(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) Secrets from the Past A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the secret of its being a secret.
Sir Henry Taylor English Dramatist (1800-1886) We should not judge a man’s virtue by his great abilities, but by the use he makes of them.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld French Writer (1630-1680) “I can’t believe it,” Clark kept repeating. “I knew Lana had issues, but I can’t believe she’d try to kill Ralph and try to blame it on you.”
“We both saw the security video,” Lois reminded him. “The 9-1-1 call was made by a pay-as-you-go phone but the call exactly matches the location and time on the security video.”
Clark flopped back in the hotel bed. As Henderson had suggested, they were spending the night in one of the high-rise hotels in Midtown to avoid the media frenzy created when news got out of Dunning’s arrest for accosting Jason. It was the lead local news story on every station in Metropolis, followed by the attack on Ralph. The two stories even drove Superman’s alleged indiscretions off the air.
Clark knew it was only a small respite. Chances were good that by tomorrow the reporters who were after Dunning’s blood today would be after Superman’s again tomorrow – especially when they found out that Superman had arranged Lois’s out-of-town trip with her family, and a perfect alibi, while Ralph was being attacked.
Lois propped herself on her elbow to face him. “Penny for your thoughts.”?”
“I don’t know if they’re worth that much.”
She sighed. “Back in Smallville, you told Lana that she had forgiven you for being different. What did you mean?”
Clark stared at the ceiling, listening to Jason’s soft even breathing as he slept on the cot by the large windows.
“Clark?” Lois prompted.
“When I was in high school, my powers started to come in,” Clark began, keeping his voice low. “I mean, I was stronger and faster than nearly everyone else since I was even younger than Jason, but the other stuff started happening. I could hear conversations halfway around town. I could see things with my naked eyes that no one else could see. It was more than just the energy aura. I knew from before kindergarten that other people didn’t see that, but I started seeing through walls and clothes, seeing the microbes they talked about in biology without a microscope. I could see the footprints on the Moon without a telescope.”
“Did she know about that?”
“No. I didn’t even tell my parents when it first started happening,” Clark said. “But there were other things I couldn’t hide quite as easily. Like a facility for languages. I can listen to a language being spoken and within a sentence or two I can identify it, even speak it a little. Give me a day and I have it down like a native, including reading and writing if I have access to the written language.”
“Nice talent,” Lois commented.
“Came in really handy when I went travelling,” Clark admitted. “But that was one of the things Lana did find out. She caught me having a conversation with some migrant workers, in Spanish. Only I’d never taken Spanish in school, didn’t know anyone who spoke it. Then the high school French teacher, Mrs. Cavanaugh, commented within Lana’s hearing on how quickly I had mastered the language, like maybe I’d known it as a child and was just relearning it.”
“Why do I have the feeling Miss Lang thought that was a little weird?”
“She did. And she was very annoyed when I got an A in French and she got a B and she’d actually spent some summers in Paris. She got very annoyed when I was elected president of the French Club the year we went to Paris for a week over spring break.”
“So, how did you end up going out with her?” Lois asked.
Clark shrugged. “Like I told you, it suited her to be seen with me, until she realized I had plans that didn’t include her.”
“So she forgave you for being weird because you were the star quarterback and wide receiver?”
“More or less,” Clark admitted. “It was a long time ago.”
“Want to tell me about it?” Lois asked.
Clark sighed. “You remember what high school was like. The cliques, the pseudo-intellectualism, the constant one--ups -man-ship . The daily drama that was only important for the moment.”
“Sounds like the bullpen,” Lois commented.
“It was a lot like the bullpen,” Clark agreed. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but Lois was right – the newsroom with its high energy, high profile personalities was very much like high school had been. But this time he wasn’t just dating the head cheerleader, he was married to her. If only Dad could see him now…
Clark knew that Jonathan Kent hadn’t always been a cautious man – he’d heard the stories of Jonathan and Martha Kent working for civil rights in Wichita and Kansas City, but the man Clark knew as his dad was a very cautious man. He had taken the discovery of a toddler in a space ship in stride. He had accepted Clark’s strange gifts with an equanimity few humans could have managed under the circumstances. But his caution had demanded that Clark not try out for any high school sports for fear of discovery of his strange gifts.
Clark had managed to talk his father into letting him be involved with the football team as team manager. Jonathan hadn’t been pleased at how much time it was going to take from Clark’s chores around the farm, but there wasn’t much he could object to when Clark was able to complete his chores in a fraction of the time of a normal teen.
The first week of Clark’s senior year in high school was clear and dry. The harvests had been good so far. In fact, Jonathan and Martha had been able to set aside some money for Clark’s education – college was coming up fast and there was no question that Clark would be going to college, even if he had to spend the first two years at Smallville Community College to help manage costs.
All this and more was running through Clark’s mind as he watched the last straggling football players leave the field to head for the showers while the cheerleaders in their sweaters and short pleated skirts practiced one last stunt. Lana, Susie, Heather, Megan, Rachel. The girls applauded themselves as they dropped their megaphones and ran after the football players – all but Rachel, who began to pick up the cheerleading equipment. Rachel Harris was one of the nicer girls in the squad and was in several of Clark’s classes this semester. He’d known her since kindergarten.
“You don’t have to bother with those, Rach,” Clark told her, picking up the remaining equipment. “I’ll take them in for you with the other equipment.”
“Why, thank you, Clark.”
She smiled and Clark felt his face grow warm. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well... ah... ah... it’s sort of my job as team manager, anyway, and...”
“Listen,” she interrupted. “A whole bunch of us are going over to Lana’s and play some CDs. Wanna come?”
“Sure…”
“Kent won’t be able to make it,” Brad McAllister, the team’s current star, announced. “Kent’s still got a lot of work to do.”
“What do you mean?” Clark began. “I’ve stacked all the...” He turned and realized that neatly stacked equipment that had been on the bench was all over the muddy ground and the wooden bench itself had been up-ended.
Over in the parking lot, Lana had her dad’s car filled with football players and the cheerleading team. They were sniggering at him like all the other times Brad McAllister or Dave Hocker made him look like an idiot. He ruthlessly quashed the spurt of anger he felt rising. McAllister wasn’t worth it.
Clark smiled faintly. “I guess I’d better clean it up.”
“I’ll help,” Rachel offered. McAllister glared at her.
“You don’t have to,” Clark told her. It was a nice gesture but he could have the mess cleaned up in seconds if there were no witnesses.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Go on,” Clark insisted. “I have to get home for my chores as soon as I’m done here anyway.”
He watched as the car sped off. Finally alone, he looked back at the mess McAllister had made. Clark didn’t know why McAllister and Hocker picked on him except that maybe, on some deep level, they recognized Clark’s ‘otherness’. It was humiliating, and it was all Clark could do to keep from lashing out at them.
One of the footballs was sitting on a tee at the two and a half yard line, left there by one of the guys who had been practicing his extra point kicks. Clark stared at the ball a moment and then gave it a frustrated kick. It sailed off like a rocket through the goal posts at the far end of the field. Over a hundred yards and he knew he could keep doing it forever without breaking into a sweat.
He looked back at the mess McAllister – he had no doubt it had been McAllister – had left for him. With a sigh he shifted into super speed to clean everything up. Dad would be furious if he knew, but it was the only way to get things done and still get home at a reasonable time.
Clark was almost home when Lana’s car barreled down the dirt road, slowed as if getting ready to stop then sped off, spewing dust and rocks behind it. Clark glared after them then cut across the fields toward home. He knew he wasn’t supposed to cross the fields, but the harvest was already in and there was no one around to see him running far faster than any human. And sometimes it just felt good to see just how much he could do.
He spotted the car rounding the corner and he came to a stop beside the front gate to his parent’s parents’ house. He leaned nonchalantly against the tree on the driveway edge and waved as the car slowed to a stop beside him. Clark smirked as the car’s occupants stared at him, open mouthed.
“Clark...?” Susie began.
“How the hell did you...?” McAllister sputtered.
It was all Clark could do to keep from grinning at their astonishment. “I ran,” he deadpanned.
Lana gunned the engine and the car sped off. Clark broke into a self-satisfied smile.
“Been showin’ off a bit, have you, son?” his dad asked.
“I don’t mean to show off, Dad. It’s just that...”
“You got all these amazin’ things you can do,” Jonathan said, “and sometimes you think you’ll go bust if you don’t let other people know.”
“I could score a touchdown every time I had the ball. Every time, Dad. Is it showing off for a person to do what he’s capable of? Is a bird showing off when it flies?” Clark asked. His dad simply looked at him. They’d had this conversation so many times over the years and it was always the same. “I’m sorry, Dad,” Clark added.
“Look, son. You’ve been nothin’ but a blessing to your mother and me. In the beginning – when you first came – we thought they’d take you away from us if people found out about... the things you could do. But a man thinks different as he gets older, thinks... better. Wiser. Starts to see things clear. And I know now that as sure as we’re gonna see the moon tonight there’s a reason why you’re here. Don’t ask me what reason, don’t ask me whose reason. But there’s one thing I do know... It ain’t to score touchdowns.”
Clark understood his father’s qualms – he knew that people feared what was different and what they couldn’t control, and he knew that people might actually fear him if they knew how different he really was – but he didn’t need to like it. Jonathan patted him on the back reassuringly as they both headed toward the barn. The dog came out of the barn barking and wanting to play. Clark ran ahead of his father to play with the dog a few minutes before starting his chores.
Clark had just dropped his book bag when he heard his father’s heart falter. He turned to see Jonathan Kent grab his left arm, stagger toward the house and collapse into a heap.
“Dad?” Clark called.
“Jonathan?” his mother called from the house. Then she screamed her husband’s name. But Jonathan Kent’s heart had already stopped and refused to restart despite Clark’s attempts at CPR.
The funeral was three days later. It was a quiet affair. The Kents had been in Lowell County for generations, but Jonathan Kent had never been an outgoing man, and while he had cared that he was respected, popularity had never been important to him. He’d never been one to hang out at the tavern or the Odd Fellows Hall when the chores were done.
Of Clark’s schoolmates, only Rachel Harris and Pete Ross had bothered to come share their friend’s grief during the funeral.
The service seemed to go on forever – Clark knew that wasn't true, but it felt that way. Finally they arrived at the cemetery and the coffin was lowered into the newly dug grave beside the rest of the departed Kents.
Pastor Linquist stood opposite Clark and his mother and read the committal words. “Forasmuch as our brother has departed out of this life, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, trusting the infinite mercy of God, in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Clark repeated the ‘Amen’, but his heart wasn't in it. He had stopped attending church some years before – the hypocrisy had become too much – but he and Pastor Linquist had spent a lot of time just talking.
“I heard a voice from heaven saying,” Linquist went on. “From henceforth, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so, says the Spirit; for they rest from their labors. Let us pray… Merciful God, our heavenly Father, who made your Son Jesus Christ to be the resurrection and the life, raise us we pray, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; that when we depart this life we may with this our brother be found acceptable to you; for the sake of your Son. , Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God world without end. Amen.”
Linquist nodded to the few who had come out to the cemetery then headed off, his job at the grave done.
“All those things I can do, all those powers... and I still couldn’t save him,” Clark said when he was alone with his mother. He was trying to keep from crying but the tears kept leaking through. His mother simply patted his hand in understanding and followed Linquist to his car.
A week later, Clark approached Coach Murphy and asked for a chance to try out for the football team. Clark had already talked to his mother about it. She wasn’t happy with the idea, but she gave him her blessing to try.
The rest of the football team wasn't exactly happy when they found out Clark Kent was joining the team, but Coach Murphy wouldn’t have any of their attitude.
By the end of first game of the season, the naysayers and jokers on the team were singing a different tune. The Smallville Crows hadn’t beaten the Evanston Bobcats in twenty years, until that game. The winning touchdown was made by Clark Kent.
Suddenly he was popular. It was a heady feeling, going from dweeb to big man on campus. He was invited to parties and get-togethers. It was like he’d entered a different world. And suddenly Lana Lang was interested in him. Lana, who spoke five languages and spent her summers in France and Italy, wanted to go out with him.
“You have to dress better if we’re going out,” Lana began. Clark didn’t see much wrong with the way he dressed. He was a farmer’s son and durability meant more than fashion. Besides, he liked the feel of flannel. But he went along with Lana’s wishes and bought new, more fashionable, clothes for when they went out. He knew his mom disapproved but she didn’t say anything to him about his spending – it was his money, after all.
Life was good. The football team kept winning and it wasn’t due to Clark and his gifts although that helped some. Smallville High came to attention of college scouts. Clark and Brad McAlister were both offered football scholarships to Kansas State. It was a heady time, especially after Smallville won the state championship for the first time in over thirty years.
It was fun going out with Lana and her friends, at least at first. Then Lana started to change, or maybe it was Clark noticing things that had been there all along. Lana didn’t like the friends Clark had grown up with, she didn’t like his choice in books or music – he preferred mysteries, techno-thrillers, classic literature, and obscure foreign writers, while Lana wouldn’t read anything that wasn't assigned by her English teacher or involved a movie star.
Lana didn’t like Clark’s easy going friendliness with everyone or the time he spent at the student newspaper. And she didn’t approve of his ‘bleeding-heart do-gooding tendencies’. Clark never considered himself a ‘liberal’, but he had always found the theory of Social Darwinism morally suspect and Rand’s ‘enlightened self interest’ was a concept that reality had proved to be unworkable – enlightened self interest demanded a long view of history and the future. Few people seemed to have that long view.
Still, Clark went out with Lana – she had interesting friends and her parents were nice people – and it was nice to have a steady girl.
But things started to get ‘strange’ around Easter.
“Don’t you like me, Clark?” Lana asked after they’d gone to dinner and a movie. The movie had been mindless, more suited to making out to than watching. Lana had snuggled against him in the balcony, teasingly kissing the corner of his jaw. But when she tried to loosen his jeans he found himself balking.
“Lana, I…” Clark began. His father had taught him to respect women and that ‘no’ meant exactly that. But Jonathan hadn’t covered the notion that it might be the woman who needed to learn that restraint. “I think it’s a little soon for that, okay?”
“We’ve been going out for nearly seven months,” she hissed at him. “It’s not like I’m asking to have sex with you.”
“This just isn’t a very comfortable place for that, okay,” Clark told her but he knew she didn’t really believe him. There had been other couples in the balcony that had been necking and petting. He didn’t begrudge them that – it was their choice. But he simply didn’t feel right doing it with Lana. He couldn’t explain it but it felt wrong. And he knew he would never be able to explain it to herLana.
Lana gave him a hard look but took his hand as they walked out of the theater.
That night Clark heard the Father Crystal singing. He got out of bed and followed the song to its source - the storage cellar beneath the barn. He opened the heavy wooden door hidden under the straw on the floor. The singing got louder and the cellar was awash with an eerie green glow. Oddly, he wasn’t afraid even though he probably should have been – it was almost as if he was dreaming.
He picked the crystal up – it was about fifteen inches long and three inches in diameter, tapered and faceted at each end. It glowed with a cold unearthly light.
Krypton. The word echoed in his mind and he knew that was where the crystal had originated. More than that, he knew that was where
he had originated.
Krypton. Even the name sounded alien. He was alien. He hadn’t been born on Earth.
The crystal whispered instructions.
Go north. Take me north.
Clark knew that was exactly what he was going to do after he graduated high school – despite the crystal’s insistence of urgency Clark knew he couldn’t leave before getting his diploma. But he also knew there would be no going to college on a football scholarship, no staying home on the farm. His destiny didn’t include that. He didn’t know where the crystal was going to lead him, but he knew he wouldn’t be staying in Smallville.
“Clark?” Lois’s voice intruded. “You looked like you were a million miles away.”
“Not that far,” Clark told her. “I’m just trying to get a handle on what Lana was after back in high school and why she told you the things she did.”
“She strikes me as someone who never learned that misery is optional,” Lois said. “I think she also thought your compassion, your need to help, was a sign of weakness that she could manipulate.”
“You’re right about that,” Clark told her. “But that doesn’t explain why she shot Ralph and claimed you did it.”
Then he heard the fire alarm and the screams – Midtown and not too far away from the hotel.
Lois seemed to read his mind. “Go.”
-o-o-o-
Lois didn’t know exactly when Clark came back to the hotel room. She had fallen asleep watching GNN news. The fire had been in one of the older high-rise apartment buildings and the fire marshal would be looking into it – Superman had reported smelling accelerants in one of the apartments and there were two dead, but not as a result of the fire.
The fire was major news but the GNN reporter on the scene, Alice Burns, seemed more interested in asking Superman about the accusations against Lois Lane than asking about the mysterious fire.
“I’m afraid I can’t comment on an ongoing police investigation except to say that I know for a fact that Ms. Lane was nowhere in the vicinity of the Daily Planet Building when Mister Gunderson was shot,” Superman said.
“And how do you know that?” Burns demanded. “Were you with her?”
Someone else might have missed the slight tightening of Superman’s mouth and the little twitch along his jaw but Lois caught it. Superman was getting more than just a little annoyed with Burns’s line of questioning.
“As I’m sure you know, Ms. Lane was with her husband and child at the time of the incident,” Superman stated. Then he disappeared, nearly bowling Burns over with his wake.
Clark had been wrong about Dunning’s arrest taking the heat off of them for a while – Superman was a much bigger celebrity than Barry Dunning could ever hope to be. And the bigger the celebrity in the water was, the more the sharks circled and the less likely they would be distracted from their potential prey.
International news wasn’t any less depressing. Latislan and Podansk were still posturing and rattling their sabers. Troops were massing on both sides of their joint border and the pundits were predicting it was only a matter of time before someone made a mistake and the two armies started firing on one another.
When Lois finally fell asleep, her dreams were filled with explosions and fire.
Clark was seated at the little table by the window when she awoke. His briefcase was open and he was sorting through documents. His laptop was also open, the screen illuminating his face. Lois couldn’t see what was on the screen.
“Hi,” Lois said, raising herself on her elbows to watch him. “I saw the fire on the news.”
“And Alice Burns’s ambush?” Clark asked.
“Hard to miss,” Lois said. “You know it’s only going to get worse until the cops arrest the person who shot Ralph.”
“It’s not going to get better until we figure out why your relationship with Superman is being targeted.”
“You don’t think it’s just Lana out to get the one guy who turned her down?”
“No,” Clark said. “I mean, yes, Lana was a duplicitous insult to a female dog back in high school and she’s no better now, but despite what she said to us back in Smallville, I don’t think she gives rat’s… you know… about me or you. It’d be too much trouble.”
“So, why did she shoot Ralph?”
“That’s a good question,” Clark said. “But I do know this. There’s a lot more going on here than we know about.”
“There usually is,” Lois said, climbing out of bed. Jason was still soundly asleep, his blanket pulled over his head. Lois occasionally wondered how he could breathe when he pulled the covers so close.
She peered at the picture on Clark’s laptop. It was an old photo of Richard White with a woman Lois didn’t recognize. Both of them were dressed formally, smiling at the camera. In the background Lois recognized Lana Lang dressed in a formal gown. Her arm was entwined with the arm of a grizzled older man in a military uniform with lots of gold braid.
“Clark?”
“Did Richard ever talk to you about what he did before he came to Metropolis?”
“He was an information officer for the NIA. They hired him straight out of the air force to be a pilot for them then he got transferred into information because of his contacts with the media.”
“So he was working for the NIA when SHADO was officially shut down?”
“I guess so,” Lois said, wondering where Clark was going with his line of questioning. “Why?”
“Just trying to get the timeline straight,” Clark said. “I was given some information that indicated that Richard White had personal reasons for investigating the whole Latislan/Podansk situation and that was why he supposedly left the NIA.”
“He told me he left the NIA during one of their periodic shakeups,” Lois said. “He was unhappy at some of the things they were doing, some of the things they were covering up. When he was given that chance to leave, he took it. Perry hired him for our London office as soon as he was free.” She frowned. “Why the sudden interest in Richard?”
“Did Richard ever mention living in Podansk, maybe even something about a girlfriend there?” Clark asked.
Lois shrugged. “He didn’t like to talk about what he did specifically while he was with the NIA. He did tell me he’d had a girlfriend and she’d been murdered. He never told me her name, but there were times he’d wake up screaming. I figured he was the one who found the body. You didn’t answer my question about your sudden interest.”
“Them.” Clark indicated the photo. “Margosha Yerikovna Kasparova. She and her father were found murdered two days after this photo was taken. Allegedly, Richard’s assignment was to entice Margosha and her father into leaving Podansk for France or Germany where Interpol could arrest the father. The mission didn’t go as planned.”
Lois stared at her husband. “You don’t really think Richard had anything to do with that, do you?”
“No,” Clark said. “In fact, I suspect the deed was done by the Podansk Security Police and Richard barely escaped with his life. The NIA let Richard retire from active service because he’d been made. He wasn’t any use to them and Perry White’s nephew wasn't someone who could just disappear.”
“Do you think Richard knew Lana?” Lois asked.
“They knew each other socially, at least,” Clark said. “The man Lana’s with is General Yerik Illyavitch Kasparov. Margosha’s father and President Kasparov’s late brother.”
“So, what was a girl from Smallville doing hobnobbing with generals in Podansk seven years ago?” Lois asked.
“That is a very good question.”
There was a chime from Clark’s computer – an incoming message. He reached over and opened the message from someone identifying themselves as ‘Lord Darth’ then he clicked the link in the message. GNN’s home page opened and Lois suppressed a gasp at the video prominently displayed on the page. Clark turned up the volume.
Alice Burns was doing a commentary. “This is the hotel where Lois Lane spent the night at the request of the Metropolis police. But as you can see, she wasn't alone…” On the video, the picture zoomed in on one of the upper floors of the hotel, catching Superman in the act of gliding onto the tiny balcony and opening a sliding glass door. Then he disappeared into the room beyond, closing the door behind him.
“Who the hell is doing this?” Lois demanded.
Clark just shook his head.
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