Man of Steel

  Perry White, editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet, sat behind his desk in the corner office. A glass partition allowed him to keep an eye on the busy bullpen outside. He was a veteran newsman, whose dark hair was graying at the temples. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.

  A pained sigh escaped his lips.

  “I can’t publish this, Lois,” he said. “You could’ve hallucinated half of it.”

  But she had anticipated his response.

  “What about the civilian contractors who corroborated my story?”

  “The Pentagon is denying there was a ship,” he countered.

  “That’s what they’re supposed to do!” she replied. “Come on, Perry. This is me we’re talking about. I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter—”

  “Then act like one.” He kneaded the bridge of his nose, as though he felt a headache coming on. “Our circulation is getting hammered, and you bring me this crap?”

  Lois sympathized, but she would not be silenced. This story was too big to bury.

  “Print it or I walk,” she said flatly.

  “You can’t. You’re under contract.” He leaned forward. “Drop it, Lois. There’s no way I’m running a story about an ‘alien among us.’ It’s never going to happen.”

  She recognized the stubborn tone in his voice. He wasn’t going to budge.

  Fine, she thought. I have other options.

  * * *

  “One Old-Fashioned for the lady.”

  The bartender placed a tumbler down in front of her. The Ace O’Clubs was a waterfront dive in the bad part of town. Ordinarily, Lois wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this, unless she was on the track of a story. But she was working the gutters tonight. She removed a thumb drive from her purse and slid it down the bar to the sleazeball sitting next to her.

  “This is the original article,” she said, keeping her voice low. “My editor won’t publish it, but if it happened to leak online...”

  Glen Woodburn picked up the drive. He was a scuzzy, middle-aged newshound who reeked of booze and tobacco.

  “Didn’t you once describe my site as ‘a creeping cancer of falsehoods’?”

  “I stand by my words, Woodburn,” she said, “But I want this story out there. So if you post this, I’ll feed you more.”

  He eyed her suspiciously, trying to figure out her angle.

  “Why?”

  She decided to stick with the facts.

  “Because I want my mystery man to know I know the truth.”

  Whatever that was.

  * * *

  A polar bear loped along the Arctic mountain range where the alien spaceship had come to rest. Half buried beneath windblown snow, the ship was anchored to the remote, inaccessible summit like a fortress. The bear growled at the object, and then gave it a wide berth.

  Inside the craft, Clark heard the bear amble by. With any luck, that would be the only visitor to stumble upon the ship’s location. A short flight had carried it hundreds of miles away from Ellesmere, or any other human settlement. In theory, he finally had time to explore it at his leisure, now that he had left NORTHCOM—and Lois Lane—behind.

  He hoped he hadn’t scared her too much.

  Pushing thoughts of the attractive reporter out of his head, he inspected the lifeless bridge. A port matching the one he’d used to deactivate the mechanical sentry was located on what appeared to be a control cylinder. He took his key, which he’d retrieved from the other port, and moved to insert it experimentally into the console.

  Here goes nothing, he thought.

  Once again the key fit perfectly. A glowing threedimensional display appeared above the trunk-like cylinder. Streams of alien code spiraled across the screen as the console booted up. Clark braced himself for liftoff, just in case the ship decided to take off again. He still wasn’t quite sure why the ship had launched the first time, or chosen to set down here in the Arctic.

  To his relief, it didn’t happen again. Instead, a threedimensional figure materialized upon the bridge. Clark recognized the bearded man as the stranger who had led him on a chase before, through the bowels of the ship. He realized now that the man was actually some kind of holographic projection.

  Not a survivor then, he thought. I’m still alone.

  The hologram smiled fondly. His deep voice was strangely reassuring.

  “You made it,” he said. “We prayed you would, but actually seeing you here, grown into an adult.” He smiled ruefully. “Gods, I wish Lara could have witnessed this.”

  Clark stared at the figure, who seemed know him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am your father, Kal. Or rather,” he corrected himself, “a shadow of him. His consciousness... and conscience. My name was Jor-El.”

  You have another father.

  Another name.

  Clark was staggered by the revelation—overcome with emotion by the sight of his birth father. This was far more than he had ever expected to find.

  “And... Kal-El? Is that my name?”

  The holographic figure nodded. “It is.”

  “I have so many questions,” Clark said, unsure where to begin. “Where did I come from? Why did you send me here?”

  The hologram, which was apparently tied into the ship’s computers, gestured broadly and an array of virtual display screens surrounded them. Alien text and images scrolled past. A colossal red sun appeared, and Clark shaded his eyes.

  On another screen, horned beasts with armored hides roamed an unearthly landscape. Humanoid figures rode upon flying creatures that looked like a cross between a seal and dragonfly. A domed citadel was rooted to the top of a high cliff, much as the ship was currently anchored to the mountain. Multiple moons shone in the sky.

  “You came from Krypton,” Jor-El continued. “A world with a much harsher environment than Earth’s.”

  City-states spread across alien continents like time-lapsed images of growing coral colonies. Mighty starships, not unlike the one in which he stood, were built and launched into space. Their thrusters lit up the endless black.

  “Long ago, in an era of expansion, our race spread out through the stars, seeking new worlds to settle upon. This scout ship was one of thousands launched into the void.”

  A vast interstellar armada spread out across the galaxy, leaving Krypton’s red sun behind. Clark watched, rapt, as the history of a people he had never known played out before his eyes.

  “We built outposts on other planets, using great machines to reshape the environments to our needs.”

  Kryptonian explorers, sealed inside rigid space suits, set foot on distant planets, some inhospitable to life. Gargantuan World Engines, resembling immense walking oil rigs, set about transforming alien environments into something more suitable. Skies changed colors. Land masses shifted. Icecaps melted into oceans...

  “For a hundred thousand years, our civilization flourished, accomplishing wonders.” At that moment, Clark caught a trace of melancholy in the hologram’s voice.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Space exploration was abandoned,” Jor-El explained. “We exhausted our natural resources. As a result, our planet’s core became unstable. Eventually, our military leader—General Zod—attempted a coup. But by then, it was too late.”

  Civil war erupted across the myriad screens. A paramilitary force, armed with futuristic weapons and aircraft, turned on the government, which had its own defenders. The alien gunships resembled flying crustaceans—scarabs, trilobites, and crabs.

  Bursts of white-hot plasma streaked a dim red sky. Explosions and crashing ships wreaked havoc on an alien metropolis where curved domes and spires reflected the biology-based architecture of the scout ship. Clark was saddened to see that his hidden history was one of war and destruction. It sounded as if Krypton was no better than Earth, in some respects.

  It had its bullies, too.

  The planet itself began to come apart on the screens. Veins of glowing green magma—most likely
radioactive— broke through the crust, erupting all across the globe. It was like Krakatoa or Vesuvius, times one billion.

  “Your mother and I, however, foresaw the coming calamity and took steps to ensure your survival. I knew the ancient scout ships were still out there. Left to rust on worlds we’d once considered colonizing.”

  Like Earth, Clark realized. Twenty thousand years ago.

  Jor-El crossed the bridge, leading him past the threedimensional screens to the platform overlooking the large, liquid-filled compartment. Clark was briefly distracted by the reference to his birth mother, but focused his attention on what the hologram was saying.

  “This is a Genesis Chamber. Every scout ship came equipped with one. In the past, all Kryptonians were conceived in chambers such as this. Every child was designed to fulfill a predetermined role in our society as a worker, a warrior, a leader, and so on. Zod had his own vision for the future, one that only included the bloodlines he deemed worthy. But your mother and I envisioned something even more revolutionary.”

  Jor-El turned away from the chamber to look at Clark.

  “We believed that Krypton had lost something precious,” he continued. “The element of choice, of chance. What if a child dreamed of becoming something other than what society intended for him? What if he aspired to something greater? We wanted to restore that possibility. We wanted to eliminate the class distinctions entirely.”

  He gazed proudly at his son. His brown eyes held both warmth and wisdom.

  “You were the embodiment of that belief, Kal. Krypton’s first live birth in centuries. That’s why we risked so much to save you.”

  It was a lot to absorb. Clark wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about all of this.

  I’m not just an alien, he thought, I’m a special alien. One of a kind?

  Alone?

  Lost in thought, he followed Jor-El to the armory he had visited before. The space suits and skintight garments were still hanging in their nooks. Fashions from a dead planet.

  “Was anyone else saved?” Clark asked. “What about you? My mother?”

  “My memories extend only up until the moment your ship was launched. Beyond that, I can know nothing.” His voice held sympathy, yet little in the way of hope for those left behind. “Given the enormity of the disaster threatening our world, it seems unlikely that anyone could have survived.”

  Clark gathered that the real Jor-El had downloaded this virtual version into the key found in the starcraft that had brought him to Earth as a baby. He must have planned that “Kal-El” would be drawn to the buried scout ship.

  “Why didn’t you come with me?” Clark asked.

  “We couldn’t, Kal. No matter how much we loved you, we were a product of our world’s failures as much as Zod was, tied to its fate. Trapped in ancient tribal divisions. We knew that.”

  His sad, thoughtful tone reminded Clark of his dad, Jonathan Kent, who had also fretted about his son’s future—and what it meant for Earth.

  “So I’m alone,” Clark said.

  Jor-El shook his head.

  “You are not. You’re as much a child of Earth now as you are of Krypton. You can embody the best of both worlds. The dream your mother and I gave our lives to preserve.

  “The people of Earth are different from us, it’s true,” he continued, “but I believe that’s a good thing. They won’t make the same mistakes we did. Not if you guide them, Kal. Not if you bring them hope.”

  He gestured at the big red “S” on the blue suit, then drew back his own robes to reveal the same “S” embossed on his own uniform.

  “That’s what this symbol means. That’s what you can bring them.”

  Hope.

  C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N

  Clark emerged from the Fortress feeling like a different person.

  I probably look like one, too, he mused.

  The steel-blue suit, which had once belonged to a distant ancestor, fit him perfectly. The crest of the House of El was emblazoned in crimson upon his broad chest. A gust of Arctic wind lifted the red cape that now flowed from his shoulders. The colorful outfit was like nothing he had ever worn before, but felt natural upon his frame.

  His face was clean-shaven. Now that he knew where he came from, he didn’t feel a need to hide his features any longer. It felt as if he was becoming somebody new.

  But who?

  He stopped and stood framed beneath the arched entrance of the space craft, lit from behind by the bright interior lights. The incandescent glow cast his shadow across the snowy mountain peak. Jor-El’s voice echoed in his memory as he lifted his eyes to the clear blue polar sky. As it did, he recalled his own urgent questions.

  “Why am I so different from them?” he had asked.

  “Earth’s sun is younger, brighter than Krypton’s was,”

  Jor-El had explained back in the armory. “Your cells have drunk its radiation, strengthening your muscles, your skin, your senses. Earth’s gravity is weaker, its atmosphere more nourishing. You’ve grown stronger here than I ever could have imagined.” He indicated the blue-and-red skinsuit. “The only way to know how strong is to keep testing your limits.”

  With that thought, Clark turned toward the sun. He felt its light and heat upon his face. He looked out across the desolate mountain range, full of dramatic peaks and crevasses. The looming mountains made the giant oil rig seem like a kid’s climbing gym, by comparison. An icy ledge ended in a steep precipice several yards away. A matching ledge rose up again in the distance.

  He took a deep breath to steel himself.

  I can do this, he thought. Jor-El says I can do this.

  Throwing caution to the wind—and possibly himself, as well—he ran toward the ledge and leapt over the gaping chasm, landing on the other side in a single bound. His heart filled with exhilaration and he repeated the feat, again and again, each leap propelling him higher and higher, until he was practically flying.

  Jor-El’s words urged him on.

  “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive toward.”

  But he was just getting warmed up. Almost flying wasn’t good enough, not any more. Balling his fists, he threw his arms out in front of him and launched himself up, up, and away—into the open air.

  Despite his enthusiasm, it was an ungainly flight. Screaming out loud, like a passenger on a roller coaster, he corkscrewed through the sky, losing control. Powerful wind currents buffeted him.

  He began to lose altitude.

  “They will race behind you. They will stumble. They will fall.”

  A snowy slope seemed to rush up to meet him. He crashed into the side of a mountain, setting off an avalanche. His body bounced and skidded across the rocky ground and over gaping crevasses. Momentum carried him for miles. Unlucky boulders were pulverized by the impact.

  Finally he came to rest at the bottom of a freshly carved crater. The ravaged mountainside looked as though a meteor had hit it. Wincing, he rose to his feet and brushed off the snow and powdered stone dusting his skin and uniform. A quick inspection revealed that the Kryptonian skinsuit was just as durable as Jor-El had promised—his crash landing hadn’t even scratched it, so that it appeared good as new. Even the flowing red cape was still in one piece.

  Clark chose to accept that as a positive omen.

  I actually flew, he realized. Not very well, but...

  He couldn’t wait to try again. So he turned his eyes skyward once more, drawing strength from the golden daylight. Then, without hesitation, he hurled himself back into the sky. Ice and rock shattered beneath the force of his leap.

  “But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal,” Jor-El had said. “In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.”

  The last son of Krypton soared above his adopted world, higher than any bird or plane. Slowly getting the hang of it, he flew smoothly through the sky, gazing in awe at the Arctic wilderness that now lay so very far below. For perhaps the first time, he felt comfortable using his uni
que abilities, as though he was finally doing what he was always meant to.

  Tears stung his eyes. No longer earthbound, he jetted across the planet at more than supersonic speed. He could go anywhere now, do anything, be anyone.

  Even a superman.

  * * *

  Leaving the barren polar region behind, he zipped across the ocean to Kenya, where he cruised above a grassy savannah, barnstorming a herd of stampeding zebras. He whooped in delight as the hot African sun filled him with speed and energy. He waved good-bye to the animals as he rocketed back up into the jet stream, heading west toward America.

  Miles sped by in seconds. A cool ocean spray pelted his face as he skimmed across the Atlantic—by focusing, he could allow himself to feel it, to enjoy it. The salty air was fresh and invigorating, adding to his exuberance. If only his friends the humpback whales—not to the mention the captain and crew of the Debbie Sue—could see him now!

  Reaching North America faster than any commercial jet, he took an aerial tour of Monument Valley, Utah. Testing himself, he wove through the rusty limestone buttes and mesas jutting up from the desert floor. His fist stretched out in front to control his flight, he banked and rolled like a fighter jet. He took a corner too quickly and clipped the edge of a towering rock formation, sending a loose boulder plummeting toward the cacti that grew on the desert floor.

  Oops.

  He dived after the dislodged rock, catching it with one hand before it hit the ground. He placed it safely on top of a convenient mesa before continuing on his way, climbing higher and higher into the sky. A thick layer of clouds hung before him, but he punched through the misty barrier and emerged into the sunlight.

  The bright, yellow sunlight.

  * * *

  How do you find someone who’s spent a lifetime covering his tracks?

  Lois began back at Ellesmere, where she showed around a blurry surveillance photo of “Joe.” The military personnel wouldn’t speak to her, naturally, but at least she got Jed Eubanks to talk a little bit about his former employee.

  Off the record, of course.

  Returning to Metropolis, she looked for the urban legends that had sprung up in the mystery man’s wake. A wild story, posted on the internet, led her to a trucker bar in Yellowknife, where a sweet young waitress named Chrissy shared an amazing story about a scruffy young busboy—and an eighteen-wheeler that got reduced to scrap under mysterious circumstances. The rig had belonged to a trucker called Ludlow, but he hung up on Lois every time she got hold of him.