Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

Half an hour later, they'd found it.

"That's the place," Roger declared, tapping the listing for a hundred-acre estate tucked away in the hills between Shandaken and Bushnellsville. "E. and N. Green Associates. 'E' for Elymas; 'N' for Nikolos."

"Certainly looks like it," Caroline agreed. "Though I still don't know what we're expecting to find."

"Me, neither," Roger confessed. "Maybe it's nothing but an emergency refugee area Nikolos set up when they first got here. I still want to know what he's up to." He glanced at his watch. "We'd better turn in, too. We'll have another couple of hours' drive in the morning, and we'll want to get as early a start as we can."

"Yes," Caroline murmured, her voice suddenly dark. "Roger... you don't suppose Fierenzo could have been so scared by the Shrieks and hammerguns that he just ran away, do you?"

"It's possible," Roger said encouragingly, squeezing her hand. He didn't believe it for a minute, of course. But then, neither did she. "But whatever happened, there's nothing we can do about it tonight," he added. "Come on, let's get to bed."

The first thing Fierenzo noticed as he dragged himself back toward consciousness was that he seemed to be surrounded by a diffuse glow of light. The second was that the familiar city noises reaching his ears were distant, yet too distinct to be filtered through the walls of his apartment.

The third thing he noticed was that he was freezing.

Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The glow was just as diffuse with his eyes open as it had been with them closed, a sort of light cream-colored glow that seemed to fill the sky above him. Blinking to try to clear his vision, he reached a hand tentatively upward.

His fingertips twitched back as they unexpectedly ran into something soft and springy. He blinked again; and suddenly his eyes found the proper focus. He was lying under a length of fabric angling downward over him like the side of a tent.

He turned his head. Not a tent, actually, but a simple lean-to attached at its upper edge to a rough concrete wall about three feet to his right. Wincing as a stab of pain shot through his neck, he followed the concrete wall down to where it ended at a flat expanse of what looked like roofing material on which he was lying.

"Welcome back," a familiar voice said from somewhere in the direction of his feet. "How do you feel?"

Fierenzo lifted his head to look that direction, noting as he did so that he was covered from feet to armpits in a thin blanket the same color as the tent material. Jonah was sitting at the far end of the lean-to, his back braced against the concrete wall. "I've been better," Fierenzo said. "Is it me, or is it cold in here?"

"It's mostly you," Jonah said. "One of the more delightful side effects of getting hit by a Green Shriek is that your body's not quite sure what to do with all the pain that's been dumped on it. Three times out of five it decides you must be sick, and kicks up a fever for a few hours. I can get you another blanket if you want."

"No, that's all right," Fierenzo said, turning halfway up onto his right side and resting his head on his right palm. Now that he was awake and moving, he could feel the chill starting to recede. Lifting his wrist, he peered at his watch: just after two o'clock on Sunday afternoon. He'd slept nearly eighteen hours. "Where am I?"

"On a rooftop in Chinatown," Jonah said. "This is my assigned station for keeping an eye on the Greens in the Sara D. Roosevelt Park and watching for Melantha to make an appearance."

"Really," Fierenzo said. Chinatown was in the southern end of Manhattan, miles from where he'd been attacked. "How did I get here?"

Jonah shrugged. "We have ways of getting around town quickly."

"Ah," Fierenzo said. Surreptitiously, he touched his chest and heard the reassuring crackle of paper from his inner pocket. At least the sketches were still safe. "Who assigned you here?"

"Halfdan and his sons are in charge of the surveillance and sentry arrangements," Jonah said, giving him an indulgent smile. "Does that actually tell you anything?"

"Enough," Fierenzo assured him, only lying a little. "As a matter of fact, I know all about the Greens and the Grays of New York." He lifted his eyebrows significantly. "Jonah Gray."

Jonah's smile didn't even flicker. "Not bad," he said. "Actually, my name isn't Gray. We're not as fastidious as the Greens about wearing our affiliation on our sleeves for the world to see. In fact, we've been branching out for several decades now, name-wise."

"But you are a Gray?"

"I am," Jonah said. "Though I doubt you understand what that means."

"Let me take a crack at it," Fierenzo offered. "You can climb buildings, you can turn invisible, you have disappearing guns, you can fly, and you aren't human. Did I miss anything?"

Jonah's lips puckered. "You've been paying better attention than I thought," he acknowledged reluctantly. "That puts me in kind of an awkward position."

"Sorry to hear that," Fierenzo said, gently rubbing his left elbow along his rib cage where his shoulder holster was nestled. From the feel of it, he could tell that the gun itself was gone. "It seems a waste of effort, though, to save my life, then turn around and kill me yourself."

"Oh, those Greens wouldn't have killed you," Jonah said. "A cop? They wouldn't have dared."

"They tried to kill you," Fierenzo pointed out.

Jonah waved a hand in dismissal. "Different situation. And don't worry, I'm not going to kill you, either. It's just that your dropping in like this is going to make everything more complicated than it already was."

"Complication seems to be the order of the day," Fierenzo said. "Can you at least tell me why you're here?"

"I already did," Jonah said. "I'm watching for Melantha."

"I meant your people," Fierenzo said. "What do you want here on Earth?"

Jonah shrugged. "The same thing everyone else wants," he said, an odd note of sadness in his voice.

"To live and work and raise our families in peace. 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' That's us."

"Very nice," Fierenzo complimented him. "I see you've been here long enough to take the tour of Liberty Island."

"Actually, I've never been out there," Jonah admitted. "But then, most of us natives never have."

Natives. Fierenzo's heartbeat picked up a little. Now they were getting somewhere. "Natives of what?" he asked carefully. "From where?"

"Natives of New York, of course," Jonah said, sounding puzzled. "I was born and raised in Queens."

Fierenzo blinked, the whole Space Invaders scenario threatening to unravel in front of his eyes.

"What?"

There must have been something in his expression, because Jonah chuckled. "No, really," he said.

"And I'm third-generation. Our people have been living here since 1928."

"Really," Fierenzo said, not sure whether to be relieved or not. Was a Space Invasion less of a threat if it waited three-quarters of a century to get moving? "Doing what?"

"What I just said," Jonah told him. "Living and working and raising our families." His lips compressed. "Of course, that was before we found out the Greens were here, too."

"I take it you have a problem with them?"

"Aside from the fact that they want to destroy us?" Jonah countered, his voice turning grim. "If you knew what—excuse me," he interrupted himself, lifting his left hand to his cheek the way Fierenzo had seen him do back at the apartment. "Yes?" he said.

Only this time, Fierenzo was able to see that the hand was empty. Another of his now-you-see-it, now-you-don't gadgets?

"On my way," Jonah said, lowering his hand and twitching his little finger. "I'll be right back," he added to Fierenzo, hopping up into a crouch and opening the cloth flap that closed off the end of the lean-to. A momentary burst of cold air rolled over Fierenzo, and he caught a glimpse of a section of rooftop and gray sky beyond it as the other stepped through, closing the flap behind him.