"A phone." Felix repeated the word with emphasis, to be sure he had heard her correctly. He laughed again, but he stifled himself and cleared his throat again, terribly passing off his amusement as a tickle in his throat. It took him an honest moment to realize she was actually serious. Still, he tried to suppress a grin while he responded. "We're a dozen miles out from Philadelphia. The nearest telephone might be at a post office a few hours' walk down the south road, but I wouldn't count on it." Only very rich people and some city government buildings had telephones -- and even then, they were basically useless unless you wanted to talk to a rich person or a senator. Felix could only conclude that this laboratory she had evidently just escaped from was extremely important and extremely well-equipped, to have a telephone installed. He was starting to get nervous, that maybe someone was looking for her, to bring her back.

He stepped over a stream and reached out to help her across. "So, does [i]everyone[/i] in your family have a tail?" He'd noticed her confusion about his tail-less state, and he thought maybe she had been sheltered in that evil laboratory in the woods, like Doctor Frankenstein's secret rooms, where everyone had strange appendages and never saw the outside world. Maybe she'd just escaped from being subjected to government experiments! Maybe he'd stumbled upon something amazing and historic, and he'd go down in history as having rescued the first human-cat hybrid! "I mean, everyone in ... what was it, Alabass? They all have tails? Do they all look like you?" [i]Alabass[/i] must be the code name for the laboratory's secret location.

Felix took her hand with a smile and led her between the trees. The sounds of banging and shouting and accordion music drifted through the forest toward them, and he hiked straight for it. A flash of bright color from the tent-tops flashed among the branches. "We'll keep you safe, don't you worry." But he couldn't help but ask the question that was burning in his mind. "So what kind of experiments go on in this laboratory in Alabass?"