>>> from the journal of H. G. Wells
This is most vexing.
My machine has malfunctioned at the least opportune moment. I have discovered that Lois Lane was given an assignment, the exact nature of which is unclear to me, to meet a man in Brussels. I am unaware of the identity of this man. Nor is it clear to me what was supposed to transpire between them. Instead, however, I have transported her to Metropolis, where the man whom she was to meet in Belgium is now in residence. Since I have learned that her – I have no other term which might describe this beast who seems to control her every action – her master is indeed living and appears to have no other subordinates either working with or watching over Miss Lane, it seems obvious that he is confident that she will carry out whatever his instructions might be without the need for supervision.
Now that I have learned this much, however, my machine has refused to activate, even though I am certain I have sufficient fuel. I am stranded in this warehouse in a village outside Brussels, attempting to repair my mechanism without knowing exactly what the problem might be. I do not believe that I am in any immediate danger, but I cannot leave, nor am I able to warn the home office of my plight, as my communication device cannot or will not connect to my supervisor’s terminal. And I am in danger of arrest and incarceration should the local authorities wish to examine my identification or travel documents, of which I have none suitable for this time period.
I fear that Miss Lane’s intentions are not benign. And I also fear that I have precipitated a series of events which might defeat my main purpose in arranging a meeting between Clark Kent and Lois Lane – namely, the beginnings of Utopia on this world.
>>>
Lucy had the cabbie drop her and Lois off at the drugstore two blocks from her apartment to fill Lois’ prescriptions. As they waited for the pharmacist to finish, she watched her sister wander aimlessly through the store, looking at the full displays of goods as if she hadn’t seen such things for many years.
She really hasn’t seen them for years, Lucy realized with a start. Where has she been for all this time?
After a few minutes watching her sister, Lucy also realized that Lois always kept herself partially hidden from the front door as she wandered the aisles. Her body was always turned to give her a good view of the front of the store, and she never turned a corner without inspecting the area first. And Lucy could see her visually check out every person who entered the store.
Lucy didn’t know why Lois was acting that way. But it made her uneasy.
Then Lois found the paperback book section and stopped. One particular volume seemed to attract her attention, and Lucy got up from the pharmacy waiting area to look.
The first book didn’t surprise her. It was “Superman’s Women” by Claude DuBarrie, a cheap and tawdry piece of thinly disguised soft porn authored by a former reporter for the Daily Planet. Lucy and Clark had read it separately when it had been published three years earlier, and then they had compared their impressions of the volume. He had laughed at the depiction of Superman as a kind of super-Don Juan, but Lucy had been furious. She’d urged him to sue the author, but Clark had just waved it off. And when Lucy had demanded specific answers from him about some of the women mentioned in the book – women such as Lana Lang, Rachel Harris, Mayson Drake, Princess Diana Asagba of Nigeria, Melanie Davis, Kelly Verlander, not to mention numerous Hollywood starlets – she and Clark had argued. The confrontation had mushroomed until she’d stomped out of his apartment and slammed the door behind her.
It had been their first real fight. And it had taken weeks for them to repair their friendship. Clark had never hinted that Lucy might have been jealous, but she eventually admitted to herself that it was true.
It had been shortly after that time when Clark had begun to leave her with a brotherly kiss on the forehead or cheek, something she hadn’t realized before seeing Lois holding that awful piece of trash. Lucy was surprised it was still selling well enough to be displayed on the rack.
Lois turned as her sister walked closer. “Hey, Luce. This thing any good?”
“No.” She took it from her sister’s hand and put it back on the rack. “It’s worse than useless. The best thing anyone could do with it would be to recycle every copy as cheap toilet paper. It’s poorly written and the few times any real sources are cited they’re poorly documented, and on top of that they’re unsubstantiated. Pretty much the only thing about it that’s even slightly true is that it’s a book.”
Lois smirked. “Come on, Punky, don’t beat around the bush. Tell us how you really feel.”
Lucy chuckled. “If you want some light reading – hmm, let’s see – yes! This one is light years away from that other thing.”
Lois took the book from Lucy’s hand and read the title aloud. “’Clark Kent, the real Superman.’ Says here that Clark hid his abilities for years before he came out.” Lois frowned at the back cover blurb. “Came out of what? I’m pretty sure he’s not gay, so what is this about?”
“I guess you really have been away. Clark was engaged to a girl from his hometown until you – uh—”
Lois turned to her. “Until I what?”
Lucy sighed. “Okay, you may or may not believe this, but here goes. Clark put on the flashy suit one day because a woman claiming to be you showed up at the Daily Planet and convinced him that his girlfriend – her name was Lana Lang, by the way, one of the few things in the other book that had a grain of truth in it – was holding him back, that he was meant to be a superhero. A few days later, some guy named Tempus threatened to blow up the city council, and when Superman flew in to rescue everyone, Tempus tried to kill him with a piece of radioactive rock. Superman was weakened but still saved the day by smothering an explosion with his body, and during all the hubbub Tempus showed some video of Clark flying in civilian clothes and using some of his other powers. Blew his secret completely apart. After that, the woman claiming to be you went back home.”
Lois frowned again. “Went back home where?”
Lucy bit her bottom lip for a moment, then said, “To her own dimension on a parallel world where she and the version of Clark who lived there were engaged to be married.”
Lois snorted and put the book under her arm. “Right. Tell me another one later. I could use a good laugh.”
Just then the pharmacist announced over the store intercom that a prescription was ready at the counter for Lane. “Come, on, Lois, let’s get your meds and get you home. I bet you’re hungry.”
“Yeah, I am. I hope you’ve learned to cook since I last saw you, because I still can’t.”
Lucy grinned. “Not to worry. That lasagna I’ve got stashed in the freezer will give you a mouthgasm on every bite.”
*****
Their dinner over, Clark sat in the back of the company limo across from James and Dominique, but he might as well have flown home ahead of them. The two of them were talking about nothing and smiling as if they were high school juniors on their first date together.
Clark was glad for them. He was happy that they were getting along so well, and he was happy that they both seemed to have so much in common. And he was glad for himself because he was the inadvertent catalyst for their warm smiles and gentle handholding.
But he was still on the outside looking in.
His friends accepted him as an equal. The public, for the most part, seemed to have accepted him as a friend who wanted to help. The federal government, despite some dicey days in the beginning of his career, seemed willing to let him alone. And he still had a job that paid the bills, along with a generous stipend from the Superman Foundation which usually ended up in some worthy charity’s coffers.
But there was no one waiting for him when he went home. There was no one to smile at as he fell asleep, and no one to wake up with in the morning. There was no one to dodge playfully while he brushed his teeth. There was no one to share the home chores with. There was no one to cook for him or for him to impress with his culinary knowledge and skills.
Suddenly it was too much.
He tapped on the partition behind the driver’s compartment, and when the window rolled down, he said, “Please drop me off at the next corner, Mr. Roberts. There’s something I need to take care of.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Roberts. “There’s one coming up now.”
“Thank you.”
The window slid up again and he turned to see James’ quizzical expression directed at him. “Superman emergency?”
Clark shook his head. “Not an emergency. You two have fun.”
Dominique leaned toward him. “I’m sorry, Clark. We shouldn’t have shut you out tonight.”
He tried to smile. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t anything new in my life.” The big car rolled to a stop and Clark moved to the door. “You two have a good time with the rest of the evening.”
“See you tomorrow at the office, Clark?” asked James.
“Unless something comes up that needs my personal attention, yes, I’ll be there.”
Dominique all but whispered, “Bonne nuit et bonne chance, mon ami.”
Clark smiled again, this time with sincerity. “Good night and good luck to you also. And I’m happy that you’re my friends.”
*****
Dinner with Lucy had been fun, for the most part. All Lois had really needed to do was dance around any real explanation of where she’d been and what she’d been doing for the last few years. She knew Lucy wouldn’t understand, couldn’t possibly understand, why Lois had done all that she’d done. And she also knew that she couldn’t take it if Lucy wouldn’t forgive her.
As if forgiveness were still an option for Lois Lane.
They’d cleaned the dishes and watched some TV in the living room. Lucy, after commenting that her sister could use a good laugh or two, picked situation comedies. Lois, of course, didn’t know most of the actors and fewer of the shows, so she gave her sister a lot of “This is supposed to be funny?” looks as the evening wore on. Eventually, Lucy’s head nearly fell off when she yawned. The sisters laughed and decided it was time for bed.
Lois hoped Lucy had gone to sleep quickly. The kid deserved it. She’d been through a lot today, and it was all Lois’ doing – well, Lois and that funny little man with the goofy hat.
It wasn’t the original plan, nor was it the one she’d thought she’d activate, but she decided it was worth the risk to make the call from Lucy’s home phone. When she heard the man’s voice answer, she said, “We need to meet.”
A sexy male voice purred, “For such a lovely voice as yours, of course. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Operation Fortitude.”
The voice flattened. “I – I think not. There would be consequences.”
“Either meet me or my boss. Your choice.”
Now he sounded nervous. “I choose neither, please. I mean no offence, but I must bid you good-bye.”
“Then you choose death for yourself and your family.”
A startled gasp came across the line. After a moment, the man grunted out an address and a time, then broke the connection. She hung up, confident that she’d just initiated a valid improvisation to begin her mission.
Lois sat on the soft bed in Lucy’s guest room and leafed through the book she’d gotten at the pharmacy. It appeared that Clark’s Superman character was just as nice a guy as he appeared to be. He didn’t hunt down high-powered crooks or use his powers to investigate them, he just caught criminals in the act and turned them over to law enforcement. And that mission seemed to be secondary to helping out at disasters, both natural and man-made.
As she read more, she understood why she hadn’t heard of him. His initial appearance had taken place more than six years before, well after she’d been taken and while she was in training with Rodolfo and his crew. The entire team had been under media lockdown during those eight months, and none of them had heard anything from the outside world during that time. When the first burst of news about Superman had died down and for the most part he’d remained in the U.S., the African news organizations had dropped the story. Even during her assignments in the Mideast and western Asia she’d avoided learning about him, since that knowledge wasn’t necessary to her for her missions. And on the few occasions when she’d gone to Europe, they had been quick in-and-out trips which gave her no time to sightsee or get caught up on world events. She learned what Rodolfo wanted her to learn and very little else.
Of course, by the time she’d completed her training, her focus had turned from gathering and publishing the news to not being a part of the news. The only way for her to survive long-term – and later, to protect her children – was to stay hidden, to remain a ghostly presence in the world, to keep anyone from knowing who she was, or even that she was still alive.
She couldn’t keep her mind on the book, so she turned down a corner of one page and put it on the nightstand. She smiled to herself as she did so, remembering how frantic she once would become at a single dog-eared page in a library book, much less mark a book in that manner herself.
Those innocent days were a misty memory now.
She wished again that she had a picture of her babies. The security protocols Rodolfo strictly enforced forbade it, but there were times she needed to see their faces. Collette, her little girl, was almost five now, and her mind was as piercing and far-ranging as Lois’ had been as a teen. Her son Jean, named for the hero of Les Miserables, was only two, but he already knew when to be silent and still and when to behave as a normal little boy.
Sometimes she wished she knew who their fathers were. Then she’d remember why she didn’t know and was thankful that her babies would never know either.
The children had been forced on her but she loved them fiercely. The circumstances of their births didn’t matter to her. They were hers, she loved them, she she’d do anything to protect them.
Including carrying out her current assignment to kill one of Metropolis’ leading citizens.
The funny little man had caught her between arrival in Brussels and beginning her plans to set up the hit, so she’d decided to humor him and see what he was talking about. If he had actually been crazy, she could have easily killed him, and by some slim chance if he did have some way to get to Metropolis without going through customs, she’d take it. Once she completed her assignment, she had at least three ways ready to leave the country. She just had to pick one and activate it.
Given Superman’s presence, it would have to be one of the quick ways out.
She’d been shocked when the thing she’d sat in – it had looked like a bejeweled air boat to her – had actually taken her to Gotham City. Security for the inter-city bus lines wasn’t anywhere near that of the international airports, which was part of the reason she hadn’t asked him to bring her to Metropolis in the first place, but the funny little Wells guy had certainly come through for her. The bus had brought her to Metropolis, and a taxi had taken her to the Daily Planet, where she’d learned that Perry White was no longer the editor, was in fact the city’s mayor, and that James Olsen was now editor, owner, and publisher. After that, it was a quick walk to the library to get Olsen’s business schedule and address, and another walk back from the library to the Planet building.
She grimaced as she recalled those taxi rides. She’d have to avoid them for the rest of her stay in Metropolis. None of the drivers had met with her approval, and she knew it had been a mistake not to tip any of them. Ready cash wasn’t the problem, but every nickel she spent was money she couldn’t put in her private accounts. But taxi drivers usually remembered people who yelled and didn’t tip. Not to mention the fact that she was used to countries where the cabbies were in business to rip off customers who weren’t “important” people.
If Rodolfo knew about that money, he’d never mentioned it to her. He probably believed that the leverage of her children was enough to keep her in line. And it hadn’t escaped her notice that he’d given her a longer leash ever since Colette had arrived, and an even longer one once she’d birthed Jean.
Yes, she was securely hooked to his leash. She was a trained attack animal, forced to do a monster’s bidding. She hated and feared Rodolfo for the power he had over her. And she hated herself for it.
Then she’d met the Superman.
She hadn’t been impressed at first, but he’d kind of grown on her as she spent more time with him. Lucy was quite taken with him too, and not because of his powers. Lois could tell that her sister thought that Superguy – or, rather, Clark Kent – had hung the moon in the sky, along with a significant number of the stars. No wonder she didn’t have any other boyfriends.
He was kind and gentle, yet so very powerful. When she’d nearly clobbered Lucy that first day and he’d caught her hand, he’d used only enough strength to stop her. She knew now that he could have ripped her head from her shoulders with no real effort, but she also knew that he wouldn’t have. And that funny tingle she’d felt when he’d held her fist had thrown her a bit off-balance. He was a man no woman could resist – no normal woman, anyway.
Lois no longer considered herself normal. Normal women didn’t do what she did for a living.
His questions hadn’t been as easy to deflect as Lucy’s were, probably because Kent was a reporter and Lucy wasn’t. He was smart, cagey without being sneaky, and as far as she could tell, he was honest as the day was long.
Which meant that she needed to finish this job quickly and disappear so she could go back to her children, before Kent could learn anything significant about her. No one would separate her from her babies.
The one thing she’d always insisted on with Rodolfo was that when the job was done, she would make a call to report in and she would talk to her children. Rodolfo always argued with her about it, saying that it was an unnecessary exposure for both of them. But Lois was adamant. She would speak with her children after every job or she’d come after him.
It was a measure of his respect for her abilities that he had never called her on it. There was no way for him to know if her threat was a bluff or not, and he refused to take the chance. Only Lois knew that it was no bluff.
She tried not to think about the training camp again. She refused to think about it again. So she got ready for bed and lay down with one of Lucy’s romance novels in her hand and thoughts of Superman flitting across her mind.
She was nearly asleep before she realized it. And the memory invaded her dreams yet again.
~~~~~
It was the training run.
The training run where the other two women had failed and died.
Once again she saw the blood and bone and the dead women and Rodolfo’s pistol growing like a cartoon cannon until she lost her balance and fell into the muzzle and—
~~~~~
She rocketed up out of sleep and nearly fell from the bed to the floor. The book which had sagged to her chest did fall, and Lois barely controlled her bladder in that moment of obscene terror.
She got to the bathroom with no time to spare. This time she managed not to throw up.
The training run dream memory always tore her up. And the memory of the final training test was far worse.
As she reentered the bedroom, she glanced at the clock. It was just minutes after three-thirty.
There would be no more sleep for Lois Lane tonight.
*****
Lucy wasn’t usually a light sleeper, but the knowledge that her long-lost sister was in her guest room popped her eyes open several times during the night. About four o’clock, she got up and padded to the bedroom door and peeked into the hallway.
A light shone under Lois’ door.
Lucy listened intently, but didn’t hear any noises. The TV apparently wasn’t on, Lois wasn’t crying or pacing, so maybe she was just sleeping with the lights on. Lucy hoped so.
She considered knocking on Lois’ door, but didn’t. They had only just met again and the relationship was too new, too raw, too tender to press her on anything. It hadn’t escaped Lucy’s notice that Lois had dodged almost all the questions about her recent past. Lois was as much a mystery now as she had been for the last half-decade and more.
That mystery would need to be solved, and fairly soon. The one thing Lucy had picked up from their conversation was that Lois wasn’t back to stay. Where she had to go, why she’d come back now, what she felt she needed to do, Lucy didn’t know. All she knew was that her big sister was not being honest with her.
Despite the distance between them brought on by the years of separation and half a decade of distinctly different experiences, the realization hurt.
Why was Lois so different today? Why did she seem to hate people with dark skin? Her rudeness to Dominique and angry exchanges with the cab driver were a shock to Lucy, something totally out of character for the Lois she remembered from long ago. That Lois would make excuses for their father’s affairs, for their mother’s frequent sojourns to the land of the soused, for Lucy’s poor grades and even worse judgment where her boyfriends were concerned, for almost anything.
The Lois in her guest room made few allowances for anyone. She seemed distant, almost cut off from other people, even Lucy. And why had Dr. Frazier acted so oddly yesterday? She’d been fine before the exam, but when she’d left the room she’d been corpse-pale and almost vibrating with what Lucy could only assume was terror.
That brought up yet another question. Could Lois have frightened the doctor that badly? And if she had, how had she done it?
Even more important, why had she done it?
Lucy turned and slipped her bedroom door shut. The next time she saw Clark, she’d have to have a serious talk with him about all this.
Assuming she got enough sleep first.
*****
Lois dressed quickly and quietly, then ghosted across the living room of her sister’s apartment. A short peek into Lucy’s bedroom told her that the younger woman was asleep.
Lois picked up the spare keys from the rack beside the kitchen and slipped out the front door. Her luggage held a few things she could disguise herself with, one of them being the shoulder-length bobbed wig which resembled her old hairstyle. Another was the unmarked biker jacket cut to hide her shoulder holster and a pair of biker boots with knife sheaths molded into each inseam. They weren’t comfortable, but she didn’t have that far to go. And the knives were something of a comfort to her after Libya.
She locked the front door and catfooted down the stairs to the side utility entrance. As she’d expected, the door was propped open to allow the trash to be taken out to the main dumpster. It was a simple matter to walk out under the two sleepy workers’ noses as they yawned through their labors.
The subway was three blocks away and her destination was four more from the closest underground terminus, but she refused to take a cab. They were too easy to trace, and at four-thirty in the morning a cabbie would be far more likely to remember her than a subway conductor or ticket-seller would. So the two ten-minute walks and the twenty-five minute ride were small prices to pay for her continued safety.
As she approached Nick’s All Night Bar and Grill, just across the street from the Greyhound bus terminal and a block from New Troy General Hospital, she automatically checked her perimeter for any suspicious characters. No one triggered her paranoia, so she pushed through the door and went to the breakfast bar.
It was the kind of diner where one would expect to see William Holden chatting with Humphrey Bogart while Lauren Bacall hung decoratively on Bogey’s arm. She half-expected the scene to revert to black-and-white as Burt Lancaster matched quarters with Kirk Douglas at the bar to see who paid for their chicken sandwiches. Even the Formica-topped tables and metal-framed chairs were appropriate for that period.
The older woman behind the counter – who looked more like Lon Chaney than Lauren Bacall – looked at her with eyes as deep as a child’s wading pool and grunted, “Whaddaya want?”
“Coffee, black with five sugars,” Lois growled back. “And you got any fresh Danish from Brussels?”
The woman’s face didn’t move but her pen hesitated, then finished writing the order ticket. “No Danish till six. I’ll get your java.” Her path to the coffee pot took her past a small non-descript man with a thin mustache and a nervous tic in his fingers.
As she waited for her contact, she sipped her coffee and checked out the other diners without being obvious about it. A short, powerful Hispanic man in a booth in the corner was munching on toast while his tall black female companion leaned away from him and dabbed at her nose with a handkerchief. The pairing was unusual enough to be staged, but Lois didn’t think so. She picked them up too quickly for them to be police.
She’d watch for them when she left anyway.
Aside from that couple, there were two men in bus uniforms wolfing down what appeared to be bacon cheeseburgers, a woman at the far end of the bar smoking a thin cigar and sipping a milk shake, and three young men with nature-boy country haircuts and small disposable cameras who looked and acted like they’d slipped their senior trip chaperones for the night. She’d have to be careful not to let them catch her face in any “candid” shots.
The twitchy little man finally got up and nervously approached her. “Er – excuse me, please. I mean no offence, but you look very familiar to me. Perhaps – perhaps we have met before?”
“Maybe.” She turned to him and tried out the contact phrase. “Have you ever been to Siberia, Florida?”
A grin tried to appear on his face as he jerkily sat on the stool beside her. “Yes, I – I have. Last summer during the wheat harvest.”
It was him. Now all she had to do was get him to agree to her proposal.
She gave him her best smile and lowered her voice. “I think we can do business. Just act like I’m a hooker and we’re negotiating a deal.”
He actually paled at the suggestion, so she added, “That’s just to fool the 4H boys in the booth near the door.”
He jerked his head around to look at them and they burst out in suppressed giggles. “Them? Why don’t you just – just take them – I mean, get rid of—”
She leaned closer and almost whispered, “If I kill anyone who isn’t my target, it’ll be you. Now let’s get down to business.”
He swallowed hard and sat straight on the stool. “What do you want?”
She told him. As expected, he wanted nothing to do with it. “No!” he squeaked. “No, I – I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Lower your voice, Slick,” she purred. “Act like you’re anticipating the next hour with relish and not terror.”
“But I can’t do as you ask! Those negotiations are at a sensitive juncture, and my boss would have my head delivered to my wife in a box if I fouled them up!”
Lois put her hand on his wrist and leaned closer. “I’m not asking you to foul up the negotiations. My boss has an interest in things happening the way your boss wants them to happen. All I need is a slight – hitch, I guess you’d call it, in the deal.”
Twitchy wiped his face with his free hand. “This is more than a hitch.”
“You’ll recover from it. Who knows, it might even help the union get what they’re asking for.”
He shook his head. “I can’t, I really—”
Lois glanced up to make sure the gargoyle-faced waitress was out of earshot, then pulled open her jacket for a moment. “Plan B involves me leaving you dead in front of union headquarters. I’d rather not fall back to that one because it’s more risk for me. But one of the plans we’ve discussed will happen. Your choice, Sport, either plan A or plan B. You have five days to decide.”
His wrist suddenly felt clammy and his eyes shrank to pinpoints. “What? No! You – you can’t just—”
“Yes I can, Slick.” She pulled him closer and kissed him, ignoring the gasps and giggles of the schoolboys behind her. With her lips beside his ear, she said, “Just like Debbie Harry said, Slick. One way or the other.” She smiled brightly and tapped his nose with her index finger. “It’s your call.”
She left two dollars under her cup and sauntered to the door. Just as she put her hand on the push bar, she turned to the three teens and said in a throaty voice, “Come see me later, boys. I’ll give you a group discount.”
She slinked out the door into the night, confident that they boys would remember to breath before they passed out.
*****
The willowy black woman looked at her partner and softly sobbed, “Well, Miguel? Do we stay with the nervous little mob guy or follow the woman he just talked to?”
Miguel shrugged. “Mob guy. He’s our assignment tonight.”
“What if she’s important?”
Miguel shrugged again. “You think she’s important, you tell the day shift sergeant. He loves to hear about working girls expanding their horizons. Right now, you need to stay in character. We don’t want mob guy to figure out we’re cops.”
“I think she might be important.”
He sighed. “Dana, she’s just a streetwalker trying for an easier mark than a biker gang. Those guys can be pretty rough. And they usually don’t tip well.”
Dana dabbed at her tears to add a little more irritant to her eyes. “I don’t think so. She had the jacket and boots but no club logo.”
“So she’s a freelancer! Let it go, okay?”
Dana didn’t answer this time. She only glanced out the window as if avoiding eye contact with Miguel. The woman in question was striding toward the subway entrance with her head up, her eyes probing every shadow.
Hookers were victims. Victims walked with their heads down, trying to avoid being seen, trying to stay away from the predators.
Whoever this woman was, she was no victim. She was one of the predators.
Maybe one of the most dangerous ones.
