Last Son of Krypton (26 page)

"Well, there is the Einstein document that's still not accounted for. I suppose I'll have to go back to Oric and look for it."

"Listen, standing around shooting the breeze with you is my second favorite pastime, but those technicians all over the studio floor are starting to come out of their trances and your reporter friend Kent is liable to turn up here any minute and I don't feel like granting any interviews just now. I'll take the elevator to the roof."

"I'll drop you." Superman swept the scientist off his feet and before he could catch a cold Luthor found himself standing in front of his arachnoid spacecraft. "What's first?" Superman asked.

"First?"

"You told me your second favorite pastime. What's first?"

"Having an unclean yak sit on my dinner."

"Johnny Carson, 1967."

"Right. I forgot about your total recall. Well, see you around, physical one."

"Can I give the Black Widow a boost?"

"No, I'll just roll it off the rooftop. It's got enough energy stored up to get back to the museum courtyard on its own. Bye."

"Sure you're not up to getting that document back from Oric? Philistine hands, you called them, didn't you?"

"I've had enough of that alien nonsense for a while. There's probably nothing much the old fiddler could've said I don't already know, anyhow. That stuff the Master thought about Einstein's finding a way to trisect an angle is a lot of hokum. I'll be going now."

"Have a good trip," Superman said and stood there as if expecting something.

Luthor thought of asking him if he's leaving or posing for the pigeons, but he didn't pursue it. Luthor opened the dome of the Black Widow's bubble, climbed in, and as he began closing the dome Superman hopped off the side of the building and vanished from sight.

The Black Widow needed only a few seconds to warm up. Luthor raised the sails and soaked solar energy before he pulled them back in, rolled the arms tightly against the bubble and shifted his own weight inside so that the mechanism rolled over and tumbled toward the edge of the roof and off. Less than halfway down the side of the 70-story building, while the sails were still unfurling, the vehicle stopped itself, started upward and instead of continuing to rise, froze motionless 350 feet over Governor's Plaza.

Luthor pressed buttons. Turned dials. Took readings. He threw open the dome of the bubble and leaped out, jet boots hissing his anger, as he flew at the huge red-and-blue-costumed figure holding the craft over his head like Atlas supporting the world.

"What the flying moonballs do you think you're doing?" Luthor said it in under half a second.

"Taking you in. Sorry old man."

"This is private property, Creepo. Get your filthy ,alien mitts off it. I'm a citizen now. I've got rights."

"Don't huff at me, Luthor. The document is stashed in its lead case in the pillow under your pilot seat. The same pillow I was lying on in my interrogation cell on Oric. I've known that since you landed. I also figured out on the way back to Earth that what the Master wanted from me was the knowledge of the written Kryptonese language, the language in which Einstein wrote that letter. I figured that out from the dreams I had when I was under interrogation. I also figured out that you knew that from the inquiries you made of your robot computer. I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt all this time, hoping you'd break down and give it back."

"So you've got me on a charge the pardon didn't cover. You have more smarts than I gave you credit for."

"I always did. That's where you've generally gone wrong."

"Well, I'm not going to go wrong this time—" Luthor poised a fisted right glove in Superman's direction, about to press the button on the second knuckle to unleash whatever fearsome weapon it controlled.

"Hold it, Luthor. Let's reason this out."

"Talk fast, hero."

"We're hovering here a few hundred feet over the city," Superman said no faster than he felt like talking. "You've got more crazy gadgets lining your outfit than a stage magician, and I don't know what most of them are. On top of that, I'm holding this flier of yours with both hands and I'll be careful of it because it will be necessary as evidence. On the other hand, I've still got my super powers and they've always been able to defeat you one-on-one before. On the basis of that alone, I'll be liberal and give you an even chance of winning out over me. Agreed?"

"So far."

"Now, add to that the fact that I'm pretty much still flushed with a victory over a would-be despot whose coming was apparently foretold eight billion years ago. I just knocked off the prediction of a guy who's had a perfect win-loss record since the beginning of recorded time. Unless you suppose I'm going to let a mere mortal with a funny costume that isn't even as good as mine ruin my day, I suggest you forget the bravado and give yourself up."

In the final analysis Lex Luthor was, after all, a creature of reason, not heroics. Superman had some hope that the brilliant scientist would wait at the Pocantico State Correctional Facility until his trial for the relatively minor crime of concealing the document. With the hero's testimony a case could probably be made that this was a crime of passion, the theft of an artifact from the life of an idol and not a cold-blooded criminal act.

But Luthor would not stand still waiting for any court proceedings. Within the familiar confines of prison, the familiar behavior patterns would find their way home.

The inoffensively handsome face would speak to a worldwide television audience for the second time in the past day. In a conference room in the Galaxy Building Clark Kent looked remarkably ill at ease as his colleagues from newspapers and broadcast news departments on three continents questioned him about the extraordinary broadcast of yesterday evening. Superman was unavailable, of course; Luthor was the last one to see him and the criminal had requested that he be placed in solitary confinement until the whole affair blew over. So Clark Kent was famous today.

"I simply happened to be caught at the culmination of a series of events," Clark shrugged. "It's in my contract, I can show you if you want to see it, it says I can take my six-week vacation in increments on as little as twenty-four hours' notice. I told my director Mr. Coyle that I would be gone for two weeks last Saturday shortly after the taping of an interview show I produce."

The reporter from Newark spoke up. "We're not giving you any third-degree, Clark, even though you're an outrageously overpaid anchorman and you were only actually gone a week and a half and you always seem to pick up on the biggest stories around for no apparent reason except bum luck. Just kidding."

"What we would like to do, actually," this was the
London Time
's Metropolis correspondent speaking now, "is find out precisely why it was that Superman chose you to preempt this alien potentate's planned hypnotic broadcast."
 

"I was the only one in the building at the time who could pass unnoticed through the news department here, and since I was just getting back from vacation, I wasn't around during the time Towbee the alien took control of the minds of everyone else here at Galaxy Broadcasting and everyone controlling TV and telephone and radio facilities all over the world. I just slipped through the alien's guard during his one weak moment. If Superman hadn't spotted me here before one of Towbee's agents did, the population of Earth might be mobilized on the way to conquer Alpha Centauri right now, and all the stars clearly visible to the naked eye at night might be physically disconnected from the gravity of the rest of the Galaxy. And Superman might be no more than a historical fact. My role in the whole thing was just that of Superman's tool to take the would-be conqueror off-guard."

Lois Lane stuck her head in the door of the conference room. "Clark, it's time for you to see Mr. Edge."

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, it seems I'm an important person just now."

Edge arranged for himself and Clark to tape a joint statement about the previous day's extraordinary events for showing on Galaxy Broadcasting affiliates only. Clark would say how scared he was, and Edge would read telegrams from the President and the Secretary-General of the United Nations thanking Superman, wherever he was, for being a hero. First Clark and Lois had to get past Steve Lombard to the elevators.

"Hey, Clarkie, we've got a bet going. Whatcha doing for lunch, Lois?"

"Something else."

"I set it all up for after the news tonight. Jimmy Olsen, Lola Barnett, and Pelé are going to judge my Bloody Mary against your mother's wonderful soft drink. How about supper, Lois?"

"Sorry, I'm going to be busy filing my nails tonight. Why are these elevators so slow?"

"I'd ask you to have dinner with me tomorrow, Babe, but Clark's gonna owe me a banquet at Tudor's after I win the bet, aintcha, Clarkie?"

In the elevator on the way up to the 36th floor Clark felt for the little lump in his jacket pocket. It was a vial of a liquid spice for which he had traded a diamond chip on Oric. A drop of it added to a pail of mop water would make the liquid irresistible to the human palate. Imagine what it would do with the already ineffable taste of Mrs. Kent's soft drink mixture. Steve didn't have a chance. Clark had been busy making statements to police and reporters and Galaxy executives, signing papers and affidavits and that sort of nonsense since the world woke up again the night before. Superman could avoid such clerical madness simply by flying away, but Clark couldn't. Still, he declined to go home when Morgan Edge offered him the rest of the week off. Instead Edge ordered a cot set up in Clark's office and told his star anchorman to get some sleep before the broadcast of the evening news.

The most powerful man on Earth was alone at last behind the locked door of Clark Kent's office. Hidden from the world, he slid the flat leaden case out of his bottom desk drawer and ran a diamond-hard fingernail around the edge. Inside were just a few pages handwritten in Kryptonese. He read them.

Dear
Kal-El,
 

I
congratulate
you
on
reading
this
message.
It
seems
that
you
have
grown
up
and
almost
certainly
done
great
things
with
your
special
abilities.
I
must
first
thank
your
father,
through
you,
for
the
remarkable
gift
of
your
Kryptonese
language.
The
planting
of
knowledge
in
full
bloom
inside
the
brain
is
most
stimulating,
though
I
understand
it
will
last
only
a
few
more
days
and
I
must
not
bore
you
with
an
old
man's
capricious
discoveries.
 

Your
father
Jor-El
wanted
very
much
for
you
to
be
raised
in
a
virtuous
environment
and
for
that
reason,
unknown
to
you,
I
was
aware
of
your
impending
arrival
on
our
humble
Earth
several
hours
before
you
landed...
 

There it was, written in Kryptonese, in ink that had dried years before anyone on Earth, to Superman's knowledge, had ever heard of the planet Krypton. Written at a time when the very notion of life of any sort on another world- let alone life with pretensions to intelligence—was considered to be a speculative metaphor at best. And written by the possessor of the most celebrated intellect of this most fabulous century.

Einstein wrote of the exhilaration he felt at being spoken to in the Universal language of scientists, the language of mathematics, when the navigational unit transmitted mentally the trajectory of the infant Kal-El's rocket. From the information imprinted on the physicist's brain by the navigation unit's telepathic recording he was easily able to calculate the time and place of the landing. He explained:

You
see,
your
father
had
the
very
best
of
intentions
when
he
pleaded
with
me
to
raise
you
as
my
own
son.
I
would
certainly
have
wanted
to
do
so,
but
I
believe
I
made
the
right
decision
in
simply
seeing
to
it
that
you
were
intercepted
by
those
fine
people
Jonathan
and
Martha
Kent.