Chapter Three
>>>Saturday, 1:51 PM
Nigel frowned in thought, then picked up his very special cell phone and pressed the only speed dial code programmed into the machine. It rang twice before the electronic voice answered.
“Yes, Nigel?”
“I wish to report something which may be of no consequence.”
“Really?”
“Yes. But then again, it also may be of some consequence.”
“Maybe it’s important, maybe it isn’t. Is that it?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“Then by all means, don’t keep me on tenterhooks. Enlighten me.”
“Very well. LuthorCorp’s main receptionist, Rebecca Connors, just had lunch with a reporter for the Daily Planet named Lois Lane.”
“What did they have for lunch?”
Nigel pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment and stared at it before continuing. “I do not know what they ordered. I noticed them quite by accident.”
“I see.” The voice paused for a moment. “Lois Lane? Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Lois Lane was on the ship which was destroyed en route to Africa several weeks ago.”
“That’s right. That was a really big explosion, wasn’t it?”
Nigel frowned again, this time in mild exasperation. “That ‘really big explosion’ cost us several million dollars. Lois Lane was partly responsible for it.”
“True.” The voice went silent for a moment, then continued. “Do you know what the reporter and the receptionist were discussing?”
“I do not. As I said, I came upon them quite by accident.”
“Hmm. Was this meeting okayed through the usual channels?”
“Ms. Connors insisted that it had been approved by her manager. I have no reason to disbelieve her at this moment, pending a quick check to verify her assertion.”
“Very well. You’re right, this might be important. Or it might be nothing at all.”
“I do not trust coincidences, especially when my own life is at risk.”
“You’re right. I’ll take this into consideration. But one symptom does not a disease make, Nigel.”
“Of course not. But it should make one more aware of the possibility of other symptoms.”
The voice sounded almost bored through the distortion. “How very medical of you. Anything else?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then I’ll wait to hear from you about the tests on the green crystal.”
Nigel inhaled to respond, but the person on the other end clicked off before he spoke. He sighed and put the phone away. If he were not paid so handsomely, he might terminate this arrangement. But the pay was so very good.
And his employer was so very unforgiving to those who did not completely commit themselves.
>>>Saturday, 6:18 PM
“Clark? Clark, are you coming down for dinner?”
Martha desperately hoped he’d come down tonight. He hadn’t been eating much lately, and even though he wasn’t quite human, he needed nourishment. And even if he didn’t need to eat, his parents needed to see him, needed to talk to him, needed to touch his heart and let him know they felt his pain.
She sighed and shook her head. Another desultory dinner with her husband wasn’t what she wanted to face. Ever since they’d gotten the terrible news about Lana, Jonathan had behaved as if he’d lost his own child. He’d been unable to say or do anything for Lana’s father at the memorial service, and he’d refused all of Martha’s entreaties to visit Dennis Lang since then. If not for that very nice Virginia McCoy, Dennis might have fallen off the same edge Jonathan apparently had.
And Clark didn’t see it. Oh, Martha understood why. The young man had suffered a profound shock. He’d lost his bride of not quite a year, and if their behavior when Martha and Jonathan had last visited them in Metropolis had been any indication, they hadn’t gotten out of the honeymoon stage.
And Lana had changed over that year, all for the better. She hadn’t lost any of her drive to succeed, but she’d tempered it with compassion and grace and complete loyalty to her marriage. Martha and Lana had spent most of one evening in the barn just before she and Clark had left for Metropolis, and Lana had shared many of the peaks and valleys of her relationship with Clark. Martha smiled as she recalled the eager young woman determined to make her marriage a success and leave her mark on the world of archaeology.
It hadn’t happened. She’d died suddenly and horribly, leaving a gaping void in the lives of so many people. And Martha was desperately trying to keep both of her men from falling into that void and off the edge of the world.
Clark missed her terribly, and probably would miss her for the rest of his life. The worst part was, he blamed himself. He believed that if he’d been just a little bit faster, just a little bit smarter, just a little bit more super, he would have saved her. Or, if he’d been willing to sacrifice his co-worker, Lois Lane, he could have saved Lana instead of Lois.
She almost turned away from the stairs, then decided to try once more. “Clark? Dinner’s almost ready. Won’t you come down?”
To her shock and amazement, she heard a door open and shut, then heard footsteps on the carpet above. She looked up and saw her son, dressed in jeans and sneakers and pullover shirt, trudging down the staircase.
“Coming, Mom.”
She blinked back tears and nodded. “I hope your hands are clean, young man.”
He paused and looked at her in astonishment, then his mouth twitched on one side. She watched his eyes brighten as he decided to play the old dinnertime game with her. “Soap and hot water, both sides of both hands. Want to check them?”
This was almost too good to be true. She crooked her index finger at him and said, “I’ll trust you this time. Now get to your place before your father eats it all.”
He put his arm around her shoulders as he stepped onto the floor. “Thanks, Mom. I hope you fixed something delicious tonight. I’m hungry.”
She smiled and patted his chest. “Good. I have a pot roast in the oven, and by now you should be able to cut it with a plastic fork.”
They walked into the kitchen together. Jonathan was already in his chair, and when he saw his wife and son walk in together, he produced a half-smile and nodded to them. “Martha, Clark.”
They stopped in the doorway to the kitchen and looked at Jonathan. He looked back at them for a long breath. Finally he waved them in and said, “If you two plan to eat anything, you’d better come now. I’m hungry.”
*****
“More potatoes, Clark?”
“Thanks, Mom. Dad, would you pass the biscuits and butter, please?”
“Trade them for another helping of pot roast.”
“Sounds like a win-win deal to me. Hand me your plate and I’ll reload you.”
The meal was a success. Clark knew why his mother had wanted him to come down and eat with them. He knew he should have done it before, but somehow he just couldn’t face them. He knew they didn’t blame him for Lana’s death, but he felt as if they should.
Maybe tonight would be a good time to talk about it.
His mother brought out a homemade strawberry cake with thick, rich, gooey white icing. It reminded Clark of his twelfth birthday, and how all the kids at his party had oohed and ahhed when the cake had appeared. Pete, Lana, Chloe, Ronnie, Brittany, Chuck, and all his other friends had declared it the best birthday cake in the history of civilization. His mother had basked in the praise, then shooed them into the living room for the opening of the presents.
He’d opened Lana’s gift first. It had been a model of the first Wright Brothers’ flying machine, and it had taken all of his willpower not to stop the party and assemble it right then and there. He’d finished the model in two days and had called Lana over to see it, since she’d been the one to give it to him.
She’d stared at it open-mouthed. “Clark, it’s perfect! It looks better than the picture on the box!” She’d reached out to it, but had held her hand back at the last minute. “Wow. You could charge admission just to see it.” She’d turned to Clark with a bright smile on her face. “And you showed it to me first! That means a lot to me. Thank you.”
Then she’d stood on tiptoes and gently kissed him on the cheek. As she’d drawn back, her face had been aglow and her smile had been luminous. She’d stared into his eyes for a long moment, then whispered, “I have to go. My dad’s coming home soon and I have to start dinner for him.”
He’d nodded silently and stood watching as she’d glided out of his workroom and out to her bike. He’d watched her ride away, her tawny hair flowing behind her, and he’d stood there, staring at the horizon, long after she’d vanished from his sight.
The memory warmed his heart, despite the pain it also brought. He quickly wiped his eyes and felt his mother’s hand on his arm.
“Clark?” Her tone was gentle. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
His father’s voice broke as he asked, “Were you thinking about – Lana?”
He nodded again. “My twelfth birthday. She gave me that model of the Wright flyer.”
Martha smiled. “You were so proud of that model, and rightfully so. It was perfect.” She tilted her head to one side. “In fact, I think it’s still up in your workroom. Seems like I saw it on the top shelf last time I dusted up there.” She linked her fingers and rested her chin on the backs of her hands. “I don’t think you ever knew that Lana asked me if I’d take thirty percent.”
Clark frowned. “Thirty percent of what?”
“The proceeds from her exhibit. She was going to charge her schoolmates a dime apiece to see that model and pay me three cents a visitor for using my house to display it.”
Clark chuckled. “No, I never knew that, but it sure sounds like Lana. Don’t you think so, Dad?”
Jonathan glowered at them. “Yes. And it would still sound like her if – “
He broke off whatever he was going to say. Martha drew in a sharp breath and Clark knew she’d felt him stiffen. In an instant, he had transformed himself from a living, breathing person into a marble statue.
His mouth ground out the words. “You mean, if I’d been good enough to save her, don’t you, Dad?”
Jonathan’s mouth dropped open and he leaned forward. “What? No! No, Clark, I know you did everything you could! I meant that Lana would still be here if not for that – that woman!”
Clark’s arm relaxed under Martha’s tender grasp. “It doesn’t do any good to blame Lois, Dad. She didn’t do anything – “
“She brought those criminals into your home!” Jonathan shouted. “She got Lana killed!” He slapped his hand down on the table. “She should pay for what she did!”
Clark spoke quiet and low. “What about me?”
“What? Son, you know you didn’t – “
“I took Lois off the ship and left Lana in the hold to die.”
“No! You – “
Clark raised his volume slightly. “I had the chance to save her and I didn’t.”
“But you thought she – “
He leaned towards his father. His eyes turned slate gray. “She’d been shot. Did I tell you that?”
“It was in the paper – “
“She held off all those men with a machine gun after she was shot. I didn’t know she’d been hurt. I thought she was fine. I thought she wasn’t in any immediate danger. I left her on that ship so she could be blown into tiny little bits.” He stood. “You want to blame someone, Dad? Blame me! Blame your son, the great Superman who thinks he’s so great he won’t let anything happen to the people he loves, that no one close to him will ever die! Blame me, the short-sighted, self-centered grandstander who let his wife suffer a horrible death because he wasn’t smart enough or fast enough or heroic enough!”
He knocked his chair backwards and stormed out the back door. Jonathan looked at Martha with a stricken look on his face.
She couldn’t face this. Not right now. It was too much.
She stood and fled into the bedroom.
*****
Clark wasn’t sure how long he’d been down in the basement cellar, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the ship, when he heard his father approach the door above. He heard the hum of the machinery as the door opened, heard Jonathan’s steps on the wooden ladder, heard the scuff of his boots across the hay scattered over the floor. He even heard his father stop at the doorway to the inner chamber where the ship and the globe sat.
Then he heard something he hadn’t heard for a long time, something that both baffled and amazed him.
He heard his father cry.
Clark stood and turned to see Jonathan leaning against the doorpost, wiping his eyes with an old blue bandanna. Clark went to his father and eased him against his super-strong shoulder as Jonathan wept openly.
After a while, Jonathan’s tears slowed their flow and he muttered, “I’m sorry, son, I’m so sorry, please forgive me!”
Clark embraced his father and whispered, “There’s nothing to forgive. Shh, Dad, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
Jonathan shook his head. “No, it’s not. I’m sorry that I hurt you again. I’m sorry you lost your wife at such a young age. I’m sorry we won’t see the wonderful woman Lana would have become.” He stopped and sniffed, then blew his nose on the bandanna. “But I’m mostly sorry for me.”
Clark held his father’s elbow. “Sorry for you? What do you mean?”
Jonathan didn’t meet his son’s gaze. “You remember what your mother said the night Lana asked her for your hand in marriage? That if there had been a girl in that ship, she hoped she might have been like Lana?”
Clark nodded. “I remember. Lana thought the world of you two even before that night, but after that, as far as she was concerned, neither one of you could ever do anything even remotely wrong.”
Jonathan grinned through the remnants of his tears. “I – I never told her how I felt about her. I wanted to. I believed it. I still do.”
Clark hugged him. “Oh, Dad, she knew how much you and Mom loved her! You guys were second parents to her, and she thought the world of both of you. She knew how you felt about her.”
Jonathan rested his head on Clark’s shoulder again and said, “I’m glad.” He patted Clark on the arm and said, “Thank you for telling me that.”
“It’s the truth. I’m not lying just to make you feel better.”
“I know.” Jonathan stepped back. “That’s what makes it so special.” He turned to climb the stairway, then stopped in place. “Are you coming up, or do you want to spend some more time down here?”
Clark looked at the globe, then at the ship, then at the barrel Lana had sat on the night he’d told her about his extra-terrestrial origins. He straightened and sighed deeply. “I’d better come on up. I need to get some rest before Monday.”
“You’re still going back to Metropolis?”
“It’s my job, my career. I’m a journalist.”
Jonathan nodded. “I understand. I’d feel the same way if I was away from the farm for too long.”
“I love it here, Dad, but I can’t stay. I have to go.”
Jonathan smiled. “I know. I’m selfish and I want you to stay, but I really do understand. Neither you nor Superman can stay down on the farm forever.”
Clark cocked his eyebrows at his father. “Funny you should put it like that. After all, I am Superman.”
His father shook his head. “It’s still hard for me to connect the things Superman has done with you, my son, whose diapers I used to change and whose bottles I used to heat up.”
Clark smiled. “You know, you could sell that story to a tabloid. ‘I Changed Superman’s Dirty Diapers.’ I’m sure the Metropolis Star would reward you handsomely.”
“Yes, but would they respect me in the morning?”
Clark put his hand on his father’s shoulder and laughed quietly. “Somehow I doubt it.” He motioned towards the stairway with his head. “Let’s go inside, Dad. I’m ready for some cake.”
“Me, too.” Jonathan put his foot on the first step, then hesitated. “Son – if I tell you something, will you promise to understand?”
Clark frowned. “What is it?”
“Uh-uh. Promise first.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. I promise to understand, whether I do or not.”
“I sure hope you understand this.” Jonathan hesitated again, then blew out his breath noisily. “I used to wish that ship had held both a boy and a girl. I wanted a daughter so much I could almost taste it. Your mother just wanted a child, any child, and I did too, but there’s something in me that craves a daughter.”
Clark nodded slowly. “I see. At least, I think I do.”
“Oh, son, please understand me! I was thrilled with you and about you. Still am, always will be. Not only do I have no complaints, I don’t know how you could be a better son. It’s just that, when Lana announced she wanted to marry you, I thought I was getting that daughter that I’d wanted all those years.”
“You did, Dad. She loved you almost as much as she loved Dennis.”
“And that’s the way it should have been. I was her father-in-law, but Dennis was her father. Still, I don’t think there’s anything I wouldn’t have done if she’d asked it of me.”
Clark smiled. “I know that feeling very well.” He cuffed his father playfully on the shoulder. “Hey, I listened to you, now you listen to me! Let’s go get some cake!”
Jonathan crossed his arms. “Young man, do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah, it’s almost so late that it’s early. But I’m still hungry.”
Jonathan chuckled and waved for Clark to follow him up the staircase. “As long as your mother doesn’t catch us, we’ll be fine.”
*****
Clark lay in his bed, his hands clasped behind his head, thinking. Was he truly ready to rejoin the world of the living? Was he ready to move on with his life? Or would he fail to find any meaning to an existence without the woman he’d loved and married?
In his travels around the country, and in his work as Superman, he’d met people who’d lost loved ones and moved on. He’d also met some who’d never fully recovered from the death of a spouse. And it didn’t seem to matter how long the couple had been together. Some partners had died young, some had died after most of a lifetime together, and some had been together one or two decades, leaving the survivor facing a new life on the cusp of middle age.
Those were the ones he thought had experienced the most difficulty. The youngest ones usually bounced back, and the older ones often either followed their beloved soon after or lived on alone, surrounded by so many good memories. But the mid-life ones, the ones who’d established a life pattern only to have it rent asunder too soon, often couldn’t take the next step to either living among comfortable memories or building a new life with someone else. It was as if they had too much future to look forward to, future time without the person they’d loved enough to commit to for life.
He felt a pang of guilt. He’d never told Lana that the globe – Bob, as Lana had named it – had once told him, just after that wonderful twelfth birthday, that his life span would almost surely exceed that of a normal Earth human, but since no Kryptonian had ever lived his or her entire live under Earth’s yellow sun, there was not enough data to be certain, nor was there enough data to predict how long Clark might actually live. It might be a century, it might be three, it might even be more, but however long it was, Clark had decided he’d live it alone. It wouldn’t be fair to ask a mortal woman to live her life with a man who wouldn’t age alongside her. And Clark didn’t believe he’d want to watch a girl he loved enough to marry grow old and die while he remained young and vigorous.
Then Lana had wormed her way into his heart and made herself indispensable to his well-being. She’d deceived him on several occasions, to be sure, but up until now he’d chosen to believe that either he would have agreed with her decision or she had been right to conceal that information from him.
Now he wasn’t so certain. He thought about Lana’s duplicity and wondered why she’d done some of the things she’d done. He pondered the reasons she’d given him why she’d concealed her wealth. He still struggled with the knowledge that Lana’s portfolio was now his, even if it was still managed by the almost living computer Lana had named Bob. If he lived a reasonable lifestyle, he could retire by the time he was thirty-five and never have to work another day in his life. Would Lana have wanted to do that? Would she have used the money to provide for the children he’d hoped for one day? Or would she have funded a lavish lifestyle like the one her mother enjoyed with her rich second husband? Or, perhaps, Lana would have become an archaeologist full-time and left him at home doing the Mr. Mom thing with the kids and the laundry and the dirty dishes. He would have done the best job he’d been capable of, naturally, but he wasn’t sure he would have liked it all that much.
And the biggest question scurrying around in his mind would never be answered. Would Lana have changed her mind about marrying him if she had known that he’d outlive her by at least several decades?
Maybe.
Probably not.
But he’d never know for certain. The last time Clark had activated the globe, Bob had told him that the probability was greater than ninety-seven percent that Lana would have chosen to wed him even if she had known for a fact that she would have died young. Yet even that less than three percent chance had niggled at him.
No more. He had loved her, she had loved him, he had lost her, and he would mourn her for the rest of his days, no matter how many days that might add up to be.
Unless he acted on his dark fantasies. He might fly outside the Earth’s atmosphere and find out just how long he could hold his breath. Twenty minutes seemed to be the maximum for him, but could he escape the Earth’s gravitational field and set himself on a terminal orbit into the Sun in that time? Or could he launch himself towards the moon, bury himself in a new crater, and wait out the rest of the time?
Was suicide even a viable option for him? He didn’t want to take Superman away from the world. But he didn’t want to live in pain for the rest of his life, either.
He didn’t know what he’d end up doing. But he’d keep his options open.
