I suggested that he wash the gel off his face, get some rest, and then meet me in my office, where we could talk about what to do next. In the meantime, I'd do some reasearch on the best drugs to try for him.

When he came in, I was at my computer. I immediately minimized the windows and looked guilty and uneasy. Clark came over and asked, "What was that?"

I compressed my lips. "Something I'd rather you not see, which is why I closed it."

"So you're still hiding things from me?"

"For a while, yes."

We stared at one another for a long moment, and he broke the eye contact first. I put a hand on his arm. "It's nothing that's wrong, by anybody's standards. Rather, it's something you'd find unnecessarily upsetting."

"Like Club Zero?" His eyes met mine again, challenging. "As I recall, you needed me to get you out of that."

I sighed heavily and got up. "Take a seat. Take a look, while you're at it." Not looking away from me, he sat and opened the windows. Two headlines popped up. "Kitty Genovese again? Superman collapses and everybody watches--nobody helps." The second was "Superman disappears. Did big business put a hit on him?" The first was by Lois Lane, the second by the staff of the Inquisitor.

Clark scanned both articles. Lane's compared him to the case in New York where a woman was stabbed on the street, repeatedly, over the course of nearly an hour, with dozens of people watching from the safety of their homes, nobody calling the police or assisting her. She had interviewed nearly every witness I had primed. Most of them said they didn't want to get involved or that they figured somebody else would help him, others specified that Superman had looked so deathly ill as he walked, occasionally stumbling or falling, even crawling at a few points, that they feared for some kind of infectious disease. The article continued, "Everybody who has read the Kitty Genovese story has thought to him or herself that they'd have been the exception. Sociologists have said that it was because nobody knew her. She was not a person to them. But every citizen of Metropolis knew Superman. Many owe him great debts. Those who were afraid of catching something were greatly mistaken. Every witness was already infected with the worst disease of all--indifference." The Inquisitor article was filled with lurid speculations and eyewitness accounts, including dripping green blood. It ended with an ominous, "The last person to see Superman watched him fall one last time outside LuthorCorp executive headquarters. Superman had often put a end to various LuthorCorp business activities. Security guards ran out and carried him in. He hasn't been heard from since."

Clark looked up at me, half-laughing, half-scandalized. "I don't get it. Why were you hiding these from me?"

"Some of the implications are rather disturbing, don't you think? I thought you'd find it painful to read that nobody so much as lifted a finger to help you."

His face clouded for a moment and then he actually grinned at me. "You did. You helped me." The clouds returned. "But I don't like the Inquisitor saying you...Maybe if I come out and say, hey, actually, I'm alive, and it's probably thanks to Lex Luthor?"

I rolled my eyes. "They'd say that I'd created a clone, or a robot, or put Dominic's brain in you, or something." I laughed shortly, "Mother Teresa could return to earth and say that I'd just helped you, as best I could, at least, and they'd say that I must have bought out Heaven." I looked pensive. "What does concern me, though, is that now the world knows you've disappeared. These both came out yesterday; I'd been trying to supress it but somebody refused to stay bribed. There's just no honesty in today's media any more."

"Why? I mean, why were you trying to supress it?" Clark was probably readying a rewarmed speech on freedom of the press.

"With Superman seemingly missing, crime rates were at eight times their usual rate last night. Tonight, I'm sending all the off-duty security who want to participate to form patrols in some of the most vulnerable areas, and I've bankrolled as much police overtime as they allowed."

"But I can go out! It's been a day since I've been sick."

"That's not enough. There are at least some who aren't convinced you're dead, they think you're waiting, or just hiding for some reason. If you do reappear and collapse in the middle of something, not only are you shown as vulnerable but you could get killed for real."

"But..."

I held up a hand. "Besides, what if you don't get better permanently? We need to know if we can handle this on our own. Perhaps we'd gotten too lazy, thinking that Superman would fix everything and the police would only be needed for directions and keeping donut shops in business."

"But I..."

"I'm not arguing this any more, Clark. Not tonight. And that's my final word." I held my breath. I'd issued an ultimatum that was both perfectly rational and firmly against his wishes. He was ready to protest but subsided.

I smiled to myself. It wasn't perfected, but it was obedience.