XXVIII
Above Us Only Sky
The first four days in Antarctica were… pleasant. Scott Free had stayed with him and told him of the worlds of New Genesis and Apokolips and his family of new gods. Clark had explained all about himself, what he could do, the White House and how security worked there. Scott would have to know that. Barda had already taken on the role of one of Lois's secret service members and Scott was to join her tomorrow. That was Clark's provision to the deal. He would go into hiding, but he wanted Barda by her side as an incognito agent until the task was complete. Barda had been surprisingly comfortable with the new role.
On the fifth day of his exile, Scott Free used his boom tube to transport himself back to Washington to join his wife and assist Lois. Clark marveled at such wondrous technology and wondered if his home world of Kypton had also produced such marvels as 'boom tubes, 'aero disks' and 'mother boxes'.
Now alone and bored, Clark had started sculpting and built an army of ice to match the terracotta soldiers of Qin Shi Huang in China. But his army consisted of eight thousand lovely memories… Memories of Lois, captured in ice.
Gathered before him, in a glacial cavern half-a-mile wide was Lois Lane, every mood, every familiar stance, every turn, every facet, in breathtaking detail. Her time at the 'Daily Planet' he knew only from images, but one hundred statues showed Lois at her first profession; journalism. There were statues of Lois with her Pulitzer, another reading a newspaper of the most fragile, translucent sheet of ice, and others at her old laptop.
Hundreds of Lois statues campaigning for office, meeting other citizens of ice, shaking hands… charming, commiserating with the common man, all in a frozen still-life. Lois writing policy, Lois addressing the Senate, Lois asleep covered in sheets of satin ice and his favorite, Lois as Aphrodite. That was more of a fantasy than a memory.
For her birthday, he would bring her here…
As he gazed upon his finished work, the call came to the micro titanium ear piece he often forgot he was wearing. It was her. She needed him to return.
His fears had come to pass, a nuclear weapon had detonated in Kahndaq. The world was on the brink. The bomb had taken the life of Captain Richard Grayson, ward of Gothamite billionaire Bruce Wayne - although only a handful of people knew this. Grayson had been a soldier… like him. Around thirty Kahndaqi soldiers and three hundred citizens had also been caught in the blast as well, but the initial detonation could have been much worse.
At speeds unknown to man, he was back in the Pentagon within an hour only to land in a beehive of activity and scheduled chaos. Soon after, he was able to watch images of the initial explosion replay on the screen, the emerald hue of the pillar of atomic fire. There was little doubt now the core had been constructed with Kryptonite… as Lois had surmised.
And there was little doubt who was behind it.
There, but by the grace of God, go I. It was a tragedy that should have never happened. It would have been simpler to give Lex Luthor to the Kahndaqi courts. How easy it would be to personally make that delivery…
Luthor had played his hand and failed. He knew the president had the combined intelligence of every U.S. agency trying their absolute best to tie Luthor (or LexCorp) to this event, but with no success. Later, Clark learned that a number of LexCorp executives had been targeted by radical extremists earlier that morning, murdered within hours of the Kahndaqi explosion. Loopholes were being pulled tight with a noose. Again, Luthor was allowed to murder at will.
The president was run off of her feet, making press release after press release, confirming emphatically to a frightened world that this was not war. This was not a missile strike. She had been forced to adopt Luthor's version of events. That he had been correct all along… Kahndaq had been manufacturing atomic weapons in secret. This was nothing more than a terrible accident.
President Lane had pledged her country's full support to the people of Kahndaq, if their government would allow UN inspectors full access. If one bomb had prematurely detonated, were there others? It would be so easy for Clark to find out, if she would let him. Let him protect the interest of the world.
He had no idea where he fit in to all of this anymore. This world of diplomacy and politics.
Against all the protocol and indoctrination he had been given since he was a child… He took the skies…. From the mesosphere, Clark watched the world below him and waited. No missiles filled the skies, no explosions beneath the clouds.
The lights of humanity and the blackness of night draped across the world below. This was how the gods liked to view humanity… from above. It was simpler that way. It took him several moments to fly halfway across the world. Miles above Kahndaq, he watched radiation swirl across the cold desert, carried by provoked winds. And he felt it. Even from this distance, he felt the green poison affecting him as he had at the Smithsonian.
He flew back to Washington. She would need him. The world would need him.
Author's Note:
The title is a line from John Lennon's "Imagine".
