Author's note: I'm only posting one chapter this time. I noticed on my stats page that there were more hits to the second chapter postings than the first, so it made me think that some people may not be expecting two chapters and are missing reading the first ones posted! Oops!
Chapter 13
The sterile atmosphere reminded Clark at once of all the labs he'd ever seen in the many buildings of Luthorcorp. The smiles on the employees looked a bit more assuring, but still, this was a research facility. A human research facility. That couldn't be good.
Lois led him through a maze of corridors with an assuredness that told him she'd been there more than once to be able to wend her way this quickly through such a jumble of rooms, hallways, labs and waiting areas. At last, she came to a halt in front of a non-descript office with a frosted glass door. The name emblazoned across the glass was Dr. Bernard Kline.
Lois looked at him nervously and Clark rolled his eyes as she rapped on the door.
"Lois, I don't think—"
"You promised you'd just meet him. Don't chicken out on me now, Smallville." No one answered the door so Lois smiled and opened it herself. Clark followed her in, hoping against all hope that the doctor was not in that afternoon.
"Dr. Kline?"
No one sat behind the desk in the office, and Clark saw Lois' shoulders slump in disappointment.
The next moment, a small explosion caused her to jump. He turned to see smoke coming from an adjacent room and then sped through the open doorway.
"Clark?" Lois turned to find him gone. "Clark?" Then she too ran through the open doorway to see Clark already helping Dr. Kline up from the floor.
"Uh…thanks. That was…uh…well, that didn't quite go as expected." He straightened his smock and looked sadly at the remains of an exploded beaker on the lab counter. "Ah, Miss Lane, good to see you again." He smiled at her and looked back at Clark. "Who's your friend?"
"Clark Kent, Dr. Kline. I work with Lois at the Planet. Nice to meet you." He offered his hand.
Dr. Kline looked down at it like he was unfamiliar with the whole custom of a handshake. Then he said, "Oh, right. Mr. Kent. Glad to meet you." He shook the proffered hand a little too vigorously to be polite, and Clark looked at Lois doubtfully. "We don't get too many visitors in this area of the complex, you know."
"If this happens around here often, I can see why," Clark said dryly, as he gestured toward the debris littering the lab counter.
"Well, yes, I suppose it does. But without experimentation, there can be no advances. Now, do either of you want some tea?" He held up a large beaker of decidedly purple liquid and both Clark and Lois immediately declined. "It's really good. Four times the caffeine as regular tea though."
Lois's eyebrows went up and she opened her mouth before reconsidering and saying, "No, no thanks." Clark shot her another impatient look and she thought it best to get right to the point. "Dr. Kline, we—"
"You," Clark corrected.
She began again, "I wanted to ask you about the kind of tests you can run on, say, a man who is very special to …uh…determine …just how special he is." She looked at Clark and decided this whole thing would be a lot easier if he wasn't here. Her wording was going to have to be so careful.
"And who is this special person?" Dr. Kline asked, pouring some of the "tea" into a smaller beaker and watching it immediately began to foam. "One of you?"
Clark shifted his weight and looked down at the floor while Lois struggled to choose just the right words. "No, no. He's a special …guy…um…who has some intriguing abilities… and he'd like to know—"
"You'd like to know," Clark spoke up again.
"Sheesh, Clark, will you give it a rest! You know," she grabbed Clark's arm and pulled him towards the door, "why don't you just wait outside and let me handle this? Okay?"
"Lois, I don't think this is—"
At that instant, Clark's hearing tuned in to a rumble deep within the earth below them. It was an earthquake, not very close, but a big one and he was going to be needed.
"Uh…maybe you're right. You have a nice chat with the good doctor and I'll just be running along. I need to—"
"Right. Of course you do. Well, go. Just go!" She was plainly irritated and he'd be paying for this later, but the rumbling was getting louder and he didn't really have time for making up excuses, so he left without saying another word.
"Does he do that often?" Dr. Kline had been watching the exchange with interest. "Just disappear like that?"
"You wouldn't believe how often," she said in exasperation, even though this exit of Clark's was probably going to work to her advantage. She clapped her hands and began rubbing them together and approached the doctor again. "Dr. Kline, you've heard of Superman?"
"Superman? Yes, of course. Guy in the red cape, flies around a lot and saves people?"
"That's him." She smiled nervously. There was just no easy way to get around this subject. She was just going to do it the old Lane way – plow right in and toss a grenade. "Dr. Kline, it seems there might be a lot of things that Superman may not know about his own body...like his—"
"His limits? You know, I've been really interested in that subject too. He really should be tested to quantify just how strong he really is, the stressors he's placing on his own physiology, that sort of thing. And those vision powers, do you know if we could study his—"
"Dr. Kline, I'm not really talking about his limits. I was wondering more about how he, I mean, if he…Well, Dr. Kline the question of sex has come up!"
"Sex?" Dr. Kline raised one eyebrow. "Oh, Miss Lane, I'm pretty sure he's a man. Of course, with an alien race, it might be difficult to tell—"
"For crying out loud, Dr. Kline, I know he's a man." She sighed. God, did she know that! "No, I mean sex. Can he have it?"
The beaker of liquid and Dr. Kline's mouth both dropped to the floor.
Lois plowed on, her need to know trumping her embarrassment. "Would it hurt a girl …well, let's just say, for argument's sake, a girl like me, for instance?" The doctor was looking at her like she'd turned the color of the tea decorating his pants and the floor.
"You want to have sex with Superman?" he whispered.
"Well, no, I mean, yes, of course, I mean, what girl wouldn't want to…Look, that's not important. I just want to know if he can have sex with …" she saw the confusion on the doctors' face and relented, "okay…with me, all right, happy?" She rolled her eyes to the sky thanking the heavens that Clark had left. "I mean he's super…man of steel…abs of steel…buns of steel… everything else of steel…so would that equal sperm of steel? You get my meaning here? See where I'm going with this? Oh, please say you do, because this is kind of awkward here, and maybe Clark was right. This is stupid. I have no right—"
"No, no, Miss Lane, I see exactly the problem you have here. Superman being an alien and all, he's a total unknown quantity in many areas." He leaned in close. "Are you dating Superman?" he asked in a conspiratorial manner and grinned.
"Uh, no. No." The answer was flat. Final. Only-in-my-dreams final. "But if I ever … if he ever…then it would be a good thing to know. You can see the problem. I mean who wants to start something you can't finish, you know?"
"Oh, yes. I see, I see. Like cock the gun and call off the hunt?"
Lois cringed.
"Well, you know, there are tests one could run to find the answers."
"Really? You could do that? Because I think it would be a good idea, you know, just for, well, future reference, just in case…I mean if he ever…And then there's like the whole question of children?" She started pacing. "Could he have them? Is it possible? I mean, I don't even know if he likes kids, really. He might actually not ever want any." For some reason that made her sad. "Would they have his powers? I mean flying two-year-olds is a very scary thought. Very strong, flying kids! Oh, my!" She felt the palms of her hands go clammy. "And then there's the nothing can hurt him thing. God, what if he never changes, never ages? But…oh…my…god." Lois was going into babbling mode now and new thoughts were popping up in her mind like little rabbits in a carrot patch. "Oh, god."
"Miss. Lane. Here." The doctor brought a chair to her and she sank gratefully down into it. He handed her a glass of water. As she took it from him, she couldn't help but examine it carefully and even give it a sniff before drinking it.
"All of these questions are very good ones actually, Miss Lane. But you know, if this institution or, for example, I, as a principal investigator, should conduct such tests to find those answers, Superman himself would be the subject and it would be totally up to him as to what tests, how many and how they would be conducted. I'm afraid the results would not be available to you at all unless he chose to release that information to you himself. We do follow HIPPA guidelines at this facility." He smiled at her.
"What?"
"HIPPA."
She still looked at him blankly.
"Privacy law stuff."
"Oh. But you could do it?"
"Oh, of course. But it's a mute point at this juncture, since the patient we're discussing has not even expressed any desire to be examined. In fact, I thought he distinctly said in one interview I read that he would not submit to any testing under any circumstances. That sounded rather definite to me. And if he doesn't want to, I doubt there's much anyone can do to make him."
Lois huffed. "Well, we'll see about that."
