Timothy Zahn - The Green And The Gray

How far will they reach?"

"Several miles," Jonah said. "Though without a booster setup in place, the Catskills may be a little of a stretch. We call them tels, by the way, not phone things." He looked down at his brother. "Come on, Jordan. On your feet, and let's see your hand."

Jordan made a face, but obediently stood up and held his left hand out to his brother. "You did want the private family line, as opposed to the general-purpose tel, right?" Jonah added, picking at the heel of Jordan's hand with thumb and forefinger.

"Unless you think Torvald would come charging to our rescue if we called," Fierenzo said dryly.

"How come you have a spare, anyway?"

"Blame it on another of my old school-cutting buddies," Jonah said. "He wanted us to be able to chat while we were skylarking around Queens without the rest of the community listening in. He was a whiz at tech stuff, and he figured out a way to build a tel that worked on a different frequency couple from the rest of them."

"It's not on any of the radio bands we already use, is it?" Roger asked, staring in fascination as Jonah got a grip on what looked like a sheer film on Jordan's hand and began pulling it carefully off.

"It doesn't work the way your radios do," Jonah assured him. "We basically take a pair of normal radio frequencies, but instead of modulating them, we run a harmonic coupling between them. There are only a half-dozen frequency pairs that are convenient to use, and he picked the one as far away from the usual band as possible so that there wouldn't be any chance of interference between them."

"What happened to the one your friend had?" Fierenzo asked. "He doesn't still have it, does he?"

Jonah shook his head. "He gave it to me when he thought his parents were closing in on us and told me to get rid of them."

"We assume he didn't want to get caught with the evidence," Ron added.

"Right," Jonah said, grinning tightly. "For all his private defiance against authority, he tended to panic over the possibility of getting into real trouble."

"Why didn't you toss them like he told you?" Fierenzo asked.

Jonah shrugged. "I liked having them, so I took a chance and hid them away instead. No one ever came down on me, so I guess the whole thing was a false alarm. Anyway, when we started getting to know Melantha's family, I dug them out of storage and gave one to Jordan so I could keep in touch with him while he was in Green territory."

"Too bad you didn't give one to Melantha," Roger murmured.

"Actually, we did discuss that possibility at one point," Zenas said. "We decided it would be better for Jonah and Jordan to be able to keep in touch. Jordan and Melantha were already pretty adept at keeping their time together private, and we didn't want Melantha getting caught with a Gray tel." His lips compressed briefly. "Though I wish now we'd done it that way."

"We also didn't know whether you could take a tel inside a tree without damaging it," Jonah pointed out. He had the film nearly pulled away from his brother's hand now, with only the fingertips still attached.

"That really looks weird," Roger commented. "Like a snake shedding his skin."

"Or Peter Pan trying to get his shadow back on," Fierenzo said. "How hard is it to work?"

"Not very," Jonah assured him. "I can run him through the manual in five minutes." With one final tug, he pulled the last fingertip free. Holding the tel dangling in front of him, he turned and squatted down beside Roger's chair. "Let's have your left hand."

Gingerly, Roger held it out. Jonah draped the tel into position on top of it, smoothing and prodding at it to get the various sections lined up along the fingers. "Just relax," he advised. "It won't hurt."

He began pressing the tel onto the skin of Roger's palm. "One other thing that might or might not mean anything," Roger said. "The day after Cyril tried his Persuasion trick on Caroline, she found out she could sense Green communications. It was only at close range, and she couldn't understand what was being said, but she could definitely tell when one Green was talking to another."

"Interesting," Zenas said. "I've never heard of anything like that before."

"Not even with Velovsky?" Fierenzo asked.

"If it happened, I've never heard anything about it," Zenas said.

"Me, neither," Laurel seconded.

"Maybe it seemed so natural he never thought to comment on it," Roger suggested as Jonah finished with his palm and started massaging the tel into his fingers. "He told us he'd had a telepathic crash course in all things Green from Leader Elymas. Maybe sensing your communication was part of the same package."

"I remember the Pastsingers talking about that contact," Laurel said. "I don't think anything like it had ever been tried before, not even with the Others back on our old world. I sometimes wonder if the strain of that was what killed Elymas so young."

"I sometimes wonder how things might have been different if he'd lived," Zenas added. "We wouldn't have this power struggle between Cyril and Aleksander, for one thing."

"On the other hand, he might already have ordered Melantha to wipe us out," Jonah said grimly.

"Melantha wouldn't have done that," Jordan insisted. "No matter who told her to."

"Well, it's a moot point now," Jonah said, giving Roger's forefinger one final smoothing. "How does that feel?"

"Weird," Roger said, wiggling his fingers experimentally. The tel didn't exactly impede his movements, but it was impossible to forget the thing was plastered to his skin. "It's like wearing half a glove."

"You'll get used to it." Jonah looked over at Fierenzo. "So what are we supposed to do while you, Roger, and Laurel head north and look for Melantha?"

"Basically, you get on with your lives," Fierenzo told him. "You act as natural as you can and wait for us to come back."

"Even Jonah and me?" Jordan asked. "Halfdan's still looking for us, you know. There've been calls about us at least once an hour since you took us off that roof."

"And they've been getting testier, too," Jonah added. "I don't think we want to be found just yet."

Fierenzo made a face. "You may be right," he conceded. "How suspicious is he going to be that you're not answering the calls?"

"Not very," Jonah said. "I've gone silent before when people were mad at me, though not so much since I left school." He lifted his eyebrows. "Still, as long as Jordan and I are hiding out anyway, why don't we go to the Catskills with you?"

Fierenzo snorted. "What do you think I'm running, a bus service?"

"And they're hardly going to let a couple of Grays into their compound," Roger added.

"I didn't mean we'd go all the way in," Jonah said. "You could drop us off on a hill someplace where we could be ready as backup if you needed us."

"If anyone spots you and Laurel together, it'll be all over," Zenas warned.

"We shouldn't need backup anyway," Fierenzo seconded. "This is a soft probe, not a frontal assault."

"Though a little extra precaution might not hurt," Ron said. "And it would certainly keep them from running into Bergan."

"I suppose," Fierenzo said. "Well... okay."

"But Zenas's right about the risks," Ron continued, looking at Zenas. "Which means the boys don't go unless he and Laurel agree they should."

For a moment Zenas and Laurel gazed at each other in silence. Then, with a sigh, Zenas nodded. "All right," he said heavily. "They can go."

"Fine," Fierenzo said. "But I'm not driving through Manhattan with all of you sitting there for the whole world to see. Can you two take the Hudson Line train to Peekskill early tomorrow morning?"

"Why can't we just go tonight?" Jordan offered.

"Sure, that'll work," his older brother agreed. "We'll take the next train and park on one of the buildings until morning. Roger can call me on the tel when you get close and arrange for a pickup."