seen Superman actually grin very often, but his smile almost made her knees weak. "Sure. It wouldn't be fair to make you keep everything secret. Just leave anything personal about me out of it. Deal?" He extended a hand.
"Deal!" she said, taking the hand almost automatically.
He gripped her hand firmly. "Thank you, Lois. I feel a lot better already."
"Don't be too confident until we see what I can do," she cautioned. "The first thing is to get as much information available about the rescue this morning, and the others, too, that we can. Any interviews, pictures, everything. I'll get Jimmy to work on that tomorrow morning. Maybe by then the imposter will have shown up again somewhere. The more we can collect on him, the better chance we have of finding something useful. You're sure you didn't have a brother or anything that came here at the same time you did, aren't you?"
"Pretty sure, yeah," he said. "I think my father would have said something in the message if I'd had a brother. Besides, the pictures in the message only showed one baby."
"You *saw* pictures of your parents, and you too?"
"I even saw the planet explode," he said, a trifle grimly. "The globe showed me everything. It was kind of a mental projection. Krypton's science must have been way beyond ours, here on Earth. Well," he added, "it had to have been, or I'd never have gotten here. And whoever had the globe for a time saw all of that too."
"That's not good at all," Lois said. "I wish you'd told me last month when you found that art cache. I'd have worked harder to find out who put all that stuff under the museum, but it didn't seem all that important at the time. The globe is somewhere safe now, isn't it?"
"Yes. I keep it in my ... fortress."
In his fortress? So Superman lived somewhere in some kind of fortress when he wasn't patrolling the skies of Metropolis? "That's good. You don't want to risk someone else getting hold of it again. After we figure out what's going on with this imposter, I think I'm going to do some more investigation of that art thing. Maybe Clark and I can find out who was behind it."
"That would be useful," Superman said. "I'd like to know who had the globe for that time -- who it is I have to watch out for."
"You know," Lois said, "it would take a lot of money and power to have a room like that built and keep it secret. Who in Metropolis has the kind of resources to manage something like that, and who would want to?"
She broke off and her eyes met Superman's. He was staring at her in astonishment. "I don't know why I didn't see it before," he said softly. "Who else could it be? Lois, you are absolutely brilliant."
"Lex," she whispered.
"Of course we can't be sure," he added after a second, "but it's a good place to start looking."
"It sure is," she said. "Thanks, Superman, you've probably given me a lead on my next big story. But first," she added, "we'll deal with the imposter. The other thing will wait."
He nodded. "I appreciate that."
"Don't thank me too much," she said. "I expect to get a good story out of it."
"I hope you do," he said honestly. "I'd better go now, though, and thanks again."
She stood at the window a long time after he had disappeared into the night, thinking about what he had told her. Who could have imagined what his real history had been? It seemed there was a lot more to Superman than she had guessed.
It wasn't until she was climbing into bed that it occurred to her that there were a number of things that he hadn't told her. Maybe he'd realized that she would figure them out for herself. How, for instance, had the baby Superman survived after he had arrived on Earth? He had been a helpless infant.
"My mother made it for me." Superman had spoken those words to Amy Platt on the day that he had saved the colonist vehicle from a fiery end. Lois had almost forgotten that. His mother, whoever she was, had made his uniform, and he certainly hadn't meant his Kryptonian mother. Just who was Superman's mother, here on Earth? And where had he been for all the years since he had arrived until he decided to let people know that he existed? He certainly hadn't been hiding in some distant fortress.
The conclusion was obvious. Superman had been raised as an ordinary native of Earth. And if, as they had surmised, Lex Luthor had been the man in possession of the globe for those critical days, then he knew it too.
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tbc
