The Death and Life of Superman (4 page)

“But . . . look, Jonathan!” Dark as the egg was, it was still translucent, and Martha could see signs of movement. “There’s something inside! Something alive!”

“You think so? It’s awfully small. Maybe this is some sorta test craft?” Jonathan gingerly reached out to touch the smooth surface of the egg. “That’s funny . . . it’s cool. I read these things were supposed to get hot on reentry an’ . . . what the hey?!”

The outer surface of the egg seemed to melt away beneath Jonathan’s hand, revealing its precious cargo within.

“Oh! Ohhh, Jonathan! It’s a baby!” Martha pushed past her amazed husband and gathered the squirming newborn infant into her arms. “And so small! Those . . . those monsters! They put a poor little baby into a rocket ship! And then they shot him off to the moon or somewheres! What kind of people are they?”

“Now, you be careful, Martha! We don’t know that this baby came from Earth! He could be some kind of—I don’t know—Martian or something!”

“Oh, now you hush, Jonathan Kent. You’ve been reading too many of those science-fiction magazines! Just look at him, he’s as human as you or me!” The baby boy seemed to smile up at Martha and then shiver as the cold wind picked up. Martha pulled her coat close around him and headed for the truck. “Well, little one, whoever the monsters were who shot you into space, I’m going to make sure that they never get their hands on you again!”

“Martha!” Jonathan had to scramble to catch up to his wife. He started to protest, but before he could open his mouth again, she turned and fixed him with a stare.

“We can’t just leave him here, now can we?”

Jonathan scratched the back of his neck for a moment, then went around the truck and held open the door for his wife.

All during the bumpy ride back to the house, Martha kept the infant cradled in her arms, alternately cooing to the child and arguing with her husband. From the moment she’d laid eyes on the boy, Martha had wanted to keep him. She and Jonathan had been trying for eight years to have a child of their own, but after two miscarriages and a stillbirth they had just about given up. Neither of them were regular churchgoers, but Martha believed in destiny, and she felt that this child was meant to be theirs. She was determined to keep him, and Jonathan was hard-pressed to counter her arguments. By the time they got home, they’d already decided to name him Clark, Martha’s maiden name.

That’s when the storm hit. Actually, it was the first of many storms. A whole series of fronts swept across Kansas that winter, effectively isolating the Kents from friends and relatives in the surrounding area. It was five months before they were again seen in town. Being farmers, they had a full larder and were able to survive in relative comfort, if in solitude, when the phones periodically failed. For his part, the tiny infant thrived under his new parents’ care.

With the spring thaw, the Kents finally made it into the nearby town of Smallville, where they proudly displayed Clark as their own natural son. Their friends were thrilled and happy that at last they had the child they’d so long wished for. Knowing Martha’s medical history, their families willingly accepted their story that she’d kept another attempted pregnancy a secret. And Jonathan had helped deliver so many calves, they knew that he could easily have played midwife. When questioned further, the new father just beamed and said, “It was a good birth . . . easier than a cat dropping kittens,” which, as a matter of fact, it had been.

Young Clark Kent at first exhibited no extraordinary powers or abilities. To all outward appearances, he was growing up to be just another normal, healthy American boy.

But Clark was not like other children. Years later, the Kents would learn that Jonathan had been right, that their son was not of this Earth. He had, in fact, been conceived on the dying world of Krypton, some fifty light-years from our planet. His genetic father, the Kryptonian scientist-historian Jor-El, had sent the gestating child to Earth within an artificial womb, so that Krypton’s last son would have a chance for survival.

As Clark grew older, he also grew increasingly stronger. When he was just eight years old, the boy was trampled by an angry bull. His clothes were left in tatters, but Clark himself didn’t suffer so much as a scratch. A few months later, Martha looked out her kitchen door to see her son nonchalantly lift up the back end of their truck to retrieve a softball that had rolled just out of his reach. As he reached puberty, Clark discovered that he could see farther and in far greater detail than any of his friends. And if he concentrated, he was able to actually see through solid objects. Finally, in the summer of his seventeenth year, Clark found that he could step off into space and defy gravity. His joy at discovering that he could fly was as boundless as his parents’ amazement.

Throughout Clark’s adolescence, Martha and Jonathan kept his incredible abilities a secret and cautioned their son to do the same. They feared that if the boy’s powers became public knowledge and the authorities learned the truth about his birth, he might be taken away from them. They suspected that some people might be afraid of Clark or consider him a monster, and that unscrupulous people would want to exploit his powers. And they knew that, at the very least, they would all become part of an unending series of stories in the supermarket tabloids.

The Kents counseled Clark to think of his powers as a great gift. Martha and Jonathan both impressed upon the boy that being stronger or able to fly didn’t necessarily make him better than anyone else. “Power carries a lot of responsibilities, son, and it’s up to each of us to use whatever talents we have to leave this world a better place than we found it.” And they stressed to Clark that he should never use his special powers to make other people feel useless.

Clark took their lessons to heart, and when he reached manhood and left Smallville, he was careful to keep his powers a secret. For seven years, he wandered around the world, working covertly to help people. But finally circumstances forced him to use his powers in public.

An experimental NASA space plane had become involved in a midair collision over Metropolis. With only seconds to act, Clark had leapt into the sky to catch the ship and guide it down to a safe landing. No one was able to get a clear photograph of his face, so quickly did he move, but there were thousands of witnesses to the rescue. After he’d brought the space plane safely to the ground, Clark had been mobbed. People were clutching and pulling at him, their voices becoming a roar of offers and demands and desperate pleas for help. It was as if they all wanted a piece of him.

Appalled, Clark shot into the air to flee the mob and didn’t stop until he’d flown halfway around the world. He finally came to rest on a remote mountaintop in Tibet, where he sat and shook with shock and revulsion.

Unsure of what to do, Clark returned to Smallville to seek the guidance of his parents. Recalling the legendary mystery-men of the 1940s, Jonathan suggested that his son adopt a separate identity through which he could publicly use his powers. Within a few days, Clark and the Kents had devised his new persona of Superman, taking the name used in newspaper articles to describe the unknown rescuer of the space plane.

Working with Jonathan, Clark developed certain subtle tricks of appearance—using horn-rimmed glasses and changes of voice, posture, and body language—by which he could divert any attention from his resemblance to Superman. The Kents reasoned that if he appeared unmasked as Superman, most people would never even consider that he might spend part of his time as someone else.

Martha had stitched up his first costume on her old sewing machine.

“I made the fit nice and snug,” she explained. “When you were a boy just about twelve, I think—I started noticing that cloth right up close against you never seemed to tear or get dirty. Besides, it shows off your muscles.”

Martha was especially proud of her work on the long, flowing cape, designed to emulate the costumed heroes of an earlier era. But as her son put it on, she began to have second thoughts. “Oh, dear. It hangs so nicely, but it’s sure to tear . . . not being skintight, I mean.”

“Don’t worry, Ma. I’ll try to be careful with it.” Clark’s voice seemed to have gone down an octave. Martha and Jonathan were astounded. In the costume, their son seemed to be a whole different person.

“The whole outfit works just fine. It has exactly the symbolic look I wanted.” And then, to reassure his mother, Superman bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

Wish I had a picture of that moment,
thought Jonathan.
Could’ve knocked us both over with a feather, I’ll bet.
Just the thought brought a smile to his face.

“That boy, Jonathan . . . that boy!” Martha wiped away her last few tears, still marveling over the gift of the watercolor.

Jonathan hugged her to him. “Yeah, we raised us a good one, hon. We surely did.”

Barely five hundred miles east of the Kents’ Kansas farmhouse, the Creature pulled at his bonds. His massive, hulking body was covered from head to toe by a hooded garment three times as thick as the thickest cowhide and more than fifty times as strong and tough. It muffled his snarls of frustration, reducing them to a low feral murmur.

Thick cables—forged of the strongest metal alloys—encircled his limbs and torso. They ranged from three to twelve centimeters in diameter and were attached to a great metal harness that was somehow bonded to the material of the garment. The harness held him upright and his limbs motionless.

Considerable time had passed since the Creature had awakened, but just how long—days? weeks? months?—he had no way of knowing. He knew that he had not slept since, and that he had spent every moment fighting against the bonds that held him. And now . . . now he felt some of the restraints beginning to weaken. The Creature thrashed all the more wildly, and one of the smaller cables snapped. With a roar of triumph, he pulled even harder, his strength seeming to feed off his rage. With a groan, more cables parted, and the Creature yanked his left arm free of the harness!

He reached out with his free arm. He could touch the wall. In the darkness, he still could not see it, but he knew where it was. And he knew it was hard.

It was, in fact, forged of the same metal as his bonds. The wall was but one of six that formed a vault around the Creature. The walls were eighteen centimeters thick, and above them lay a mile of rock and clay. No one alive was aware of the buried vault . . . no one, save for the Creature inside.

All was quiet and motionless. Then he began beating at the wall.

2

Superman soared high
above the sprawl of Queensland Park and headed north, across the river into Metropolis’s central borough, the island of New Troy. Separated from the other five boroughs by two rivers and a deep harbor, New Troy was what out-of-towners thought of when you told them you were from Metropolis.

To Superman’s left stretched street after street of five- to ten-story buildings, some of them fine old brownstones and apartments with first-floor storefronts. Others were old factory buildings, slowly being retrofitted into condominiums, lofts, and studios, as the last of the small manufacturers continued their exodus to the industrial parks of the outer boroughs and the suburbs. Beyond that, at the northwest part of New Troy, lay the greenery of Centennial Park and the adjacent campus of the University of Metropolis.

Alma mater, we shall not falter . . . Dear old U. Met, we all hail you!
The school fight song which had so appalled his literature professor—for attempting to rhyme mater with falter—immediately sprang, unbidden, to Clark Kent’s mind. He had earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism at U. Met, astounding his faculty advisor by fulfilling all the requirements for the four-year program in just two years. It wasn’t that difficult if you could get by on one hour of sleep a night.
Ah, the resiliency of youth,
he thought with a smile.
I could never do that now! These days, if I don’t get at least two hours, I’m wasted.

Off to Superman’s right lay Metropolis’s central business district, its skyline dominated by the ninety-six-story L-shaped tower that served as the world headquarters of LexCorp International.