Lex had discovered that being held captive by a lunatic could actually be pretty tedious. They were now in the barn; in the search for his mystery object, Dolman had moved through the farm's outer buildings, his progress impeded all along the way by trying to keep Lex in his sights.
Meanwhile, the ranting continued sporadically, enough that Lex felt he might be driven mad himself. The first thing I'm going to do when I get hold of that gun is to tell him to shut the hell up, Lex thought.
At the same time, Lex listened for any new information in Dolman's blather. Coherence was frustratingly sparse. In his mind, the man seemed to be bouncing back and forth between two lives, the real one that Lex knew — at least it held true with what Lex knew of Dolman's history — and the imaginary one in which Lex had wreaked havoc with the world. And Dolman seemed to think this upheaval had happened since last night.
The trouble was, while Lex held a much clearer idea of the reality he was living, memories of his dream still wandered in his mind, and were not expelled by the traumatic events of the day, by his fears for Lois, or by his strategizing to overcome Dolman. Not even by the prospect of seeing his mother again after so many years. Kal-El rescuing him from drowning, his father at the riverside — it felt as though these things had actually happened, and though it was not quite Dolman's level of confusion ...
No, Lex thought, he's affecting my state of mind, and I'm letting my imagination run away with me. It's not related. He tried to set it aside.
Dolman paused in his hunt and spoke as if instructing himself: "Figure out how to get back to before the fracture, and reroute the signal from there ..." He nodded, satisfied, and halfheartedly resumed the nearly exhausted search of the dusty barn.
"Look, Dr. Dolman," Lex ventured. "I'll tell you again: If I've taken something from you, I didn't hide it here. I haven't been here for over seven years."
"You didn't hide it," Dolman said, as if Lex were being deliberately obtuse. "You used it. It would have been left where it was when you sent the message."
This was new. "Message?"
It was new to Dolman as well, apparently. He stopped, perplexed. "Yes, of course," he mused. "That's how you did it."
"Tell me, Doctor, what's the likelihood that I'd be using your ... whatever it is ... under, say, an old couch in a barn?" He gestured toward the loft, where Dolman had overturned furniture that Martha had left in place from Lex's own youthful sanctuary.
A dawn of realization gave Dolman the closest look of sanity he had demonstrated all day. "You wouldn't. Even if you stashed the Kryptonite here, you wouldn't have the electrical power necessary. But where would that be?" He stared at Lex.
Dolman's back was to the partially open door. Lex struggled to keep his face impassive as he saw a figure slip inside, raising one of Jonathan's old shotguns.
"You ..." Dolman was saying. "Level Three ... I should have remembered."
The shotgun touched the back of Dolman's neck. "Put the gun down."
Dolman started, and before he could comply, Lex seized the chance and wrenched the pistol from the scientist's hand, where Dolman had held it lax in his reverie moments before. Dolman seemed poised for flight briefly, then sagged in defeat.
"Hi, Mom," Lex said with a rueful smile.
"What ... what is going on?" Martha stammered, her eyes wide with astonishment.
"Hold on," Lex said, and rapidly checked Dolman for weapons. He doubted any could have got by White House security, but better to be safe.
As expected, there were no weapons. But from Dolman's breast pocket Lex pulled a small cylindrical object.
"Quite the gadget man aren't you? What is this?"
Dolman merely looked sullen.
"You have nothing to lose by cooperating — just tell me!"
"It's how I got you here."
"It works the transporter? Can we use it to get out of here?"
Dolman was regaining his maddening air of irritation at the stupidity of Lex's questions. "It needs the homing beacon," he snapped. "You activate that, you'll just end up in the cellar."
"Useful," Lex said dryly.
"It's a prototype!"
Lex pocketed the object, then turned to his mother. "Sorry. We can't be caught off guard with this one. Still — God, it's good to see you."
She lowered the shotgun, letting her son keep Dolman in check. "It's wonderful to see you, too, sweetheart." She smiled warmly, even if she still looked slightly dazed.
The certainty that she was alive lifted an enormous burden from Lex's heart. She looked healthy, even if the toll on her face seemed to be more than seven years' worth.
"You're good?" he asked her. "You've been okay?"
"I can't lie and say it hasn't been difficult. But right now" — she laughed a little — "it feels like I've never been happier. Except, well, how did you get here? And who ...?" Martha trailed off with a look at Dolman, who was scowling at the ceiling.
"Mom, this is Dr. Shawn Dolman. Member of my scientific advisory committee, spy for Kal-El, and my kidnapper. Dr. Dolman, this is my mother, Martha Kent."
Dolman responded with a dismissive snort.
"Don't take it personally," Lex told Martha. "He's kind of mad at me. Plus, he's more than a little insane."
"He kidnapped you for Kal-El and brought you here? Why?"
"No, he's a free agent in this, as far as I can tell. As for what he wants, that's a bit ... muddled."
"You can explain it to me in the house." She held up a hand as Lex started to protest. "You can bring Dr. Dolman along. We can keep an eye on him just as well there."
So the three crossed to the farmhouse, Lex following behind his mother with Dolman by the arm and at gunpoint. The one-way limitation of the transporter was unwelcome news, Lex thought. Stranded in the heart of the Zone, saddled with an unstable companion — he considered it was worth weighing the option of just letting Dolman go to fend for himself. But even if Lex had to trek out of Kansas on foot, this time he was determined not to leave his mother behind.
Lex felt a rush of aching familiarity as they entered through the kitchen door. The room, once the center of Kent family life, had not changed so much even since he had left for college, but like rest of the farm, it had acquired a layer of age and deterioration that his mother's housekeeping could not disguise.
Dolman looked about the kitchen curiously. Then he abruptly announced, apparently having taken in the evidence: "This isn't your home. It's ludicrous to think you belong here."
Martha frowned skeptically. Lex shrugged and dragged Dolman to the dining room table, ordering, "Sit down and shut up. I need to figure out how to get out of this mess you made —"
Dolman sat, but interrupted, "There is no way out of this. That's obvious to me now."
"My plan," Lex resumed irritably, "may eventually involve letting you go, so in your own best interest, keep your ravings to yourself."
"Lex." Martha cut off the squabble. "Tell me what's going on."
The gently forceful reproof in her voice cut Lex short, reminiscent as it was of the times past she had played referee between her husband and son. "Sorry, Mom," he said a little sheepishly. And he launched into what he knew of the events of the past hours, and tried to sum up what he had gathered from Dolman.
"It is possible that he was supposed to be abducting me for Kal-El, but he decided to follow his own very confused agenda," Lex said as he finished his tale.
"If he was supposed to be taking you to Kal-El ... his people watch this place, Lex, I know it. I wouldn't be surprised if they already knew you were here. But at least, in case of that," she smiled slightly, "I have something for you."
She handed him a ring. It was his, a gift from Lois when they were first dating, evidence of her twisted sense of humor, he had thought at the time. A ring set with meteor rock: It was supposed to remind him of his hometown and of the meteor crash that marked it — and marked him, leaving him bald since the age of nine. It wasn't until later he had come to suspect she knew even then that it could be a defensive weapon. Lex had left the ring with his mother; taking it had been Martha's concession when she had insisted on staying on the farm.
"You carry this with you, at all times?" he asked her.
"Well, I took it with me when I thought there were intruders in the barn, but I felt better with the shotgun, too. It's not like people out here see much of Kal-El himself. He has his thugs to take care of things. But if we know he's after you right now, you can take it as a safeguard."
Lex sighed, but did as he was told and put it on his finger. He concluded his explanation of the morning's mysteries: "Dolman doesn't know anything about Lois being part of the original plot, so he says. Whatever was going on before Dolman got me, the gunshots ... I hope she's okay."
"Probably not," Dolman broke in. "You think she's yours. She's not. It's all been turned around, and you don't even see it. It's all to your advantage, and you don't see it. But you thoroughly botched it for the rest of us, and it can't be changed. Without the Chrono-etalon, it can't be changed."
"If you're so convinced that I sent some message that ruined your life —"
"— and everyone else's —"
"Right. Did you ever think, in that addled brain of yours, that just maybe you can't remember that you were the one who sent the message that somehow destroyed your life? Yes, and everyone else's but mine, because clearly things are going so well for me at the moment. Did you ever think that if you're the creator of this device, then it's your fault?"
Dolman seemed briefly taken aback, then recovered. "Impossible. I would not have caused all this. I had a simple idea: discover Superman before the rest of the world did —"
"What? Discover who?"
"I found out who he was, when he arrived here, how to disable him. I could have been rich and famous, and free of you. Instead, I'm trapped, and I never received that message, and I can't remember my life, and I've gone from being your slave to his!"
"It sounds like you're remembering more now," Martha said.
Lex picked up on her composed, encouraging tone and emulated it as best he could. He sat next to Dolman and said, "Dr. Dolman, if you can just explain what that device of yours does, maybe we can work this out. Try to think ..."
Dolman pressed his fingers to his temples, slipping away again. "We can't ... It's gone."
"I know. But if you had it, what would you have done?"
"Sent a different message, erase what you did ..."
"Lex —" Martha's voice was suddenly dark with alarm. She touched her son's arm, and he noticed the sound of tires on the gravel drive. Lex stood up, and with Martha, moved rapidly to the front room to see what was coming. Heedless of his status as prisoner, Dolman followed, nervously craning for a look. The trio saw through the window a sleek black vehicle come to a halt.
"Oh dear God," Martha whispered as the driver exited.
Kal-El was here.
"Damn it, Dolman, this was a set-up all along?" Lex demanded as he turned to the scientist, who was deathly pale.
But evidently Kal-El's arrival was not something Dolman had expected or wanted. In a blind panic, he bolted for the front door. Both Lex and Martha shouted after him — Lex discovered that in a crunch, he wasn't willing to use the gun — but Dolman ignored them and was gone, desperately heading for the dormant fields.