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Luke grinned up at Nathan as he took back his brush. He just couldn't help himself.

That brushing had felt so good. He couldn't remember anything feeling quite like that before. It was even better than a long, hot shower. He and his littermates had groomed one another when he was young, but they obviously hadn't known what they were doing. Of course, the fosters had always insisted that he brush himself. He'd never felt close enough to anyone since then to ask.

He felt like giving Nathan a hug, but then thought better of it. The afternoon's tension was making him shed, and seeing how much was in the brush, he didn't think Nathan would appreciate getting covered with that much fur. As he got up, he brushed his front, trying to get the worst, then put the brush back in his jacket pocket.

"Luke, I think we need to talk about what's happened." Nathan was looking serious.

"So do I. But I don't feel comfortable talking in front of them." He gestured toward the living room.

"How about the library?"

"Library? On campus, you mean?" That was far enough away, but....

"Oh, no, sorry. I haven't given you a tour of the house, have I? I mean upstairs. Come on, I'll show you around."

"On the right, you can see a large, elegant dining room. With seating for at least twenty souls, it has been the location for uncounted gourmet repasts. Like maybe two." Sometimes Nathan could be quite silly. The room was large, with several cabinets of china. The table hadn't been dusted in a while.

"Here on the left, on the other hand, is a tiny, decrepit kitchen. It's amazing anyone can cook anything at all in it." Not quite as large as the dining room, it was bright and airy, with a tile floor and plenty of modern conveniences, including a well used breakfast nook.

"I usually just use the microwave," Nathan admitted as he got a couple of sodas out of the refrigerator. Root beer, this time.

"Let us now proceed eastward down the entryway," the tour guide continued. "Here you will see a small bathroom to your left, and ahead is a spacious living room. To the right, on the other hand, down this plush hallway, are stairs leading to the upper floor. Come, let us climb." The deep carpet on the banistered stairway was soft under Luke's bare feet. The top opened up into the middle of another wide hallway.

"We now find ourselves on the second floor. To your left you will see the door to the master bedroom. The masters enjoy their privacy, so let us not intrude on them.

"The room's a mess. I'll show it to you another time, OK?"

"Not a problem," Luke grinned.

"Let us turn left again. Down at the far end of this elegantly upholstered hallway we find the miserable servants' quarters. Cramped and dingy, they show how little the masters care for them." Were the servants miserable or was it just their quarters, Luke wondered.

"The bedroom on the right actually shares the master bathroom." Nathan explained. "The one on the left shares a smaller bathroom with the other front bedroom." The beds in both obviously hadn't been slept in for quite a while, if ever. Like the table downstairs, there was dust on both.

Continuing in his best tour guide voice, Nathan went on, "Let us once more turn to our left, circling the treacherous depths below." The thick railing around the stairwell was an extension of the stairs' banister. Luke could imagine sliding down it. Unlike many he'd seen pictures of, there was no post at the bottom to cause injury.

"Now, at long last, we finally reach our original destination. To the right you will encounter the baronial library. Filled with tomes of ancient and forgotten lore, here we doubtless will find the information we so desperately seek. I like books," Nathan admitted. "Come on in."

Luke couldn't help gaping. The walls of the rather large room were all lined to the ceiling with full bookshelves. Several pieces of framed artwork were hung on some of the vertical supports because there wasn't any wall space for them. Besides the two large windows, the only free space was another doorway. He guessed it must open into the shared bathroom that Nathan had mentioned.

"Sit down. Relax," Nathan encouraged him. There were two overstuffed reclining chairs, one obviously used more than the other. "Is this private enough, do you think?"

Luke put his root beer on the table next to his chair. The coaster advertised the same brewery that the soda had come from.

"Sure. I was just uncomfortable talking right in front of them. The kitchen probably would have been fine."

"I'm not so sure, myself. Much farther might be better, but I'm just being paranoid, I hope."

"Obviously they're telepathic," Luke began. "Do you think they can read us this far away?"

"I've always thought of telepathy as a fantasy," Nathan admitted. "Our brains just aren't made that way. But this...I dunno."

"Well, their brains aren't anything like ours, if that whitepaper is to be believed. Maybe that has something to do with it."

"Somehow, I just don't think that's all it is. Our brains generate billions of tiny signals, so their detectors must be really sophisticated to separate them out. Encephalographs have to use some kind of direct contact, and the experiments I've read about helping blind people see put probes right into the visual cortex."

Luke rubbed the back of his head. "Ouch." Thinking about cutting open the skull and sticking in wires almost made him feel nauseous.

"Ouch is right." Nathan took a sip of his root beer and looked at it gloomily. "But maybe there's another way."

"What do you mean?"

"Nanites. Lots of 'em. They could get inside and act as probes in all the right places, using encrypted bidirectional radio transmissions. They wouldn't even have to transmit very far, less than ten feet or so. There've been plenty of scifi stories about it." He waved at his bookshelves. "I've got quite a few of them here."

"Scifi." Luke snorted. "They're just stories."

"Are they? Now? It certainly fits. Much as I hate to admit it, that white paper about CNFs sounded really sincere. And it seems a lot more reasonable to me than organic telepathy."

Then he looked thoughtful. "But I suppose something organic could have the same results. I dunno if it'd be more or less likely to trigger rejection."

Now Luke really was starting to feel nauseous. "You mean there might actually be something in our heads? But how would it get in there?"

"Lotsa ways. Inhaling something like dandruff, for example. Mites, maybe. Colonies of dust mites live in pillows, you know, too small to see. Some people are allergic to them. Of course, they'd probably have some kind of efficient delivery system. They wouldn't want to waste any." He paused and grimaced. "Ugh."

"What?" Luke was not at all sure he wanted to hear Nathan's next idea. The guy had much too horrible an imagination, and if it made him make a face....

"When you first got Ben, did you have any dreams about licking?"

Luke almost didn't make it into the bathroom in time.