Last Son of Krypton (2 page)

"Look here. Look at this," he would tell friends as he pulled it from his billfold. "I'm not what you think I am. I'm a famous fiddler."

Maybe if he had practiced more as a little boy that is what he would be doing for a living today. Maybe he would be happier. Then again, his belly would probably not be as full. He certainly could not take issue with the life the Fates had handed him. There were those he had loved in his way, and his accomplishments appeared considerable enough. If only people wouldn't treat him as if he were brittle as an eggshell. For example, what he wanted now most in the world—even more than his pipe—was an ice cream cone. As his bow caressed the strings he began formulating fanciful plans for sneaking out to the ice cream parlor before the nurse knew he was gone.

"
Herr Doktor,
" the nurse called, "your mail is here."
 

"Is there anything important?" he asked as she breezed into the bedroom.

"The Dean of Faculty mentioned yesterday that this one would come. It's a request that you speak at the freshman banquet next month. It's only a formality that he asked you. He doesn't expect you to accept."

"Freshman banquet? You mean the first day of the school year?"

"Yes, they have one every year."

"I have not met a freshman in years. I believe I would like to go."

"
Doktor,
it would certainly be an unnecessary strain."
 

"Strain shmain. What else is there?"

"Something from Mr. Ben-Gurion. Probably a thank-you note. All the rest look to be from children. I'll open them and send your pictures to the ones with a return address."

"Won't you leave them here? I think I would like to read some mail from children today."

She did, and the old man flipped a tuft of furry white hair from his face with the bow and resumed playing. For a moment he thought there was a slight buzz in his superb violin. Unthinkable. But as the hum got louder he realized it was coming not from the instrument at all, but from the window behind him. He turned to see what it was, and sitting on the open window sill was the oddest-looking mechanical device he had seen all day. Beyond the window, rolling by on Mercer Street, was a collection of teenagers in a 1939 DeSoto convertible. He decided the device was the second-oddest machine he had seen all day. He changed his mind again when the thing addressed him.

"I have sought out, through this device, the greatest mind on this planet to tell you
that an event will take place in a short period of time which will concern you as well as the rest of the world," were the words he heard.
 

There was an odd intonation of the words. They seemed to run all together, and yet he heard them with exquisite clearness. As he approached the machine, the words became neither louder nor softer. They were constant. Very interesting, he thought, as he considered what this visitor might be. Then he realized that he could not tell whether the machine was speaking German or English. He drew some conclusions.

"Pardon my simplicity," the old man said, "but have I the honor of addressing God?"

The machine resumed its announcements as if in answer. "My name is Jor-El and I am speaking to you through the use of a device which relays spoken information directly into the mind of the individual it contacts. My recording is incorporated into a navigational device whose purpose is to lead my son Kal-El to a planet inhabited by intelligent creatures whose thought patterns roughly correspond with those of the humanoids of my planet, Krypton. By the time you receive this message my world will have been long destroyed by natural forces. Since the cataclysm, my infant son has been traveling through space at a speed close to that of light, and the time has passed for him slowly enough so that he is just beginning to feel the effects of a day without food. At this moment he is slowing down in preparation for entering your field of atmosphere."

This was too fantastic. The doctor's mind raced over possible methods for one of his students to have set up this prank. He put his hands tightly over his ears and still heard the words perfectly clearly. He played his violin and the sounds of the music seemed on another level altogether. What he was "hearing" from this machine was not sound. Could it really have been a telepathic recording?

"Just as the navigational device was drawn to a world of intelligent beings, it was drawn to you, the most highly developed intellect on your world. The purpose for this is to implore you to take in my son Kal-El as your own and see that he is raised to proper manhood."

The possibilities of this being a hoax were quickly being eliminated in the old man's mind. He was listening intently.

"My son is of a highly developed humanoid species. Legends of the creation of our world imply that we are an offshoot of another world somewhere, and that at some time many worlds were seeded with humanoids. This is why I hold out hope that you yourself may be one. It would matter little, however, if you were not, as long as my son were exposed to the proper intellectual stimulation during his upbringing. I will attempt to pinpoint the location of Krypton in relation to the course my son's small rocket traveled and in that way enable you to determine where and when he is likely to touch down on your world...."

And the old man scurried to his desk and notepaper, almost excited. He would get past the nurse today, but not to buy an ice cream cone.

H
e was not a small man, though he looked slight and shambling as he hunched in his seat on the bus. But now he was standing, a little stooped, next to the driver with one hand grasping an airline bag and the pole to keep steady as the other hand groped through the pockets of his baggy pants for change.
 

"Thirty cents," the driver said.

"Just a moment. Right here."

The old man's German accent touched off the driver's memory of the loss of a brother in the Second World War not long ago, but the wrinkled man smiled through his mustache as he maneuvered a handful of coins toward the tips of his fingers. There was something familiar about that smile.

"Here we are," and the old man dropped a quarter and a dime into the driver's palm, "thirty cents."

The driver didn't move to make change, since the old man seemed not to notice it was due him. The guy might have a nice smile, but a nickel was a nickel, after all. The driver might have wondered why he tugged his woollen cap down over his ears on a day as warm as this, but he wasn't that observant.

"Excuse me, officer." The old man stopped a policeman in the charming rural village. "Do you know of a nice hotel maybe?"

"Yes, sir, at that corner you make a right for a block and you'll see the Smallville Hotel sitting there big as life. Staying in town long?"

"No, just a day or so. Thank you, officer."

"Visiting friends? Relatives?"

"Yes. Friends. Thank you very much."

"I'll walk you there, it's just down the block. I'm Captain Parker. George Parker, Mr.—"

"Eisner. Umm, Calvin Eisner. Lovely day, no?"

"Certainly is. Rained yesterday, though. Where are you from, Mr. Eisner?"

"The east. New Jersey. Tell me, is there a taxi company in Smallville?"

"Sure is. You can call them from the hotel. Free direct line. What do you do in Jersey?"

"I teach. I am a teacher."

"A teacher. I love kids. I thought of being a teacher. Couldn't afford college, though. Who you visiting in town, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Who? Umm, whoever it is that owns that ice cream parlor over there. I haven't had a good ice cream cone in weeks. Would you join me in an ice cream cone, Captain Parker?"

"Seems like a long time to go without ice cream. You been out of the country?"

The old man wondered whether the policeman was simply being friendly or whether he recognized him. The tight woollen cap hid the distinctive flurry of white hair, and the fact of being in a totally unlikely place, he thought, served to complete the disguise. It did not occur to him that with four years of the kind of paranoia that war brings about, it might be hard for the officer not to be suspicious of someone with a thick German accent. It was necessary, though, to meet as many people as he could in the next several hours, so he treated Captain George Parker to an ice cream sundae and checked into the hotel as Calvin Eisner.

In the hotel room he pulled the cap off and jiggled his head until his scalp could breathe. He sat on the bed, cupped his hands under his chin, stared out the window, and thought of Krypton. There were images, not only words, in the message from Jor-El. Images of a giant world circling a great red star. This world was huge, and not a gaseous, amorphous mass like Jupiter, but heavy with rocks and minerals and incredible gravity. Yet there were people there, walking and talking a completely foreign language, and living day to day in much the same way as those on Earth lived. This child on the way from that world would be quite an individual, born on Krypton and raised on Earth. The mere physical effects the change in environment would have on him would certainly be considerable.

The youngster would be human, the old man decided, that was for sure. But he would be a tuned-up human, a Kryptonian.

The old man imagined what it would be like to have muscle tissues heaped one on top of the other and ground together as hard as the composition of matter whose sub-atomic particles had fallen in on each other—to have a sun that makes normal skin tan make your supersensitive skin indestructible—to have every sensory nerve ending stimulated all the time—to be constantly aware of your environment's every aspect, every quirk—to be able to hear for perhaps as great a distance as there was a sound-conducting atmosphere—to see for incalculable reaches of space—to be able to negate even the tug of gravity with your own finely tempered mass.

He imagined this, and then imagined growing from infancy in that state. Being able to develop your motor reflexes through a body designed to weather terrible wear before it reaches maturity. Growing inside that body in surroundings that nurture rather than hinder. He imagined to what ends such massive excesses in physical and freed-up mental capacity could be turned with the proper guidance. Imagined approaching the upper limit of human potential.

The old man was never one to shrink from the wondrous and terrible places his analytical mind could take him; that was the source of his greatness. These thoughts, though, gave even him pause. There was the possibility that today the Earth would become home to a superman.

The old man considered the immense possibilities for disaster that might accompany such an event. There were, of course, even greater possibilities for disaster that might accompany such an event. There were, of course, even greater possibilities for benefit, and it was only now beginning to dawn on him how squarely the responsibility for providing conditions favorable to those benefits fell upon his shoulders. There was work to be done.

It seemed amazing, as he walked down the street with dusk beginning to fall, that he had received his mechanical visitor only about nine or ten hours earlier. Now, how did one meet people in Smallville?

Unfortunately, Smallville was apparently closed. It was a dry town; that was a good sign. The only place of business he found open was a small general store on Main Street where he bought a local newspaper, a corncob pipe, and some tobacco, all of which he enjoyed immensely until he fell asleep in his hotel room.

Morning was brisk, and the heavy woollen cap that hid his thick hair was almost comfortable. The old man was beginning to wonder whether the inquisitive police captain, George Parker, was his man. He was friendly, probably honest, had a secure job and was waiting outside for the old man as he shambled out of the hotel.

"Top of the morning, Mr. Eisner."

"Captain. What a pleasant surprise."

"You mentioned you needed a taxi, and I thought since I was in the neighborhood I'd offer to take you where you're going."

"Well, how considerate."

"Where was it you were going, now?"

The man huddled under his heavy sweater and drew on his corncob pipe. He was starting to notice a hint of suspicion in the policeman's disarming manner. "Actually, I was planning on taking a walk this morning. I would like to see what your lovely town looks like. Can you join me?"

"Walking around Smallville is what I do for a living."

"You keep long hours, Captain Parker. How does your wife feel about that?"

"I'm a widower. The force is about all I've got right now. Hope to be police chief someday."

"Oh, I am sorry. I lost my wife, too, some years ago. A man should have someone who can take care of him."

"Suppose he should. But I do all right."

The child should have a mother. Parker would not do.

"Surely you have other interests, Captain. Hobbies?"

"Oh, not really. Used to go sailing a lot, though. Tell me, Mr. Eisner, just who was it you wanted to—"

"Sailing? I love sailing. You know, I have my own sailboat. I go out every week on a lake where I live. Did you know that at the time of Columbus people did not even know how to sail into the wind?"

"Do tell?"

"No one had ever thought of something as simple as tacking with a rudder. Can you imagine that? One would think perhaps daVinci or Archimedes or someone could have come up with the idea with not much effort, but no."

"Maybe we should go sailing, then, before you leave Smallville. How long did you say you would be staying?"

"Perhaps we could, Captain, that would be nice. Do you have a boat?"

"Not one of my own, but Sam Cutler here rents them by the day. The fella that owns the hardware store over there."

It was not simply a hardware store. There was hardware sold there, but also used heavy farm equipment, lumber, building supplies, and the finest collection of small sailboats the old man had seen in a long time. One in particular, a nine-foot Ketcham-Craft, drew his attention, and Parker wandered into the store after him when he insisted on measuring its dimensions.