Okay, Carol. I got mine done. Where's yours?
Second Choice: 4/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
His feet touched bottom and he stood up, carrying Lois Lane. Swiftly, he ran his heat vision over her again as he sloshed out of the lake and onto solid ground and then warmed the ground itself before stretching her out on it. As gently as he could, he divested her of her sodden coat and hung the garment over a convenient tree limb. Then he stood back and swept her again with diffused heat vision, drying her clothing as he did so and warming her body.
Steam rose from her in a cloud, white as ghosts in the freezing air. He had knelt beside her and was holding her in a sitting position while he dried her back when she seemed to come suddenly to consciousness. She twisted like an eel and struck at him with the edge of one hand.
Clark caught the hand in time to prevent its connecting with the side of his neck. "Hey! Take it easy! It's me!"
Her struggles stopped as she froze in place. Their eyes met.
"Clark?" she whispered.
**********
And now, Part 4:
During the workweek, between three-thirty and four o'clock in the afternoon on Smallville's Main Street was probably the noisiest time and place in the town, Clark reflected as he approached the Lane apartment. High school had let out and teenaged kids had been set free for the rest of the day. One couldn't say that rush hour in Smallville was very intense but there were still a respectable number of vehicles trying to make their way home from town. Adding to the noise, most of them had their radios going, playing music or broadcasting the rush hour news and that made it even more difficult for him to tune his hearing to listen for Lois Lane's heartbeat.
He couldn't hear it and he hesitated, wondering what he should do. Most likely she wasn't in the building but he couldn't be certain. At last, he reluctantly lowered his glasses and peeked through the walls to scan the apartment.
Lucy Lane was watching television, lying on her stomach on the floor and munching on the contents of a bag of potato chips. Fragments of the chips were scattered all about her on the carpet and a Social Studies book lay on its face next to her, obviously abandoned in favor of the afternoon cartoons.
Behind her on the sofa, and totally ignored by Lois's sister, Ellen Lane lay either asleep or passed out. The bottle of vodka sitting open on the end table and the half-full glass beside it would lend probability to either scenario.
Well, that settled that. If she were present, Lois would never allow Lucy to ignore her schoolwork in order to watch cartoons. He glanced into the kitchen.
As might be expected, the stove was bare of any signs of preparation for dinner. The bowls that had contained this morning's breakfast cereal were still sitting in the sink and there was no trace of any of the items that Lois might use to prepare dinner for her sister and herself sitting out. There were a few cans of soup in the cupboard and the freezer held a number of frozen dinners -- probably Lois's attempt to make sure that her sister consumed the occasional balanced meal, he thought with amusement. Lois had never made a secret of the fact that cooking was not one of her skills. Smallville High had a requirement that students must take four semesters of a selection of elective classes during their four-year sojourn within its walls and Lois's previous school had only required two, which necessitated that she take two more. She had opted for Small Engine Repair and Metal Shop, and, since the school had an unreasonable objection to a female in both of those classes, she had been forced to substitute Home Economics in place of Metal Shop in her second semester.
Two weeks later, after three fire alarms and three enthusiastic evacuations of students from the Home Ec classroom -- and that wing of the school -- in order for the noxious fumes from one of Lois's creations to be cleared, Lois was transferred summarily to Metal Shop at the urgent request of the Home Ec teacher.
It hadn't been through any intentional scheme that Lois might have hatched, although he knew that she was completely capable of executing such a plan. It was simply that Lois knew her limitations, and the school administration hadn't believed her. Lois Lane and kitchens mixed with all the alacrity of oil and water. Over the last months, Clark, who had successfully taken Home Ec in his Sophomore year, had cooked a number of meals in the Lane kitchen for the girls and their parent.
He glanced once more at Ellen Lane and shook his head. He knew that Lois wanted to try to get her mother into some kind of alcohol rehabilitation facility, but she had no way of forcing Ellen to cooperate and her father had washed his hands of the problem. That didn't, however, prevent him from calling up periodically to argue with his ex-wife over some detail or other -- which inevitably meant more trouble for Lois and Lucy for the next few days.
Well, Lois obviously hadn't come home after school. So now where should he look? Clark shoved his hands into his pockets and began to walk along the street, his glasses halfway down his nose and unobtrusively scanning the stores that he passed on both sides of the street. He was beginning to be seriously concerned. Lois was either very upset about something, in deep trouble, or off with Ronnie Davis.
He doubted the last. Ronnie wasn't really her boyfriend. He'd been around for a little over three months and had dated a number of the local girls, Lois included. The town grapevine said he was the son of Harvey Davis, who was the new owner of Jackson's Mercantile and Dry Goods. The business had changed hands a few months ago when the original owner had abruptly retired and left town. Rumor said that he had moved in with his widowed daughter in Kansas City. Davis, the new owner, had taken over at once and the town was slowly getting to know him. He seemed like a nice enough guy -- a widower with two sons, one of which was a senior at Kansas Technological Institute. So far, Clark had heard that Ronnie, the younger boy, had graduated from high school in Wichita and was taking a year off before entering Business School. He evidently found small town life boring and had taken to entertaining himself by seeking the company of the best-looking girls in town, much to the disgust of the local boys. Lana had dated him a few times, Clark had learned from a somewhat disgruntled Pete Ross. He drove a Mustang convertible and it predictably drew the attention of the girls. Rachel had gone with him once or twice and so had Ruby Everett and several others. Lois, who was, in Clark's opinion at least, the prettiest girl in the school and unquestionably popular with the boys, had also dated him. Clark knew better than to argue with her -- her dating life was her business but not for the first time he wished Lois's father had been around to put his foot down. Her mother certainly wouldn't. Ellen Lane lived much of her life in a drunken haze, and if the school officials had known of it, Clark had no doubt that the state's social workers would have been called in.
Still, the Ronnie option seemed unlikely today. He had picked her up after school for the last three days, but he'd done that for Lana and Rachel, and several others at different times as well. Besides, he hadn't been there today and Clark figured he was out doing whatever he usually did at this time of day when he wasn't chasing girls. What worried him more was the possibility that Lois was off investigating some story in her own inimitable way, which usually meant she was doing something dangerous.
As she had been doing the first night he had saved her life at Harris Lake.
When she had come suddenly to consciousness and struck at him, only his super-human reflexes had saved Lois from a probable broken or badly bruised hand. She'd stared at him unbelievingly and then her rigid body relaxed suddenly against him. He released her hand and it dropped to her side. "What are you doing here? Where are we?"
"What happened?" he asked, in the vain hope that he might distract her from the questions. The rowboat had vanished and from somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of a car's engine starting up. "How did you get in the lake?"
Lois was peering down at herself in the darkness and he saw her hands fingering the cloth of her blouse and slacks. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "And what happened to my clothes?"
"What do you mean?" he asked. He was stalling, trying to delay the inevitable. "I heard you screaming for help and --"
Her hands flashed from her clothing to his. "Clark, you're soaking wet! We've got to get you out of those wet clothes before you freeze. Where's Wayne's car?"
"Uh --"
Lois turned her head, looking around in the dimness. Beside them, the smooth surface of the lake gave a faint illumination to the scene. She couldn't see as well as he could, but she probably could see enough. "Where are we?"
"By the lake," he said, a sense of fatalism possessing him. There was really no rational explanation that he could give her -- at least not one that she would believe. "Why were you in the lake?" he asked again.
"Where's my coat?" she asked, totally ignoring his question. "At least you can put that on until we can get you into something dry."
"Uh --" he fumbled. Lois got to her knees and made an effort to get to her feet. He grabbed her as she swayed unsteadily. "Take it easy. You nearly drowned -- or froze to death. I'm not sure which would have happened first. I pulled you out. What happened? How did you get here?"
Lois sank back to the sand, but she was beginning to shiver in the icy air. "Clark, what happened? How did you find me, and why are my clothes dry -- and where's my coat?"
Clark wished he could think faster, which was odd because usually he could think faster than he moved. Surreptitiously, he fanned her with diffused heat vision again, warming her slightly. In the darkness the swath of heat vision produced the faintest of pale red shimmerings in the air. Lois, however, was looking around for her missing coat. "It's hanging on the limb behind you," he said. "Just a minute." He got to his feet to retrieve the sodden garment.
Lois managed to get to her knees again and reached for it. "My coat's still wet. Clark, what happened? How did you hear me, and how did you save me without freezing to death?"
He sighed and gave in. "Look, I'll explain it all later, if you'll tell me what happened to you. Deal?"
She hesitated and he saw her nod a little reluctantly. "Somebody tried to kill me."
"*What?*" It was only by a supreme effort of will that he kept his voice low. "*Who?*"
She shrugged. "I don't know his name."
"Well then, why?"
"He caught me checking out his greenhouse."
"He tried to kill you for trespassing?" A few things were starting to add up, however. A few months ago, Sheriff Harris, Rachel's dad, had found a field of marijuana plants, growing quite innocently between the completely legitimate corn stalks in a field, near a tumbledown shack well on the outskirts of Smallville. He'd been trying for some time to find the source of the pot that seemed to have invaded the town in recent months, Clark knew, but it had been Wayne Irig who had provided the clue. He'd seen the cultivated field by accident while tracking down his bovine escape artist, Molly, on property that shouldn't have been cultivated in over a year and was up for sale to boot, and mentioned it to the Sheriff.
"Well -- not exactly," Lois admitted. "There's been a lot of pot showing up in town again. I started looking around and I found out that Eddie Driscoll was selling it. So I followed him this afternoon."
"*Eddie Driscoll* tried to kill you?"
Lois shook her head. "No, not Eddie. There's a farm just east of the Driscoll property. The little one that sells eggs."
Clark knew at once the property of which she spoke. "It's not really a farm. It's just a house. They grow some vegetables and have a bunch of chickens and sell the eggs. A guy retired there a few years ago."
"Yeah, well, he's got a big greenhouse in his back yard. I followed Eddie in Mom's car, and he went over there and talked to the owner, and then he bought a bag full of something and drove away again. So I waited until dark and started snooping around. He's growing pot in the greenhouse. Rows and rows of it. It looks like a pretty big operation. And he's got this fancy set-up for drying plants, and big bags of the dried stuff stored in the back --"
"And you got caught," Clark said.
"Well -- yeah. Pretty much. The guy had a rifle. He tied me up and put me in his car and drove out here. He made me get in a rowboat and rowed out into the middle of the lake. Then he took off the ropes and made me jump in the lake. I figured I could stay afloat until he left and then swim to shore. I'm a good swimmer, and the lake isn't that big, but it was so cold I --"
"Yeah," Clark said. "I get it."
"Anyway, I saw enough. We need to tell Sheriff Harris, and then I can write it up for the Smallville Press. Don't you see, Clark, I can get my name on a big story -- enough that they might hire me part time. If I can do that, I'll be able to earn more money for school."
He nodded. "I understand," he said. "I just wish you'd told me. I wouldn't have tried to steal your story -- and you probably wouldn't have almost gotten killed."
She shrugged, looking down at her hands, clasped in her lap. "I know. I should have. I just didn't think about it." She looked up. "I sometimes do things without thinking and get into trouble. Daddy used to get mad at me for being reckless. But we have the story. I *saw* the plants growing in the greenhouse and the guy doesn't know I'm alive -- does he?"
Clark shook his head. "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I saw him. He was rowing away when I got here and realized you were in the lake. But the problem is, it's your word against his. Sheriff Harris has to have more to go on than that if he's going to get a search warrant."
She stopped and it seemed to him as if some of the life went out of her voice. "Oh. Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess I need some kind of evidence, huh?"
"Yeah," Clark said. His eyes met hers. "We need to go back. Together."
She looked quickly up at him. "Would you? You'd help me?"
He couldn't resist putting an arm around her. "You know I will."
"Great!" She started to get to her feet and this time he gave her a hand. She hugged her arms around herself. "Brr! It's freezing, and my coat's still wet -- and so are your clothes. How did you get me dry, anyway? You promised you'd tell me what happened. And where's Wayne's car?"
Well, the hope that she'd forget about his part of the story was obviously futile. He sighed. "I didn't bring it."
"Then how did you get here? And how did you hear me screaming, anyway?"
Clark sighed again. "This is going to take some explaining. Look; let me fix your coat first so you don't freeze to death. Keep a watch out. We don't want the guy in the rowboat to come back again." He took the article of clothing and hung it back on the tree limb, spreading the lower part of the garment one-handed.
"Yeah." She looked oddly at him for an instant, one hand again tentatively feeling the dry fabric of her jeans, and then back toward the lake. "I don't see anybody."
"Keep watching anyway. If he shows up with his rifle we could both be in trouble."
Lois wrapped her arms around her torso and stood looking toward the lake, obviously taking her assignment seriously. Clark trained a burst of muted heat vision on the coat.
With a faint hiss, steam billowed from the soaked cloth, curling upward into the icy air and diffusing outward into streamers of mist that faded away into nothing. "Okay," he said, "it's dry. Let's get out of here. It's about five miles back to the Driscoll farm, so we can talk on the way."
Lois had turned when he spoke and now she took the coat, giving him an odd look when she felt the warmth of the cloth. Without a word, she put it on and followed him back through the opening in the trees and brush that he had broken in his headlong charge to save her life.
"Have you got a pocket hair dryer or something?" she finally asked.
"No. That might be easier to explain," he said. "Nobody ever knew this but my mom and dad. They told me about it when -- well, when they explained I'm adopted." He took her hand to guide her through the darkness of the trees. "Be careful. There's lots of branches that can poke you in the eyes or something."
"How can you see?" she whispered.
"Good night vision," he said. "It's all part of the story." He was silent, trying to figure out how to explain it. "I'm probably not from Smallville," he started out. "Mom and Dad didn't know where I came from. They found me -- late one evening in Shuster's Field."
"Somebody abandoned you?" She sounded horrified.
"Mom and Dad never knew. Did you ever hear the old legends about changelings? Babies the fairies left for a human couple to raise? I'm almost tempted to believe them." He pushed up a stiff branch and held it for her to pass. "It's a pretty weird story. I'm not sure anybody would believe it without the evidence."
"What evidence?" she asked.
"Me," he said.
"Well, go ahead," she said a little impatiently.
He took a deep breath. "Right. Okay, Mom and Dad found me and pretended I was their baby. They told everybody that Mom hadn't known she was pregnant until she started having labor pains and had me at home. She was a little plump back then, and I guess people believed her. Dad's cousin was a doctor and he got them all the paperwork for a birth certificate and everything, and nobody ever knew. They figured that was the end of it."
"What does this have to do with how you found me?" Lois asked.
"I'm coming to that. They pretty much figured how they'd found me was past and nobody ever needed to know -- not even me. Until I was ten." Clark hesitated. "Then they had to tell me."
"Why?"
"I started to be able to hear things a long way off. I could hear what people were whispering in the next room. It's no fun to hear somebody making nasty remarks about you when they think you can't hear. It got so I could hear things miles away -- people talking in normal voices. I thought I was going crazy for a while until I learned to filter all that stuff out."
"And that was how you heard me?" Lois sounded a little skeptical.
"Yeah. But that wasn't all. There were some other things -- I could run faster than Dad's horses. We had a couple back then. Some other things happened, too, and that was when they had to tell me about how they found me. They figured I was some kind of scientific experiment or something. But then they were killed in that car wreck and they never knew the other things that happened. Anyhow, tonight I was at home when I heard you scream and ran as fast as I could to get here in time to pull you out of the lake before you drowned."
"Do you really expect me to believe this?" Lois said. "I wish you'd tell me the truth. I'm really not in the mood for fairy tales right now."
"I'm telling you the truth," Clark said, almost offended that he had told her part of his secret and she didn't believe him. "How do you think I managed to dry your coat so fast -- and why doesn't the cold weather bother me, even though my clothes are wet? It's because the cold doesn't affect me and --" He stopped and turned, drawing her to a stop. "Feel this?" He fanned his heat vision lightly over her again. "That's how I dried your clothes."
Lois was silent for a long moment. "What was that?" she asked at last, and this time her voice sounded more curious than skeptical. "It looked like your eyes put out this faint red light."
"That was one of the things that happened after Mom and Dad were killed," Clark said. "I think it's infra-red light. I call it heat vision."
"Do it again," Lois commanded. She extended a hand.
Obediently, he let the attenuated heat vision caress her hand and heard her draw in a breath. "Well," he asked. "Do you believe me now?"
"I guess I have to," Lois said. "How do you do that?"
He shrugged, forgetting that she might not be able to see him in the dark. "I don't know. I just want it to happen and it does." He took her hand and began to lead her through the trees once more. "Are you okay with this?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" Her voice sounded, he thought, a little surprised.
"Well -- Dad warned me, back when they told me about how they found me that, if anyone ever found out, the government would come and take me away -- they'd put me in a lab and dissect me like a frog."
There was a long silence. Finally Lois said, "I think your Dad was right. Didn't I tell you you're too trusting?"
Somewhere inside him, a tight knot was unwinding. "And I told you I'm a good judge of character."
"Yeah, well the next time you might be wrong. You've got to promise me that you won't tell anyone about this, Clark. You're my best friend, and I'm telling you. Don't tell anybody else. I don't want you to get dissected. Promise me you'll be careful?"
"Okay," he said. "I promise."
"Good," she said. "Start thinking ahead from now on. You could have been in a lot of trouble this evening."
"Yes," he admitted, "But I couldn't let you die, could I?"
"I'm glad you didn't -- but we'll have to explain how you got out here when we tell the sheriff about the pot farm."
"I came with you in your car," Clark said. "And followed you when the guy held you up and dumped you in the lake."
She was silent again, obviously thinking. "Okay, I think that'll work," she said. "What about Mr. Irig? Isn't he going to wonder how you got out here?"
"I'm supposed to be looking for Molly," Clark said. "I'll explain when I get back that I got sidetracked. Wayne doesn't ask a lot of questions." The trees opened up ahead of them and a short distance away he could see the highway. "Do you mind if I pick you up? I think we can get back to that greenhouse before the owner does if I run."
"Really?" Lois's voice sounded a little breathless. "Okay then, let's go!"
**********
tbc
