Home: Circle of Fate 10/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
Lori nodded and fell silent as Lois spoke with the towing company. After Lois hung up, she spoke. "I was just thinking."
"About what?" Lois asked.
"I was thinking that if Tempus were still trying to get hold of me -- or even you -- it would sure be a benefit for him if we didn't have your Jeep."
Lois didn't answer for a long thirty seconds. At last, she spoke. "That hadn't occurred to me," she said. "I think I'll have Joe Pemberton check out the Jeep for anything suspicious."
"I think that would be a very good idea," Lori said.
**********
And now, Part 10:
John Olsen paced his office.
The drama that was unfolding at STAR Labs and the house on Hyperion Avenue had been in the back of his mind all day, even as he ran his news office with his usual effortless skill. Lori had been kidnapped by the criminal time-traveler, Tempus, and taken god-knew-where in time. He might not be present to see what was happening, but he had a pretty good idea what his great grandfather was going through. Even the thought of something like that happening to Marilyn made John feel as if his insides had just gone into free-fall. The loss of Lori was bound to have pushed Clark close to the edge of sanity.
The news had spread through the family with the speed of light. Every member of the Kent clan had been drafted by CJ to look for any possible hint that Lori might send a message to them from some location in the past, or any indication of something that wasn't quite as it should be. Anything at all that might be Lori's way of letting them know when and where her abductor had taken her.
It was odd in a way, John reflected, that he didn't for a moment doubt that Lori would somehow escape from the man who had kidnapped her, or that she would somehow manage to tell them where she was. The only fault with that argument was the possibility that the time-traveling criminal could have taken her into his own time, a century in the future. If that had happened, there would be no way that Lori could get a message back to them.
Still, John had to put his faith in his great-grandfather's indomitable wife. Lori Lyons, Lois Lane, Lulu, Loisette, and doubtless many others he had never heard of; they were all manifestations of Clark's soulmate, and possessed the strong personality that had made Lois Lane the Daily Planet's top investigative journalist before he was born, and the unquestioned matriarch of the Kent clan during his youth. As a small, and then not-so-small, child, he had idolized his great grandmother Lois. She had taken a special interest in him while he was growing up, the only non-super child in his family. She had paid him extra attention, and told him stories of her life as an investigative journalist. In the end it had been Lois who had inspired him to become a reporter, himself. Lori wasn't likely to be any less formidable than her predecessor had been. In her short time at the Daily Planet, she had already shown him that.
It just figured that this all had to happen a week before CJ's 100th birthday, though. There had been a celebration planned for him as the first child of Lois Lane and Clark Kent: the first Kryptonian-human to reach the century mark. John had been deputized by his great grandmother Lois to deliver the gift that she would not live to give to him in person. She had made him promise faithfully that he would see to it that her gift was the first to be delivered personally into CJ's hands, and opened.
Well, he would carry through with his part. Maybe, by then, Lori would be back, and CJ Kent's hundredth birthday would be a day of celebration after all.
He glanced at his wrist talker. It was nearly quitting time. The evening editor would be arriving within minutes, and today he had no intention of hanging around the office. John had planned to meet Marilyn at her place of work, and then to head over to the house on Hyperion Avenue, where CJ and his family lived. Clark was there right now. Maybe he couldn't do much to help, but at least he would be there.
**********
Joe Pemberton had been Lois Lane's mechanic since she had bought her Cherokee. Joe had seen every possible disaster that a vehicle could endure and yet survive to be driven another day, and most of them had been involved with Lois Lane's Jeep, so when she and Lori arrived with the tow truck, the phlegmatic mechanic didn't so much as blink. He waved to the truck driver and directed him to deposit the Jeep in the queue of vehicles waiting to be serviced.
Lois and Lori descended from the cab of the tow truck and Lois led the way into the lobby of the service department.
The woman behind the counter seemed to know Lois as well, Lori thought. With expressionless efficiency, she whipped out a form and began to fill it out. "How can we help you today, Ms. Lane?" she inquired, while her fingers typed in name, address, phone, license number and make of the vehicle without hesitation.
"My car won't start," Lois said. "The battery is good -- my lights turn on and the radio works, and you can hear the starter when you turn the key -- but the engine won't turn over. It may be nothing, but it could also be sabotage. Can you tell Joe to check it over for anything suspicious?"
"Absolutely," the woman said, as if such requests came her way every day of the week. "If we find any, will that be filed as a vandalism claim?"
"Well, if someone sabotaged it, it was vandalism," Lois said, reasonably.
"Just checking," the woman said. "I'll tell Joe personally, but he probably already knows."
"Probably," Lois said.
"Just sign here," the woman said, in a matter-of-fact manner.
Lois signed her name. "If somebody tampered with my car," she said in an aside to Lori, "I'm going to make him regret the day he was born."
"And I'll help," Lori said.
The woman behind the counter smiled professionally. "We'll give you a call with an estimate when we've checked it over."
**********
Arnold Frazier looked up from his scrutiny of the hooded rat that had made the four-hour trip through time, just in time to see it. "It" was a three-inch by four-inch rectangular spot in the air that didn't fit with the rest of the scene on all sides of it. Then it was gone.
Arnie rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. The curious little rectangle had definitely disappeared. Slowly, he moved toward the spot as if it were some strange animal that might bite him and waved his hand through the air where the rectangle had been, wondering futilely if he were seeing things.
"Is something wrong, Doc?" Gregory had come into the lab behind him and was now checking the rat over. "Matilda looks all right, don't you think?"
"Uh ... yes, certainly. I'm going to want to run a few tests on her, but on first inspection she looks unharmed." Arnie moved back to the small cage containing the lab rat, watching the spot where he had seen the rectangle out of the corner of his eye. Normally, he had absolute faith in his mental stability, but this was the third time he had seen the thing in the last ten minutes. It simply sat there, hovering in the air, a little piece of scenery that didn't fit, and each time it had disappeared after a few seconds.
Gregory left the lab, whistling tunelessly, but Arnold Frazier continued to frown, glancing every few seconds at the place where the rectangle had been.
There was no sign of anything unusual now. If it followed its previous pattern, it wouldn't appear again for some minutes, but he definitely wanted something to attest to the fact that he wasn't imagining things, and that it had actually been there. After a moment, he triggered the lab camera that he used when conducting experiments where certain effects were extremely transitory and set it to cover that section of the lab. If the rectangle appeared again, he would have a record of it. He turned to Matilda. "Okay, Mattie, this is where I stick you with a needle. It will only hurt a little," he assured the small, friendly animal. Matilda was his favorite rat, and that fact had more than once been responsible for saving the little creature's life. Quickly and expertly, he took a small sample of the rat's blood and released her into her cage again. Matilda sat down and began to vigorously wash the spot that he had stuck. Everybody knew that Matilda belonged to him, and the staff frequently brought her treats of one kind or another. Arnie had often toyed with the possibility of taking her home and making her a pet, since she was a de facto pet right now, but then there would be long periods of the day when there was no one around to keep her company. Actually, she probably wouldn't mind the solitude, but he couldn't bring himself to isolate her like that. So Matilda remained in her cage in the corner of his office, and continued to receive tidbits and attention from Arnie and his staff. After today, she would have the distinction of having been the first rat known to have traveled through time. Quite an achievement, when you thought about it.
He was spreading the tiny drop of blood on a slide when a flicker of motion at the corner of his eye made him look up. The rectangle had appeared again, only this time he could have sworn that it had acquired an eye.
The eye was brown, he noticed now, and was, to all appearances, human. It looked up, down and around, like Alice looking through the tiny door into Wonderland, and then the little rectangle vanished again, blinking out as if it had never been.
Arnie shook his head sharply. Something very strange was happening in his lab. Almost mechanically, he finished the task in which he was engaged, applied the fixing chemical, and then went to the controls for the lab's video camera. Automatically, he transferred the image of the last few minutes to play on his computer screen and called up the file. He adjusted the picture digitally to get a close-up of the rectangle. There it was. Definitely a human eye, all right, which was, in its own way, very unnerving. It was almost as if someone had opened a tiny, rectangular portal in space and was peering at him through it. What in the name of the great god Murphy was going on?
He continued about his business, running several tests on Matilda, satisfying himself that the little rodent had incurred no injury in her trip through time, but all the time, half his attention was on the section of his lab where the rectangle had appeared. At last, he stroked her with one finger, offered her a piece of cracker, which she snatched with typical greed, and put her back in her cage. Matilda ignored her human friend's minor agitation and began to munch on the cracker.
It had been a good ten minutes and he hadn't seen the rectangle return. He had almost relaxed when it made another appearance. This time it was a foot higher than it had been, and closer. He stepped quickly toward it and, careful not to touch it, peeked into the strange phenomenon.
It was as if he were looking into another room, an office, he thought, with a littered desk, and on the wall behind it a diagram of some kind of primitive electronic device could be indistinctly seen.
He had barely taken in this scene when the eye appeared again, inches from his own on the other side of the rectangle, and for a split second, the two of them stared at each other.
Then the rectangle vanished again.
Slowly, Arnie lowered his muscular body onto a lab stool. The rectangle was a tiny opening in space, it seemed, a door into somewhere else.
Or somewhen. The idea occurred to him with almost a physical jolt.
Slowly, he looked over his shoulder at the time machine. That strange contraption journeyed through time to the past or future, opening the doors of time as it were, to transport living matter from one reality into another. Was it somehow connected to the miniature door in space in his lab? Was there any way to tell?
He didn't know, but there was at least some chance that this odd peephole in the air was related to the time machine. After several moments, he went to the vidphone. There was only one person living today who had traveled through time -- at least if you discounted Lori Lyons, who wasn't in this time period, anyway. Maybe Clark would know what was going on.
**********
"They said the cab will be here in fifteen minutes," Lois said, disgustedly. "I'm hungry. It's nearly three."
"So am I," Lori said. "We missed lunch."
Lois nodded. "I know. When the cab gets here, we're going to take care of that. Let's wait for him in the shade, at least," she added, pointing to the rickety bus stop bench located strategically in the shadow of the repair shop's canopy. "It's getting hot early this year. It usually doesn't get unbearable until August."
"The fact that both of us are nearly nine months along probably doesn't help," Lori observed with her trademark practicality.
"I don't feel like being logical," Lois said, scooting sideways to take full advantage of the shade. "I hope the guy hurries. I'm starving, and this bench isn't going to be in the shade for long."
Lori said nothing. She wiped sweat from her forehead. "I wonder how Dr. Klein is doing on the time window controller."
Lois shrugged. "He said he'd call if he got any results, but he might have got involved in his work and forgotten," she said. "I'm going to give him a call and ask him."
Lori didn't say anything. The waiting had been gnawing at her since the night before. Every minute that she was away from her own time seemed like an eternity. Tempus, or whatever his real name was, obviously didn't care in the least about the lives he disrupted or destroyed as long as he could prevent the creation of the future that he hated so much. The man was a misfit in a relatively peaceful society. He would have been much happier in the Wild West, or the gangster world of the Prohibition Era. She suspected however that if he were actually stranded there, he wouldn't find things nearly as much fun as he thought he might. In her experience, unhappy persons longing for high adventure usually found that a big letdown awaited them.
Lois was punching in the phone number for STAR Labs. She waited, and Lori heard the faint sound of a phone ringing.
"Dr. Klein's office, please," Lois said, finally. "It's Lois Lane."
Lori could hear the faint whisper of a voice at the other end. Lois scowled and visibly got a grip on her temper. "Yes, he's expecting my call. Look just put me through. If he decides not to talk to me he can always hang up."
Silence.
"Dr. Klein?" Lois said at last. "Yeah. Your receptionist or whatever she is didn't want to let me talk to you."
A pause. "Yes. I was calling about the time window control," Lois said. She held her cell phone out, turning up the exterior speaker. "Have you had any progress?"
"Oh, that," Bernie Klein's voice said. "Some. I've managed to get it running, but I'm having trouble with the calibration."
"The what?"
"I'm having trouble aligning the settings. There doesn't seem to be any way to adjust them. If they're handled automatically, the mechanism may have been one of the things broken when the control was dropped."
"But you've got it running?"
"Yes, but not in a way that it'll do anyone any good," Bernie's voice said. "I'm working on it. I'll call you when I make any progress."
"All right," Lois said. "Keep us informed."
"I will. 'Bye."
"I wonder what he meant," Lori said. "Trouble aligning the settings?"
"You're making the mistake of trying to understand Bernie when he tries to translate his technical jargon into English," Lois said. She pushed the antenna of her phone down and stuffed it into her purse. "He's run into a snag and is working on it. The best thing we can do right now is to leave him alone."
"Yeah, that much I figured out," Lori said. "Here comes the cab, finally!"
Lois heaved herself to her feet and waved. The cab pulled slowly to the curb and the driver leaned toward the passenger window. "Lane?" he inquired.
"That's us," Lois said. She opened the rear door and scooted inside. Lori followed.
"Where to?" the driver asked.
"Sixth and Magnolia," Lois said. "Abby's Corner Café. I'm starving."
The taxi pulled sharply into the street, and Lori heard the squeal of tires as the car behind them slammed on its brakes. The driver ignored the sound and accelerated toward the red light at the cross street. Lori closed her eyes and gripped the handhold on the door with all her strength.
The taxi didn't pause. After a second, she opened her eyes again, looking back. The light was now behind them, and was green. Lois gave a faint laugh and Lori responded with a weak smile. "I'm not used to cabs anymore."
Lois shrugged. "Neither am I. If Tempus meddled with my car he's going to pay."
The cab took a corner on two wheels. Lori gripped the handhold tighter. They were barreling toward a line of stopped cars. She held her breath.
The cab screeched to a stop inches from the car's rear bumper. Lori let out her breath. Ten hair-raising minutes later the cab came to a fast stop by the curb at the corner of Sixth and Magnolia. Lois handed the man several bills and climbed out. Lori slid after her on shaking legs. The taxi roared away, diving into traffic with reckless disregard for the fact that there appeared to be no room between a tractor-trailer and a minivan. She resolutely looked the other way, hearing the now-familiar screech of tires, but no crash of rending metal. She figured that in the ten-minute ride she had used up her good luck for the next five years.
"I don't know how they do it," Lois remarked. "They must take their driver's training in a demolition derby. Come on; Abby's is right around the corner. Let's get some lunch. I'm ready to eat the awning. I'm beginning to understand how Bobby Bigmouth feels."
Lori's stomach growled on cue. "I'm pretty hungry," she said. "I just don't like to take advantage of you like this."
"Wouldn't you do the same for me if the situation were reversed?" Lois asked.
"Well, of course."
"Exactly. Come on."
**********
"An eye?" Clark's image said.
"An eye," Arnie Frazier said.
"How big was this rectangle?"
"It was about three inches wide by four inches tall. Like a tiny door in the air."
"When you looked through it, what did you see?"
"Well, it was like looking through a slightly distorted lens," Arnie said. "There was an office on the other side."
"An *office*?"
"Yeah. There was a wooden desk with a lot of papers and things on it."
"Was there anything else?"
"Yeah. The eye! There was a brown eye looking through it at me."
Clark frowned. "That's odd."
"No kidding!" Arnie said. "I felt like the little green men from Antares were scouting out my lab!"
"Something's happening." CJ moved into the vidscreen's pickup. "And I'd bet my last credit that it's tied in to this whole affair. Maybe you'd better hold off taking off in the time machine Dad -- at least for a little while."
Clark glanced at him, and Arnie could see the indecision on his face.
John Olsen moved into the screen. "Clark, I've said before that if Lori is somewhere in the past, she'll find some way to let us know where she is. This could be part of that."
Clark bit his lip, his heavy brows drawn together in a deep scowl. At last, he nodded. "You're right. Something we don't understand is going on. I'll tell you what. I'll wait until morning, but no later, unless something else happens."
"I think that's a good decision," John said, resting a hand on his great grandfather's arm. "If you wait, it won't matter time-wise. The time machine lets you turn time into your ally. If we wait, whatever this 'door in space' is may turn out to be the clue that tells us where she is."
Clark nodded. "If it appears again, let us know, all right?"
"I will." Arnie caught a glimmer at the corner of his eye. "There it is now. It's back, and so's the eye."
"Is it Lori's?" John asked.
"No," Arnie said. "It's the wrong shape, and there are too many wrinkles around it."
"Are you recording it?" John asked.
"Yes," Arnie said. "I'll send you the file."
"Do that," CJ said. "I want to see this."
"So do I," John said.
**********
tbc
