The Last Days of Krypton

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Once back inside the manor house, Lara retired to their bedchamber as her labor progressed. The female doctor hovered inside the room during Lara’s hours of contractions. Jor-El held his wife’s hand the whole time.

  Afterward, though Lara was exhausted and drained, her amber hair streaked against her face with perspiration, Kirana-Tu insisted it was a relatively easy delivery. “So typical, you barely needed me here.” Lara lay back in the bed and held her baby in the crook of her arm, biting back several choice comments for the humorless doctor.

  Jor-El’s chef had returned from serving the masses in Kryptonopolis, clearly disgusted with how his master had been treated by the Council. Fro-Da wanted to settle down at the estate again, where he could worry about nothing of greater consequence than his sauces, braised meats, roasted vegetables, and spiced fruits. To do his part for Lara, he had studied traditional records and developed a special fortified soup that would help the new mother regain her strength.

  The next morning, Lara insisted she needed fresh air. Holding the baby, Jor-El walked slowly with her out to the open porch where she could smell the fragrant breezes and look out over the flowers, the fresh-cut purple lawn, and the splashing fountains. Resting in a comfortable chair, she cradled the infant in her arms. He was wrapped in a red and blue blanket sent to them by Charys from Yar-El’s old possessions.

  Jor-El stared in wonder at the little boy’s face. “After so many astonishing events, I never imagined that the high point of my life would come so unexpectedly.”

  “Unexpected? You’ve known for almost nine months you were going to be a father.”

  “But I didn’t know it would feel like this. Before, it was always a theoretical proposition.”

  “You and your theories, Jor-El,” she teased.

  “But this one has struck me here.” He put a hand to the center of his chest. “I can’t explain it.”

  “You don’t need to explain it. Just feel it. That’s what I’ve been trying to show you all along.”

  He gave her a bittersweet but satisfied smile. “I vowed that our son would be raised in a better world, and I intend to keep that promise. I’ll see that our boy reveres truth and justice.”

  The infant’s blue eyes were open and clear, and Lara was sure he was studying his parents. She wondered if he would remember this moment.

  “Truth and justice,” Lara mused. “Remember the obelisks, the paintings I made to symbolize the most important facets of our race?”

  “Yes, you used Kal-Ik to symbolize truth and justice. I felt a lot like him when I stood up to Zod.” Jor-El looked at her, and they were both considering the same thing. “So you think Kal is a good name?”

  “I think it’s a perfect name for our son. Kal-El.”

  “Who am I to disagree?” He bent down and kissed the baby. He had dark hair, with a small but persistent curl at his forehead. “Welcome to the world, Kal-El.”

  Giving his wife a tender kiss, he took little Kal in his arms and held him.

  CHAPTER 84

  Jor-El retreated from public view for a few days after the birth of his son. At home, he doted on baby Kal-El, savoring the delights of watching him discover small marvels, like holding his parents’ fingers, splashing in warm bathwater, and making experimental sounds. Jor-El wondered if Yar-El had experienced the same simple pleasures after his two sons were born.

  Jor-El returned to his laboratory and revisited the many half-finished projects he had abandoned over the years. As a scientist, he couldn’t simply stop the ideas from coming into his head. Zod’s Commission for Technology Acceptance was forever gone, but Jor-El expected no more openness from the new leadership, even though he was ostensibly part of the Council. The six old-guard members could always vote down his suggestions.

  Though some of his fellow Council members blamed Jor-El for their troubles, others respected him just as much for what he had done in the past. He was Jor-El, and he did not care about glory, wealth, or fame.

  Since Lara was recovering well and the baby was healthy, he knew he had to return to Kryptonopolis and get back to work on the Council. Many of the members were the older sons of entrenched noble families that had been disenfranchised by Zod’s iron regime, and they were likely to idealize the old, stagnant ways. Without his guidance, he dreaded some of the decisions they might make.

  Before he could leave home, an urgent message from No-Ton and Or-Om shattered the calm. In Jor-El’s absence, many scientific responsibilities had been shifted to the other scientist’s shoulders, and No-Ton was the first to admit he felt inadequate to bear them.

  On the communication plate, the two men stood close to each other, their images clear. “This isn’t a social call,” Or-Om said gruffly, scratching at his newly cut hair.

  No-Ton seemed almost frantic. “The Council just issued an edict banning all of your supposedly dangerous technology, Jor-El.”

  He felt a cold wave of disgust. He had already been afraid of dark and reactionary days ahead. “Just how do they define dangerous technology?”

  “Anything invented by you, presumably.” Or-Om shook his head. “Since they don’t understand any of it, they don’t want to take the risk.”

  “I wasn’t there for the vote,” Jor-El said. “I didn’t hear any of the discussion. I wasn’t given a chance to speak on my own behalf. I will demand a reopening of the debate.”

  “Your vote wouldn’t have made a difference,” No-Ton said. “Tyr-Us has his majority of cronies, and he means to demonstrate how ‘different’ he is.”

  Now Jor-El did not try to hide his anger. “They already destroyed my wife’s art in Kryptonopolis without a valid reason. Now they mean to erase everything I’ve done? They can’t just delete me from the historical record. Surely I have more supporters than that? How could they forget so quickly?”

  “Right now, people are afraid to speak out,” No-Ton said. “The Council is still vigorously rooting out any remaining supporters of Zod, and no one wants to fall under a veil of suspicion.”

  “We could bring Zor-El back to stand by you,” Or-Om suggested. “He won’t put up with this nonsense. He never should have gone back to Argo City.”

  “I’m coming to Kryptonopolis. Maybe I can sway them in the next official meeting. I can’t ignore this.”

  “It’s more urgent than that!” No-Ton interrupted. “You already know that the Council means to destroy your Phantom Zone. Tyr-Us and Gil-Ex are irrational about it. Korth-Or and Gal-Eth both debated with them, but the six won’t change their votes.”

  Jor-El replied with a sigh, “But they can’t destroy it. I’ve already explained that.”

  No-Ton was trembling as he spoke. “Tyr-Us has decided to throw the silver rings down the shaft in the crater of Kandor. He thinks the magma should get rid of the Phantom Zone well enough. I…I’m not certain about my physics, but I fear that—”

  Jor-El reeled backward, feeling as if a tall dam had just shattered and a wall of foaming white water was rushing toward him. “But if they do that, it will sink to the very core! The Council members don’t understand what they’re doing. They never have. The consequences could be devastating.”

  “They have made up their minds, Jor-El,” Or-Om said gruffly. “Tyr-Us has already taken the Phantom Zone up to the crater.”

  The valley around Kandor was black and devastated, the once-beautiful landscape now a vast, leprous scar. Lava boulders lay scattered everywhere, as if a giant had tossed a handful of black crumbs across the ground. A smoky haze hung in the sky, trapped by an atmospheric inversion.

  At the edge of the crater, Jor-El disembarked and let the floating vessel drift. He began to scramble along the steep rock-strewn path; the group of determined Council members had already picked their way down. Tyr-Us, Gil-Ex, and the other four Council members who had been imprisoned in the Phantom Zone were clearly determined to undertake this ill-advised action.

  Work crews had cleared away part of the hardened lava pillar left behind by
the eruption, exposing the shaft sealed off by Zor-El’s protective field. The containment barrier held the still-pressurized magma below the surface. The somber self-important men stood next to a large object covered with a draping fabric, the silver rings enclosing the Phantom Zone.

  “Wait!” Jor-El sprinted across the hellish ruins of the crater floor, waving his arms. When he stumbled and cut his palm, he ignored the blood running down his hand. “Stop! You must not do this.” Armored guards blocked his way. They seized Jor-El’s arms, but he continued to throw himself forward. “Let me go. I am a member of the Council.” He pulled free. “Do not put the Phantom Zone into the shaft! You’ll never stop the aftereffects.”

  The six members of the new Council looked at him with exasperation and resentment. “Once again, Jor-El threatens us with his science,” Gil-Ex sneered.

  “This is the truth. You are about to cause an irrevocable disaster!”

  Tyr-Us screwed up his face into an expression of extreme distaste. “Obviously, he doesn’t want us to destroy the Phantom Zone. Either he has an overweening pride in his own work, or he has an insidious plan to use the rings.”

  One of the other four said, “Maybe he wants to release General Zod. We can’t let him do that.”

  “Ask any of your own scientists if you don’t believe me. Ask No-Ton or Zor-El! Tyr-Us, my brother is your friend. At least talk to him first—but listen to somebody.” The guards stopped him again when he tried to push forward, so he kept shouting from where he was, desperate to get through to them. “The Phantom Zone is a singularity. It’s an opening into another universe. I created it by using a great concentration of energy, and it feeds on energy. If you throw it into our planet’s core, the singularity will have more than it can possibly consume. It will grow, and it will keep growing. You’ll never be able to stop it.”

  Gil-Ex rolled his eyes. “Jor-El is predicting the end of the world—again!”

  Jor-El’s knees went weak. Even though time and again he had been proved right, no one believed him. “I’m begging you—at least consider what I have said. If you do this, there’s no turning back.”

  Two of the men removed the fabric to expose the silver rings and the flattened furious faces of Zod, Nam-Ek, and Aethyr trapped in the empty dimension.

  Tyr-Us smiled. “We have pushed the lava down into the shaft using Zor-El’s barrier. We’ll drop the Phantom Zone in, cover it with another energy field, and dump these rings into the depths, where no one can ever retrieve them.” He let out a long, slow sigh. “Zod will be gone, the Phantom Zone will be gone, and we can all breathe easily again.”

  Jor-El thrashed and struggled, but he could not stop these foolish, naïve men from carrying the object toward the deep hole. He let out a last cry as they placed the silver rings into the protected shaft, and he caught a final glimpse of General Zod’s vengeful expression, snarling at them.

  Pleased with themselves, the Council members switched off the lower field, releasing the singularity into the fiery lava core. The Phantom Zone disappeared into the blazing pit.

  When it was entirely too late, the armored guards released Jor-El, and he sank to his knees on the sharp black rocks. He began to calculate how much time remained before Krypton destroyed itself.

  CHAPTER 85

  In the few weeks since defeating General Zod, Argo City had made tremendous progress. One of the severed bridge spans was temporarily repaired so that mainland traffic could cross the bay to the peninsula. Zor-El began to feel that his city was thriving once more. He had real hope again.

  Until Jor-El told him what Tyr-Us and the others had done.

  Continuing solar flares caused bursts of static and signal breakup on the communication plate, but his brother’s news was shockingly clear. “I couldn’t stop them, Zor-El. Every day, every hour counts now.” His brother’s face was pale and distraught. “The Phantom Zone is going to kill us all.”

  Jor-El sent a series of images and calculations. “As it sinks to the core, the singularity will drain more and more energy from the mantle. When it reaches the critical point, the opening into the Phantom Zone will expand geometrically, like a huge hungry mouth. It will swallow the entire core of Krypton instantaneously, leaving a great void. The remaining matter will suddenly collapse inward, and the shock waves will rebound. The whole planet will be blown apart.”

  Zor-El brushed his dark hair out of his eyes, refusing to give up. “Then you and I will find some way to stop this disaster. We’ve got to.”

  “Take all my data. Please find something I’ve done wrong. Show me my error.” Jor-El swallowed hard. “I calculate that we have three days left.”

  As solar static threatened to disrupt the transmission, Zor-El stored the information. If Jor-El was right, no one and nothing could retrieve the singularity now that the Council had dropped it down into the shaft.

  And Jor-El was almost always right.

  After the signal broke up, he sat with Alura in his tower room, tugging at his hair and reviewing his brother’s calculations. He racked his brain to think of some factor Jor-El had forgotten to include, some flaw in the initial conditions. But each result was as disheartening as the last. He tried to force the equations to yield different results.

  Every time he ran a simulation, he watched the singularity expand until it engulfed the core of Krypton. Then the whole planet collapsed and broke apart like an empty eggshell. “There’s not even the slightest chance, Alura. Nothing. Jor-El rarely makes mistakes in his calculations, and he hasn’t now.”

  No errors.

  Less than three days.

  He wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her close. Looking out across the sea, they held each other as darkness gathered. “What can we possibly do in three days? Even if we had all the resources of Krypton and the full cooperation of everyone in the world?” He stroked her dark hair. “Do we even tell our people? My mother? Do we inform them all that they’ll be dead soon? It could spark a worldwide panic. Maybe it would be better if we just allowed them a few more days of peace and happiness.”

  Alura pulled back. “You can’t do that, Zor-El. You’ve always trusted your people before, and they’ve always believed in you. They put their lives on the line to support your decisions. You can’t hide this from them. It’s not right.”

  When they told Charys, she agreed wholeheartedly.

  And so Zor-El issued his statement. Despite the late hour, gongs were rung, people came out to their balconies to listen. With his wife and mother beside him, Zor-El paraded solemnly down the long, flower-decked streets. Every time he took a step, he was acutely aware of the ground beneath his feet. Somewhere deep below, a hungry monster was devouring the heart of the planet.

  He followed the whispering canals, breathed in the perfume of the beautiful plants, and announced with utmost sincerity that the end of their world was coming.

  Zor-El did not sleep, still struggling to find a solution, even a hint of a possibility, but he found very little hope to cling to. “I have the shield that I used to protect us from Zod. I can cover Argo City with a protective dome. We can hide under it and hope that will make enough of a difference.”

  “My greenhouses could support our population for a long time—but what chance would we have? How can your golden dome, however powerful, save us when all of Krypton crumbles? What possibility is there that any of us will survive?”

  He bowed his head. “Almost none.” Then he clenched his fist, struck the table, and looked up again with fiery eyes. “But what other choice is there?”

  She gave him a wan smile and repeated his words. “Almost none.”

  CHAPTER 86

  The huge telescope dishes stood as silent sentinels, still watching for now-irrelevant threats from space. With Krypton’s time slipping away minute by minute, Jor-El went to the distant early-warning outpost, hoping for inspiration. The twenty-three receivers looked like gigantic flowers, their petals spread wide to drink electromagnetic signals. Soon they
would all be swept away.

  Lara accompanied him out to the site, holding the baby as they walked toward the observation array. She refused to leave her husband’s side, knowing they had so little time left together. Kal-El nestled in his mother’s arms, looking at the sights around him as if trying to see every detail of Krypton before it was too late.

  Jor-El whispered to his baby son, “Kal-El, I am so sorry that you’ll never be able to grow up, never meet your potential. I wanted to give you everything, but I can’t hold the world together for you.”

  Lara fought back tears. “It’s not your fault, Jor-El. The other members of the Council closed their eyes to the truth. They didn’t want to see it.”

  “They feared my knowledge rather than respecting it. Tyr-Us and the others were so tied up in politics and alliances and feuds that they couldn’t imagine a man might speak the truth just because it’s the right thing to do. And now their willful ignorance will kill them.”

  No-Ton, Or-Om, and Gal-Eth—the Council members who did believe Jor-El’s dire prediction—begged him to suggest a project they could undertake—even something desperate and high risk, no matter how little likelihood it had of succeeding.

  Although their chances were vanishingly small, Jor-El gave No-Ton and his companions his old plans for the arkships to be used if the red sun threatened to become an imminent supernova. Working with complete abandon, racing for their lives, a frantic army of engineers, builders, and other volunteers from all walks of life stripped down buildings and tore apart bridges, then used the structural girders, alloy plates, and curved crystal sheets as raw materials to build the vast vessels.

  No-Ton tried to cajole Jor-El to join them, promising him passage for himself, Lara, and his son. But Jor-El had done the projections, and he knew that there simply wasn’t enough time to build such ships. He had to find another way.