Tempus Fugitive Revisited - (Part 1 of 8)

By Kaz from Oz (alakazam@geko.com.au)

Summary: A thoughtful, intriguing rewrite of the episode "Tempus
Fugitive," in which a darker, more sinister Tempus travels back
in time to attempt his murderous agenda.

Eeeeek ... I just can't think about time travel any more! Like a
spider's web, one wrong move and you're stuck! Debby Stark
suggested that I attempt this to work through my discomfort about
TF, so you have her to thank (blame?) Otherwise, I might never
have attempted this sort of thing - at least, not a revelation
story, and certainly not this one. I'm convinced Lois and Clark
have actually moved beyond the people they are in this story.
Next time, it will be very different.

Still, I've managed to get a lot of what irked me about the
episode off my chest, and actually had great fun researching the
time period. I especially enjoyed taking pieces of the original
script and putting them in entirely different places to alter the
emphasis, and happily explaining away all the things that didn't
make sense to me. Anyway, you'll see what I mean.

Special thanks to Ursula, for being a tireless sounding board
from which to bounce ideas, and again to Urs, Debby and Mel -
poor freaders extraordinaire!

I guess I'll never quite get over what they did to TF - it should
have been bigger, more important - different! But Doctor Friskin
says I'm doing a lot better now! Please enjoy the results of my
therapy.

***

The year was 1966. It was a time of anger and confusion - of lies
and mistrust. The NATO alliance was falling apart. The war
dragged on in Vietnam, and every month 30,000 young Americans
were uprooted and sent halfway around the world to kill young
North Vietnamese. Nobody understood it at all.

Ralph Nader criticized the built-in dangers of the great American
motorcar and sales of the Corvair dropped by eighty percent.
Elvis was out. So were Ray Charles and Little Richard. The kids
just weren't buying that kind of optimism left over from the
fifties any more. The world was growing wild-eyed and
reactionary. It was a time to protest and smoke pot and try to
forget. The people looked for heroes but saw none - just greed
and fear - the base essence of humanity.

Things were a little better in Smallville, Kansas; where time was
still signposted by the rotation of the corn crop. These folk had
not forgotten the value of their neighbors, or the simple joys of
living, and they could be counted upon to instill these values in
their children. As a result, the revolution hadn't quite reached
Smallville.

An aging hippie sat near the entrance to the drugstore. He was
banging on a drum with manic intent and singing something
tunelessly with lyrics he made up as he went along. The hippie
movement was a recent phenomenon, and in Kansas it was non-
existent - but the kind people of Smallville still smiled as they
passed, and more often than not they placed money at his feet, or
offered him food and a place to sleep. He gathered up the coins
with relish, but sneered at the offers of assistance. He'd been
seen like this at various places around town for the last two
weeks - sometimes asking questions and mumbling about lights in
the sky, sometimes saying nothing and just staring into space.

He seemed to be waiting for something - something that was going
to happen soon. At least he hoped it would be soon. Tempus was
not a patient man.

***

The year was 1994. But time was easy to forget when you could
float above the clouds. Superman had been called to a crisis in
China this morning, where he had plugged the mouth of a volcano
that was threatening to erupt, and now he was taking time out for
a bit of a joy flight before he made his way in to the office of
the Daily Planet, Metropolis' leading newspaper.

The clouds billowed like huge mounds of cotton candy hanging
suspended in the sunshine, absolutely careless of gravity. And it
was quiet. Not quiet like a summer evening in Kansas, where all
you could hear were the chirping of crickets and frogs and the
water as it lapped up against the dock. Not quiet like a late
night stint at the Planet after everyone else had left and the
only sound was the humming of your terminal and the distant flow
of traffic. It was absolutely silent ... so far up that no
earthly sound of man, beast or insect could ever penetrate. Here,
even Superman could find peace.

This was the part of his life that he could never share with
another living soul. The chill breeze that felt brisk as it
buffeted his skin was a deadly minus sixty degrees to a human.
Just above him, the breathable atmosphere arced away into the
void of space. No, he could never bring Lois here. There were so
many things he wanted to share with her, but it seemed every day
another obstacle was placed in his path. Today's obstacle wore an
Hawaiian shirt and a stupid grin. 'Call me Daniel' Scardino had
been making inroads into his relationship with Lois and he wasn't
sure just what to do about it. He was 'Superman' and he still
didn't know what to do.

So in the meantime, he came up here to think - or to clear his
mind so that he *could* think. It didn't solve his problems but
it gave him a rush. And rush is exactly what he was going to have
to do if he wasn't going to be late, he realized. Today was the
big birthday bash for Perry. Jimmy had been planning it for
weeks, especially after last year's fiasco. At least that should
be fun. He kicked himself into high gear and headed for
Metropolis, hoping he wouldn't get another call for assistance on
the way. Time flies - especially if you're a superhero.

***

Lois Lane rushed down the ramp in the Daily Planet's newsroom. At
the bottom she met Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter and general gopher,
who was brandishing a brightly wrapped present.

"I've still got eight minutes, what did I get him?" she
demanded.

"Checked suspenders," Jimmy replied, as if announcing a coup.
"Did you remember the card?"

"Oh, no!" she sighed. Despite Jimmy's constant reminders, the
occasion of editor Perry White's birthday had caught her
completely unprepared - as did the occasion of everybody's
birthday.

"Who's your buddy, huh? Who's your pal?" Jimmy crowed, fishing
for praise and not getting it. "I am, right?" He waved a blue
envelope complete with cheery birthday card in front of her face.
Lois grabbed it with a relieved smile and shoved the envelope in
the front pocket of her handbag as she made her way to her desk.

Just then, Lois' partner of two years, Clark Kent, loped casually
towards her from behind an overzealous spray of party balloons.

"Good morning, Lois," he singsonged brightly.

"You're late," was all she managed, wondering at his apparent
good spirits. She took another precious gulp of her first coffee
for the morning.

"Good morning, Clark," he answered himself when she didn't reply,
but he seemed pretty relaxed considering the events of the last
week.

Their fledgling romance had gotten off to a fairly rocky start,
what with the car bombing of the assistant District Attorney who
had been seeing Clark and the appearance of a cocky DEA agent who
had turned up to investigate the case but seemed more interested
in investigating Lois.

Lois had made every effort to let Clark know that none of that
mattered, but she had to admit that his current state of rug-
chewing jealousy made her heart beat a little faster. Clark was
usually quiet, capable and intelligent - that's what made him
such a wonderful partner. She respected him as much as anyone she
had ever known, but suddenly he was moping about, acting
childishly and being a general nuisance. It was exciting to be
able to arouse him to such passion, and she secretly loved him
for it. Of course she hadn't actually come right out and used the
word LOVE. There were still some truths to get out in the open,
for both of them.

Clark had a whole other life going on somewhere, Lois was sure of
it. He regularly took off for no good reason and was sometimes
gone for hours. Lois had learned to amuse herself during these
lonely, deserted times when her partner went missing by coming up
with wild fantasies about what he was really up to. Maybe he was
a secret agent, working for some foreign government - it amused
her to think that her Kansas farm boy was living some exciting,
exotic lifestyle. He seemed to be able to read and speak a number
of other languages, although he never really mentioned it, and he
was the luckiest son-of-a-gun she had ever seen with an
electronic lock.

Maybe he had a family somewhere - a wife and kids. In her more
gracious moments she found it hard to imagine that a nice, well
brought up guy like Clark had escaped until now.

Maybe he was supporting a dotty, gray-haired old grandfather in
his twilight years, or doing volunteer work for charities, or
writing for a non-profit organization for social reform. It was
funny how she kept casting her partner in the role of a hero when
in reality he was probably just out checking leads and snooping
sources without her. But somehow she just couldn't bring herself
to distrust him as much as he probably deserved.

Lois looked at Clark's sweet, puppy-dog face and knew that she
had again been forgiven for showing an interest in Dan Scardino,
scourge of the DEA. And for the millionth time, she forgave Clark
in kind. Would it always be like that? Sometimes she felt like
crying. Sometimes, she did.

"So what did you get him?" Clark asked, gesturing again to the
package.

"Checked suspenders," Lois announced proudly, as if it was all
her own idea.

"Didn't you get him those last year?"

"Yeah ... he liked 'em, didn't he?" She made a challenge of it.

Clark turned quickly back towards his desk, in case she saw the
grin that sprang to his face. It wouldn't do to let her know that
he found her mercurial moods delightful. For some reason, that
wasn't the way it worked with them.

Clark wasn't expecting a visitor. But there, perched on the
corner of his desk was a gray-haired man of indeterminable age,
who examined him from a set of piercing hazel eyes. He set down
Clark's name plate as Clark approached.

"Mr. Kent, I presume," he began in an accent which bore a trace
of well-educated cockney. He stared at Clark with an expression
of awe, like someone who had just been introduced to the
President. It made Clark uncomfortable.

"That's right ... Mister ... er," Clark took the proffered hand
and waited to be enlightened. He noticed the man visibly pull
himself under control.

"Oh, terribly sorry. Yes, of course. It's ... er, George. Ah ...
Herbert George."

"Nice to meet you. What can I do for you, Mr. George?"

Mr. George was dressed in an odd selection of mismatched items.
His velvet smoking jacket bore the cut of the early 20th Century,
but his cravat was of a strange material Clark had never seen
before. He also wore a small pin with a ruby-like stone which
glinted in the overhead lights, but it was set in some kind of
titanium alloy that Clark couldn't recognize as he casually
lowered his glasses and examined it in detail.

"Well, I'm afraid I haven't really thought this through. I
arrived in such a hurry and I haven't had time to er ... that is,
I wasn't exactly prepared ..."

Although he seemed a bit out of his depth, Clark got the strange
feeling he was anything but. However it *was* Perry's birthday
and unless Mr. George got to the point soon, the point would be
lost amidst the noise of party poppers and a hearty if badly sung
chorus of "Happy Birthday to You." They were journalists after
all, and they were highly skilled at making themselves heard over
everything else. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Lois
straining to listen in on their conversation. She was about to
come barreling over he could tell, but at the last minute got
waylaid by Jimmy and Karl from Travel.

"Excuse me, sir. I don't mean to be rude, but today is our
editor-in- chief's birthday and ..."

"Ah yes," the little man leapt on this with glee. "October 30th.
I was just reflecting as a matter of fact on another event in
history which took place on October 30th." As if to take Clark
into his confidence he leaned towards him conspiratorially.

"Those were indeed exciting times! It was the Mercury Theater,
October 30th, 1938. We had a large percentage of the populace
convinced that the Martians had landed. There was mass panic,
rioting - people reverted to their baser selves. Darwinism proved
its point once again. We need to evolve. To strengthen our
genetic stock ..." Suddenly he stopped as if he had decided he
was giving too much away.

Clark wiped a hand across his face and gave the man a strained
smile. He actually felt like he was being given some sort of a
test. Well, okay, there was little about literature or the
history of the media that he didn't know. That *was* his
profession after all - well, one of them. Maybe it wouldn't hurt
to play along for a few minutes. That's what Lois would have
done. He glanced across at his partner and saw that she was still
deep in conversation. Clark folded his arms across his chest and
decided to take the bait.

"You're referring to the Orson Welles radio play of H.G. Wells'
War of the Worlds. The broadcast was delivered in such a way that
many people really believed they were hearing the destruction of
New Jersey and New York City. It was incredibly irresponsible if
you ask me," Clark finished sternly.

"Oh, do you think so? I thought it illustrated my point very
well. It was all my idea you know. *I* am H.G. Wells."

Clark sighed. That was enough. "Listen ... sir," he placed a hand
at his back to usher him away. "H.G. Wells wrote fiction, and he
died in 1946."

"Are you a fan of science fiction, Mr. Kent?" The man refused to
budge. "Of course, in my day it was called 'scientific romance'.
A delightful epithet, don't you think? Commits one's writing to a
higher ideal than those gray and morbid tomes of unrelenting
oppression."

"No. Actually, it's my mother who's the sci-fi fan. I found that
... War of the Worlds, for example," Clark chose carefully, "set
a bad precedent."

"Oh really?" The little man looked taken aback. "How do you
mean?"

"H.G. Wells? Father of the 'Bug-Eyed-Monster?' " Clark made his
fingers like claws and waved them in the air to illustrate his
point. "Slimy aliens from outer space, roaming over the land and
destroying everything in their path. Then in The Time Machine,
the future was full of depressing images like the Eloi and the
Morlocks." Clark was all too familiar with these kinds of
stories.

"And you disapprove of these images?"

"Like I said. I think it set an unfortunate precedent. Wells
practically invented science fiction and his images formed the
basis of the whole genre. How do we know that aliens who come to
this planet will automatically want to destroy us with black
smoke? Maybe they just want to help."

"Quite so, quite so." Suddenly, the man became quiet and
introspective. "In fact, I agree with you. I'm sure ... Mr. Wells
would be greatly saddened to think that any prejudice which was
to persist into the future had its roots in his fiction. But
Wells wrote other documents of social commentary as well," he
went on, seeming to need Clark's approval.

"Yeah, I've read 'em. Propaganda novels! He had some very
definite views about how society should evolve - A Modern Utopia,
The Food of the Gods, The War in the Air, The World Set Free ..."
Clark counted them off on the fingers of his left hand.

"You appear to be very well read, Mr. Kent."

"Well ... I did a lot of reading when I was a kid."

The man paused, seeming to come to a decision ..."and here I was
thinking Superman would probably love my books."

He could have meant anything, but Clark felt his body go numb and
his heart become a leaden weight, pressing on his guts like an
anvil. Clark felt that familiar sickening shock of discovery as
the man looked him straight in the eye and dropped his voice to a
whisper again.

"I know you're Superman and I need your help."

Just then Lois, freed from her little meeting, appeared at
Clark's shoulder. "What? What did he say?"

"Aah ... my partner Lois Lane." Clark said by way of
introduction, desperately trying to change the subject.

"I said," the man suddenly lost all trace of the harmless
prankster and assumed a bearing of immense intelligence, "if I
could just have a moment of Mr. Kent's time, all his doubts will
be quelled."

"Doubts? What doubts? Clark?"

"Yes, yes," Clark managed, still reeling from a sense of dread,
and started to walk his visitor to the elevators. Lois simply
picked up her handbag and followed.

"Look ... Lois," Clark hedged, "there's no reason for both of us
to go --"

"What's up partner?" She said with a breezy nonchalance, aimed
straight at her partner's weakest point - his conscience. "Got a
scoop?"

"No Lois, it's nothing like that. It's, ah ... it's personal!"
Clark was genuinely apologetic, and held out his palm to Lois in
a kind of entreaty. "This is er ... the TV repairman. He's
installing a new cable and I just need to let him into my
apartment."

Lois looked skeptical. Clark was such a bad liar for someone who
got in so much practice.

"But what about the party?" she demanded, furious that he was
running out yet again.

Clark and his companion stepped into the elevator, and as the
doors closed on Lois' angry face, the stranger shouted, "Don't
worry, Miss Lane, we'll be no time at all."

"Okay. Who are you, really, and what do you want?" Clark
practically dragged his companion along the street. When they
reached the corner, the man stopped for a minute then steered
their progress south, down towards the old factory area. Clark
had given up the idea of playing dumb about Superman and had
decided to go on the offensive, but he found himself helplessly
following in the little man's wake.

"As I have already told you, Mr. Kent, my name is Herbert George
Wells, the same H.G. Wells who wrote those appalling works with
their unfortunate precedents."

Clark was polite enough to feel guilty, and that in itself gave
him pause for thought. "Although in my own defense I must say
that my opinions have undergone a certain fine-tuning in my
travels. I had much to learn, as do we all."

Wells seemed distracted for a moment by a woman in a short, red
mini-skirt and Clark seized the opportunity to jump in.

"So you're just traveling through time! Wait ... don't tell me.
In your time machine, right? And all these years I thought you
were a writer." He did his best to sound sarcastic but it didn't
come out right. He had a strange feeling about this.

"No, I *was* a writer. Now I am many things. I have met many
beings and seen many wonders you could barely imagine. But I am
foremost a guardian of humanity, if you will, concerned with its
survival, and on this trip, it is your survival which is of
primary concern."

Clark began to feel a measure of confidence. He had been
threatened by all the greats, but apart from an unfortunate
reaction to that rare element, Kryptonite, he had proved
indestructible. It was the one constant in his life. He'd spent
many a lonely night up in the tree house he called 'The Fortress
of Solitude', with a history book, or a book on warfare, or a
science fiction novel or even one of Wells own stories, wondering
about his mortality. He'd come to the conclusion that if they
dropped the bomb tomorrow, and every living creature on the
planet turned to dust, he would be doomed to wander the barren
earth all alone, without even the means to effect his own
destruction.

"I don't think you need to concern yourself with that ... Mr.
Wells." He used his sternest 'Superman' voice for extra effect.

"Suppose I had information that a certain party, against whose
goals your continued presence is counter-productive, is
attempting to return in time to Smallville, Kansas in 1966 to
kill you. A new born babe, just landed on Mother Earth, without
the same resilience you have built up over the years in the warm,
nurturing rays of this sun?"

Whoever this guy was, Clark decided, he knew too much. Almost
more than Clark himself had dared to suspect. But his parents
were in Smallville and there was no way he was going to put them
at risk by failing to acknowledge at least that this man posed a
threat. He would have to go along with him until he could find
out what was really going on."

"Okay, Mr. Wells. You win. What is it that you think you know?"

"Ah, Mr. Kent. You're humoring me. Nothing less than I expected,
of course. And you, of course, will understand when I say that I
can only impart the most basic information to you. Much less
chance of disturbing your established history.

"You must come with me to Kansas in 1966. When we arrive you may
seek your own confirmation. There you will find the man who is
trying to destroy you and only you can save yourself. It is
imperative that you do so."

They rounded the corner and entered an abandoned warehouse which
bore the distinct traces of fire damage. Darkened beams
criss-crossed the floor and the roof had completely caved in,
flooding the area with sunlight.

As they emerged from the larger area into a smaller room Clark
saw it. At first it seemed a conglomerate of quaint 19th Century
styling with futuristic looking silver panels overshadowing the
cylindrical chamber. As Clark looked closer however, and even
took the opportunity to surreptitiously examine the circuitry
with his x-ray vision, he saw components, the purpose of which he
couldn't even guess at. There were even elements which did not
read like lead, yet still defied penetration. The feeling of
dread tightened in his stomach by an extra few notches. He was
starting to believe.

"Where did this come from?" Clark asked distractedly, running his
hands over the alien instrumentation, absolutely fascinated. He
was so absorbed, he didn't hear the sigh of disturbed dust behind
him as Lois settled into the shadows to listen.

"It's a bit of a group effort, really. What's that wonderful
expression? 'It's not what you know it's *who* you know.' Yes,
yes, very apt," Wells chuckled to himself. "Now no more talk."

"Listen, er, Mr. Wells." He thought of Lois waiting back at the
Planet as usual, probably wondering what lie he was acting out
this time. He owed her an explanation someday, he knew that. "I
can't just up and leave because you say so."

"Well, that is the beauty of time travel. If all goes as planned,
you will be deposited back without losing a minute."

"Time travel?" Lois echoed to herself, wondering if she'd heard
correctly, and carefully worked herself into a better position.
She was losing every third word and she was furious that Clark
had tried to keep her out of this story. She wasn't going to let
him get away with it.

For his part, Clark was intrigued. Was this really H.G. Wells?
Could they really use this machine to travel in time? And could
it all really be done without abandoning his duties to the people
in this time and place and moreover, without having to face Lois'
hurt, questioning expression when he was forced to lie to her
again? It was almost too tempting to resist.

Wells led Clark towards the center of the chamber and pushed a
few buttons on an old-fashioned instrument panel. A low whine
began to emanate from the machine and the sunlight seemed to
gather about the silver panels.

"Come, come Mr. Kent. We must effect our strategy before the time
line is altered."

"So ... if we don't make it, we can just go back in time again
and fix it, right?" Clark said, still stalling, and still trying
to deal with the bizarre situation.

"No. We get one opportunity and this is it! Are you coming or
not?"

"Why? I don't understand the urgency." Clark asked more seriously
now, but Wells ignored him.

Clark was a little wary of the open-plan design. Was he really
going along with this? He watched the light swell and the
particles in the air begin to churn about the top of the craft.
He could even detect the elemental excitation that would
theoretically have to precede a phase shift. On the spot, he made
his decision. "Where am I supposed to stand?"

"Anywhere within the flux field is fine." Wells seemed
unconcerned. "Now for the most important piece of information,
the piece that gives us our edge over Tempus. When, exactly, did
you arrive in Smallville?" The whining grew even louder and Clark
stepped up next to Wells.

He hedged again, still not sure of this character's motives.
"That information is contained in government files. I'm surprised
you know what you say you do, but not that."

"All those files were destroyed. Most of them by you in fact. And
the rest were destroyed by me. But that's another story, isn't
it? And I shan't be drawn in." He waggled his finger at Clark
without sparing him a glance. It was weird to hear Wells talk
about things Clark hadn't done yet.

Clark gave up and rolled his eyes in resignation. "Well, okay. If
I'm losing my sanity, I may as well go out with dignity. It was
early morning. About 1am on May 17th, 1966."

"Your birthday," Wells said as if it was common knowledge. "Well,
of course. How apropos!"

"Not really my birthday. But it's all I've got." Wells punched in
a few more numbers and as the sunlight gathered in around them,
neither saw Lois Lane charge out of the shadows and into the
vortex of swirling light.

***

Loron Tempus was a man grown heady with power. 'Tempus' wasn't
even his real name, just an appellation he liked to use because
it reminded him that they controlled time itself. *And* it looked
good in the news reports. Others with this power had learned to
use it wisely, or grown bored and moved on to other pursuits but
Tempus was convinced that the future had been pushed off course,
and that the culprit was the alien, Superman.

What's more, he had managed to convince a lot of other people who
were looking for a solution to the global threat and after all
those years of debate, he had secured this one chance to put his
theory into practice.

Records had been difficult to disinter, but he had a vital piece
of information which provided him with the location of Superman's
arrival - Smallville, Kansas, United States of America. Some
additional digging had eventually yielded a year and even a
month, May 1966, so he had allowed himself to be stranded in this
godforsaken backwater. He didn't think anyone would be disposed
to come to collect him if he failed. In the meantime, he tried to
mingle with the fauna and pick up any information he could about
strange visitations from space.

He sat in a diner in the main street, trying to find a record on
the table top jukebox that didn't yield anymore of that abysmal
Rock'n'Roll. He was sick of the way his fashionable poncho
scratched at his neck and the clinking of his love-beads against
his ruby pin had finally rattled his brain.

"There you go," said the proprietress as she placed a large
hamburger and salad down in front of him. "I figured you might
like a glass of milk to wash that down with. I know you didn't
ask for it, but you look a little pale."

"Oh goody," Tempus sneered, and frowned at the stuff that came
out of the unwashed mammaries of cows, but the woman seemed
satisfied and breezed away again in the same friendly, no-
nonsense manner.

The bell over the screen door tinkled annoyingly as it opened to
admit a young couple. The man was heavy set and handsome and the
woman was attractive and petite.

"Martha, honey! Jonathan!" hailed the woman behind the counter.
"Sit down there and I'll make you a Sweethearts' Double Sundae,
with extra banana." She winked at them conspiratorially.

The man laughed. "Don't you think we're a bit old for the
Sweethearts' Double Sundae, Peggy?" But he looked like he
wouldn't say no.

That seemed to irritate Martha. "Well the Government says we're
too old! Too old to adopt a child."

The woman behind the counter looked sympathetic, "Don't tell me
your application was turned down again." Tempus was bored with
this pathetic saga of family woes but his mood brightened when he
found a song called, 'Here Comes My Baby' by the Tremeloes on the
jukebox and dropped in one of his coins to get it going. None of
the others seemed to notice though, which he thought was
unfortunate. He giggled to himself. God how he loved irony!

"Jonathan and Martha Kent!" the woman admonished. "You are *not*
too old! Why, you two are about the biggest love birds in town."
She went on with a litany of small talk, trying to cheer them up,
so Tempus played the next Tremeloes song on the playlist,
'Silence is Golden' in the hopes that they'd get the message.

He chased the hamburger around with a fork, thinking he would
never get used to unrefined foodstuffs, then began to alter the
face on the HAVE A NICE DAY sign that had been hand lettered and
left on every table, all the time half tuned in to the
conversation. Then suddenly it hit him.

"Jonathan and Martha Kent!" They were the names of Clark Kent's
parents. He had studied some ancillary information on the Daily
Planet reporter while looking into Superman. The Daily Planet
newspaper had a special relationship with Superman in its heyday,
and he was sure that Clark Kent was from one of these little mid-
west country towns. Herb knew more of course, but once he had
gotten an inkling of Tempus' true motives, he had destroyed any
evidence that he had collected from his decades of research.

Kent seemed to be a more important piece in the puzzle than he'd
first imagined. Perhaps these people held the key to the
whereabouts of Superman. Tempus dropped one last coin in the
jukebox, and as the strains of The Fortunes singing, 'You've Got
Your Troubles, I've Got Mine' filled the small room, he ducked
outside to await the Kents' departure.

***

As the sense of disorientation receded, Clark found himself in
more or less the same position of a few moments before. He was
still dizzy and felt himself almost black out, but the world
righted itself and the face of H.G. Wells swam into focus. He
felt Wells hand on his arm to support him.

"Steady on there, Mr. Kent ... perhaps your brain waves resonate
at a slightly different frequency -- fascinating ... " he said to
himself. Wells seemed genuinely surprised. "Most people don't
experience that kind of disorientation."

"I'm not most people," Clark reminded him.

"Your return journey should be far less stressful, I assure
you."

Clark wasn't listening though as, fully recovered and charged
with nervous energy, he tore out of the little barn in which they
had landed and ran out onto the road, his feet barely touching
the ground. Taking a quick look around, he recognized the banks
of the Elbow River a short way off and decided that whether or
not this was 1966, it was certainly Smallville.

In a heartbeat he arrived at the southern end of Main Street. He
could still hear Wells trudging along at human pace about five
miles back. He spared little thought for him however as he took
in his surroundings. All the major landmarks were just as he
remembered them - the school, the clock tower, the main square
where the large pine tree was decorated every year at Christmas
time. But when he zoomed in on the details he realized it was all
different.

The cars parked at the curb were straight out of an old sixties
television show, and so were the people. The civic auditorium
where they had the Christmas bash every year had a quaint little
wooden hall standing in its place. The video store wasn't there
anymore (he corrected that to 'yet') nor was the Walmart. Instead
there was a drive-in hamburger restaurant called Vinnie's and a
gas station.

When Wells caught up with his companion again, only about twenty
minutes later thanks to the generosity of a passing motorist,
Clark had his head in the Kansas City Gazette. He'd been all
over, gazing in store windows and examining his home town in
detail.

"It's true. We are really in 1966!" Despite the evidence, Clark
was astounded.

Wells pulled the top of Clark's paper towards him so he could
examine the masthead. "The sixteenth of May. Perfect! Now you
either have to find Tempus or wait at the landing site and see if
he appears. I prefer pro-active measures, don't you, Mr. Kent?"

Clark's mind was awash with questions. "We're here! Do you
realize what was going on in the world in 1966? What's going on
right now?" He held his paper out to Wells but the man ignored
it.

"Now, Mr. Kent. What's done is done. You can't tamper with the
past."

"Then what are you doing here? " Clark challenged him.

"I'm not doing anything, *you* are. We have very strict rules in
our little group and Tempus knows that because it was his group
too. *I* cannot attempt to save you, no matter what Tempus'
plans, but *you* can. We all have the right of self-defense. I am
just here to assist and guide you where I can. It's something I
need to do," he finished, almost to himself.

"You mean this Tempus guy is a friend of yours? And why does he
want to kill Superman?" Actually, Clark thought, most people
didn't need a very good reason to try to kill him. 'Because he
was there' was often good enough.

"Let's just say he's a contemporary. And, as I've told you, he
has decided you are 'a problem'. Minimal information, Mr. Kent. I
am already risking everything by being here. It is enough to know
that he plans to kill you as soon as he can find you, when you
are most vulnerable by his reckoning. Now, we must locate him,
and you must try to stay clear of everyone else if you can. We
don't want them to carry memories of you into the future." Wells
added impatiently, like scolding a child.

"Yeah, I know," Clark said. The implications hitting home.
"Anything we change in our past could affect our future." It
seemed so simple. As Wells continued to describe Tempus and
outline his plan, Clark allowed the other half of his mind to
wander.

Thoughts of his mother and father emerged from the jumble of
images in his brain. They would be younger now. Younger than he
could remember them. As young as they were in those pictures his
mother kept in an album. She would be striking, with thick, wild
auburn hair and his Dad would look like he did in that old black
and white photograph of their holiday on the west coast. His
father was fair and handsome and was wearing a Tarzan-like
swimming costume with a single shoulder strap. He was holding his
mother up in his arms and they both looked so in love. Clark
ached to see them like that.

"Now, where did you say your ship was found?" Wells' no- nonsense
tone called Clark back to the issue at hand.

"It's near Simpson's quarry. It's a deep, open-cut mine north
east of here."

"Well, you head up there -- *discreetly* Mr. Kent, and keep an
eye out for the man I've described. I'll stay in town and
question the locals. He has been here for over two weeks so
someone may recognize him. I'll hire a vehicle and meet you there
at five."

"You won't find a rental place around here. This is
*Smallville*," Clark explained. "Nearest one is in Wichita, near
the airport," then he realized that this was actually 1966.
"Especially not now," he added. "You might be able to get a
loaner from the gas station ... I don't know."

"Very well, leave that to me," said Wells. "Hurry now!"

Clark nodded, carefully replaced the paper in the rack and
wandered north in the direction of the quarry, mulling over what
Wells had said. Didn't this guy realize that stopping Tempus
would be child's play? Earth didn't possess even a sliver of
Kryptonite yet and that was an incredible feeling. He was truly
invulnerable - more powerful than he'd ever been when he left
Smallville for the big, wide world - before he'd tested himself
against the biggest catastrophes this planet could throw at him,
and survived.

For the first time in a long time he felt free, and charged with
excitement. The tension of the last few weeks had completely
drained away, as a vista of possibilities opened up before him.
He headed north as far as Bourke Street then, his decision made,
headed west towards home. Who could it hurt to just take a look?

***

Back in the little barn on the outskirts of Smallville, Lois
awoke with her nose buried in sweet-smelling hay, and sneezed.
She could feel the tight-caked flakiness of dried blood on her
temple and glared at the iron drum that had hit her on the way
down. As she pushed herself to her feet, the time machine, tall
and silent, loomed large in her field of vision. She had a little
way to go on this weird dream, she could tell.

She stopped to listen and could hear nothing but the chirping of
birds and crickets. There was no sign of Clark or his "friend"
Wells.

"The TV repairman," she said to the machine. "Yeah, right!"

Despite the untroubled air she was trying to affect, Lois began
to feel a little panicked. She emerged from the barn to hear a
horrific, huffing and puffing sound draw nearer and nearer.

She grabbed a handy pitchfork and raised it above her right
shoulder like a baseball bat, awaiting whatever alien nemesis
approached. She lowered it again as a herd of very large gray
ducks - or maybe geese - waddled round the corner. When they had
passed out of view, she listened again, and thought this time she
could make out the sound of a car engine traveling along up
ahead. She clutched her handbag tighter and made her way towards
the road.

She soon secured a lift in a quaint little '62 Buick into the
main street of what she realized now was Smallville, Clark's home
town. She was deposited there only after her solemn promise to go
to the doctor and get treatment for her "just a scratch" head
injury. Lois of course did no such thing, and wandered in the
opposite direction to which she had been pointed. She realized
then that the little car was not the exception but the norm and
that the prices in all the windows were outrageously low, even
for Smallville.

Lois also found herself gravitating towards the newsstand like
her partner before her, and quickly souvenired a paper for
posterity. It was there in black and white -- May 16th, 1966. The
headlines jumped out at her and the leader was accompanied by a
grainy telephoto shot of tanks rolling into the Danang Army base
in Vietnam. The copy looked like that old leadtype that Perry
kept in his office in a display case. It was this, more than
anything else, that finally convinced her that she had just
traveled back in time, just like Clark's friend had claimed.

Every now and again passers-by stopped to stare, but according to
the displays in the store windows, suits were back with a
vengeance and the length of her skirt was in current favor. She
smiled sweetly and decided that in a town like Smallville, every
stranger was an oddity.

She usually didn't have this problem because she was usually with
Clark. The worst she'd had to do in the past was field endless
assumptions that they were a hot item. But all that was thirty
years away now.

Her mind swam with the journalistic possibilities. They could go
anywhere. They could be there when Columbus landed or when
Washington crossed the Delaware. Then she admonished herself,
'Big, Lois, think big!' They could report on the signing of the
Magna Carta or the fall of Rome - or the dinosaurs - or be there
to watch life crawl out of the primordial soup. She stared at the
paper again and giggled with sheer joy.

This went beyond the Pulitzer Lois had hungered for all her
working life. This was a journalist's dream - an opportunity to
make a difference - to be there to comment on the march of
humanity down through the ages. She wanted to share this with her
partner. He was the one that had the real handle on humanity.

Lois knew she was a good investigative journalist -- the best,
but Clark had a knack of making this kind of copy "sing". That
was what Perry always said. Maybe she didn't have the patience to
be as observant as Clark was about people, but he could certainly
write in a way that put you *inside* the story, where you could
see the expressions on everyone's faces as if you had been there
yourself. He could make his writing reach out and grab you by the
heart. It wasn't right for every story, but she had to admit,
Clark was the only writer who had ever brought tears to her
eyes.

She truly admired that about him, but had never been able to tell
him. With them it was all bad jokes and sarcastic remarks. And
she was as much to blame as he was. If he was here now, she
decided, she would tell him that. Here in 1966. It hit her again
with a wallop.

"We're here, we're really here," She tried the thought aloud and
couldn't help smiling. "Where are you, Clark, when I need you?"

And where did he find this Wells guy? And why have they come back
in time, to the time and place where Clark was born? Her very
active mind started to race and all the conclusions were bad
ones. Could this have anything to do with Clark's big secret? Is
this what he had been keeping from her?

She would kill him if she ever found him. No - she would hug him
*then* kill him. As annoying as he was sometimes, she felt a
little disoriented without Clark by her side. She supposed she'd
just gotten used to having him there. But of course he was
nowhere to be found, just like usual. Well there was one other
place in Smallville where she felt welcomed. Lois flagged down a
beat up old Ford and asked the driver if he might be heading in
the direction of the Kent farm.

***

Clark was careful to stay out of sight as he approached his
parent's house. Again, he had that feeling of out-of-kilter
familiarity. The house was the same one he remembered, slightly
less weathered perhaps, and it didn't have a back porch yet. Nor
did the pond sport the little dock he'd helped to build when he
was ten. The big barn over at Irig's farm didn't yet exist, and
when he passed his favorite tree, he experienced a pang of loss
that the "Fortress of Solitude", the tree house that had been his
little escape from the world, was not there to welcome him.

He heard the wonderfully familiar creak of the back door and was
transfixed for a moment when a young brunette emerged with a
basket of laundry. It was the beautiful young woman from those
old black and white photos miraculously sprung to life. This was
his mother. At the last minute he remembered to duck behind the
tree.

She hung out the wash in record time and returned to the house.
Clark used his x-ray vision to follow her, and tuned in his
super- hearing. His father burst in the door on the other side of
the house looking young and strong as he carried a pile of wood
to the hearth. They engaged in a delightfully normal conversation
about the weather getting warmer now and about the price of a new
rotor blade. He grumbled about being too hungry to wait for lunch
and his mother batted her husband's hand away as he picked at the
cold cuts she was making into sandwiches. She warned him about
his blatant attempts to try and cheer her up, and Clark wondered
what she needed cheering up about. Then his father grabbed her
and they kissed, the lunch forgotten. His parents had always been
an affectionate couple but this raw passion was confronting.

He was so captivated by the by-play between these lovers who were
to become his parents that he didn't hear the little car pull up
out the front of the barn. His head whipped round in time to see
the passenger disembark and the car drive away.

"LOIS? Oh, no ... Lois," he whispered. "Oh jees ..." he sighed
again with exasperation as she swung her handbag more comfortably
onto her shoulder and bowled on up towards the front door.

What was she doing here? How did she get here and what on earth
was she intending say to his parents? He waited and watched,
hoping some miracle solution would present itself so he could get
her out of there before she ruined everything.

Lois fidgeted with the shoulder strap of her bag, realizing that
despite all her rehearsed speeches in the car, she still hadn't
come up with anything that sounded half way towards plausible.
She practiced a few opening gambits as she made her way to the
front porch.

"Hi, I'm Lois Lane ... future partner and
almost-sort-of-girlfriend of your baby son, if he ever gets his
act together." She grimaced. "I don't suppose you've seen him
around, have you? Well, of course, even if you did you wouldn't
recognize him because ... urgh! Lois you're babbling!" She
scolded herself in her best imitation of Clark's voice.

"Hi, I'm Lois Lane from the Department of Health. We're looking
for an escaped mental patient who is a pathological liar. He's
traveling with a man who says he is the television repairman but
who is not *really* the television repairman ... sure, Lois ...
like they're gonna believe you!"

"Hi ... *I'm* an escaped mental patient ..."

Her diatribe was cut short as she reached the door and knocked.
She had more or less decided to wing it. She was usually good at
that. Suddenly, the possible ramifications of saying the wrong
thing made her pale.

Her opening line became of little consequence however. Martha
Kent swung open the front door with a welcoming smile, took one
look at her white-faced visitor with the blood still caked on her
forehead, and hauled her inside with a heartfelt, "Oh my!"

"Jonathan! Jonathan? Oh dear, you'd better sit down ...
Jonathan!"

Lois wanted to say something to relieve Martha's obvious worry
but she was just so shocked to see this young version of Clark's
mother that although she opened her mouth a couple of times to
speak, not knowing what to say, she shut it again without
uttering a word. She allowed herself to be guided onto the settee
without protest.

"What happened?" said Jonathan as he emerged from the bathroom,
drying his hands.

"I'm okay." Lois managed. "I just ... got a little bit lost and
... oh no. If you'd just let me explain."

"You just sit there for a minute and rest," Martha admonished,
and raced into the kitchen to pour a glass of iced tea. On the
way she looked worriedly at her husband. "Oh Jonathan, I think
she's been in some sort of an accident."

"What's your name? Does anyone know where you are?" Jonathan
asked, being practical. "Where have you come from?" Although he
seemed not much older than Lois herself, she found his calm,
soothing voice refreshingly familiar.

"Er, well. I just wandered along ... sort of ... until I ..."
Lois was glad that they had come up with a reason for her to
sound a bit vague. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely, staring at
their concerned faces and realizing this had been a mistake. She
gratefully accepted the glass of tea that Martha handed her, and
hung onto it like a life-preserver. "I just didn't know where
else to go," she finished somewhat truthfully.

"That's perfectly fine," Jonathan assured her. My name's Jonathan
Kent and this is my wife, Martha." But Martha had run off in a
whirlwind again.

Jonathan looked apologetic. "Ah ... she's always doing that.
Martha has a lot of ... energy."

"Yes. She reminds me of ... of someone else I know." Then Lois
remembered Clark. The paper in her bag said May 16th, 1966.
Wasn't Clark born like ... tomorrow? Lois was hopeless with
birthdays.

Martha re-entered with a bowl smelling of some kind of
disinfectant, some cotton balls and a bottle of mercurochrome and
sat on the chair that Jonathan had pulled into place. Lois noted
Martha's trim figure and tried to phrase her next question as
innocuously as she could. "You're very good at this. Do you have
any children?" she asked pleasantly.

The Kents exchanged significant looks and Martha seemed to draw
into herself a little. She hesitated, obviously uncomfortable
confessing this to a stranger. "It's just, I'm not able to have
children."

"We can't," Jonathan added, taking his share of the load.

"Oh." Lois was completely thrown. She felt the wind rush out of
her lungs. It was a total shock. She had simply never considered
this before. "I'm sorry," she said distractedly.

Clark was *adopted* and he'd never said a word. All his interest
in chasing that Children Seeking Their Natural Parents stuff, and
she had just shrugged it all off like yesterday's news. And the
way he took Jack and his brother under his wing - and had found
them a home and jobs. But Clark and his parents had the most
wonderful parent/child relationship she had ever seen. In fact
they had the closest relationship of anyone she had ever known.
Somehow it threw her partner and his parents into sharper focus.
These were very special people and even her presence here was
probably a risk to them. But Lois couldn't quite figure out how
to politely extricate herself, while Martha dabbed at her
forehead tenderly and Jonathan piled pillows up at the end of the
couch. Just then there was another knock at the door.

"Excuse me ... sir." Clark's unmistakable voice sounded strained
as he greeted his father face to face. "I'm looking for my, er
... wife. We had a little accident."

Lois couldn't deny the shiver of relief she felt at hearing his
voice.

Jonathan ushered him in the door gratefully. "Thank goodness
you're here. She seems a bit mixed up."

Lois took offense at that. She thought she was doing pretty well
under the circumstances. This trip was one big roller-coaster.

Martha stepped back out of the way and Clark crouched down in
front of Lois, noticing the bloodied cotton balls lying all over
the floor and the freshly cleaned cut on her forehead. He reached
out and brushed her hair away from her face gently with his
finger, the way he always did. He gazed into her eyes with a
mixture of fear and affection. "Lois, are you okay?" he
whispered.

She wanted to say, "no, I'm *not* okay!" She'd been lied to, and
dragged through time chasing after her partner and hit in the
head and chased by wild geese!

But seeing his liquid brown eyes, full of nothing but concern,
she couldn't find the anger she needed. "No, I'm fine ...
sweetheart," she added daringly, and was rewarded by the tiniest
grin of mutual understanding. It was fun playing at being
married. It was a game they both enjoyed, no matter what the
circumstances.

"Well, we really have to get going," Clark said abruptly, as he
dragged his gaze away from Lois' eyes, which were still sparkling
with the promise of a thousand questions. He stood and held out a
hand to her. She placed her hand in his without hesitation. It
was almost a challenge.

"Whoa there, young fella," his father said. "Don't you think she
should rest for a while?"

"Oh, no," said Clark, looking everywhere except his parent's
faces. "She's pretty tough. She does this kind of thing all the
time. Running off ... getting into trouble." He glared at her and
she glared back at him. "But I'm sure everything will work out
okay." Her glare became even more chilling.

Clark was doing everything he could to get himself and Lois out
of there, but he didn't help his case any when he reached down
and started to collect up all the used cotton balls.

"Oh, don't worry about all that." Martha intercepted him. "I'll
see to it."

"Yeah ... but I know how clean you like to keep things." Clark
winced when he realized his faux pas, and looked at Lois.

"What he means is that it's obvious that you keep your house as
neat as a pin." Lois rescued him and dragged on the hand she
held, pulling him towards the front door. When they reached the
door Clark turned again and finally allowed himself a quick
glimpse of his parents' young faces. Then he just stood there,
looking from one to the other. "Thank you ... for everything," he
said with a sincere emphasis that escaped them both.

"Yes, thank you," Lois echoed, pulling Clark through the door.
"C'mon Cl ... c'mon dear," she was careful not to use his name.
"We'd better leave these nice people in peace. We've already
caused enough trouble." With a parting smile she yanked on
Clark's arm once again, and pulled him along the path after her.

"Well they're a strange pair," Jonathan observed.

"Oh really? I think *he's* kinda cute," Martha teased.

"Where did he get that tie?" Jonathan was astounded. It had
really been unusually garish. It was probably one of those new
'geometrics' that were all the rage now.

Martha's depression from earlier in the day seemed to have
lifted, although Jonathan knew it was always there, beneath her
bubbly exterior.

"But I think you're cuter," she finished, and didn't let her
husband get in another word.

As they got out of earshot Lois felt Clark tense up. She dropped
his hand but kept walking straight ahead. Clark had to break into
a jog to catch up to her side. "Lois," he sighed, as she stormed
on ahead of him, "what are you *doing* here?"

"What am *I* doing here? That's a good one. I was following some
guy who was *supposed* to be my partner, that's what. I followed
him and his "friend" into a disused warehouse where they jumped
into a funny machine and went 'poof'. I guess I just jumped into
the 'poof' too.

"How did you hurt your head?"

"Forget that, Clark! I want to know what's going on." She swung
round to face him, shouting. "We've traveled back in *time*, for
god's sake! I don't understand any of this!"

"Lois, I wasn't sure what was going on. I met this guy called
Wells and he seemed pretty strange. I was just going with him to
check him out, that's all. I didn't want to worry you, and I
didn't want you to get hurt - and that's the *truth*." He seemed
to honestly want her to believe it.

"Well, that's not the way it works. I can look after myself so
don't do me any favors. Besides that, we're partners ...
*partners* Clark. We're in it *together* okay? I'm quoting you
directly by the way. Clark Kent: Words of Wisdom, Rule Number
Eighty-seven." She emphasized her point with a finger in his
chest. He looked suitably chastened and unable to find a reply.
Satisfied, she plowed on.

"And how come you never told me that you were adopted?"

He was shocked that *this* was the thing she'd decided to fix on.
"It's not something you just blurt out. I didn't think it was all
that important."

"It's a *part* of you. It's a part of what makes you who you are.
If we're ever going to get any further in this crazy relationship
we've got to start opening up to each other. How come you get the
deepest, darkest secrets of my innermost soul and I get zip?
There's this huge wall between us. Sometimes I really want to
know what's going on inside you and you won't let me in. You're a
hypocrite Clark Kent." She could see she'd struck a nerve.

" ... I wanted to tell you ..." he started, but it seemed such a
struggle for him, she relented. She really didn't want to fight
with him again. She wanted to share her excitement that they had
traveled back in time with someone who she knew would
understand.

"Well ... that's okay. Just don't let it happen again!" She
smiled, sharing the private joke.

Miraculously, she'd forgiven him *again*. If anything, it made
him feel worse. He couldn't see any way that they were going to
get out of this without Lois finding out the truth about some
things. And he knew the truth would hurt her deeply.

Right now, however, she was bubbling over like freshly popped
champagne. "Now tell me what's going on with this Wells guy."

"As near as I can figure he's H.G. Wells, the novelist," he added
just in case, and she gave him an impatient look, "and that thing
we came here in is his time machine. Lois, I know this sounds
crazy but you have to believe me ..."

"Clark, this is 1966! Right now I'm inclined to believe just
about anything. But what does he want with you?"

"Sshhh!" Clark interrupted her, and held up his hand to forestall
her protest. "Okay," he shouted off into the bushes ahead of
them, "c'mon out."

A sour-faced hippie emerged from behind a tree, and with a shock
Clark recognized a man who fit Tempus' description to a T.

"You're Tempus! What are you doing here snooping on my ... on the
Kents," Clark snapped angrily.

"Clark ... who is this guy?" Lois asked, confused, but Tempus
seized on the name. These two were obviously dressed more in step
with the nineties than the sixties. It was a small leap of
logic.

"Clark Kent, I presume," Tempus chortled, "and you must be the
famous Lois Lane. So Herb has engaged *you* to help with his
little witch hunt. Oh, but that's pointless ... why involve
others? Surely he would have enlisted Superman's aid. After all
it is Superman who I am here to eliminate."

Lois shot a look of concern at Clark, but he didn't say anything.
She returned her attention to Tempus. "Nobody can kill Superman,"
she challenged him.

"Unless you could get hold of him when he was a helpless little
baby. Gee ... if only I could go back in time." He laughed at his
own joke.

Lois was confused. She had never imagined Superman as ever being
a baby, helpless or otherwise.

"But Superman's not here. He only arrived on Earth ..." she
trailed off. She didn't actually know when he'd first arrived on
Earth, only that he turned up at the Planet two years ago. She
realized that almost everything she knew about Superman was an
assumption. Maybe those assumptions were wrong.

She looked again to Clark. From the look on his face, he knew
*exactly* what was going on. 'Of course Clark knows,' she
thought, 'he and Superman are so close.' What else had he been
keeping from her?

Clark just glared silently at Tempus. Tempus looked confused for
a moment, but something about the quality of Clark's silence
persuaded him to continue his analysis.

He had absorbed a lot of information about Superman before Wells
discovered his secret agenda, and he had always been confused by
a series of unexplained phenomena. Where had Superman lived? How
had he always managed to disappear back into oblivion when he
wasn't needed? Why had he made such a career out of helping these
two reporters in particular? What was the connection? The final
pieces fell easily into place.

"Oh but maybe he *did* bring Superman. Oh yes ... yes, it's
perfect!" Tempus stepped up to face Clark, strangely unafraid. "A
disguise? It's been suggested many times. How did you escape
detection? Why that's remarkable. It's so simple. How did you
manage to perpetrate this farce for so long?" He rolled his eyes
heavenwards and laughed even louder.

"Oh my dear," Tempus turned to Lois. "How you must have
suffered!" he declared with false sympathy. "Always running off
to change into his little blue suit and save the world. All those
lonely nights. All those cold dinners!"

Tempus stopped when he saw her face, which was absolutely devoid
of expression. She was as white as a sheet. "Don't tell me he
didn't tell you?" he said, finding yet another piece of the
puzzle. "Oh, this was worth the whole trip!"

Lois stared at her partner while her brain sorted through all the
seemingly disjointed information. Superman came to Earth as a
baby. Clark was adopted. Clark was always running out on her.

She stared until her eyes began to swim out of focus ... then,
like looking at one of those 3-D pictures, suddenly it just
clicked.

Clark's face resolved itself into the face of Superman.

Her eyes widened, blinking back moisture and her lips parted. A
great blackness massed itself at the edge of her consciousness.
With a great strength of will, she held it all at bay.

For the second time, Lois had this shoved in her face, but this
time, for some reason, she *knew* it was true. She couldn't
think. She couldn't breathe. A thousand images tried to crash in
on her simultaneously and her mind cried overload. She had to
resist it. She had to escape.

Lois simply turned and ran.

Helplessly, Clark watched her leave, then turned back to stare at
Tempus, noticing a crack in his bravado. Obviously, Tempus
expected some sort of retribution, but Clark didn't even feel
angry.

He felt resigned, almost relieved. For some reason, he had never
been able tell her, but she was bound to find out one day. If it
hadn't been Tempus, it would have been Diana Stride or the Smart
Kids. There would always have been someone waiting to destroy the
fragile balancing act that was his life. He had been so lucky
until now really, he couldn't have expected it to go on forever.

Was this what it was like on death row, when, after years of
hoping and staying the inevitable, your final appeal is
dismissed? Just an overwhelming relief that it was finally over?
He looked again at Tempus, a man who has set out to destroy
Superman but had succeeded, unwittingly, in delivering a much
more painful blow.

"C'mon Superman," Tempus jeered, sensing weakness and trying to
illicit some reaction. "Fly after her now. I'm sure you could win
her back with your super-manly charms. Well, do *something*.
Don't just stand there! Aren't you going to fly me into the town
jail and bend the steel bars around my neck. Or you could burn me
alive with your heat vision. C'mon Superman, I wanna see it. Kill
me! I would've killed you."

"You're crazy! You can't hurt Superman. He's invulnerable." Clark
thought about how many times he had said that, and how, all
along, it had never been true. He wondered if that had anything
to do with the catch in his voice. "What has he ever done to
you?"

"You came to Earth where you never belonged." Tempus seemed to
want confirmation and was trying to taunt him. But Clark refused
to give him the satisfaction, or even absolute proof.

There were still at least seven hours before the ship landed.
"You'll keep," he said menacingly, and grabbed him by the collar
and hauled him towards the fence fifty feet off the side of the
road embankment. He loosened several strands and used them to
bind Tempus to the fence post, all the while ignoring his vicious
barbs and cries of protest.

He jumped up the little slope at a normal human pace and took off
in the direction Lois had gone, back towards town. Perhaps if he
gave her a little time to herself ... Clark didn't like his
chances.

***

Eventually Lois had found herself back at the dirt road that led
into Smallville and began wandering towards town. She hadn't
walked very far before a grimy white truck pulled up beside her,
and it's equally dusty-looking driver offered to take her as far
as the crossroads.

She sat, dazed, in the passenger seat with her chin in her hand,
staring at the distant corn crop and allowing the undulating
yellow waves to absorb all conscious thought. She willed
everything else to remain blank. She was so fixed on the distant
fields that she was startled when she felt the truck pull over to
the right and stop. Lois had wanted to stay like that forever.

"This is as far as I'm goin' little lady," the man said amiably.
"Are you sure you're all right?"

"I'm fine ... thank you ..." she added as an afterthought,
backing away from the vehicle. Why did everybody keep asking her
that? She wasn't some fragile porcelain doll. Far from it.

A sign pointing to Smallville said 7 miles. Another pointing to
Simpson's Quarry said 5. She veered off the road in the direction
of Simpson's Quarry, for no other reason than she was mesmerized
by the expanse of golden pasture. Eventually she started to walk
faster and faster, and then she ran. Her heels caught every now
and again in the damp earth but she kept on running. She didn't
want 'him' to find her.

Who was she kidding? He could find her in an instant, just the
way Superman always could. The realization knocked the wind out
of her chest and she fell to the ground, hands clutching at the
warm, damp soil. She had to get a grip, she told herself as her
gasping gave way to sobbing. No one was going to help her - the
life she knew was thirty years away, and like some far off
fantasy world, she was never going to have that life back again.

Superman and Clark. Clark and Superman. They had been the best
friends she had ever known - and for a time, each had been much
more. She wasn't sure that she was able to let them go and tell
herself that they had never existed. The magnitude of the loss
brought stinging tears to her eyes. And whoever it was who now
stood in their place had lied to her and toyed with her and heard
her deepest secrets.

It was Claude and Lex all over again. But this time it was much,
much worse. With the others she had always held something back,
instinctively expecting the worst. But Clark and Superman were
different. She had trusted Clark more than she had ever trusted
anyone or anything in her life. She had *believed* in him.

Lois didn't want to think about this stranger. She wanted Clark
back again. She wanted Superman to swoop down out of the sky and
deliver one of his speeches that made her feel safe and
worthwhile. No ... there was no Superman. She wasn't even sure if
there was a Clark. There was just one big, fat lie. That's all
that was left.

She felt her mind try to spiral away in denial. How could she
have let herself come to this? She had made rules for herself
that this would never happen! It was because she felt things so
deeply that she had to beware letting herself feel at all. She
raised her head and looked around and saw nothing but corn fields
in every direction. There was no-one to see her lose control, and
no-one to care. She was totally alone, just the way it has always
been. Finally she let all the agony well up and overflow the
walls she had built in her mind. The sobs came quicker and
quicker and finally meshed into something that sounded
suspiciously like crying as she allowed herself to sink into the
soft grass. She just couldn't hold back any more.

***

Wells trundled along in his rented Dodge towards the Kent farm.
Clark hadn't been at Simpson's Quarry, and it didn't take a
genius to figure out where he'd gone. Somehow Wells had imagined
that his idol would be a bit more ... superheroish. The Clark
Kent he had met was just a normal man. Easygoing ... intelligent
certainly, but young and unsure of himself in many ways. He
didn't seem to be the stuff of which legends were made. Then
again, perhaps he was exactly that.

Wells had chosen to approach Superman at the very beginning of
his 'career', when he was at his most accessible. He wondered if
the young man realized what lay in store for him on the path he
had chosen - what triumphs and tragedies he was yet to face. The
adventure had only just begun.

Wells kept to a slow pace, all the while keeping an eye out for
Kent, who was around somewhere, and Tempus, who had reportedly
caught a ride out to Kent's farm. After a few minutes, he topped
a rise and saw the figure of a man in hippie clothing lashed to a
fence post just visible through the trees at the side of the
road. Wells quickly veered off into the dirt. He reached for the
sturdy, double-barreled shotgun he had purchased as insurance and
climbed out of the car, making his way down the little hill. He
hoped Tempus wouldn't realize that he didn't feel capable of
pulling the trigger, supposing it was even legal.

"So, I've finally found you,' Wells said, holding the gun where
Tempus could clearly see he meant business.

"Herb! I'd like to say 'what a surprise' but we both know it
isn't." He looked pointedly at the gun. "Now Herb. We all know
you're a first rate humanitarian. This," he gestured at the gun
with a nod, "seems a little out of your league. And I'm so
disappointed in you. Why didn't you tell me that Clark Kent was
Superman."

"Because all his life he went to great pains to preserve his
anonymity, and I wasn't about to tell the world what I knew. And
I especially wasn't going to tell you, with your warped ideas
about 'contamination'," he said with contempt. " Now just keep
still and you won't be harmed," Wells threatened, but no sooner
did he get the last of the pieces of wire unhooked, Tempus
pivoted and attacked him and they struggled to the ground, each
fighting for possession of the gun.

A shot broke the stillness of the late afternoon for a moment and
an agonizing cry rang out. Then the dappled light settled back
over the countryside with a cloak of silence. Crickets chirped
and frogs croaked and no-one noticed the tiny spaceship glide
overhead, sear a path along the ground and settle with a gentle
thud in Shuster's lower forty, six hours ahead of schedule. An
afterglow of shimmering green particles followed in its wake and
the slightly larger pieces scattered themselves around the craft
like a big, loose necklace. Unaware of the danger, or the role he
would play in the history of his new home, inside the ship the
tiny baby slept on.

***

Clark trudged on in the direction from which he had heard Lois
crying. The sobs had all but stopped a few minutes ago and had
been replaced by the occasional hiccupy gasp that was so pitiful
it tore at his heart.

He didn't want to go through this confrontation, and that
knowledge seemed to be draining all his energy.

Over the next rise he saw her. She was seated on the ground,
hunched in on herself - one hand wrapped around her stomach and
the other ripping over and over at the grass near her feet. When
he got within a few feet of her, he expected some reaction, but
as he stopped in front of her, she only raised her eyes enough to
stare at his shoes. They stayed like that for a long time, each
seemingly content to be at the mercy of the other's first move.
Clark closed his eyes.

Finally Lois broke the silence "I knew you'd find me."

Clark started to say a number of things, but let every hopelessly
inadequate offering trail off into silence.

"I've been sitting here thinking about you. About both of you,"
she added as she finally looked up into his eyes. It looked as if
it had taken real effort. Then she just seemed transfixed,
staring at his face. He let her take her fill. It was the least
he could do. Her eyes were red and her face was streaked with the
tracks of dried tears. Her nose was red and swollen and her hair
was in a mess. He had caused her this pain. This was the price of
his "normal" life. Ashamed of his selfishness, he eventually had
to blink and look away.

She began again hesitantly, as if every word was painful. "I was
remembering when you ... first came to the Planet and I ... told
you about my 'rules'. And then when ... you flew me back from the
space shuttle, and I asked you for an exclusive because I'd seen
you first, and ... do you remember what you said?"

Clark nodded, grateful beyond all comprehension that she was
extending this olive branch to him. He knelt down in front of her
and smiled sadly, "I said, 'is that the rule?'"

"I should have known right there and then. Pretty sassy stuff
from a Kansas farm boy in blue underwear," she said and he smiled
at her to share the joke, but she wasn't smiling, and seemed to
have drawn in on herself again. Her mood scared him.

Lois was struggling with a thousand different images that were
each clamoring for the attention of her conscious mind. Each
wanted to be taken out and examined and reinserted into this new
truth. But there was no order to anything, so she was just
selecting images at random.

"When ... you were blinded and I thought you were off on a dirty
weekend with Mayson but you were there all the time ... when you
stole the globe ... when Superm ... when *you* flew off to stop
that asteroid and ... you ... you lost your memory ..." She
stopped and looked at him, horrified. "I didn't know ..." she
finished apologetically. "You could have been killed!"

"Lois ..." he started.

"You *were* killed. You let me think that Clyde shot you and he
couldn't have ... you just flew away and let me think you were
dead?"

Her eyes pleaded with him to deny this betrayal. This was veering
into dangerous territory.

"All those times you walked out as one and flew in as the other.
You just had all the bases covered, didn't you," she accused.

"Lois, I never ..."

"You must have thought I was such a jerk, swooning over
Superman!" She parroted him back at himself with deadly accuracy.
'What's the matter, Lois, bored with Superman already?' 'Hot date
with Superman, huh?' 'You two are very lucky to have each other'
... ha!

"I must be ... *an idiot*!" she said with a kind of self-mocking
laughter. Her conversation was all over the place - surprise,
denial, anger ...

"Why didn't I see?" She looked at him earnestly, like she
expected him to help her, then shook her head as if to disabuse
herself of any idea of help from that quarter. "I had *all* the
clues. Pulitzer ha!" She started to laugh - a kind of hysterical
giggling and let her head fall into her hands as tears reappeared
in her eyes, trying to hide them from him. Clark grabbed her
wrists but she shook him off angrily. She jumped up then and
started to storm off across the field again. He leapt up to
follow her.

"Didn't you trust me? Or is it yourself you didn't trust?" She
stopped in her tracks and turned to face him again, this time
opening her hands to him, asking the one thing that still didn't
make sense. "Why couldn't you just *tell* me?" Lois deserved an
answer, and Clark wasn't sure he could give her one.

"Lois, I hated not being able to tell you this. The closer we've
gotten ... the more I've wanted to explain this to you but ..."
He tried to take her hands in his but she quickly folded them
across her chest. "but it just kept getting so ... complicated."
This sounded like a lie to his own ears. He didn't think he had
ever really wanted to tell her. He dreamed of a time where she
*knew* - a dream of blissful, honest intimacy - but that wasn't
really the same thing. Never in his life had he ever wanted to
tell anybody. It was as ingrained in him as the survival
instinct.

All his life he had been conditioned to believe that to tell his
secret was to surrender his very life. His father's most grave
warning as he set out on his own was that if anyone found out
about him they would put him in a laboratory and (he heard his
father's voice) "dissect you like a frog." While Clark knew that
dissection was probably impossible, he still retained that
childhood fear that if he wasn't very careful, he would end up as
a some kind of specimen, or a zoo exhibit, or a freak, or a
recluse. And so he had always been paralyzed by this 'thing' that
no-one else could ever know.

Never in his life had he stayed very long in the one place,
except home of course. If things looked like getting a little too
hairy he'd always moved on. On the day he came to Metropolis he
saw a chance for something different. It was a big city, not like
Smallville, where everyone knew everyone else. He could lose
himself in a city like Metropolis. There was room enough for
Clark to live a "normal" life while someone else - a man in a
disguise - continued to help where he could then disappeared back
into nowhere.

When "Superman" seemed to be able to successfully fulfill Clark's
self-imposed obligations to the planet that nurtured him, he
began to feel confident that there was nothing to stop 'Clark'
having everything a normal man might wish for. In the back of his
mind he had always told himself it would all fall apart one day
and again he would have to move on, but he had played each day as
it came, grateful for the time he had been thus far granted to be
in Metropolis and working for the Daily Planet, and to have
friends like Perry and Jimmy ... and Lois. He could see now that
the apparent success of Superman had lulled him into a false
sense of security.

It had all seemed to work so well at the start and, like the fool
that he was, he'd even played upon Lois' affections for the guy
in the cape, telling himself that he deserved a little happiness.
It felt so good when she looked at him with adoration in her
eyes, even if it was Superman she was looking at. Until the day
he realized even Superman had become an obstacle to his
happiness.

The relationship Clark had built with Lois was more of an
intellectual sparring match, born of the fact that Lois had first
seen him as a rival. It was fun though, and they had both enjoyed
the challenge. It had even been intensely flirtatious in a way
but it didn't leave much room for Clark to express the genuine
admiration he had for Lois and have her believe him. If ever Lois
had needed support or understanding, for some reason it had been
easier for Superman to provide it.

As a result, she had fallen so completely in love with the
superhero, that Clark didn't think the real man would ever live
up to Lois' idealized image. So Superman had to extricate himself
from Lois' life, and Clark had tried to take up where he left
off.

He just couldn't go on giving Lois reinforcement when he was
wearing the cape, and he had found himself pulling back from her.
It had hurt to see her confusion. He wasn't the perfect hero
anymore, but strangely, Lois didn't seem to let it affect their
relationship, offering the same degree of affection she always
had, no matter how many times Superman pushed her away. After
that, Clark had worked so hard to be what Lois needed, but
Superman made sure that the one thing she needed the most - for
Clark to be there for her - was the one thing Clark couldn't
offer.

He had never had to face any of these issues before - issues of
staying and coping and fighting on. Lois was always much better
at that than he was. His first solution had always been to pack
up and leave. Or at best, to hope it all went away. Lois deserved
much, much better than that. He had only ever wanted her to be
happy - in fact, that was all he had ever wanted for himself.

"It all started because I wanted to lead a normal life. Friends,
a job ..." he let the sentence trail off. "Lois, I knew that I
couldn't do that if people knew." He stopped again, the thought
of all he stood to lose made him giddy.

She had started to speak several times while she watched him
struggle with his emotions, but she couldn't make herself choose
one of his names. Both of them had been so real to her. "I don't
even know what to call you," she said finally, shocked. The
knowledge that he had taken even that surety away from her was
overwhelming.

"Superman is ... what I can do," he tried to explain. "Clark is
who I am." And he knew that this at least was true. Moreover,
'Superman' was what he could do easily. Flying and catching bad
guys and stopping nuclear missiles, that was the easy stuff. It
was down here on Earth being human just like everybody else that
he found incredibly difficult. He didn't have a head start. In
fact, he had a major handicap.

Sometimes it was a relief - an escape - to fly off to answer a
call for help. At least he knew he could discharge that
responsibility with some degree of success. Better to be useful
somewhere than not at all. As it turned out, Superman had made
pretty much a success of his life, while Clark, on the other
hand, had been a dismal failure.

But for all his fancy excuses, Clark knew that it was fear that
kept him silent, and he didn't want to admit to fear: fear of
discovery; fear that Lois would hate him beyond all repair; and a
very real fear that to let Lois in on the secret would force her
into that same dark world where guys like Tempus would want to
kill her, too, just for the hell of it. He was afraid the day
would come when he wouldn't be there when she needed him.

"And it was partly for your protection."

"Don't patronize me," she fired back at him.

"I'm not patronizing you. If you knew, and somebody found out
that you knew, you'd have been a target."

"What do you think I am, stupid?"

"You are the smartest woman that I know," he said, trying to
convey the wealth of admiration and respect he had for her and
failing, "and I never wanted to hurt you in any way. Now if what
I did was wrong then I apologize, but I can't change what I've
done."

He wanted to explain that his work was important - that he was
proud of what he had achieved since donning the cape, but Lois
had spun on her heels and continued her progress in the direction
of Shuster's field. As that was more or less their next stop, he
decided to let it go. She seemed to have stopped the questions
for now - perhaps if he just gave her a little more time. At
least she hadn't slapped his face. That was encouraging!

Jogging after her again, he suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous.
"Lois ..." he started, as the trees up ahead accelerated wildly
off into the distance and the rest of the countryside collapsed
into that same vanishing point. Then the world tilted at a
sickening angle and the ground leapt up and hit him in the face.

He came to with her palm on his forehead and her voice echoing in
his ears. The sound pulsed in and out for a while and he couldn't
make out what she was saying, but she sounded so scared it
frightened him and he put all his effort into shaking the cobwebs
out of his head.

"Oh my god," she was saying. "I've never seen you look so pale.
Here, can you sit up?"

He tried to get up, but the world spun round his head again.
"Ugh, I don't feel so good," he said unnecessarily and smiled at
her. This was his punishment he was sure. He couldn't really
think straight.

Eventually, with Lois' assistance, Clark managed to sit and then,
after a while, stand. But Lois had her arms around him all the
time. That part felt good. Everything else felt lousy. She helped
him as they continued down the quarry road, not knowing what else
to do.

"Just down here is Shuster's field," he explained, "where the
ship landed. Mom and Dad used to say that it was night when they
were driving along and they saw what they thought looked like a
meteor ... so I guess we're early." The sun was just starting to
dip below the horizon. He was stopped again by another stab of
pain.

"I've been remembering something else," Lois said hesitantly, and
he tried to give her his full attention. "Remember when we came
here for the corn festival, and Trask ...." she let that trail
away because Clark was nodding. "And you got really pale and sick
and you said it was your allergies. Well, it wasn't allergies,
was it?"

It took a few steps for that to sink in. Clark shook his head in
denial. "The capsule doesn't land till 1am," he said with
finality. "There *is* no Kryptonite yet. That's hours away!"

For some reason her reporter's instincts had taken over again.
She didn't know what part of her let her deal with things like
this so calmly and rationally, while the rest of her mind was
screaming at the overload, but she was eternally grateful for it.
It had seen her through many a crisis.

Maybe it was because she had had a damn good cry, and she felt
much better. Maybe it was because, despite his condition, he was
with her again and that always made her feel safe. Maybe it was
because he needed her to be strong now, and maybe it was because
the shock was starting to wear off and this new reality was
already asserting itself. Whatever it was, she methodically added
these new pieces to the jigsaw and started to see the whole
picture much more clearly.

"Where's Tempus?"

Clark willed himself to focus. "I left him tied up back in the
woods. I was going to go back for him after I'd made sure you
were okay.
I ... just started to feel so tired."

"Well we'd better hurry," Lois said, getting a better grip around
his waist and dragging him forward. "I don't know what your
parents saw in the sky that night, but that spaceship is already
here."

They'd gotten about another five hundred yards when they saw the
smoking trail heading off into the trees. They hobbled across the
cow grating and stared at the burning scar cutting a swath across
the green pasture land. "Lois, this is Shuster's field, where my
parents found the ... me."

They'd almost gotten to the trees when Clark collapsed, unable to
co-ordinate his legs properly any more. Lois helped him the rest
of the way and propped him against a large oak, where she hoped
he'd have some protection. He sunk down to the ground gratefully.
"You wait here and I'll go look," she soothed, but he wasn't
quite that far gone.

"No, Lois ... wait," he called out, trying to stand again and
finding that it was temporarily beyond his ability. But Lois had
already disappeared along the path of the landing trail. He let
his head loll back against the tree and began to summon his
strength for one last effort.

Lois heard the voices just before she happened upon the little
tableau. An old Dodge pickup was parked on the main access road
to the quarry with the driver's side door hanging open. Tempus
and Wells were walking backwards and forwards. Tempus had a rifle
trained on Wells' back and he was forcing him to collect up all
the scattered green rocks that they could find and pile them up
next to a silvery blue capsule. Wells was favoring his right leg.
She could hear a small baby gurgling.

"Hurry up, Herb," Tempus cried. "Do you suppose you'd work faster
if you didn't have a couple of bullets in you?"

Wells threw down the rock. "I won't do this. I suppose you will
just have to kill me." He stared defiantly at the gun.

Lois picked up the largest stick she could see lying around and
waited, with absolutely no idea how she was going to approach
them without being seen.

Wells tried one last gambit. "Do you really think you can change
the future by killing a child?"

"Well, as you can see Herb, I'm giving it my best."

"You're a fool. Loron, please. What you're doing is against all
the rules we live by. You cannot interfere with history, you'll
be expelled. You'll lose a lifetime's worth of wonderful
memories."

"I won't be expelled, I'll be exalted! Applauded as the savior of
Earth. Drastic situations call for drastic measures you know,
Herb." Tempus continued, using a lot of his best speech
material.

"It's his kind that have brought us to this. It's his arrival
that was the mistake. It was never meant to happen. I am not
interfering with history, I am setting it back on its rightful
course." Tempus was fired with his belief.

"Look how far we've fallen, you and I." Wells said sadly. "We
were friends! Oh ... I'm not castigating you for your beliefs.
You're only human, and that's my point. It was the same in 1966
as it has always been.

"When faced with a crisis, humans revert to their baser selves -
greed, unreasoning fear - and we look for someone or something to
lash out against. But if you do this there will be no hope for
us. We *need* to evolve and we can't do that alone. When he came
to this planet, there was no hope. He set us on a different path.
You must not alter that path now!" Wells finished, seeming to
have exhausted all his energy to argue. But Tempus cut him down,
ending their discussion.

"Herb, did your books actually sell? 'Cause you're kind of a
bore."

Tempus was forced to finish collecting the Kryptonite by himself,
throwing it all towards the pile at the side of the tiny
spaceship one handed, as he kept the gun trained on his prisoner.
He pushed Wells back to the car and started to wire his hands to
the steering wheel. Lois decided it was now or never.

Slowly, she snuck up behind him and whacked him across the back
of the head with her stick. He fell to the ground, dislodging the
gun which was propped against the side of the car. They both
scrabbled in the dirt for it but Tempus was stronger. She managed
to disrupt his aim with a kick, and the first shot fired off into
the car, the discharge missing Wells by inches. But she was swung
off balance and could only back away from him as he leveled the
gun, with it's remaining loaded barrel, at her head.

The sound of the first shot raised Clark from his stupor. "Lois
..." he groaned as he willed himself, with superhuman effort, up
off the ground and towards the clearing. Tempus had a shotgun
aimed squarely at Lois' head and his fingers were tightening on
the trigger.

Clark tried to fly to her, but he could barely walk. He staggered
to a tree at the far edge of the clearing, and tried to use his
heat vision to melt the gun, but the power seemed to have
deserted him. While pins and needles danced in front of his eyes
like tiny stars, Clark managed to direct a stream of freezing
breath towards the gun in Tempus' hands. When it became too cold
to handle, he yelped and dropped it. But the effort of blowing
had left Clark so light headed that he felt the life drain out of
him with a kind of sick euphoria. Then he felt nothing at all.

Clark sunk to the ground unconscious. The proximity and abundance
of the Kryptonite was almost lethal to him now.

While Tempus glared at Clark, Lois had the opportunity she needed
to kick his legs from under him. "You like violence so much?
C'mon. Let's see what you've got," she taunted him. Now that the
odds were more even, she downed him with a knee in the stomach
and a double fist to his kidneys. "I hate to tell you this," she
said to his crumpled body, "but you hit like a girl."
Unfortunately, Tempus couldn't hear her.

She quickly untied Wells, noticing the blood caked on his thigh,
and used the wire to bind Tempus' hands behind him before he came
to. "The baby!" Wells cried, but Lois had already snatched the
baby from inside its Kryptonite laden cradle and placed him in
the car.

"Can you get him?" she shouted, pointing to where Clark lay and
she jumped in the Dodge to kick the motor over, but the spray of
pellets had done some damage somewhere and it wouldn't start.

"We have to get them away from the Kryptonite," Wells called
after her as she grabbed the baby again and raced over to place
him next to his older self, resting a hand on her partner's neck
to assure herself that there was still a pulse, beating thready
and weak.

"Or ... get the Kryptonite away from them," she yelled back at
him. Lois instructed Wells to help her load all the Kryptonite
into the back of the truck. They tied up the steering wheel with
the left over fencing wire, and then put it in neutral and
released the hand brake. With a bit of a push, they were able to
direct the car down the hill towards the quarry and, bathed in
the crimson glow of sunset, it toppled over the edge and plunged
way down into the cavern below.

***

A giant, throbbing pain clutched at his temple and his chest felt
tight. Under normal circumstances the after-effects of Kryptonite
poisoning were very unpleasant, but this was the best headache
he'd ever had.

When he'd gone down that last time he was sure he was dying. He
had even tried to hold onto the feeling, having never experienced
anything like it before. But unless man had been greatly mislead,
this was not heaven.

His arms felt heavy and his mouth was dry. He felt awful. But it
had at least one aspect of heaven. Close by, he could hear Lois
singing.

He gradually worked his eyes open and she swam into focus, as
beautiful as ever, limned by moonlight. She'd had a bit of a
chance to clean up. She'd washed her face at some stage and had
brushed her hair back to some semblance of its usual glossy veil.
She was cross-legged on the ground, only about four feet away and
she was clutching a bundle of cloth and singing down into its
folds. It was a sweet, melodic piece. It sounded like Simon and
Garfunkel. Then he recognized it, it was 'The Boxer'. She was
singing something about going home and she eventually made her
way through a number of 'di, di, di' lyrics which were very
soothing.

He watched her contentedly as she shifted the baby around in her
arms, and from what he could see, the baby was doing much the
same thing. 'That's me she's holding like that!' he thought.
Clark had always wondered why he had fallen so in love with Lois
at first sight. Now he wondered whether the bond had started a
lot earlier than either of them imagined.

She finished the song and noticed him watching her. "How do you
feel?" she asked.

"Ugghh!" It took a couple of goes to make the words come out
right. "Next question?" he said, but managed a reassuring smile
for her, which seemed to be what she needed as she settled back
to gaze at her charge.

"Hey, what happened back there?" he eventually managed. "I kinda
lost it there at the end."

"Wells is guarding Tempus, they seem to have lots to talk about,
and the Kryptonite is at the bottom of the quarry, along with Wal
Truscott's Dodge pick-up." She said it all without sparing him a
glance.

Clark winced, then remembered something. "Hey ... that quarry was
partially filled and graded in the early seventies to make way
for the highway bypass. I guess that's pretty lucky for me." He
owed her his life.

"Lois, I want to say ..." he looked up at her earnestly but
couldn't help the smile that came to his face at the sight of
Lois Lane, star reporter, getting all clucky over a little baby.

She felt his eyes on her again and looked up defiantly. "He was
cold." She said, noticing his expression, and wrapped the blue
blankets around the infant as if to support her statement.

"Lois, trust me. He's not cold." He eased his head back against
the tree gently, but the throbbing had subsided somewhat.

"Clark Kent, what do you know about babies?"

He raised his head again and looked at her. "D'you know that's
the first time you've called me Clark since ... I wondered if
you'd ever say it again."

She didn't deign to answer that, but instead had closed her eyes
and listened intently as he spoke. "Lois ... what's wrong?"

"It really is the two of you in there, isn't it?"

Clark swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded.

"Same voice, same ... face ..." she took another look to confirm
her words. "I can't *believe* you did this! I just ... can't
believe it." But she was much calmer now.

Forgiven but not forgotten then, Clark thought. She'd obviously
had a few hours while he was out cold to sort out her feelings.
Clark started to believe that given time, it might all just work
out. It was a start anyway. He began to feel much better and
tried another tack. "How's he doing?"

"He's fine. Better than you. And he was closer to the Kryptonite.
Maybe it didn't start to effect you till you got older."

"I don't know," Clark replied honestly. "I'd never even heard of
Kryptonite till that trip to Smallville."

Lois absorbed this, too, but again didn't reply. He was getting
high just watching her with that baby and let his mind drift to
another of his favorite fantasies. "What time is it?" He thought
to ask and sat up straight.

"Just after eleven," Lois offered. "We've still got plenty of
time." And suddenly she seemed to mean something else entirely.

He pushed carefully to his feet, feeling better every minute, and
brushed off his pants a little.

Lois looked slightly panicked "Where are you going?"

"To check on Wells and Tempus." He said, and started off in the
direction of the clearing, from where the sound of their raised,
angry voices had started to filter back to him.

"Bring some firewood," she said.

"Lois, I said ...."

"Well *I* might be cold!"

"Here," Clark said as if it was easily fixed, and peeled off his
jacket, walking back to drape it gently around her. As she helped
to settle it around her shoulders she noticed it was warm and
smelled wonderfully familiar, just like usual. Lois realized she
cherished that familiarity.

"Bring some firewood anyway," she said cryptically, as he walked
off again. 'What was her problem?' Clark thought. 'It wasn't that
cold.'

Wells and Tempus were passing the time alternating between tense
philosophical discussions and stony silences. It was into one of
those silences that Clark intruded. He walked right past Tempus,
who glared at him in disgust, but he seemed to have run out of
snappy comebacks for the time being. Clark crouched down in front
of Wells, noticing the slowly seeping wound above his knee for
the first time.

"I think I might be able to do something about that," Clark said,
hoping that ability too had returned. He began to push aside the
cloth as Wells protested that he would be okay.

"Please, Mr. Wells ... it's the least I can do to thank you for
all you've done for ... for Lois and me." As he lowered his
glasses he took another sidelong glance at Tempus, who was
fascinated, despite himself. Wells had more or less the same
expression as Clark successfully directed his heat vision to seal
the wound.

"Hey Superman," Tempus called out, and Clark rose and moved
across to stand in front of him, unconsciously folding his arms
across his chest to adopt his 'Superman' persona.

"As long as I have you here just answer one thing for me. Why
tights? Why a cape? You're a grown man. Don't you feel
ridiculous?"

Clark leaned forward to glare at him menacingly. "My mother made
it for me."

After assuring Wells that he was feeling much better and
receiving assurances back that Wells had Tempus under control,
Clark collected some twigs and branches and returned to pile them
up back at the tree. After he had what he thought was a decent
teepee arrangement, he asked Lois if she had any matches in her
bag.

She was watching him like a hawk. "Can't you just ... you know,"
she offered casually, and suddenly he realized what the little
drama before had been all about. She *wanted* him to do it. He
swallowed hard.

He had been specifically avoiding doing anything to remind her
about it, wanting to save her any more pain, but here she was
practically pleading with him. He lowered his glasses, feeling
strangely naked and vulnerable and slightly excited to be doing
this in front of her, and ignited the little pile to a healthy
glow. When he looked up again she was staring at him, with that
same expression, the one she got when she was thinking really
hard about something. He gave her another smile but she just
turned away to place the now sleeping baby beside her and pulled
the morning's edition of the paper out of her handbag, angling it
into the flickering light.

He settled down into a sitting position, stoked the fire
unnecessarily and tried to fix on an innocent topic for
conversation. The baby was very quiet and he said something to
that effect - that he was a good little baby.

"That's *you* in there." Lois reminded him.

"I know. At least I know it in here." He tapped his head. "It's
just hard to look at him and see ... well it's just difficult to
get used to, that's all."

"For me too, Clark," she said and returned to her paper, and once
again he knew that they were talking about something else.

Lois read from the lead article. "Fighting broke out in the South
Vietnamese port of Danang today. This morning, American troops
manning the giant Danang Airbase were ordered off the streets as
the Vietnamese marines took over key points in the city ..."

"This is all happening right now Clark, and we can't do anything
about it -- not *anything*!" Lois looked at him with a mixture of
wonder and horror, but Clark had that far away expression he got
when he was about to announce that he had to return an urgent
video, or collect a vital Cheese-of-the-Month shipment. She
recognized it now. It was the same expression Superman got when
he was called away to a crisis. Clark was hearing the call of
duty and she was shocked to realize that he had been living the
very life she had fantasized for him. Her own personal hero. Or
maybe not hers at all. She continued to read.

"There were demonstrations at 12 Colleges today where draft
deferment tests were held. The US has been calling between 25,000
and 50,000 men a month since the major military build-up started
in South Vietnam last August. Present US strength on the ground
stands at 255,000 men and is rising at the rate of about 18,000
men a month. The Chairman of the Senate Preparedness Committee,
Senator John Stennis, last night predicted a "substantial
increase" in American strength in Vietnam."

Clark looked fidgety, so she leafed through the paper for
something a little less dismal. "Rome - Sunday. Italian surgeons
have successfully grafted the kidney of a chimpanzee onto a 23
year old youth."

"Che un'orrenda esperienza per lo scimpanze," he said under his
breath in perfect Italian.

"Huh, what did you say?"

"I said, what a horrible experience for the chimp!"

She remembered something. "Can you really order dinner in 347
languages?"

"Certamente. Che fa domani?" He smiled to himself, then told
himself it was time to open up and decided to let her in on the
joke. "Er ... what are you doing tomorrow?" She grinned at him,
unable to help herself. He really did look better.

He pretended to consult a make-believe menu. "Mi porti la
macedonia di frutta, e un'mousse al cioccolato per la mia
amica."

"I hope that last one's for me," she giggled. "Even I can
recognize a chocolate mousse when I hear one. What about the
winelist?"

"Garcon!" he clicked his fingers in the air, switching to French.
"Pourrais-je avoir la carte des vins?"

"Mmmm, 'vins'," she smiled. "Lots of vins."

"Cuantos mas seamos, mejor," he agreed in Spanish, showing off a
little. "Does this mean I'm making progress?" he asked
hopefully.

"I'm still mad at you, remember?" she warned him, and went back
to her paper.

"Aber Rom wurde nicht in einem Tag erbaut," he said resignedly.
Lois didn't remember much high school German, but she thought it
meant something about Rome in a day.

There was a landslide in Ecuador which killed 52 people, but she
didn't think she ought to mention that. "Hey ... French stunt man
M. Henri Rochatain stepped back to land after spending eight days
on a tightrope 300 feet over the ... Loie, Loir-e Valley."

"Loire," he corrected her pronunciation absentmindedly. It
sounded sexy when he said it.

There was a story about the British/French plans to build a
tunnel under the English Channel. She grimaced to herself at the
reporter's slanted opinions on the likelihood of this ever coming
about. There was even a television section, with a story on Dr.
Kildare and another about a "new" show called Star Trek.

"Hey here's something," she said, finding a topic that might
engage his enthusiasm again, "did you know that Cape Kennedy is
launching Gemini 9 tomorrow. It says it's the seventh manned
mission in the last 14 months and they are having a three day
flight and a 25 minute space walk."

She looked up to gauge his interest, then, with a jolt, saw
something else.

"I guess you can take a 'space-walk' anytime you want to ... and
you don't need a Gemini rocket to get you there. You're
Superman!" She'd made this discovery time and time again over the
last few hours, but somehow, it was still difficult to accept.

He looked up at her and she felt the flush of realization
overcome her again as she remembered all the times he had taken
her flying in his arms.

This was Superman, sitting right next to her. He hadn't gone
anywhere. He was right here, where he had always been. She
cringed when she remembered the day she told him that she would
love him, even if he was an ordinary man, and after all this
time, his reaction suddenly made sense. A lot of things suddenly
made sense. And overlaid across all the painful disappearances,
and all the secrets and the strange events that were never fully
explained, was the knowledge that the two of them, together in
this one man who was her best friend, had looked after her and
stood by her, body and soul, for all the time they had known each
other. All of a sudden she felt very humbled.

She watched him as he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge
of his nose. "I just gotta wake up here," he commanded himself.

Maybe it was his way of helping her come to terms with this new
knowledge. He was certainly being very patient with her, and he'd
always been that way, she remembered. He'd always put other
people's feelings before his own. Perhaps that's how he got them
into this mess in the first place. He was different to anyone
else she had ever met ... or ever would.

Lois knew now that she wanted very much to start to mend the rift
between them, and start to get to know the real Clark Kent - the
whole Clark Kent. But first she wanted to apologize.

"Look, I'm sorry I was so hard on you before about ... you know."
She wasn't sure which before she meant. Before when she railed at
him in the field, or all the times before that, when she'd hurt
him without even knowing it. He stopped what he was doing
suddenly and gazed into her eyes, looking for absolution. "It
must have been really hard all those years having to hide and
pretend and not being able to share. I'm sorry you had to go
through all that alone."

"I wasn't alone Lois. I always had my parents ... and you. Maybe
there were a lotta things that I couldn't say, but ... there was
nothing I couldn't feel. You don't have anything to apologize
for. You've always been there for me. It was more than I
deserved," he finished lamely.

"Clark ..."

"Lois ..."

Just then the baby whimpered and they exchanged knowing smiles
that acknowledged how the gods conspired against them at times
like this. Lois reached down to draw the bundle back into her
arms, and Clark's jacket began to dislodge from around her
shoulders. He moved across till he was just behind her and
replaced the jacket, settling it back in place and leaving his
hands encircling the tops of her arms, feeling light-headed again
with being this close to her.

"It suits you," he whispered just behind her, enraptured by the
way she glowed in the firelight and loosened the silky hair with
his forefinger where it was caught under the collar of the
jacket. He stared, entranced, at those few inches of bare neck
and felt like a moth drawn to a flame. Gently, and perhaps
unwisely, he let his lips rest briefly on the warm skin.

"Clark, stop it," she said without conviction and she shivered
uncontrollably, feeling her head slip to the side without her
volition, to allow him better access. Her actions were in
complete defiance of her words.

"What suits me ... your jacket?" She thought to ask. She was
having trouble keeping a hold of the baby. All her limbs were
turning to lead. "Ah, Clark!" she yelped, and he drew back so she
could place the baby just out of reach, folding the blue blanket
more comfortably under his head.

Clark sat back on his heels and watched her. "Motherhood," he
said, simply. "Who knows, one day you might get to have kids of
your own." Clark wondered whether he could be a part of that
dream.

Lois brushed the leaves away from her hands and then stood up,
bending down to pat at her skirt, dislodging more bits of
clinging foliage. She walked back over to where Clark was still
kneeling, and coming to a decision, bent down and kissed him
chastely on the cheek. She smiled, wondering the same thing he
was and accepting the uncertainty of their future.

"Well, I don't know if I'll ever have my own kids ... but it'll
sure be fun practicing!"

This was so wildly suggestive, Clark felt his face flush. He
leapt to his feet and stared deeply into Lois' eyes, looking for
permission. He took her hands in his as their heads came closer
and closer together. They inhaled the same warm, moist breath for
one, two, three seconds - lips a hair's breadth apart, each
paused in the knowledge that this would the first kiss they would
ever share in complete honesty.

At the last instant Clark altered his aim. He slid his lips along
hers without allowing them to touch and kissed the side of Lois'
mouth instead, delaying the moment. He kissed her chin, then
planted feather-light kisses on the tip of her nose and her
forehead. It was the most incredible feeling of worship Lois
could imagine, and she sighed in helpless, blissful agony. Clark
kissed her nose one last time then caught her sigh in his mouth,
which finally fastened on hers with a hunger that took her breath
away. Lois felt her whole body ready itself for the promise she
had just made to him.

She felt herself overbalance and tried for an instant to replant
her feet underneath her, but his strong arms snaked over her
shoulders, slipping the jacket off and letting it fall to the
ground. His arms then moved around her back like hot steel bands
and practically lifted her off the ground towards his chest. She
felt two years worth of denial and a lifetime of longing in the
way he kissed her. Eventually she drew back, needing air, and
tried to ease the intensity a little, sensing that this was not
the time or the place for this. She placed her hands on his
chest, smiling through tears, and tried to think of something
important and meaningful to say. In the end all she could come up
with was, "Wow!"

She giggled and Clark laughed. Something she had heard him do all
too rarely. She was so happy that he was happy, but she was still
sorting through feelings, some of which she hadn't even
identified.

Just weeks ago she was crying into her pillow, trying to sort out
her feelings for both Clark and Superman. She had hated herself
for her selfishness, for harboring an unquenchable longing for
two men. What dizzying fairy tale was this that decreed she could
have both? Who was this new, wonderful being who was everything
she had ever wanted wrapped up in one package? Was this really
happening? It was too good to be true. It *had* to be a dream and
Lois wasn't sure what all the ramifications would be in the cold
light of day.

Could she really expect to have 'Superman' all for her very own?
Or were there sacrifices to be made in order to be allowed to
love him? In a way, she had already answered this question the
day she told Superman that there was nothing she wouldn't do for
Clark. And that was more true now than ever before. But she still
wondered what the future held for them. It both scared and
excited her.

"Clark ... this is all happening a little too fast for me. It
would be so easy to just let go but I still have so many
unresolved feelings about things. I just need some time to sort
it out."

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised her.

Lois threw her arms around his neck, not passionately, but like a
friend. They held onto to each other tightly for a little bit
longer and she marveled at the hard strength of him against the
entire length of her body, and the definition of the muscles
under the warm cotton shirt. Laughing nervously, they finally
pulled apart and Lois tried to steer the conversation back to
business for the moment. She glanced at her watch and realized it
was already ten to one.

"Your parents said they saw a light in the sky, when the
spaceship landed?" she asked and Clark nodded, understanding her
perfectly.

"One light in the sky ... coming up." He gave her a mock-salute
but otherwise, didn't move. They just stood looking at each
other, like they were on the cusp of something very important.

"I guess it's time you should be going," Lois said at last, but
she was reluctant to let him go out of even arms' length now that
they had just found each other. She hoped she would eventually
get over this feeling because it would look pretty embarrassing
in the newsroom if they spent most of their time staring into
each other's eyes.

He stepped back and looked up again shyly. He had always wanted
to do this in front of her. He pulled at the knot of his tie with
his forefinger and starting unbuttoning his shirt, slowly
revealing the large "S" that covered his chest.

This slow transformation helped better than anything else to
merge the two of them in Lois' mind. Then he suddenly kicked into
high speed, and the rest of his clothing disappeared, and
Superman stood in the place where Clark Kent had been a split
second before.

"One day, you're gonna tell me how you do that!" she insisted,
feeling giddy and euphoric now that she could finally see Clark
inside the blue suit. Her heart was thumping wildly.

Clark went over to collect the younger version of himself,
looking down at the little face with a strange feeling of
unreality.

"He hasn't cried once." Lois observed.

"I don't think I ever did. Mom says I didn't get hungry so I
didn't cry."

"Must have been strange having a baby that didn't want food all
the time. Things have sure changed since then." She looked at
Clark pointedly. "You'll eat anything."

Yet another memory shuffled to the front of Lois's mind. She
supposed this would happen for quite a while. "Hey, how come you
couldn't eat my meatballs? You eat bombs and you can't eat my
meatballs?"

"I was prepared for the bomb, Lois." He had a look on his face
that said, 'don't hit me, I'm holding a baby here,' which Lois
found incredibly funny. Here was Superman, looking at her, and
looking afraid that she might hit him. As if she would.

He became serious again. "You wait over there, out of sight, and
I'll do a circuit to guide Mom and Dad to this clearing." She
nodded.

"Hey," she called out, just before he leapt into the sky. He
stopped and looked at her. "Happy Birthday, you two."

A grin spread across Clark's face. "Hey, you remembered! That's
gotta be a first." He could see she was pretty proud of herself
for that one.

"Yep," she said, "and there's gonna be a lot more changes around
here. You wait."

"Time to go, pal," Clark said nervously to his small charge. He
landed back at the capsule and he placed the baby back inside,
wondering if this was how it was really meant to be. The vagaries
of time travel confused him. He would have to ask Wells about
that when they had more time. "Now I just need to show Mom and
Dad where to find us. Sit tight little fella, and they'll be here
to get you ... or us." It was all very strange.

He sped up into the stratosphere, making sure he left a visible
trail and shot over his parents' heads, just as they approached
the Simpson's Quarry road, just before one. When he saw the truck
skid to a halt, and his parents climb out, he zipped back down to
where Lois was waiting.

He watched in silence as his parents made their way towards the
capsule, Lois close behind him. Eventually she let her chin come
to rest on his shoulder and slid an arm round his waist from the
back, underneath the cape. They both felt the magic of this
moment and she wanted to let him know she understood. He laced
his fingers in hers.

As Martha bent down to pick up the baby, Lois sighed heavily. "I
wish I could hear what they were saying." As he had done a week
before, Clark started to relay the conversation for her.

"Hey ... I just thought of something else," she said, and waited
till he turned to look at her. "You don't really read lips at
all!"

"Well no, Lois. I've never really had to," he offered
sheepishly.

"You louse," she said good naturedly, and hit him, on the
shoulder, hard.

"Yeooow!" he cried automatically.

"And don't pretend that hurt ... Superman." They were both
grinning like idiots.

***

Clark flew Wells and Tempus back to the time machine and returned
with Lois only minutes later.

Wells informed them that they would have to wait until dawn to
power up the little craft, as its solar panels required daylight.
He then went on to reassure them that he and Tempus would be fine
for a few more hours. All the time Clark and Lois had been
smiling at each other helplessly, and seemed physically unable to
let go of each other's hand. Wells had looked at them
sympathetically, and told Clark that they could afford to take
some time for themselves, an opportunity which Clark seized
gladly.

They were still laughing when they landed back at the little barn
on the outskirts of Smallville, just after six. Lois had insisted
Clark change back into his suit and tie before they had taken
off, because she had shyly admitted to a nighttime fantasy to be
carried aloft by her handsome partner, just the way Superman had
always done.

Strangely, the two had merged in her dreams more readily than
they ever had in her conscious mind, and eventually, she had
admitted this too. The reality was a little unlike the dream
however. She had to confess that she didn't want to spend the
rest of her life sewing his seams back together from undue wear
and tear, no matter how romantic the notion. Without being
conscious of it, they were already making long-term plans. All
their thoughts automatically turning to possibilities which
stretched off into the future.

Lois giggled while she tried to make the ends of his hopelessly
frayed shoulder seams meet in the middle and then Clark had to
point out that her jacket was in much the same condition. It was
a fairly unbecoming look for a future pair of Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalists. As they walked back towards the
entrance of the barn, Lois came up with all sorts of wild
possibilities as to how Clark's "talents" could be better
utilized in their quest for the really big stories. Then she hit
him again when he confessed to a few of the times he had already
'cheated'.

"You rat," she said with conviction. "When I think of all the
times I was scaling walls in my good shoes, and compromising my
virtue to get the inside scoop, and all this time I could have
sent you in there to do it for me. You ... the 'mild-mannered
reporter,' who can leap tall buildings in a single bound and bend
steel in his bare hands. You know, if I'd known this sooner ... I
would have made a better job of ensnaring 'Superman'."

"You did a pretty good job anyway," he said and trailed off into
silence. Lois couldn't believe the power she had held over him
all this time. There was one more thing that was important to get
out into the open between them. She stopped and waited for him to
look at her.

"Please don't be mad because I loved you both. It's the one thing
that makes sense out of all of this, " she assured him
earnestly.

"I understand Lois ... sometimes it confuses me too ..."

"You might not realize this, but you managed to separate who you
are very effectively into two different people. Superman seems to
have inherited all your confidence and bravado. He says things to
people I would never have dreamed of hearing you say. I think
Superman needs to be that way, to do the job he does. I loved
Superman because of his heroism and bravery and honesty, and
those qualities came from *you*. But somehow I instinctively knew
that he had to put everything else before me." She struggled to
put her feelings into words.

"Clark Kent on the other hand, is warm and loving and gentle. He
makes time for me even when he doesn't have any. He makes me
coffee and breaks his donuts in half for me, fairly and squarely,
right down the middle," she teased him. "He buys me caramel
apples and fixes my VCR, he lets me crash at his place and
watches stupid movies with me way into the night. He edits my
copy and shares my dreams with me. It's Clark Kent who I want to
be with, but I can't tell you how happy I am to know that I won't
be losing Superman after all. I can love both of you now."

It was a shock for Clark to realize that she knew him better than
he knew himself. But there was one thing that stood out from her
little speech above everything else, and one last thing left for
him to say. "We love you too, Lois," he smiled, and he kissed her
again, gently.

"You know what else? You *kiss* different! When you were Superman
you were always so ... so in control. When you're Clark, it's
like ... you're so shy. It's sweet."

"When I was Superman I was sure you wanted to kiss me back."

Just to prove his point, he gave her a patented 'Superman'
special, that held nothing back at all.

"Is this gonna feel as weird to you as it does to me?" she asked
Clark as they walked back inside. "Knowing that you're Superman
from now on."

Wells came up to meet them. "Oh I'm afraid that can't be, Miss
Lane, not just yet anyway. We've tampered with history enough."

"It's a little bit late ..." Clark started, as he approached
Wells.

"No, no, not at all," Wells laughed pleasantly, as if ripping
away their memories was as easy as cleaning up spilt milk. "I'll
simply drop each of you back before I ever showed up. That way
you'll both remember nothing and none of this will have ever
happened. Certainly you'll both experience a moment of
disorientation as your synaptic signatures adjust to the new time
period. Then blissfully, it will all right itself. You'll see."

It took a moment for the implications of his words to sink in,
but when they did, Clark felt his mind flare hot with anger. For
a moment he couldn't speak, and he felt Lois come up behind him.

"Is that what you're going to do with Tempus?" Clark asked, not
really wanting to know. But he was panicking and stalling for
time. There was no way he was going to go back to the pain and
the lies and the life before this one, now that he and Lois had
gone through the fire and survived. They would stay here in the
past, before he would allow that to happen. Wells really couldn't
stop him if that's what he made up his mind to do. He knew he
owed Wells his life, but what was it worth if it was all ripped
away from him again? There had to be a way.

"Yes. That's exactly what will happen to Tempus." Wells showed
Clark the ruby broach in his hand, the twin of the one he wore on
his cravat. "It is attuned to our specific brain print and allows
us to traverse time with impunity.

"The people who helped him to come here will not return. He's
failed in his mission and without this he will remember nothing
when we go back. That is the punishment for his kind of crime,
unfortunately."

But Clark wasn't really listening. "We won't go back!" Clark
threatened and he felt Lois take his hand in silent support.

"I'm afraid you have to, Mr. Kent. There are still some very
important things for you to achieve in your own lifetime. No ...
you have your destiny, and Tempus now has his."

Clark looked over towards Tempus. He had been very silent all
this time and was obviously feeling the same sense of
devastation. It was the cruelest form of mental rape Clark could
imagine. He began to feel something akin to sympathy for this man
who had tried to kill him. He walked over to where he was tied.
"I'm sorry for that," he said helplessly.

But Tempus was not a man who accepted sympathy. "Oh excuse me,"
he said dismissively, "but I'm in danger of choking on my own
vomit." Clark heard the fear behind the hatred, and understood a
little more of Well's perspective.

He returned to where Lois was standing and took her arms in both
his hands. He looked into her eyes, trying to imprint their new-
found knowledge on his soul, as if he could carry it into the
future that way. There didn't seem to be any way to avoid this.
He felt hot tears of frustration well up in his eyes. It felt
strange. He couldn't remember ever having cried before.

"Clark," she whispered back and wiggled free of his arms, pulling
the blue envelope Jimmy had given her from the front of her bag
and scrabbling for a pen in the front pocket. Like a hundred
other times he could remember, when hope had already deserted
him, Lois had a plan.

She maneuvered Clark to stand between her and Wells, blocking his
view and Clark watched her scrawl the simple expedient,
CLARK=SUPERMAN on the front. Again without looking, she stashed
them both in the pocket again as Wells summoned them to their
places.

Clark looked seriously at Lois. This wasn't really a solution.
They would have to go through it all again. All the anger and
hurt - all the uncertainty. And there were no guarantees that it
would all work out the same. But she was silently asking his
final permission with her eyes and Clark realized that he had
taken part in a little slice of the future where there were no
uncertainties. Lois knew and she still loved him and it felt like
coming home. She was asking him to trust her with his secret, and
as he turned back to Wells, he knew it had never been in safer
hands.

***

Lois Lane rushed down the ramp in the Daily Planet's newsroom. At
the bottom she met Jimmy Olsen, brandishing a brightly wrapped
present. She collected it gratefully, having almost forgotten the
occasion of Perry White's birthday, and made her way towards her
desk.

As she stood there, looking at the colorful wrapping paper, a
giddy feeling overcame her, and she had to put down her coffee
cup quickly in case she spilled it. She stared at the present in
her hand, and then up at the bustle around her as people started
to gather near the elevator, awaiting Perry's arrival,
experiencing the strange feeling of having done all this before.

For a moment, an image of something very important had seemed to
hover on the edge of her consciousness, but just as she felt the
knowledge flutter within her grasp, it darted away again. She
shook her head to clear it, and picked up her coffee again,
letting the delicious aroma distract her.

At the same instant Clark Kent found himself standing behind an
overzealous spray of party balloons in the Daily Planet newsroom.
He was disoriented for a second because moments before he had
been ... standing in a barn with Lois. He looked up and saw her
... and a flood of memories crashed in upon him.

He hadn't forgotten a thing! Wells had been wrong! Clark looked
up and saw Lois take a sip of coffee at her desk, apparently
unconcerned. So Wells had miscalculated then. Lois had forgotten
but Wells had neglected to consider Clark's Kryptonian heritage,
the same way he did when they went back in time.

Clark still had his memory, and he now knew for sure that telling
Lois his secret would bring him everything he'd ever wanted. He
knew her better now than ever.

He would take it slow, and lead her by the hand into this new
understanding. He would make it up to her, he promised himself.
They could start again, and for the first time in his life he
knew it would be alright.

Clark started towards Lois' desk, when suddenly a feeling of
dizziness came over him. He felt his mind try to blank out just
like the first time, and he desperately tried to cling to the
memory of their trip into the past, understanding, with a sick
dread, that he had been wrong. It *was* happening to him too.
It's just that he had a different physiology and it was taking a
little longer for his brain to dump it's excess baggage and
return itself to the present. Soon he too would be blissfully
unaware of the depth of their new relationship, and they would be
returned to that tragic treadmill of lies and fear.

He tried to latch onto his dissolving memories and started to
panic as he felt them disappearing like fine sand through his
fingers. He groaned in anguish and frustration, looking around
for something to lash his memories to. He raced across to Lois'
desk.

"You're late," she told him, wondering if she should share the
strange thoughts she'd been having, or whether he would just make
a joke out of it. It wouldn't do to give him the upper hand.
Still, some new resolve made her want to try.

"... you know," she went on honestly, "I'm having the weirdest
feeling of deja-vu ..." was all she managed to get out before she
noticed the remnants of tears in his eyes. "What's wrong?" She
was horrified by his expression and reached into her bag to look
for a Kleenex.

"Lois I ... I need to tell you ..." He shook his head to clear
the confusion then saw the bag and remembered a note -- a very
important note.

"Lois, the note ... it's important!" He practically snatched the
handbag from her in desperation as the last tenuous images began
to spiral away.

"Clark!" She yelled at him, wrestling with him for possession of
her handbag, but he had grabbed a blue envelope from the front
pocket and dropped the rest of the bag on the floor.

"Shhh, it's important!" he said as he turned the piece of paper
over and over in his hands, but he couldn't remember what he was
looking for any more.

He stared at the envelope. It was just a blank, blue envelope.
Nothing special, nothing of earth-shattering importance. He
couldn't remember what he was getting so concerned about. He gave
her a sheepish shrug, and wiped at the tears with the back of his
fist, feeling foolish.

"Clark, what are you doing?"

She was right! What *was* he doing? He searched his mind for
another of his patented, dumb excuses to explain his behavior.

"Uh ... you were holding it for me. It's my card remember?"

"No! I don't. I just got it from Jimmy."

"Come to think of it ... I don't even like cards. It just slows
down that whole getting to the present thing, you know what I
mean." He doubted she was buying any of this.

Lois just smiled indulgently and shook her head. She wondered if
she would ever figure him out. Lois snatched the card back and
attached it to the parcel when she heard the elevator door
dispense Perry White into the city room amidst a swelling chorus
of 'Happy Birthdays.' They both turned as one to greet their
editor-in-chief.

Time had righted itself again. None of it had ever happened.

***

THE END, for now

(tempfug.txt)