The Green And The Gray

by Timothy Zahn

  "Certainly," Sylvia said, her voice far calmer than Nikolos's. "The one hiding... where was she, anyway? Your trunk?"

  "That's right," Roger confirmed. "And of course I know now why your people reacted so badly when they realized she was there. At the time we thought she might have overheard Damian talking, or else someone referring to him. But there is no Damian, is there?"

  Wordlessly, Sylvia shook her head. "Right," Roger said. "What you were actually afraid of was that enough of your Warriors had been chattering for her to realize how many of them you actually had.

  Like everyone else, she'd bought into Nikolos's story that there were only sixty of them. If she'd heard all hundred twenty talking, she'd have realized what the plan really was."

  "And if she had, she should have kept it to herself like a good Green," Nikolos said darkly. "But that's behind us. What does this have to do with the situation here and now?"

  "The fact that Laurel is listening in on every order you send your troops and passing the word on to Detective Fierenzo and me," Roger said. "We know where each of them is, and what you're planning for them."

  "So that's the way of it, is it?" Nikolos murmured in a voice that sent a shiver up Caroline's back.

  "Laurel Green has become a traitor to her people."

  "Actually, you have that backwards," Roger told him. "She may be one of the few Greens who isn't a traitor to their people." He lifted his eyebrows. "Want to hear more?"

  For a moment Nikolos frowned at him, and Caroline could sense a quick wordless conference with Sylvia. "It won't do you any good to move your people around," Roger warned into the silence.

  "We'll know the minute you try anything, and can relay the information to both the police and the Grays. But I can also promise you there are no tricks here. All I want is a chance to talk."

  "Fine," Nikolos said. "Talk."

  Roger shook his head. "Not here." He pointed out the window at the glass and soft lights of the Winter Garden. "In there."

  Nikolos smiled thinly. "Of course," he said sarcastically. "You expect us to just walk meekly into the middle of the police camp?"

  "Why not?" Roger countered. "Are you in any better contact with your Warriors here than you would be there? Besides, you're actually safer in there than you are here. Right now the cops would have very little compunction about blowing this yacht into driftwood if they thought it was justified.

  They're going to be a lot more careful with the real estate in and around the Winter Garden."

  "What exactly are you planning, Roger?" Sylvia asked.

  He seemed to brace himself. "I'm planning a meeting between both sides," he told her. "I've learned a few things I think you'll both want to hear."

  "Us meet with Grays?" Nikolos bit out. "I don't think so."

  "There won't be more than four of them at the most," Roger promised. "Surely a Command- Tactician and Group Commander aren't afraid of four Grays."

  "That's not the point," Nikolos said stiffly. "The Grays are our enemies."

  "Yet you met with them at least once before," Caroline pointed out, wondering if Roger could have discovered the same secret she had about Nikolos's deceit. "Back when you decided to sacrifice Melantha."

  "Cyril and Halfdan met," Nikolos countered. "I wasn't involved."

  "Well, you're involved now," Roger said. "And frankly, the alternative is that the Grays go on the offensive all over New York with a quarter of your troops pinned down here."

  "We can get out whenever we want to," Nikolos insisted.

  "Not all of you," Roger said. "Up to now, the police have been treating you with kid gloves. After your little escapades on the balconies, they're ready to start using deadly force."

  Nikolos snorted. "Overreaction," he said contemptuously. "We didn't even hurt anyone up there."

  "Call it whatever you want," Roger said. "But they're primed and ready... and right now, this conference is the only thing standing between you and an all-out assault."

  Nikolos pursed his lips, as if mulling it over. But Caroline wasn't fooled. He played the Command- Tactician role well enough, but she could sense the apprehension in his silent communication with Sylvia. She sensed Sylvia's decision—

  "All right," Nikolos said, nodding slowly. "We'll come to your little party. Is that Velovsky in there?"

  "Yes," Roger said. "After all, he was present at the beginning, or at least the chapter that began in New York. I thought he deserved to be in on the end of it, too."

  "The end," Nikolos murmured. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that. And the other guests?"

  "Torvald and Halfdan are on their way," Roger said. "They should be here by the time Cyril and Aleksander arrive."

  "Cyril and Aleksander?" Caroline asked, frowning. "Are they nearby?"

  "Nearby, and in the company of two Group Commanders, a Farspeaker, and forty of Manhattan's Warrior contingent," Roger said dryly. "As I said, Nikolos has no secrets from us anymore."

  "Perhaps," Nikolos said, his voice silky smooth. "Perhaps not. At any rate, we'll come and see what you have to say."

  "Thank you." Roger gestured to the door. "Follow me, please."

  "Here they come," Cerreta said, peering across the plaza at the figures filing through the wheelhouse door. He watched a moment, then shifted his gaze back to Fierenzo. "You've got until they get here to level with me."

  "I already have," Fierenzo said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I went undercover to penetrate one of the sides of this gang war, and I just never had a chance to check in."

  "That's a crock," Cerreta countered, matching the other's tone. "You've been manipulating this whole thing right from the start. Everything from the cop-in-distress alarm at the Two-Four, to Smith's little unauthorized jaunt upstate, to this whole damn S.W.A.T. exercise."

  "Do you deny these groups pose a potential threat to the city?" Fierenzo countered, waving out at the battlefield. "And remember, you've only seen one of the two sides in action."

  "That's not the point," Cerreta ground out. "The point is that your private crusade here has managed to run roughshod over just about every rule of procedure and evidence in the book. We started out thinking we had a conspiracy to commit kidnapping or murder that we could hang these people with.

  Now, we've got squat."

  "I would think you'd be glad I hadn't been murdered," Fierenzo murmured.

  "At the moment, it's at toss-up," Cerreta retorted. "Because anything else we might have been able to use will be thrown out the minute a judge sees how you handled it." He snorted. "In fact, about all we could arrest them for right now would be assault on police officers. And even that would be problematic, given that we don't know who did what."

  "Actually, I was hoping to avoid making any arrests at all," Fierenzo said.

  "Oh, right," Cerreta growled. "You and Whittier think you can get them to talk out their differences, have a nice group hug, and become fine upstanding citizens again."

  "Sarcasm aside, I think there's a good chance we can do exactly that," Fierenzo said, putting all the confidence he could into the words. A neat trick, given that he didn't have the slightest idea what Roger was even planning.

  "I hope for your sake that you're right." Cerreta jerked a thumb back toward the Winter Garden. "But if you think I'm going to let you all sit around in there alone, you're badly mistaken."

  Fierenzo felt his jaw tighten. Whatever Roger had in mind, the last thing they could afford would be for more people to be let in on the secret. "I don't think that would be a good idea," he said carefully.

  "No?" Cerreta asked. "Well, I don't think letting any of these people out of my sight would be a good idea. And my think outranks your think."

  "I understand," Fierenzo said, resisting the temptation to point out that a couple dozen of the Greens were, in fact, already out of Cerreta's sight. "But keeping us in sight doesn't mean you have to eavesdrop, does it?"

  "Meaning...?"

  "Meaning we could go up on the steps
to talk," Fierenzo suggested, pointing through the glass wall at the set of semicircular steps leading up from the center of the main floor a few yards beyond the ordered rows of palm trees. "The S.W.A.T. guys guarding us could stay down here, near the exits.

  We'd all be in clear view, and there'd be no way out if someone decided to try anything."

  "What about the hallways into Building Two and Three?" Cerreta asked, looking doubtfully through the glass.

  "Already sealed off," Fierenzo told him. "We'd be isolated, under constant guard, and still have the privacy both sides are going to insist on."

  Roger and the others had climbed the steps from the boat basin and were halfway across the plaza before Cerreta spoke again. "All right," he said, his gaze seeming to bore straight through Fierenzo's retinas into his soul. "But I'll tell you this, Detective. No matter what happens here, you're going to have to answer for your behavior this past week."

  Fierenzo nodded. "Understood."

  Watching the Greens approach, he could only hope that it would be the only thing he would have to answer for.

  48

  Cyril and Aleksander were the first to arrive, passing silently through the door and between the line of stone-faced S.W.A.T. cops Cerreta had set up just inside the glass wall. They ignored Roger as he tried to greet them, brushing past him and Caroline and climbing the steps to where Nikolos and Sylvia had picked out a tier of steps to sit on just above the circular platform midway up. They did deign to glance at Fierenzo as he stood silently a few steps away, though Roger suspected that was mostly from curiosity, and nodded with some genuine civility at Velovsky where he sat a little apart from the others.

  Halfdan was next, giving the rows of palm trees below a wide berth as if expecting a dozen Warriors to leap out of them as he passed. He gave Roger and Caroline a curious once-over, ignored Fierenzo completely, and nodded formally to Cyril as he chose a place on the steps at the same level as the four Greens but a quarter of the way around the circle from them. Torvald was only a minute behind him, limping past the palms without giving them a second glance and carefully climbing the steps to where Roger and Caroline waited. "I see we're mostly assembled," he commented, nodding to his brother and glancing at Velovsky and the four Greens.

  "Actually, we're completely assembled," Roger said, gesturing him toward the steps. "Please have a seat."

  Torvald climbed the last few steps to where Halfdan sat stolidly and lowered himself onto the marble beside him, and Caroline gave Roger's hand a quick squeeze. "You can do it," she murmured.

  Letting go, she crossed to Velovsky and sat down beside him.

  Roger took a deep breath and stepped to the center of the circular platform. "Thank you all for coming here tonight," he said, looking at each of their faces in turn. None of them, with the exception of Caroline, looked particularly encouraging. "This is certainly a nicely symbolic place, if I do say so myself. Marble and stonework for the Grays; palm trees for the Greens. Something for everyone."

  "If you have a point to make, please get to it," Aleksander said impatiently.

  Roger took another deep breath, forcing himself not to be intimidated. Whether they knew it or not, whether they even cared or not, what he was about to say was going to change their lives. "But even more symbolic is the view through those windows," he continued, gesturing over their heads.

  "Directly behind you is Ground Zero, where three thousand innocent people died when the twin towers collapsed."

  He locked eyes with Aleksander. "A fate thousands more might have suffered if certain of you had had your way in this war of yours."

  "Nobody wants to kill innocent people," Aleksander insisted. "All we want is the right to survive."

  "Really?" Roger said. "Who's stopping you?"

  Aleksander snorted and started to get up. "This is a waste of time," he declared. "Come on, Nikolos

  —"

  "Did you know that you all came from Earth?" Roger cut him off.

  Aleksander froze halfway to his feet. "What?"

  "That's right," Roger told him. "You didn't come from some alien world in some distant solar system. The only distance your transports brought you was about a quarter of the way around the planet, probably from someplace in central or eastern Europe."

  "What are you talking about?" Sylvia demanded. "This is nothing like the world we left."

  "That's because the transports also catapulted you four or five thousand years forward in time,"

  Roger said. "Possibly more."

  Slowly, Aleksander sat back down. "Dryads," he murmured. "The wood nymphs of Greek mythology."

  "Yes," Cyril agreed, nodding as if a long-lost piece of a persistent puzzle had suddenly appeared on the table in front of him. "I wondered about that myself, years ago. But I put it down to coincidence."

  "No coincidence," Roger confirmed. "You were indeed the inspiration for the dryads." He gestured behind him at the harbor. "Given your performance out there tonight, you probably inspired the myths about water nymphs, too."

  He looked over at the two Grays. "And while the Greens were being worked into Greek myth, you and your manufacturing skills and Thor-inspiring hammerguns became part of the Norse tales."

  "As the dwarves, I assume," Aleksander said, looking over at Halfdan and Torvald with a halfamused, half-malicious smile. "Not very flattering."

  "Maybe not, but the Norse myths were more fun to read," Roger said before either Gray could respond. "But how you were perceived by the humans around you isn't important. The point is that you haven't really gone anywhere, which means that even if you wanted to leave there isn't anywhere else for you to go. This is your home; and if you can't learn to live together, you're still going to be stuck here."

  "What makes you think we want to live together?" Torvald asked evenly. "What makes you think we even can live together?"

  "You did so once," Roger pointed out. "Back in the Great Valley you lived in peace for at least three generations." He nodded at Velovsky. "Mr. Velovsky told us the whole story."

  "Then I'm sure he also told you how that peace was broken by Green treachery," Halfdan bit out.

  "Which, as you can see, is still the way they do things." He threw the Greens a tight smile.

  "Fortunately, it's a game two sides can play." Still smiling, he lifted his left hand toward his ear—

  "Freeze," Fierenzo said quietly.

  Roger looked over at him. The detective had his gun out, tucked subtly at his side where it was out of view of the S.W.A.T. cops on the far side of the palm trees. "Lower your hand to your lap, nice and smooth," he ordered.

  "And if I don't?" Halfdan countered, his hand hovering in the air halfway to his scarred cheek. "Are you going to shoot me?"

  "If I have to," Fierenzo said.

  The Gray shrugged. "It won't matter if you do," he said. "You didn't think I was foolish enough to come here alone, did you?"

  "That's what you agreed to," Roger said, his pulse pounding suddenly in his throat. No—it couldn't come apart. Not now. Especially not like this.

  "I agreed to come in here alone," Halfdan corrected him. "Out there in the world is a different matter entirely."

  "What are you waiting for?" Aleksander demanded, looking at Fierenzo. "You can see he's betrayed us. Shoot him."

  "Wait a minute," Roger said, holding out a hand toward Fierenzo. "Halfdan, you don't really want to die, do you?"

  "Whether I die or not, you can't stop what's about to happen," the Gray said calmly. "My sons Bergan and Ingvar are standing ready, and they have their orders."

  "What orders?" Roger asked. "What do you want?"

  "To fulfill the bargain Cyril and the Greens made with us," Halfdan said, an edge of anger underlying his words. "We agreed to sacrifice Melantha with the understanding that it would return our forces to parity and thus ensure neither side could start a war with any guarantee of victory." He nodded toward the glass wall and the yacht floating in the harbor. "Now, of course, we see why Cyril
was so willing to let her die. He already had a full set of aces up his sleeve."

  "I knew nothing about the Catskills colony or those Warriors until tonight," Cyril protested. "That was all Nikolos." He flashed a look at Aleksander. "Or Aleksander."

  "In that case, you should be on my side in this," Halfdan told him. "Regardless of whose plot it was, the fact is that there are enough Warriors in those trees and that boat to slaughter every Gray in New York. So I'm going to eliminate them, and bring us back to the parity we originally agreed to."

  "You can't do this," Aleksander snarled. But there was a nervous edge beneath the bluster. "Fierenzo, you can't let him murder an entire group of Greens."

  "He won't," Nikolos assured him, staring coldly at Halfdan. "Because if he does, an equal number of Gray children will die."

  Halfdan's face froze. "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about twenty Warriors already in place in Queens and Brooklyn," Nikolos said. "Tell him, Detective—you and the other police watched them leave the yacht."

  Halfdan snarled something in an alien language. "You uncivilized little—"

  "Calm yourself," Nikolos cut him off. "Your children aren't their primary target. But that will change the minute the first Warrior out there dies at your hand."

  For a long moment they locked eyes. Then, slowly, Halfdan lowered his hand to his lap. "Those Warriors will not leave here alive," he warned softly. "We agreed; and we will fulfill that agreement."

  "So the truth comes out at last," Aleksander murmured. "When Grays speak about peace, what they really mean is the incremental destruction of the Greens."

  "You see the problem, Roger," Torvald said. "The old hatreds and animosities run very deep."

  "No, they don't," Caroline spoke up. "Or at least, they shouldn't. You had three full generations of peace between your peoples. Doesn't that count for anything?"

  "Not to those who lived through the war," Aleksander said. "Not to those who saw their homes destroyed and their families slaughtered."