Chapter 7

"You seem ill at ease, Miss Zor-El. Are you?"

Kara looked Lillian Luthor up and down, analysing the woman who stood before her. She couldn't help but to be reminded of Lena, their bodies were about the same age.

"No." Kara said, more coarsely than she had intended.

Lillian curved her mouth down at the corners and went back to rolling up the map she'd been studying when Kara had arrived. Behind her, the maid who had shown her in pulled the chart room door shut with a heavy click. Luthor hadn't seen fit to accompany her to the presence of his wife. Instead, the maid had appeared as if by magic as they had headed out of the lounge. Luthor paid her about as much attention as he had the first time. When Kara had left, he had still been standing at the mirrorwood desk, staring at the blast mark on the wall.

Mrs Luthor deftly tightened the roll on the map in her hands and began to slide it into a long protective tube.

"Well," She said without looking up. "Ask me your questions then."

"Where were you when your husband was killed"?

"I was in bed," She looked up at Kara that time. "Please don't ask me to corroborate that, I was alone."

The chart room was long and airy under and arched roof that someone had tiled with illuminum. The map racks were waist high, each topped with a glassed-in display and set out in rows like exhibit cases in a museum. Kara moved out of the centre aisle, putting one of the racks between Mrs Luthor and herself. Kara almost felt like she was taking cover.

"Mrs Luthor, you seem to be under some misapprehension here. I'm not the police. I'm interested in information, not guilt."

She slid the wrapped map into its holder and leaned back against the rack with both hands behind her. She was immaculately fastened up in black slacks and something born of a union between a dinner jacket and a bodice. Her sleeves were pushed casually up almost to her elbow, her wrists adorned with jewellery.

"Do I sound guilty, Miss Zor-El?" She asked.

"You seem overanxious to assert your fidelity to a complete stranger."

She laughed. It was a dissonant, throaty sound and her shoulders rose and fell as she let it out.

"How very indirect you are."

Kara looked down at the map displayed on the top of the rack in front of her. It was dated in the top left-hand corner, a year four centuries before she was even born. The names marked on it were in a script she couldn't read.

"Where I come from, directness is not considered a great virtue, Mrs Luthor."

"No? Then what is?"

Kara shrugged. "Politeness. Control. Avoidance of embarrassment for all parties."

"Sounds boring. I think you're going to have a few shocks here, Miss Zor-El."

"I didn't say I was a good citizen where I come from, Mrs Luthor."

"Oh," She pushed herself off the rack and moved towards Kara. "Yes, Lionel told me a little about you. It seems you're thought of as a dangerous woman on Krypton, and a dozen other planets to that matter."

Kara simply shrugged again, and Mrs Luthor regarded her with a disapproving glare.

"It's Russian."

"I'm sorry?"

"The script." She came around the rack and stood beside Kara, looking down at the map. "This is a Russian computer-generated chart of the moon landing sites. Very rare. I got it at an auction. While my husband and daughter might like to obsess over the so-called achievements of aliens I prefer the conquests of humans. Do you like it?"

"It's very nice." Kara commented dismissively. "What time did you go to sleep the night your husband died?"

Mrs Luthor stared at her. "Early. I told you, I was alone." She forced the edge out of her voice and her tone became almost light again. "Oh, and if that sounds like guilt, Miss Zor-El, it is not. It's resignation. With a twist of bitterness."

"You feel bitter towards your husband?"

She smiled. "I thought it said resigned."

"You said both."

"Are you saying you think I killed my husband?"

"I don't think anything yet, but it is a possibility."

"Is it?"

"You had access to the safe. You were inside the house defences when it happened. And now it sounds as if you might have some emotional motives."

Still smiling, she said. "Building a case, are we, Miss Zor-El?"

Kara looked back at her. "If the heart pumps. Yeah."

"The police had a similar theory for a while. They decide the heart didn't pump."

She somehow managed to make it sound as though only a complete moron would have thought as much. Kara could feel her grip on the interview sliding out of sight.

"What made the police…"

"Ask them." She turned her back and walked away from Kara as if making a decision. "How old are you, Miss Zor-El?"

"Subjectively? Thirty. The years on Krypton are a little longer than here, but there isn't much in it."

"And objectively?" She asked, mocking Kara's tone.

"I've had about two centuries in the tank, including my latest stay. You tend to lose track." It was a lie. Kara knew to the day how long each of her terms in storage had been. She had worked it out one particularly lonely night after the fall of the Legion, and the number wouldn't go away.

"How alone you must be by now."

Kara sighed and turned back to examine the nearest map rack. Each rolled chart was labelled at the end. The notation was archaeological. Syrtis Minor, 3rd excavation, east quarter. Bradbury; aboriginal ruins. Kara started to tug one of the rolls free.

"Mrs Luthor, how I feel is not at issue here. Can you think of any reason why your husband might have tried to kill himself?"

She whirled on Kara almost before she had finished speaking, and her face was tight with anger.

"My husband did not kill himself." She said freezingly.

"You seem very sure of that." Kara looked up from the map and gave her a smug smile. "For someone who wasn't awake, I mean."

"Put that back," She cried, staring back towards Kara. "You have no idea how valuable…"

She stopped, brought up short as Kara slid the map back into the tack. She swallowed and brought the flush in her cheeks under control.

"Are you trying to make me angry, Miss Zor-El?"

"I'm just trying to get your attention."

They looked at each other for a pair of seconds. Mrs Luthor lowered her gaze.

"I've told you, I was asleep when it happened. What else can I tell you?"

"Where had your husband gone that night?"

She bit her lip. "I'm not sure. He went to Osaka for a meeting that day, for a meeting."

"Osaka is where?"

She looked at Kara in surprise.

"I'm not from here." Kara said impatiently.

"Osaka is in Japan. I thought…"

"Yeah. Krypton was settled by Japanese and European colony ships. It was a long time ago, and I wasn't around."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. You probably don't know much about what your ancestors were doing three centuries ago either.

Kara stopped. Mrs Luthor was looking at her strangely. Her own words caught up to her a moment later. Download dues. Kara knew she was going to have to sleep soon, before she said or did something stupid.

"I am over three centuries old, Miss Zor-El." There was a small smile playing around her mouth as she said it. She'd taken back the advantage as smoothly as any politician or negotiator that Kara had ever seen. "Appearances are deceptive, as I'm sure you know. This is my eleventh body."

The way that she held herself said that Kara was supposed to take a look. She flicked her gaze across the Slavic boned cheeks, down to the décolletage and then to the tilt of her hips, the half-shrouded lines of her thighs, all the while affecting a detachment that was clearly wasn't the reaction Lillian Luthor had been hoping for.

"It's very nice. A little young for my tastes, but as I said, I'm not from here. Can we get back to your husband please? He'd been to Osaka during the day, but he came back. Where did he could after that?"

"I don't know, I'm not his keeper, Miss Zor-El."

Kara could tell her interview was going nowhere fast.

"Perhaps I'd better speak to him about it." Kara looked around the room. "All these maps, how long have you been collecting?"

Mrs Luthor must have sensed that the interview was drawing to a close, Kara could practically see the tension puddle out of her like oil.

"Most of my life. While Lionel was staring at the stars, some of us kept our eyes on the ground."

Kara thought of the telescope abandoned on Luthor's sundeck. She saw it stranded in angular silhouette against the evening sky, a mute testimony to times and observations past and a relic no one wanted. Kara remembered the way it had wheezed itself back into alignment after she jarred it, faithful to programming maybe centuries old, briefly awakened the way Kara had stroked the Songspire awake in the hall.

Old.

With a sudden and suffocating pressure, it was all around her, the reek of it pouring off the stones of Suntouch House like damp. Age. Kara even caught the waft of it from the impossibly young woman in front of her and her throat locked up with a tiny click. Something in her wanted to run, to get out and breath fresh, new air, to be away from those creatures whose memory stretched back beyond even historical events she had been taught in school.

"Are you alright, Miss Zor-El?"

Download dues.

Kara focused with an effort. "Yes, I'm fine." Kara cleared her throat and looked into her eyes. "Well, I won't keep you any longer, Mrs Luthor. Thank you for your time. I'll see myself out."

The walk out of the chart room seemed to take forever, and Kara's footsteps had developed a sudden echo inside her skull. With every step, and with every displayed map that she passed she felt those ancient eyes on her spine, watching.

Kara muttered to herself.

"I really need a cigarette."