Lois grimaced as she looked at herself in the lighted mirror in her sun visor. Her eyes felt swollen and they looked red.
She’d had to pull over to the shoulder of the road when the truth had finally hit her. Lucy was gone and she was never coming back. All that was left was an echo, someone who shared the face of her sister, and some of the same memories, but who was no more her than a twin might have been.
Crying was something Lois hated. She hadn’t been able to do it when her parents died; all she’d felt was numb and hollow. That feeling had only spread as she had tried in vain to fill that void with awards and professional success.
To have had this sort of hope and to have it yanked out from under her; it was overwhelming.
Worse, she couldn’t give in to her first inclination, which was to wash her hands of the whole situation and take a long vacation. This story was hurting her professionally; it was costing her the trust of the government and it was making her feel old before her time.
Yet this doppelganger, this twin of Lucy…Lois owed her. If the situation had been reversed, and it had been her sister trapped in another universe, she’d have hoped that her counterpart would be able to expand the definition of family to include her.
The other passengers were going to be punished for something they had no control over. Lois had gotten into her profession to make a difference. She’d hoped to make the world a better place, and no matter what the professional cost, she was going to have to continue.
It was the right thing to do.
**********
The house still had water stains to the four foot mark and Clark could smell the tell tale smell of mold. Of course, there was nowhere in even his own New Orleans that was free of that smell, and he couldn’t smell anything that seemed to be dangerous.
Overlaying those smells were the chemical scent of lemon cleansers, potpourri and gumbo. It was a familiar mix that reminded Clark of his own New Orleans.
Cyrus wasn’t doing as well as he had been on the flight over. He was staring into space and mumbling to himself in a voice that was unintelligible even to Clark.
Knocking firmly on the door, Clark waited as he heard a light tread.
A shadow crossed the peephole and Clark carefully stepped aside so that Cyrus would be visible. He heard a small sigh on the other side of the door, and then there was a moment of hesitation before the noise came of the chain being undone and several locks being turned.
The porch light came on and the door opened to reveal a tall, slender woman wearing a purple kaftans. Her face was dark and distinguished looking, even though there were already traces of gray in her hair.
“It’s been a long time,” she said neutrally, staring at her brother.
Cyrus smiled up at his sister and said, “An angel of the Lord has brought the prodigal son back to the family.”
“You haven’t been taking your medicines, have you?” she said.
“He seemed perfectly clear an hour ago,” Clark said.
He hoped that the stress of flying hadn’t been too much for the older man.
“Cyrus knows better than to tell people what he’s seeing,” she said. “It’s only when it’s at its worse that he forgets how things look to the best of the world.”
Clark didn’t know what to say. Without revealing what he was, his only other choice was to allow Cyrus to look crazy.
Of course, the man was becoming visibly more withdrawn even as they spoke.
“Come in,” she said finally.
*********
The truck stop was practically deserted which was just as Lois liked it. She would have preferred an internet café, but this was closer and more secure. She wouldn’t have to worry about anyone looking over her shoulder as she accessed the internet.
Lois smiled neutrally at the woman behind the counter as she moved past the entrance to the small diner and headed toward the back, where the internet kiosks were. There were facilities also for showers and bathrooms and a small convenience store which sold everything the modern trucker would need.
She was online in a matter of moments, having slipped her money into the slot. It seemed a little pricy, but it was well worth the cost to have unmonitored internet access.
Lois hadn’t even bothered to look at the paper in the darkness of her vehicle. Now her main interest was in finding the site that was on the third page. With her luck, the government would shut the site down before she had a chance to see it.
It was a You-tube address, which surprised Lois. She wasn’t aware that You-tube had any dealings with the government.
She clicked the small arrow, and a moment later the small screen within a screen brightened.
She squinted for a moment. Was she looking at the deck of a garbage scow? She could see men moving around and from the sound of it they seemed to be speaking Norwegian.
They were staring up in the air. One spoke quietly to the other, and even without understanding their language, Lois could see that they were uneasy.
She heard the sound of thunder. The camera panned up, and Lois could finally see what had caught the attention of the sailors. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing; it was something dark that seemed to writhe and move as it covered the entire sky.
It was a flock of birds, one so massive that it seemed to stretch for miles, and it was descending toward the ship.
The sailors took one look at the descending horde and immediately headed for the safety of the enclosed deck cabin. The view of the camera changed, pitched back and forth as it too headed for the cabin.
The view changed as the door was slammed behind the cameraman, and the camera whirled around.
The flock descended in its hundreds of thousands, and as more and more birds landed on the deck, the cameraman zoomed in on one of them.
It was some sort of pigeon, gray but reddish under its throat. Lois frowned as something niggled at the back of her mind.
She’d seen this sort of pigeon before. It wasn’t the usual sort of pigeon she’d seen on the streets of Washington, or even at some of the more exotic locations she’d visited.
Clicking the pause button, Lois minimized the screen and opened a new window. She began to do some quick, but pointed research.
Her source wouldn’t have sent her to this site if it wasn’t important. Yet although the flock of pigeons was massive, Lois couldn’t see anything special about it.
After several minutes of increasingly frustrated searching, Lois froze as she stared at a picture identical to the one she had been looking at on You-tube.
She remembered where she had seen the pigeon before.
It had been on the one trip her parents had taken them on to the Smithsonian. Lucy had been bored, even though Lois had been interested in her father’s explanations of all the stuffed animals on display.
There had been a certain morbid curiosity, staring at all the stuffed dead animals with their staring glass eyes.
Her father had spoken at length at how lucky they were to see this one display, before it was returned to the archives.
It was a bird, of a species that had once covered the world, with single flocks that were so huge that they would take days to pass by overhead. One flock covered eight hundred and fifty square miles and over a hundred and thirty million birds.
They’d been slaughtered by the thousands and by the millions and used as cheap meat by the poor.
She’d stared at the bird for a long time. According to her father, it had been the last of its kind and with its death had come the extinction of its entire species. She’d felt sad at the thought of just how alone that bird must have been, trapped in a cage to the very end of its life.
No being should have to be that alone.
They’d named the bird Martha, and she was the last of the passenger pigeons. She’d died in 1914.
She’d looked exactly like the birds on the garbage scow.
**************
“We’ll have to get him back on his meds as quickly as we can,” she said.
Clark could tell that this was a woman who was used to being in command. Her house had been recently redecorated, and he could see familiar African masks that reminded him of his time in Nigeria.
“I really can’t stay,” he said. “There is something important that I have to do.”
The woman glanced at her brother, who was staring in fascination at one of the masks. “You’ve already done more than most people would have done. Most people see someone like my brother on the streets, and they look the other way.”
Clark shrugged uncomfortably. “He helped me out when he didn’t have any reason to. I couldn’t just leave him where he was.”
“He knows what it’s like to need help,” she said. “It’s when times get tough that you know who your friends are.”
“I wish there was more I could do,” Clark said. Cyrus was now settling onto a newish looking leather couch and his breathing was already slowing.
“He’s a good man, when he isn’t sick,” she said. “We’ll get through this, one way or the other. Sometimes you just have to have a little faith.”
Clark nodded.
The tension on Cyrus’s face had drained away and his breathing was deep and even. He was finally home.
The tall woman sniffed and stepped over to the couch. She pulled an afghan from the chair beside it and settled it over him.
It reminded Clark uncomfortably of his own mother, and for a moment he found a lump in his throat.
He hated being reminded just how alone he was in the universe. He’d been isolated, first by what he was, and then by his parents’ deaths. He’d been forced to hide himself from everyone, which had left him even more alone. Mostly he’d been able to avoid thinking about it with work and sometimes with Lana.
It was funny how he’d barely thought of Lana since he’d come to this universe.
Of course, in this universe he was more alone than he had ever been, separated from everyone he’d ever known.
The only time he hadn’t felt that had been when he was with Lois Lane. Somehow when he was with her, he didn’t have time to think about anything else. Whether she was spraying him with mud or pepper or simply demanding his help, she seemed to eclipse everything else around her.
He’d spent too much time with all of this. He needed to get back to Washington and find Lois. He needed to get his people and sometimes find a way to get them all back home.
He’d gambled a lot on the idea that Lois was going to be all right, he could only hope that he was able to find her again.
The one thing he wasn’t going to think about was why being around her felt like being home.
**************
Mavis closed the door, and switched off her porch lights. She sighed and turned to head back into her living room.
She hesitated as she realized that she hadn’t even gotten the man’s name. He’d gone out of his way to help her brother, and she’d just let him walk away. With no lights on the street other than her own porch lights, he’d have a hard time finding his way back to his vehicle.
Cyrus had called the man an angel. Knowing her brother, he meant it literally. It was at least a refreshing change from the devils which were his more usual hallucinations. Perhaps this time he’d do better at staying on the medications. Her son had mentioned some possible new medicines that might work better.
She opened the door and switched on her lights, ready to call out to the man who had helped her brother. When Cyrus was better, he’d want to know the man’s name. Stepping onto the front porch, she peered out into the darkness.
The man was now standing on her sidewalk looking up at down the darkened street. His eyes met hers, and he smiled.
A moment later he was rising into the air.
As Mavis stared, he disappeared into the heavens.
Slowly she stepped back into her house and closed the door.
