Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

But who?

She scooped up some of the hot water in her cupped hands and rubbed it across her face. It didn't matter, really, at least not to her. Whoever Damian was, there was little she could do about it here.

What she could do was continue the path she'd started on tonight. If she could nurture her new relationship with Sylvia—if she could spark even a little empathy toward the humans Nikolos might soon order her and her Warriors to kill—maybe the Command-Tactician who had quietly defied Cyril's peacemaking authority might find himself facing a minor rebellion of his own.

Leaning back in the tub, she closed her eyes and willed herself to relax. She could only hope she would have enough time to teach Sylvia what it meant to be human.

There was no one with the distinctive Gray body type loitering by the MacDougal Alley gate as Roger drove slowly through Greenwich Village's crowded evening traffic. But as he passed, he could see lights burning in Torvald's loft apartment. Circling the block, he found a parking space and maneuvered the Buick into it.

He had already decided there was no point to trying to sneak up on them. Even if there was no one watching from street level, they undoubtedly had sentries posted on the nearby buildings. Pushing his way through the gate, he strode boldly down the alley to Torvald's building and pushed the intercom button.

There was a moment of silence. Roger stood motionless, feeling the eerie sensation of having a dozen pairs of eyes focused on his back. He reached for the button again; but before he could press it, there was a click from the lock. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and headed up the stairs.

"Well, well," a familiar voice said dryly as he emerged from the stairway. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Roger grimaced. "Hello, Ingvar," he said, noting a couple of fresh mud stains on the fleece collar of his gray jacket. "I'm glad to see that car didn't flatten you."

"I'm touched by your concern," Ingvar said with only a trace of sarcasm. "You been surfing the sewers?"

Roger looked down at his clothing. He had brushed away the worst of the mud at the Thruway service area, and a lot of the rest had caked up and fallen off since then. But he still did indeed look like something Caroline's mother's cat would proudly bring into the house to show off. "I've been playing with the Greens," he told the other. "Is Torvald home?"

Ingvar's forehead creased slightly. "Sure," he said, nodding toward the studio door. "Go on in."

"Thanks." Gingerly easing past the other, Roger opened the door and stepped inside.

Torvald was home, all right. But he wasn't alone. There were at least two dozen other Grays packed into the studio, some gathered into small conversation groups in various corners, the rest standing around one of the flat tables that had been set up in the center of the room. Torvald was presiding, gesturing with a pointer at a large-scale map of Manhattan spread out across the table, his middleaged daughter Kirsten beside him.

Everyone looked up as Roger came in. Fighting against the impulse to turn and run, he gave Torvald a nod. "Hello, Torvald," he said. "Sorry to barge in on you this way."

"Have you found Melantha?" another older Gray with a long scar on his left cheek spoke up from Torvald's side.

Roger focused on him. "And you are...?"

"Halfdan Gray," the other identified himself. He quirked a small smile. "Father of the two gentlemen who stopped you on the street yesterday."

"Right," Roger said. "Sorry about that."

Halfdan waved the apology away. "Do you know where Melantha is?"

"I might." Roger looked back at Torvald. "First, we need to discuss my price."

"By all means," Torvald said, not sounding offended. "Can we offer you anything? Coffee? Tea?"

"Dry cleaner?" Halfdan added, gesturing toward Roger's clothing.

"Nothing, thank you," Roger said, glancing around at the rest of the group. "Just a little privacy."

One of the Grays in the corner stirred. "I'm not sure I like that," he said.

"I'm not sure you have to," Halfdan told him. "Everyone out."

Slowly, and with some quiet muttering, the Grays made their separate ways to the door, a few of them giving Roger suspicious or unfriendly looks as they passed. Roger stood still, wincing as the river of bodies flowed around and past him, until only he, Torvald, Halfdan, and Kirsten remained.

"There's your privacy," Halfdan said shortly. "Where is she?"

"My price first," Roger said, walking the rest of the way across the loft to stand on the far side of the table from the other three. "I want a guarantee that Melantha won't be killed."

Halfdan snorted. "Don't be ridiculous. The whole point of this exercise is to eliminate her."

"No, the point is to eliminate her as a threat," Roger corrected. "That doesn't necessarily mean she has to die."

"If she doesn't die, she can't be anything but a threat," Halfdan countered. "We can't take the chance that a Leader might rise up someday who decides to use her to get rid of us."

Roger shook his head. "I don't think they're nearly that blindly obedient to their Leaders anymore."

He looked down at his dirt-stained clothing. "I have some recent experience in the matter."

"So do we," Torvald said. "But you assume the current tug-of-war between Cyril and Aleksander is the natural state of Green society. It's not. Give them a true Leader, and the dissent would evaporate."

"Fine," Roger said, conceding the point. "But why would a future Leader suddenly decide he wanted to wipe you out? Assuming you hadn't done anything to them, of course."

"We didn't do anything back in the Valley, either," Halfdan bit out. "That didn't stop some Leader from ordering the Warriors to attack us."

"Or to order their Groundshakers to bring down an entire cliff," Torvald added darkly. "Hundreds of families died in that—"

"Wait a second," Roger cut him off. "They told me you started the war. That you set fire to their forest because you weren't getting your way in the talks."

"That's a lie," Halfdan said flatly. "We didn't set that fire, and they knew it. It was probably dry lightning—we'd been warning them for years to do something about the brush around their trees."

"They also told me you were shooting at them from the cliffs," Roger said.

"Of course we were shooting," Torvald said. "But not at them. We were shooting at the trees in front of the fire, trees they'd already vacated."

Roger frowned. "The ones they'd vacated?"

Torvald sighed. "A firebreak, Roger," he explained patiently. "We were trying to create a firebreak."

"Hoping to save the rest of the valley," Halfdan growled. "But they didn't care. They saw we were distracted, figured it was as good a time as any to teach us a lesson, and started knocking down our cliffs."

"I see," Roger murmured, a hard knot forming in his stomach. Even with all his questions and suspicions about the Greens, he'd nevertheless still assumed that what they'd said about their history had been accurate. In fact, he'd rather cavalierly dismissed Caroline's suggestion that they needed to get the Grays' side of the story.

"But that's ancient history," Torvald continued. "You're here to discuss current events."

"Yes," Roger said, forcing his mind back to the subject at hand. "And I'm still waiting to hear what you're willing to do about Melantha."

"I already told you that," Halfdan said. "We can't let her walk away from this alive."

"What kind of guarantee could you give us?" Kirsten put in suddenly.

Roger focused on her. "What?"

"You want Melantha to live," Kirsten said. "We want to live, too. What guarantee could you give us that her Gift wouldn't be used against us, now or in the future?"