Last Chapter (okay, I heard that sigh of relief!) -- Baron John.
Evening at the Special Operations compound was marked by the smell of cooking food, tired chuckles over low conversations, dark curses at uncooperative equipment, locks being locked and snuck open again, and excited whispers concerning night operations plans. For Clark, tonight, it was also marked by the prospect of a plain half-opened door in the bottom of the complex.
"Come in, son." The voice was neither deep not light, as nondescript as Lake's casual glance. (Lake could kill with her mind alone. Her glance was deadlier than his heat vision.) Having known Lex and Lionel, that concealment of power spoke volumes to Clark: training and experience to a frightening degree. John didn't even care to try to impress anyone.
Lionel wasn't even in Lake's ballpark. Lake's glacier eyes betrayed her ability to literally freeze a living being at a thought. And Lake answered to John.
Clark steeled himself. He could throw a tractor over his shoulder. Bombs pissed him off only because they burned his clothes. Machine guns amused him as he matched the bullets' speed, and Dylana had established that no, a nuclear bomb wouldn't much hurt him.
Lake terrified him. And he was about to meet her boss.
Clark took a deep breath and walked through the door. "Randal said you wanted to see me, sir."
John's dark gray eyes looked up and took in his face with a trace of amusement. "I always make time for anyone who has gone to the effort to visit us, but sometimes it's delayed by circumstances beyond my control. I appreciate your coming here, Clark, Kal-El. I just wanted to check on how things were going with you."
Check on him? The whole place was wired for stereo, Clark thought, there was probably a bug planted in his underwear. But he was too busy dissecting the double and triple layers of meaning in the Baron's greeting to find time for resentment at that. No one "went to the effort to visit" Special Operations without a very specific invitation, and circumstances beyond John's control probably meant nothing less than a full-scale disaster.
"Fine. Sir." Clark bit down on his tongue, trying to get himself under control. This was worse than going to the principal's office in first grade. "Um, I'm learning a lot." If the past few days had been lessons, then this was some sort of serious test.
John nodded. "Good to hear. It's been a long time since a Renaissance Man could learn everything there was to know about their world, but we disgrace our heritage if we ignore it and don't try to learn at least some of it."
Clark felt himself retreating into the distance again. Earth's heritage wasn't his.
If John noticed Kal-El surfacing in Clark again, he didn't let on. Covering up for himself, Kal-El thought, with a trace of anger and racial contempt, if not outright hostility.
"You know the quote," John went on mildly, clearly ignoring Kal-El's look even as he met his eyes. "'If I have seen further than others, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.' Look it up, and the history it entails. It's a complex relationship, but you might find it inspiring. Of course," he added, as if in afterthought, "Krypton's history was pretty complex too. Eight world wars? I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of, but it's unlikely that this planet's mammalian population would have survived such a record."
Clark and Kal-El both felt the room reel around him, as if John had taken out a meteor rock. "How did you...?"
"Sit down, son." John gestured. "I accessed your spaceship's messaging system as soon as we found out about it, of course." There was actually a literal twinkle in his eyes. "I have read my own science fiction collection, you know. Along with the rest of the library."
The SO library's science fiction collection alone was over a hundred thousand books, counting the ones that veered on fantasy or horror. The hardcopy library took up three entire buildings, larger than the main library in Metropolis, and that didn't count the computers. Clark sat down heavily. Either John was an even faster reader than he was, or....
"How old are you?" The man looked in his late forties, a touch of gray hair, lines in his face from smiling and frowning and sun, but no sags or wrinkles. Clark realized that he should have guessed immediately that it was impossible for someone so young to have put together an organization like Special Operations, much less ride herd on all its recruits.
John nodded in approval. "Wynter and Dylana must be pushing you. Most people don't make that connection for months, if not years. Not even Cyrus and Randal did until they touched me and knew what to try to read for. I would tell you, Clark, because anything in this organization that would cause mistrust among any of us is too dangerous to risk any of our people for, with our talents, but I honestly don't know. I came to America not long after the Revolutionary War, but long stretches before that simply run together." The Baron smiled again. "You wait, it will happen to you too in a few years. By the time you're thirty, you won't even remember Lana's coming-out birthday party."
The one where her moron aunt had given her that damn meteorite necklace -- what kind of psycho thought a kid should have a souvenir of her parents' death? -- and she'd twirled around and held it right up to his face to show him how pretty it was, when they came in from the cookout to open her presents. He'd collapsed and thrown up from the violent nerve shock and passed out in front of everybody. He'd later learned that Lana had sat beside him, crying in concern (and because her birthday party was ruined, for which she'd never quite forgiven him), until Jonathan had come to get him. With her necklace still in her hand, of course.
Sheer luck that their farm was next door and someone had thought to call his parents and his dad had gotten there before the ambulance. He'd been frighteningly sick for hours from the prolonged radiation exposure, and the butt of jokes for a month. Clark didn't even bother to ask how John knew about that. "Not likely," he growled.
"Time conquers all," John said gently. "Entropy, actually. In fact, I'm a little pleased that you don't seem to be particularly gifted at science. That was one part of your family tree that might have been too easily inherited, and it was too often misused. If your destiny is to rule the world, Kal-El, at least it won't be the way half your own ancestors tried to do it."
Clark felt dizzy again. "What did you do, plug into the damn thing? The only other, well, human, who did that went insane -- " oh, man, maybe he shouldn't have said that, but it was too late now -- "And catatonic, and got mutated, and ended up being killed." And it was my fault, Clark added to himself, reflexively.
"The linguist killed himself with his carelessness, and he was a nutcase to begin with and an idiot anyway," John said, unconcernedly dismissive. "Lake wanted to get rid of him as soon as he started obsessing over the language symbology; she was pretty sure he couldn't handle the direct feed. Lake was right, as usual. She has good instincts about power. I would have sent her before he took care of the problem himself, but she was on assignment elsewhere.
"Personally, I found the information processor fascinating, though I'll admit that it gave me a headache. Wynter and Virgil Swann are still arguing over interpretations. Virgil was rather more shocked to find out about Wynter's age than he was by the download. In fact, the good doctor has managed to make use of some of the readings to restore most of his own damaged nervous system, with Bill's help. You really should go see him again. Knowing that you existed was just about the only thing that kept him alive, after the accident."
"That I existed?" Clark said faintly. "That can't be.... I thought he.... He wants to.... He's not afraid of...?"
"Afraid of you?" John sat up very straight and stared at him. "Of meeting intelligent life from another planet? Someone that we here on Earth can actually communicate with, and who would be willing and able to listen to what Earth-humans have to say and offer? Clark, Kal-El, what kind of fools have you been getting your opinions from? If you've been brainwashed by any of those moronic squawk shows, I will turn Lake loose on them."
"No! No, I just meant...." What on Earth (yes, Earth) DID he mean? They knew about Krypton, about the orders to obey and rule, and they weren't terrified? They knew what he could do, what he HAD done, and John was carelessly talking about sending LAKE against the fearful people to PROTECT him? Even kryptonite didn't make it this hard to swallow.
"You mean, Wynter, and Doctor Swann know about the message too?"
"And Dylana, and Little Sky, and Randal, and Myriam, and all the other mental talents and power-handlers with the capability and discipline to accept the feed, right on down to young Kurt -- that's right, you haven't met our sun-channeler yet, which is probably just as well, since he still tends to melt things when he gets excited, and he's very excited about meeting you.
"In fact, about the only person we haven't given access to the download is Lake. I would rather not risk the possibility of her discovering that her mind can create a wormhole singularity, such as your ship used, on the surface of a planet. She understands, but she's still tempted. We're both rather relieved that you destroyed it."
"I had to." John made it sound so, so reasonable. So ordinary. Clark's own voice came back to him from a long way away. "But I hurt... so many people...."
John raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you've read the records on Lake."
Clark gave that just enough thought to shy away from it. "She'd kill me."
"Oh, she'd do much worse than that. She'd talk to you about it. Calmly, politely, and frankly. And Kal-El, perhaps you'd better read them -- they're fairly highly classified even among our own people, but very little here is outside of your need-to-know -- because if she ever does talk with you, you will definitely need to know what you're in for."
John leaned back casually in his chair, and to Clark, the human gesture was as unbelievable on him as it would have been on the mask he'd seen Lex wear. "I found Lake by following a trail of unexplained and rather gruesome murders. People had been taken apart -- literally, their bodies turned into something you don't want to even imagine right now -- with no other marks on them. No sign of weapons, or any other sort of physical contact. Even to me, the idea that someone might be capable of doing that without touching them seemed, well, difficult to comprehend. But we have old movies of her. Those, you don't need to see for another few years. Punks would try to snatch her on the street. And then they would be," John made a disturbing gesture with one hand, like a slow claw slash, "dismembered. She was, oh, about the same age as you were when you landed here. Two or three."
Clark held nausea in check only through dint of long hard practice. The first picture that came to him was of the small slim pale woman with the startling flash of a smile who had been teaching him to fly. Involuntarily, his mind substituted a tiny homeless child on the streets. Being subjected to torture, rape, hunger, cold, pain. With the power to strike back -- power even more dangerous than his, especially at that age -- and no reason not to, no conscience or parents or anyone to care who could teach her that there was love in the world.
No wonder Lake was psychopathic. What choice had she had?
"You did what you felt you had to do. No one else is entitled to stand on judgment for your actions with your own property. It was your choice alone, whatever the cost."
John turned away and steepled his fingers, a gesture that Clark was pretty sure was as contrived as his appearance. But his voice held no trace of artifice. "During the Civil War, the War Between the States," he said softly -- and Clark was suddenly enlightened as to where that ability among John's people had come from, to so easily call everyone by two different and sometimes opposing names, -- "I was a field medic. I wore clothing as neutral as I could come by, and served both sides whenever I could. I saw brothers shooting their own brothers, fathers killing sons and sons killing fathers, anger and insanity and waste over causes that neither could prevail on through such a useless war. I saw hatred and arrogance, overriding what should have been at least knowledge of what could have been done, and sanity enough to top and talk and think. I saw people suffering loss and pain and conflict with themselves that even you can barely imagine.
"I saw a woman trying to give birth on a battleground, even as she was holding the hands of the dying men to try to comfort them. The woman died in my arms, under my care. Her baby made it four more days before he died of starvation and diarrhea. I couldn't feed him, and the drugs were gone."
The memory of the look in his father's eyes -- Jonathan's, not Jor-El's -- that had hurt so badly that he'd risked the red kryptonite, faded to insignificance. Clark wanted to faint, to retreat to unconsciousness to keep from hearing any more. It was only Kal-El that refused to allow him to pass out in front of John.
"Hundreds of years ago, you say. You think it doesn't happen today? I stayed out of actual combat zones during Korea and Viet Nam, in order to funnel relief efforts where I could, but I doubt if any of the survivors would thank me much. Sometimes I think demons truly do rise up and infest all of us, until we are forced to confront them. I am good at war, as you might imagine, but I have no taste for it. If more people had to experience war up close and personal, fewer of them would be willing to drop bombs."
He turned and faced Clark again, still distant in the storm-cloud eyes, but focused on him. "In your ship's indoctrination tapes, I saw the man who provided the male half of your heritage -- the download wasn't clear on whether or not you were artificially enhanced, although there were indications that you had been genetically engineered to a certain extent just in order to survive being sent away -- begging, pleading, with the ruling council, to look at the evidence, to face the growing problems, instead of playing dominance games and being addicted to their own blind convictions of superiority. Sound familiar? It ought to, if you watch the world-wide news. The female half of your genetic heritage was standing in opposition to him. Civil war, over a baby, with the survival of the planet and the entire species at stake. In the end, the only thing they agreed on was to oppose the rest of the entire unwilling population, and do whatever they could to keep their only child, the whole world's only and last child, alive."
John turned his chair away again. "The north and the south both lost. The east and the west both lost. All of the factions of the ruling council of Krypton lost. Jor-El and Lara both lost. You may be the only winner in the history of all civil wars."
Clark / Kal-El was absolutely certain that the room had been lined with green rocks. His eyes hurt. His throat hurt. He couldn't breathe. "I didn't ... I didn't see...."
"I'm not surprised you can't consciously dredge up the full download. There was a few million libraries' worth of information there, maybe excluding Alexandria. What I wouldn't give for time travel, to rescue some of that! Never mind. Have the psych team teach you self-hypnosis. It takes time and concentration, but with your self-control, you should be as good as Lex at it within a week. Just don't fall asleep while you're digging into your family history. The dreams can be brutal.
"Which reminds me. Alexander Luthor was discharged from the hospital yesterday, at his own ranting insistence, and is back at that rather unsubtle mansion in Smallville."
Kal-El's gut finally twisted on a sob, when the final straw of emotional strain broke the alien command. Tears ran down his face. Clark wondered how his head could be so clear. It felt like all the samples from Lab 8 were hanging around his neck. "Thanks," he murmured.
"You owe me no thanks," John said, so seriously and sternly that it reset Clark's mood like a slap. "If anything, I owe you an apology. I didn't find out what it was to be different until well into adulthood, aside from the minor convenience of recovering easily from injuries and illnesses that would have killed most of the people of that time. I did not learn until much later how hard it would be on others, to have no others like themselves. No gods will ever know how many children I failed to find or help, and how many like Lake I may have created in my arrogance, believing I could control them once I had unleashed them. I failed you a long time ago, Kal-El. There is nothing I can do to make up for that, and everything I can offer now is not enough for what you have been through."
"It wasn't your fault!"
"Tell that to William. Tell that to yourself."
Clark took a deep breath and met his eyes, those storm-colored ancient eyes that he for some reason could not see through, though the rest of the Baron's body was pretty much normal-human to x-rays, aside from a disconcerting impression of perfection. "Okay. I will."
John smiled, and it was like being basked in sudden sunlight. "Is that a promise?"
Clark steeled himself to face a future of trying not to blame himself. "Yes."
"I am holding you to that. If you break your promise, I will tell Lake." He turned to the desk behind him, and picked up a remote phone. "I don't believe the people who sent you here meant for you to become a dictator, Clark. The language is ambiguous because of the cultural context, which is something you'll have to get used to on this planet too. There are many ways to rule, and force is the least effective in the long run." He gestured around. "As you have seen here, I hope.
"Krypton's one-world society was a rigid one, but not a cruel one. My feeling is that you were meant to "lead with strength" by setting an example for this all-too-confused world, because you are a strong and worthy example to be followed. Because of who you are, not just what you are -- a very good person, a kind and thoughtful and caring person, even at your age. A young man who went alone, and nearly on your own, through some of the toughest trials anyone could ever be put through. Short of actual combat. And we don't usually send little children into combat unless there is nothing left to lose. We need to broaden your history reading. You tended to score better on the worst examples our planet has set, and not so well on the heroes."
Clark scowled a little, but it was the truth. He identified more with the morbid than with the happy times. "All gods have feet of clay, and come to a bad end," he muttered.
John actually chuckled. "You're thinking of wars again. I'm not talking about gods, Clark. You know full well our prohibition against playing god, Lake and Dylana's occasional rampages notwithstanding. I'm talking about heroes, the day-to-day hero that can be there in all of us. The hero that needs only a little encouragement, an example, to come out in everyone.
"I suggest you read up on, oh, for example, the early days of the space program, to see what mortal hands and minds will actually dare to try. What the most talented among us can aspire to, what even the most vulnerable will rush into, no matter what the cost we risk for failure. Have you never run across the phrase, 'our reach must exceed our grasp'?" Clark would have sworn on a stack of glowing rocks of all colors that a wistful expression for the good old days -- wistful! John! letting him see! -- crossed his face. "Oh, of course there was the lighter stuff, too. Engineers and technicians would have fistfights on the floor of the VAB over pressurization tolerances. But it was a chance to do everything we could do, give our all, in a great and worthy cause. One of the few places I can be proud to say, I was there."
John looked down at the phone he'd been toying with. "What is a quest, Clark? What is your destiny, Kal-El? You are both, and together, searching for something. You didn't have to be ordered to do that. It's part of living and growing older -- growing up -- for everyone." The centuries-old man made a conspiratorial sound of amusement. "Even I learn something new every day, if I'm not very careful to keep my eyes and ears and mind closed.
"Can't the time you spend searching, and learning, be considered your quest? This is a huge and enormously complex world all on its own, Clark Kal-El Kent. Most people never see a fraction of it. Even I can barely claim to have scratched the surface."
*Our* quest. Clark looked down, blinking. I can be both. I *am* both. And I can be accepted as both. No, as what he said. As one and the same. I can be from Krypton, and still call Earth my home. "There is an awful lot," he whispered.
"As you and I and a few others are uniquely in a position to know. And we also know that there are no easy ways out. Is reaching your full potential what all your parents wanted for you? Is opening up and accepting all that you are, doing everything you can do and be, facing up to all that there is both out there and inside, enough to satisfy the hopes for the last survivor of a destroyed world and the lawyer's daughter who married a stubborn farmer?"
Clark wished that to be a rhetorical question, but John sat waiting for an answer, with the patience of someone who had had centuries to learn to wait. "It will have to be, won't it?" he said heavily. Looking for an answer. Looking for something to hold onto.
"No," John said gently. "Nothing has to be unless we let it be. Wars don't have to be. Hatred and fear do not have to be. I don't even have to leave this room. Neither does anyone else. But we choose to, just as we make the decision sometime to do both the very wrong and the very good. Because we can."
Not much to hold onto. But Clark straightened his shoulders. It was a massive weight, the weight of this world. Two worlds. He wondered how others had borne it, without his physical strength. Yet somehow, they had. "Okay. I can try. To choose it to be."
John regarded him for a long half-minute from those storm-colored eyes, seemingly impassive. Inside, despite his years, he was anything but. Make or break, with all of Earth in the balance. John had no illusions about the future, having so much of the past to draw from. Earth was entering an age where half its crazy population could destroy everything, not to mention what might still be lurking out there among the billions of stars. Clark could be the whole planet's best hope of salvation. Or the mind-damaged teenager could become its most dangerous threat.
The others had done all they could. The Baron was the last chance that the world had left.
"As someone who has seen a lot of people giving their all," John said in a carefully normal, friendly, quiet tone, "My opinion is that you'll succeed." His eyes glittered as if lightning had flickered through the clouds. "You would have loved meeting Marie Curie. Remind me to tell you about her some time."
He glanced at something on his desk screen, and that sunlight smile that Lake must have learned from, when she allowed herself to actually feel happiness, lit his face again. "In the meantime, the circumstances beyond my control that I mentioned was the time it took to convince your parents and friends to meet at Lex's place so they could make use of his better-secured privacy circuit. I prefer not to give out my personal number to every operator in Kansas." He held out the phone to Clark just as it rang. "I believe this call is for you."
Clark damn near bolted for the door. He made it five steps at full speed before the situation -- the timing, the conversation, the whole setup, registered on him.
No circumstances were ever beyond John's control, not even Clark's. The Baron's choices might be incomprehensible to those without his unimaginable experience, but if John chose to play god, no one, not even Lake or Nicole or Dylana or Kal-El, were ever out of his reach.
He stopped, and braced himself, and turned back to meet John's level, challenging, sympathetic, expectant gaze. It was harder to face than opening the vault in Lab 8.
But he took the phone.
Evening at the Special Operations compound was marked by the smell of cooking food, tired chuckles over low conversations, dark curses at uncooperative equipment, locks being locked and snuck open again, and excited whispers concerning night operations plans. For Clark, tonight, it was also marked by the prospect of a plain half-opened door in the bottom of the complex.
"Come in, son." The voice was neither deep not light, as nondescript as Lake's casual glance. (Lake could kill with her mind alone. Her glance was deadlier than his heat vision.) Having known Lex and Lionel, that concealment of power spoke volumes to Clark: training and experience to a frightening degree. John didn't even care to try to impress anyone.
Lionel wasn't even in Lake's ballpark. Lake's glacier eyes betrayed her ability to literally freeze a living being at a thought. And Lake answered to John.
Clark steeled himself. He could throw a tractor over his shoulder. Bombs pissed him off only because they burned his clothes. Machine guns amused him as he matched the bullets' speed, and Dylana had established that no, a nuclear bomb wouldn't much hurt him.
Lake terrified him. And he was about to meet her boss.
Clark took a deep breath and walked through the door. "Randal said you wanted to see me, sir."
John's dark gray eyes looked up and took in his face with a trace of amusement. "I always make time for anyone who has gone to the effort to visit us, but sometimes it's delayed by circumstances beyond my control. I appreciate your coming here, Clark, Kal-El. I just wanted to check on how things were going with you."
Check on him? The whole place was wired for stereo, Clark thought, there was probably a bug planted in his underwear. But he was too busy dissecting the double and triple layers of meaning in the Baron's greeting to find time for resentment at that. No one "went to the effort to visit" Special Operations without a very specific invitation, and circumstances beyond John's control probably meant nothing less than a full-scale disaster.
"Fine. Sir." Clark bit down on his tongue, trying to get himself under control. This was worse than going to the principal's office in first grade. "Um, I'm learning a lot." If the past few days had been lessons, then this was some sort of serious test.
John nodded. "Good to hear. It's been a long time since a Renaissance Man could learn everything there was to know about their world, but we disgrace our heritage if we ignore it and don't try to learn at least some of it."
Clark felt himself retreating into the distance again. Earth's heritage wasn't his.
If John noticed Kal-El surfacing in Clark again, he didn't let on. Covering up for himself, Kal-El thought, with a trace of anger and racial contempt, if not outright hostility.
"You know the quote," John went on mildly, clearly ignoring Kal-El's look even as he met his eyes. "'If I have seen further than others, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.' Look it up, and the history it entails. It's a complex relationship, but you might find it inspiring. Of course," he added, as if in afterthought, "Krypton's history was pretty complex too. Eight world wars? I'm not sure if that's something to be proud of, but it's unlikely that this planet's mammalian population would have survived such a record."
Clark and Kal-El both felt the room reel around him, as if John had taken out a meteor rock. "How did you...?"
"Sit down, son." John gestured. "I accessed your spaceship's messaging system as soon as we found out about it, of course." There was actually a literal twinkle in his eyes. "I have read my own science fiction collection, you know. Along with the rest of the library."
The SO library's science fiction collection alone was over a hundred thousand books, counting the ones that veered on fantasy or horror. The hardcopy library took up three entire buildings, larger than the main library in Metropolis, and that didn't count the computers. Clark sat down heavily. Either John was an even faster reader than he was, or....
"How old are you?" The man looked in his late forties, a touch of gray hair, lines in his face from smiling and frowning and sun, but no sags or wrinkles. Clark realized that he should have guessed immediately that it was impossible for someone so young to have put together an organization like Special Operations, much less ride herd on all its recruits.
John nodded in approval. "Wynter and Dylana must be pushing you. Most people don't make that connection for months, if not years. Not even Cyrus and Randal did until they touched me and knew what to try to read for. I would tell you, Clark, because anything in this organization that would cause mistrust among any of us is too dangerous to risk any of our people for, with our talents, but I honestly don't know. I came to America not long after the Revolutionary War, but long stretches before that simply run together." The Baron smiled again. "You wait, it will happen to you too in a few years. By the time you're thirty, you won't even remember Lana's coming-out birthday party."
The one where her moron aunt had given her that damn meteorite necklace -- what kind of psycho thought a kid should have a souvenir of her parents' death? -- and she'd twirled around and held it right up to his face to show him how pretty it was, when they came in from the cookout to open her presents. He'd collapsed and thrown up from the violent nerve shock and passed out in front of everybody. He'd later learned that Lana had sat beside him, crying in concern (and because her birthday party was ruined, for which she'd never quite forgiven him), until Jonathan had come to get him. With her necklace still in her hand, of course.
Sheer luck that their farm was next door and someone had thought to call his parents and his dad had gotten there before the ambulance. He'd been frighteningly sick for hours from the prolonged radiation exposure, and the butt of jokes for a month. Clark didn't even bother to ask how John knew about that. "Not likely," he growled.
"Time conquers all," John said gently. "Entropy, actually. In fact, I'm a little pleased that you don't seem to be particularly gifted at science. That was one part of your family tree that might have been too easily inherited, and it was too often misused. If your destiny is to rule the world, Kal-El, at least it won't be the way half your own ancestors tried to do it."
Clark felt dizzy again. "What did you do, plug into the damn thing? The only other, well, human, who did that went insane -- " oh, man, maybe he shouldn't have said that, but it was too late now -- "And catatonic, and got mutated, and ended up being killed." And it was my fault, Clark added to himself, reflexively.
"The linguist killed himself with his carelessness, and he was a nutcase to begin with and an idiot anyway," John said, unconcernedly dismissive. "Lake wanted to get rid of him as soon as he started obsessing over the language symbology; she was pretty sure he couldn't handle the direct feed. Lake was right, as usual. She has good instincts about power. I would have sent her before he took care of the problem himself, but she was on assignment elsewhere.
"Personally, I found the information processor fascinating, though I'll admit that it gave me a headache. Wynter and Virgil Swann are still arguing over interpretations. Virgil was rather more shocked to find out about Wynter's age than he was by the download. In fact, the good doctor has managed to make use of some of the readings to restore most of his own damaged nervous system, with Bill's help. You really should go see him again. Knowing that you existed was just about the only thing that kept him alive, after the accident."
"That I existed?" Clark said faintly. "That can't be.... I thought he.... He wants to.... He's not afraid of...?"
"Afraid of you?" John sat up very straight and stared at him. "Of meeting intelligent life from another planet? Someone that we here on Earth can actually communicate with, and who would be willing and able to listen to what Earth-humans have to say and offer? Clark, Kal-El, what kind of fools have you been getting your opinions from? If you've been brainwashed by any of those moronic squawk shows, I will turn Lake loose on them."
"No! No, I just meant...." What on Earth (yes, Earth) DID he mean? They knew about Krypton, about the orders to obey and rule, and they weren't terrified? They knew what he could do, what he HAD done, and John was carelessly talking about sending LAKE against the fearful people to PROTECT him? Even kryptonite didn't make it this hard to swallow.
"You mean, Wynter, and Doctor Swann know about the message too?"
"And Dylana, and Little Sky, and Randal, and Myriam, and all the other mental talents and power-handlers with the capability and discipline to accept the feed, right on down to young Kurt -- that's right, you haven't met our sun-channeler yet, which is probably just as well, since he still tends to melt things when he gets excited, and he's very excited about meeting you.
"In fact, about the only person we haven't given access to the download is Lake. I would rather not risk the possibility of her discovering that her mind can create a wormhole singularity, such as your ship used, on the surface of a planet. She understands, but she's still tempted. We're both rather relieved that you destroyed it."
"I had to." John made it sound so, so reasonable. So ordinary. Clark's own voice came back to him from a long way away. "But I hurt... so many people...."
John raised an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you've read the records on Lake."
Clark gave that just enough thought to shy away from it. "She'd kill me."
"Oh, she'd do much worse than that. She'd talk to you about it. Calmly, politely, and frankly. And Kal-El, perhaps you'd better read them -- they're fairly highly classified even among our own people, but very little here is outside of your need-to-know -- because if she ever does talk with you, you will definitely need to know what you're in for."
John leaned back casually in his chair, and to Clark, the human gesture was as unbelievable on him as it would have been on the mask he'd seen Lex wear. "I found Lake by following a trail of unexplained and rather gruesome murders. People had been taken apart -- literally, their bodies turned into something you don't want to even imagine right now -- with no other marks on them. No sign of weapons, or any other sort of physical contact. Even to me, the idea that someone might be capable of doing that without touching them seemed, well, difficult to comprehend. But we have old movies of her. Those, you don't need to see for another few years. Punks would try to snatch her on the street. And then they would be," John made a disturbing gesture with one hand, like a slow claw slash, "dismembered. She was, oh, about the same age as you were when you landed here. Two or three."
Clark held nausea in check only through dint of long hard practice. The first picture that came to him was of the small slim pale woman with the startling flash of a smile who had been teaching him to fly. Involuntarily, his mind substituted a tiny homeless child on the streets. Being subjected to torture, rape, hunger, cold, pain. With the power to strike back -- power even more dangerous than his, especially at that age -- and no reason not to, no conscience or parents or anyone to care who could teach her that there was love in the world.
No wonder Lake was psychopathic. What choice had she had?
"You did what you felt you had to do. No one else is entitled to stand on judgment for your actions with your own property. It was your choice alone, whatever the cost."
John turned away and steepled his fingers, a gesture that Clark was pretty sure was as contrived as his appearance. But his voice held no trace of artifice. "During the Civil War, the War Between the States," he said softly -- and Clark was suddenly enlightened as to where that ability among John's people had come from, to so easily call everyone by two different and sometimes opposing names, -- "I was a field medic. I wore clothing as neutral as I could come by, and served both sides whenever I could. I saw brothers shooting their own brothers, fathers killing sons and sons killing fathers, anger and insanity and waste over causes that neither could prevail on through such a useless war. I saw hatred and arrogance, overriding what should have been at least knowledge of what could have been done, and sanity enough to top and talk and think. I saw people suffering loss and pain and conflict with themselves that even you can barely imagine.
"I saw a woman trying to give birth on a battleground, even as she was holding the hands of the dying men to try to comfort them. The woman died in my arms, under my care. Her baby made it four more days before he died of starvation and diarrhea. I couldn't feed him, and the drugs were gone."
The memory of the look in his father's eyes -- Jonathan's, not Jor-El's -- that had hurt so badly that he'd risked the red kryptonite, faded to insignificance. Clark wanted to faint, to retreat to unconsciousness to keep from hearing any more. It was only Kal-El that refused to allow him to pass out in front of John.
"Hundreds of years ago, you say. You think it doesn't happen today? I stayed out of actual combat zones during Korea and Viet Nam, in order to funnel relief efforts where I could, but I doubt if any of the survivors would thank me much. Sometimes I think demons truly do rise up and infest all of us, until we are forced to confront them. I am good at war, as you might imagine, but I have no taste for it. If more people had to experience war up close and personal, fewer of them would be willing to drop bombs."
He turned and faced Clark again, still distant in the storm-cloud eyes, but focused on him. "In your ship's indoctrination tapes, I saw the man who provided the male half of your heritage -- the download wasn't clear on whether or not you were artificially enhanced, although there were indications that you had been genetically engineered to a certain extent just in order to survive being sent away -- begging, pleading, with the ruling council, to look at the evidence, to face the growing problems, instead of playing dominance games and being addicted to their own blind convictions of superiority. Sound familiar? It ought to, if you watch the world-wide news. The female half of your genetic heritage was standing in opposition to him. Civil war, over a baby, with the survival of the planet and the entire species at stake. In the end, the only thing they agreed on was to oppose the rest of the entire unwilling population, and do whatever they could to keep their only child, the whole world's only and last child, alive."
John turned his chair away again. "The north and the south both lost. The east and the west both lost. All of the factions of the ruling council of Krypton lost. Jor-El and Lara both lost. You may be the only winner in the history of all civil wars."
Clark / Kal-El was absolutely certain that the room had been lined with green rocks. His eyes hurt. His throat hurt. He couldn't breathe. "I didn't ... I didn't see...."
"I'm not surprised you can't consciously dredge up the full download. There was a few million libraries' worth of information there, maybe excluding Alexandria. What I wouldn't give for time travel, to rescue some of that! Never mind. Have the psych team teach you self-hypnosis. It takes time and concentration, but with your self-control, you should be as good as Lex at it within a week. Just don't fall asleep while you're digging into your family history. The dreams can be brutal.
"Which reminds me. Alexander Luthor was discharged from the hospital yesterday, at his own ranting insistence, and is back at that rather unsubtle mansion in Smallville."
Kal-El's gut finally twisted on a sob, when the final straw of emotional strain broke the alien command. Tears ran down his face. Clark wondered how his head could be so clear. It felt like all the samples from Lab 8 were hanging around his neck. "Thanks," he murmured.
"You owe me no thanks," John said, so seriously and sternly that it reset Clark's mood like a slap. "If anything, I owe you an apology. I didn't find out what it was to be different until well into adulthood, aside from the minor convenience of recovering easily from injuries and illnesses that would have killed most of the people of that time. I did not learn until much later how hard it would be on others, to have no others like themselves. No gods will ever know how many children I failed to find or help, and how many like Lake I may have created in my arrogance, believing I could control them once I had unleashed them. I failed you a long time ago, Kal-El. There is nothing I can do to make up for that, and everything I can offer now is not enough for what you have been through."
"It wasn't your fault!"
"Tell that to William. Tell that to yourself."
Clark took a deep breath and met his eyes, those storm-colored ancient eyes that he for some reason could not see through, though the rest of the Baron's body was pretty much normal-human to x-rays, aside from a disconcerting impression of perfection. "Okay. I will."
John smiled, and it was like being basked in sudden sunlight. "Is that a promise?"
Clark steeled himself to face a future of trying not to blame himself. "Yes."
"I am holding you to that. If you break your promise, I will tell Lake." He turned to the desk behind him, and picked up a remote phone. "I don't believe the people who sent you here meant for you to become a dictator, Clark. The language is ambiguous because of the cultural context, which is something you'll have to get used to on this planet too. There are many ways to rule, and force is the least effective in the long run." He gestured around. "As you have seen here, I hope.
"Krypton's one-world society was a rigid one, but not a cruel one. My feeling is that you were meant to "lead with strength" by setting an example for this all-too-confused world, because you are a strong and worthy example to be followed. Because of who you are, not just what you are -- a very good person, a kind and thoughtful and caring person, even at your age. A young man who went alone, and nearly on your own, through some of the toughest trials anyone could ever be put through. Short of actual combat. And we don't usually send little children into combat unless there is nothing left to lose. We need to broaden your history reading. You tended to score better on the worst examples our planet has set, and not so well on the heroes."
Clark scowled a little, but it was the truth. He identified more with the morbid than with the happy times. "All gods have feet of clay, and come to a bad end," he muttered.
John actually chuckled. "You're thinking of wars again. I'm not talking about gods, Clark. You know full well our prohibition against playing god, Lake and Dylana's occasional rampages notwithstanding. I'm talking about heroes, the day-to-day hero that can be there in all of us. The hero that needs only a little encouragement, an example, to come out in everyone.
"I suggest you read up on, oh, for example, the early days of the space program, to see what mortal hands and minds will actually dare to try. What the most talented among us can aspire to, what even the most vulnerable will rush into, no matter what the cost we risk for failure. Have you never run across the phrase, 'our reach must exceed our grasp'?" Clark would have sworn on a stack of glowing rocks of all colors that a wistful expression for the good old days -- wistful! John! letting him see! -- crossed his face. "Oh, of course there was the lighter stuff, too. Engineers and technicians would have fistfights on the floor of the VAB over pressurization tolerances. But it was a chance to do everything we could do, give our all, in a great and worthy cause. One of the few places I can be proud to say, I was there."
John looked down at the phone he'd been toying with. "What is a quest, Clark? What is your destiny, Kal-El? You are both, and together, searching for something. You didn't have to be ordered to do that. It's part of living and growing older -- growing up -- for everyone." The centuries-old man made a conspiratorial sound of amusement. "Even I learn something new every day, if I'm not very careful to keep my eyes and ears and mind closed.
"Can't the time you spend searching, and learning, be considered your quest? This is a huge and enormously complex world all on its own, Clark Kal-El Kent. Most people never see a fraction of it. Even I can barely claim to have scratched the surface."
*Our* quest. Clark looked down, blinking. I can be both. I *am* both. And I can be accepted as both. No, as what he said. As one and the same. I can be from Krypton, and still call Earth my home. "There is an awful lot," he whispered.
"As you and I and a few others are uniquely in a position to know. And we also know that there are no easy ways out. Is reaching your full potential what all your parents wanted for you? Is opening up and accepting all that you are, doing everything you can do and be, facing up to all that there is both out there and inside, enough to satisfy the hopes for the last survivor of a destroyed world and the lawyer's daughter who married a stubborn farmer?"
Clark wished that to be a rhetorical question, but John sat waiting for an answer, with the patience of someone who had had centuries to learn to wait. "It will have to be, won't it?" he said heavily. Looking for an answer. Looking for something to hold onto.
"No," John said gently. "Nothing has to be unless we let it be. Wars don't have to be. Hatred and fear do not have to be. I don't even have to leave this room. Neither does anyone else. But we choose to, just as we make the decision sometime to do both the very wrong and the very good. Because we can."
Not much to hold onto. But Clark straightened his shoulders. It was a massive weight, the weight of this world. Two worlds. He wondered how others had borne it, without his physical strength. Yet somehow, they had. "Okay. I can try. To choose it to be."
John regarded him for a long half-minute from those storm-colored eyes, seemingly impassive. Inside, despite his years, he was anything but. Make or break, with all of Earth in the balance. John had no illusions about the future, having so much of the past to draw from. Earth was entering an age where half its crazy population could destroy everything, not to mention what might still be lurking out there among the billions of stars. Clark could be the whole planet's best hope of salvation. Or the mind-damaged teenager could become its most dangerous threat.
The others had done all they could. The Baron was the last chance that the world had left.
"As someone who has seen a lot of people giving their all," John said in a carefully normal, friendly, quiet tone, "My opinion is that you'll succeed." His eyes glittered as if lightning had flickered through the clouds. "You would have loved meeting Marie Curie. Remind me to tell you about her some time."
He glanced at something on his desk screen, and that sunlight smile that Lake must have learned from, when she allowed herself to actually feel happiness, lit his face again. "In the meantime, the circumstances beyond my control that I mentioned was the time it took to convince your parents and friends to meet at Lex's place so they could make use of his better-secured privacy circuit. I prefer not to give out my personal number to every operator in Kansas." He held out the phone to Clark just as it rang. "I believe this call is for you."
Clark damn near bolted for the door. He made it five steps at full speed before the situation -- the timing, the conversation, the whole setup, registered on him.
No circumstances were ever beyond John's control, not even Clark's. The Baron's choices might be incomprehensible to those without his unimaginable experience, but if John chose to play god, no one, not even Lake or Nicole or Dylana or Kal-El, were ever out of his reach.
He stopped, and braced himself, and turned back to meet John's level, challenging, sympathetic, expectant gaze. It was harder to face than opening the vault in Lab 8.
But he took the phone.
