Twins: 4/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
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. How 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.
**********
And now, Part 4:
Clark entered his apartment, as he usually did when dressed in his Superman outfit, through the bedroom window, and flopped down on his bed without even bothering to change out of the colorful costume. Well, it was done. Lois was going to help him figure out what was going on, and who and what the imposter was. The trouble was, it had been necessary to tell her more than he wanted, and Lois, being who she was, wouldn't just let things lie. She was going to start thinking, and would certainly come to some conclusions that he didn't want her to come to. She was bound to realize that Superman was actually someone else who lived an everyday life as a normal man. He just hoped that she didn't add things up too close to home.
She probably wouldn't, he comforted himself. Nobody would even consider that a mild-mannered reporter could also be a superhero. He hoped that Lois wasn't the exception to the rule.
For an instant he wondered why he hoped that. Didn't he know her well enough by now to realize that she wouldn't give away his secrets for that Pulitzer? Well sure, but ...
Still there was the fear that if she knew ... well, who knew what could happen. He couldn't let the fact that he wanted her as a good deal more than just a friend make a difference in his caution. He couldn't risk his emotions distorting his judgement. Could he?
He wouldn't mention this to his mother and father, he decided. If he did, Mom would just go off onto one of her psychological analyses about him wanting Lois to know and not being able to admit it to himself or some sort of psychobabble like that and Dad would get upset about his being careless. It was done, and now the less said about it the better.
**********
Lois was leafing through a stack of papers when Clark walked onto the lobby of the Daily Planet the next morning. She glanced up from the European edition of the Daily Planet that she had been perusing and beckoned to him. "Clark, we need to talk."
"About what?" he asked.
"We've got something important to do, and if we're lucky it'll turn into a headline -- if we can just figure out what's going on."
He grinned. "That sounds promising."
She lowered her voice. "It's about Superman, Clark. He wants us to do something for him. Come on." She stuffed the paper untidily back into its holder and grabbed his elbow.
He raised his eyebrows. "Okay. You don't need to drag me along ..."
He broke off as Perry White sauntered through the revolving doors into the lobby. Clark found that now his eyebrows had climbed almost to his hairline and, with a supreme effort, managed to assume a noncommittal expression.
Lois glanced at their boss and did a double-take. "Um ... Morning, Chief."
The Editor of the Daily Planet was wearing an obviously expensive coat and a pair of stylish sunglasses, and carrying a suit in it's plastic bag over one shoulder. He lifted a hand to the visor of his Daily Planet baseball cap in a jaunty gesture to them as he passed. Both Lois and Clark stared after him for a brief moment of startled silence before Lois seemed to shake herself. "Uh ... yeah. Let's go upstairs and talk where we can't be overheard."
"Sure." They followed Perry toward the elevator.
The ride to the newsroom was accomplished in near-silence. Clark glanced once at his boss and then fell to studying the control panel of the elevator. Lois gazed as if mesmerized at their editor's clothing.
"Um ... anything special going on today?" she asked.
"No." Perry began to whistle almost inaudibly. Clark cast a surreptitious glance at his choice of wardrobe and returned to studying the elevator buttons. It was that or stare, which would have been rude.
"Oh," Lois said. Silence, while the elevator creaked slowly upwards. At last it slid to a stop and the doors opened. Lois and Clark stood back to let him exit first. As he stepped out into the newsroom, Lois glanced at Clark. He shrugged slightly and gestured her out ahead of him.
Lois made a direct line for one of the conference rooms and Clark trailed after her. Jimmy Olsen, headed in the direction of the editor's office, nearly ran into them. In his scramble to avoid them, he dropped a number of what appeared to be brochures on the floor. "Oops! Sorry."
Clark bent to pick them up. "My fault, Jim." He glanced at the top brochure as he handed them to Jimmy, than took a second, closer look. "Whitewater rafting? Planning a vacation in Colorado?"
"Uh ... no. They're for Mr. White."
"Perry?" Lois snatched the item out of his hand and examined it. "He can barely tread water. What's he planning something like this for?"
Jimmy shrugged. "You got me. It's not exactly his style."
"Not exactly," Lois agreed. She glanced once more at the brochures. "Death Valley scenic hikes? Is he kidding?"
"I don't know," Jimmy said. "He said he was going to surprise the Mrs. with a different sort of vacation this year."
"Huh," Lois said. She shrugged. "Well, if a husband of mine took me on a Death Valley hike, I'd come back alone. Look Jim, when you get finished giving him this stuff, I need you to do some research for me."
"Sure, but I'd better get this to Mr. White before he starts yelling." He took the brochure back and continued on after his boss.
Lois looked after him for a few seconds and finally shook her head. "Well, whatever's going on, we'll probably find out about it after while. In the meantime, we need to talk."
"I'm at your service," Clark said. "Why all the mystery, though?"
Lois didn't answer until the door of the conference room closed behind them. She turned the lock. "I didn't want anybody to hear because Superman told me this in confidence. He said we could print anything that didn't give away anything about his background, though. He came to see me last night after I left your place. Remember the plane in France yesterday morning? Superman says he didn't save it. It was somebody else that looked like him. He wants us to try to find out what's going on."
Clark listened while she detailed the highlights of his visit to her the night before. When she had finished he said, "So what do you plan to do?"
"First," she said, "I'm going to have Jimmy find out as much about that rescue and the others as he can. I want pictures, if there are any, and statements from the people he rescued. Then, depending on what we find out, we can decide what to do next."
"Okay," Clark agreed. "Sounds like a good first step."
Lois nodded briskly. "If we get a story out of this, though, we can't mention anything about what Superman told me, Clark -- about his history. The last thing he needs is for people to figure out that he lives here as an ordinary guy. If they did, people will start hunting for him, and we don't want something like that to happen."
"Of course not," Clark said. "How do you figure that, though?" He waited, holding his breath.
"Well, it's obvious. If he came to Earth as a baby, he couldn't have survived by himself. Someone had to have taken care of him, raised him, taught him the things that everybody knows. It never occurred to me before how familiar with human customs he always seemed to be, but he really is. He had to have been raised as a human; he must have gone to school somewhere as a regular kid. He probably lives somewhere in the city, holds down an ordinary job, although that's kind of hard to imagine, pays taxes, takes out the garbage -- just like everybody else. When I first met him, he told Amy Platt that his mother made his costume, so he has adoptive parents somewhere. That's another thing. If the media ever found out about them, they'd have reporters camped out on their doorstep for the rest of their lives, and every crime lord in the world would know that to keep Superman off his back all he'd need to do would be to threaten Superman's parents -- so anyway, none of that stuff is going to get out. Got it, Kent?"
"Got it," he said. "You don't need to worry about me, Lois. Superman is my friend too, remember."
"I guess so, even though I never see you talking to him. Anyway, we don't talk about this to anybody else. Not even Perry or Jimmy. It's strictly off the record."
"Absolutely." Clark could feel the knot of tension in his gut unwinding as she spoke. His faith in Lois had been justified. Nobody was going to learn about Superman's secrets from her.
But then, Lois was loyal to her friends. He'd known it all the time underneath or he'd never have told her the things he had, but he still wasn't going to say anything about this to his parents. Much as he loved both of them, just this once he didn't feel like being either cautioned by his worried father or psychoanalyzed by his mother over the whole thing. His feelings for his partner were something private and personal and he didn't want to talk about them to anyone, especially when there was still this mystery man out there apparently pretending to be him. And for once, the fact that his reasoning didn't make a bit of sense didn't bother him at all. Maybe Lois was rubbing off on him more than he realized.
***********
Nearly an hour later, Clark sat at his desk leafing through half a dozen photographs that Jimmy had produced in a minimum of time. With a quick glance around to be certain that no one was watching, he lifted his glasses and zoomed in on the pictures taken of the airplane rescue the previous morning. The image was slightly blurry, but it was unquestionably his own face he was looking at. Slowly he sat back, pushing his glasses back into place.
"Anything?" Lois's voice asked behind him.
He laid the photos down. "From what I can tell, it's Superman. At least, it sure looks like him. If he says it isn't, then there's a double out there somewhere."
"Then there's a double out there," Lois said flatly. "I've been reading the reports. From everything people said, he can do everything Superman can do -- except that he isn't Superman. Where could he have come from?"
Clark shook his head. "That's a good question. If he doesn't have a brother, and apparently he doesn't, then who is this guy? Someone who's had plastic surgery or something? I didn't know there were *any* plastic surgeons that were that good."
"I don't see how it could be," Lois said. "In the first place, he's got Superman's powers and he sure didn't get those with plastic surgery."
"Good point," Clark admitted. "So where do we go from here?"
"I've got Jimmy looking for more reports of appearances by Superman outside the United States," Lois said. "Whoever this guy is, I'd say he's trying to stay away from Superman. Why?"
"Good question."
"He had to know he'd be on the news so he can't expect Superman not to have heard about him, but he doesn't want to meet him," Lois pursued. "That has to mean something."
"Probably," Clark agreed. "Or maybe he doesn't want to meet him just yet for some reason."
"That's possible," Lois said. "Anyway, it sure *looks* like he's avoiding Superman. What's he got to hide?"
Jimmy stood up abruptly from his small desk and crossed the room to hand Lois several sheets of printer paper. "Your hunch was right," he said. "There have been a bunch more reports -- none of them as spectacular as the one yesterday. Superman's been all over the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, South and Central America, Africa, Australia and the South Seas. Lots of little rescues and a couple of big ones where there weren't any cameras around. Take a look."
"Jimmy, this isn't Superman," Lois said. "He told me so."
"Well, it's somebody who looks just like him then," Jimmy said, clearly skeptical. "Could it be somebody else from Krypton, like maybe a relative or something? Or maybe the people from his planet all look alike."
"Superman says it isn't," Lois said, firmly. "I believe him. There's got to be another explanation."
"Maybe," Jimmy said. "I've got another question though."
"What?"
"Why is Mr. White wearing a hairpiece?"
The switch in subject was so abrupt that it took her brain several seconds to shift gears. "A ... hairpiece?"
"Yeah. I makes him look like Dan Rather, only younger."
Lois couldn't quite visualize that. "Who knows. Maybe his wife talked him into it."
"I dunno," Jimmy said. "I've got a weird feeling about this."
**********
The information Jimmy had found for her wasn't particularly enlightening, Lois thought some time later. It was mostly a list of places and events with a very few quotes from witnesses. It appeared that the imposter had flown in, performed his deeds and flown out again without ever once talking to even the local press. One little blurb had a witness's description of Superman as he flew off. "He was doing barrel-rolls," the man was quoted as saying. "It seemed as if he was showing off for us or something. He must have been very happy that he'd saved our lives."
Barrel-rolls? Lois stared at the quote. That certainly wasn't the Superman she knew, so there was one difference between the two. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Clark get to his feet and hurry toward the stairs, one hand on the knot of his tie. She was about to call after him when he ducked through the door to the stairs and she sighed. Clark did that a lot, and it was certainly irritating that just when she wanted to talk to him, he took off. Oh well, he'd probably be back soon enough, and with a story. That was the way it frequently happened.
True to form, Clark was back an hour later. As he slid into his chair and started to type, she crossed the space between their desks. "Where'd you go? I wanted to talk to you."
"I had to meet a source," he said. "Then I ran into a jewelry store heist on the way back. Superman was there."
"You're sure it was Superman?"
He nodded. "He wanted to know if you'd made any progress but I said we were still collecting information. I'm just going to write this up. It'll only take a couple of minutes."
"Okay." Lois went back to her desk, picked up her coffee mug and poured the cold coffee into the flowerpot on one corner of her desk. The withered plant that resided in it would have to be replaced, she noted absently. What was it about her plants, anyway? They somehow never seemed to last long. Maybe it was the lighting in here or something.
Dismissing the thought, she crossed to the coffeepot and refilled the mug. By the time she had returned, Clark was reading what he had written. As she watched, he made one small correction and saved his story.
"Done already?" she asked.
"Yeah. I'd already written it in my head on the way back. It was pretty straightforward." He transmitted the article to their boss and leaned back in the chair, stretching. "So, what did you want to talk about?"
"The reports that Jimmy dug up. Here's what a witness said about one of his rescues." She handed him the sheet of paper.
Clark read it and she saw his brows snap together. "Barrel-rolls?"
"Not exactly something Superman does after a rescue, is it?"
"Well," Clark said, "I suppose he might want to do something like that if he was just enjoying himself, but after a rescue? Still, maybe since things went right ..."
"I wonder if Superman ever flies just for fun," Lois remarked, keeping her voice low. She didn't want anyone to overhear of course, even though they probably wouldn't know what she was talking about, but it was an unnecessary risk. The idea of Superman enjoying what he did hadn't crossed her mind before. She'd only seen him in the line of duty, or when he'd given her lifts now and then. Did he even have a sense of humor? Well, she thought he did. If he had been raised as a human, by human parents, he most likely thought like a human, too. And if he thought like a human, then he had a sense of humor -- it was very probable, however, that on the job he didn't think it was a good idea to be joking around. In his ordinary-man identity, it might be different. He probably joked and laughed like any other man, although that was hard to visualize. Maybe she'd even walked past him on the street and hadn't recognized him. The thought of seeing Superman in the clothing of an ordinary man and not knowing him didn't seem likely, however. The man was just so ... so much *more*. Surely she would recognize him if she came face to face with him, even dressed in a suit and tie, wouldn't she?
She caught herself on the thought. She was babbling in her head again. 'Watch it, Lois,' she told herself, 'you're losing it.' On the other hand, Clark had told her that he liked it when she babbled and Superman had said last night that he didn't mind either, so maybe it wasn't so bad.
Clark raised an eyebrow. "I imagine he enjoys himself when he flies," he remarked, his voice as low as hers had been. "If what we think is true, it must have been a terrific thrill when he realized he could fly under his own power. It would be for anyone."
"You're right there," Lois agreed. "I wonder when he started flying, though. I've never seen any reports of anyone flying under their own power until Superman came along. If he'd been able to do it when he was a kid, you'd think he would have been caught on camera or something."
"You'd think so," Clark said.
"I'll ask him next time I see him," Lois said. "If he'll tell me. I got the feeling he didn't want anyone to know too much about him. I guess I understand why. If the media found out who he was, he'd never have a moment's peace." She turned her attention back to Jimmy's information. "Evidently our imposter doesn't worry about his image, though."
"Looks that way," Clark said. His thick brows were drawn together as he scanned the paper again and for an instant as Lois watched him, the strange impression that had been present after the pheromone incident, the feeling that she was missing something, was back. "This guy is getting around."
"I guess finding him is going to be a matter of luck," she said.
"I suppose if Superman hears about him appearing at some rescue he could fly over to him, but how many emergencies like the jetliner are going to happen in the space of a few days?" Clark said.
"Probably not many," Lois said. "Maybe he'll decide to show up in Metropolis before long."
"Maybe," Clark said. "I'm not sure that's a good thing, either."
"Maybe he's friendly," Lois said.
"Let's hope so," Clark said. "I'd hate for someone with Superman's powers to be his enemy."
"So would I," Lois said, quietly.
**********
tbc
