Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

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."

"Fine," Roger said. "Hold onto your own personal hatred, if you insist. But there's no reason to saddle your children and grandchildren with it, too."

"The children will go where the adults lead," Halfdan said sourly. "Especially Green children."

"Maybe," Roger said. "But maybe not. Let me tell you about a couple of idealistic young kids named Jordan Anderson and Melantha Green."

He related the story of the accidental meeting between the young Green and Gray, the tentative development of their secret friendship, and the eventual expansion of that friendship to their families. Through it all, his audience listened in stony silence.

"So that's what happened," Torvald murmured when Roger had finished. "I'd wondered how Melantha's family could have persuaded a Gray like Jonah McClung to rescue her that night."

"He did it because she and Jordan were friends," Roger said. "If your own history doesn't convince you that you can live in peace, maybe that will."

He looked at Halfdan. "Not just in a state of truce, either, with both sides poised for war but knowing they can't win," he added. "I mean a real, genuine, stable peace."

"It's easy for you to talk peace," Aleksander growled. "Easy for Melantha and Jordan, too. None of you ever saw the results of Gray treachery."