Clark sighed. “Come down to my office,” he said. “We can talk there.” He led them down the stairs to his basement office.
Kal-El took a moment to inspect the bookshelves that lined the living room. At home, he owned nearly every one of the books here, with the exception of the romance novels – they obviously were Lois Lane-Kent’s choice of reading material.
One volume caught his attention: A Year on New Krypton by Clark Kent. He skimmed the book, stopping to read certain passages more closely.
“Mrs. Kent, how much of this book is fiction?” he asked.
“The part were Clark Kent isn’t Kal-El,” Lois replied. “Why?”
“Krypton was an advanced, peaceful society. According to your husband, the colony of New Krypton was a barbarous war zone. How did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” Lois said. “I don’t know if they know what happened or why, except to blame Nor.”
Lois’s expression became distant. “Except for what he wrote there, Clark won’t talk about what happened to him while he was gone. It still gives him nightmares, and it took nearly six months before he was willing to put on the suit, to come back to his other job. I’ve read what he wrote and I know he left a lot out.” She hugged herself as if suddenly cold. “I remember the scars he came back with. Some of them were so awful, we thought he’d never heal.”
“You don’t like them much, do you?” Wanda observed. Lois shook her head.
“I know Zara and Ching try to understand Earth society, mores,” Lois said. “They try, and I know the multitude of cultures here confuses them, but they don’t understand that life has to be more than pragmatic analysis of needs. There has to be joy and love and hope. There has to be art that has no purpose other than to be pretty or sentimental, poetry and music that aren’t dirges or military marches. And I don’t like the way they assume they have priority in my husband’s life.”
Kal-El canted his head to one side, listening. Zara was talking about Nor’s grand-daughter and her child. A child who, if Zara could be believed, was biologically Clark’s daughter. It was Zara’s solution to the political problem such a child presented to the stability of New Krypton that appalled him.
Downstairs, Clark was shouting at them. “You’re the brilliant military strategist, Ching. You come up with a different solution, cause I’m not buying into the one you’ve got. Superman does not kill! And I will not sanction the death of a child in any case!”
“I don’t see that you have a choice, Kal-El,” Ching said.
“There is always a choice,” Clark insisted. “And I have made mine.”
Kal-El heard a whoosh and a moment later a sonic boom.
“They must have him gotten pretty upset,” Lois said softly. “He doesn’t normally take off that fast from the house.”
“They asked him to do something completely reprehensible,” Kal-El. “They asked him to kill.”
Clark II
Ching had grabbed the metal case he’d brought with him and carried it downstairs with him. Clark noted the case was sealed and he didn’t see an obvious way to open it. It was lead-lined so he couldn’t see into it. That worried him.
“Clark,” Zara began as soon as all three of them were behind the closed door of Clark’s office. “We have a crisis on our hands. Not only has Xon been trying to destabilize the Great Houses, but he’s specifically targeted the Houses of Ra and El. A few weeks ago our people caught Nor’s daughter Conza. She was pregnant, close to term.”
“I remember Conza, I think. She was only about five years old when I killed Nor. She was there that day,” Clark said. “She was with her mother, watching.”
He closed his eyes against the unbidden memories. Memories of that last duel with Nor, when he was forced to use every trick he’d learned from Ching in drei combat. Nor was taller, more experienced, and simply meaner than Clark. But luck, desperation, and a few moves from martial arts movies had been on Clark’s side. Somehow, he had brought Nor to his knees and the Kryptonian quarterstaff down on the back of Nor’s neck, the photon emissions burning through skin and bone. No doubts, no mercy. Only the kill.
“The mother swore vengeance against the House of El,” Ching said, continuing Zara’s explanation. “She was one of the leaders taken out in the final raids against Nor’s strongholds before you left for Earth. The daughter disappeared, and we had assumed she had died as well.”
“We don’t know who had her, who raised her, but when she was found, she had become what you would term a ‘terrorist’. We believe she was responsible for the assassinations of the heirs,” Zara went on. “When she was caught and discovered she was in the hands of the Houses of El and Ra, she tried to kill herself and the unborn child with her. We managed to prevent it only to discover when the child was born that she carried the genetic markings of the House of El. We assume they got your genetic material when you were held by Nor.”
“That’s probably a safe assumption, considering I don’t remember most of what happened while Nor’s people had me,” Clark said. What little he did remember was best described as a drugged out nightmare. Not that he’d had any experience with drugs prior to that. On Earth, under the yellow sun, they didn’t affect him at all. But it wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat.
“So, what’s the crisis?” Clark asked. Zara sighed and shook her head.
“Clark, biologically, the child is yours. A female member of the House of El out of Et,” Ching said. “She joins the two Houses and as such is a valuable pawn in whatever Xon has planned.”
“So, give her back to him,” Clark said. “I haven’t been on New Krypton in ten years, so obviously I didn’t consent to any union with the child’s mother.”
“Clark, you’re being dense,” Ching said. “The child is a pawn. She was bred to take down the House of El. Whether you claim her as a member of the House or not, Xon can make the claim that the child’s mother was your bound concubine as right of victor, and the child has the right of inheritance in preference over your natural, half-breed, heirs. You’re only choice is to repudiate any claim the child might have on you, and take steps to ensure Xon has no chance of using her against you.”
“But you just said he’ll use her whether or not I claimed her.”
Zara and Ching just looked at him. He saw pity in their eyes and he finally realized what they were referring to.
“No!” Clark found himself shouting at them. “You’re the brilliant military strategist, Ching. You come up with a different solution, cause I’m not buying into the one you’ve got. Superman does not kill! And I will not sanction the death of a child in any case!”
“I don’t see that you have a choice, Kal-El,” Ching said.
“There is always a choice,” Clark insisted. “And I have made mine.”
“Clark, just sign the repudiation documents,” Zara insisted. “Your hands will be clean. Ching and I can handle the rest.”
“No!” He found he had his fists clenched and he was shaking with fury. He stalked out of the office and blurred his way through the underground passage that led from the house to the river’s edge. Then he took off, into the sky, as fast as he could, without bothering to change into the blue and red suit. The night was a good enough disguise.
He headed north, to the glacier he frequently used as a refuge when he was close to losing control. The glacier had taken a beating over the years. This time, instead of taking his anger out on the ice, he simply sat, head on his hands.
He didn’t understand Zara and Ching. Even on New Krypton life was precious. They’d started out with only fifty thousand colonists and the number had dropped to half that between the harshness of the planet they were on and Nor’s war. But now they wanted him to authorize the death of a child whose only crime was to be born.
He heard the swoosh of a Kryptonian coming to ground and looked up to see Kal-El standing a few yards away, wearing the familiar blue and red.
“I don’t think I like the Kryptonians in this universe,” Kal-El said conversationally, sitting down on the ice facing Clark. The aurora borealis streamed above them in the darkness, coloring the landscape.
“I know I don’t like them,” Clark replied. “And I don’t understand enough of Kryptonian law to argue against them. Assuming they’re not making things up as they go along. I know Nor was. By the way, how did you find me?”
“There are only four full-blooded adult Kryptonians on the planet. It wasn’t that hard.”
“I’m not used to having other Kryptonians around,” Clark admitted. “And I admit that I have a bad habit of avoiding emotional confrontation by taking off.” He sighed. Ten years of therapy hadn’t broken him of the avoidance habit.
“I should be working on a way to get you and your Lois back to where you both belong. But the usual suspects haven’t shown their faces yet either to apologize or to gloat, depending which one, so I don’t have a lot to go on.”
“There are ‘usual suspects’?”
Clark nodded. “Oh yeah. There’s H.G. Wells and his time machine. When he shows up it’s usually to apologize for messing us up again. Then there’s Tempus, he’s a psychopath from the future who will do just about anything to keep Lois and me from doing whatever it is he thinks we’re going to do. He almost got himself elected president ten years ago. And then there’s Mix’m. He’s a demon or imp from another dimension and he just loves making my life miserable. It’s his idea of fun.”
“H.G. Wells, the writer?” Kal-El asked. “Isn’t he dead?”
“Sometimes,” Clark said with a bemused smile. “And then, sometimes just he shows up out of the blue and Lois and I end up plane hopping, or time hopping, or both. It gets a little weird, sometimes. I’ve lost count of how many alternates I’ve met, or heard about."
“Maybe I should be glad I don’t know him,” Kal-El said. “I don’t recall seeing any humans, time travelers, or imps, when that storm hit us. And I’ve never seen, or felt, a storm like it. It was like it had intelligence, like it was following us. And it was moving fast, faster that anything natural. When it hit us, it was like the world turned inside out. If I were back in my own time-line, I could ask the AI in the Fortress of Solitude.”
“I don’t have one of those, at least not since I outgrew the tree house in the back yard,” Clark said. “And there was no AI there. Dad wouldn’t even let me bring in power.”
“I wonder . . .” Kal-El murmured. He reached behind him, to a hidden pocket in his cape and pulled out the copy of the father crystal he’d made just before he and Lois had ended up here. “There was no memory crystal, or memory block with your ship?”
“There was a navigation module with recorded messages, but nothing that looked like that,” Clark said. “But then, the ship that brought me here was stolen not long after I arrived. I got it back not long before I went to New Krypton. It’s possible there were more modules, but I doubt it.” He held out his hand and concentrated. The small blue and green globe of the Earth that normally rested on a shelf in Clark’s office appeared in his hand. It shifted into its red Kryptonian view.
“That’s a neat trick,” Kal-El commented.
“It’s tuned to me,” Clark explained. “But I still haven’t figured out all the things it can do.”
Suddenly, the globe in his hand began to glow bright white as it levitated away from him. Clark saw that the crystal in Kal-El’s hand had also started glowing. Kal-El opened his hand and the crystal floated up to a spot only inches from Clark’s navigation module. After a long moment the light became even brighter and Clark found himself shielding his eyes against it. Then, there was a musical chime and the crystal went dark, dropping to the ice. The sphere’s glow dimmed to a more tolerable level as it sped away from the two men.
“Hey, get back here,” Clark muttered as he stood and watched the sphere disappear over an ice ridge.
Kal-El held out a hand. “Wait.”
The glacier quaked and steam billowed from the far side of the ice ridge. Soon, even the ridge was enveloped in the steam. There was a sound like crackling ice cubes, only a thousand times louder and Clark saw huge shafts of crystal thrusting upwards out of the ice, coming together at odd angles, creating something resembling a structure. The crystals glowed from some light shining within the structure.
Finally the quaking ended, the lights dimmed, and the only sound that remained was the icy arctic wind.
Clark saw a puzzled frown on Kal-El’s face. “That’s odd,” Kal-El murmured. “It’s not the same.”
“It’s different than the one you have?”
“Yes. It’s simpler, somehow. Like from an earlier age,” Kal-El said. “Shall we go in and look?”
