MAN
OF STEEL
WOMAN OF KLEENEX
By Larry Niven
Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text.
He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive.
He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a
girl?
At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action
Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still
unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious
matter. The species itself is in danger!
An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that
those who chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his
condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame.
Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.
Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an
orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any
form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.
As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an
adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior?
What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social
behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.
What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between
his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split
personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his
defense of his "secret identity."
But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.
The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being
a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The
kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl
and the passenger pigeon.
What turns on a kryptonian?
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless
the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble
their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a
certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.
Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.
What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle
mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane
probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like
a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between
Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy-and would be, of course, by
church and common law.
Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for
convenience.
Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark
Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one
years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray
vision; he knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of
Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child
Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to
suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear
clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.*)
The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during
sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable
epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.
Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened
concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during
what amounts to an epileptic fit?
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge
to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are
dealing with kryptonian muscles.
Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously
ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.
Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all
other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume
otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-
El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet.
(*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes
during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Artificial insemination may give us better results.
First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic
speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the
stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both
for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting
the air at such speeds.
He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's
faster than a speeding bullet.
But can he keep it?
All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold
true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian
sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they
can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick,
boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that
they are capable of translight velocities.
What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties?
Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For
the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the
seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman
and LL can perform artificial insemination.
At least there will be another generation of kryptonians.
Or will there?
A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down
her Fallopian tube.
Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube,
begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube.
The magic moment approaches...
Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On
the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with
Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...
One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump
on it's surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm From
entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...
And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.
Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind
things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't
stop them. They will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an
orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.
But LL's problems are just beginning.
Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian
sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm
scatter.
They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved
channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way
to the open air.
That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading
deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more
loops of intestine.
Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.
This is more serious than it looks.
Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks
they will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected
by heat, cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite.
(*And other forms of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red
kryptonite that make giants of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm
size spermatozoa swarming over a Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the
beach balls... but I digress.*) There they are, minuscule but dangerous;
for each has supernormal powers.
Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric
heat, sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry,
antique ceramics, electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens.
Some of the sperm will crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive
with a network of narrow, eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation.
And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate
condition.
Consider: LL won't get pregnant because there were too many of the blind
mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human
egg in its panic flight, it will attack.
How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by
chemical cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions;
and kryptonian sperm could travel a long and crooked path, billions of
miles, before it gives up and dies.
Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (*If the pubescent
Superboy plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.*)
Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can't afford to
pay. There's a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic
diamond form...
The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in
artificial insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no
difficulty. Superman may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny
tweezers to pluck a sperm from the swarm.
In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL's abdomen at
transsonic speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down?
There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite.
Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal
powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold
kryptonite, we would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent
forever. We may regard this solution as somewhat drastic.
But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then
use standard techniques for artificial insemination.
By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are
we out of the woods yet?
Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian
genes. If these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human foetus.
There will be no more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the
mother's health.
But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant...
Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a
power he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave
LL sterile. If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse.
But when he starts to kick, it's all over. He will kick his way out into
open air, killing himself and his mother.
Is there a solution?
There are several. Each has drawbacks.
We can make LL wear a kryptonite (*For our purposes, all forms of
kryptonite are available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated,
from the startling tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the
explosion of Krypton, that the planet must have outweighed our entire solar
system. Doubtless the "planet" Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one
of a binary pair, the other member being a red giant.*) belt around her
waist. But too little kryptonite may allow the child to damage her, while
too much may damage or kill the child. Intermediate amounts may do both!
And there is no safe way to experiment.
A better solution is to find a host-mother.
We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (*She can't mate
with Superman because she's his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest
differently.*) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has
a secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than
Supergirl herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown
out of school.
A better solution may be to implant the growing foetus in Superman himself.
There are places in a man's abdomen where a foetus could draw adequate
nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm
to surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence
more easily than Supergirl's schoolgirl alter ego.
When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It
would have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with
incubators as long as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through
Superman's invulnerable skin as an exercise for the alert reader.
The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of
Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him' strange new jokes
would circulate the prisons...and the race of Krypton would be safe at
last.
Reprinted from All the Myriad Ways (C)1971 by Larry Niven.
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