Perry hung up his phone, unable to stop the wide grin. Yes! He thought. He looked over – Lois and Clark were at her desk, about to go get coffee. Perry headed over to them. This he wanted them to hear first.
"Hey you two," Perry started.
"You got the editor-in-chief job," Lois said.
Perry's jaw dropped. "How'd you know?" Clark was startled too, Perry noticed.
"Oh, come on, Perry, it's obvious. A new EIC is needed, you're the obvious candidate, and you've got a grin like I've never seen on you before." Lois picked up her mug. "Come on, let's get some coffee."
"Lois, you're a better investigative reporter than I thought," Perry said. "I don't think anyone else has figured it out yet."
"Thanks, Perry," she said shyly. Lois was like that, Perry thought. Tough as nails, a fighter through and through. But give her a compliment and it hit her under her defenses.
"Congratulations, Perry," Clark said, offering his hand. Perry shook it. "You deserve it. You've taught me so much….I know that the Planet will be better with you in charge of it.
And that was like Clark, Perry thought. He could make comments that would sound like crass flattery from another, but from him were just sincere truths. One didn't think to doubt a Clark pronouncement; one just took it at face value, as Clark so obviously intended.
"Well, so much for my big announcement," Perry said, mock-ruefully. "I wanted to tell you two first. Just as my two best reporters, you know," he said playfully. "Once I'm editor-in-chief, I won't be able to display such blatant favoritism."
"Uh-huh," Lois said, smiling.
"Ah, who am I kidding?" Perry said. "You'll still be my favorites. Because you two earn it." He hoped Lois and Clark picked up the steady gaze and the sincerity in his voice. "You've come up with some great stories already, even as new as you are."
Lois asked, "When do you start?"
"The official announcement goes out at the end of this week, and I take over in three months. There's a one-month transition period where I'll be in the office with Dale, and he'll be supposedly showing me the ropes."
"You need the ropes shown to you?" Lois asked incredulously.
"Not really, but it looks good on paper," Perry laughed. "I think it's really just a ploy to ease me in and grease the skids on any remaining hard feelings from my previous tenure here."
Lois said, "Three months, eh?" She looked at Clark. He gave a slight nod.
"Perry?" she asked.
"What?"
"Clark and I are working on a story. We can't say anything about it right now, but I think we'll probably have something big for you right about the time you take over as editor-in-chief."
Perry gazed quizzically at the two of them. Interesting that Lois felt confident enough to half-promise something big. She'd never let him down before. He debated asking her what it was about. Then he decided not to bother; Lois never revealed anything before she was ready. What really caught Perry's attention was the time. Lois had predicted big stories before; she'd always delivered on them, but she'd never given such a specific date.
"Well, that's nice to hear," Perry said. "It'll be good to get something big right when I start."
"Oh, it'll be big, Perry," Lois said confidently. Again, Perry caught the slight glance and nod exchanged between her and Clark.
"I think you'll be impressed," Clark added.
*************
Nothing came of the next few days. Perry found he could detect when Clark and Lois were going to discuss their private business, whatever it was they talked about so obliquely. It was a matter of picking up a certain tension in their postures, a certain tone in their voice. Then they'd discuss it over coffee and they'd both look relieved. So Perry found himself placed for overhearing once again today.
Clark started the conversation for once. "Chloe, it's not decent!"
"Oh, I kind of liked it," Lois said. Perry caught her running her tongue over her lips. "And call me Lois, remember?"
"I'm sorry," Clark said. "I'm a little overwrought here, Lois."
"Well, it's got to be tight, you know that, Clark," Lois said in a pedantic, but somehow devilish voice.
"Not tight enough to outline my…to show off my…"
"Your package?" Lois asked sweetly.
Clark sputtered. That was what Perry had to call it – sputtering.
Then Lois got a businesslike tone. "You're right, Clark." She grinned again. "Although, if we keep it the way it is, no one will be looking at your face."
"Lois!"
"Oh, all right, Clark," she soothed him. "The blue line needs breaking up anyway. How about the red?"
"I like the green," Clark said almost sullenly.
"We have been over and over that, Clark," Lois said sternly. "The green just doesn't go. Who has the color sense here? Red is right for you. No green."
"How about the belt?" Clark – whined, thought Perry. "I need a belt to, you know, keep things up."
"All right!" Lois conceded. "You can have a belt." Clark looked happier at that, thought Perry. Lois went on. "But I'm not sure about the cape."
What the…thought Perry. A cape?
"You got the red, Lois," Clark said. "I'm not giving in on the cape. I like capes."
"You and FDR," Lois said sarcastically. "And Zorro."
"Hey, I might need it to cover up, um, my package, as you so delicately call it," Clark retorted. Then his voice took on a more tender tone. "And, when we're, um…" Again he made that gesture that Perry couldn't catch. "You got so cold last time. We could wrap you up and you'd be warm then."
Whatever it was they were talking about, and Perry had no idea – frankly, this whole cape thing just came out of left field – what Clark said must have convinced Lois. She looked in Clark's eyes, smiled, and nodded.
"We'll try it out tonight," she said. They walked away.
Perry sat staring at his desk. It served him right, he thought. He eavesdropped but didn't get anything intelligible out of it. And he felt queasy about the eavesdropping. He pulled out his battered copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, turned to Step Seven.
Goaded by sheer necessity, we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character flaws that made us problem drinkers in the first place, flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into alcoholism once again. We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but in some instances this will appear to be an impossible job from which we recoil. And we cling with a passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing to our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much.
Perry shut the book. This hit too close to home. He was a reporter, darn it! Well, an editor now, but a reporter at heart. It was a reporter's job to find out!
Don't you think you're crossing the line here, Perry? his inner voice asked him. And Clark and Lois are friends.
He refused to listen to the voice today.
**********
The very next day, Perry at his usual position at his desk, Clark and Lois met again. Once again, Perry turned his face to his paperwork, trying to avoid any incriminating glances.
"Success!" he heard Lois carol.
"And you will admit, Lois, that I was right about the cape?" Clark teased her.
"Oh all right. You were right," Lois said dismissively. Then she pulled him closer. In an even quieter voice, she said, "We're ready to begin, right?"
"Almost," Clark said. "I talked with Jorl – " Who is that? Perry thought. They're always referring to him. "- and he said these would do the job."
Perry didn't look up, but he heard Lois' incredulity in her voice. "Glasses?"
"Uh huh. That's what Jorl said," Clark replied stolidly.
"Clark, I know the technology from your, um, home, is pretty advanced. This is the best Jorl could do?" Lois challenged him.
Technology? thought Perry. Glasses are advanced technology in Smallville?
"Um, I asked him that too. And he said it would work. I just have to wear them," Clark stammered. "Nobody will, um, make the connection." He shuffled a little bit. "Well, obviously you, of course, because you already know."
Know what? Perry thought. These oblique comments irritated the heck out of him.
"Glasses. We're talking glasses. Yep," Lois said, disbelievingly. "Well, I've seen some unusual things before. I guess we'll just have to depend on Clark's Law here."
Clark's Law? Perry didn't recognize that.
"Oh, I'm putting my trust in Jorl," Clark said. "He's come through before." Then Clark's voice sounded weary. "What other option do we have?"
"Well, there's the mask –" Lois offered.
"We tried that already. The mask just doesn't work. It keeps on getting turned around. Then I can't use my –" Again, irritatingly, Clark's last words were too softly spoken for Perry to hear.
Mask? Perry thought. This conversation was taking a hard right turn into surreality.
"OK," Lois said slowly.
"OK," Clark said in turn. "I'll try it the day after Perry moves into the glass office. You'll be the first to check out my new look." He looked happier. "Then, after work, I'll make my debut. We'll make our debut."
What? Perry thought again.
"Speaking of debuts, that should be a big enough story for Perry's as Chief Editor," Lois said brightly.
"That's what I thought too," Clark said. A moment of silence.
Perry risked a glance to see the two of them in a quick embrace. He looked down as they separated, Clark heading back to his own desk.
He wrote down as much as he could remember of their conversation. And once again, he felt a twinge of conscience. And he wanted a drink.
Perry distracted himself by looking up something. It turned out there were three Clarke's Laws, and one Clark's Law.
The one Clark's Law was "Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice." Perry raised his eyebrows at that one; Lois and Clark were neither incompetent nor malicious. Surely they weren't referring to that.
The three Clarke's Laws, named after the English science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, seemed a little more promising. They were:
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And Perry, after looking this up and thinking about it for awhile, still wanted a drink.
He made a phone call. "John, can we meet for lunch? Or coffee?"
******************
Perry sat in the small diner, facing John L., his sponsor. The burly ex-machinist put some artificial sweetener in his coffee and listened to Perry. There was something comforting about the older man. He seemed solid, dependable, in a way that Perry knew he himself had yet to attain. John had over forty-five years of sobriety and had sponsored many in the Friendly Friday group.
"So, let me get this straight," John said. "You're keeping an eye – and an ear - on a couple of your reporters. And you think they're planning something?" He stirred his coffee. "What's the matter with that?"
Put that way, it didn't sound unreasonable. But Perry found himself trying to explain. "It's hard to say. I guess it's who they are." He'd carefully not given John L. any clues as to the identity of the reporters in question; John certainly knew Clark from the latter's frequent attendance at Friendly Friday meetings, and he'd met Lois a time or two as well.
"They're just not the type to do something underhanded. And they're always honest with me."
John latched onto this. "And you're not being honest with them?"
Yes. That's it. Perry faced up to it. "Yeah. I kept on telling myself I was chasing a story. But now I'm editor, and I can't lie to myself anymore that way. I'm just invading their privacy." He looked down. "I did that a lot when I was a younger reporter. Before I found out what it could do to people's lives."
John L. looked skeptical. "A reporter with a conscience?" he muttered.
"Hey!" Perry said.
"All right, Perry." The heavyset man leaned forward. "What it gets right down to is, are you working the program? If you do, everything else follows."
"Happy, joyous and free," Perry muttered sarcastically. Then he took a deep breath and looked across the table at his sponsor. "Yeah. I know what I have to do."
John caught his eye. "Then do it."
Later that afternoon, Perry printed out everything he had in his "Clark Kent" file and deleted all copies of the file. He took a minute to review the hard copy – all his facts (surprisingly few) and his suppositions (surprisingly large). Perry had forgotten he had so much data. Some of his comments came from years ago.
Perry read it all again and sat, staring into space. Probably Clark Kent was a meteor freak, he thought. Perry had heard of those in Smallville and at first had derided them as junk journalism. But events over the years had proven the existence of those with metahuman powers. Heck, Lois had turned in numerous stories on them herself, although not lately. Sure, the Planet played them down, tried not to print the stories, tried to force stories into the tabloid pages, but Perry couldn't deny that the meteor-infected actually existed.
And there was a stigma. "Meteor-infected" now, in most people's minds, was equivalent to "homicidal psychopath." And Perry knew Clark. Maybe Clark did have some strange powers (and Perry was pretty sure he had something), but Clark was a…just a good guy. So why "out" Clark? Why tar him with the "freak" brush?
Perry felt more at ease with himself than he had for awhile. Later on this week, he would call Clark into his office, explain what he'd been doing, tell Clark this was the only file in existence, and give the file to Clark. Then he'd ask Clark for forgiveness. It was going to be hard. But heck, he'd joined AA and started working the program. Perry knew how to do hard.
