Readers were scattered and rare. Most reading didn’t actually tell you that much about what someone was thinking. Tennal, like any reader, could focus on someone and read them on a shallow level whenever he wanted, though he would only pick up a vague outline of their feelings and intentions, and if he left his mind open for too long it gave him a headache. Even that shallow reading was illegal, but it could be useful if you were discreet about it. Readers who could go deep, beyond surface emotions, were even more of an anomaly—so much so that many people didn’t believe they existed.
