Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"You all right, Mr. Tompkins?" Fishburn demanded, sounding both relieved and a little deflated.

Tompkins's face gave an odd sort of twitch. "Yes, I'm fine," he said quickly, his eyes behind their thick glasses flicking to Smith and then back to the police chief. "Is there a problem?"

Fishburn threw a look at Smith. "No, we were just worried about you, that's all," he said. "Carry on."

"Just a second," Smith said as the chief started to brush past him. There had been something strangely familiar about that twitch. "Are you sure you're all right, Mr. Tompkins?"

"Yes, I'm fine," the other said, his face twitching again.

Only this time, Smith remembered where he'd seen it before. "Glad to hear it," he said carefully.

"Tell me: have any ships or boats docked here since nine o'clock this morning?"

For a second, Tompkins's body seemed to go rigid. He looked at Fishburn, back at Smith, turned to look out his window at the docks, then finally turned back to Smith again. "Just one," he said, sounding as if he was surprised at the sound of his voice. "A yacht, really. It docked a little after ten."

Smith looked at Fishburn in time to see his mouth drop open. "A what?" the chief demanded, his voice clearly on its way to a bellow. "Tompkins, what the hell—!"

"Easy, Chief," Smith cut him off. "I saw this same thing back in the city. Mr. Tompkins, why didn't you inform Chief Fishburn like he'd ordered you to do?"

Tompkins shrugged, a confused hunching of his shoulders. "Because... he told me not to."

"He told you not to?" Fishburn looked at Smith. "What is this, some sort of game?"

"More like some sort of hypnotic," Smith told him. "A good one, too; except that it doesn't work if you ask a direct question."

"Really," Fishburn said, reaching to one of the chairs and pulling it over to him. "Good. Because there are several very direct questions I want to ask."

"Two lanterns," Jordan said, clearly delighted that he was the first to catch onto Fierenzo's little joke.

"I get it. 'One if by land, two if by sea.' "

"Very good," Fierenzo said, scribbling one last note on his pad. "Okay, here's the deal. A yacht named Galen's Tenth picked up two women from the docks at Kingston, about seventy miles up the Hudson from New York. The dock manager identified Caroline from her photo; we assume the other was Sylvia."

Roger felt his chest tighten. "Did she seem okay?" he asked.

"He never saw her up close," Fierenzo said. "But she definitely got onto the yacht under her own steam, so my guess is she's fine."

"Did he see the Warriors?" Zenas asked.

"No, but we know there was at least one other passenger aboard," Fierenzo said. "An older gentleman who came to his office as the women were getting on and instructed him not to tell anyone about the docking and pickup. And he didn't, either, until Smith asked him a direct question about it."

He looked at Roger. "Just like the super in your building," he added. "Seems to be the trademark pattern of a Green Persuader, at least one working with humans."

"Aleksander," Jonah muttered.

"Or else Cyril's joined the party, too," Ron said. "If his support for peace this whole time was really only a matter of pragmatism, the sudden revelation that Nikolos had an unbeatable force might have been all it took for him to change sides."

"I think Cyril's more sincere than that," Laurel objected.

"We'll find out soon enough," Fierenzo said. "The key point is that the yacht was moving downriver at the time they picked up Sylvia and Caroline, so my guess is that the Warriors were already aboard.

Probably taken on somewhere farther north, maybe at a private dock with less exposure to the public eye."

"It doesn't sound like Sylvia was originally intended to go on board," Zenas said thoughtfully.

"Otherwise, why make the pickup in the middle of town?"

"I agree," Fierenzo said. "She probably planned to drive herself and Caroline to New York and rendezvous with the Warriors there. Once Smith spotted them and gave chase, though, she lost that option."

"So she called the yacht and had them stop at Kingston to pick them up," Zenas said, nodding. "That makes sense."

"It also means we've already disrupted Nikolos's plans," Jonah pointed out. "What makes you think he hasn't already gone to your Plan B?"

"Nothing," Fierenzo said, looking him straight back in the eye. "We just have to assume this is a minor enough glitch that he's still on track."

"Do we know where the yacht is now?" Stephanie asked.

"The State Police have people spreading out along the river to look for it. "To observe and report only," he added, looking at Roger. "They're all aware there's a hostage aboard."

"Do we know anything else about the yacht?" Laurel asked.

"It's based at the North Cove Yacht Harbor, so we assume it's eventually going to head back that way," Fierenzo said. "We don't know if the owner's aboard or not. From the ship's dimensions, I'd say it's big enough to carry a hundred people or more, though certainly not in any comfort."

"Where exactly is this harbor?" Laurel asked. "I don't think I'm familiar with it."

"It's on the southwest side of Manhattan, just north of Battery Park," Fierenzo told her. "It's surrounded on three sides by the buildings of the World Financial Center."

"Puts it just a couple of blocks from Ground Zero," Roger murmured. "How nicely symbolic."

Melantha shivered. "It's all right, Melantha," Laurel assured her quietly, letting go of the girl's hand and putting her arm around her shoulders. "No one can make you do anything like that."

"Not even a Persuader?" Ron asked pointedly.

"No," Laurel said, her eyes hard. "We won't let them."

"Question," Jonah spoke up. "We seem to be assuming they'll be coming back to harbor. What if they don't?"

"What do you mean?" Jordan asked.

"I mean what if they just sit offshore and let loose with the grandmother of all Shrieks?" Jonah said.

"With a hundred Warriors aboard, they could probably knock every Gray off his building for three blocks inland."

"Is that possible?" Fierenzo asked, looking at the Greens.

"I don't know," Zenas said hesitantly. "I remember a Pastsinger once saying that a pair of Warriors can reinforce each other's Shrieks in a way that focuses direction and intensity. But I don't know if you can do it with more than two of them or whether they'd start canceling each other out."

"But if they can do it, it won't just affect the Grays," Laurel pointed out. "Every Human in range would be knocked off their feet, too. There would be car wrecks, people falling down stairs and onto subway tracks, maybe even out of windows."

"Probably have a rash of heart attacks and strokes, too, just from the stress of it," Zenas added. "I don't even want to think of what it might do to the mentally unstable."

"The blood of thousands of New Yorkers," Fierenzo said grimly. "Just like Cyril promised."

"We could take them, you know," Jonah said, his voice under tight control. "Before they ever had a chance to do that. A handful of Grays at the top of, say, the Empire State Building could hit the yacht hard enough to blow it into splinters."

Stephanie looked at him in astonishment. "Jonah! How can you think such a thing?"

"You can't slaughter that many Greens, certainly before we've even been attacked," his father agreed firmly. "We've already decided that."

"Not to mention the fact that Caroline's still on board," Stephanie added.

"I hadn't forgotten about her," Jonah said, and it seemed to Roger that the young Gray was studiously avoiding looking in his direction. "But Aleksander and Nikolos haven't exactly called us up with a declaration of war. If this kind of sneak attack is all right with them, why isn't it all right with us?"