The Death and Life of Superman (53 page)

Lois switched off the TV and sat staring at the blank screen for several minutes, trying to make sense of what she’d just seen. Then she picked up the phone and called Smallville.

“Hello, Martha? Hi, it’s Lois—how are you? How’s Jonathan? Oh, good. I’m sure he’s glad to be home.” Lois hesitated for a moment. “Martha, I have to talk with someone about this. I hope you don’t mind my asking, but were you watching GBS’s report on the young Superman?”

In Smallville, Martha answered softly, her voice almost a whisper. “Oh, heavens no, Lois. I’ve had my fill of television for a while! And all those Supermen . . . they stir Jonathan up a mite, and the doctor says that he needs to relax. Thankfully, he’s upstairs asleep right now.”

“Well, believe me, Martha, I know how Jonathan feels. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or scream—sometimes I want to do all three at once. This young Superman, for example—well, I had a—weird encounter with him just today at the
Planet.
He’s arrogant and more than a little careless—he took offense at something a photographer said and turned the man upside down—but he pulled a very strange stunt this morning.” Lois shivered slightly as she recalled how the boy looked with glasses. “And this evening, while taking on some gangsters, his costume hardly took a scratch, but his jacket got shredded. It was just like the way Superman’s capes always used to take such a beating.

“So I started thinking, well . . .” Lois tugged absently at her hair. “Martha, what was Clark like when he was in his midteens? What if he had the powers of a Superman? Maybe he would have acted like this kid.”

Martha frowned into the phone as if Lois could see her. “Now you know that no boy of ours would ever act the way you say that youngster does, powers or no powers.”

“I guess that’s the problem, Martha. You didn’t raise this boy. Do you know what a clone is?”

Alone over the city, Superboy swooped past the downtown skyscrapers once more and settled on the roof of an old brownstone. He sauntered casually close to the edge, rested one foot on a cornice, and leaned against his knee, looking out over Metropolis with immense contentment. The city air was too dirty and hazy for him to see many stars, but the full moon beamed down at him, and he smiled.
This is a totally perfect end to a totally perfect day.
He clapped his hands together, as if giving himself a high five. “Metropolis has gotta feel safer already, knowing that Superman’s back on the job.”

A voice suddenly rang out behind him. “Yes, you did okay out there, son.”

Superboy whirled around, clenching his fists as he turned, ready for anything. There, standing straight and tall before him, was a blue and yellow clad figure that he dimly recognized from all the information that had been fed him while he was still in the tube. “Guardian?! Hey, don’t tell me you’re gonna try to drag me back to the Project!”

“No. Not now, at any rate. There’ve been some big shake-ups at Cadmus. Your little stunt of going public with a big television network has finally caused certain people in Washington to ask some serious questions. For the time being, at least, you’re on your own.”

“Whoa! You serious?” The young man peered closely at the Guardian, then shrugged. “Stupid question. Of course you’re serious. Well, damn. Cool! Hey, speaking about serious, check out the new jacket!” Superboy turned around, flashing the broad gold S-shield across the back of the jacket. “WGBS is making these up by the truckload—they’re gonna make sure I’m always lookin’ fine!”

The Guardian held back a sigh. “That’s nice, son, but remember that things aren’t always as they seem. And you won’t always have as easy a time as you did today.”

“Hey, don’t worry about me, man. I am
primed.
No way is anything gonna get past me!” He turned around to find himself alone on the rooftop. “Guardian? Hey, Guardian?!”

Superboy turned a complete circle. He stared hard into the shadows, but the big man was nowhere in sight. “Well—
duh
!” The young hero stood scratching his head. “Guess it wouldn’t hurt to be a little more alert, at that.” With a shrug of his shoulders, he flew off into the night.

In a windowless “safe room” within a building secretly maintained by LexCorp through a dummy corporation, Carl Packard sat squirming in a straight-backed chair, sweating as if the room’s one shaded lamp were a bank of floodlights.

Lex Luthor paced back and forth, taking care to stay partly in the shadows. It was an outrageously theatrical measure, but Luthor had always found it effective, and he fully intended to make his visitor as uncomfortable as possible.

Luthor paused, slowly turned, and tapped his foot against the tiled floor. “I did think,
Dr.
Packard, that we had an agreement. As my mole, you were supposed to keep us informed of any untoward actions on the part of the Cadmus Project.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen, Mr. Luthor. Believe me!” Packard risked a glance in Luthor’s direction, but he couldn’t tell if the industrialist was looking directly at him or not. “Westfield and the other directors felt the world needed a Superman—”

“One at their beck and call, of course.”

“What? Oh, lord, no. There was never any of that; at least, not on the part of the directors. With Westfield himself . . . well, that’s a good question. He does tend to follow his own agendas.” Packard shook his head. “At any rate, after the Project lost possession of Superman’s body, I was instructed to rush Experiment Thirteen into production . . . to create a new Superman.”

Luthor suddenly leaned into the light, coming nearly nose to nose with the geneticist. “And you didn’t consider such an experiment at all ‘untoward’?!”

“Well . . .” Packard nervously loosened his tie. “I suppose it could be seen as unusual. But I was going to tell you! I was preparing a paper all about the experiment and would have slipped it to Dr. Happersen long before Thirteen was to be decanted. Honestly!” He slumped back into his chair. “He wasn’t ready yet.”

“Who wasn’t ready, Packard?”

“Experiment Thirteen . . . the young Superman. You don’t think we intended to release a
teenager
with those powers, did you? We weren’t
total
fools!” Packard’s voice rose in anger, his professional pride wounded. “After all, in trying to duplicate Kryptonian DNA, we were working in uncharted territory. There were certain safeguards we’d planned to implant in the subject, just in case anything went wrong later on. But those infernal Newsboy clones liberated him before the safeguards were in place, before he was even fully grown! He was at least a week from maturity.”

“I see.” Luthor faded back into the shadows. “And what, besides a collective gnashing of teeth, does Cadmus intend to do about this?”

“Nothing! There is nothing we can do about it now! That young upstart has already become a media darling! If he disappeared now, GBS would shine a light under every possible rock! Cadmus can’t afford that—Washington is reviewing our entire operation as it is. If only that stupid kid hadn’t told everyone that he was a clone.” Packard rubbed his neck. “In retrospect, it was perhaps a mistake to include MTV as part of his information feed.”

Luthor loomed over Packard, noting with scant satisfaction that the man’s sweating had become a virtual Niagara. “Let’s talk a little more about his creation. From the earlier information you supplied Dr. Happersen, I’d gotten the impression that you
couldn’t
clone Superman.”

Packard dragged his hands through his hair. “Well, yes and no. Superman’s body was intact—we couldn’t isolate a tissue culture. And we got only a partial reading of his DNA. But from that, we were able to simulate certain properties of his DNA and implant them in a tissue sample obtained from another donor.”

Luthor stroked his beard. “So, this young clone’s powers probably do
not
exactly duplicate those of Superman.”

“Yes . . . yes, that’s quite correct, sir. He may have weaknesses and shortcomings of which we—and he himself—are unaware.”

Luthor leaned in close again, showing Packard his teeth. “Tell me more, Packard. Tell me everything you know.”

Deep within the darkened chambers of the main branch of the Metropolis Mercantile Bank, Gerald Fine merrily went about his business. His business was cracking safes.

Tonight, Fine softly hummed an old Beatles tune as he attacked the door of the bank’s largest vault with a high-speed drill. He finished drilling through the shiny chromium steel along one side of the lock mechanism, then backed the bit out, reset it, and started on the other side. He chuckled to himself as he went about his work.

The bank had been established in 1875, and most of their security system didn’t seem to be much newer. In casing the building, Fine had found no ultrasonic motion detectors, no heat sensors, and no electric eyes.
And this is the main branch!
He clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth.
You’d think such a well-heeled place would’ve sprung for a better system. That alarm box of theirs was so old, I’ll bet it was installed during the Truman administration! I was bypassing circuits like that before my voice changed!

Fine finished his drilling and then, cracking his fingers, reached in through the hole he’d made and began manipulating the guts of the lock. There was a series of soft clicks as tumblers fell into place.
They might as well have left this door unlocked.
Fine smiled and eased open the door.
Well, time to make that big withdrawal.

Suddenly a black gloved hand shot out of the shadows, grabbing Fine by the throat. “Sorry. Business hours are nine to four.”

The shocked safecracker struck at the wrist of the hand that held him, but he could not break the grip. Fine looked up into a strong, powerful jaw and mouth; the glow of his flashlight glimmered off the smoked amber of the visor that wrapped about his captor’s eyes.

The Superman reached out with his free hand and crushed out the offending light. He stepped away from the vault, carrying his squirming captive at arm’s length.

“N-no . . . n-not you!” The burglar’s voice was a pinched gasp. “You’re the one they were talking about on the news! The one who—who killed the ski mask murderer!”

The Superman smiled grimly. “I’ve dealt with a number of transgressors. What I did to them was meant as a warning. Too bad you didn’t pay better attention; now I’ll have to make an example of you as well!”

“H-h-hey, wait a second! I’m not like that!” Fine clutched at the Superman’s wrist, thinking fast and talking faster. “I mean, the creep who attacked that woman—sure, he
deserved
to die! B-but I’m just a burglar. I’m nonviolent. I don’t even
carry
a gun. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life! Y-you wouldn’t kill a guy just for cracking a safe, would you?”

The Superman dropped the gasping safecracker to the floor. “There are many forms of violence. You may not have caused physical harm, but your crimes have hurt many people.”

Fine lay huddled on the floor. “Please don’t kill me.”

“You’re not worth killing. But I will make certain that you don’t try this again.” The Superman reached down and grabbed the safecracker by his hands.

The man’s screams raised a most effective alarm.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, Ms. Lane.” Dr. Daniel Blumkin peered over the X-rays for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Every bone from this man’s fingertips to his elbows has been broken—almost crushed in some cases. If it had been any worse, we’d have had to amputate. As it is, he’ll be in rehab for months before he’s even able to hold a cup again.”

Lois glanced from the X-rays back over her shoulder at the bed where Gerald Fine lay with his arms up in traction and encased in plaster. “And he claims that Superman did this to him?”

“He’s said little else, and I could almost believe him. His arms bore deep bruises. They formed handprints, Ms. Lane.”

She shuddered at the thought. “Doctor, at least four superpowered men have recently been playing Superman. It might be any one of them. Could I ask your patient some questions?”

“You could try, Ms. Lane, but we’ve had to give him a lot of morphine for the pain.” Blumkin gathered the X-rays into a folder and paused at the door. “Just keep it short, okay? He needs to rest.”

Lois nodded, then knelt down beside the groggy safecracker. “Mr. Fine, can you hear me? This Superman who attacked you . . . what did he look like? Was there anything unusual about him?”

Fine cocked his head toward the reporter. His lips moved slowly, as if it were an effort to form the words. “Suh-sunglasses. He wore sunglasses. Big yellow ones . . . like a visor.”

“Oh, dear God.” She drew back from the bed.
“That
one.”

Fine nodded off and Lois left the room, wandering aimlessly down the hospital corridors.
I just don’t know what to think now. Each of the “Supermen” I’ve run into so far has seemed a little like Clark . . . but all I know for certain is that his body’s missing again. And from what my sources say, this time the Cadmus Project isn’t to blame. Maybe I should call Lana Lang. I need to talk to someone who will understand!

Lois turned a corner into a lounge area and nearly ran into Cat Grant.