Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"I'm more than happy to pass, thank you," Fierenzo assured him, handing back the projector. "I'd probably twitch my arm the wrong way and shut the thing off in midair."

"You can't," Jonah said. "As long as there's any significant weight on the line it won't shut off. Safety feature."

"And this is what you used to pull Melantha out of the frying pan Wednesday night?"

Jonah nodded. "The tricky part was coming up with a way to keep them from realizing it was somebody outside their group who'd snatched her," he said. "The only way to get over the trees was to set up the tension line several stories up on one of the buildings east of Riverside Park. The problem was that if I'd just slid down to the ground at that angle, I'd have been going so fast I'd have bowled over half the circle when I landed."

"So how did you do it?"

"I set the line nearly horizontal, running it to a building across the Hudson in New Jersey," Jonah said. "Then instead of just hanging on as usual, I hooked an elastic rope onto it and held onto that.

When I got over the circle, I bungeed down into the middle, grabbed Melantha, and ran."

"Clever," Fierenzo said. "But why didn't they find the bungee afterwards?"

"Because it wasn't there," Jonah said. "I didn't use the projector's retrieval ring myself, but left Jordan back at the jump-off building to handle that. He waited until the bungee was over the middle of the river before shutting it down. The bungee sank, and there was nothing left to tell anyone how it was done."

"And so they spent the next few days throwing suspicious glares at each other instead of looking for an outsider," Fierenzo said. "I suppose it was you who blew out all the lights on Riverside Drive, too?"

"Yeah, and I'm sorry about that," Jonah said. "But we had to make sure they couldn't see what was happening."

"So how did the Whittiers come into the picture?"

"The original plan was for me to get Melantha across Manhattan and offshore to Roosevelt Island,"

Jonah said. "Neither side was occupying it, so we figured it would be a safe place to hide her for awhile. But you need both arms to carry someone on a tension line, and one of the Warriors had managed to get me with a knife before I flattened him. At the same time, Melantha wasn't in any shape for a long walk."

"Why didn't you just hop a cab or the subway?"

"What, with me bleeding all over my shirt?" Jonah countered. "Besides, a fair number of Green Laborers drive cabs these days. All I could think to do was take us northeast toward Nikolos's stronghold in Morningside Park, hoping it would be the last direction anyone would expect us to go, while I tried to come up with a new plan. But Melantha wasn't even up to that, so I found an alley to hide her in and went scouting."

"Having blown the padlock off the gate with your hammergun?"

Jonah nodded. "Anyway, I'd just about decided we were going to have to risk that cab after all when I heard the Whittiers talking about the trees on their balcony. It was the perfect solution: being inside a tree would protect Melantha from prying Gray eyes, while being off the ground would keep inquisitive Greens from probing around and finding her. So I called Jordan and had him pop the lights on Broadway. Well, to try, anyway; the gadget we'd rigged up didn't work as well there as it had earlier on Riverside Drive. But it worked well enough. Melantha was awake by then, so I had her turn her trassk into something I could scare the Whittiers with long enough to hand her over to them."

"You were taking a pretty big chance," Fierenzo pointed out. "Picking a pair of New Yorkers at random doesn't necessarily get you the cream of the crop."

"I know," Jonah said. "But like I said, I was out of options. Anyway, I figured we could always get her back from them if we had to. We just couldn't afford to get caught with her ourselves. As long as the Greens didn't know who'd snatched her, even if they got her back, we'd be free to try again. But if we got caught, Halfdan would make sure we never got another chance."

"Halfdan being the head of your peace faction?"

"Halfdan being the one ready and willing to sacrifice Melantha to maintain the status quo," Jonah corrected bluntly. "You can call that peace if you want to. Anyway, I made the handoff, then hid on the wall until they'd taken Melantha away. I called Jordan, told him to get ready to cover for me when the you-know-what hit the fan and all adult Grays got scrambled into search or sentry duty, then climbed up to the fire escape to hide and heal. You know the rest."

"Except what exactly was going on in the Whittiers' apartment when I got dragged into this mess,"

Fierenzo said. "What do you know about that?"

"Not much, but I can connect the dots," Jonah said. "Jordan had wanted to follow the Whittiers home, but the search got under way faster than he'd expected and he had to get clear of the area. The next night, after most of the commotion had moved elsewhere, he went back to the neighborhood to try and find her. My guess is that some people from both sides spotted him climbing around the Whittiers' building and got curious."

"So the next day we get two separate groups converging on the place," Fierenzo concluded. "The Grays went up the outside and tried to get Melantha to come out of the trees by shooting at them.

When that didn't work, they started trying to break the door glass enough to get in, only they were interrupted by a set of Greens who'd gotten the building super to open the door for them."

"You've got it," Jonah agreed. "We were just lucky that Mrs. Whittier and Melantha had already left."

Fierenzo nodded. "I think that brings me up to date," he said. "Except for two questions. One, where is Melantha now? And two—" he cocked an eyebrow at Jonah "—just whose side are you on in this?"

"To answer the second: I'm on Melantha's side," Jonah said.

"And which side is that?"

"Like I said: Melantha's," Jonah repeated. "As to the first—" He shook his head. "I wish I knew.

Somebody's got her—that much I'm sure of. If she were free we would have heard from her by now.

But as to who or where, I have no idea."

"Sounds like Number One on our things-to-do-list," Fierenzo decided, unzipping his coat and fishing inside. "You'd probably better take charge of these, too," he added, pulling out the folded sketches.

"All I really wanted them for was to force the truth out of—"

He broke off in mid-word, staring at the pages in his hands. Back at the precinct house, he'd put four sheets of paper in his pocket: two pictures each of Jordan and the adult Gray.

Now, two of the sheets were missing.

He snapped open the remaining pages, tearing one of them in his haste. To his complete lack of surprise, they were both of the adult.

Jordan's pictures were gone.

"What is it?" Jonah demanded.

"We've been robbed," Fierenzo said tightly, crumpling the sheets and shoving them into his side pocket. "Somehow, while they were hauling me down the sidewalk, the Greens managed to grab Jordan's pictures."

For a split second, Jonah just stared at him. Then, abruptly, he jerked his left hand up to his cheek.

"Jordan, we're blown," he snapped. "Get out of here—go to Meeting One. And call Mom and Dad and tell them to join us."

He waited for an acknowledgment and dropped his hand. "We'd better get out of here," he added to Fierenzo, closing the supply box lids and refastening them.

"You think they'll give Halfdan the sketches?" Fierenzo asked, starting to fold up the blanket and wincing as twinges of pain shot through his shoulders.

"They probably showed them around to their own people first," Jonah said, folding the pad Fierenzo had been lying on and tucking it under one arm. "If none of them recognized him, yes, they'd certainly give them to Halfdan."