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Dick looked at Bruce. Batman. No, definitely Bruce right now. And then he looked back at Superman. Clark.
"You're. Pregnant." The words fell like bullets into the silence.
"Um," said Clark. And, "Yes."
"Okay. Give me a second to make my brain stop hurting, and then explain this to me."
"Dick," growled Bruce in his Batman voice.
"No, shut up. I need someone to explain to me how you got your boyfriend pregnant. He's not even the right gender!"
"Actually-" said Clark, and stopped when Dick turned to glare at him.
"Do not. Tell me. That you are female."
"Define 'are,'" said Clark humorlessly. "And 'female.'"
Dick folded his arms and gave Clark a look.
"I've been to the Fortress eight times in the past three days," said Bruce, "and I spent most of it - well, actually, I spent most of it dealing with the AI. But some of it I spent translating."
"And?"
"And he," Bruce paused, giving emphasis to the word, "isn't. If you define female as the egg-bearing half of the population."
" . . . I'm not sure how to respond to that."
"Okay, let's try again," said Clark. "I am, by Earth definitions of the word, a female. And always have been. By Kryptonian definitions I'm male. It took us a while to figure it out because most of the external biology is the same."
"Can one of you," said Dick, raising a hand to rub his temples, "please start making sense in the next ten seconds?"
"You know how with seahorses it's the male that gets pregnant?" asked Clark.
"Well, yeah. But only after the female lays eggs and he." Dick stopped. "Oh. Kryptonian females fertilize internally, don't they. Because they are, in fact, the males. And you don't actually have a penis, you've got a-"
"Modified ovipostor," broke in Bruce.
Dick glared some more, mostly to cover his growing discomfort, and then took a deep breath. "Okay. Still doesn't explain how he got pregnant. Wouldn't a Kryptonian female have to-well, fertilize the egg?"
"And this is where it gets complicated. We - by which I man Kryptonians - are all capable of becoming pregnant and carrying a child to term. The only thing is that a child with two genetic parents is invariably female. It's kind of like certain earth insects, where a fertilized egg grows into a female and the unfertilized eggs are all males - "
"So what you are telling me," said Dick, "is that you are not only pregnant, you are carrying what is essentially a perfect genetic copy of yourself."
"Yes," said Bruce.
"Kind of," said Clark at the same time, before capitualting. "Yes. And - "
"And?" asked Dick.
"And I am going to keep getting pregnant, every seventy-four months, for the next forty-some years."
Dick paused and thought about that and . . . "You mean you are going to ovulate every six years and if there isn't a Kryptonian female around you are just going to," he made a motion in the general region of his abdomen, "instead. And there will not be a female around because there aren't any."
"Yes."
"And you are going to keep them all." It was not a question.
"I will try," said Clark. "There are a lot of seasonal triggers that don't exist here. I might not actually be capable of - and the AI started listing off the probabilities as soon as it found out-"
"Clark," rumbled Bruce, and then to Dick, "What Clark is trying and failing to explain is that the entire social structure of Krypton, the Houses and extended families, developed because Kryptonian pregnancies aren't easy. Something like the opposite of easy."
Dick - paused. "How 'not easy'?"
"A Kryptonian male, which is by Terran definition the female - sorry, Clark - has the potential of either giving birth to or depositing six to seven eggs in a lifetime. If all of the children survived, then the population would explode. But the population was never very high, because most of the pregnancies failed naturally. The chances - and I'm talking in terms of preindustrial civilization - the chances of a successful pregnancy went up if there was a whole extended family around to deal with the fact that a pregnant Kryptonian can consume up to twice their body weight daily, and should consume at least their own weight."
"Woah," said Dick. "That's - "
"There was a reason that the instant the technology was good enough to allow it, my species gave up natural pregnacies and started using the House birthing matrix." Clark's voice was wry. "Get an injection once every six years and have children when you and your mate were prepared to deal with it. As opposed to one of you having to attempt a pregnancy every six years because the House will not survive unless you manage to raise at least one child - "
"But on average each couple must have raised two children - " protested Dick.
"Not - they don't actually need the females, Dick. Or rather, very many females. Just enough that the species isn't composed entirely of genetically identical individuals. Prior to the invention of the birthing matrix, there were nearly two dozen males to every female." Bruce sighed. "Each male only needed to successfully parent one child. The population only went up because occasionally someone managed two."
"Until our version of the industrial revolution," added Clark. "Then the population rose fast enough that real cities - as opposed to massive family farm complexes - became possible. But the entire planetary population of Krypton was still only in the hundreds of millions when the birthing matrices were invented, and it remained pretty much stable from there on out."
"Oh," said Dick, and then blinked. "Which isn't really the issue. You're pregnant."
"Yes."
"And you are going to do your best to carry to term and give birth to your clone."
"Yes."
"Just like you are a clone of Jor-el - "
"No. Birthing matrices made two-parent males possible," said Clark, tightly.
Dick took a moment to parse that. "Okay. Why tell me? Now?"
"Well, I was hoping . . . " Clark trailed off.
Bruce picked up the thread. "We were wondering if we could convince you to be the child's godfather."
" . . . of course I will. Just give me a little bit to sort this out. In my head." A thought struck. "How many people are you telling? I mean, it's not like Superman can just announce to the planet that he's pregnant and that, by the way, this is totally normal for Kryptonian biology. Aside from the fact that he can't be fighting like that -"
"Dick. Calm. Down," said Clark. "We're already working it out. Kon-el and the Birds of Prey are going to be taking over Metropolis for the duration. They know, of course, and so do Alfred and Cassadra and Tim and now you, but we're trying to keep the circle as small as possible. I'm going to make a public announcement that I will be absent for the next six months. Officially, I'm leaving to go search for other surviving Kryptonians. That way it won't look nearly as strange when I turn up with a baby and announce my leave from active . . . Supermanship? For a few years, at least. Until he's old enough not to need constant care."
"And I will, of course, be helping," said Bruce. "We'll have to start working on plans right now, or another superbaby every six years will make someone take note."
"By which you mean you already have it all planned out, don't you?" asked Dick. Bruce, of course, didn't answer. "All right. I'm the kid's godfather, of course I'm going to help with however you plan to keep him a secret. Even if know I'm going to regret it."
Bruce smiled, the kind of honest and open and really happy smile that he'd only recently - since falling in love with Clark - learned. "Thank you."
"Although, Clark, you could have just told Luthor you'd start popping out clones in a few years. Save him the trouble-"
"Dick!"
But Clark was laughing, so that was okay.