Somewhere in Vermont, September 1948
Lex Luthor stepped out of the car, a black Studebaker, under the watchful eye of his chauffeur and bodyguard, and walked along the roadside. The forest seemed almost to close over his head. The sun was shining brightly, yet it barely filtered through the branches. He walked briskly towards a clearing where a stream sounded and there was a wooden bridge. The summer had been a difficult one for Luthor. Work on the Kryptonian pathogen had not ceased, and it had proven extraordinarily complicated. Several scientists had died, as well as several people used as test subjects. Work on ICARUS continued, but for the time being the Kryptonian's corpse had not yielded all its secrets. Only a few months had passed. On the Island of Death, or whatever they called it in the Aleutians, the Army had drained the lake and were about to start digging up the capsule that emitted the strange signal. Twelve thousand years buried. All the last months of work of all the teams of the Rand Corporation were in his hands, and the most important part of that work was to be found on six microfilms hidden in six fountain pens he carried in his jacket.
The summer was ending; the election campaign was in full swing. Luthor had obtained authorization to move ICARUS' body from Area 51 to an island in Metropolis Bay owned by TELCORP where a group of scientists were working with him. He had thus removed the dead alien away from the Pathogen. Maxwell Lord was still obsessed with the Pathogen but had suddenly regained interest in the capsule buried in the Aleutians and in alien technology. The Area 51 team seemed to have discovered some very interesting things in extraterrestrial technology concerning wiring and chips.
Luthor sighed and stubbed out a cigarette over the bridge railing. A young bald, well-dressed, priest-like little man emerged from the trees and approached Luthor.
"How are you, Colonel Luthor?"
"Colonel?" Luthor's expression was one of surprise, but he quickly understood.
"Congratulations on your new rank, Comrade Stalin is grateful for your services. The Russian atomic bomb and our extensive knowledge of extraterrestrial life would not be possible without you. I have nothing to give you, just shake your hand."
The little man smiled. Luthor knew his codename was Karla and that he lived in San Francisco, but he treated him as Tony. Luthor smiled and shook the other man's proffered hand.
"So Luthor, what do you have for us?"
"A collection of fountain pens," Luthor took them one by one out of his jacket and held them out to Karla.
The little man smiled, "This is very generous from your side."
"The last three months have been full of effort and hard work."
"Won't the political change affect you?"
"No, I have subordinated myself completely to Maxwell Lord and I am his strongest supporter in the Rand Corporation, and to General Hardy. They now believe they are in charge, giving orders and counter-orders. I have gotten them to agree to move the Kryptonian's body away from the Pathogen and it is now on an island in Metropolis Bay. Research on alien technology and the Pathogen remains inconclusive. Perhaps your scientists can advance faster than ours."
"Don't be confused Mr. Luthor, your scientists are not really "your" scientists, and mine are your comrades."
"It's clear to me."
"It's normal. Sometimes in these situations you get confused about what role you are playing, right?"
"I am very clear about which side I am on."
"Don't worry."
The little man smiled at Luthor with beatitude and understanding.
Luthor was besieged by the cynicism and suspicion of the Soviet agent. His political evolution had been anything but linear. Personally, he had always been upright, free of religious concerns, committed to progress, equality, and individual freedom. He believed in the scientific method. He once believed in capitalism. In the early 1920s, as a staunch conservative, he began working with Nikola Tesla, and together they founded TELCORP, pioneering breakthroughs in broadcasting, aviation, electricity generation, and computing. But the Great Depression shattered his convictions. The orderly, conservative world he had trusted collapsed into corruption and poverty. Though still wary of communists and revolution, he found himself drawn to the Nazis and Italian Fascists, believing they could restore Europe's strength, curb American excesses, and halt the French and British exploitation of Africa and Asia. Yet his admiration was short-lived. He soon saw them for what they were: racist, violent, delusional, and reactionary.
Without quite knowing why Luthor began to study Marxist theory. He sympathized with them, they were historicists like him. Marxists believed strongly in the study of history to understand present and future processes, and in the progress of man. The brutalities of Stalin's regime were only an anecdote explained by history, perhaps a necessary evil. He began to correspond with university professors. Luthor was enthusiastic about the idea that conflict was the engine of progress.
When the Nazis launched their assault on the USSR, he experienced an unexpected fervor and took it upon himself to covertly deliver to the Soviet embassy confidential designs for computer systems being developed for the US military, along with a blueprint for enhancing clandestine radio communications. The Soviets, wary of his motives, instructed Luthor to keep his distance. They must have been watching him closely, as shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Karla, the little man, enlisted him. He became the foremost industrial tycoon in America to align with the Soviet cause. Luthor quickly learned the value of decisiveness, finding solace in his partnership with the Soviets. His unparalleled intellect and capabilities were dedicated to the advancement of science, and socialism, or at least socialist supremacy, as the only future that could be a viable path for mankind and that could restrain the ambitions of the USA and old Europe. He was the rallying point, a bridge man, a demiurge confronting the pettiness of imperialism and capitalism while playing the role of the best man in American capitalism. His ego swelled with pride.
But that damn flying woman… Superwoman, meant a setback for Humanity. A terrifying and uncontrollable inhuman force, but that under the mask of kindness would subdue all mankind. And would also make the USA believe that it had the strategic advantage of a super-powerful woman, pushing the military conflict with the USSR. The impending threat of World War III loomed, orchestrated by an enchanting alien. This was intolerable. She had to be neutralized.
The little man sparked a cigar, "You would do well to have a more political profile in the months ahead, Mr. Luthor."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Be a hawk, you must be the most hawkish and the most anti-communist in the Rand Corporation. You must pressure the new government to use any scientific discoveries against us. If you succeed, we may be able to bomb Area 51 and the Death Island eliminating any dangerous alien remnants."
"Have you made any progress with the small sample of the Pathogen I gave you last time?"
"I am not authorized to tell you. It is up to you to make as much progress as you can on your side. The only thing I can tell you is that we staged a nuclear accident to lure the lady in red into a trap… And it seems she can withstand the heat of the bomb."
Luthor stared into infinity. He wasn't used to truly obeying anyone's orders, but the Soviets were the only ones he could trust to take down Superwoman and stop World War III. He had already gone too far. He himself had killed Nikola Tesla in late 1944. Tesla was mentor, his teacher, the man who made him rich. He had smothered him with a pillow in the hospital because he had discovered that Luthor was passing Manhattan Project information to the Soviets. He had done it with tears in his eyes, but he had done it, and he would do it again.
"How are your wife and daughter?" the little man asked.
Luthor's heart skipped a beat. He hated it when the Soviets referred to them. They were his weakness, what he loved most, what he could never sacrifice unless he then assumed his own death.
"They are very fine, thank you very much."
"They are in the press a lot," the little man laughed, "It's good, it helps us a lot. No spy has such a famous and nice family. Do you think they would adapt to the Soviet Union?"
Luthor thought of his wife Alice, busy at the Tesla Foundation, the leading philanthropic organization in the USA. He thought of his daughter Leda with his little grandson. Leda was a lover of art, photography, fashion, always on the cover of magazines. No, they would not adapt to the USSR.
"What worries me, Tony, is what's in the capsule, in the Aleutians." Luthor changed the subject
Karla handed him a lighter and made him put it in his jacket.
"These are the codes for when they open the capsule. If there is anything of concern you will know. Contact me by phone in San Francisco and repeat those codes. In two hours, there will be a nuclear bombardment on the Death Island. Comrade Stalin will tell the world that we had to do it because the United States of America was playing with forces that could cause the death of millions of people, and that we don't want any war nor disturb American civilians. We will get you out of America in 48 hours and you will go to Leningrad as our greatest scientist."
Luthor looked at Karla/Tony with distrust. He would never accept an extraction; it would be a noose around his neck. The Soviets would never trust him, and he would fall into any purge. If discovered, he would take his own life. He would leave a detailed written explanation for his family and History itself to absolve him.
"And think about how to use ICARUS and the Pathogen against Superwoman as soon as possible. I have been told that Comrade Stalin is very uneasy about her. Believe me, Comrade Stalin is in more of a hurry to take down that alien than your Rand Corporation comrades, who I see as somewhat confused and greedy, Colonel Luthor."
The little young man smiled and plunged back into the forest.
Metropolis, Harry's bar
Clara Kent looked at Louis Lane with some concern as he sipped his whiskey. She adjusted her glasses and faintly smiled.
"So, Saturday we go to the movies?" She asked tenderly.
"Yes, but we must see Tom&Jerry or Donald Duck. I'm afraid we can't take Emily to see MacBeth."
They both smiled.
"I can't wait to go see Hitchcock's "Rope" with Jimmy Stewart."
"That's one thing you have in common with Superwoman, James Stewart." Louis said humorously.
Something else I have, my dear…
"How do you know?"
"She told me when I interviewed her."
"It's nothing unusual; everyone loves James Stewart."
"I think he's a great actor too, along with Laurence Olivier."
"I'm disturbed by Laurence Olivier Louis. He reminds me so much of you physically, he's like an even more snobbish version of yourself." Clara winked at Louis affectionately.
Louis laughed and then looked down at the table, suddenly pulling himself upright and putting on a holier-than-thou expression as he threw his shoulders back, something Clara had learned to identify as a sign of nervousness in him.
"As soon as the elections are over, we should talk, Clara." There was a complete change in his tone of voice.
Clara was startled and blushed a little. "We should talk?"
"Yes, we should talk about our friendship, our career... You have been working with me for three years at the newspaper. We could go away for two or three days. Nantucket, Innsmouth or some discreet little town. Walk, talk, make decisions."
Speak clearly, please, silly man, Clara thought.
"Are you going to quit the paper if Dewey wins the election, Louis?"
"No, I don't think so, I just want to talk to you calmly, with time. Just you and me."
Clara's heart was racing, Finally, finally it can't be true.
"I would love to, Louis."
"Two rooms, some books, a lot of walking."
"You're putting too much emphasis on walking, if you want, we can take a walk from Battery Park to Riverdale today."
Louis laughed, and grabbed Clara's hand, squeezed it tightly. "There are many things I want to tell you, perhaps I should have said them before. My situation needs to be clarified. And you are a woman with great potential; you are a much better reporter and writer than me."
Don't beat around the bush, Louis.
"I think the same thing... About the fact that we must talk about many things. I don't agree with the other thing you said." Clara's voice became graver.
"Oh Clara. You're always competitive and stubborn, and you didn't like me as a columnist. Don't play docile now."
Clara ignored the joke. Louis had proposed a trip together for two months from now, just the two of them alone. At last, everything could start to become clear. Maybe at last she could tell Louis the whole truth about her. She felt anxious.
"Louis, why two months from now and not now? I would "walk and talk" with you for as long as it takes today."
"I have a few things to do first, and I can't get too distracted by the election campaign. I'm sorry. It's just that I need to go without any burden on my back to "walk and talk"."
One more euphemism in their relationship. A relationship full of shadows, lies and misunderstandings, "walk and talk". Playing cat and mouse. But who was the mouse and who was the cat? Was Louis really going to separate from his wife Patricia? Clara thought back over the past three months as Louis rambled on about polls and the chances of Dewey's victory over Truman. He was trying to steer the conversation away from his earlier offer or confession.
Since Superwoman had been busier than ever, she spent half the day with her red cape unfurled, barely getting one hour of sleep. Still, it had been a very happy and hopeful few months. People were very appreciative and Superwoman felt so much affection whenever she helped someone, whether it was the victims of a typhoon in the Philippines or a robbery in Dallas. With Louis it seemed that things were moving forward, even if it was so slowly. She had spent a hot summer in the city with Jimmy and Lucy, and the three of them had often escaped to the beach. She had seriously thought about finally confessing to the two photographers that she was Superwoman, but at the last moment she had backed out.
"The Superwoman issue has inexplicably faded from the campaign," Louis complained.
"Truman and Dewey agree that Congress should place limits on her, but when you talk to congressmen and senators, none of them knows what limits they're talking about. Superwoman already complies with U.N. protocols." Clara smiled to herself, thinking that the criticisms of Superwoman from few months ago had begun to fade from public memory.
"It's anti-communism... I'm as anti-communist as anyone, but tensions are rising because of that damn Berlin Blockade. That's only to be expected. Superwoman is apparently on our side, so everybody is rushing to defend her because of the help she's providing there in Berlin."
Clara thought about the Berlin blockade. She had flown containers and containers of medicine and supplies into the blockaded city throughout the summer and continued to do so. She hadn't meant to, but the pressures on her from the army and politicians had stopped after that. She didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved. Only Luthor was still a problem.
"Out of curiosity Louis, how many times has Superwoman saved your life?"
Louis was startled by the question and his expression turned icy.
"Twice. When I fell from that bloody airship, and in Greece, because of the guerrillas. But I don't think my life was really in danger in Greece."
Clara put on a funny look at Louis' lie. She had saved his life six times already: from his fall of the airship, from John Corben who wanted to assassinate him, twice from Zod and Faora who threw him through the air, from Metallo and Luthor's henchmen, from the guerrillas in Greece...
"Twice is enough Louis. She must be worried about you."
"I trust she is not very clear about who I am and what my name is."
Oh, she knows who you are, I'm afraid it's quite clear for her, Clara thought. She looked around, Harry's Bar was a sleek, modern bar full of famous people, she felt a little out of place.
"Clara, what are you going to do about Luthor and the Rand Corporation issue?"
"I'm somewhat stuck."
"Don't get obsessed with it, keep an eye on it, but don't go looking just for the sake of looking."
"I'm not looking for the sake of it. I think Luthor and Lord have cowed everyone, and no one wants to talk. And there seems to be a fairly bipartisan consensus that everything the Rand Corporation does is wonderful science and progress."
"Did you get the interview with Luthor?"
"I don't understand any of this. He invites me in for interviews and then cancels them. Now he's invited me to a Tesla Foundation fundraiser."
"That's because he doesn't want to say too much, and he wants you to see how good he is. Obviously, you should go."
"Of course I'm going. I'll have to rent a new dress and a pearl necklace, but I'm going to show up at that party and stay there until Luthor talks to me."
"That's right. Don't let the prey get away. The old Clara Kent magic." Louis winked at her.
"Louis, you used to like Lex Luthor... When did you change your mind?" Clara asked, trying to sound naïve.
"I don't know, he started to seem megalomaniacal and sinister to me. It's just a hunch. I honestly believe he's a shady person."
Another lie, Louis. Another shadow play. Clara knew perfectly well that Louis's opinion had changed the moment Luthor had him kidnapped to lure Superwoman into fighting Metallo. Luthor... Clara felt trapped by him, and by the Rand Corporation investigation. As a journalist, she had run into a wall of silence. She had flown to Area 51 as Superwoman, but it had been hellish. The military had lined every building with lead, and her X-ray vision couldn't penetrate it. Loudspeakers blasted an unbearable radio frequency, inaudible to humans but intolerable to her. At superspeed, neither she nor Flash had been able to get in unnoticed. Each entrance was covered in carbon and lead dust, making it nearly impossible to move discreetly. The only way in was to break in openly through the roof, but Superwoman couldn't attack a U.S. base. Whatever Luthor and the Rand Corporation were planning would remain a secret. Batman was working on a plan to infiltrate Area 51 quietly, but she knew that if they did and were discovered, Luthor would go public, and events would become unpredictable... And people like Louis would turn even more against Superwoman. She had to be patient, and she was very bad at that.
"Have you seen the pictures Life has published?" Louis seemed to be looking at the ceiling. He's bored, or uncomfortable, Clara thought.
"What pictures Louis?"
"Several photos of the battle between the Army and Superwoman against the Kryptonians have been declassified. They were taken during the battle in Hudson Bay two years ago."
"I didn't know there were any photos."
"They must have been leaked. I don't know by who and why."
Well, my dear Louis, you were there, and I was there. Clara's memory slipped back to those days.
***
A beep.
Just a beep.
A deafening beep. That was how Clara, and everyone on Earth within reach of a radio or telephone, knew something was wrong. It was a hot July in 1946. She had been working at the Daily Planet for barely nine months, all the while hiding her red cape beneath her office clothes. Everything was new and exciting. The world was in love with Superwoman. Although she often felt overwhelmed, she could at last use her powers and help others without having to hide. This freedom made her extremely happy. The moment when she had to slip out of the office or discreetly step into a phone booth, open her jacket and blouse, and reveal her Superwoman costume was exciting and exhilarating. The world was complicated. The ruins and horrors of war were still there, but Superwoman gave the world hope, and being Superwoman was, at that moment, more of a relief than a challenge for Clara. At the paper, she was making rapid progress despite Cat Grant's awful personality, and although she was sometimes intimidated by Louis, she was happy to work side by side with that handsome, gentlemanly, serious, ironic, and sometimes annoying man. She did not yet know that she was in love. Then, on July 16, 1946, a deafening beep interrupted every radio and telephone in the world, and a rough, dry voice with a strange accent broke over the airwaves in almost every language.
GREETINGS, APHERIS. THIS IS HOW WE KRYPTONIANS KNOW YOU EARTHLINGS. WE ARE GENERALS ZOD AND FAORA.
WE ARE THE THIRD DIVISION OF THE KRYPTONIAN ARMY, BUT WE DO NOT COME AS SOLDIERS. WE COME AS REFUGEES. OUR PLANET HAS BEEN DESTROYED. WE ARE AMONG ITS LAST SURVIVORS.
FRIENDS OF APHERIS, WE SHARED A BOND THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, BEFORE THE STARS SEPARATED US.
WE ARE AWARE OF THE PRESENCE OF A KRYPTONIAN WOMAN ON YOUR PLANET. IT IS CRUCIAL THAT WE BE ALLOWED TO MEET WITH HER.
WE CANNOT SETTLE ON EARTH. WE ARE TOO DIFFERENT. WE ASK FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF YOUR GOVERNMENTS SO THAT WE MAY CONTINUE OUR JOURNEY AND FIND A NEW HOME. WE NEED FUEL AND PROVISIONS. KRYPTONIAN LIFE IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH APHERI LIFE. THE KRYPTONIAN CITIZEN YOU CALL 'SUPERWOMAN' MUST LEAVE WITH US. SHE IS ONE OF OUR PEOPLE.
WE ASK FOR YOUR HELP. PEACE TO ALL.
Despite its words, the message was not reassuring. Clara jumped out the window, tearing off her clothes in confusion and giddiness. Flying as Superwoman, she quickly arrived at the Fortress of Solitude and begged her assistant robot, Kelex, and the projections of her parents to explain who Zod and Faora were. Kelex had been sent folded up like an iron ball inside the pod in which Clara had arrived on Earth. He did not deploy until 1939, when, to Clara's surprise, he revealed himself as a robotic guide and showed her the holograms of her parents, who solemnly explained who she was and what she was doing on Earth. They also told Clara her birth name: Kala-El. In the Kryptonian language, Kala meant "hope." It was all too confusing for Clara. She wept bitterly on the shoulder of Martha, her adoptive mother.
After Pearl Harbor, she took the opportunity to try to forget and to serve others as a nurse, but the horror of the war and the fear of making things worse with her powers were lacerating. In 1944, she single-handedly kept the hospital ship USS Shuster afloat and managed to beach it after it was torpedoed by the Japanese. There were more than 3,500 wounded American soldiers and Filipino refugees on board. Clara had never had to use so much strength for anything. She did not realize it because of the adrenaline and tension, but as she struggled to lift the ship's thirty thousand tons and propel it forward to keep it from sinking, she lifted the ship out of the water and levitated above the sea with it on her shoulders. After that, Clara decided that she had to talk to Kelex again and use her powers to help others. Together, they searched for weeks in Alaska for a glacier where a large Kryptonian ship had been buried for thousands of years. They could use it as a discreet sanctuary and a place to learn. Clara named it, somewhat melancholically, the "Fortress of Solitude."
Her father's hologram revealed to her that the Kryptonians had initially done much good for humanity, but that later a Kryptonian faction had tried to destroy them, fortunately failing in the attempt. All of that had happened 12,000 years earlier. On that ship, Clara put on for the first time the ceremonial female costume of the House of El, which had also come in the pod in which she had arrived on Earth. She had known those garments since childhood. Her adoptive parents had shown them to her in an attempt to explain an origin about which they knew nothing. The cape, and its strange symbol resembling an S, had been a constant source of fascination, but as a teenager she had done everything she could to forget it and bury it in her memory. Something told her it was not natural, that it set her apart from the others she so desperately longed to belong with. In the future, that ceremonial costume would be recognized as the uniform of Superwoman. Clara at first found the costume to be a strange set of bright blue and red garments, with a very long red cape, that looked very outlandish to her. But she felt a sense of pride. The costume was soft and comfortable; it was warm and seemed unbreakable. To the touch, the fabric felt metallic, and it adapted to her body like a second skin. Her father's hologram told Clara that the suit had been worn by her great-grandmother when she confronted the High Council of Krypton and demanded an end to the caste system.
She began to train her powers in the last months of the war. She had little time. The world needed her. Clara flew there for the third time. Earlier that day, and before the day she lifted the USS Shuster, she had only managed to fly briefly in Kansas when she was a teenager. That day, she was able to fly a few thousand feet before crashing into a tree and splitting it in half, to the horror of Joe, her adoptive father. Thanks to her ballet days, she could levitate slightly and move almost as if floating for a short time. But flying was something else. At first, Clara only knew how to make great jumps and fall hard on ice and rocks, which she reduced to frost and dust. But the jumps grew longer and longer. She learned to use the air currents to propel herself. Later, Clara was able to level herself out after launching herself into the sky. Soon she began to glide and use her super speed to extend her jumps. One day she realized that she was not falling back to the ground, that she could propel herself continuously, that she could stand upright and float. Her jumps no longer traced a parabola but became a seemingly endless flight toward her destiny. Clara flew upward, to a height from which she could begin to see the contours of the continents. She could fly. Yes, she could fly. She descended at speed, in tears of joy, and was able to land softly... It was a miracle! Her powers no longer seemed to her a punishment or a heavy burden, but a wonderful gift that she could place at the service of others, a gift from God and from her biological parents. Clara also learned to use her X-ray vision, which no longer gave her migraines, and to control, without fear, her heat vision, which had terrified her so much in the past. She learned to blow a hurricane wind or a cooling breeze without drowning anyone, and to run and fly at super speed without becoming exhausted or almost suffocating.
Only a year and a half had passed between the first time she flew over the Alaskan skies in her red cape and the arrival of that deafening beep, but it felt like an eternity. The holograms of her father and mother had been clear: she could not trust Zod, and still less Faora. They were fanatics and monsters. Zod and his followers were also adherents of the old banned religion her parents had followed, the Path of Rao. But they had a twisted interpretation of history and of the sacred texts. Zod's faction had been a very small but powerful sect, entrenched within the air force and among the crews of experimental rockets. In their eyes, Krypton's sin had been to abandon its manifest destiny: to conquer and populate the universe as a master race. They accepted the caste system, genetic experimentation, and new technologies; what they rejected were isolationism, mandatory atheism, and population control. This sect had been willing to kill millions on Krypton. Her parents had sent them into the Phantom Zone, a wormhole, by sabotaging their ships. Somehow, Zod and his followers had managed to escape and reach Earth. She could not trust them. She was already human, even if her physiology was Kryptonian. Kala-El, also known as Clara Kent and Superwoman, had to defend Earth and humanity. She could not allow the Kryptonians to try to destroy humanity again. Her parents had also urged her to make a terrible resolution, one that made her heart shrink. She was not to see Zod and his followers as her equals, or as the last remnants of her people. No compromise with them was possible. She would have to face them in defense of her new home.
***
"Some new polls just came in from Rufus. Dewey is down in California and Ohio, but up in Illinois. Here, we're still at least ten points ahead of Truman. It's going to be tougher than we expected."
"Hmm..." Clara replied distractedly.
"Am I boring you with politics? Sorry."
"What will you do if Dewey loses, Louis?" Clara looked at him in frustration. They had come so close to having a heart-to-heart, but everything had slipped back into the present again, into the damned election campaign.
"I won't do anything different from what I'm doing now. Unless MacArthur calls me."
"Would you leave journalism to work on a MacArthur campaign?"
"Probably."
Clara looked at Louis disapprovingly.
"You're a Pulitzer Prize winner, Louis. You were the first man to interview Superwoman."
"I drifted into journalism by chance. I didn't know what to do after finishing my studies, so I went to Europe and wandered around for a while. The Spanish War caught me there, and I appointed myself a correspondent. I sent in a few dispatches, they sent me home, and instead of giving me a foreign posting, they put me on the trail of mobsters, swindlers, and crooked officials. I had a lot of fun. And yes, they gave me a Pulitzer for it. But for the last three years, since I came back from the war, I haven't been sure this is where I belong. As for the Superwoman interview, I'd rather we forgot it entirely."
Clara did not answer.
"Maybe I don't like journalism anymore, Clara. I'm tired of it. You have it in your blood. You love it. I want to teach history. I'd like to write about the Sea Peoples and the end of the Bronze Age, or about the High Middle Ages. I've always wanted to get a doctorate, but then there was marriage, the war... In a couple of years, I'll probably be doing that."
"Or inflating elephant balloons for MacArthur."
Louis laughed.
"Would you find that unbearable? Let's forget politics, Clara. I know you could never vote the way I do... What about that article you told me about last week, for a literary magazine? And your children's stories? The two publishers I introduced you to told me they looked promising."
"I don't have time, Louis."
"I can cover for you as long as you need, Clara. You're a walking writing machine. I've got enough articles for three weeks. Take a vacation. I'll say it was my idea. Cat may be annoyed, but that hardly matters."
I wish you could really understand, Louis.
***
Superwoman flew swiftly to the White House to advise President Truman that he must not trust the aliens and that they had to be expelled. The Woman of Steel herself would be responsible for driving the invaders away, but she needed help. She did not yet know how she would do it, but she had to. Kelex informed her that, having not spent so many years on Earth absorbing the Sun's radiation, the Kryptonians were probably little more than hulking humanoids, and that Superwoman would be able to subdue them. The real danger lay in their weapons. She did not hesitate. Learning who Zod and his followers were, and knowing that she would have to face them, planted a seed of division within her. Despite her love for her parents and her pride in the symbol she wore on her chest, she was human.
As she flew at superspeed, she kept repeating to herself that she believed in the God of her adoptive parents, who must surely be the same as Rao; that she adored her adoptive mother as much as she missed her father; that she adored her few friends; that she dreamed of becoming a mother and of writing a biography of Mary Shelley. She was also Kryptonian, but her biological parents, or at least those holograms that preserved their thoughts, had been clear: Krypton had failed; its elites had driven it toward self-destruction. She was the custodian of millions of voices and traditions that were no longer alive, but Zod was above all representative of the worst of Krypton, of what had destroyed Krypton. Earth did not deserve the same fate.
The government distrusted her. The military mobilized. All the armies of the world. Superwoman did not know whether to fly toward Zod's three ships, which hovered barely five thousand feet above the waters of Hudson Bay, or to wait; she did not want to disobey the President. The U.S. government then prepared a secret embassy to meet the Kryptonians within hours of the message. Military officers and scientists led by General Hardy, two senators, and Louis were included. Lex Luthor was also invited, but declined. Even she did not understand why the government had immediately turned to Louis. Perhaps because he had interviewed her and spoken with her for so long... Or perhaps because she was being followed and had unwittingly shown some sign of affection for him while acting as Superwoman. The government ordered Louis to join the embassy because of his supposed experience dealing with Kryptonians. Clara waited for an order or a message telling her to report to Zod, knowing that what awaited her would likely be terrible, but she had to fulfill her duty.
***
"You seem distracted, Clara. You really should get some rest. I insist, you should take a vacation. If you like, I'll give you the keys to the house in Oyster Bay, and you can take your dog with you for a week to rest, swim, and write about whatever you want. I don't like seeing you like this."
"Like what?"
"Clara, you're being very unfriendly today."
"That's not true. I'm just the same as always."
"I very much doubt that. If you were always like this, I'd rather have dinner with Adolf Hitler, or worse, with Cat." He was trying to sound funny.
Clara looked down at her plate. She was angry, though she did not know why.
Louis persisted. "Clara, please go to Oyster Bay and stay at my house for a week. Forget about Luthor, the election, me, Cat, everything. No one will bother you there. Not even me."
Clara changed the subject. "What were your favorite adventure novels as a child, Louis?"
"Jules Verne, Salgari, Stevenson... Anything that had to do with the sea."
"I wanted to be the Scarlet Pimpernel but as a girl, of course. I wanted to go with a mask and a sword helping those who needed it." Clara propped her head on her hand and looked around absentmindedly.
Louis looked at her with a glance that seemed to Clara to be one of suspicion or vague distress.
***
Clara Kent simply did not show up at the office the day after Zod's message. Many other employees did not either, choosing instead to stay home with their families. People assumed Louis had done the same. He telephoned his wife and told her the Army wanted him. Within a few hours, he was standing with the rest of the human embassy and its escort on a military barge in Hudson Bay, beckoned aboard. Superwoman had been flying around the world, carrying out rescues and reassuring people, while waiting for Zod's next move. She even went to speak directly to the Soviets, but they had no intention of listening to her: to them, she was the Super-Lackey. She returned home to ask her mother, Martha, for advice.
You will do what you must do my love; you have a big and clean heart. I can't imagine there is anyone stronger than you. You have always thought of others. Do the same now. I will pray for you. Perhaps it is true that they come in peace.
No, it was not true. Through a painful frequency inaudible to humans came a constantly repeating message from Faora and Zod, both of them alternating every sentence.
"Why do you not come to us, Kala-El? Are you afraid of us? How can you bear to live among these absurd apes? Do you hide among them? Why do you let them worship you as a goddess, only to live as one of them instead of above them? What has it cost you to adapt yourself to these stupid animals? Do you truly esteem them? How is that possible? Even now, several of the creatures they sent to us have been cast from our ship into the waters below. They were too noisy. The others are our prisoners. Come to us. Rejoin your people. Do not betray Rao. Do not betray Krypton. There is no dignity, and no logic, in your servitude to these monkeys. We are waiting for you. If you do not come, we will cast out the rest of this ridiculous embassy your masters sent to us, and we will begin the cleansing of this planet without you. Then you will have lost your chance."
Superwoman flew at full speed into Hudson Bay. The Anglo-Canadian and American armies were taking up positions along the coasts of Ontario and Quebec. Warships from every nation were entering the bay through Hudson Strait, taking advantage of the thaw. Generals Patton and Montgomery were deploying tanks and barges. Superwoman had no time to meet with them. Above the waters, thousands of feet up, three huge black ships floated among the clouds, each far larger than any ship she had ever seen. One was immense and semicircular, another was seed-shaped and seemed to rotate, and the third was a strange flat rectangle with some sort of masts on either side and strange folded metal sails. Kelex and her parents' holograms had explained to her that they probably had no fuel either to continue their journey or to establish force fields. And what was she going to do? Kill them? Push them back into space without weapons so that they could continue their journey, though perhaps with no chance of survival? Her heart was pounding. With her X-ray vision and super-hearing, she detected where Zod and Faora were, and where the prisoners were being held. The Woman of Steel's heart skipped a beat when she recognized Louis among them. She flew forward with determination and struck what looked to her like a hatch with her fist, but it was not ordinary metal; it was much harder. She felt pain. She had barely dented it. The hatch opened.
***
"Emily wants a Superwoman doll."
"Really?" Clara felt a flicker of pride and happiness: despite Louis's misgivings about Superwoman, his daughter had become a fan of the heroine.
"I'm afraid it's true. She had her Cinderella phase... Now it's time for the Superwoman phase."
"What did you say to her?"
"That she's an alien, that we don't know if she's good or bad, that we can't control her... That we always have to be wary of people with such extraordinary powers and hold them accountable."
"What does she think?"
Louis shifted in his seat uncomfortably. "She sees her as some kind of angel or space princess. She just sees a pretty, smiling woman flying around in a red cape rescuing people and endowed with wonderful abilities... She's been bouncing around the house in a cape for a week. I preferred it when she played at being a princess or Daisy Duck.."
Point for me, Louis.
"Louis, if you don't give her a Superwoman doll, I will."
"You've never been particularly enthusiastic about her." Louis lit up a Cuban cigar.
"Are you going to smoke that stuff?"
"I don't inhale it. It's harmless. I quit smoking thanks to you, but I think I can smoke a cigar."
"Whatever... No, I've never been particularly enthusiastic. The media focuses too much on her. She's just a woman of extraordinary origins and abilities doing her duty. She does what she must do. No more, no less. And I'm fine with her being regulated and subject to the law, as long as she always has a free hand to help civilians. I neither hate her nor am I a fan."
"What would you do if you had her powers, Clara?"
"The same thing she does. Do you, Louis?"
"I would hide underground or fly into the sun and let myself burn up, or something like that. Such an existence is unbearable. Such a being cannot exist. It goes against thousands of years of human existence. It is not controllable. We are simply at her mercy. It is not endurable."
Oh, Louis please don't, don't, don't say these things...
"You don't think she could be a normal woman?" Clara asked.
"A being with those capabilities will never truly be able to share, understand, or feel our values, our way of life, our emotions. She may try to adapt, even to feel and behave like one of us, but it is not possible. And as the years go by, she will realize it more and more, and she will become a kind of empress or sovereign, not some kind of flying nurse or policewoman."
Clara felt very hurt and very far away from Louis. How could he be so close and yet so far away? How could she ever make him see how wrong he was? She felt like crying, but she pulled herself together.
"You know her, you've interviewed her, she's saved your life twice, you said... Do you really see her like that?"
"I see an abysmally superior and different being, trying to behave like a human, but failing."
You are blind, Louis, blind, completely blind. My love... What are we going to do?
***
Zod and Faora were exactly what she had expected: ceremonious and distant, like her parents' projections. They greeted her with an almost unsettling friendliness. The inside of the ship was very strange. It was different from the one in Alaska and from her pod. It looked like a cyclopean metal temple. Only a few holograms and strange machines appeared here and there, along with discreet panels covered in buttons in the shape of strange symbols. There were no more than thirty or so Kryptonians on that ship, and about as many on the other two. She and those hundred or so other lives were all that remained of Krypton. They were all dressed in strange metal armor that seemed almost electrified, but beneath it they wore ceremonial suits very similar to her own.
They first tried to speak to her in Kryptonian, but when they saw Clara struggling, they switched to some kind of automated translator. Zod and Faora were very clear; there was no point deceiving themselves. They had come to take over Earth and transform it using the planetary machines they had brought with them. All of humanity would perish. It was their destiny and the mandate of God, the only way to save the chosen people. Her father, Jor-El, had betrayed them. In some ways, Kala-El herself was, to them, a genetic aberration, but they were willing to forgive her if she helped them refound Krypton. She was a daughter of Rao, after all.
Clara listened in silence to their abhorrent explanations. She was furious and afraid, but she tried at first to reason with them. She told them that she knew everything about their past, that she was stronger than they were, and that Earth was not suitable for them. The Woman of Steel simply urged them to leave, but Zod and Faora seemed to have expected that answer.
Zod turned away, almost admiring her in a false, theatrical way. "You do not even speak the language of your people properly."
Kala-El pushed aside the pain those words caused her and answered in her strongest voice. "The only thing I can say is that you must leave immediately, or you will regret it. You have no business here. You cannot adapt to life on this planet, so leave. I will not allow you to..."
"Where are we going to go?" Faora laughed gruffly.
Zod hardened his gaze and spoke serenely. ""Do you truly esteem them? And what of your own people? What of your inheritance? A million years of Kryptonian civilization the greatest, most advanced, most perfect the universe has ever known. And yet you choose to live in attachment to these apes? Do you call this love? Do you truly believe you have become one of them? That is madness. You are unwell. You are afflicted by the same sickness that overcame certain Kryptonian explorers of the old age when they were marooned too long upon distant worlds. We can see it in you. You are consumed by grief, devoured by pain, and all this bitterness in which you live will never be calmed among these creatures. Only by returning to the bosom of your own race will that anguish be stilled."
"I honor the legacy of my parents, and of those who were like them. I bear it on my chest. You are the ones responsible for Krypton's destruction, for the destruction of its culture. You are the traitors to Rao and to Krypton. The society you would build here, upon billions of corpses, would perish just as Krypton perished."
Clara stiffened and stepped closer to Zod, trying to intimidate him. She could not allow herself to doubt. She knew the confrontation was inevitable, and though she did not know where to begin, she did not want to strike the first blow. And then what?
Zod tried to explain himself in a friendly tone. "Your father... your father... You should not listen to whatever ridiculous messages he may have left behind. Your parents were intelligent, but they were fanatics, and they hated Krypton. I am certain they longed for its destruction."
Superwoman decided to give Zod and his followers a demonstration of her power. Her Kryptonian muscles tightened beneath the blue fabric of her suit as she unleashed a series of heat rays at what she took to be a control panel. But it was not as easy as it would have been on Earth; the metal resisted, taking precious moments to melt. The lights inside the ship flickered.
She had barely been at it for two seconds when Faora, with a burst of fury and a strength Superwoman had not expected, seized her by the cape and hurled her to the ground.
"Ridiculous, stupid aberration!" Faora shouted in Kryptonian as she lunged at the Woman of Steel.
Faora began striking Superwoman, who struggled to defend herself as best she could. One of Faora's blows broke one of her teeth. Though she was faster, she felt unable to strike back. A sharp blade sprang from Faora's fist, and although it failed to pierce her skin, it caused her enough pain to throw her off balance. She tried to spin at superspeed like a whirlwind, but a giant man in a metal mask lunged at her and began striking her as well. With one blow she managed to send him flying, but Faora kept hitting her again and again. In the end, Faora's skill in combat overwhelmed her. Clara could not understand how it was possible; she was not in unbearable pain, but she was pinned down, stunned, and bewildered. Faora seized her by the throat and slammed her into the ground.
"Wretched aberration… Did you think your childish displays of power would inspire fear in us? We have sailed the black void for years and endured every corruption of radiation. This vessel is wrought from metals laced with Kryptonite, the substance that poisons and unmakes you. Your life is ours to extinguish. We can kill you whenever we desire." Faora howled.
Zod stepped forward and gently kicked her in the back. Once at first, while Faora and the giant man held her down. She did not feel much pain. I can endure this and strike back the moment they let their guard down, she thought. Zod must have sensed that the Maid of Might, even immobilized, was not in much pain, because he began to kick her harder and harder, with increasing violence, until the superheroine started to cry. Superwoman was now in pain, bleeding from the mouth, yet still struggling to remain calm and recover her strength
Zod knelt down and seemed to speak into her ear. He was speaking in Kryptonian, but very slowly and in a plain, unadorned accent, so that Kala-El could understand him clearly. "I could stab you here and now, daughter of Jor-El, but we still have need of you. Where we stand was once this planet's North Pole. Twelve thousand years ago, we came here to remake it and to erase Humanity; creatures so like us in form, and yet so immeasurably beneath us. We still do not know how they came to exist. Perhaps they are the descendants of degenerate Kryptonian explorers. This world bears an ancient curse. In the beginning, many Kryptonians settled here and, in their weakness, came to sympathize with the apes who resembled us. As you have. We taught them. We ruled them. We enslaved them. Yet the moment we turned our eyes elsewhere, they dared to rebel. They dared to despise us. These vermin even found ways to kill us. We should have finished the work then. We should have wiped them out to the last. But there were too many Kryptonians like you, sentimental and diseased, and so the task was left unfinished. What stands here now is a grotesque and pathetic parody of Krypton. It must be cleansed and remade into something worthy of us, so that Krypton may be reborn. The poles of this planet will be restored to their rightful places. I have already sent a planetary machine to the opposite end of the world. The work has begun. The ancient curse of this species is about to be fulfilled. They will be erased. To speak plainly, we believe some of their weapons may still pose a danger to us, and we require time to work without interruption. I am willing to spare your life. More than that; I may even allow you to keep some sterilized humans as pets or playthings, if you help us destroy the armies of Earth while we activate the planetary machines. That is the true destiny of Kryptonians: to rise to the full height of our power, to master the stars, to become the supreme race, and to lay an eternal curse upon the unclean beasts of this world. And when you join us, you will cease to feel disorientation. You will cease to feel pain. You will cease to live this parody of a life, in which you must hide yourself and play the gracious servant of inferior creatures. You will be with your own kind. Rebuilding your inheritance, and that of your parents. Submit. Yield. Quell your delusion. Accept your destiny and your duty."
Superwoman fought to hold back the pain and the dizziness. She thought of her adoptive mother and father. She thought of the people of Smallville, of the Daily Planet, of her neighbors, of Louis... She thought of the men she had watched die in the field hospitals of the Pacific islands where she had served as a nurse; of the refugees and wounded aboard the USS Shuster, whom she had saved from the torpedo; of the photographs of the Nazi concentration camps; of the images of Hiroshima. No. She would never allow it. Perhaps it was too much for her. Perhaps it was unjust that so much should rest on her shoulders. But she would never allow it. She would fight to the very end, whatever the cost.
Summoning all her strength, she tried to rise at superspeed. Kala-El's strength enabled her to break free from the restraint imposed by the Kryptonian hands. In one sudden movement Superwoman drove her head hard into the giant man in the metal mask. She felt the metal fracture like porcelain and heard his cry of pain. At once Faora and Zod hurled themselves at her. Despite the pain of their blows, she moved at superspeed, twisting and wrenching herself free as she spun like a whirlwind. Around her, walls buckled, machinery bent, and panels burst into showers of blue and orange sparks beneath the force of her speed and the violence of the struggle, while the other Kryptonians rushed toward her from every side. They were fast, terribly fast, but not fast enough. Superwoman seized Zod by one electrified boot and, with all her might, swung him through the air and hurled him straight into Faora. The two of them crashed against the wall and were left stunned for a moment.
Their guards fired strange green beams at her, lances of poisonous light that scorched the air, but she managed to evade most of them, darting and twisting through the ship in bursts of speed. A little farther ahead she saw a great domed pane of glass, a bulging honeycombed visor or viewing panel. Without hesitating, Superwoman flung herself toward it with all the strength she had left. The glass exploded into a thousand shards as she burst through it and out of the ship. That alien material cut into her, slashing her skin, cracking parts of her suit, and tearing her cape. Air and oxygen roared into the vessel behind her in a violent rush as alarms began to scream. Inside, Zod and Faora were already shouting orders to their guards: fire the cannons at Superwoman, and cast whatever remained of the human embassy out of the ship.
The dozen or so remaining members of the embassy were hurled out through a hatch while Superwoman dodged beams and projectiles at superspeed. Fighting through the pain, she rushed from one falling body to another, catching them in midair and carrying them to safety as fast as she could, depositing them on land or on nearby barges wherever she was able. There was no grace in it, only desperate speed and precision. One after another, she saved them all. Louis was the last to be thrown out through the hatch, and the last she reached. Superwoman flew toward him at a speed greater than any she had ever achieved before.
"Dear God! Louis, what are you doing here?" Superwoman did not realize she had spoken in Clara Kent's voice; Louis was too distraught to notice. She clutched him anxiously as she flew toward the nearest barge.
"Kala! Thank God! Who are they? What do they want? They've killed half the embassy..."
"I'm sorry I didn't get here in time... They're worse than anything you can imagine." Clara answered with stark authority, without trying to lessen the horror of it.
"The Army made me come. They thought I'd know how to deal with the Kryptonians because I was the first human to interview you."
Louis lifted a hand and touched her face with quiet tenderness, studying the wounds there. "Kala-El... You look dreadful. You need to see a doctor."
Thank you, Louis.
"I'm fine. You have to get away from here. Put as much distance between yourself and this place as you can. I need to warn the President. What they're planning is unspeakable."
She suppressed the urge to kiss Louis, to hold him close for even a second longer, and then shot away at full speed. As she flew, she saw the seed-shaped craft unleash a strange bluish beam over the sea. A moment later it triggered an explosion unlike any she had ever seen. It rose like a nuclear mushroom cloud, yet slower, heavier, threaded with eerie rays of blue light that seemed to pulse through it like veins. The whole thing looked less like an explosion than the birth of some monstrous new atmosphere.
The shockwave was already racing toward a British battleship that had drifted too close. Superwoman hurled herself toward it, but she was too late. The wave struck the ship and tore it apart as though it were made of paper and splinters. Nearly eight hundred men died in an instant. Half-blinded by pain, and with what felt like the last reserve of strength left in her body, Superwoman threw herself toward another battleship nearby. With a cry that never quite left her throat, she heaved its forty thousand tons out of the water and dragged it away from the advancing wall of force. Then she turned to the barges, ferrying them one by one, or sometimes two at once, pulling and pushing them beyond the range of the blast as fast as she could. Metal groaned, water frothed, men shouted in terror, and all the while that strange blue light continued to spread across the sea behind her.
When at last the immediate danger had passed, her strength gave out. Her breath failed her, and she dropped from the sky onto the freezing water, where she could do nothing but float. The cold bit into her, but even that felt distant. She did not know how long she remained there like that. Perhaps only an hour, perhaps less, though it felt much longer. She drifted in and out of a haze until pain brought her back to herself, along with the guttural roars of polar bears somewhere nearby on the ice. When she opened her eyes fully, she saw that the seed-shaped ship was still firing blue bolts or streams of energy in the distance. It no longer seemed to be attacking randomly. It looked as though they were marking out a perimeter, staking a claim, building the first outline of some alien domain.
She forced herself upright. There was no time to recover, no time to grieve. She had to fly to the Fortress of Solitude, learn everything she could from Kelex and from the recorded wisdom of her father, and then bring that knowledge back to the military. After that, she would have to try to destroy the invaders.
As she drove herself toward Alaska in desperation, numb with exhaustion and dread, the first outlines of a dangerous and complicated plan against Zod began to form in her mind.
***
"I've never seen you do a single ballet step, Clara. Lucy told me you're magnificent." Louis seemed sincerely curious, almost desirous.
"I'm not as clumsy as you think... But it isn't true that I'm magnificent. I danced a little as a child, and as a teenager." Clara tried to answer in a tone of mild indifference.
"Yes, I know the story. You've told me."
"I think my father did the right thing." Clara believed that, and knew it had been fair; even so, the lost dream of ballet still filled her with a certain melancholy.
Louis seemed to understand. "It's very hard to be a good father. It's even harder to be a good son." He said it as if trying to make light of the matter, but Clara kept thinking about that last sentence.
"My father was very strict. He was affectionate and kind, but he was also very rigid and distrustful."
Louis did not answer. He took her hand, and with his thumb he idly traced her knuckles.
"Will you come to the boys' orchestra concert on Thursday?" Louis said.
"Yes, if I'm able, I'll go."
Louis had assembled an orchestra of boys from an orphanage and reform school in South Metropolis. It was actually a long-standing project of Louis's father, who, although a wealthy man, came from the area. The journalist knew how to communicate with young people and was not a bad conductor. He put in several hours a week and took his daughter with him to rehearsals. It was one of the things about Louis that amazed Clara when she discovered it.
"Do you have one of your special appointments, Clara?"
"In this job, you never know..."
Louis looked at her fondly.
"We don't sound bad."
"Not at all... You sound wonderful."
Louis smiled.
"Don't give me a hard time, but the kids manage to get noise out of the instruments. And I just manage to make sure nobody notices that I'm not really conducting at all... just like in the newspaper."
Clara grabbed his hand across the table.
"I will do my best to be there."
"South Metropolis is not the Himalayas; you'll get there on the Number 4 subway line, my dear."
***
Twenty-four hours had passed. Superwoman had flown to the Fortress of Solitude and argued for hours with the holograms of her parents and with Kelex. Then she had flown to Kansas and brought her mother to safety at the Fortress. After that, she went to an urgent meeting in the White House, where she faced a group of military officers, politicians, diplomats and President Truman.
In Hudson Bay, the seed-shaped ship was still projecting a blue beam into the water, making it boil. A swarm of small Kryptonian craft circled around the beam, and a giant humanoid robot patrolled the area, firing projectiles at any ship that came too close. The smaller Kryptonian ships were attacking the Anglo-Canadian and American troops, but they could be shot down. Heavy-caliber shells could wound, and even kill, Kryptonians. Even so, the casualties already numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, not counting the dead aboard the British battleship HMS Manchester.
Superwoman had flown there several times to help bring down those ships and to discreetly protect Louis, but the important thing now was to speak to the President and the military leadership. She was still wounded and almost disfigured, though sunlight had allowed her to recover much of her strength and heal considerably.
"They must not have much fuel. Their smaller ships can be brought down by heavy artillery. There may be a way to destroy their larger ships using the small vessel in which I came to Earth," she began.
"We've received word that there is another ship in the Indian Ocean," an admiral informed the President. "It is very strange and is also emitting that same blue beam, along with an electromagnetic pulse. American, British, French, and even Soviet ships are heading there. A swarm of small craft, which we've started referring to as 'fly-ships,' is also guarding it. Although these vessels provide some protection, they are relatively easy to bring down with high-caliber weaponry.
Truman's voice faltered for a moment, then grew firm again. "Can you tell us once more what these things are, Mrs. El?"
Superwoman swallowed under the weight of the many hostile stares. "Planetary machines... These machines alter the Earth's electromagnetic field and its tectonic layers. They need days to complete the process. They shift the continents, the poles... then the atmosphere. Total destruction. In order to... well... reshape the planet into another world. The machine in the Indian Ocean is the most important one."
"Why should we trust you," said a foreign prime minister attending the meeting over the intercom, "when you were absent during the worst war mankind has ever seen?"
The question wounded Superwoman, but she steadied herself. "I ask myself that same question every day," she answered with sincere grief.
Truman spoke again. "Do you think you can destroy the ship in the Indian Ocean, if that is the important one, before helping us with the ships in Hudson Bay?"
"I'm going to try," the Maid of Might answered with determination.
***
"It's been a long, hot summer, Clara... with the campaign in the middle of it."
"The campaign..." Clara did not even bother to hide her exasperation. The conversation had grown tense and uncomfortable, circling around absolutely nothing.
Louis gave her a cold look, but then it softened into one of affection, almost of pleading. "It doesn't seem to matter what I do or say; I always end up hurting you... I don't want to waste your time."
Clara tried to hold her breath and fight back her tears. Why does everything have to be so difficult?
"You do me much more good than harm, much more good... Louis, you have no idea how much you brighten my days. Maybe you don't understand, but my day-to-day life is very complicated."
"There are many things we need to talk about."
"There are many things we need to talk about and explain, on both sides, but I'm hopeful... Everything will work itself out."
"Me too, Clara."
***
Superwoman was flying at full speed around the planetary machine in the Indian Ocean. It was very different from the seed-shaped ship she had seen in Hudson Bay. This object was an almost flawless golden sphere, continuously emitting a blue beam that caused the water beneath it to boil or vibrate. The result was unusual, massive waves resembling an intense, illuminated storm. The sphere was surrounded by two enormous metal rings, perhaps a thousand feet in diameter, that spun ceaselessly around it and gave off an unbearable buzzing sound.
The small Kryptonian ships protecting the planetary machine were engaged in a fierce battle with the cannon fire of human warships and aircraft. They launched projectiles and beams of energy, but human shells could still bring them down. Superwoman cut through the beams with her heat vision and shattered the incoming projectiles with bursts of super-strength, shielding the planes that managed to shoot the smaller craft out of the sky. Yet it weighed heavily on Clara's heart to know that there were thinking, sentient beings inside those ships as well, beings very much like her, very much like humans. She had flown past each of the small ships, pleading the Kryptonians inside to surrender in her broken, rudimentary Kryptonian, but she had failed. One by one, the little ships were destroyed until none remained.
Then Superwoman positioned herself between the two giant spinning rings and began to circle the great sphere in the opposite direction, faster and faster, unleashing her heat vision at the same time. Within moments she had reached the limits of her speed. The heat and the strain were nearly unbearable, but she forced herself to continue, circling for minutes that felt endless, until at last she began to hear sharp popping and cracking sounds. Then she stopped and closed her eyes for a single instant. All around her, the rings were bursting apart and collapsing into the sea in flaming fragments. Those enormous structures, hundreds of feet wide and tall, could not withstand the force of Superwoman's speed and strength driving against them in the opposite direction.
Soon only the great golden sphere remained. The blue beam it projected had shrunk to almost nothing. Superwoman drew back, gathering what strength she had left, and prepared to hurl herself against it at full speed and with all the force in her body. She could not tell whether there was anyone inside. Then she struck. She slammed into the sphere at full speed and smashed through it. The pain was unbearable. She felt burning, brief but terrible wounds opening across her body; tears sprang to her eyes as the metal scorched her hands and chest and seemed to melt around her. The Kryptonian materials were still too strong for her, but she managed to break through and emerge on the far side. Badly wounded, she turned in time to see the sphere itself rupture, explode, and fall in blazing pieces into the sea.
Superwoman could no longer fly quickly. She was too exhausted, too battered; her suit hung from her nearly in tatters. She raised a hand toward the pilots she could make out below, British and Soviet, and shouted, "Thank you very much, guys!"
Then she turned upward. She needed sunlight. She needed recovery, whatever the Sun could still give her. She did not know whether there would be enough time. She cried, and she prayed. Then she went still for a moment beneath the light. I can do it. I must do it. The Woman of Steel rose into the sky, driving herself straight toward the sun at the greatest speed she was still capable of.
It was time to face Zod and Faora, and to wipe out the Kryptonian detachment in Hudson Bay.
***
"Maybe the world was about to end in Hudson Bay. It was just over two years ago, and one has the feeling that it has been almost twenty."
"Louis, I believe that for sure the danger was real... Who knows what horrible weapons the Kryptonians had." Clara insisted on her fake naivety.
Both had left Harry's Bar and were waiting for a taxi. The sun was fading, and nightlights were on.
"Whether we like it or not, we are indebted to Superwoman. Without her we would all be dead... The whole world... it's crazy." Louis sighed.
"What did they tell you about what happened?" Clara feigned curiosity.
"My sources told me that Superwoman seemed to manage to destroy several of the ships and then disappeared into the largest one... No one knows exactly what happened, but apparently there was a very strange blue electrical explosion and some kind of absorption. The main ship disappeared, and Superwoman descended from the sky like a goddess. Real madness. If the Kryptonians were here in the past and did such crazy things, it's only natural that the Indians wrote the Mahabharata."
"The point is that Superwoman came back to save the day again," Clara said with a laugh and an almost mocking tone.
Despite her pride, and a certain temptation to take the feat lightly, the final confrontation came back to her in full. She remembered how she had carried, already emptied of its memories, from Kansas the pod in which she had arrived on Earth. Its engine switched on and ready to hurl itself into a gravitational portal, as her parents and Kelex had counseled. She remembered how she had first tried, one last time, to negotiate with Zod, Faora, and what remained of their army. Kala-El had nothing to offer them except that they lay down their arms and submit to cryostasis aboard the old ship she now called the Fortress of Solitude, in those ancient capsules, while she and Kelex found some way to strip them of their powers. It was a chimera, but she had needed to offer them a chance, against everything her parents had begged of her. Deprived of their powers and forced to live as prisoners among humans, perhaps one of them might one day change, and help build a new home. It had been madness. Instead, there was a terrible battle.
Zod and Faora had learned, however crudely, to use their heat vision, and they slaughtered the troops fighting on the coast. Thousands of soldiers perished in a couple of hours. The fighting was brutal. She managed to force them back inside the main ship only after destroying, at superspeed and with blows that left her utterly exhausted, that giant humanoid robot which dominated the waters and with which they attacked the ships and the great coastal batteries. At last she activated her little ship, the wicker basket that had brought her to Earth. Within minutes it would generate a gravitational field and then trigger a spatial jump. Used autonomously, outside a proper launch space, it would cause a catastrophe all around it and absorb and destroy all the Kryptonian ships. Faora must have sensed something, because she hurled herself at Clara with murderous fury even as she shouted warnings to the others. Then a kind of storm of light and lightning engulfed them. Clara fled at superspeed. Faora pursued her, but Clara saw the bluish light catch her, warp her, and make her vanish. She herself escaped the opening of the portal by only a few seconds. When it was over, nothing remained.
"You take Superwoman's existence too lightly." Louis's voice cut through her memories.
"Louis, I'm not impressed by people in capes... I'm from Kansas. I was told I'd see some strange things in the big city."
"Clara, Bob Mailer has a strange, rather sinister theory about the whole Kryptonian invasion and the Superwoman thing... He told me about the other day in a social dinner."
"Mailer..."
"Hahahaha, I know you don't like him. He's professionally rude, but he's a very witty and intelligent man. For me he's the best head in the paper."
"And what is his theory?"
"That the Kryptonians were called by the Nazis. That they were the famous secret weapons that Hitler and Goebbels talked about. They managed to contact the aliens and offered them the planet thinking the Kryptonians were aryans but they arrived too late for the nazis. And that Superwoman is an alien or an android discovered by us or by the Nazis, whom we have brainwashed or programmed to obey us."
"What a horrendous crackpot... Do you believe it?"
"No, but it's a curious idea. There might be something real in between."
Sometimes, you are really the dumbest man in the world, my dear Louis.
Despite having destroyed the last Kryptonians known to exist besides herself, despite the pain of having been ultimately responsible for it, despite having chosen Earth without hesitation; her new home, the home she loved… A veil of suspicion began to come between her and the public that had once admired her. Voices arose everywhere. If the Kryptonians were capable of such things, could the world truly trust Superwoman? Kala-El, or Clara Kent, suffered because of it, and the answer she reached in private weighed heavily on her. She decided to choose Earth. She wanted to be only human. In a sense it was a betrayal; her parents had made it clear that Zod's was a sect of fanatics, yet the image of Krypton darkened in her mind. Far from remaining a world as complex and contradictory as Earth, it became in her imagination a dark hell in which only her parents were light. She abandoned her studies of Kryptonian religion and language, though she still mingled prayers to Rao with the Lord's Prayer. Her parents, those artificial intelligences that projected them, did not notice her pain, nor did they detect how Kala-El was drawing away from her origins in order to try to become only Clara and Superwoman, they couldn't. Her own people had tried to exterminate Earth. At times she understood that she was being enormously unfair, that any human army condemned to be the last survivors of its planet might do the same if it found a world inhabited by a form of life that could be subjugated. Though defeating Zod and his companions was something she felt proud of, could she truly judge them with severity? They had murdered nearly five thousand human beings. Everything crowded in upon her mind. If I want people to trust Superwoman, if I want to live as Clara Josephine Kent, then I must be only Superwoman and Clara Josephine Kent, from Smallville, Kansas. But that resolution hurt her.
"Are you coming by taxi with me Clara?"
"No, I'll walk to the office, I forgot my watch there."
"You are incredibly absent-minded. If you continue like this, on the day you least expect it, your head will be far away from the rest of your body…" Louis laughed at his own joke.
He took her hand and kissed it. She blushed, and as many times when Louis did that, the electric lights around them flickered from the invisible energy emitted by Clara. He didn't seem to notice.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Clara."
"See you tomorrow, Louis."
When the taxi left, Clara discreetly looked for an empty alley. Surely Superwoman has work to do. Under an emergency stair, she took off her glasses and jacket, opened her shirt revealing the El's house crest, pulled down her skirt and stockings revealing her almost unbreakable blue tights and unfolded her red cape. Up, up, and away!
The younger or more impressionable passersby pointed to the now recognizable red and blue blur flying overhead…