Twins: 14/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Clark, have you thought about what's going to happen to the clone if you do manage to save him?" Martha asked suddenly.
Clark shrugged. "Kind of. Of course, we're not sure yet if we *can*. If Dr. Klein can figure out what's going wrong, and if there's anything he can do about it, I guess we'll have to find some way to take care of -- of him and teach him how to behave. I'm not sure how yet, but ..."
"He needs to be around someone who will teach him right from wrong," Martha said quietly. "If he's only a few months old, I doubt what he's been taught has really had time to become permanent, no matter how fast he absorbs information -- but you can't allow someone with your powers *not* to understand the difference."
"I know, and that's been worrying me, too. He's not bad, but he *is* a child. He wants to please his 'father'." Clark made a face. "A 'father' that doesn't care about him at all, except for how he can use him."
"I know." Martha bit her lip. The mere thought of Clark's twin in the hands of Lex Luthor not only frightened her, it broke her heart. A child needed love while he was growing up and learning what the world was about. This child, for that was what he really was, had a man in the place of his parent who, she thought, wasn't really capable of love. "If we can help, you know we will," she said.
"I know." He finished the tea with a single swallow, and glanced at his watch. "I need to go. They'll be expecting me back in the office in a few minutes. I'll call you and let you know what happens. And don't be surprised if I ask for advice," he added with a little smile. "Somehow, things are always at least a little clearer after I've talked to you and Dad."
**********
And now, Part 14:
Lois glanced up as the elevator opened and Clark stepped out. It had been a good hour since she had seen him on television, and with his help the passengers had been long since freed and taken to various hospitals. Of course, if Clark were an ordinary person, she wouldn't wonder at all what had held him up from the meeting with his "source". Still, she thought, he had to allow for normal travel time.
He hurried down the ramp with his usual bouncy step. Lois had to work not to smile as she watched him. He was so good at being un-Supermanish that it was really amazing.
"What's so funny?" he asked, as he arrived at his desk.
"Nothing, really. Jimmy got our film developed and he sent the stuff on the clones to Dr. Klein."
"Good. How did the copies of Leek's evidence come out?"
"Nice and clear." She handed him the envelope containing the pictures and he examined them closely.
"This should give us the leverage we need," he said.
She nodded. "Now we have to be sure Leek stays alive long enough to hand the originals over to Henderson."
He slipped the photos back into the envelope. "Leek is safe as long as Luthor needs him," he said, "and not a minute longer. I imagine he figured that out pretty quickly, or he wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to document all these things."
"He may be pond scum," Lois said, "but he's not completely stupid. I just hope he was careful. Anyway, as soon as Dr. Klein has his answers, Lane and Kent are going to have to have to talk with the good Dr. Leek."
**********
When Clark returned to his desk, he found a neat stack of printer paper with a post-it note from Jimmy. He scanned the first page quickly as he took his seat and leafed through the subsequent pages, frowning. It seemed as if one day the advertisers had simply decided to drop the Daily Planet and start advertising in the Star, the Gazette, the Herald, and even the National Whisper -- anything but the Daily Planet.
"Anything?" Lois asked. She set his mug on the corner of his desk, nearly slopping hot coffee on its surface. "Oops, sorry."
"No problem." Clark unobtrusively steadied the cup. "The only common factor seems to be that they left the Planet without any complaint or warning." He sounded frustrated, even to himself. "What's the connection?"
"The lack of warning is the connection," Lois said. "They left ... and others are leaving us ... without warning. That means that there's something besides dissatisfaction with the Planet behind it. You were thinking corporate takeover, and you could be right. Remember what I said the other day? When something weird happens, my first suspect is ..."
"Luthor," Clark said.
"Exactly. And," she continued, "from the research I've done on him since November, this fits the LexCorp pattern. A company starts having sudden financial trouble -- nothing that can ever be traced to anyone, though. If it still manages to struggle along, acts of god intervene, and other things start happening to it. Employees strikes, vandalism ... sometimes even some deaths. And then, when the company is on its last legs, LexCorp moves in with an offer ridiculously below what the company was worth a few months before. Right after that, all the bad luck stops and within a little while, it's thriving again. There's never any one thing that can be pinned on anyone, but the whole routine stinks."
"I need to read that folder of yours," Clark said.
"I makes interesting reading," Lois said. "Of course the Planet's troubles could be unrelated, but it fits."
"Yeah, it does, but why the Daily Planet?"
"It's a very prestigious newspaper," Lois said, unarguably. "Wouldn't he benefit to be able to control a news outlet like us? Besides, we're a thorn in his side. How many of his schemes do you think we've busted up in the last few months?"
Clark had to admit she was right. "Probably at least a dozen."
"Or more."
That, of course, was a telling argument. "Okay, how do you think we should check it out?"
"That's another question. I'd guess that there could have been some bribery involved. Who makes the decisions over where these companies advertise?"
"Hmm ..." Clark glanced at the list again. "Let's see if we can dig up lists of the company officers. If we could take a look at their finances ..."
"Jimmy!" Lois called.
**********
Lois was closing down her computer and tidying her desk for the day when her phone rang. She paused in the act of wiping off her computer screen and picked up the receiver. "Lois Lane."
"Oh, Ms. Lane!" The agitated voice at the other end was familiar, and in a few seconds she identified it. "I was afraid I'd missed you!"
"Dr. Klein?" she asked.
"I'm sorry, yes. I need you and Mr. Kent to come by the lab as soon as possible."
"Have you found anything?"
"Yes, but I don't want to talk about it over the phone. When is the soonest you can come by?"
"We're just getting ready to leave," Lois said. "We'll stop by on the way home."
"Wonderful!" Bernard Klein's voice had an excited edge bordering on hysteria. "This is an incredible scientific discovery, Ms. Lane. I'll tell Security to expect you."
"Who was that?" Clark asked as she hung up.
"Dr. Klein. He wants us to stop by on the way home. He says he's found something."
"That was fast."
"Well, he didn't say he had the answer. He just said he'd found something and didn't want to talk about it over the phone. Let's go," she added.
Clark followed her willingly toward the exit. "Lois, if you do any more investigations of Luthor before we solve this thing, you're going to let me help you, right?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "Sure. You're my partner, aren't you? We work together. Why?"
"Well, yeah, we're partners. It just scared me that you'd gone after Luthor without me to help."
"I promise I'll let you be my backup," she said. "Geez, Clark! Didn't anyone ever tell you that you obsess over silly things?"
"Yeah. You."
"Well, I was right." She punched the call button and waited, watching Clark fidget. "I know you think I was taking a risk, but it wasn't as bad as you think."
"Lois, we're talking *Luthor* here."
"I know. But he's putting on his best face for me and I've been careful to let him think I'm completely taken in." She put a hand on his arm. "Clark, he was threatening *you*. Do you know how much that scared me?" That was no lie. She hadn't wanted to admit to herself how much the threat to Clark had frightened her. Now she understood it; back then it had simply left her with a hard, cold knot of fear in her gut.
Had she really been that attached to him all those months ago? It seemed that despite all her resolutions, Mad Dog Lane hadn't been immune to a handsome face, a nice body and a charming personality after all.
But that wasn't quite true. She'd known a number of good-looking, charming men many of whom had made plays for her at one time or another. Most of the time they didn't faze her in the slightest. It wasn't just any man who had worked his way through her defenses. It was whatever made him uniquely Clark. And that held true whether he was Clark or Superman. After all, she'd fallen for both of him, hadn't she?
"Lois?" Clark's voice snapped her out of her abstraction. "Are you okay?"
"Huh? Sure. Why?"
He was looking at her oddly. "You kind of zoned out on me."
"I was thinking," she said, somewhat inadequately. "Anyway, I promise to tell you if I plan on doing any more snooping on Lex. Besides, it will be easier with two of us to do the work. I have a date with him tomorrow night, by the way. He's taking me to the ballet." The elevator doors opened and they stepped in. "I won't do anything to make him suspicious, Clark. That's a promise."
He didn't speak immediately. The doors of the elevator closed.
"Did it really scare you that much?" he asked in a low voice. "Enough to take that kind of a risk?"
"Huh? You mean when Lex tried to kill you? Clark, if he'd succeeded, I'd have lost you. Do you have any idea what that would have done to me? Just because I sometimes don't treat you as well as I should doesn't mean you aren't important to me. Yes, it scared me. After I'd had time to think about it, it scared me a lot. I decided that I wasn't going to let him hurt you, whatever it took, and that meant I had to bring him down. It's only common sense."
"Right. Common sense." He rubbed the bridge of his nose and pushed his glasses more firmly into place. Lois glanced away to keep him from seeing that she was trying to hide a smile.
**********
The STAR Labs parking lot was largely deserted at this hour, although there were a few vehicles left. Five middle-aged sedans, one flashy sports car, a battered pickup truck and a motorcycle, all chrome and glossy black paint, still occupied the lot. Lois pulled her Cherokee up beside the motorcycle and cut the engine. "Wonder who works here that would ride a motorcycle," she wondered aloud.
"I believe that belongs to Dr. Klein," Clark said.
"How do you know?"
"Jimmy mentioned it," Clark said. "He says Dr. Klein isn't your ordinary absent-minded professor."
"From what I saw of him last night, that's a good description," Lois said. "At least he's not a mad scientist out to take over the world."
Clark grinned but said nothing.
The security guard at the entrance to the main building checked their identification, supplied them with passes and let them through. Lois was completely lost almost at once, but Clark never hesitated and within a couple of minutes he was knocking on the door of an office with the name "Bernard Klein" on a small, eye-level metal plate.
The scientist answered the door at once and beckoned them inside. Lois had only met Dr. Klein in person twice, although she had spoken to him on the phone several times. He was a middle-aged man, chubby, balding and surprisingly tall -- and obviously chomping at the bit to explain his discovery. He closed and locked the door behind them and turned.
"This way," he said, "I want to show you something."
Lois and Clark looked at each other and followed Dr. Klein through his cluttered office and into the adjoining laboratory.
Lois saw Clark lift his head slightly as they entered the lab, but he said nothing as Dr. Klein threaded his way across the room to the terrarium located in the very back, where three frogs hopped about. He paused, looking very pleased with himself.
"These are the frogs you brought me, Ms. Lane," he said, gesturing at the amphibians. "One of the two sick ones died. I used it for my research. I used the other one as a test subject. It's one of these, and the other two are the reasonably healthy ones you included. Can you tell which one it is?"
Lois shook her head. They all looked the same to her.
"This one." Klein picked up one of the hoppers and exhibited it proudly before her. "What do you think?"
"It looks like an ordinary frog," Lois said.
"It does," Dr. Klein said, "but it's anything but an ordinary frog. When you brought it to me it was dying. Now it's healthy."
"You know what was killing it?" Clark asked and Lois could hear the suppressed excitement in his voice.
"I do." Bernard Klein grinned, waving the frog with triumphant exuberance. "The cloning process actually validates several theories on the subject." He held up the squirming amphibian. "This looks like your ordinary spring peeper, but it's anything but. An extra DNA chain was added to its DNA structure -- also from a frog, but not a spring peeper. It supplies an enzyme that produces the accelerated growth ..."
"But why did the frogs die?" Lois interrupted.
"I'm getting to that. The growth enzyme itself is the culprit. You see, the accelerated growth enzyme comes from an exotic South American frog -- the doppel-buffo. They grow with amazing speed. When the enzyme-producing DNA is incorporated into the DNA of another creature, it induces the accelerated growth that is needed to create an adult clone -- like the Superman clone. But in its original owner, when the frog reaches its adult size, there's another enzyme that the frog's body produces to shut down the growth enzyme. That chemical cue isn't present in other creatures, and when they reach adult size the enzyme doesn't shut off. It progressively produces metabolic imbalances that eventually kill the clone." He grinned triumphantly at them. "I suspected something of the sort as soon as I read the records you sent me, and I was able to identify the enzyme from the molecular receptors ..." He broke off. "Well, that's pretty technical. Anyway, doppel-buffos are commonly found in pet stores in the United States, so it was easy to buy a couple of them to isolate the enzyme. I tried it on the dying frog, and ..." Again he gestured with the frog. "Voila! It worked!"
Lois stared at the wiggling creature as the grinning scientist placed it back with its brothers. "Can you use the same method to save the Superman clone?"
Klein nodded. "I don't see why not. It will have to be done once he loses his invulnerability, however, because the enzyme has to be injected directly into the bloodstream. In any case, it would be best if Superman can bring the clone here as soon as possible because I'd like to run some tests first."
"Dr. Klein, this is wonderful," Lois said. "Jimmy said you were smart, but I think he underestimated you."
Klein gave an embarrassed grin. "Well, if I can't be hip, I guess that's the next best thing. I'm ready to go home early for once. Care to walk out to my motorcycle with me?"
"That really is your motorcycle?" Lois asked.
He nodded, reaching up to retrieve a leather jacket and helmet from the coat rack. Lois read the logo on the back of the jacket and raised her eyebrows. "Lab Rats?"
"Do you think it's too much?" Dr. Klein asked, pausing in the act of pushing a hand into the sleeve.
"Actually," Lois said, "it's creative. I kind of like it."
"It was my idea," Dr. Klein said. He opened the door to the hall and stood back to let them precede him, then closed and locked it behind him.
Ten minutes later, they watched as the scientist roared out of the lot on the black and silver motorcycle, popped a wheelie, and sped away down the road.
"Jimmy was right," Lois said, after a pause. "Dr. Klein is definitely not ordinary."
**********
(tbc)
