Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"What will happen then?" Roger asked. "I know you plan to—" he glanced at Caroline "—to pick up where you left off. But after that, what? Are you just going to trust the Grays to stick to their part of the bargain?"

"I don't know what Cyril will decide," Nikolos said. "Personally, I think Manhattan's grown far too crowded of late anyway. My advice would be to sacrifice Melantha to prove our good faith, then pull back to upstate New York where we'll have all the trees we could ever want." He shook his head.

"But that will be a decision for all the Greens to make," he added. "At any rate, you understand now how important it is that Melantha be returned to us. When and where can we pick her up?"

Caroline sensed Roger bracing himself. "We appreciate your time, Mr. Green," he said, his tone suddenly formal. "If you'll give me your phone number, we'll be in touch."

Nikolos's face had gone stony. "We don't have time for games, Roger," he said, a layer of ice coating his tone. "We need her back; and we need her back now."

"No, you don't," Roger said, his voice almost calm. "You need her back by Wednesday. That leaves us plenty of time to decide what to do."

He touched Caroline's arm and pushed back his chair. Caroline followed suit, and they stood up together. "You're making a mistake," Nikolos warned, not moving from his own seat. "We cannot allow you to jeopardize our lives. We will have Melantha back."

"If she's willing to return, we'll deliver her personally," Roger promised. "If not, I guess we'll have more talking to do. Your phone number?"

"Just come back to the park," Nikolos gritted out. "Someone will contact you."

The two Greens who had ridden in the cab with them were waiting outside the door as they emerged from the dining room. Caroline gripped Roger's arm tightly as she walked beneath their silent glares, but they made no move to interfere. "What now?" she asked as they emerged from the building into the chilly afternoon air.

"Subway," he said shortly, turning them to the west and picking up his pace.

He lapsed into silence as they headed across the university. Probably angry with her again, Caroline realized with a sinking feeling.

Even on a Saturday, the campus was comfortably crowded with students and faculty wending their way between the various buildings. Roger led them past Dodge Hall, and Caroline found herself wincing as she looked at the doors leading into the Miller Theater. If she hadn't insisted on walking home from that performance Wednesday night—if she'd just put a leash on her phobias for once and had been willing to ride the subway a few short blocks—they never would have been marched at gunpoint into that alley and gotten themselves into this mess.

Of course, in that case, Melantha would probably be dead. Maybe she was anyway.

The subway car was rumbling its way south before Caroline plucked up the courage to speak. "Are you mad at me, Roger?" she asked tentatively.

To her relief, he merely frowned at her. "No, of course not," he said, sounding puzzled. "Why would I be?"

"I don't know," she said. "I thought maybe I talked too much in there. You've been so quiet since we left."

"I was just trying to sort it all out," he said, reaching over to take her hand. "What do you make of it?"

"Mostly, it seems inconsistent," Caroline said. "Nikolos makes the Greens sound all noble and civilized, but admits they're willing to murder a twelve-year-old girl in cold blood."

"For the good of the rest of the Greens," Roger reminded her.

"I don't care if it's for the good of the known universe," Caroline countered. "It's still wrong. I also can't believe the Grays are so callous that they'd demand it."

"They were the ones shooting into the trees during the war," Roger reminded her. "Or are you going to tell me there's another side to that story, too?"

"There's another side to every story," Caroline said, trying to keep her voice even. Arguing with him wasn't going to get her anywhere. "And we need to hear theirs before we make any kind of judgment."

Roger grunted and lapsed back into silence. The 96th Street stop—the one by their building—came and went, apparently without him noticing. Caroline thought about pointing it out, decided it would be safer to pretend she hadn't noticed it, either.

"All right," he said as the train pulled into the 86th Street station. "Compromise. Let's go back to the Youngs' and look around. If Melantha's lying low, she has to expect we'll come back for her."

"If she's there, why didn't she answer when I called to her this morning?"

"Maybe she was afraid to," he said. "Maybe there were still Greens or Grays hanging around."

"You think they'll be gone by now?"

"No idea," Roger admitted. "But right now, it's all I've got."

"Okay," she said. "That sounds fine."

"Yeah." He exhaled, just loudly enough for her to hear. "Sorry," he added. "I'm just—I'm not very good at this."

"You did just fine," Caroline assured him, a bit surprised by the vehemence of his confession.

Usually when he felt this strongly about his weaknesses, she got the brunt of his self-anger. "In fact, you did better than fine," she added. "You kept control of the conversation, and probably got a lot more out of him than he planned to give us."

"I doubt that," Roger muttered. "But thanks anyway. I'm just sorry I didn't do better when they forced us into that cab."

"I'm not sorry," Caroline told him, frowning. Why was he apologizing about that? "We wouldn't have learned any of this if they hadn't taken us to Nikolos."

"As it turns out, yes," he said. "But you sure weren't happy about it at the time."

"I wasn't upset," Caroline protested. "Really."

"You were awfully quiet."

She frowned. Was that what had put him in this mood? "I was listening," she said. "Trying to make out what they were saying."

It was Roger's turn to frown. "What are you talking about? They didn't say a single word the whole trip."

"Not out loud," Caroline agreed. "But it was like—" She paused, trying to find the right words to describe it. "You know how sometimes when you're by a stream that's running over a lot of rocks you can hear a kind of murmuring? When I was young I used to pretend the stream was talking to the woods. It was kind of like that."

"Really," Roger said, clearly intrigued. "Could you get any words, even ones you couldn't understand?"

She shook her head. "I could tell they were talking to each other, but that was it."

"What about with Nikolos? Could you tell if he ever talked to anyone?"

"Not really," she said. "Of course, he was farther away from me than the Greens in the cab."

"Which probably means your range is pretty short," Roger concluded. "Too bad."

"Sorry," Caroline said automatically.

To her surprise, he grinned at her, possibly the first genuine smile she'd gotten from him since this whole thing began. "Don't apologize, hon," he assured her. "It's not exactly your fault. I wonder why you could hear it and I couldn't."

"Maybe I was sensitized when Cyril tried to get me to bring Melantha to him," Caroline suggested.

"Maybe," Roger said. "It's as good an explanation as any." He nodded out the window at the subway tunnel wall flashing past. "Times Square coming up. We need to change trains."

Caroline braced herself. "Roger... what happens if we do find Melantha? Do we just hand her over to Nikolos?"

Roger shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "Let's worry about it then."

Jonah was plowing his way through his fourth sandwich when Fierenzo's cell phone finally rang.

Scooping it off the table, he popped it open. "Fierenzo."

"It's Jon," Powell's voice came back. "I've got good news, bad news, and weird news. Which do you want first?"