Second Choice: 11/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
It emerged, later that evening when Lois picked him up after her evening class, that Ellen had thumbed a ride out on the highway. Some obliging citizen of Smallville had given her a lift to town.
She had spent the afternoon harping on Lois's stubbornness and ingratitude and nearly driving her daughter to the screaming point. Clark could see that the situation couldn't remain as it was. Ellen had made no move to find new lodgings in town, and Lois had begun to suspect that that part, at least, had been an empty threat, but, upon their arriving home, Lucy informed them, with a certain relish, that Mother was passed out on the couch. Clark and Lois looked at each other and Lois sighed.
"I think," Clark said, "that we have a problem."
**********
And now, Part 11:
The forty-percent chance of thunderstorms that the weather forecaster had given them that morning emerged around nine o'clock in the evening. On the stroke of nine, Lois snapped off the small, thirteen-inch set that had come from the Lane apartment and sent a slightly protesting Lucy up to bed before heading up to the master bedroom, herself. She was already in bed with only the lamp on her nightstand burning when Clark emerged from the bedroom's adjoining bathroom a short time later, clad in his black shorts with his dark hair damp from the shower. She looked him over appreciatively and smiled. "I wish I'd gone to the lake with you, back when we first met," she said.
Clark grinned faintly. "So do I," he said. "On the other hand, seeing you in a bathing suit might have made it a lot more difficult for me to sleep than it's already been since I met you, so I guess it's probably just as well."
She blushed. "I'm glad it's you with all those special vision powers and not some of the other guys around here," she said. "If Hank Weston had them, I'd have been wearing a lead suit. He was bad enough on just one date. It was all I could do to keep his hands where they belonged."
"Well, I can't exactly say I wasn't tempted around you," Clark said, sliding into the bed next to her.
"It's a good thing you have super willpower, too," Lois said, batting her eyelashes at him.
"It's a good thing I don't need it anymore," Clark countered.
In the distance, thunder growled. Outside, he was aware that the wind had begun to pick up somewhat. "Looks like we might be in for a storm," he remarked. "We can use it. It's been a dry year." He pulled Lois into his arms. "I guess it's a good thing anyhow. We won't have to worry so much about being quiet."
Lois giggled softly. "Why, Mr. Kent, what on Earth could you possibly have in mind?"
"Well," Clark said judicially, "I guess I could go get the Scrabble board."
"No way!" Lois said, instantly indignant.
He grinned. "On the other hand, I'd have to be crazy to do it," he added, "when I've got you here." He lowered his face to kiss her thoroughly. Lois's indignation subsided at once.
At the foot of the bed, a glow began, faint at first but brightening rapidly, and a low-pitched hum filled the room. Clark raised his head, both frustrated and at the same time eager.
"The globe!" Lois whispered.
They scrambled out of bed and Clark went to his dresser to get his key ring. He had decided yesterday morning that the key to the footlocker would do better in his pocket than left where Lucy or more likely Ellen, on a snooping expedition, might find it.
As soon as he opened the chest the sphere floated out, blazing with energy. The scarlet continent pulsed at them, and the whole globe seemed now to have developed a faintly ruddy hue.
Clark reached out to take the object into his hand and instantly Jor-El was standing before them.
"This is the second of the five times I will appear," the solemn voice said. "You may wonder that I speak your language and not my native Kryptonian. I do not. That is another property of the object."
And then they were floating insubstantially in the alien laboratory again. This time it was indeed *they*. Although he couldn't see her, Clark could sense Lois's presence beside him. A white table before them bore a helix-shaped object and both Jor-El and Lara were bent over it, performing some kind of delicate adjustments to it. Above the object a ghostly image of the thing floated and as Jor-El touched the solid object, corresponding points on the image glowed with pinpoints of light.
"Unmanned probes have explored every corner of the known galaxy and beyond," Jor-El's voice continued. "For thousands of centuries we have received data back from those probes..."
The laboratory began to shake as it had the first time. Jor-El and Lara grasped the table and each other until the shaking subsided. When everything steadied again, Jor-El's voice continued. "I've every confidence that, given enough time, we *can* achieve the conversion to a manned vessel. But will we have the time?"
The scene shifted as Lara moved across the lab to the mysterious capsule, which now lay open and for the first time Clark could see what it contained. "The pattern of core disintegration continues to accelerate," the disembodied voice continued. "Even I cannot predict where it will end.
A baby, probably no more than two months old. Clark found that he was holding his breath. The infant moved aimlessly in its strange bed, its dark eyes fixed on the woman. Lara gazed down at her child and then back at Jor-El, who looked at her with pain in his own eyes.
"There is an ancient Kryptonian saying," Jor-El's voice said. "'On a long road, take small steps.' Precision and care are our watchwords. Yet, we still have far to go."
The vision vanished and the light faded. Clark stared at the now inert globe.
"Clark!" Lois whispered. "Do you see? That baby was *you*!"
Slowly, Clark replaced the globe in his footlocker and closed the lid. Lois watched as he locked it, and her face revealed her excitement. "That was *you*!" she repeated. "There was some kind of disaster coming -- what did he say? 'Core disintegration?' They were trying to *save* you!"
"I think you're right." Clark rose to his feet. "Something was happening -- something really bad. They talked about unmanned probes -- it sounded as if they didn't have manned space flight. Jor-El somehow must have found a way --" He looked down at the footlocker, willing the globe to glow again but nothing happened. "I guess we'll have to wait to see, but --" He looked up to meet her eyes. "I've gone all my life, thinking that my parents abandoned me. I was angry with them for it, but --"
"Maybe," Lois ventured, "they knew you would be. They must have wanted you to know what really happened -- that you were so important to them that they somehow managed to send you here to safety." Her hand crept to her abdomen. "They must have loved you very much."
"Just like you love this baby," Clark said. He put an arm around her. "Like I already do. I'm glad you decided to keep it." He raised his free hand to her face, cupping her cheek. "I'm glad I have you."
Outside, a gust of wind buffeted the side of the house and rattled the windows. A sudden pattering on the glass made him look past her, through the wall. "It's raining."
A bright flash of lightning, visible even through the blinds and pulled curtains, was succeeded by a crack of thunder that made the house quiver. Lois winced.
"Get back in bed," Clark said, reaching for his robe. "I'll check to be sure all the windows are closed and I'll be right back. We have some unfinished business tonight."
**********
As he checked the house at high speed, Clark almost expected to see Lucy scrambling down the attic stairs, terrified of the thunder, but a quick glance showed her sleeping like the proverbial log. He had carried Ellen Lane up to her room an hour earlier, still in a drunken stupor, and apparently the effects hadn't worn off yet, for no sounds, other than those of the storm, disturbed the household.
Lois was waiting for him as he re-entered the bedroom and locked the door behind him. "Is everything all right?"
"All safe." He didn't tell her that he was listening for any of the telltale signs of something worse. Tornadoes had a certain characteristic sound that he had found he could recognize from a long way off. Listening for warning sirens was nearly useless, he knew, for by the time the warning sounded it was often too late. The radio at the Irig home, a number of miles away, had been talking of a tornado alert for the past fifteen minutes and if the alert turned into the real thing, Clark intended to have his small family down inside the storm cellar long before the cyclone actually struck. In his eighteen years in Kansas, he'd been through a number of such alerts and, for some reason, the storms always steered clear of the area where the Kent farm stood. Something about the wind currents, some of the old timers said, seemed to direct the big twisters away from the general area -- which might be true, but he certainly wasn't going to count on anything so nebulous as folk wisdom that Lois and the others would be safe. He intended to be sure.
Another flash of lightning lit up the window and more thunder made the house tremble. Lois looked anxiously at him. "That was close. I've never seen a storm like this."
"We have them now and then," Clark said. "Lightning has never hit us, but Dad put up a lightning rod a couple of years before he and Mom --" He broke off. "It's still there and I reinforced it while I was fixing up the place. We'll be all right."
"All right." She appeared to accept that and patted the mattress next to her. He accepted the wordless invitation and slid under the covers. "Now, handsome, I think we had some urgent business that was rudely interrupted..."
**********
It was two AM when the sound that Clark was listening for brought him out of a light sleep. The wail of the wind had taken on an edge that was almost like the snarl of a big animal. He sat up, scrambling out of bed in the same motion. "Lois, wake up!"
Her eyes opened. "What's wrong?"
"We need to get to the storm cellar right now," he told her in an urgent but calm voice. "Go wake your mother up. I'll get Lucy."
Lois didn't take the time to ask questions, for which he was thankful. She snatched her dressing gown off the chair that sat nearest her side of the bed and thrust an arm into it as she exited into the hall. Behind her, Clark whisked up the attic steps and an instant later was shaking Lucy's shoulder. "Lucy, wake up!"
Unlike her sister, Lucy barely opened her eyes, closed them again, rolled over and pulled the pillow over her head. Clark reached out, grasped her around the waist and picked her up, covers and all. An instant later, he was in the hall, steering the half-awake girl by one arm.
"Mother, wake up!" Lois's voice sounded exasperated. "Wake *up*! It's an emergency!"
An inarticulate mumble from Ellen Lane answered her. Clark hurried to the door. "Take Lucy. I'll bring your mom."
Less than a full minute later, the four of them exited the back door of the farmhouse and crossed the yard. Rain sluiced down around them and Clark could hear the howl of the wind, still with that hair-raising edge to its normal boisterous voice. He herded them toward the storm cellar, half-carrying Ellen in spite of his mother-in-law's slurred protests.
They stopped by the trap door and Clark muscled it open one-handed. "Go on down!" he commanded. "Hurry!"
The normally warm wind of Kansas in July had an icy edge to it, and it whipped the blanket that Lucy hugged around her shoulders, and blew Ellen Lane's hair wildly about. Lois was first down the ladder and Clark pushed Lucy after her. "Hurry, Lucy! There's no time to lose!"
The younger girl threw her blanket down the hole and clambered down after it, nimble as a monkey. Right behind her, Clark lowered Ellen down by the hands, flying somewhat to negate the lack of leverage. As soon as her feet touched the ground inside, he released her hands and stood up. In a flash he had returned to the bedroom and grabbed his footlocker. After all they had gone through to get to this point, he wasn't going to lose the globe!
He was back in a split second, lowering himself down the ladder. Once inside, he pulled the heavy wooden door shut. Lois was holding one of the flashlights that he had placed on one of wall shelves for just such an emergency, and, in its light, he fastened the sturdy latches to hold the door in place.
"Everybody sit down," Clark said. "If we're lucky, we won't have to stay here long."
"What's going on?" Ellen mumbled.
"Tornado," Clark said briefly. He set the footlocker down in a corner, turned to the radio that sat on one of the shelves and switched it on. Outside, he could hear the savage roar of the wind that heralded the coming of the monstrous storm. The thing was barely a mile and a half away from the farmhouse and he could only hope that it would stay on its current track and not shift direction at the wrong moment.
"Tornado?" Lucy squeaked.
"Are we safe?" Lois asked steadily. She wrapped her soaked dressing gown around her skimpy night clothing.
"Yeah," Clark said. He opened the chest that he had stored down here while he was renovating the farmhouse, and produced dry blankets. "Here, wrap up in this and give me that." He held the blanket up so that Lois could remove her dressing gown and wrap herself instead in the light blanket. He handed another to Lucy, and a third to Ellen. His mother-in-law seemed to be more alert now, with the realization of danger.
Silence descended on the dark little room broken only by the shrieking of the wind. Clark turned the radio dial, searching for a station. Somewhere in the static, he could hear an announcer's voice speaking and dance music.
Lowering his glasses, he tracked the storm. The huge funnel was moving north, parallel to the highway that ran past the Kent farm, plowing a narrow path of destruction through the countryside. There shouldn't be anything in its way if it kept its current track, he thought. Hopefully no one would be running around in the dark and rain at this time of night, anyway. It was a little late in the season for tornadoes but he knew the huge, destructive storms really could happen just about any time of year.
Lucy began to cry softly and Lois put an arm around her. "It's going to be okay," she told her sister. "Clark knows what he's doing."
Above them the heavy door rattled sharply but showed no sign of coming open. Ellen clutched the blanket Clark had given her around her soaked nightgown and seemed to hunch into herself. Clark reached out to take Lois's hand and continued to try to tune the radio with his free hand, more as a cover for following the progress of the storm than from any real hope of hearing any news announcements.
Eventually, the wind began to die down somewhat and the rain slackened. Even the static began to clear somewhat. The storm, in the way of tornadoes, dissipated with relative suddenness. One moment it was howling like the monster it was, and the next it began to lose its power. The rain continued to fall, but it had abated its violence. Clark suddenly found the radio reception to be relatively clear, with a radio weatherman assuring them that the storm had gone. And giving the all clear signal.
"It's over," Clark said. "We can go back in the house."
"If it's still there," Ellen muttered peevishly.
"It's there," Clark said. "Didn't you hear what he said about the route? It passed about half a mile to the east of us. It's over."
"What if another one comes back?" Lucy asked.
"They said the weather front is passing," Clark said. "It isn't likely but if another one does come near us, we'll come back down here. Don't worry, Lucy. I'll have plenty of warning, just like this time."
When they got back into the house, the phone was ringing. Clark answered it, unsurprised to hear Wayne Irig's voice issuing from the speaker.
"Hello, Wayne," he said in answer to the older man's inquiry. "We're fine. It missed us by about half a mile. Are you and Nettie all right?"
"We're all right," Irig's voice said. "I'm gonna have some damage to clear up tomorra, though. That big oak tree out back came down in the wind."
"I'll come over in the morning to help you chop it up," Clark told him. "You're sure you and Nettie are okay?"
"Yeah," Wayne told him. "I'm gettin' a bit stiff to go climbin' down ladders in the middle o' the night, but we're okay. I'll see you tomorra, sometime."
"Good night," Clark said.
**********
tbc
