—Earth II—As usual, dinner conversation was dominated by world news and school. Jason White, Zara and Ching’s son, was in Lara’s kindergarten class at school. Lara announced he was fitting in well, for a boy.
An emergency over the Ordway called Clark away from the table for nearly an hour. He looked worn when he got back.
“Bad accident?” Lois asked.
He nodded. “Tanker truck hit the median wall. I’m guessing the driver fell asleep. Wasn't much left since the tanker blew up. I think he died instantly.”
“I’m sorry,” Lois said.
“Any sign of Wells?”
She shrugged. “It was a stupid idea. I’m sure they’re fine.”
They shared a moment of silence, just enjoying being in one another’s company after a long day. CJ and Lara were in the family room, arguing over battle tactics on the game they were playing on-line. CJ hated admitting it but Lara’s sense of tactics and strategy was excellent, even better than his. Jordan was playing with Legos, creating something only he could identify.
The door bell rang. CJ ran to get it.
“No running in the house!” his mother yelled. She turned to Clark and whispered: “Are you sure he doesn’t have super speed yet?”
“I think he just likes to run,” Clark replied as he went to see who CJ was greeting at the door. “Plus he knows it annoys you.”
--Earth I—“Uncle Perry,” Richard said into his cell phone, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I think I need to delay going to Paris, at least for a little bit.”
“What’s going on?” Perry asked. “How are Jason and the baby?”
“They’ve both been admitted and they’re both in ICUs,” Richard told him, his voice cracking. My baby boy is sick. “Perry, I’m scared. They have Jason hooked up to machinery and they have no idea what’s wrong except that he’s barely holding his own. And the baby… Clark’s baby is dying, Uncle Perry.”
He heard Perry’s sharp intake of breath, then: “How’s Lois doing?”
“They let her scrub up so she could be with him in the isolation ICU,” Richard said. “They can’t identify the disease agent and they’re afraid he might be contagious even though Lois has been around the baby almost as much as Clark has and she’s fine. And you and Aunt Alice are okay, so far. I did tell the doctor that the baby had been around Superman…”
“Why did you tell them that?”
“Uncle Perry, Clark is sick with the same thing the kids have. What if Luthor had a backup plan? What if he managed to infect Superman with a space bug of some sort?”
“I see what you mean,” Perry said. “Tell Lois we’re all behind her and not worry about work.”
“Uncle Perry, I think you could announce that World War Three had started and she wouldn’t budge from Jason’s side,” Richard told his uncle. “I’ll keep you posted,” he promised and hung up his phone. He leaned back against the wall outside the ICU. Only one visitor was allowed at a time, so all he could do is look through the glass partition at the woman he’d been engaged to and the boy he had raised as his own for five years.
Lois’s head was bowed and he couldn’t see her expression beneath the surgical cap and mask she was wearing, but he thought he saw tears on her face.
Dear God, let Jason be okay. And Clark and the baby. The world needs him. Lois needs him. Please don’t let them die.* * *
“How are they?” Alice asked as Perry hung up the phone.
“Both the kids have been admitted to intensive care,” Perry told her. “It doesn’t look good.”
Perry occupied himself by tipping the ice Alice had brought up into a plastic bowl with water. He replaced the folded damp cloth on Clark’s forehead with a fresh cold one. Clark’s temperature wasn’t coming down and he was having fewer and fewer lucid moments in between his fits of uncontrollable shivering.
Clark had tried more than once to get out of bed, to get to the window in response to something only he could hear. It had taken both he and Alice to get Clark back into the bed. That was when Perry noticed the gauze bandage on Clark’s back and realized the wound Luthor had given Superman had opened up and was oozing blood and green pus.
Alice changed the bandage without complaint – she had been a practical nurse before she married and had children. She burned the soiled bandages in the fireplace.
Perry had the radio set to a news channel for a little while then changed it when he realized the reports were making Clark more agitated. Classical music was doing a better job at keeping the younger man calm.
“Perry,” Alice said, placing two fingers against Clark’s carotid artery to check his pulse. “He’s not doing very well.”
“I know,” Perry told her. “His breathing’s gotten shallower.”
“He needs a doctor,” she told him, worry darkening her eyes.
“Alice, I haven’t a clue as to who to call for him,” Perry admitted.
“And you still think he shouldn’t be in the hospital?”
“Honey, they can’t help him more than we can.”
--Earth II--A slender gray-haired man wearing an old fashioned suit, wire-rim glasses, and a moustache was standing in the entryway – Herbert George Wells. He blinked, breaking into a relieved smile when he caught sight of Clark.
“Mister Wells, you got our message?” Clark asked, ushering the man into the living room. “Oh, watch your step. We’re having the flooring replaced. Hardwood cleans up better than carpet.”
“Oh, you tried to get a message to me?” Wells asked. He seemed confused as he sat on the edge of the sofa.
“Yes,” Lois told him, coming into the living room, holding the baby to her shoulder. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Actually Missus Kent, I came to ask some questions,” Wells said nervously. “If you don’t mind.”
“Okay,” Clark agreed, settling into one of the chairs opposite the sofa. Wells was normally a little on the nervous side when he visited. Of course his visits were usually as a result of some catastrophe he was trying to avert that negatively affected mankind’s future. But tonight he seemed unusually diffident.
“Pardon me if I speak bluntly, but did you have any ‘odd’ visitors in the past few days?”
“Define ‘odd,’” Lois said with a grin. “Zara, Ching, and their son were here from New Krypton along with an assassin and Lord Xon. They’re both dead, by the way.”
Wells frowned. “Was there anyone, anything else?”
“Well, that’s what we were trying to get hold of you about,” Clark said. “A Lois and Clark from an alternate time-line also showed up, courtesy of a tempocane.”
“A tempocane? Oh my,” Wells murmured. “Do you happen to know which variation they were from?”
Clark shrugged. “I don’t think it’s one Lois and I visited while we were doing our involuntary tour of the multiverses. He was born in ’72, became Superman in ’98 or there about. That Lois has a son named Jason who’s the same age as our Lara, but she’s engaged to someone other than Clark. And their Clark was missing for over five years.”
Wells seemed troubled by Clark’s description. “I was afraid of that.” He seemed to lose himself in thought for a long moment before looking over at Lois and Clark. “Did they take anything from this time-line back with them?”
Lois and Clark shared a worried look. “Ching and Zara had a baby with them, in a stasis device. The baby went with them for safety.”
Wells nodded thoughtfully. “Was the stasis device still sealed when they took it?”
“I believe so,” Lois told him. “Mister Wells, what’s going on? If you didn’t get our message, why are you here?”
“Because there are certain time-streams that seem to be keys, almost like the keys in an arch,” Wells told them. “When a key is disturbed in a serious manner the vibrations, if you will, affect the neighboring time-streams. Rarely for the better.”
“Is their time-stream one of the key ones?” Lois asked.
Wells nodded.
“Mister Wells, what’s happened there?” Clark asked.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Wells said. “Except that their version of Utopia has been destroyed. In their universe, Superman was never publicly revealed as being Clark Kent. So there were no biographies of Mister Kent, no journals saved, nothing that can be used by Peacekeepers to trace back problems. The one thing I know is that Superman came back to Earth from a nearly six year absence, and disappeared again only two weeks later. His disappearance corresponds temporally with a minor change in this time-stream.”
“And what was that change?” Lois asked. Martha was fussing a little. Wells swallowed hard and Clark and Lois watched him worriedly.
“Originally, your fourth child, a girl named Martha Michaela, died of a sudden, undiagnosed illness when she was only a day old,” Wells told them, not meeting their gaze. “The older three were critically ill for a few days but recovered. Another infant girl died of the same disease, but she was never identified.”
“But Martha’s four days old now,” Lois reminded him. “And the other kids are just fine…”
“Exactly.”
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