How I Spent My Christmas Vacation -- One Year Later
by Nan Smith
Previously:
The door opened as they mounted the steps, and Lois decided that the Mayor had been watching for them.
"Come on in!" Perry said. Then he stopped, looking back and forth at their faces. "Either you don't want to be here, or something has happened that shouldn't have," he stated in no uncertain terms. "Do I want to know what it is?"
Lois glanced at Clark. "You think we should tell him?"
Clark sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I think we should. Maybe he can help."
**********
And now: Part 3:
"That's when we found out where his powers had gone," Lois said. "I have them. All of them."
"And you're completely normal? No powers at all?" Alice White was holding her husband's hand tightly as Lois and Clark concluded the story.
Clark nodded. "None. I checked out every one of them. I have no more super powers than you do."
"What do you think could have caused it?" Perry asked.
"Well," Lois said, "it obviously had something to do with that camcorder, or whatever it really was. I think the red crystal that Dr. Klein found in there might be some kind of Kryptonite. There was lead on the outside of the casing, and Dr. Klein said there was a coating of it inside as well. Somebody was awfully determined not to let Clark see what was in the camcorder."
"Could the stuff be dangerous to ordinary people?" Alice asked.
"Maybe. Dr. Klein was careful with it, just in case, but he said he'd never seen anything like it before, except for Kryptonite, which is green," Clark said. "He said he'd get back to us as soon as he found out anything. We left him with the camcorder and the crystal."
"That was smart," Perry said. "What're you doin' about Lois, though?"
"What do you mean?" Lois asked.
Clark bit his lip. "He means that I need to teach you to control your powers as quickly as possible. If I don't, you're going to hurt someone without meaning to."
Alice was nodding. "He's right. If you don't know how to handle them, you're going to try to use them, sooner or later, and there's going to be a tragedy. Clark needs to give you some lessons in the use of super powers -- fast."
"I haven't hurt anyone so far," Lois protested weakly.
"Not yet," Perry said. "You're just lucky the handle on the cab's door wasn't somebody's hand."
Clark nodded. "Remember the door at the apartment," he pointed out gently. "Doors can be fixed, but --"
Lois heaved a sigh. "You're right. I guess we'll take some time tomorrow to go somewhere private and Clark can teach me what I need to know."
Alice smiled. "I think that's a very good plan," she said. She got to her feet, glancing at her watch. "Why don't we go in to dinner, now? It was ready fifteen minutes ago."
Dinner, necessarily, was a fairly quiet meal. What conversation they exchanged was somewhat bland, concerning the weather, the current state of Metropolis politics, and like subjects, as might be expected, Lois thought, considering the fact that they couldn't talk about the one burning topic occupying the minds of all four of them.
Perry had mentioned to her more than once that having a cook, and five other members of the Mayor's house staff, was something to which he had difficulty adjusting. Considering his job, however, and the political events that he was obligated to host, they were as much of a necessity as his office team. Lois knew it was absolutely true, but it sure put a crimp in the dinner conversation.
Considering the company tonight, Perry's cook had apparently felt it necessary to put in his best efforts on dinner. Clark, at least, evidently thought that Jacques' cooking deserved a word of thanks, and sent a message to the kitchen, expressing his appreciation for the meal -- one of many little things, Lois supposed, that was expected of Superman. Being a superhero wasn't as easy as most people thought. She had learned that fact over the previous year while she had helped him reclaim his life from the various persons and organizations that seemed to believe that they had some sort of right to intrude on his privacy any time they chose. Still, there were probably a lot of things that she didn't know about -- perhaps things that even Clark didn't consider.
They had retired to the sitting room after dinner and were alone for the moment, but that situation could change any second. She had opened her mouth to speak to Clark when the horrifying thought occurred to her that now those same organizations and individuals that she had been thinking about, in relation to him, might decide to take the same kind of liberties with her if anyone discovered what had happened. That, she decided, couldn't be allowed to happen. At least no one knew that she had received Clark's powers. Maybe they could keep it that way.
Clark seemed to be watching her more closely than she realized. "What's the matter?" he asked in an undertone.
"Later," she whispered. The last thing she needed now was for one of Perry's staff to overhear their conversation. The media would be lying in wait for her by the time she and Clark left the Mayor's home. Clark nodded quickly and turned to Perry.
"So, Chief, how's business going down at City Hall?" he inquired.
"All right," Perry said. "The usual wrangles with the City Council. They're pressuring me to okay an initiative to build a new stadium for the Metropolis Tigers."
"Where would the funding for it come from?" Clark asked. "I thought the city budget was pretty tight. At least that's what I heard at the last council meeting that they let the press into."
"Not everything they do is done in the light of day," Perry said dryly. "You know that rule allowing them private sessions in the case of city crises?"
"I've noticed there's been a lot of them recently," Clark said.
"Yeah. They want to have a session without the press listening in, they just declare a city crisis and closet themselves up in the Council Room, where they debate how to waste the taxpayers money in ways that'll best ensure their re-election," Perry said, somewhat cynically. "They want to take money from the taxes collected for school repair and funnel it into the stadium. You didn't hear that from me, by the way. If you quote me, they'll just deny it and figure some other way to wangle it. You gotta remember, Luthor was the major donor for three of these guys' campaigns. It wasn't exactly because they're pillars of the community."
"Maybe we should start investigating their finances next," Lois said.
"I'd recommend it," Perry said. "Leave me out of it, though."
"No problem, Chief," Clark said. The door opened and one of the staff came in with a tray of after dinner coffee.
"So are you going to tell us how you got onto Luthor's trail?" Alice said, filling the silence that had fallen. "What was it that made you suspect him?"
"Do you remember the fires last year about this time?" Clark asked. He accepted the coffee from Perry's butler with a small nod of thanks. "There would be one in downtown Metropolis and almost at the same time one would pop up in Suicide Slum. Someone gave us a tip that someone was buying up land on the fringes of the slum, and that every time there was a double fire, there was also a robbery --"
"Suicide Slum?" Alice said.
"Yes," Lois said. "That was the beginning. We've been tracking down hundreds of financial transactions of dubious legality since, and it led us to a lot more -- including several murders. And drug dealing, prostitution, gunrunning, extortion -- every kind of crime you can think of. The Planet's only printed a small portion of what we know. There are going to be more trials, and we'll cover them and give the background after it can't influence the case anymore. By the time it's over, Luthor's going to have more life sentences than you can count on the fingers of both hands, so if his lawyers manage to get him out of one or two, it won't matter. It could go on for years."
Perry shook his head. "I guess it just goes to show that you shouldn't take anyone at face value," he said. "All of Metropolis thought he was a knight in shining armor, and look what happened. LexCorp is being broken up and bought by dozens of its competitors. I hear that Church Enterprises is bidding on the LexSave chain."
"Church Enterprises?" Clark asked. "Aren't they the ones that own Cost Mart?"
"That's the one," Perry said. "I hear they're looking to expand. The City Council is all for that -- it'll keep the tax base stable."
"Yeah, I guess that would matter the most to them," Lois said. "Never mind that Lex was running a crime empire of legendary proportions. After all, we're talking about the City Council here."
Perry snorted. "No comment," he said.
The grandfather clock that stood against one wall of the sitting room chose that moment to chime nine p.m. and Clark got reluctantly to his feet. "We both work tomorrow, and Lois and I have that appointment in the morning, so I guess we'd better go."
"Yeah," Perry said. He heaved himself to his feet. "Ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow morning," he said. "And another dratted appointment with my trainer."
"Trainer?" Lois asked, startled.
"Yeah." He shot his wife a rueful look. "Alice and my doctor put me on a diet and exercise routine for my blood pressure. Again."
"Well," Alice said, with composure, "if you hadn't let your physical fitness slide, you wouldn't have to work so hard at it."
"Yeah, yeah." Perry winked at her. "I guess we'd better call it a night."
**********
"All right!" Clark said. "A-plus on the heat vision!"
Lois looked resignedly at the thoroughly crisped log. "I was aiming for the bottle." The glass beer bottle that somebody had discarded on the ground was, naturally, completely untouched. "I don't know if I'm ever going to get the hang of this."
"You just have to focus," Clark explained calmly. "Only think of the thing you want to use your vision on. Look at it and nothing else. Try it again, now."
Lois concentrated, trying as hard as she could to obey the instructions. She knew very well that she wouldn't have nearly the patience that her partner was demonstrating to deal with her ineptness -- especially with something this important. As she had learned in the last hour, as she strained to follow Clark's instructions and learn what he was trying to teach her, super powers, used incorrectly, could easily kill or maim someone. She was like a loaded weapon just waiting for someone to inadvertently pull the trigger. Her respect for Clark, already very high, had grown by increment each time she had muffed the use of another power.
A pale red shimmering of heat in the air between her and the bottle told her that this time she had managed to aim correctly. She seemed to feel the power she was putting into the heat vision. She concentrated on limiting the beam to a pinpoint on the neck of the bottle and saw the tiny pinhole form.
"You did it!" Clark's voice held a note of triumph.
Lois relaxed and walked forward to pick her target up, examining the results of her experiment with a surprising feeling of accomplishment. Clark had been right after all. She *could* control the powers with a little practice. Still, it was a slow process.
Centennial Park was a winter wonderland at five-thirty in the morning, its coat of new snow gleaming luminously in the rosy light of pre-dawn. To the east, above the buildings, the sky was brightening, presaging the rising of the sun. Beside her, Clark looked like a grizzly bear, swathed in a heavy coat, heavy boots and furry hat, with thick gloves on his hands. Lois's muffler was wrapped incongruously around his neck. Lois, of course, though she was aware of the cold, wasn't in the least uncomfortable. It only underlined more vividly for her the change in their status. She bit her lip, looking again at the incinerated log as doubts assailed her once more. "Clark, I don't like this. I don't trust myself."
"I know," he said. "You're having to learn all at once what I learned over time. At least you aren't going to set any haystacks on fire. Most of what I learned, though, I had to figure out on my own. It was pretty scary, because I never knew what was going to happen to me next. I kept expecting to wake up in the morning with green tentacles growing out of my hands, or something."
She was diverted. "Really?"
"You bet. For a while I spent most of my time hiding in my room. It wasn't until I was about fifteen that I figured out that whatever was going on, I probably wouldn't wind up looking any different than a regular person."
She stifled a giggle. "I wouldn't say that. You're the best-looking guy I've ever met."
"Lo-is!"
"Well, you are! You have to know that!"
He shrugged. "Looks don't matter. Look at that assistant of Luthor's -- Mrs. Cox. It didn't matter how beautiful she was on the outside. Inside she was evil. I've always tried to believe that there's some good in everyone, but the only good she did was to turn state's evidence on Luthor, in exchange for being admitted into the Witness Protection program."
"She needed that," Lois said. "Luthor would have had her killed, otherwise -- even in prison."
"I know. That's why I spoke in her favor." He took the bottle from Lois's hand and deposited it in a wire trash container. "I think you have enough control of your heat vision not to hurt anyone. Shall we move on to the next power?"
"Which one is that?"
"Well, there are a lot, but we've mostly covered the ones that could hurt anyone. I think we should try flying, now."
Flying was the one power she wasn't afraid of. "Okay."
"It isn't as hard as you might think," he said. "You --"
The sound of screeching tires and sirens interrupted them. Lois swiveled her head toward the sounds, almost instinctively using her enhanced hearing to zero in on the location.
"What is it?" Clark asked.
"That car!"
"What car?"
Lois took off in a run toward the sounds. It was a police pursuit, she thought. As she watched with Clark's super-vision, the man in the passenger seat of the fleeing vehicle leaned out the window to fire his handgun at the pursuing police car. Even at 5:30 in the morning, there were other cars on the road. This was a recipe for a disaster.
She burst out onto the road ahead of the car as it rounded a turn and came racing toward her. Instinctively, she braced her feet and thrust out her hands in time to contact its bumper. She had seen Clark do this more than a few times, and if that was how he did it, that was the way to do it.
The momentum of the car pushed her backwards, but she exerted Clark's super strength and pushed back. She could hear the screech of tires and smell the burning rubber as the vehicle began to slow in spite of the efforts of the driver. The passenger aimed his weapon at her and fired, and she felt the bullet bounce harmlessly off her forehead.
Thanking Providence that it was almost certainly too dark for them to get a good look at her face, Lois pushed harder and brought the car to a halt. The pursuing police cars were screeching to a stop as she sped forward, faster than the eye could follow, disarmed both men, fastened their hands behind them with their belts, shut the car doors again, and left the road with the same speed as she had come.
Clark was standing on the hill above the roadway, looking down at the scene as she joined him. He blinked as she appeared suddenly beside him and then looked back at the scene of the drama. The police were opening the doors to pull the stunned felons from their vehicle.
"Not bad at all, even for a first try," he said slowly. "Good job."
Her heart was beating fast more from the excitement than from exertion. For several seconds they stared at each other, and then Lois sank down on a fallen log. Clark sat down beside her.
"Well, at least they didn't get a good look at me," Lois said finally. "They'll probably think it was you."
"Probably," Clark said, "But this brings up something I meant to mention last night -- only I got distracted. You're not the kind of person who can stand by when someone's in trouble and do nothing."
"I'd already thought of that," Lois said, soberly. "Until we figure out how to get your powers back where they belong, I'm probably going to have to substitute for you. But I'm darned if I want the media turning my life upside down, and I want it even less after things go back to normal."
"If they ever do," Clark said.
"They will. But they don't know who I am -- and I want it to stay that way."
"I agree," Clark said. He frowned, thinking. "The other Lois made my costume, but she's not here. Can you sew?"
"Some. I got a 'C' in Home Ec."
"Alice sews," Clark said. "I wonder if she could help us ..."
**********
tbc
