Clark grabbed Martha before she hit the ground. Reflexively, he scanned her with his deep vision. Her concussion was no worse, but when he put a hand to Martha's cheek, he was surprised at the chill. "She's fainted," he said, alarmed. "She's too cold." He turned to Perry and asked urgently, "Do you have any hot tea? Something hot? And something to eat?"
"Follow me." Perry said decisively. He strode to the Planet entrance, and held the door open for Clark, who carried Martha.
Clark looked around at the Art Deco-inspired architecture and decoration of the lobby. A fortress-like desk marred the symmetry of the room, with two hulking men seated behind it. Clark, hands full with Martha, X-rayed the area. The desk concealed three shotguns and several handguns; the men were also heavily armed. But I don't see any kryptonite.
One of the men rose at their entrance, but Perry waved him down. "It's all right, Keith," Perry said. "They're with me."
"Do you need some help?" the burly man asked.
"No, we're fine." With those terse words, Perry led Clark past the desk, toward the elevators. Clark nodded courteously at the two men, and they nodded back, obviously memorizing his face.
Perry pressed the button for the elevator. It lit up, and Clark belatedly noticed the obvious. "You've got power."
"And heat. And running water."
"How'd you do that?" Clark was curious. He hadn't seen smoke consistent with a coal furnace, and he knew that there was little to no electrical power generation. Besides, transmission lines had been destroyed.
"A little Kryptonian present," Perry said shortly. The elevator arrived and Perry gestured for Clark to precede him into it. Clark complied, adjusting his grip on Martha slightly.
Perry took pity on Clark's burning curiosity and sighed. "This was the HQ for the collaborators. That robot thing – "
"Brainiac."
Perry looked at Clark curiously. "Yeah. Apparently he felt it was amusing to have the Planet print daily news summaries of what was happening." Perry laughed bitterly. "'The newspaper of record for humanity's downfall.' That was Brainiac's motto, apparently. He made sure we put out an edition every day." Perry sighed. "Anyway, he arranged for us to have some sort of crystal gizmo in the basement. God alone knows how it works, but it kept on humming even after Zod….went down. We've got all the power we want. It must have dug some sort of well, because we have water too."
Martha stirred in Clark's arms, distracting him.
"Martha? Are you OK?"
"Clark?" she asked sleepily. "I'm so cold…."
"We're going to get you warm, I promise." Clark didn't like her wavering tone. Hypothermia on top of starvation was a dangerous combination.
The elevator bell dinged, announcing their arrival on the top floor. Perry led the way out into the hall and Clark followed him to the publisher's office. Perry opened the door and Clark stared at the large suite, furnished in a style befitting the CEO of the world's largest multi-national media corporation.
"Nice," Clark said noncommittally. He set Martha down on a leather chaise lounge. "You got anything for her to eat?"
Perry was already heading for a small kitchenette. "I've got tea….here's some soup….just have to heat it up."
Clark looked worriedly at Martha. It frightened him that she was so pale. "Get me the soup stuff. I'll heat it up. You start on the tea." He barely refrained from speeding over to the kitchenette. He did stride over there quickly and almost ripped the soup packet and bowl from Perry's hands.
"The rest of the stuff is right there….oh, I see you found it," Perry said dryly. Clark had thrown open the cupboards and assembled items – faster than a human would have been able to – while water from the faucet filled the bowl. Clark put the bowl on a tray and engaged the heat vision. He poured the contents of the soup packet into the boiling water to steep, and raised his head to see Perry staring at him.
"How about working on the tea?" Clark snapped. Perry flinched, and Clark carried the soup to Martha. Beeps in the background indicated Perry had decided to use the microwave for his tea preparation. Clark set the tray on the coffee table in front of Martha.
"We've got to get you out of that wet coat," Clark said, mentally kicking himself for missing the obvious. "Here, let me help you…." Martha set her mug back on the tray. Clark helped Martha stand, and removed her sodden parka and soaked hat. He looked around and saw a coat closet on the other side of the large suite. Without asking permission, he went over and hung Martha's coat.
Clark frowned when he saw that the rain had soaked through and Martha's blouse and pants were wet as well. He almost engaged his heat vision again. He remembered his promise.
"Dry you off?" he asked in a low voice. Surely Martha knew what he meant.
The microwave dinged and they both unconsciously turned toward it, watching Perry take out a teapot. Martha's eyes didn't leave Perry as he fumbled in a cupboard and produced a mug. Perry chose a sturdy and voluminous coffee mug rather than the delicate –but small – teacups that went with the teapot.
"Yes, please," she murmured to Clark quietly. Perry reached them and set the teapot and the mug on the table, and poured.
"Thank you, Perry." She took one bite of the soup and then set it down next to the mug. She straightened and stared into Clark's eyes. Clark darted his eyes toward Perry, standing next to Martha. The older man said nothing, but his stance and proximity to Martha gave him the appearance of her protector and her champion.
Clark sighed and engaged the heat vision. Steam wisped off Martha's clothing. She stretched and lifted her arms so Clark could dry every part of her soaked blouse. Clark didn't look at Perry. He felt obscurely embarrassed. He felt alien….unnatural.
Reinforcing this was Perry's gasp when Clark's eyes turned red. The older man hadn't moved from Martha's side, but Clark picked up on dual elevated heartbeats. Perry's heart beat more rapidly than Martha's, though. It seemed that neither one was as blasé about the heat vision as they tried to appear. Martha, thought Clark, was accepting it more readily than Perry. The fact that Perry's heart pounded so rapidly, the fright-or-flight response, implied that Perry had seen red eyes and heat vision before – and not in a good way.
Clark stopped when Martha's clothing was dry and the awful paleness banished from her face. She took a large swig of tea, and then spooned the soup into her mouth. The movement caught Perry's eye and he leaned over her. Finding her unharmed, he looked back at Clark who returned it with a steady gaze of his own.
"Oh, sit down, you two," Martha said between sips. "You're looming over me. It makes me nervous."
Perry gestured at a leather-upholstered chair sitting at an angle to the couch, to Martha's left. Clark sat, and Perry followed, sitting in a chair opposite Clark.
"Nice trick," Perry said in a neutral tone.
"I've got a lot of them," Clark replied evenly, taking the measure of the man who sat across from him. This Perry wasn't the insightful but sodden drunk Clark had met in his own world. This Perry looked ten years younger, and his clear gaze and authoritative air commanded immediate respect.
Clark felt a curious twinge. The other Perry, back in Clark's own world – could he have been this man? What if he had found and published Clark's secret? Would that one incredible huge story have let that man redeem himself? This Perry seemed so different. Clearly he'd never been a slave to alcohol, a common drunk. And of course, he'd already lived through the biggest story except the Second Coming. This Perry had reported the alien invasion of Earth.
Perry in turn stared at Clark, the two men sizing each other up. Martha coughed and broke their semi-confrontational alpha-male staredown. Clark popped up and went to her.
"Are you all right?" He couldn't help the anxious quiver in his voice.
"I'm fine. A little went down the wrong pipe, that's all."
Clark went back to his seat and caught Perry's face. The stony impassivity had a momentary dissolve into softness, then surprise at Clark's concern. Then Clark saw Perry school his expression back into neutrality.
"I believe you said something about an interview?" the newsman asked. He leaned forward.
Martha interrupted. "'Tell me, O Muse, of the storm-tossed mariner,'" she exclaimed portentously.
Clark stared at her, surprised. She hiccupped.
"You shouldn't have put brandy in the tea," she chided Perry. "It was Courvoisier, wasn't it?" She hiccupped again.
A smile played on Perry's lips. He didn't answer Martha's question. Instead, he said, "The Aeneid. 'Midway through the journey of my life, I found myself within a dark wood.'"
"The Divine Comedy," Clark said immediately. Martha frowned at him and he had the feeling he'd interrupted a game – a game where he didn't know the rules.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," she said gently, staring at Perry.
"A Tale of Two Cities." Perry shrugged and seemed to give up the game. "Martha, what's going on?" He glanced over at Clark. "I heard the rumors, but…." He trailed off, again looking away from her to stare at Clark.
Martha took another – apparently large – gulp of brandy-laced tea. "Meet my new partner, Perry," she said. "He'll tell you the story."
Perry's eyebrows raised. He stared at Martha incredulously for a minute. Then he leaned back in his chair. "Partner?" He cast a measuring look over Clark, who almost squirmed at the force of it. "Martha, you've outdone yourself. This is one story I have to hear." He pulled a small voice recorder from his pocket, turned it on, and set it on the coffee table amidst their gathering. He also took out a notebook and pen. His eyes met Clark's.
"Go ahead."
Clark did squirm at this. "Well, um…." He felt trapped. He glanced over at Martha and she hiccupped again. Everyone laughed and suddenly Clark felt able to start.
"You probably won't believe a lot of this," he started hesitantly, "but it's all true."
Perry raised his eyebrows. "Good start, kid," he said admiringly. "You've got me hooked." Somehow, Clark didn't feel offended that Perry White called him kid.
Time to go ahead. "OK. Back in 1989 there was a meteor shower."
"I knew that."
"I came down in a spaceship with the meteors."
"How come I didn't hear – never mind, go on."
"I was a baby at the time. The people that found my spaceship – and adopted me – were Jonathan and Martha Kent."
Perry whipped his head back at Martha. She shrugged and nodded. Perry appeared to be holding his mouth shut by sheer force of will.
"They raised me. I thought I was human till I was fifteen." Despite his best efforts, Clark's voice took on a tinge of the melancholy he'd always felt since that day. The day he discovered he was an alien. The day he discovered that he was alone. "By then I was old enough to start, uh, getting my, um, abilities, and over the next few years, uh, I went to high school and tried to cover it up." Clark swallowed. "A lot of people in Smallville had developed strange powers from the meteors, and some of them, um, caused trouble. I stopped most of them."
"Go on," Perry said expressionlessly.
"To make a long story short, Brainiac came into my world. He threatened to go back in time, make it so that I never left Krypton. I was in….well, let's just say I was in a bit of a state at the time." Clark smiled sardonically. "I thought, maybe it would be better if I wasn't here." He took a minute to think of the lives lost because of his secret. "My father, Jor-El – "
"I thought you said your father was Jonathan Kent."
"He was." Clark stated that emphatically. "He was and always will be. Everything I am I owe to him and my mother." He carefully didn't look at Martha as he said this. "Another long story short – I'm referring to an Artificial Intelligence download of the personality and memories of my biological father, Jor-El of Krypton. He's the controlling intelligence of the Fortress of Solitude."
Martha sat up straight. "That's the big crystal place up there in the Arctic?" Her brandy-fueled mellowness completely disappeared. Martha seemed fearful again.
"Yeah," Clark said. "I think there might be something wrong with the AI, because it keeps on doing really strange things." He paused for a moment.
"Things?" Perry prompted.
"Things. Like sending me into this universe. A parallel universe where I never did make it off Krypton. But Brainiac did."
"Brainiac?"
"Brainiac is another Kryptonian Artificial Intelligence – "
"Just how many of these Kryptonian AI's are out there?" Perry demanded.
Clark sighed. "I think those were the only ones." He took a deep breath. "Anyway, Brainiac's programming was to get Zod out of the Phantom Zone – "
"Phantom Zone?" Perry sure had a lot of questions, Clark thought.
"High-tech Kryptonian slammer," Clark said curtly. "Trans-dimensional jail. For the worst baddies in the twenty-eight explored galaxies."
"Oh."
"Brainiac tried to break Zod out in my universe. I stopped him back then. Anyway, for whatever reason, Jor-El sent me to this universe. Here, I never made it to Earth. The Kents never raised me. There was no one to fight off Zod when Brainiac arranged his release. When I got to this….world, I was shocked. I didn't know what had happened."
"I guess you know now," Martha said bitterly.
"Right." Clark wondered if she heard the sadness in his tone. He turned back to Perry, willing the other man to believe him. "I literally stumbled onto Lois – do you know Lois Lane?"
"I've heard of her."
"She figured out I was Kryptonian, captured me – "
Perry's eyebrows rose again at this.
" – and took me to the Resistance. We made a deal. I help them overthrow Zod and use my powers to repair what he did. They let me live." Clark tried hard to keep the bitterness out of that last sentence. "I was on a job with Martha and we were coming back to Metropolis base when we saw you." He leaned forward and picked up a mug of tea. "And that's my story."
"And you're sticking to it?" Perry asked Clark after a long moment of consideration. A tiny smile played on his lips.
Clark smiled back. Somehow, this Perry White had the ability to draw him out, and at the same time make him realize how ridiculous and implausible his story really was. And yet, fantastic as it seemed, his story was true. "Yeah." He gestured. "Ask Martha. She was there for most of it."
Martha looked up from her mug at her name. She'd swung her feet up onto the couch. "What? Oh. Yes, that's the gist of it." She yawned.
Clark rose and went to her. "More tea?" he asked, kneeling by her side. He caught her grimace. "How's your head?"
"Hurts," Martha muttered.
"Can I check it?"
"OK." Martha wasn't nodding now, Clark noticed. He squinted and focused. Her brain was healing, but something about today's excitement – or was it the altitude? - had temporarily worsened the swelling. Clark focused deeper and saw the blood rushing through the area, the cells aggregating at certain spots, trying to heal the injury. He sighed. It needed at least several weeks more healing time.
"Why don't you get some sleep?" Clark suggested. Martha was halfway there already. "Just lay there on the couch…."
"We should report to Lex," she protested sleepily.
"We can't do that till your coat is dry," Clark said, praying she wouldn't ask him to dry it with his heat vision. "You need to rest while it's drying."
"OK." Her head must have hurt, because she rubbed it before curling up on the couch – with no protest, Clark noted. As she closed her eyes, Clark warmed her with a gentle sweep of heat vision.
He turned back to find Perry standing, watching him.
"You're different."
"I am an alien," Clark said, annoyed. "I thought we'd established that."
"No, I mean you're not like the other Kryptonians."
"You've seen them?"
Perry's face shuttered. "A few times." He visibly changed the subject. "Now, if you don't mind….you've got a lot more to fill in on that exclusive interview you promised me."
Clark almost grinned. He'd used the powers in front of Perry and the newsman, after the first rush of surprise, hadn't blinked. It was so different from the usual awkwardness and ill-concealed fear that accompanied his efforts at Metropolis base. "Well," he said, looking over at Martha, who had almost immediately fallen asleep, "it looks like we're going to be here for a bit." He matched Perry's businesslike tone. "I might as well." He looked back at Martha again. "Do you have a blanket?"
Perry glanced at Martha, curled up, looking tiny on the large leather couch. "I think so." He rummaged in a closet and came out with the requested article. He laid it over Martha, and stared Clark back into his chair.
"Now, I have a lot of questions. You say you came in the 1989 meteor shower?"
"That's quite a story," Perry said, setting down his notebook and pen. He leaned back in his chair.
"Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either if it hadn't happened to me." Clark smiled enough to take the sting out of the words.
Perry's reply stopped when Martha shifted on the couch. She woke, rubbed her eyes, and sat up. An awkward silence fell.
"Would you like some tea?" Clark broke the silence.
Martha stood, slightly wobbly. "Right after I go."
Perry, correctly interpreting her need, got up and pointed her to the executive washroom. She returned, and Clark quickly prepared tea. He poured for all three.
"So, Clark," Perry said neutrally - during their four-hour talk, Clark and Perry had quickly begun addressing each other by first names - "what are your plans?"
Clark shrugged. "Get Martha back to the base safely. We'll report to the council on our latest mission." He frowned. "I think I need some time off to work on, um, the flying. I'm not sure I have it all under control yet."
"Do you think you and Martha could come for lunch next Thursday?"
It was hard to tell who was more surprised, Clark or Martha. Perry smiled. "Hey, Martha. I don't have any other Metropolis Library Board members around." He gazed at Clark. "And when you bring Martha, I'd like to talk with you, too. One o'clock OK?"
His open smile made it impossible to refuse. "OK."
Perry led them back through the hall and down the elevator. He escorted them through the lobby, past the guards. The rain had diminished into a fine drizzle. "See you next week!" he said cheerfully before he turned and went back into the building.
"He's unique," Clark said.
Martha laughed. "It's Perry White. Somehow you just end up telling him your story and doing what he says."
"I thought that was Lex Luthor," Clark grumbled.
The smile left Martha's face. "Well, yes. But in a different way." They both were silent as Clark began walking away from the Planet building. Martha kept step with him automatically.
When they were out of sight of the Planet Clark asked, "All set?" - his usual question. Now it had a strange poignancy. Would he fly with Martha again? They'd become friends, of a sort, on this strange trip. Would she remain as comfortable with him as she'd become?
"All set," Martha whispered. She stayed still as he gathered her into his arms and lifted off quietly.