Uneventful as the landing had been, Lois couldn’t help but be disappointed that crowds of people weren’t waiting for them outside the airport. Clark had named her as the one with the exclusive story, and while it had resulted in an ugly look or two from Agent White, it had given her a rush. Her position at CNN was assured if she still wanted it and a vindictive part of her wanted to make Pilar eat crow.
Yet the reports of complaints by China and Russia about unwarranted United States weapons tests directed toward Asia tempered the sweetness of the moment. Myanmar was protesting the deployment of a new United States weapon and the violation of its national sovereignty and France, Germany and Turkey were complaining about violations of their airspace.
Agent White had spent the rest of the flight in hurried conversations at the back of the airplane while she and Dr. Ledderman had watched the news with horrified fascination.
Most news outlets were treating the whole thing as a hoax, although they were reporting the complaints and other international news as serious news.
It irritated Lois that with everything Clark had already done; most news outlets were ready to relegate him to the position of being a publicity stunt and being an amusing anecdote. They didn’t seem to make the connection between the serious news stories they were telling and the man in the Superman costume.
She sat in the back of the Limousine and stared out the window. At this point Agent White had abandoned the two Agents guarding her; they were in the car following them.
Whatever damage she could do to them had already been done. Lois had directed Clark at the media like a guided missile, and apparently in Agent White’s opinion, she was as responsible for the media debacle as he was.
Dr. Ledderman looked up suddenly. “Do we have any indications about the size of the individual rifts? I know we have a fairly accurate indication of the duration, but…”
Agent White looked up from his cell phone and shook his head.
Ledderman looked at Lois, who shook her head. “I saw several of them forming, but they were invisible. Clark could see them, I think. He’d be able to tell you.”
“I’ve been making my assumption based on the idea that the rift was barely large enough to pass a passenger jet. In that case, it would have required a great deal of pressure to push enough gas through to kill everyone on the other side.”
“And if the rift was larger?” Lois asked.
“If the rift was large enough, even atmospheric pressure on the other side would be enough to work. If that was the case, then it could be that the world on the other side could have conditions like those on earth three billion years ago.”
“Meaning we’d still be dealing with Earth and not Jupiter.” Lois said.
“Of course, this would irrevocably alter the course of the development of life on that other world,” Dr. Ledderman said. “A whole host of bacteria and viruses would have inevitable been draw to the other side and while most of them will probably die off, some won’t.”
Lois nodded, although she could see that Agent White was already looking distracted. He was awkwardly text messaging on his telephone and she wondered what it was he was saying that he didn’t want them to know.
“If we could ever figure out a way to control these rifts, we could advance all branches of science in ways that no one ever could have imagined.” Dr. Ledderman looked excited. “Want to learn about the beginnings of life? Watch it happening.”
“We’re trying to shut this down, Doctor,” Agent White said, “Not turn it into your own personal science project.”
“You don’t understand the potential benefits…”
The two men argued in low voices for the next several minutes while Lois found herself drifting off, her attention drifting and becoming unfocused. Unlike Agent White, she hadn’t had any sleep the night before.
Neither had Dr. Ledderman, but it didn’t appear to faze him. Apparently he was still on some version of a gambler’s high, only this time it was related to science.
The limousine stopped and Agent White and Dr. Ledderman got out. Lois moved to follow, but Agent White stopped her, shaking his head.
“Your sister has been asking to see you,” he said.
Lois frowned, unable to see the point. Of course she wanted to see the woman who looked like her sister, but important events were happening, events of which she was a part.
“Where are you going?” Lois asked.
“We have a presentation to make before interested members of congress,” Agent White said. “We have to prove to them just how urgent this all is, and the importance of pressuring the French into shutting down the project.”
“I can help with that,” Lois said.
Agent White shook his head. “The Vice president will be sitting in, and the secret service isn’t allowing us to bring you into the same city as POTUS or the vice president.”
“But why?”
“Your friend is effectively a weapon of mass destruction. The limits of his powers are unknown. He dresses up like Superman, but we have no reason to believe that the traditional abilities are the only ones he has. “
“I haven’t seen anything that isn’t consistent,” Lois said.
“And what if he has the ability to control minds?”
“If he can control minds, then I’m not sure what difference it makes,” Lois said. “Given what he can do, all he’d have to do is ask where he can find the President and move from there.”
“Even if he is exactly what he claims to be, the Secret Service isn’t willing to take the risk. They can’t guarantee the safety of anyone as long as your friend is in the same town.”
Given that he’d already survived being hit with a missile with little damage to anything other than the clothes on his back, Lois could see their point.
“What does all that have to do with me?” Lois asked. “I’m not dangerous to anyone unless I’m carrying a microphone or a keyboard.”
Agent White smirked. “We have a file on you. Martial arts, gun skills…for a civilian you can be pretty dangerous. We won’t underestimate you.”
At Lois’s sour look he shrugged.
“The FBI has profilers working the case already, and they’ve told us it would be safer to keep you away from everyone.”
Lois scowled. “He’s not dangerous! He’s just here to help.”
“He believes he’s Superman, and he has the power to back that up. That means that he’s likely to try to…”
“I’m the one who convinced him to put on the costume,” Lois said. “He never claimed to be Superman.”
“How close is the personality you’ve seen so far like that of Superman?” Agent White asked, staring at her for a long moment.
“He’s not like the Chris Reeve version!” Lois said. “Well, not Reeve’s Clark Kent anyway.”
At Agent White’s stare, Lois flushed. “Pretty close.”
“As far as he’s concerned, you are being held prisoner.”
“I am being held prisoner,” Lois retorted. Despite the more relaxed atmosphere of her confinement, she doubted she’d be allowed to go off on her own.
“Even if your friend is as benign as you seem to think he is, if he were to try to extract you near important officials things could get ugly.”
“You mean a bullet could ricochet and hit somebody important.” Lois said dryly.
“Someone who considers themselves more important than either you or me,” Agent White said. “So the short answer is that no, you aren’t going.”
Lois was silent for a long moment. “So you are expecting him to rescue me?”
“You’re Lois Lane. If he’s read any of the comic books, he’s going to think he has to make a career out of rescuing you.”
Lois scowled at him, and he took the opportunity to back away and shut the door. Before she could speak again he signaled to the driver and a moment later she was in transit alone.
She found herself stewing. She was an independent woman who didn’t need rescuing. Although she resented being sent away from the action, she was going exactly where she wanted to be.
***********
He needed to rescue her, although he had no plans to do it by broad daylight. He didn’t want to have to assault anyone or damage federal property any more than absolutely necessary. It wasn’t the sort of message that Lois had wanted him to convey.
In a way he agreed with her. One of his greatest nightmares had been that the world would reject him, universally fearing him for what he could do. He’d heard Agent White’s comment about him being a weapon of mass destruction.
He’d also heard the jokes that news anchors were making.
The only way to overcome both effects was to prove to the world that first he was real, and second that he was not dangerous.
That meant being even more active than he had been before. Instead of pulling back he was going to have to step up his activities. In the light of day, he was going to force people to believe in him.
As soon as he saw where Lois was going, he was going to step up his activities.
************
Agent Randal was at the safe house, looking sullen and angry.
“I’ll take her,” he said, reaching out as though to grab Lois’s arm.
The agent driving the car stepped out and shook his head. “The Special Agent in charge said she was to be treated with kid gloves.”
“I know what I’m doing,” he said.
Lois ducked under his outstretched arm and headed for the building.
As he opened the door for her, she smirked up at him. “Who’d you piss off to get this assignment?”
He flushed and said, “It’s none of your business.”
The government was expecting Clark to try to rescue her. Either he’d simply attack, in which case there was a chance that Agent would get hurt, or he’d move her out by stealth, in which case he’d be used as a scapegoat and punished for his failure.
Obviously Agent Randal had managed to step on someone’s toes. He’d been placed in a no-win situation. If he hadn’t been such a habitual bully, Lois would have felt sorry for him.
It wasn’t until he pushed her into the small living room that he realized that her sister was sitting there.
“She’s supposed to be in quarantine!” Lois said.
Agent Randal grinned maliciously. “Nobody told me to wear a safety suit.”
“It’s not just for her protection, you twit,” Lois said. “It’s for yours. Her world may have viruses that ours don’t.”
Agent Randal stared at her for a moment. “I think you missed your calling. You must be the best saleswoman in the world if you’ve got the top brass convinced of this other world’s bull-“
“They came to me with it,” Lois said.
“This is all a hoax,” Agent Randal said. “And I’m not the only one who knows it either.”
“Tell that to the rest of the world,” Lois said, gesturing toward the television.
Her sister had been watching them both wit wide eyes.
“Nobody else believes it either,” he said. “When they come to their senses I’ll be right here waiting.”
He slammed the door behind him and Lois could hear the sound of a key in the lock. A quick examination showed that the lock on this door had been altered so it could only be opened with a key on either side.
“What’s going on?” Lucy asked. “Why is everything so weird on television? Other worlds?”
They hadn’t told her. Lois felt a sudden chill down her spine as she realized that she was going to have to be the one to break the news to her sister.
How did you tell someone that even though you acted and looked exactly like the sister they had lost, that sister was dead and gone, and that worse, you weren’t even in your own world or time anymore?
***********
Strapped into her seat, Natasha grimaced as the Soyuz began to shake. This was always the part of the journey that she hated the most. Any part of the space program was dangerous, but reentry lacked the excitement of actually reaching space.
Instead she was always left with the slight feeling that something was going to wrong. As a cosmonaut, she knew the details of just how many things could fail, and the thought that her life could lay in the hands of a worker hung over from a weekend of drinking too much vodka wasn’t comforting. Sometimes all it took was one defective part out of a million parts to destroy everything.
Worse, there had been a malfunction on the last re-entry, which made her feel even more nervous.
Glancing over at her American counterpart, she wondered what the other woman was thinking. She always seemed so cool and collected, not loud and brash like most of the Americans Natasha had met.
When the light turned red and the ship began to shake more than it usually did, her gut clenched suddenly. This was it; the one trip she wasn’t going to be able to walk away from.
**********
“We’ve lost communication with the Soyuz,” the voice wasn’t familiar, but Clark had been listening for any hint of a response from the White House. “They’ve gone into a ballistic descent.”
“How many American astronauts are on that flight?”
“One, and two cosmonauts.” The voice was grim. “We’re going to have to spin this. The other side is going to-“
Clark blinked. As far as he could tell, the President wasn’t in residence, so he’d been eavesdropping on someone who seemed to be the chief of staff, hoping to hear what the American response was going to be to him. If it was going to be aggressive, he wanted to know so that he could form a response that was non-threatening but firm.
“Where do you think they are going to come down?”
“They were supposed to be landing in Kazakhstan. There’s no telling where they’ll end up now.”
That was all Clark needed to hear.
**********
As the ship shuddered around her, Natasha found herself muttering prayers that her grandmother had taught her. Religion was still frowned on in some circles, but at the moment she didn’t care.
The sudden jerk as they hit the thicker parts of the atmosphere almost made her black out. She felt her neck snap back slightly and the pressure on her body felt as though she was being crushed.
The roar of the wind outside sounded like the end of the world.
It took her a moment to realize that the pressure on her was gradually easing. Strangely, the sound of the wind outside was vanishing as well. Natasha wondered if she was going deaf.
“Did the parachute deploy?” her American counterpart asked in a strained voice.
A look showed that she didn’t think so any more than the others had. The feeling of the parachute snapping into place was distinctive. This wasn’t it.
“Maybe we passed out and have landed already?”
Natasha shook her head and gestured at the instrument panels. They were still in the air, but they had somehow impossibly decelerated to a speed that was unsustainable. Furthermore they were changing direction without feeling much of a sense of acceleration.
“You people have something you haven’t told us about yet?” the American asked again.
“Whatever this is, it isn’t of our doing.”
The radio crackled, and a moment later communications were restored.
**********
Nickolai scowled as he gestured with his rifle toward the last of the civilians. The evacuation of Red Square had taken longer than he would have liked. In the old days before Glasnost things would have gone much more quickly. There wouldn’t be Russian camera crews waiting just outside the perimeter like vultures waiting for a corpse to fall.
When word had come that the Soyuz was going to crash in the Red Square, he’d wondered how they could be so precise. Given the distances involved it would be easy to be off by three blocks, and if the thing landed in the midst of a crowd of bystanders he had an uneasy feeling that he would be the one to get the blame.
“Keep those people back!” he shouted, gesturing toward some of the men under his command.
He started to issue another command, but he stopped, staring up at the sky.
The familiar shape of the Soyuz was coming quickly over the horizon, but it didn’t look like it was going to crash at all. It looked like it was flying.
Two Mikoyan Mig-29 fighter planes bracketed it. As it approached, Nikolai could suddenly see why they were so certain the ship was going to land here.
It was being carried.
