Thanks to my awesome BRs, Nancy and Carol.
Previously...
Kal’s brow furrowed, as he was deep in thought. Finally, he met her eyes.
“All right,” he told her quietly. “Let us give your NIA contact-”
“Jack,” Lois filled in.
“Jack,” Kal repeated. “Let us give Jack a call.”
PART SIX
Kal checked himself in the mirror one more time and pushed the glasses up on his nose again.
For some reason, he was very nervous about venturing outside today. Maybe because this was his first time trying to pass as ‘normal’, and not as a stranger to this planet. Although Lois had assured him that any minor oddities in his behavior would be overlooked, he was still worried about what would happen if he were confronted with something that he had never experienced before, and if he reacted strangely.
Of course, this disguise wasn’t a matter of life or death, he reminded himself. The opportunity to walk unnoticed in the city wasn’t something he *needed*, although he would like the option.
It surprised him, actually, how much he seemed to care about it.
“Stop twitching, *Clark*,” Lois admonished him. “You look great.”
Kal felt a fresh flutter of nerves at Lois’ use of his acquired name.
“Are you sure this style of hair is acceptable?” he asked Lois. “It seems so… loose.”
“It’s not scraped back and plastered to your skull, you mean. It’s fine, Kal. This is actually closer to how most people wear their hair, and it’s different enough from your usual style so it makes you look pretty different.”
Kal ran a hand through his hair again. Then he fiddled with a button on his jacket. Then he checked to make sure his shoes were still tied.
“Okay, that’s it,” Lois announced. “We’re leaving right now before you can second guess this any more.” She pushed him out towards the door until Kal stood nervously fidgeting in the hallway as she locked the bolts. Then, Lois looped her arm around Kal’s and led him down the hall. “It’ll be fine,” she told him. “I know this is a little nerve-wracking, but no one will notice anything off about you. I promise. You meet a lot of weird people in Metropolis, and you’re not that high up on the list.”
They were just about to step outside when they were stopped by a friendly looking couple just entering the building.
“Lois!” The woman called.
Lois stopped. “Michelle! Hi, how are you?”
“Oh we’re just fine,” the man answered for the pair. He glanced over to Kal, who tried not to squirm. Kal had certainly not planned on meeting someone this soon!
“Oh, Michelle, Arnold, I’d like you to meet… Clark,” Lois spoke, nodding in Kal’s direction.
“Yes,” Kal spoke up, reaching his left hand out towards the pair. “I am Clark. Kent. Clark Kent.” He looked down at his hand, and hastily switched it with his right.
If the couple noticed anything off, they didn’t show it. Michelle simply smiled as she shook Kal’s hand.
“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she smiled, overly sweet. “Are you and Lois…?” She gave them a meaningful look.
Kal glanced over at Lois, confused. What was this woman asking?
Thankfully, Lois seemed to know the answer.
“No, we’re not, Michelle,” Lois smiled.
Was Kal just imagining it, or did that smile seem a little strained?
“Clark and I are just friends,” Lois continued.
As opposed to what? Kal wondered.
“Well, I don’t imagine you’d want to wait too long before settling down, Lois,” Michelle admonished. “The Arnolds of the world are getting scarcer and scarcer. And you know, not everyone is privileged enough to have a perfect marriage like we do.”
“Eight years and never a cross word,” Arnold spoke up, nuzzling against his wife.
Michelle giggled like a schoolgirl.
Lois growled like a pit-bull.
“Well, we really should be going,” Lois spoke through clenched teeth. “Clark here is visiting from Kansas, and I want to show him all the sights before he has to leave.”
Kal said his farewells to the couple, and followed Lois out of the building and to her Jeep, where she climbed inside smoothly.
Kal stood outside of the door opposite Lois’. After some hesitation, he grabbed the handle of the door, and pulled. To his pleasure, it opened nicely and he was able to sit beside Lois. He had never actually ridden inside a vehicle before.
“Pull that strap around in front of you and buckle it on your left,” Lois instructed him. “I know you’re not about to get hurt in a car accident, but we’ll still use it for appearances.”
“Where are we going?” Kal asked Lois as she pulled away from the curb.
“Centennial Park,” she replied. She stared straight ahead, and didn’t say any more.
“Lois?” Kal asked, breaking the silence. “Were those people your neighbors?”
“Yeah,” Lois replied. “The Sitkowitzes. They’re always just… Well, you saw them. Patronizing and perfect and absolutely in *love*. To them, anyone who isn’t married is just asking to be drowned with pity.”
“Marriage is not a requirement in this country, is it?” Kal asked.
“No,” Lois answered. “But that doesn’t stop some people from thinking that you need to be married to be considered successful.”
“Have you considered getting married?” Kal asked. “Do not feel as if you have to answer that,” he told her. “I am just trying to learn more about life on Earth, and you are one of my few sources.”
“I don’t mind answering,” Lois responded. “Normally, I don’t like sharing a lot of personal information, but with you it’s different, somehow. I’m not really sure why.”
“Perhaps because I am asking out of objective interest rather than being patronizing like the Sitkowitzes,” Kal suggested.
“Maybe,” she shrugged. “Anyway, I’m not *opposed* to the idea of getting married one day. But I guess right now, I’m not planning on ‘settling’ just in order to get a husband. If I were to meet someone and he turned out to be the kind of guy I would want to spend the rest of my life with, then I would be happy to marry him. But I’m not going to marry any guy just because I’m getting a little older. I’ll wait for the right guy, or I just won’t get married at all.”
“So you believe that you have a soul mate,” Kal inferred.
“I don’t know… I always thought that ‘soul mates’ seemed like such a subjective term. Is there really a person out there who is meant for me, or do people just make their significant others into their soul mates?”
“On Krypton, many marriages were arranged, especially in the upper classes,” Kal spoke, surprising himself in sharing this. “But at the same time, the idea of a soul mate was esteemed beyond the contract of an arranged marriage. If a couple was believed to be soul mates, then the previous engagement was dissolved, as long as there had not been a marriage yet. Of course, many people never found their soul mate. So they proceeded with the planned arrangement.”
”Did you ever meet… I mean, did you have an arranged marriage?”
“Yes,” Kal replied. “Although she had found her soul mate, so the arrangement was dissolved. I hadn’t, though,” he told her, answering her unspoken question.
“Oh,” she nodded.
Memories bubbled to the surface, but Kal clamped them down, trapping them like a lid on a pot of boiling water. He wanted nothing more than to spill the memories out, but he felt that they were still too painful to handle. So instead, he tapped his fingers in his thigh in a desperate attempt to release some of the trapped energy simmering under the lid.
“My parents were soul mates,” he managed to blurt out, nearly sighing at the release of pressure. He longed to tell Lois more. To explain to her the bond of love that had joined his parents in a way much greater than any civil service could. But the memories were too raw, and the emotions too painful.
So instead, he relapsed into silence, nursing his scalded emotions.
* * *
When she thought about it, Lois realized just how cooped up Kal had been for the last few weeks. At the Kent farm, he was free to walk wherever he wanted without any attention, and could do some real exploring. But ever since he came to Metropolis, he hadn’t been able to go out in public at all without fear of causing a riot.
That had all changed, now, of course. Jack Olsen had certainly come through in creating Kal’s civilian identity. ‘Clark Kent’ was the son of a distant cousin of Jonathan and Martha Kent, with no immediate family still alive. He had a complete background history, and owned everything from a birth certificate to a social security number. The one thing he did not have was a driver’s license, and Kal had shown a surprisingly typical male reaction to that and had immediately asked about how to get one. Whether or not she would be lending him her Jeep to practice was another matter entirely.
But after weeks of confinement, ‘Clark’ was now walking around Centennial Park with Lois, taking in the sights with fascination almost equal to his reaction to the rainstorm he had encountered the day they met.
The fresh air had even seemed to cure Kal of the melancholy mood he had sunk into since their conversation on soul mates.
A Frisbee landed at their feet, and Kal picked it up carefully, turning it over in his hands.
“Hey, buddy! Throw it back, will you?” A man called out to Kal.
“You spin it,” Lois tutored quickly. “Flick your wrist sideways like…” But Kal had already managed to figure out the throw and had tossed it back to the waiting players. “That was pretty good,” Lois told Kal as they moved away from the group. “Did they have something like that back on…” She stopped, aware of the public location. “Back at home, I mean?”
“No, nothing like that,” Kal replied. “But I am quite physically able. Even without the abilities I have here. I tend to pick up on those types of things fairly quickly.”
“Oh, really?” Lois asked, her competitive streak lit up.
“Yes,” he replied, seeming slightly amused. “I am very good at what you would call ‘sports’ here.”
“If you’re so ‘physically able’ like you say, then you wouldn’t object to a match of some kind again me.”
“With that plastic disk?” Kal asked.
“Frisbee,” Lois corrected absently. “And no, that wasn’t what I meant. I was thinking… tennis.”
“I am not familiar with that sport,” Kal told her. “That would put me at a serious disadvantage.”
“Well, if you’re as good as you say you are, you should be able to learn fast,” Lois shrugged. Of course, she didn’t mention that she had been a champion at doubles tennis in college. That little detail wasn’t all that important, anyway.
Kal studied her for a moment in silence. “Fine,” he finally spoke. “I agree to your challenge.”
“Yes!” Lois crowed. “We’ll do it next Saturday, okay?”
“Okay,” Kal agreed.
Lois smiled to herself, looking forward to the day where she could say that she beat Superman in tennis. Well, not that she would actually *say* she beat him. Not in public, anyway. It wouldn’t be good for everyone to know that she had that much of a relationship with ‘Superman’. Jonathan and Martha would be the only people who she would be able to gloat to. But of course, she would still milk it for all it was worth.
Still happily planning, Lois caught sight of an ice cream stand out of the corner of her eye, and decided to treat herself to a pre-victory snack. She didn’t bother to ask if Kal wanted anything. In the weeks he had stayed there, she hadn’t seen him take even a sip of water.
Lois paid for her fudgesicle quickly, and looped her arm back through Kal’s, resuming their walk as she ripped open the package.
“Lois,” Kal asked curiously, “did you just give that man with the ice cream stand money?”
“Yeah,” Lois replied. “The ice cream cost a dollar, so I gave him one.” She took a pleasurable bite of the treat.
Kal dropped her arm in shock and turned around to face her. “You mean you have to *pay* for food here?”
“Well… yeah.”
“But… what about the people who cannot afford to pay?” he asked, almost panicking at the thought.
“Well, there are organizations to help,” Lois told Kal uncomfortably. “There are food banks and soup kitchens and…” she trailed off. No matter how well intentioned those organizations were, there were always going to be people who slipped through the cracks.
“And for those people who cannot access those organizations?” Kal demanded, hitting her own insecurities with deadly accuracy. “Do they starve?!” He shook himself free of her arm, and stalked off away from her.
“Ka-… Clark!” Lois called after him. She dumped her forgotten fudgesicle in the trash and jogged after him. By the time she caught up, he had already calmed down.
“I am sorry, Lois,” he apologized softly. “I was upset, but I did not mean to get upset with you.” He allowed her to loop her arm back through his, and they kept walking through the park. “I have seen a lot of things that I am not used to, Lois,” he shared. “Some of them are wonderful. The diversity of life on this planet is… just amazing. You have no idea how lucky you are to live here. And the artistic expression here is unlike anything you could ever find on Krypton.
“But there are things that shock me,” he continued in a more subdued tone. “Things I have never experienced firsthand before. All the injuries and sickness and unlawful violence. They are all things that I am not familiar with in the slightest. And the idea of one member of society going hungry because they cannot afford…” Kal paused for a moment, and shuddered. “It is a thought I can hardly comprehend.”
“It is a terrible thing,” Lois agreed. “And we help when we can, but for the most part, I think we’ve trained ourselves not to think about it. And it never really occurs to us until someone like you comes around and points out what’s right under our noses.”
“I want to use my abilities to be able to help out here,” Kal told Lois, “but I have no idea how I can use them to help with this.”
“I can’t think of any way,” Lois confessed. “It’s a basic fact of life here that food costs money. So in order to provide it to people, you need to have money. But you’re helping out in so many other ways, Kal,” Lois told him. “Don’t think about the things you can do nothing about, and just be glad for the things you can do. You’re a symbol of hope for all of us here now. And whatever you can actually, physically do is enough. Because that energy of hope spreads to everyone else.”
“You do the same thing,” Kal realized. “Perhaps not in any physical gestures, but your words are an inspiration to many, and give people hope that someone is looking out for them.”
“I guess I do,” Lois agreed. “Although I hardly ever think of it that way. You shed a more positive light on it than I normally do.”
“I cannot have any actual power in this matter with the hungry,” Kal decided.
“Sorry, no.”
“Then I suppose I will have to just inspire others to do the work for me,” Kal declared. “In this matter, I am not any different than you.”
* * *
“Jimmy!” Lois shouted across the newsroom. “Do you have that list of financial holdings for me yet?”
“In a second, Lois,” Jimmy replied. “This kind of thing takes time, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” she grumbled, tapping her pencil impatiently on her desk. She only had half an hour before she needed to leave to go cover the ceremony of the mayor giving Superman the key to the city. While she did want to be there anyway to support her friend, it did mean that her free time at work was cut in half. And free time had been a little scarce lately, anyway. Perry expected all of his reporters to be scrambling to cover whatever Superman rescues they could get their hands on. Although Lois could get unlimited exclusives just over dinner, she felt that she should put up a good show in order to avoid suspicion. She knew it wasn’t a good idea for her to have a public connection to Superman.
“Here you go, Lois,” Jimmy announced, placing the folder on her desk. “Why did you want a list of the financial holdings of the wealthiest people in Metropolis, anyway?”
“I can’t tell you that yet, Jimmy.” Lois replied. “I’m working on a hunch right now. As soon as I know more, I’ll be coming to you for help, I promise.”
“Okay, Lois,” Jimmy replied as he strolled away.
Lois opened the folder eagerly and began sifting through the information.
In order for someone to sabotage space station Prometheus, there had to be some sort of benefit, Lois decided. So she was looking through these lists to determine who among the wealthy had holdings in some sort of space program. If Prometheus failed, then whoever sabotaged it could potentially gain significant benefits if their company was chosen to build a new model.
Tim and Amber Lake were out of the question, Lois decided. Most of their investments were in arts and culture areas, and the few technology based investments had nothing to do with space exploration.
Arthur Chow had a division of research within his company that devoted itself to space exploration, Lois discovered. She hated to suspect him. He seemed to be one of the few people who did not let his extraordinary wealth get to him, and was instead committed to making Metropolis a better place.
Of course, she couldn’t let appearances deceive her. That’s what everyone had thought of Luthor before her investigation had come out. And she wondered sometimes if some people of Metropolis still thought that way about Luthor.
Speaking of the sociopath… Lois paged through the file until she came to his list.
Although his financial worth had decreased dramatically, he still owned a company that devoted itself to space exploration, she discovered. To her, it seemed like a rash way to get back on top, but Luthor had been known to make mistakes in the past, and there was no way she was cancelling him out of suspicion on this one.
Another name that made it on her list was a woman named Arianna Carlin. Lois wasn’t familiar with her, which mean that she was probably a newcomer to Metropolis. But newcomer or not, a large portion of her investments were geared towards space exploration, and that made her a suspect in Lois’ books.
So she was left with a list of three people. Chow, Luthor, and Carlin. But she had no idea how to narrow the list down any further. She needed more information to do that.
Or a partner, Lois realized as she collected her notebook and pencil and went off to grab Jimmy to take pictures at the ceremony. A fresh perspective on this would be very helpful.
The trouble was, she wasn’t ready to trust anyone at the Planet with this. Not yet, anyway. Which meant that she was on her own.
