Timothy Zahn: The Green And The Gray

"She's gone!" a deep Gray voice boomed from behind her.

There was a flurry of movement from that direction, footsteps and shouts and voices calling to her mind. Her forward motion was abruptly halted, and she felt herself being clutched closer to her rescuer's body as he began to climb the wall the Grays had been hanging onto a few minutes earlier.

She tensed as he climbed, waiting for the inevitable shouts of discovery and the sounds of pursuit.

But all the activity seemed to be moving away from her, either deeper into the darkness of the park or back toward the garden and the stone steps. A moment later she and her rescuer reached the top of the wall and the upper promenade, and once again she found her chin bouncing painfully against his shoulder as he ran silently along the ground.

"You okay?" a gruff voice murmured in her ear. "Melantha?"

It took two tries to get any words out through her half-paralyzed throat. "I'm okay," she wheezed.

Her voice was the voice of a stranger. "Who—?"

"It's Jonah," he said; and this time, she recognized the voice. "Don't try to talk."

Melantha stiffened. That last word had been more grunted than spoken, and for the first time she noticed how labored his breathing sounded. Lifting her left hand from the arm still wrapped around her waist, she carefully touched his chest with her fingertips.

And jerked away as she touched wetness. "Jonah!"

"Don't try to talk," he said again, his breathing sounding even more ragged. "It's okay."

He slowed to a walk, his head turning back and forth as if taking his bearings. A moment later he came to a complete stop, letting her slip a bit so that her feet were touching the ground. She stretched her legs, trying to take some of her own weight away from him. But her knees were too weak to give any support, and a terrible fatigue was beginning to wash over her. In the distance behind them she could feel the calls of chaos and consternation and growing anger. "This... isn't right," she managed to whisper. "I need... to go back."

He leaned down and lifted her again off her feet, stifling her protest. "It'll be okay," he murmured as they headed off again.

The last thing she remembered before drifting into a nightmare-filled sleep was the sensation of her head bouncing rhythmically against his shoulder as he ran through the night.

The play at the Miller Theater had been one of those modern psychological dramas, exactly the sort of thing Roger Whittier would expect from a Columbia University student production: dark and pretentious, relying heavily on deep sociological quirks, without any pretense of rationality in its plot. From the polite applause bouncing off the lowering curtain, he guessed that most of the audience had found it as mediocre as he had.

Which was practically a guarantee that Caroline would love it.

Suppressing a sigh, he continued to slap his hands together, trying not to be embarrassed by the fact that his wife was one of the half-dozen people who had jumped to their feet in standing ovation. In four years of marriage he had yet to figure out whether Caroline's enthusiasm in these situations was genuine, driven by sympathy for the underdog, or just stubborn defiance of popular opinion.

The applause went down, the house lights came up, and the rest of the audience got to their feet and began unscrunching their coats from the backs of their seats. Roger joined the general chaos, mindful of his elbows as he pulled on his topcoat and buttoned it. He'd endured the play; and now came the verbal diplomacy as he tried not to tell Caroline exactly what he'd thought of it. The more enthusiastic her response, in general, the stonier the wall of silence that went up if he tried to point out how much the thing had actually stunk.

A flying elbow jabbed him in his right shoulder blade. "Sorry," he said automatically, half turning.

The offender, a small wizened man with an expensive topcoat and bad comb-over, grunted something and turned away. Roger turned away, too, muttering under his breath as he struggled to get his right arm into a sleeve that had pretzeled itself into a knot. What in hell's name was I apologizing for? he growled to himself. He finished with his coat and turned to see if Caroline was ready.

Caroline wasn't ready. Caroline, in fact, had vanished.

He looked down, a fresh wave of annoyance rolling over the pool of resentment already sloshing through his stomach. She was on her knees on the floor, her back twisted into half an S-curve as she scrabbled around in the shadows. "Which one is it this time?" he demanded.

"My opal ring," Caroline's voice came back, muffled by distance and the dark hair draped along both sides of her face.

Roger looked away, not bothering to reply. It was always the same lately. If she wasn't running late because the water heater had drained too far for another shower, then she was misplacing her watch or losing her ring or suddenly remembering that the plants needed watering.

Why couldn't she ever get herself organized? She was a real estate agent, for heaven's sake—she certainly had to have her ducks in a row at work. Why couldn't she do it at home, too?

She was still bobbing around, searching for the missing ring. For a moment he considered getting down and seeing if he could help this along a little. But no. She knew better than he did where it had slipped off, and he would just be in the way.

Taking a deep breath, trying to calm himself, he watched the other people streaming out the doors. If she didn't hurry, he told himself darkly, they weren't going to get a cab.

The last stragglers were strolling toward the exits by the time Caroline finally spotted her ring, hiding behind the front leg of the chair in front of hers. "Found it," she announced, retrieving the wayward jewelry.

Roger didn't reply. He's angry, she realized, an all-too-familiar sinking feeling settling into her stomach. Angry, or annoyed, or frustrated. Like he always seemed to be lately. Especially with her.

She felt her eyes filling with tears as she carefully climbed back to her feet, tears of frustration and some annoyance of her own. I didn't drop it on purpose, she thought angrily in his direction. I didn't see you offering to help, either.

But it was no use. He hadn't liked the play, and he was probably steaming over that man who'd bumped into him a minute ago. But no matter what happened, or whose fault it was, in the end it all got focused on her. On her slowness, on her lack of organization, on whatever else she did that irritated him.

He was already moving toward the aisle by the time she had collected her coat and purse, his back rippling with impatience. Roger never yelled at her—that wasn't his style—but he could do a brooding silence that hurt more than her father's quicksilver temper ever had.

In some ways she wished he would yell. At least then he would be talking honestly instead of pretending everything was all right when it wasn't.

But that would require him to be assertive. No chance of that happening.

No chance of getting a cab now, either. That would irritate him all the more, especially given the near-argument they'd had on the subject as they were getting ready to leave this evening.

With a sigh, she headed off behind his impatient back, her vision blurring again with tears. Why couldn't she ever do anything right?

Sure enough, by the time they stepped out into the cool October air, the line of cabs that would have gathered at the curb for the post-performance crowd had vanished. "Blast," Roger muttered under his breath, looking up and down Broadway.

But the Great White Way was quiet tonight, or at least this stretch of it was. The university had a significant chunk of the street blocked off with a construction project up around 120th, and the city's own orange-cone mania had similarly struck down at 103rd, sealing off most of the street there. The cabbies, who had enough trouble just battling regular Manhattan traffic, had taken to avoiding these particular twenty blocks entirely.