Lessons: 4/5 (probably)
by Nan Smith
Previously:
"Like I was saying, Chief," Jimmy said quickly, looking at his editor, "I don't see how it could possibly have been part of Nightfall. It wouldn't be able to get here ahead of the other pieces, but what if Superman made it back? We've got to go look!"
Perry appeared to be thinking, and then he got slowly to his feet. "It can't hurt," he said. "I'll get my coat. Where was this place, Lois?"
"It was over near the western border of Suicide Slum," Lois told him. "I'm not sure of the exact street but there's a billboard there that advertises the Metro Liner. Whatever came down there crashed right through the sign." She hesitated. "If you find -- well, anything, let me know right away, would you? If Superman came back there's still a chance." She resolutely did not look at Clark.
"You'll be the first to know," Perry said. Lois thought he looked grim. "I just hope it really was him."
"Me too," Jimmy said. "I don't want to rely on a rocket."
"I don't think anyone does," Perry said. "Including EPRAD." He pushed open the door. "Let's go, Jimmy."
**********
Part 4:
"Everything I've read about this guy --" Clark waved generally at his computer, "he's unreal! He says he isn't from Earth, and has all these powers --" He looked at Lois. "Are you sure of all this?"
She nodded. "Yeah, I am. I've flown with him, remember. Superman is pretty amazing. He went to stop Nightfall and something happened to him. I just hope he's all right." She gave her partner a worried look.
"You sound like you care a lot about him," Clark said.
"Everybody cares about Superman," Lois told him. She frowned thoughtfully at him. "He's a friend of yours, too. Did anything you read bring anything back?"
He grimaced faintly. "Not yet."
"If the rocket doesn't succeed," Lois said, "he's all we've got left. Everything we know could be destroyed. I hope Jimmy and Perry come up with something. If everyone is looking for him, maybe we'll have a chance of finding him."
He nodded, obviously not connecting what she was trying to say.
"You and he are good friends," Lois repeated, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
Clark frowned, obviously making a heroic effort to recall. "I don't remember."
Lois sighed internally and tabled the subject for the moment. Perhaps she could try another angle. "I tried to contact your parents last night but the lines were jammed. I tried again a little while ago, but no luck. If you could talk to them, maybe they could help. They're good people, and they love you."
"Where do they live?" Clark questioned. "Maybe we could go to their place."
"I'm afraid not. They live on a farm in Kansas. You were raised a farm kid."
"I was?"
"Uh huh. Your hometown is called Smallville. I was there, once. It's a nice little place. We went during the Corn Festival. You and I square danced. And we stopped a bunch of crazy government agents from trying to attack Superman with some kind of rock that the leader thought would hurt him."
"A rock?" Clark said, mildly curious. "How could a rock hurt a guy as powerful as this Superman is supposed to be?"
"I don't know," Lois said, wondering seriously about it for the first time. "I never saw it, if it ever really existed. The head bad guy was named Jason Trask. He was going to kill both of us, but you managed to break out of the back of the van where they'd tied you up and tackled him."
"I did?"
"Uh huh. He tried to shoot you in the back and the Sheriff -- Rachel Harris -- had to shoot him to save your life. Do you remember her?"
Clark shook his head. "No."
"I think she had a crush on you," Lois said, watching him closely. "She's a very pretty girl."
"I don't remember," Clark said, sounding a little frustrated. "To have the end of the world coming and not know what I've missed --"
"You've traveled the world," Lois said. "You've been just about everywhere. You speak several languages -- but eventually you decided to settle down here in Metropolis and go to work for the Planet. You're one of Perry's best reporters -- after me, of course." She smiled at him.
"Can you tell me how I joined the Planet?" he asked. "You said something about a knob-tailed gecko?"
"Oh, that," Lois said. "That was an article you wrote for the Borneo Gazette. It was the article about the old theater that got you the spot." She got to her feet. "Come on. Let's take a walk and I'll tell you all about it."
**********
Outside, the traditional landscape of Metropolis in winter was very much evident. The sky was gray, with clouds beginning to creep across the sun. People passed by them, huddled in coats and hats against the damp, cold wind that gusted down the streets, but one thing was different. Here and there, groups of people stood about, looking up at the sky. Lois glanced up once, almost irresistibly drawn to it before she shook herself sharply. That was silly, she knew. The chunk of Nightfall was out there somewhere, but it was still much too far away to be seen. By the time it could be seen by the naked eye, no one was going to be looking. They would all be huddling in shelters somewhere, hoping to survive the impact.
She and Clark walked down the sidewalk, side by side. Lois pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat against the chill, noting that Clark's coat wasn't even buttoned, and her partner seemed oblivious to the temperature. What would it be like, she wondered, to be Superman, and be impervious to the daily discomforts that afflicted the human race? Had Clark ever known, or had he always had the powers that Superman had demonstrated when he arrived in Metropolis?
"Don't you have family?" Clark asked her suddenly.
Her thoughts had been so far away that his voice nearly made her jump. "Huh?"
"Family," Clark repeated. "I mean, don't you have a mother and father, maybe brothers and sisters?"
"Kind of," Lois said. "My parents are divorced. My sister is going to school all the way across the country. I tried to get hold of them, but the lines are still jammed. I'll try again -- later, I guess. My family isn't close."
"Why?" He was looking at her in some surprise. "I thought family was -- well, family."
"Not my family," Lois said. "I ran as far from my family as I could. My mother and dad fought constantly while they were together. I just about single-handedly raised my sister after they broke up. Daddy never came around and Mother was always --" She broke off.
"Always what?" Clark asked.
Lois didn't answer for a moment, and then she shrugged. "What does it matter? My mother is an alcoholic. After my dad left, she spent most of the time drunk. She dried out a few years ago, except for a couple of times when she backslid. At least if Nightfall hits, there won't be much booze around for her to fall back on."
"I shouldn't have asked," Clark said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Lois said. "It doesn't matter, anymore. I just didn't want to be like them. I guess that's why I'm such a workaholic. I wanted to be successful, and prove to my dad --" She stopped suddenly.
Clark didn't ask what she was going to say this time. "But you are successful," he said slowly. "It's not your fault that your mom and dad had problems."
"I guess not," she said. "You know how kids are, though -- or maybe you don't, now. Kids blame themselves for all kinds of things that they shouldn't. For a long time, I thought I was the problem."
"How could you have been?" he asked. "People don't break up over their kids. Not usually, anyway."
Lois shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. Put like that, it doesn't really make much sense, does it?"
"Not really," he said.
"Out of the mouths of --" She didn't complete the sentence. Why the heck was she telling Clark all this stuff, anyway? It wasn't any of his business, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. Maybe, since he couldn't remember anything about himself, it made him safe in a way. That didn't make much sense either, of course, but for some reason she really didn't seem to care anymore.
"It doesn't matter what your parents were," Clark said. "You don't need to prove anything to anybody. I saw a bunch of your articles while I was reading about Superman. You're a great reporter."
She patted his arm. "Thanks."
"No, I mean it," Clark said. "If I were Superman, I'd be flattered and proud that someone like you thought so much of me."
He probably wasn't aware of the faintly wistful tone in his voice. Lois didn't answer, but her mind was busy. It was obvious, when he wasn't on his guard, that Clark thought a great deal of her. A lot more than he ever let on in day to day life. "I suppose a lot of people do," she said. "Superman is worth it. He gives people something to build some hope around."
"Yeah, I guess someone like that would," Clark said.
"If the rocket fails," Lois said, "a lot of people are going to die if Superman doesn't show up. Can you imagine what it will do to the planet? The destruction will be beyond anything we can imagine, I suspect. We're talking about the end of civilization."
"They must think it's going to work," Clark said, sounding, Lois thought, a little worried. "Don't they program satellites to orbit the Moon and Mars and stuff all the time?"
"Yes," Lois said. "But they have accidents, too. They lose satellites that malfunction because of things they didn't expect. Sometimes someone goofs up on the programming. This time everyone on Earth is depending on them. They have to try, but what if someone makes a mistake because of all the pressure? It's happened before."
Clark didn't answer. Lois bit her lip. What was she going to do? If she told Clark that he was Superman, would it help him regain his memory, or would it scare him so much that he wouldn't listen to her, maybe make him sink back into deeper denial? She had to keep trying, she knew. If he hadn't recalled his identity by tomorrow, before the asteroid was supposed to hit, she would have to tell him and hope that Superman's sense of responsibility would force him to remember, but it wasn't a sure thing, by any means. In the meantime, she had to keep trying to find some way to recall his buried memories. What would be likely to get through to him? What mattered to him more than his fear of what had nearly happened to him?
The little that she remembered from the psychology class that she had been required to take in college wasn't a lot of help, but now she dredged her memory for any scraps of information. What had her professor said? There were supposed to be three parts of the psyche, according to Freud: the id, the ego, and the superego. She was probably oversimplifying, but, if she remembered correctly, the ego was the thinking part, the id was the emotions, the wants and needs, and the superego was supposed to be the conscience. She'd always suspected that Freud had been making a lot of things up as he went along but, if he was even partly right, it meant that the part of Clark's mind -- assuming that a Kryptonian's mind was anything like a human's -- that was suppressing his memory was the emotional part, the part that felt rather than the part that thought. So appealing to his rational mind wasn't going to help a lot. Somehow, she had to appeal to his emotions, in such a way that it was more important for his memories to return than it was to suppress his memory of Superman. But how was she supposed to do that?
A check of her watch told her that it was near to quitting time. Where had the time gone? Looking around at the people simply standing in place, looking up at the sky, as if there were the slightest chance of seeing the destruction that was rushing toward them, made her shake her head. This was getting no one anywhere. "Let's go back to the office," she said. "Maybe Jimmy and Perry are back. Besides, I need to close up my desk for the night."
Obediently, Clark followed her as they turned back toward the Daily Planet.
**********
The sun was dropping behind the buildings to the west as they left the Daily Planet an hour later.
"Where are we going?" Clark asked.
"My place," Lois said. "I don't have a car, and I don't see any taxis, so we're going to have to walk. It isn't that far, if we cut through the park."
Clark looked dubiously around at the darkening city. The streetlights had not yet come on and the clouds that had been gathering since about two o'clock definitely obscured what was left of the waning sunlight. Lois struck out down the sidewalk with a determined stride.
"Come on. The quicker we get to my place, the better off we'll be."
Clark kept up with her easily, and she noted again that his coat wasn't buttoned up. Clark obviously didn't feel the bite of the wind that gusted intermittently down the streets. He would certainly survive the impact of the asteroid, but how would he feel if all his friends and his parents ended up dead? Not good, Lois was sure, but apparently that wasn't getting through to the part of his mind that was blocking his memories. What, she wondered, striding vigorously along, would get through to it? If only Jonathan and Martha Kent were available, it might make a difference, but trying to get hold of them had so far proven futile. The traffic jam on the phone lines had been slowly clearing, but a call to Kansas apparently wasn't in the cards.
It was growing darker by the minute, as the sun sank farther behind the buildings, and the streetlights began to glimmer. Lois kept up a brisk walk against the chill. The quicker they got back to her apartment, the quicker she could warm up. So far, the criminal element of Metropolis hadn't made itself particularly evident during the crisis, but she had no doubts that some of Metropolis's less upstanding citizens were doing their best to take advantage of the situation. She had no wish to be the target of a mugger.
Three blocks down, they approached Centennial Park and Lois unhesitatingly took her favorite shortcut. One of the lights along the walk was out, she noted. The bulb had been smashed, probably by some punk with a rock who had nothing better to do, but she knew her way perfectly even in the dusk. Besides, there were lights farther along the path, placed there some years ago as a crime-prevention measure.
Sure enough, a moment later the next light came into view, glowing warm and yellow against the backdrop of leafless trees. Here and there, big evergreens stood out, tall and black against the sky, tossing now in the growing breeze. Lois hurried along, Clark keeping up with her easily.
Another light was out some distance ahead. Lois kept to the center of the path, and the unbidden thought crossed her mind that the park might not be such a good place to be, tonight. The police were patrolling the streets in greater numbers because of the possibility of rioting, although there hadn't been much trouble so far, at least in Metropolis. That, however, could change if people thought that there was no way to stop Nightfall. And the increased police presence on the streets meant that there were fewer in places like the park.
Clark moved up beside her and in the dimness his large presence was unexpectedly reassuring. They moved ahead, through the dark patch, and Lois felt the knot in her middle relax as they approached the next light. Clark glanced back at the area they had just left. "There's somebody back there," he said.
If one's heart could really climb into one's throat, Lois would probably have choked on hers. She speeded up her walk, one hand on Clark's elbow. Her partner kept pace with her, but she noticed him glancing over his shoulder more frequently.
"Is someone still there?" she asked.
"There's a couple of guys back there," Clark said. "I think they're following us."
Lois increased her speed, and behind them the sound of running footsteps became audible. They were literally within sight of the street when two figures appeared suddenly, one on either side of the walkway, and she saw the glint of a streetlight off of metal.
Lois came to a stop. Clark stopped beside her and for a short moment she and Clark looked at the two men who faced them.
The larger of the two held the knife. He was taller than Clark, and most of his face was concealed by a ragged muffler. A pair of shaggy eyebrows and a prominent forehead gave Lois the entirely unexpected vision of Lurch. The smaller man hung back, but she could see some kind of club gripped in his hands.
"Hand over the purse, lady," the taller man said, his voice distorted by the cloth.
Lois took a step back. A powerful hand gripped her wrist, pulling her farther back, and Clark stepped in front of her. "Leave the lady alone," he said.
The smaller man laughed. "How about you hand over your wallet?" he suggested. He moved to the left, apparently intending to come at them from the side. Lois bent her knees, balancing on the balls of her feet.
The bigger man stepped lightly forward, the knife darting out in a slash at Clark's midsection. Lois couldn't see what he did, as the smaller man stepped in, swinging his club at Clark's head.
The club bounced. Literally. And Clark ignored it completely as he stepped in to parry the knife thrust. There was a brief scuffle between Clark and the man with the knife. Lois moved, taking advantage of the smaller man's surprise, and seized the club with both hands. She drove her heel downward into his instep and twisted the club, and abruptly found herself in possession of the weapon.
And suddenly, the two assailants were fleeing back into the dimness of the park, leaving Clark and Lois in possession of the field. Lois dropped the club, and looked quickly at Clark. He had turned to look at her, and for a moment they stared at each other.
"I think," Lois said, after a long second, "that I'm not taking any more shortcuts for a while."
"Yeah," Clark said. "Are you okay?"
"Fine. Let's get out of here."
"Good idea," Clark said.
The street was literally only about twenty feet away. They emerged out onto the sidewalk, and Lois set a quick pace toward her apartment, but as she hurried along, her mind was busy.
Clark hadn't known that he couldn't be hurt. He could have turned and run, but he hadn't. That erased any questions she might have been harboring about his courage. He had taken on a man with a knife and another with a club for her. That he had been protecting her she didn't doubt for an instant.
The realization left her somewhat at a loss. Clark had proven, in that short, violent encounter, something that she hadn't really internalized. He cared about her enough to risk his life for her. He had faced down a man with a knife to defend her.
Superman was in there, somewhere, The right sort of motivation could probably bring him out. And it was beginning to dawn on her what that motivation might be.
**********
tbc
