Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

Caroline shrugged. "We're only human."

"One of your many failings," Sylvia agreed. "It's apparently easy to run you out of ideas, too. Having failed to come up with anything else to do, they're going to let him come talk to us."

Roger had detached himself from the group, and with the Warrior at his side he headed across the plaza. Caroline watched him, suddenly and rather irrationally wondering how she looked after three days in the same clothing. He walked down the steps and onto the dock, where the Warrior took the lead and gestured him to the wheelhouse. Caroline stood where she was, feeling suddenly more nervous than she had at the height of the battle.

And then the wheelhouse door opened, and Roger stepped inside, his eyes flicking around the cramped space and quickly coming to rest on her. For a moment he stood where he was, and she had the sense that he was fighting a battle with the dignity of the situation.

Dignity lost. A second later, he had taken two quick steps across the wheelhouse, and she found herself being squeezed tightly in his embrace. "Are you all right?" he whispered in her ear.

"I'm fine," she whispered back, clutching him just as hard in return, tears of relief welling up in her eyes. "You?"

"I'm okay," he assured her. He held her another moment; then, almost unwillingly, he slackened his grip and turned to the others in the room. "Hello, Nikolos," he greeted the other, his voice gravely controlled. "Sylvia. I appreciate you seeing me like this."

"Actually, it was Caroline's idea," Nikolos said, straightening up from the deck and giving Roger a long, measuring look. "She seems to think you might have something useful to say to me."

"She's right," Roger agreed, stepping slightly away from Caroline but keeping a grip on her hand.

"I'm here to tell you that if you keep this up, you're going to lose."

"Really," Nikolos said, a touch of amusement in his voice. "What makes you think that a handful of bumbling Humans and a couple of Grays skulking at the top of a building are even going to slow us down?"

"A couple of reasons," Roger said. If he was surprised that they knew that there were only two Grays out there, he didn't show it. "Point number one: as long as I'm in here with you and the police maintain their perimeter, you're effectively trapped."

"Nonsense," Nikolos said. "The Warriors who've taken the eastern park area can slip out around that building any time they want. We have others in the trees to the south who can probably do the same, and the ones already in the water can swim all the way to New Jersey if they have to."

"Granted," Roger said calmly. "But you need to take another look at your numbers."

Nikolos's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"You left the Catskills with a hundred thirty-five Warriors, Farspeakers, and other support personnel," Roger said, ticking off fingers. "You sent eight of them in the vans as decoys, dropped twenty-two more in northern Manhattan to provide a feint for Torvald's Grays, and landed twenty more in Queens and Brooklyn. That leaves eighty-five here within shouting distance. Subtracting the fifteen in the water, the twelve in the trees south of the harbor, and the fourteen currently in the wooded park by Building Two—all of whom you claim can get away—you still have forty-four here on the yacht or in that line of trees along the northern part of the plaza who are effectively trapped.

Taking into account the sixty Warriors you already had in the city, it looks to me like nearly a quarter of your troops are pinned down." He lifted his eyebrows. "Not to mention you and Sylvia, of course. How's my math?"

Nikolos's face had gone rigid. "You can't possibly have those numbers," he insisted.

"But I do," Roger said. "Which is point number two: we have an inside track on everything that's happening here. Namely, Melantha's mother, Laurel." He looked at Sylvia. "You remember her from our visit to your little retreat."

"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."