Where before he had read the domain the way a person read a room, taking in its contents and their positions and their meanings, now he read it the way something read its own territory, the space and the people and the structures and the barrier all registering as extensions of a single connected awareness rather than a collection of separate things.
The environmental awareness that Cynthia had talked about.
He raised his hand slightly and felt the air respond to the gesture with the particular responsiveness of something that was paying attention, the molecules of it not moving visibly but arranging themselves in the way of a material whose relationship with the person asking had changed.
He closed his hand and said nothing about it.
Ileana reached him first.
She walked to him and looked at his face for a long moment with the thorough attention she gave to him when she was checking something important, taking in the full picture of what the evolution had produced.
