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This might have been a fifth thing, if it had worked out. It's not going anywhere, but I really like the bit with the T-shirt, which is why I saved it.
Lex opened his eyes, or tried to, but had to squint into the bluish light above him. He was on a squishy sort of pallet, and his head hurt.
He remembered a guy on a cross and a flash of light.
Pushing himself into a sitting position, Lex looked around the room he was in. It was extremely odd. It looked a little bit like the sets on The Next Generation, but shrunk about five times so that all the equipment overlapped, and the light was funny so the edges of things seemed to waver.
“Hello?” he called out.
There was a muffled noise from behind him, and he turned his head to see a door slide down into the floor. A pretty, dark-haired woman with dark eyes stepped through and smiled at him. She was wearing something like coveralls, black with royal blue markings. She said something he didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that language,” he said politely.
She frowned and repeated herself more slowly.
He shook his head. “I still don’t know what you’re saying.”
She took two steps forward, which brought her within touching distance, and looked at the flashing display by the side of his pallet. Lex looked at it too.
The characters weren’t English, or Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, Thai or anything else Lex could ever remember seeing. He swallowed.
The woman said something that sounded cheerful. Then she turned back to him. “Lara,” she said, pointing at herself and enunciating carefully.
“Lex Luthor,” he said, imitating her.
Lara smiled and called out something over her shoulder.
A really big man stepped into the room, wearing the same outfit. He was also dark-haired and had eyes bluer than Lex’s mother’s, and he was carrying a toddler at his hip. The toddler’s eyes were wide and frightened. He was wearing dark pants and a red T-shirt decorated with a picture of something green with lots of teeth.
Lara talked quickly, a flurry of syllables that included an approximation of his name. The man frowned, but the little boy smiled and reached out towards Lex. After a brief hesitation, the man came close enough that the child could reach out and touch Lex on the cheek. Lex blinked in surprise; he thought he could feel a tingling where the boy’s fingers had grazed him.
“Lex,” he said again, pointing to himself, staring into the boy’s strange green-brown eyes.
“Kal-El,” Lara said, smiling at him and indicating the toddler. “Jor-El.” That was the man.
Lex took a deep breath. “Um, I probably owe you my life and I don’t want you to think I’m rude, but – where are we? Are we in space?”
All three of them looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Oh-kay.” Nervously, he reached up to run a hand through his crazy hair, and gaped when he didn’t find any. Bringing both hands up to grope, he quickly discovered that he was now as bald as a baby’s bottom. What a revolting development.
Pay attention to the essentials, Lex, his father’s voice lectured. Bald! he screamed back in his head. That’s kind of essential! But it wasn’t really, not compared to being abducted by aliens, which was pretty obviously what had happened. Had their experiments taken his hair? They seemed so nice, if ignorant.
Lex pushed himself off of the pallet and found that he could stand, though he was swaying a little. When they didn’t make any moves towards him or sprout tentacles, he ventured forward, trying to get a look at what lay beyond the door.
The next room smelled like food, fresh and old mixed together in an almost overpowering aroma. Lex coughed, hoping his asthma wouldn’t kick in now, when everything was so exciting. They must have been cooped up in here for a while, he surmised. There was another door on the left, and Lara followed him through it.
This had to be the control room. Strange round screens were on every surface. Some showed what ought to be star charts, others strange swirling fractal patterns or eddies of colors that hurt Lex’s eyes.
One screen, near the center of the room and in front of a stool-like thing, showed what looked like an Earth cornfield that had huge brown swathes burned through it. Lex hurried over to it.
“Is this where we are?” he asked, pointing at the screen.
He looked back at Lara, who smiled at him. Argh! “Lex, here?” he asked, pointing again. “Lara, here?”
Her head did a little shimmy that, in a human, would have been a strange-looking “no.” “Lex, here,” she repeated and pointed at the image of the cornfield.
That was a relief – they were still on Earth.
Only, it wasn’t a relief. The government would be here soon, and they’d take Lara and Kal-El and Jor-El and he’d never see them again. That would be so unfair. He’d found them! Okay, they’d found him, but it was almost the same thing. He’d read lots of books about this.
The scars in the field indicated that the landing had been more of a belly-flop than a gentle glide to a complete stop, so maybe Lara and her family were stranded. He could be their only hope.
“Take me out there,” he said.
Eventually, after an excessive amount of pointing and a conversation between Lara and Jor-El, Jor-El did something off at one side of the room, and a hatch opened. Lara boosted Lex out, and he found himself standing on top of a mound of silvery metal half-dug into the dirt. Anybody driving or flying by could have seen it.
That wouldn’t do at all. Lex used a rock – equated to the ship by the limited but powerful pointing process – to demonstrate his opinion that they ought to bury the ship and cover it with the broken stalks of corn so that it wouldn’t be so easy to find. More alien conversation ensued.
Jor-El had brought Kal-El outside when he came. The boy wandered through the field, still silent, until he made a whimpering noise that neither Lara nor Jor-El seemed to hear over their apparent argument. Lex abandoned them, hurrying after the boy. He was huddled by another scar in the earth, groaning. Lex remembered the multiple booming noises he’d heard just before he’d been knocked out and guessed that other things had come down with the ship. At the end of the furrow, a black-green rock was half-buried in the ground. It glowed feebly green in sick, slow pulses.
Lex didn’t like the look of it, and it didn’t seem to be doing Kal-El any good either. The boy was whining, and strange black veins were writhing on his face, only feet from the strange rock. “Come on,” he said, picking the boy up when he didn’t respond. He was heavy, but Lex managed to stagger away about twenty feet before he had to stop, and by that time Kal-El was able to stand on his own. The veins were gone. The boy smiled up at Lex, grateful, and Lex vowed that he’d pay closer attention until Lara and Jor-El resumed their probably-parental, maybe-babysitting duties.
As they returned to the ship, Lex saw that Lara was kneeling in the ground, poking at a crumpled part of the ship. She looked up at Jor-El and said something negative. Jor-El closed his eyes in dismay, then offered her a hand up.
What happened then was hard for Lex to believe. The two aliens blurred, and a hole began to appear in the ground, dirt piled up to one side. He swallowed, keeping Kal-El well away from the growing hole even as the boy smiled and waved in appreciation of the spectacle. Kal-El was still eerily silent. Maybe aliens didn’t speak until they were adults. Maybe he was telepathic; certainly he seemed to sense Lex’s fear, and squeezed his hand reassuringly.
When the hole was large enough for the ship, the aliens went around to the other side and pushed it in. Lex gawped. The thing had to weigh twenty tons at least, and they tipped it as if it were a garbage can. Then the speeding began again, pushing the dirt around and the fallen corn until the ground looked as if it had been through a big storm, no different than the rest of the field.
It wouldn’t put off determined investigators, but it would buy them some time. Enough time for his mother to come and take charge of everything.
“Okay,” he said when they were finished. “Now we need to find a phone to call my mother.”
They looked at him blankly, except for Kal-El who was smiling as if he’d said something brilliant. Lex attempted to pantomime the existence of a person who was to him as they were to Kal-El. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded, but they followed him to the road at last, Kal-El clinging to his hand. If they walked along the road long enough, they’d have to find some outposts of civilization.
Lex hoped so, anyhow. He was hungry and thirsty, and still dizzy from being knocked out before. And he was probably getting sunburned on his head. His mother always insisted he put on gobs of sunblock, but she hadn’t rubbed it into his scalp.
It occurred to him that he’d probably be sobbing like the weakling his father always warned him not to be if he didn’t have more important things on his mind. Sure, the kids at school were going to point and laugh, but none of *them* had discovered aliens.
They left the buried spaceship and headed towards the power lines running along the west side of the field. Sure enough, the lines parallelled a two-lane paved road. Lex chose a direction at random and they began to walk down the road. Kal-El alternated between walking at Lex's side and running back to be carried by Jor-El. Lex kept up a narration as he went, on the off chance that the aliens could pick up English just from listening.
"Smallville is the fifth largest farming community in the state of Kansas," he narrated. "Currently, corn processing is the major non-farming source of employment." He explained the structure of local, state and federal government. Lara and Jor-El remained silent, except for a brief whispered conference during one of the times Kal-El was holding Lex's hand.
The sun was well on its way towards the horizon by the time they came to a turnoff. The sign over the rutted dirt said "Kent Farms." Lex could see a small yellow farmohouse and a large red barn, along with a few other outbuildings, at the end of the track.
"Let's try here," Lex said and turned. Kal-El paused by the mailbox with its flag down and examined it curiously. "Come on," he prodded, and the boy hurried back.
They must have made an odd-looking group, the adults in their black SWAT-team uniforms, Kal-El in his fire-engine red T-shirt showing the weird-looking thing with all the eyes, and bald and chubby Lex. He realized, as they approached the farmhouse, that he hadn't been short of breath the entire time.
A red-headed woman stepped out of the house, onto the porch. "Jonathan," she called back into the house, "we have visitors."
You have no idea, Lex thought and smiled at her. "Excuse me, ma'am. We had some trouble in the – whatever it was that happened earlier."
A blond man came to join the woman on the porch, frowning. The woman looked at Lex, then at his silent adult companions. "It was a meteor shower, the radio says."
Lex swallowed.
“Oh. When the, uh, meteors started falling, we drove off the road. The car was damaged and we had to walk." It was almost true, he thought. The man and the woman were still looking at the aliens, waiting for them to speak. "These are my cousins. From Estonia. They don’t speak any English, and I only know a few words of Estonian. May we please borrow your phone so I can call my mother to come get us?”
Lex waited, praying that the people didn’t turn out to be of Estonian extraction. It had been the best he could think of on short notice; no red-blooded American was likely to speak a Communist language. He hoped.
“Estonia?” Jonathan repeated, stepping down so that he was within a few paces.
Lex nodded. “This is – George Elshtain, and his wife Lara. And Cal, their son. My name is Alexander.” The Luthor name wasn't exactly universally popular, so he didn't add it on.
The man smiled at the aliens, polite but wary. He extended his hand. "Jonathan Kent."
Lex held his breath.
After a noticeable pause, Jor-El imitated him, and they shook. Then Lara did the same, smiling brightly. Mr. Kent looked less suspicious after she was done with him. Never underestimate the value of a sincere smile, his mother had said, and now that he’d seen it work with another species entirely he was a believer.
The woman, probably Mrs. Kent, followed her probable husband's lead, and Jor-El didn't hesitate this time.
"Of course you can use our phone," Mrs. Kent said.
Lex relaxed a bit.
"Come on in," she said, climbing back up the steps to hold the door open for them. Lex obeyed, trusting that Jor-El and Lara would continue to play along.
They went into a small kitchen that his mother would probably call "cozy." Mr. Kent came after, still keeping an eye on Jor-El.
"The phone is right here," Mrs. Kent said, and he hurried over to it.
"Oh – where are we?" he remembered to ask.
Mr. Kent offered some very rural-sounding directions. He hoped his mother's driver would know the way.
“Hello?” His mother picked up on the first ring, sounding worried, and he felt a throat-closing rush of guilt.
“It’s Lex,” he said, wanting very much to call her Mother.
“Alexander! Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I need you to come get me. But I need you to come alone. No one else, just you. Please, will you do that?”
“What’s wrong, darling?”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise. Just – will you come? Alone?” Martha Kent was watching him with worry, but she hadn’t said anything yet.
His mother breathed, too fast, too loud, as if she were about to have one of her attacks.
“All right,” she said finally, and Lex gave her the Kents’ address.
"Would you and Cal like a snack?" Mrs. Kent asked.
Lex's stomach answered for him, to his great dismay. Mrs. Kent beamed at him. "Just sit down at the kitchen table."
Lex led Kal-El to the table and helped him onto the chair. Fortunately, chairs didn't seem to be a mystery to him; he squirmed, but no more than any other small child. Mrs. Kent set glasses of milk and a plate of cookies in front of them.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said and reached for a cookie, which was soft and studded with chocolate chips. He'd never been allowed anything like it, and he realized the full injustice of that as soon as he took his first bite.
"These are delicious!" he said. He wondered if she'd make them on commission, if he convinced his mother to accept it.
She smiled. Kal-El, looking at Lex's face, reached out for a cookie of his own. His tentative imitation turned into a hasty gobble, leaving him with a ring of crumbs and chocolate around his mouth, and Lex hastily pulled the plate out of his reach. He didn't know if alien kids were anything like human ones, but if they were, sugar shock wasn't a good idea.
Kal-El pouted, but picked up his milk when Lex shook his own glass for emphasis. "That's right," he said encouragingly when Kal-El took a sip.
Fortunately, Kal-El was just as excited by the milk as by the cookie.
Mrs. Kent was staring at Kal-El’s T-shirt. Up close, it didn’t look much like a normal T-shirt; there were no visible seams. Not to mention the picture of the thing that was like a cross between a dinosaur, a tiger, and a brace of knives. “We, uh, got that in Japan,” Lex improvised. “It’s a character from one of the cartoons they have there.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Kent said. “It’s ... scary.”
“The Japanese have a very different attitude towards that sort of thing,” he said confidently.
Jor-El and Lara were whispering again, standing in the corner. It didn't sound much like Estonian ought to sound. The kitchen was crowded with six people in it.
To draw attention away from the aliens, Lex thanked Mrs. Kent again and asked if they might wait outside. He remembered to wipe Kal-El's face before encouraging him to get down from the chair. The sugar seemed to have improved the boy's already high spirits, and he was practically bouncing by the time they got into the yard. The adults followed, to Lex's great relief. Jor-El wandered off by the barn, while Lara followed him just until she would have lost sight of Kal-El, who seemed fascinated by the Kents’ red truck.
Lex went over to where Lara was standing, looking up at the darkening sky. The first few stars were just beginning to show, along with a scattering of satellites, Venus, and a thin fingernail of moon against the rich blue horizon.
He picked up a stick lying against the fence and began drawing in the dirt. A small circle, surrounded by nine ellipses, each interrupted by its own circle like a display of necklaces. He couldn’t remember how many moons Saturn and Neptune had and the scale was prohibitive anyway, so he just drew in Saturn’s rings and only gave Earth a moon. Lara was watching as he tapped the third planet. “Earth,” he said.
Lara’s smile was wobbly this time, like his mother’s when she promised him that she’d do her best to get better quickly. He held out the stick, and she squatted to draw a diagram of her own. Hers had only six ellipses, one so extreme that it crossed three of the others. She pointed at the fourth planet. “Krypton.”
“Krypton,” he repeated. Wow.
Lara looked up across the yard. “Kal-El!” she cried out. Lex spun to see Kal-El pushing at the truck – and the truck rocking on its tires, one side actually leaving the ground as Lex gaped. In a flash, Lara was standing by the boy, grabbing him away from the truck and lecturing in rapid – “Kryptonian” seemed unlikely, given that Lex didn’t speak Earthian, but it would do for the moment. Maybe it was Kryptonian; all the aliens in the books seemed to have a world government and a unified culture, which might be a prerequisite for long-range spaceflight, but Lex kind of suspected that it was a matter of convenience for the authors.
While Lex geeked, Lara was staring back at the farmhouse, where Mrs. Kent was standing on the porch with her hand over her mouth.
Lex rabbited back over to the porch. Mrs. Kent took a step backwards, away from him, and Lex stopped, confused and hurt. “I’m not – nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“You’re not one of them,” Mrs. Kent said confidently. Lex winced; his father always said that his dissimulation skills were distinctly subpar. “What *are* they?”
“They’re – they’re stranded here, Mrs. Kent. They need help.”
Mr. Kent came jogging up. “Martha – that man, he was looking around the barn as if he didn’t recognize anything. And then he went out into the field, and one of the cows came up to him. He picked it up like it was a kitten!” He was ignoring Lex, his eyes fierce with determination to protect his wife.
“I know,” she said. “Lex was telling me that our visitors just arrived here.”
Mr. Kent frowned and moved closer to Mrs. Kent. Lex backed away, down onto the first porch step. “I don’t understand.” Mr. Kent’s eyes flicked to the shotgun propped beside the door.
“Lex?” Mrs. Kent’s voice was as soft as his mother’s. If he didn’t do a good job, she was going to be disappointed in him.
He looked down at the porch steps, showing faded brown wood under coats of white paint.
“They came down in the meteor shower. They saved my life after the meteors knocked me out. They’re from a place called Krypton.”
The Kents looked at one another. Mr. Kent’s face twisted in that “isn’t he an imaginative child?” expression that people always got when they couldn’t believe that he was that smart for his age. “Now, son –“
“If we don’t help them, the government is going to dissect them and cover it all up!”
That didn’t help. Mr. Kent just frowned harder.
Mrs. Kent laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “Jonathan, what if he’s right? That little boy –“
“Martha, it’s ridiculous. People don’t just come from the sky. These people might be deluded, and maybe they’ve fooled a child into believing, but it’s not possible!”
“Little boys don’t just lift trucks, either, and grown men don’t just lift cows single-handed,” Lex countered.
“Lift trucks?”
Mrs. Kent nodded in confirmation.
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on. The radio says that at least five people are dead, and more missing.”
"They didn't do that. They rescued me. I think they had an accident with their ship – I don't think it works any more."
Noise from the road interrupted the conversation. His mother's long black Cadillac purred up the Kents' drive, stopping only a few yards from the porch. The car had barely come to a halt when the back door opened and Lex saw his mother's elegant ankles and the high heels she cursed in private but wore unfailingly in public.
Her head emerged over the door. Lex forgot the Kents and their knowledge and ran to her.
She rocked back, leaning against the door, looking down at him in shock as he threw his arms around her. "Mother," he said into her stomach, not worrying about getting her dress dirty.
"Alexander – my God, what happened to you? What happened to your *hair*?"
He looked up into her horrified face. Honestly, he'd almost forgotten. It wasn't as if he were weird compared to the Kryptonians. "I don't know. I was knocked out in the meteor shower, and when I woke up I was like this. These people –" he let his mother go to wave at the aliens – "rescued me. They, uh, they don't speak any English."
Lex summarized the day’s events, describing the spaceship, Lara and Jor-El’s speed and strength, and their solicitousness towards him. His mother divided her attention between him and the aliens, now standing together in a worried huddle. Even Kal-El had grown subdued. The Kents watched everyone else in silence that only darkened the mood further.
“So you decided to call me, and keep your father out of it, at least for now,” she said when he was finished.
He nodded, hoping it was the right thing.
She smiled, brightening her too-pale face. “My little emperor, always planning.”
Relieved, he smiled back.
She turned to the Kents. "Thank you for helping my son."
"You're Lillian Luthor, aren't you?" Mrs. Kent asked, her face strained.
"I am. Have we met?"
"We had a few classes together in college. Before your marriage." Mrs. Kent was holding on to her husband's arm. He didn't look happy.
His mother nodded politely. "I'm in your debt. If there is ever anything I can do for you –"
"I don't think that will happen," Mr. Kent said severely. Mrs. Kent's eyes flickered to him, then down to the ground.
His mother's expression didn't change. "Of course. Then we won't impose on you any further. Lex," she said, kneeling so that she was at his level, "can you ask your friends to join us in the car?"
Lex walked over to the aliens. "My mother is here," he said, even though they wouldn't understand. "She's going to take us somewhere we'll all be safe."
Kal-El detached himself from Jor-El and hugged Lex. His arms exerted the same sort of pressure on Lex's chest that he'd often felt when the asthma was bad. "Hey," he managed to pant out, "it's okay." Feebly, he pushed against the boy's shoulders. Lara said something sharp, and Kal-El relaxed his grip but slid one small hand down Lex's arm until they were holding hands. Lex squeezed in reassurance, and Kal-El's sunny smile returned.
"Come on," Lex said and tugged Kal-El towards the waiting car.
The adults didn't look thrilled, but they followed.
Mr. and Mrs. Kent were watching, even less satisfied, but they weren't going to do anything. Lex could tell; he'd seen that look on a lot of people's faces. He hoped his mother wouldn't do anything to them to improve the aliens' security, though. Mrs. Kent's cookies had been really good.
"Goodbye, ma'am. Goodbye, sir," he said, just before he got into the car. He helped Kal-El into a seatbelt as the others entered. The aliens sat next to Kal-El. Lex and his mother sat across from them.
As the car began to move towards Metropolis, Lex's mother opened the wet bar and offered water to everyone. Lex accepted, as did Lara. His mother smiled at Lara and got the same harmless smile in return.
"I think we're going to get along very well," his mother murmured. "Lex, do they have any English vocabulary?"
"Just 'Earth,' I think."
From her purse, his mother produced a pad and a pen. "Perhaps we can do some simple nouns. I'll have experts come in eventually of course, but I'd like to keep this in the family for now."
"In the family?" Lex asked, with not a little dread.
“A figure of speech, darling.”
Lex looked over at Kal-El, who raised his hand in a wave, then buried his head in Lara’s side, seemingly shy under Lex’s mother’s scrutiny.
“I think you’ve tamed Bucephalus,” she continued, and now her smile was her business smile.
Lex felt a twist in his stomach, but she’d never hurt him or his. “He’s not a horse, mother.”
She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Alexander. You and I will make sure our visitors are treated with the care and consideration they deserve.”
Lex closed his eyes, happy to have her there to take care of everything. Boldly, he leaned into his mother, pressing his head into her side the way he’d just seen Kal-El casually asking for affection. After a moment, her hand caressed his shoulder and then moved to his head, touching him as if he were as fragile as a robin’s egg. “I love you,” he whispered, and her hand stilled.
“You as well, darling.” She bent and pressed a kiss to his scalp, the newly exposed skin there so sensitive that Lex had to bite back a giggle. “There’s much that needs to be done.” She unbuckled herself and moved to kneel before Lara and Jor-El, showing them the pad. Kal-El whined, and after some shuffling, he was moved to sit beside Lex while Lex's mother sat between the adults. Lex felt an unfamiliar pride – the boy was looking up to him, for care and protection. Like a little brother.
Across the car, Lara and Jor-El were repeating his mother's name. Kal-El wasn't talking, but maybe Lex could help him learn English, too. “This is the story of Alexander the Great and how he created the largest empire the world had ever known,” he told Kal-El, who squeezed his hand with chubby fingers and smiled as if Lex were the best friend ever.
Lex was thrilled. He just knew that great things were coming.
Lex opened his eyes, or tried to, but had to squint into the bluish light above him. He was on a squishy sort of pallet, and his head hurt.
He remembered a guy on a cross and a flash of light.
Pushing himself into a sitting position, Lex looked around the room he was in. It was extremely odd. It looked a little bit like the sets on The Next Generation, but shrunk about five times so that all the equipment overlapped, and the light was funny so the edges of things seemed to waver.
“Hello?” he called out.
There was a muffled noise from behind him, and he turned his head to see a door slide down into the floor. A pretty, dark-haired woman with dark eyes stepped through and smiled at him. She was wearing something like coveralls, black with royal blue markings. She said something he didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know that language,” he said politely.
She frowned and repeated herself more slowly.
He shook his head. “I still don’t know what you’re saying.”
She took two steps forward, which brought her within touching distance, and looked at the flashing display by the side of his pallet. Lex looked at it too.
The characters weren’t English, or Arabic, Cyrillic, Japanese, Chinese, Thai or anything else Lex could ever remember seeing. He swallowed.
The woman said something that sounded cheerful. Then she turned back to him. “Lara,” she said, pointing at herself and enunciating carefully.
“Lex Luthor,” he said, imitating her.
Lara smiled and called out something over her shoulder.
A really big man stepped into the room, wearing the same outfit. He was also dark-haired and had eyes bluer than Lex’s mother’s, and he was carrying a toddler at his hip. The toddler’s eyes were wide and frightened. He was wearing dark pants and a red T-shirt decorated with a picture of something green with lots of teeth.
Lara talked quickly, a flurry of syllables that included an approximation of his name. The man frowned, but the little boy smiled and reached out towards Lex. After a brief hesitation, the man came close enough that the child could reach out and touch Lex on the cheek. Lex blinked in surprise; he thought he could feel a tingling where the boy’s fingers had grazed him.
“Lex,” he said again, pointing to himself, staring into the boy’s strange green-brown eyes.
“Kal-El,” Lara said, smiling at him and indicating the toddler. “Jor-El.” That was the man.
Lex took a deep breath. “Um, I probably owe you my life and I don’t want you to think I’m rude, but – where are we? Are we in space?”
All three of them looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“Oh-kay.” Nervously, he reached up to run a hand through his crazy hair, and gaped when he didn’t find any. Bringing both hands up to grope, he quickly discovered that he was now as bald as a baby’s bottom. What a revolting development.
Pay attention to the essentials, Lex, his father’s voice lectured. Bald! he screamed back in his head. That’s kind of essential! But it wasn’t really, not compared to being abducted by aliens, which was pretty obviously what had happened. Had their experiments taken his hair? They seemed so nice, if ignorant.
Lex pushed himself off of the pallet and found that he could stand, though he was swaying a little. When they didn’t make any moves towards him or sprout tentacles, he ventured forward, trying to get a look at what lay beyond the door.
The next room smelled like food, fresh and old mixed together in an almost overpowering aroma. Lex coughed, hoping his asthma wouldn’t kick in now, when everything was so exciting. They must have been cooped up in here for a while, he surmised. There was another door on the left, and Lara followed him through it.
This had to be the control room. Strange round screens were on every surface. Some showed what ought to be star charts, others strange swirling fractal patterns or eddies of colors that hurt Lex’s eyes.
One screen, near the center of the room and in front of a stool-like thing, showed what looked like an Earth cornfield that had huge brown swathes burned through it. Lex hurried over to it.
“Is this where we are?” he asked, pointing at the screen.
He looked back at Lara, who smiled at him. Argh! “Lex, here?” he asked, pointing again. “Lara, here?”
Her head did a little shimmy that, in a human, would have been a strange-looking “no.” “Lex, here,” she repeated and pointed at the image of the cornfield.
That was a relief – they were still on Earth.
Only, it wasn’t a relief. The government would be here soon, and they’d take Lara and Kal-El and Jor-El and he’d never see them again. That would be so unfair. He’d found them! Okay, they’d found him, but it was almost the same thing. He’d read lots of books about this.
The scars in the field indicated that the landing had been more of a belly-flop than a gentle glide to a complete stop, so maybe Lara and her family were stranded. He could be their only hope.
“Take me out there,” he said.
Eventually, after an excessive amount of pointing and a conversation between Lara and Jor-El, Jor-El did something off at one side of the room, and a hatch opened. Lara boosted Lex out, and he found himself standing on top of a mound of silvery metal half-dug into the dirt. Anybody driving or flying by could have seen it.
That wouldn’t do at all. Lex used a rock – equated to the ship by the limited but powerful pointing process – to demonstrate his opinion that they ought to bury the ship and cover it with the broken stalks of corn so that it wouldn’t be so easy to find. More alien conversation ensued.
Jor-El had brought Kal-El outside when he came. The boy wandered through the field, still silent, until he made a whimpering noise that neither Lara nor Jor-El seemed to hear over their apparent argument. Lex abandoned them, hurrying after the boy. He was huddled by another scar in the earth, groaning. Lex remembered the multiple booming noises he’d heard just before he’d been knocked out and guessed that other things had come down with the ship. At the end of the furrow, a black-green rock was half-buried in the ground. It glowed feebly green in sick, slow pulses.
Lex didn’t like the look of it, and it didn’t seem to be doing Kal-El any good either. The boy was whining, and strange black veins were writhing on his face, only feet from the strange rock. “Come on,” he said, picking the boy up when he didn’t respond. He was heavy, but Lex managed to stagger away about twenty feet before he had to stop, and by that time Kal-El was able to stand on his own. The veins were gone. The boy smiled up at Lex, grateful, and Lex vowed that he’d pay closer attention until Lara and Jor-El resumed their probably-parental, maybe-babysitting duties.
As they returned to the ship, Lex saw that Lara was kneeling in the ground, poking at a crumpled part of the ship. She looked up at Jor-El and said something negative. Jor-El closed his eyes in dismay, then offered her a hand up.
What happened then was hard for Lex to believe. The two aliens blurred, and a hole began to appear in the ground, dirt piled up to one side. He swallowed, keeping Kal-El well away from the growing hole even as the boy smiled and waved in appreciation of the spectacle. Kal-El was still eerily silent. Maybe aliens didn’t speak until they were adults. Maybe he was telepathic; certainly he seemed to sense Lex’s fear, and squeezed his hand reassuringly.
When the hole was large enough for the ship, the aliens went around to the other side and pushed it in. Lex gawped. The thing had to weigh twenty tons at least, and they tipped it as if it were a garbage can. Then the speeding began again, pushing the dirt around and the fallen corn until the ground looked as if it had been through a big storm, no different than the rest of the field.
It wouldn’t put off determined investigators, but it would buy them some time. Enough time for his mother to come and take charge of everything.
“Okay,” he said when they were finished. “Now we need to find a phone to call my mother.”
They looked at him blankly, except for Kal-El who was smiling as if he’d said something brilliant. Lex attempted to pantomime the existence of a person who was to him as they were to Kal-El. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded, but they followed him to the road at last, Kal-El clinging to his hand. If they walked along the road long enough, they’d have to find some outposts of civilization.
Lex hoped so, anyhow. He was hungry and thirsty, and still dizzy from being knocked out before. And he was probably getting sunburned on his head. His mother always insisted he put on gobs of sunblock, but she hadn’t rubbed it into his scalp.
It occurred to him that he’d probably be sobbing like the weakling his father always warned him not to be if he didn’t have more important things on his mind. Sure, the kids at school were going to point and laugh, but none of *them* had discovered aliens.
They left the buried spaceship and headed towards the power lines running along the west side of the field. Sure enough, the lines parallelled a two-lane paved road. Lex chose a direction at random and they began to walk down the road. Kal-El alternated between walking at Lex's side and running back to be carried by Jor-El. Lex kept up a narration as he went, on the off chance that the aliens could pick up English just from listening.
"Smallville is the fifth largest farming community in the state of Kansas," he narrated. "Currently, corn processing is the major non-farming source of employment." He explained the structure of local, state and federal government. Lara and Jor-El remained silent, except for a brief whispered conference during one of the times Kal-El was holding Lex's hand.
The sun was well on its way towards the horizon by the time they came to a turnoff. The sign over the rutted dirt said "Kent Farms." Lex could see a small yellow farmohouse and a large red barn, along with a few other outbuildings, at the end of the track.
"Let's try here," Lex said and turned. Kal-El paused by the mailbox with its flag down and examined it curiously. "Come on," he prodded, and the boy hurried back.
They must have made an odd-looking group, the adults in their black SWAT-team uniforms, Kal-El in his fire-engine red T-shirt showing the weird-looking thing with all the eyes, and bald and chubby Lex. He realized, as they approached the farmhouse, that he hadn't been short of breath the entire time.
A red-headed woman stepped out of the house, onto the porch. "Jonathan," she called back into the house, "we have visitors."
You have no idea, Lex thought and smiled at her. "Excuse me, ma'am. We had some trouble in the – whatever it was that happened earlier."
A blond man came to join the woman on the porch, frowning. The woman looked at Lex, then at his silent adult companions. "It was a meteor shower, the radio says."
Lex swallowed.
“Oh. When the, uh, meteors started falling, we drove off the road. The car was damaged and we had to walk." It was almost true, he thought. The man and the woman were still looking at the aliens, waiting for them to speak. "These are my cousins. From Estonia. They don’t speak any English, and I only know a few words of Estonian. May we please borrow your phone so I can call my mother to come get us?”
Lex waited, praying that the people didn’t turn out to be of Estonian extraction. It had been the best he could think of on short notice; no red-blooded American was likely to speak a Communist language. He hoped.
“Estonia?” Jonathan repeated, stepping down so that he was within a few paces.
Lex nodded. “This is – George Elshtain, and his wife Lara. And Cal, their son. My name is Alexander.” The Luthor name wasn't exactly universally popular, so he didn't add it on.
The man smiled at the aliens, polite but wary. He extended his hand. "Jonathan Kent."
Lex held his breath.
After a noticeable pause, Jor-El imitated him, and they shook. Then Lara did the same, smiling brightly. Mr. Kent looked less suspicious after she was done with him. Never underestimate the value of a sincere smile, his mother had said, and now that he’d seen it work with another species entirely he was a believer.
The woman, probably Mrs. Kent, followed her probable husband's lead, and Jor-El didn't hesitate this time.
"Of course you can use our phone," Mrs. Kent said.
Lex relaxed a bit.
"Come on in," she said, climbing back up the steps to hold the door open for them. Lex obeyed, trusting that Jor-El and Lara would continue to play along.
They went into a small kitchen that his mother would probably call "cozy." Mr. Kent came after, still keeping an eye on Jor-El.
"The phone is right here," Mrs. Kent said, and he hurried over to it.
"Oh – where are we?" he remembered to ask.
Mr. Kent offered some very rural-sounding directions. He hoped his mother's driver would know the way.
“Hello?” His mother picked up on the first ring, sounding worried, and he felt a throat-closing rush of guilt.
“It’s Lex,” he said, wanting very much to call her Mother.
“Alexander! Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I need you to come get me. But I need you to come alone. No one else, just you. Please, will you do that?”
“What’s wrong, darling?”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise. Just – will you come? Alone?” Martha Kent was watching him with worry, but she hadn’t said anything yet.
His mother breathed, too fast, too loud, as if she were about to have one of her attacks.
“All right,” she said finally, and Lex gave her the Kents’ address.
"Would you and Cal like a snack?" Mrs. Kent asked.
Lex's stomach answered for him, to his great dismay. Mrs. Kent beamed at him. "Just sit down at the kitchen table."
Lex led Kal-El to the table and helped him onto the chair. Fortunately, chairs didn't seem to be a mystery to him; he squirmed, but no more than any other small child. Mrs. Kent set glasses of milk and a plate of cookies in front of them.
"Thank you, ma'am," he said and reached for a cookie, which was soft and studded with chocolate chips. He'd never been allowed anything like it, and he realized the full injustice of that as soon as he took his first bite.
"These are delicious!" he said. He wondered if she'd make them on commission, if he convinced his mother to accept it.
She smiled. Kal-El, looking at Lex's face, reached out for a cookie of his own. His tentative imitation turned into a hasty gobble, leaving him with a ring of crumbs and chocolate around his mouth, and Lex hastily pulled the plate out of his reach. He didn't know if alien kids were anything like human ones, but if they were, sugar shock wasn't a good idea.
Kal-El pouted, but picked up his milk when Lex shook his own glass for emphasis. "That's right," he said encouragingly when Kal-El took a sip.
Fortunately, Kal-El was just as excited by the milk as by the cookie.
Mrs. Kent was staring at Kal-El’s T-shirt. Up close, it didn’t look much like a normal T-shirt; there were no visible seams. Not to mention the picture of the thing that was like a cross between a dinosaur, a tiger, and a brace of knives. “We, uh, got that in Japan,” Lex improvised. “It’s a character from one of the cartoons they have there.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Kent said. “It’s ... scary.”
“The Japanese have a very different attitude towards that sort of thing,” he said confidently.
Jor-El and Lara were whispering again, standing in the corner. It didn't sound much like Estonian ought to sound. The kitchen was crowded with six people in it.
To draw attention away from the aliens, Lex thanked Mrs. Kent again and asked if they might wait outside. He remembered to wipe Kal-El's face before encouraging him to get down from the chair. The sugar seemed to have improved the boy's already high spirits, and he was practically bouncing by the time they got into the yard. The adults followed, to Lex's great relief. Jor-El wandered off by the barn, while Lara followed him just until she would have lost sight of Kal-El, who seemed fascinated by the Kents’ red truck.
Lex went over to where Lara was standing, looking up at the darkening sky. The first few stars were just beginning to show, along with a scattering of satellites, Venus, and a thin fingernail of moon against the rich blue horizon.
He picked up a stick lying against the fence and began drawing in the dirt. A small circle, surrounded by nine ellipses, each interrupted by its own circle like a display of necklaces. He couldn’t remember how many moons Saturn and Neptune had and the scale was prohibitive anyway, so he just drew in Saturn’s rings and only gave Earth a moon. Lara was watching as he tapped the third planet. “Earth,” he said.
Lara’s smile was wobbly this time, like his mother’s when she promised him that she’d do her best to get better quickly. He held out the stick, and she squatted to draw a diagram of her own. Hers had only six ellipses, one so extreme that it crossed three of the others. She pointed at the fourth planet. “Krypton.”
“Krypton,” he repeated. Wow.
Lara looked up across the yard. “Kal-El!” she cried out. Lex spun to see Kal-El pushing at the truck – and the truck rocking on its tires, one side actually leaving the ground as Lex gaped. In a flash, Lara was standing by the boy, grabbing him away from the truck and lecturing in rapid – “Kryptonian” seemed unlikely, given that Lex didn’t speak Earthian, but it would do for the moment. Maybe it was Kryptonian; all the aliens in the books seemed to have a world government and a unified culture, which might be a prerequisite for long-range spaceflight, but Lex kind of suspected that it was a matter of convenience for the authors.
While Lex geeked, Lara was staring back at the farmhouse, where Mrs. Kent was standing on the porch with her hand over her mouth.
Lex rabbited back over to the porch. Mrs. Kent took a step backwards, away from him, and Lex stopped, confused and hurt. “I’m not – nobody’s going to hurt you.”
“You’re not one of them,” Mrs. Kent said confidently. Lex winced; his father always said that his dissimulation skills were distinctly subpar. “What *are* they?”
“They’re – they’re stranded here, Mrs. Kent. They need help.”
Mr. Kent came jogging up. “Martha – that man, he was looking around the barn as if he didn’t recognize anything. And then he went out into the field, and one of the cows came up to him. He picked it up like it was a kitten!” He was ignoring Lex, his eyes fierce with determination to protect his wife.
“I know,” she said. “Lex was telling me that our visitors just arrived here.”
Mr. Kent frowned and moved closer to Mrs. Kent. Lex backed away, down onto the first porch step. “I don’t understand.” Mr. Kent’s eyes flicked to the shotgun propped beside the door.
“Lex?” Mrs. Kent’s voice was as soft as his mother’s. If he didn’t do a good job, she was going to be disappointed in him.
He looked down at the porch steps, showing faded brown wood under coats of white paint.
“They came down in the meteor shower. They saved my life after the meteors knocked me out. They’re from a place called Krypton.”
The Kents looked at one another. Mr. Kent’s face twisted in that “isn’t he an imaginative child?” expression that people always got when they couldn’t believe that he was that smart for his age. “Now, son –“
“If we don’t help them, the government is going to dissect them and cover it all up!”
That didn’t help. Mr. Kent just frowned harder.
Mrs. Kent laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “Jonathan, what if he’s right? That little boy –“
“Martha, it’s ridiculous. People don’t just come from the sky. These people might be deluded, and maybe they’ve fooled a child into believing, but it’s not possible!”
“Little boys don’t just lift trucks, either, and grown men don’t just lift cows single-handed,” Lex countered.
“Lift trucks?”
Mrs. Kent nodded in confirmation.
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on. The radio says that at least five people are dead, and more missing.”
"They didn't do that. They rescued me. I think they had an accident with their ship – I don't think it works any more."
Noise from the road interrupted the conversation. His mother's long black Cadillac purred up the Kents' drive, stopping only a few yards from the porch. The car had barely come to a halt when the back door opened and Lex saw his mother's elegant ankles and the high heels she cursed in private but wore unfailingly in public.
Her head emerged over the door. Lex forgot the Kents and their knowledge and ran to her.
She rocked back, leaning against the door, looking down at him in shock as he threw his arms around her. "Mother," he said into her stomach, not worrying about getting her dress dirty.
"Alexander – my God, what happened to you? What happened to your *hair*?"
He looked up into her horrified face. Honestly, he'd almost forgotten. It wasn't as if he were weird compared to the Kryptonians. "I don't know. I was knocked out in the meteor shower, and when I woke up I was like this. These people –" he let his mother go to wave at the aliens – "rescued me. They, uh, they don't speak any English."
Lex summarized the day’s events, describing the spaceship, Lara and Jor-El’s speed and strength, and their solicitousness towards him. His mother divided her attention between him and the aliens, now standing together in a worried huddle. Even Kal-El had grown subdued. The Kents watched everyone else in silence that only darkened the mood further.
“So you decided to call me, and keep your father out of it, at least for now,” she said when he was finished.
He nodded, hoping it was the right thing.
She smiled, brightening her too-pale face. “My little emperor, always planning.”
Relieved, he smiled back.
She turned to the Kents. "Thank you for helping my son."
"You're Lillian Luthor, aren't you?" Mrs. Kent asked, her face strained.
"I am. Have we met?"
"We had a few classes together in college. Before your marriage." Mrs. Kent was holding on to her husband's arm. He didn't look happy.
His mother nodded politely. "I'm in your debt. If there is ever anything I can do for you –"
"I don't think that will happen," Mr. Kent said severely. Mrs. Kent's eyes flickered to him, then down to the ground.
His mother's expression didn't change. "Of course. Then we won't impose on you any further. Lex," she said, kneeling so that she was at his level, "can you ask your friends to join us in the car?"
Lex walked over to the aliens. "My mother is here," he said, even though they wouldn't understand. "She's going to take us somewhere we'll all be safe."
Kal-El detached himself from Jor-El and hugged Lex. His arms exerted the same sort of pressure on Lex's chest that he'd often felt when the asthma was bad. "Hey," he managed to pant out, "it's okay." Feebly, he pushed against the boy's shoulders. Lara said something sharp, and Kal-El relaxed his grip but slid one small hand down Lex's arm until they were holding hands. Lex squeezed in reassurance, and Kal-El's sunny smile returned.
"Come on," Lex said and tugged Kal-El towards the waiting car.
The adults didn't look thrilled, but they followed.
Mr. and Mrs. Kent were watching, even less satisfied, but they weren't going to do anything. Lex could tell; he'd seen that look on a lot of people's faces. He hoped his mother wouldn't do anything to them to improve the aliens' security, though. Mrs. Kent's cookies had been really good.
"Goodbye, ma'am. Goodbye, sir," he said, just before he got into the car. He helped Kal-El into a seatbelt as the others entered. The aliens sat next to Kal-El. Lex and his mother sat across from them.
As the car began to move towards Metropolis, Lex's mother opened the wet bar and offered water to everyone. Lex accepted, as did Lara. His mother smiled at Lara and got the same harmless smile in return.
"I think we're going to get along very well," his mother murmured. "Lex, do they have any English vocabulary?"
"Just 'Earth,' I think."
From her purse, his mother produced a pad and a pen. "Perhaps we can do some simple nouns. I'll have experts come in eventually of course, but I'd like to keep this in the family for now."
"In the family?" Lex asked, with not a little dread.
“A figure of speech, darling.”
Lex looked over at Kal-El, who raised his hand in a wave, then buried his head in Lara’s side, seemingly shy under Lex’s mother’s scrutiny.
“I think you’ve tamed Bucephalus,” she continued, and now her smile was her business smile.
Lex felt a twist in his stomach, but she’d never hurt him or his. “He’s not a horse, mother.”
She patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Alexander. You and I will make sure our visitors are treated with the care and consideration they deserve.”
Lex closed his eyes, happy to have her there to take care of everything. Boldly, he leaned into his mother, pressing his head into her side the way he’d just seen Kal-El casually asking for affection. After a moment, her hand caressed his shoulder and then moved to his head, touching him as if he were as fragile as a robin’s egg. “I love you,” he whispered, and her hand stilled.
“You as well, darling.” She bent and pressed a kiss to his scalp, the newly exposed skin there so sensitive that Lex had to bite back a giggle. “There’s much that needs to be done.” She unbuckled herself and moved to kneel before Lara and Jor-El, showing them the pad. Kal-El whined, and after some shuffling, he was moved to sit beside Lex while Lex's mother sat between the adults. Lex felt an unfamiliar pride – the boy was looking up to him, for care and protection. Like a little brother.
Across the car, Lara and Jor-El were repeating his mother's name. Kal-El wasn't talking, but maybe Lex could help him learn English, too. “This is the story of Alexander the Great and how he created the largest empire the world had ever known,” he told Kal-El, who squeezed his hand with chubby fingers and smiled as if Lex were the best friend ever.
Lex was thrilled. He just knew that great things were coming.
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Must stop that. *grins* Great piece here!
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Awww! I just *adore* your little Lex. He's so sweet, and amazingly precocious. And Kal-El was the cutest little thing. Now I'm sad that you're not going to do anything more with this, because it is a fascinating premise, and one that I'd really, really like to see more of.
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Also, thank you for this bit!
lecturing in rapid – “Kryptonian” seemed unlikely, given that Lex didn’t speak Earthian, but it would do for the moment. Maybe it was Kryptonian; all the aliens in the books seemed to have a world government and a unified culture, which might be a prerequisite for long-range spaceflight, but Lex kind of suspected that it was a matter of convenience for the authors.
I've never been much into sci-fi, but that's also the part where I'd get my geek on, too, feeling annoyed when people refer to Kryptonian language or culture. And I love that it's in character for wee!Lex to be so geeky about it.