This is another excellent, deeply moving chapter, Rac.
I will not quote much from the first part of this chapter, where Jimmy insists on accompanying Lois to Kinwara. But I loved this:
“I can’t ask you to help me,” she replied quietly.
“Why not?” he challenged. “I’m your friend, aren’t I?”
“Of course you’re my friend. Jimmy, you’re like family to me and Clark.”
“You guys *are* my family,” he insisted. “And family takes care of each other. I want to help you do this, because it’s the right thing to do. And because you shouldn’t have to do it alone.”
Jimmy is right: Lois shouldn't have to do it alone. And therefore he will be there for her in Kinwara, to help her tell this story to the world and to offer her his support - and he'll do it because it is the right thing to do, even if he'll suffer for it. Again you make me feel the *goodness* of many of the people in this story. They will risk themselves and their physical and mental wellbeing to be there for their friends and to do what they can to help defenseless people caught in a terrible war.
Like Carol pointed out, Lois's desire to protect Jimmy - who in many ways is like her younger brother - so nicely parallels Talan's attempt to protect her own younger brothers from the war on New Krypton. I really don't believe that you are going to kill Jimmy in this story, Rac, but I don't feel equally convinced that both of Talan's brothers will survive. How horrible it would be to be this noble person who is risking everything to try to make the world better, and who has to see some of his or her own nearest and dearest perish in the same fight.
It was fascinating as well as saddening to see Clark and Talan discuss what they should do about Nor. This got to me:
He was silent for a long moment, letting the question that had gnawed at him for months roll around in his mind. The creeping fear had burned a hole in his gut, tearing him apart slowly from the inside. He desperately needed it to stop. Finally, he gave voice to his doubts, seeking reassurance but at the same time, knowing his able commander would never lie just to make him feel better. “Can we beat Nor? Can we win this war?”
The belief that Clark once had himself has been lost because of the torture he suffered at Nor's hand. The way I read your story, Clark is content to have their forces just react to Nor's rebel armies and beat them back. He doesn't feel any burning need at all to really go after Nor and try to really defeat him. Because something inside him still tenses up, goes still and frozen at the thought of going after Nor and
finding him - and having to face him down.
It was so good that he asked Talan for her honest opinion about their chances to beat Nor. Because Talan will not lie to him, not embellish the truth. If she thinks they are unlikely to really defeat Nor, she will tell him so. So can they beat him?
“We can, sir. And we will. Nor may be ruthless, and without ethics, but he is also without principles. A monster who believes in nothing can still be hunted down. He can still be deterred and frightened and he can be manipulated because he places his own survival above everything else.
And she honestly believes that... yes, they can.
The truly frightening enemy is the one without scruples and an overabundance of belief. The one who will give up anything, even his own life and the life of every innocent person around him because of an idea.
This is
hugely interesting. In these two sentences, you actually describe today's fanatical terrorists, those who will give up their own lives to kill as many "infidels" as possible. Those who will deliberately and knowingly set off bombs strapped onto their own persons so that they can take as many perceived enemies with them as possible. How do you stop people who are ready and willing to turn their own bodies into minced meat shrapnel in order to fight for their cause?
But Nor is not like that, and therefore he can be defeated. Because he does not believe in anything but his own personal power and comfort:
There is nothing Nor is willing to die for. Because of that, he is afraid. And we shall give him good reason to fear.”
Lois looked up, subconsciously tilting her head to one side in a perfect imitation of Clark, as she listened to the broadcast. “Ultrawoman, if you’re around, we could use some help.”
I absolutely love this, hos Lois has in some respects
become Clark, a female version of Clark, now that she is Ultrawoman. She models herself after Clark's Superman because she loves Clark, because she knows him, because she admires him, because she so deeply respects him, and because she is striving to be what he was, when he was on the Earth being Superman.
Jimmy focused hard on keeping his hands from trembling. He would never get clear photos if he couldn’t stop shaking.
These sentences describing Jimmy's anguish forcefully remind me of what Lois said to Jimmy when she tried to persuade him not to go to Kinwara:
“This is the kind of thing that gets to you. It gets inside you and it makes you sick. You don’t need this.”
And now it has gotten inside him and made him shake with horror and fear. Lois had been right, of course. He didn't need this for his mental wellbeing. But he had to do it anyway, because Lois needed his help, and it was the right thing to do.
He needed to photograph what he saw around him and show it to the world. And he needed to photograph Lois when she tried to help the victims of this war:
From a distance that seemed both profoundly detached and unbearably close, he focused his zoom lens on her as she ran out of one unremarkable building, with nothing to distinguish it from its neighbors except the fact that it used to be the home of the tiny infant Lois now carried in her arms, held close to her chest.
I can see Lois so clearly when you describe her like this. I think perhaps you modeled her after a fireman who was photographed carrying out a small girl from a day care center inside the federal building in Oklahoma City that was destroyed in a terrorist attack in 1995. The child died later, maybe just after she was brought into hospital. The fireman carried her so tenderly, like a father solemnly carrying his little dying daughter. It was a heart-rending picture. Just like this one must have been:
The baby lay completely on one of Lois’s forearms, her hand gently cradling the child’s head, her other hand shielding the infant’s face. The image she cut was both tender and fiercely protective. It was…unmistakably maternal.
You tell us later that the little baby was a boy. It doesn't matter much that it was a boy rather than a girl, because the important thing is that it was a baby. Still... Lois has her own little boy at home. Her arms, her whole body, must remember what it was like to carry her own little boy in her arms, the way she is now carrying this little boy in Africa. You make me feel that the lines between her own little boy and the little African boy are blurring, and the two little baby boys are almost one and the same. Lois has carried them both in her arms, tried to protect them.
Did the photographer who snapped the picture of the fireman and the dying child keep on taking pictures afterwards? Jimmy did just that here in Kinwara:
He took photograph after photograph, straining to listen for the baby’s cries over the chaos and din that surrounded them, but he couldn’t.
Because the little baby boy died. Just like the little girl from Oklahoma City.
Did the image of the fireman and the child get to that photographer just as much as the picture of Lois and the little baby boy in Kinwara got to Jimmy?
Lois goes back home. She couldn't save the little boy in Africa, but she has to try to be a mother to her own little son, who for a moment seemed to become one with that helpless little victim in Kinwara:
In the darkened nursery, Lois lifted Jon gently from his crib without waking him. She floated to the rocking chair, her son sleeping soundly in her arms, his head on her shoulder. His thumb found its way to his mouth as she rocked back and forth. She took his other hand in hers and looked down at his perfect little fingers.
Her son is alive and well. Even though other little children are dead.
But Jon wakes up, and to soothe him Lois has to sing her son's favorite tune:
“I hear babies cry
I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more
Than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.”
She felt a single tear roll down her cheek as she kissed the top of her son’s head.
“And I think to myself
What a wonderful world.”
Oh, Rac. You almost made me cry.
This little paragraph packed such a punch, too:
Perry looked down at the mockup of his front page for the next morning. He put his hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “That’s some picture you took. It’ll be on the front page of the paper tomorrow and before the week’s end, the cover of every magazine in the country. It’s heroic. Iconic.”
“The baby died,” Jimmy replied sullenly.
It doesn't matter to Jimmy that he has just taken a photograph that is going to appear on the covers of magazines all over the world. It doesn't matter, because the baby died.
I loved what Lois said to the crowd who had come to the rally for Kinwara:
“Normally, we’d ask you to observe a moment of silence. But silence is exactly what’s wrong with the world. Silence can be ignored. Silence can be forgotten. Silence can swallow up the victims of this crime. So please, don’t be silent. Continue to fight. Speak up. Be heard. And continue speaking until people really listen.”
So true! We need to have more people speaking up, not more people who are silent.
Again you show us good people ready and willing to risk discomfort for themselves in order to do what is right:
She looked back at the Congressman’s partners in crime. Rachel Cohen, a preeminent theologian and human rights scholar, and Bill Sperling, a professor at Metropolis University’s School of Divinity, hardly seemed like the rabble-rousing sort setting out to add to their rap sheets, but she had no doubt that they intended to do exactly as they said. At least the three middle-aged activists weren’t likely to cause an altercation in their protest. They’d keep the ‘civil’ in civil disobedience. She turned back to the congressman. “You know I can’t bust you out of jail, right?” she asked.
Congressman Pennybaker’s eyes sparkled with mischief as he laughed. “We know,” he assured her.
I love how you describe Talan:
It was still so odd to see the larger than life general commander behind a desk for most of her time. The room, the corridors, the base itself, all seemed like they were too small for her, like they were cramped and confining. As unnatural as the setting was, the general commander still excelled here, accomplishing what few others could even hope to do.
She looked at the usually taciturn commander and noticed something different in her expression. It was nothing as unsubtle as a smile, but there was something there Enza had never noticed before – a look of honest gratitude and respect.
True to her word, Talan had never once pressured Enza to make exceptions or take liberties with what the law required of them. That day on the northern ridge, she’d proved that she too believed that their only hope for survival lay in doing the right thing, even when it was difficult. Even when the desire for vengeance was overpowering.
Talan comes through as a commander of the utmost honor, the kind of leader that you would be willing to lay down your life for, because you'd know your sacrifice would not be in vain.
Do you know I suddenly felt as if I was describing a leader inspiring a terrorist suicide bomber? Because Talan would be able to inspire the same total faith in her soldiers as the terrorist leader would in his followers, right? But there is a huge difference between Talan and, say, Usama bin Laden. Talan does
not order or allow her soldiers to kill because it is expedient. She believes in what is right, in the respect for the law, in the respect for the lives of other people. She would
never allow anyone under her command to blow himself or herself up and take as many people with them in death as possible.
This, again, is so moving:
“There’s talk that the Council is going to reconsider its approach to the situation in Kinwara,” he said before taking a sip of his rye.
“What caused the change?” she asked as she leaned forward.
“A lot of things. Better news coverage. A group of distinguished religious leaders and American politicians getting themselves arrested at a demonstration. But most of all, you. And specifically, a certain photograph of you that is currently gracing the cover of half of the magazines published in the world.”
Lois's long, heart-breaking battle to get some support for her fight to save the innocents in Kinwara is finally bearing fruit. And it was so very, very good that Jimmy came to Kinwara to photograph her in the middle of the horrors there.
“I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like,” he continued. “The death of a child is one of the most unfathomable evils in this world. But what if this one doesn’t have to be in vain? What if this one marks the turning point that forces the world to wake up and take notice? To finally act to stop the slaughter?”
Can the death of a child be worth it? How do you answer that?
“I hope you’re right,” she said as she stood up. “But it’ll be a cold comfort to that little boy’s mother. Some things can’t be made right. Some prices are too high to pay.”
Wearily, Enza stepped off her transport, her bag slung over one shoulder. Her boots thudded loudly on the gangway as she walked into the hangar. Through the crowd of crewmen, mechanics, and technicians, she spotted the tall communications sergeant walking slowly toward her. He stopped and smiled, stooping to lift her little niece into his arms. He pointed toward Enza and she watched as Thia’s face lit up.
This gets to me so strongly - Enza's tiredness, some of it perhaps war-weariness - and then how one small face lighting up at the sight of her fills her with strength and purpose and a reason to live that can't be compared with anything else.
“I missed you, too,” Thia replied. “Don’t go away anymore.”
Enza felt her heart break. “I am going to stay with you as long as I can,” she said. “But sometimes I have to go away. It’s my job.”
“Will you come back?”
“Always,” Enza whispered fiercely.
Interestingly - this is what Clark has often said to Lois. "I must go, but I'll always come back." He can't promise that, of course. Will he come back now? I'm sure all of your readers fiercely hope that he will.
But what if Enza doesn't come back? My heart feels like breaking when I'm thinking of what little Thia will have lost.
The rest of this chapter focuses on characters who may be villains or traitors, and I always shy away from such people. I don't want to spend more time than necessary in their company, so I'll refrain from commenting on what you write about them.
To summarize, it's so admirable how you make this story stay gripping and excellent in chapter after chapter, and as far as I can see no ending is in sight. Well, I'm not complaining, and I'm looking forward to many more chapters of this moving, poignant, heartwarming and heartbreaking tale.
Ann
- nice parallel with Zara and her brothers later. (you do this parallel stuff a lot - very effective )
It was indeed the firefighter in Oklahoma City that inspired that scene. Eleven years after it happened, I can still see that image of the soot covered firefighter, cradling the baby wearing the yellow socks. I could just see Ultrawoman in that situation and I knew how hard it would be for her.