Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

"What the hell?" Roger muttered aloud, thumbing off the connection from his end. Still, he had nowhere better to be right now. Returning the phone to his pocket, he started the car and pulled back onto the street.

He found a parking garage near the Marriott and headed on foot through the bustling streets of Times Square. The theatre's ticket office was just off the street, and he found himself wincing at the pointed once-over the man at the window gave his filthy clothes as he handed over an envelope. Wondering whether the ushers would be nearly so diplomatic, he found the escalator and headed up.

As Fierenzo had predicted, he had caught the play between acts, and the lobby was full of milling people. Trying not to touch any of them, he eased his way through the crowd toward the nearest door.

A hand caught his arm. He started to pull away—

"Just keep going," a voice murmured in his ear. "Elevators are that way."

Heart pounding, Roger looked sideways at his captor. The man was definitely a Gray, short and wide, with the kind of iron grip he knew would be a waste of time to struggle against. "I don't know what you think you're doing," he protested, deciding for lack of any better idea to try the innocent approach. "But I paid good money to see this show."

"No, you didn't," the man murmured back. "Relax, will you? We're all friends here."

Roger frowned. "Friends of whom?"

"Oh, come on," the other said reproachfully. "Don't you even recognize your favorite delivery man?"

Roger frowned a little harder... and then, suddenly, the voice clicked. "You're—?"

"The name's Jonah," the other said. "Come on, the others are waiting."

They caught one of the elevators and headed up into the hotel towers rising high above the theatre part of the complex. Jonah took them off at the twentieth floor, then led the way to the stairs and walked up three more flights. "Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger stuff," he apologized as they emerged from the stairway. "But we have to be careful."

"I didn't say anything about you," Roger assured him quickly. "I didn't even tell them you were a Gray."

"I appreciate that," Jonah said. "In here."

He stopped at one of the doors and tapped the wood: two quick taps, a pause, then three more.

Whoever was on the other side was ready; he'd barely finished the third tap when the door swung open. Jonah hustled Roger inside, crowding in close behind him, and Roger caught a glimpse of a shorter Gray as he swung the door closed again.

"Welcome to the vast conspiracy," Jonah announced, taking Roger's arm and leading him into the main part of the room.

Roger caught his breath. There were four other people sitting in a semicircle around the room, gazing at him with expressions that ranged from anxious to suspicious to hopeful. Two were adult Grays, a man and a woman, much older than Jonah. Beside them sat another couple.

Only the second couple weren't Grays. They were Greens.

"These are my parents," Jonah said, gesturing toward the Grays. "Ron and Stephanie McClung."

He gestured to the Greens. "And these are Zenas and Laurel Green," he added quietly. "Melantha's parents."

"You'll have to excuse me," Roger said as Jonah led him to an empty chair and sat him down in it.

Distantly, he realized he was staring rudely at the Greens, but he was unable to stop. To find Greens and Grays sitting peacefully together in the same room was too far outside his range of expectations to absorb in a single gulp. "I was under the impression—I mean—"

"You thought we all hate each other," Zenas said gently into his fumbling.

Roger winced. "Yes," he confessed. "Both sides have told me flat-out that the other side tried to exterminate them. And you don't seem to have anything in common."

"Of course we have something in common," Stephanie said, smiling sadly at Laurel. "We have Melantha."

"But—" Roger looked at Jonah. "But you're Grays."

"And if you'll shut up for a minute or two, they'll tell you all about it," a voice suggested from the corner behind him.

Roger twisted around. Detective Fierenzo was sitting on the floor in the corner, his coat off, his shoulder holster prominently in sight. Focused on the main group, Roger hadn't even noticed him.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," Fierenzo assured him. "Why?"

"Doesn't matter," Roger said, feeling foolish and somewhat annoyed that he'd wasted all that worry on a man who was obviously alive and well. "So how did you get into this?"

"Same way you did," Fierenzo told him, flicking a look at Jonah. "Wrong place at the wrong time.

You ready to listen yet?"

"Yes," Roger said, turning back to face the others. "Sorry."

"It started about six months ago," Zenas said. "Melantha had gone to the library to do some research for a school project, and was on her way home when a half-dozen toughs decided she looked like someone they could pick on. Fortunately for her—" he looked over at the young Gray who had opened the door for them earlier, now seated quietly on the floor beside Jonah "—it happened that Jordan here was passing by and took exception to their lack of manners."

"Had he also been at the library?" Roger asked.

"Nothing so respectable," Ron said dryly. "He didn't feel like studying that day and had cut school and gone into Manhattan."

"For the third time that month, I believe," Stephanie added, sending a slightly threatening look at her son.

"He's always getting in trouble," Jonah murmured to Roger.

"Like his brother before him," Ron added pointedly. "At any rate, he had his hammergun with him, so he masked and got up on a wall and proceeded to beat the toughs silly. Eventually even they figured out that something weird was happening and headed for higher ground."

"Melantha, of course, realized instantly who it must have been who'd just rescued her," Zenas said.

"She'd learned about Grays and hammerguns from the Pastsingers, and she took off as soon as she had a clear path and headed for home. She was pretty shaken, she told us later."

"But by the time she got home, she'd had time to cool off and think about it," Laurel picked up the story. "She'd been taught the Grays had hated us, but she also recognized that Jordan's actions on her behalf didn't fit that pattern."

"Maybe he just hadn't realized she was a Green," Roger suggested.

"I hadn't," Jordan confessed. "There are a lot of people in the city who look kind of like Greens."

"And we don't teach Green recognition nearly as well as the Greens teach their children what Grays look like," Ron said.

"Comes from our differing teaching methods," Zenas explained. "Pastsingers can transfer fairly clear images directly to their students, which naturally include images of Grays from the Great Valley time. We wouldn't want you to think we deliberately prime our children to be on the lookout for Grays."

"And in fact, Melantha did conclude that he hadn't recognized her," Laurel added.

"Which was a big relief to her," Zenas said. "But at the same time, she found herself intrigued. It's not every day you see a real, live fossil walking the streets of New York. She decided not to tell anyone, but see if she could track him down herself."

"Sounds risky," Roger said, frowning. "Not to mention kind of needle-in-haystackish."

"Melantha's always enjoyed challenges," Laurel said, blinking back tears. "If she'd just left things alone—" She broke off, daubing at her eyes.

"She decided to start where he'd first appeared," Zenas said, taking his wife's hand. "As Ron said, he'd been masked while he was shooting, but she remembered seeing a boy with a red-and-blue backpack running for a nearby doorway as the gang moved in on her and guessed that had been him.