Schuldig shot Rufus another sidelong look. This one, for once, wasn't openly hostile, instead merely questioning in a suspicious, why-are-you-persisting sort of way. "It's good in that respect, yes, although unless the patients spread out so much some of them go beyond my radius it doesn't much make much difference to my telepathy about the density," he replied. "But it means that either the power-dampening abilities and influence of the institute stretch this far, and canvas an entire community - which I hardly need to tell you is an alarming conclusion to draw - or that there's a possibility my telepathy's been permanently hobbled. And either way, I can't get any new information like this...nothing we can reliably trust, anyway, since there's no way of knowing whether or not we're being lied to if I can't get in their heads."

He finally pulled himself to his feet, studying the town through the windows of the bus. "It's also a little unsettling," he muttered. "I can't read the staff, and there are a few select patients whose minds are beyond my reach, but that's not that many people compared to those I can read in the institute. But this is a whole town</>. I see them but there's nothing where their thoughts should be. Shape without substance." He shot Rufus another look. "It's about how you feel if you stepped off this bus and discovered you couldn't hear them in the mundane sense. Something's very wrong."