Clark landed in the Kent farm’s back yard an hour before sunrise. As he looked around for a good place to wait, the kitchen light came on. He glanced through the wall to make sure his mother was decently attired, and since she was, he climbed the steps to the back door and knocked.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber,” he answered.
She chuckled at the tattered old joke as she unlocked the door. “Sorry, no parrots here. Come on in and have a seat, honey.”
“I’m surprised you still get up this early.”
“I still have a few chores, like checking for eggs and feeding the chickens. I was a farm wife too many years to sleep to noon like some lazy city dweller.”
“Thanks a lot for that, Mom. Can I help with breakfast?”
She shook her head. “I’m just having coffee and toast this morning. I have an early lunch meeting in Wichita with a man who wants to sell my sculptures in California and Arizona, maybe Oregon. Nothing’s been signed yet, but it looks very promising.” She put her hands on her stomach and lifted one eyebrow. “I can’t fill up first thing today. The last time I met with Bart Winslow over lunch, I ate a big breakfast first, and after that huge meal he insisted I finish, I waddled around like a pregnant hippo for the rest of the day.”
“Hey, that’s great! Not the hippo part, but the potential sale part. If he’s half as smart as he thinks he is, he’ll trip himself getting the sales agreement in front of you.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Clark, but we’ll have to wait and see. Now, what’s bothering you?”
“Bothering me? Why does anything have to be bothering me?”
“Because you don’t show up unannounced before sunup unless there’s something you need to talk about. Now spill it, ya filthy animal!”
He laughed. “You’ve been watching too many Home Alone reruns, Mom.”
“But I’m still right, aren’t I?”
He nodded, still smiling. “You are and you know it.” He leaned back in his chair. “Do you remember the no-win training scenario in the Star Trek movies?”
“I was never the Trekkie you were, Clark—”
“Trekker, Mom, not Trekkie.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I think I know what you mean.”
“Good. Just to make sure we’re both on the same page, Cadet James T. Kirk was the only one who ever defeated the no-win scenario.”
“I do remember that part. Didn’t he cheat, though?”
Clark’s smile grew. “As someone recently pointed out to me, he didn’t really cheat. He just altered the conditions of the test.”
Martha looked at him for several moments without reacting. “It’s early in the morning and I haven’t had my coffee yet. I’m going to need you to fill it in around the edges a little more so I can see the whole puzzle.”
“Okay. You know how Dad always told me to be careful not to let anyone know what I could do or I might end up dissected like a frog in a laboratory, right?”
“Uh-huh. Still not finding the point, though.”
“I want to alter the conditions of the test.”
She leaned back and rubbed her temples. “Honey, you’re going to have to tell me directly how Star Trek links up with what your father used to say because I’m still not getting it.”
He leaned forward and grinned. “Clark Kent can’t be seen doing all the special things I can do. But someone else can. Someone wearing a costume or a disguise of some kind, something that grabs people’s attention and makes them look. Something that will stand for what’s good and right and safe.”
Martha tilted her head. “But no one can do what you can do but you, and if – oh – a disguise – but – wait just a – you mean – that’s – and—”
He grinned wider and watched her process the concept. “I haven’t done anything with this idea yet. I wanted to get your input first.”
She nodded slowly. “Ah – yeah. Thank you. Um – I think – at first blush – well, Clark, it’s either the most brilliant idea you’ve ever had or the absolute worst. I can’t tell which yet.”
He reached out and took her hands in his. “Mom, I want you to spend a couple of days thinking over this. I’m going to do the same thing, and if we agree, I want you to help me design my good guy outfit. Will you do this for me? I really value your input, and this is extremely important to me. I want to get this right as to whether I do it or not.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Do you? I don’t know if I see it all yet.” He stood and paced around the kitchen. “But if I do this, I can help people in car wrecks, help out at natural disasters, stop violent crime in the streets – I don’t even know all of it!” He stopped and spun to face her. “If I do this, I’ll have a way to help people I couldn’t help before. Just think of the lives I could save, the injuries I could prevent! Who knows, maybe I could be a spokesperson for orphanages and adoption agencies and help rural hospitals raise money and build better facilities and buy newer equipment! Mom, I could make a huge difference in people’s lives! A real difference everyone could see and touch and talk about and help with!”
Clark saw his face reflected in his mother’s glasses. He assumed it was a trick of the light, something about the curve of her lenses that made his face seem to glow, but he didn’t care. Just talking about it made the whole concept seem more real to him.
After a long moment, Martha stood and embraced her son. “I love you, Clark. And I think you may have a bigger heart than anyone else in the state of Kansas.” She patted him on the back and smiled up at him. “Come back in three days and we’ll talk some more.”
“Three days? You need that much time?”
She gave him a sideways grin. “I do if I’m going to come up with some truly heroic designs for your new costume. I’ll stop at Monica’s fabric store on the way back from my meeting today and get started right away.” Her hands found his chest and she pushed him away. “Now you go to work and do your usual wonderful job. Go bust some perps or something.”
“Yes, Mom. See you Saturday morning!”
“That’s fine as long as I have my coffee before we start.”
He laughed again. “I’ll bring you a latte from Starways, okay?”
By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, he knew he was as ready as he’d ever been in his entire life.
*****
Tuesday morning was neither just a day of the week nor a retail store for Clark. By the time he got home, he’d been in several Midwest states cleaning up after tornados, in Canada to repair an oil pipeline damaged by environmental terrorists, in the Philippines to partially deflect a tsunami – he hadn’t been totally successful, but he had saved many lives and mitigated the property damage – and in Metropolis where he’d turned eleven criminals caught in the act in to various police stations, complete with witness statements and physical evidence.
He hadn’t slept since Friday night and he was tired. He’d planned to nap in the sun on his patio for most of the day and put in a patrol that evening. Bill Henderson had generously allowed him to take time away from the office while he was on administrative leave for shooting someone, especially since the shooting had taken place out of state. Bill was still working with the commissioner to smooth the ruffled feathers of the Castle Rock city fathers and police officials for that incident.
So he didn’t need an angry blonde ADA beating on his door at eight-twelve in the morning, but he had one anyway. There was no other choice than to open up and let her in, and despite having her right arm in a sling, Mayson burst through the door like an out-of-control bulldozer and stomped down the short flight of steps to the lower level as soon as Clark released the latch.
She stopped in the middle of the room, then spun on her heel and glared at him. “This apartment still sound-proof?” she demanded.
Clark sighed and closed the front door. “As long as you don’t use a bullhorn or your witness-is-lying courtroom voice, no one should hear us.”
“Good. Because I have something to say to you.”
Maybe it was because he was tired, but she looked like she wanted to cross her arms but couldn’t. She also looked to be exhausted and running on pure adrenalin. He managed to suppress the chuckle that wanted to bubble out of his throat.
He tried to defuse Mayson’s pending explosion with humor. “Would you care to sit down before you fall down? Or should I prop you up against the wall?”
Her mouth fell open and she shook her head as if to clear it. He’d normally be far more patient with her, but he had a strong hunch about why she was here and he was determined to stand his ground.
She shook her head and tried to regain her momentum. “Do you know what they’re calling you now?”
Obviously humor wasn’t what was needed. “No, I don’t know what they’re calling me, unless ‘they’ are the two robbery suspects I brought in before the Denver trip, and I can’t believe anything they’d call me would be repeatable in polite company.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” She lifted her free hand to the side and gave him her witness-is-lying-like-a-cheap-rug look. “Are you too busy to read the papers? Or turn on the TV? Listen to the radio?”
He sighed, his chuckle crushed beneath the treads of her intensity. “Yes, I have been too busy to read a newspaper or watch TV or turn on a radio. What are they calling me?”
She turned and addressed the air near his kitchen. “He doesn’t know. Seventy-two hours of flying around the world like a maniac and he doesn’t know! Fifty-six arrests – illegal arrests, mind you – and he has no idea what he’s stirred up!”
Clark took three steps toward the kitchen and spoke to the air over her head. “Maybe if she told me what they’re calling me we could move forward with this conversation. What do you think?”
She spun and stared at him. “If you think you can – never mind.” She walked into his personal space and glared up at him. “They’re calling you Superman!”
He felt his eyebrows elevate. “Superman?”
“Yes! Superman!”
“You mean like Nietzsche and his ubermensch?”
“I don’t know! Some reporter in Gotham City, I think, saw a picture of you lifting a railroad car with that big ‘S’ on your chest and decided ‘Hey, I think this guy could be a Superman!’ And now that’s who you are!”
“Mayson, look, I—”
“You have no privacy now, you idiot! You’ve thrown your personal life down the sewer! You’re so blasted eager to help people that you forgot about the people already in your life! And all because you wanted to look like a circus clown on steroids!”
“My mother made me that outfit!”
“So she’s on board with it? Great! Now there are two idiots instead of just one! You can’t just—”
“That’s enough!” he barked. “I haven’t arrested anyone! I just took them to the precincts with enough evidence for the officers there to arrest them! I haven’t done anything illegal!”
“You’re acting like a vigilante! Your ‘Superman’ identity doesn’t have any legal—”
“I didn’t pick the name! Maybe people need someone powerful and good to root for! And you leave my family out of this!”
Mayson stopped and stared at him, then exhaled slowly. “Okay.” She took two steps back and pushed the air between them with her free hand. “Okay, fine. I’m sorry. I crossed the line with the crack about your mother. I never should have said that.”
“No,” he growled. “You shouldn’t have.”
Her eyes closed for a moment and she seemed to deflate. “I just wish you had talked to me about this decision.”
“Why, Mayson? Why should I include you in my life’s choices?”
Her eyes widened and her mouth went slack. “Wh-what are you – what do you mean? I love you, Clark! What affects you affects me!”
“I don’t think we should be that close.”
Her voice caught and she almost whimpered, “You mean – right now? While you figure out the – the Superman thing?”
“No. I’m talking about a permanent change in the status of our relationship.”
In a thin, almost wispy little-girl voice, she asked, “You – you’re breaking up with me?”
The tears balanced on her lower eyelids and he almost softened his stance, then remembered what Lois had told him – that he was with Mayson more out of compassion for her than out of affection for her. “Yes, I am,” he confirmed, but with less force than before. “You may love me, Mayson, but it’s for the wrong reasons. You wanted my powers along on this witness transfer because you wanted to be ready for anything. And you knew that I’d get Lois to Denver no matter what we came up against.”
He crossed his arms and sighed. “But you don’t want to accept them as part and parcel of me. You want the ‘normal human’ Clark most of the time, except when I can add something to the situation that no one else can. I’m very uncomfortable with that state of affairs, and I feel like you’re using me to instead of relating to me. I think we should stop being a couple.”
A tear flowed down her cheek and fell on her sling. “That’s not true. I just want you to be happy. And you can’t do that if people are hounding you all the time.”
“Not as long as they believe Clark Kent and Superman are different people.”
“And how long do you think it’ll be before someone makes that connection?”
“I don’t know. How loud can you yell that? I don’t think they’ve heard you in Gotham City yet.”
“Clark, please! I – I just want you to be happy.”
He crossed his arms and took time for a deep breath. “If you really want me to be happy, Mayson, let me do this, okay? If it turns out that – sorry, what was that name again?”
It was harsh, making her say the name when they both knew he couldn’t have forgotten, but he’d been pushed too far this morning. She blinked and more tears fell. “Superman.”
“Right. If Superman becomes more of a problem than a solution, I’ll just announce that I’m going into hibernation, give the costumes back to my mother, and apologize profusely to you. Until then, though, I’d appreciate it if you kept my secret.”
A hint of the old fire shone in her eyes. “I know how to keep a secret, remember?”
“Being able to keep a secret has never been an issue for you. The issue is whether or not you choose to keep it.”
Her mouth hardened into a flat line in her face. “I suppose I deserve that. Yes, Clark, I will keep your secret, until you tell me directly that it isn’t necessary for me to do so any longer.”
He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. “Thank you, Mayson. I know this whole thing is difficult for you.”
“You just think you know.” She moved past him to the door and he opened it for her. “When will I see you again?”
“Assuming my resourceful and charming boss fixes everything with the LEOs in Castle Rock, I think I’ll be back in the office Monday of next week. If I don’t go to Colorado for a few days, that is.”
“Colorado? Why?”
“I think you know why.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah, I think I do. But if I’m right, you should go to West Virginia instead.”
“What? Why?”
She stopped in the doorway and spoke without looking at him. “Because that’s where the federal trial for Lex Luthor will be held. With so many of his people vanished or in jail and his two top goons dead, the US Attorney wants to be as close to Metropolis as possible. He’ll have better access to witnesses, physical evidence, the local investigators, yadda yadda.” She strode through the open doorway and down the hall without another word to him.
So. Luthor would be tried in Wheeling after all. The week on the run, the stress of protecting Lois, the threat of discovery and ambush, the palpable fear that she’d be killed at any moment – it was all for nothing.
Wait, Mayson said the federal trial?
That meant the city and state had ceded jurisdiction and custody. It had to be yet another blow to Mayson’s hopes for putting Luthor in jail. Of course, it really didn’t matter who put him there, just as long as he was convicted of at least some of the crimes he’d committed. And if the Feds ever let him go, the state of New Troy would snap him up in a heartbeat. The man would never inflict his particular brand of evil on the public again.
And if he somehow escaped the legal system, Superman would track him down and capture him.
He closed the front door and thought about his new identity. Superman, yeah. He was starting to like that name. It suited him.
And then he mentally slapped himself for making such an atrocious and labored pun.
*****
Clark knocked on Bill Henderson’s office door and waited for a response. “Just a moment,” Bill called through the door.
Clark refused to listen in on the conversation, but for a moment it got loud enough for anyone to hear Bill say, “No! You started this, you can finish it!” Then there was silence for a long moment before a woman’s familiar voice murmured something Clark chose not to hear.
The door swung open and Clark stepped in as Bill stepped back. “You wanted to see me, boss?”
“Yes. Come on in and close the door.”
Bill moved to his desk and sat. Mayson already occupied the chair in front of the desk farthest from the door. Bill waved him all the way in. “Have a seat, Clark. Mayson has something to tell you.”
“Okay. What is it, Mayson?”
She kept her gaze locked on the far wall behind Bill, who finally said, “Oh, let me start. I know you two are having personal problems, but I expect you both to behave as professionals. Mayson, if you insist on acting like a junior-high diva, I’ll get Jim Dixon on the line and you can explain to your boss why your attitude is so crappy lately. Clark, you haven’t done anything worth me getting mad at you yet, but if you start acting like a kid who needs a timeout I’ll have you on patrol report review duty at a desk on Highland Avenue before you can turn around. You two got it?”
Mayson huffed and almost barked “Yes!”
Clark frowned. “You mean the precinct where the worst crime they have is the occasional trash can tipper?”
“That’s the one.”
Clark nodded in agreement. “I promise I’ll play nice.”
“Fine. Mayson, I want you to tell Clark what you told me about the Lois Luthor assignment.”
Clark almost corrected his boss on Lois’ form of address but changed his mind at the last moment.
Mayson adjusted her sling and turned slightly in Clark’s general direction. “That trip to Denver was both a smokescreen and a trap. When she volunteered to testify and provide documentary evidence against her husband, Jim and I decided to let the federal courts have first crack at Luthor. I came up with the plan to go cross-country to lure out Luthor’s lieutenants and soldiers. We even smoked out a leak we didn’t know we had.” She stopped and sighed. “It worked better than I hoped it would.”
Clark stared at her ear for a about ten seconds, trying to control his sudden anger, then bit out, “Yeah, it worked great except for all the people trying to kill us.”
Mayson had the grace – or maybe the shame – to look down at her feet. “I’m truly sorry, Clark, but I knew you’d protect us once we got on the road. My getting shot put a monkey wrench in the plans but you did great. You couldn’t have done better.”
Clark lifted one clenched fist. “So we were just bait? You put us out there to chum up the water and see who came up to take a bite?”
Bill lifted one index finger. “I wasn’t kidding about Highland Avenue, Clark. Keep a lid on it.”
Mayson’s eyes began leaking again. “No, Bill, he’s right. I did a stupid thing and put a witness in jeopardy so I could score some points in the DA’s office. Jim didn’t like the idea at first, but I sold him on it when he found out you were going. You have a really good reputation over there, Clark.”
“Which apparently doesn’t include reading me in on dangerous operations even when I’m part of them!”
“And that was wrong, Clark. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” She finally turned to look at him and her bleak expression almost broke his heart. “I’m deeply sorry on every level I can think of.”
Once again Lois’ analysis came to his mind, and this time he also compared her attitude toward his powers to Mayson’s. Lois seemed to accept him for who he was. Mayson used his special abilities to further her own interests. He believed her when she said that she regretted her actions, but there was no way to know whether or not she’d do the same thing again given similar circumstances.
He turned back to his boss. “Inspector, the reason Mayson is so touchy and the reason I’m kinda prickly is because we’re no longer a couple. We officially called it quits between us—”
“You called it quits,” muttered Mayson.
“Fine. I called it off this past Tuesday because I don’t feel respected. The relationship was unequal and she had a bad habit of using me for her own gain.” He shot an angry glare in her direction. “And it seems that I was right. I respectfully request that you not assign us to work together on any special projects in the future.”
Bill nodded slowly. “You know, Mayson, this young man could make a lot of trouble for you if he wanted to. Sounds to me like he’s trying to be reasonable.”
Mayson blew out a breath and turned away from Clark to stare at the back wall again. “I really can’t argue with that.”
“Then let’s leave it like this. Clark, if you investigate a case and Mayson gets assigned to it by her boss, you treat her like you would anyone else. Got it?”
He nodded. “I think I can do that.”
“Good. Mayson, if you two do end up working together on a case, you leave any private stuff off to one side. And you don’t pressure Clark to do something he doesn’t want to do unless it involves some point of law.”
“Fine. I can work with that.”
“Then it’s all settled. I’m happy, Jim Dixon is happy – or will be – and you two aren’t happy but you aren’t fighting, either. Everybody wins.”
Mayson stood and waited for Clark to move so she could get to the door, but instead he said, “Inspector, did you receive my vacation request?”
Bill nodded. “I did. I approved it and forwarded it up the food chain.”
“Thanks.” Clark finally stood and moved to the door. “I assume you also received my report of lost equipment?”
“For your LexTel phone?”
“That’s the one.”
“Got that too. Go see Marcy Quarles on the fourth floor for a replacement unit.”
“Will do, boss. Uh, it won’t be a LexTel, will it?”
Bill grinned and waved his hand once from left to right. “No. But it is the droid you’ve been looking for.”
Last edited by Terry Leatherwood; 05/28/17 08:13 PM. Reason: fix icon
