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haven’t been eavesdropping again, have you, Damia?
    She parried that surprise with a quick,
After Afra reamed me for that with Larak? Not bloody likely.
    Oh, it was he who stopped you? Your mother thought it was Isthia.
    The trouble with telepaths is sometimes they think
too
much,
she remarked acidly, infuriated afresh to realize that her mother, also, knew of that incident.
    Damia!
Jeff’s tone was unusually severe.
Your mother is the only person in the galaxy who has any inkling of your problems . . .
    Then why did she hand me over to Isthia to raise?
Damia flashed back without thinking.
    Because, my darling daughter, you were without doubt the most infuriating, incalcitrant, unmanageable four-year-old. Your mother was too ill with her pregnancy to keep track of you blithely teleporting all over the system. I sent you away, not your mother. It was not her decision and she resisted it every step of the way. I’ve told you that before. But you two are so bloody much alike . . .
    Damia snorted. She was not the least bit like her mother. There was absolutely no resemblance between them. She was Jeff’s daughter from her slender height to her black hair and vivid blue eyes. Ezro, yes, and Larak, too, took after the Rowan. But not she. Of course, Damia had to admit, her mother had an exceedingly strong and diverse psionic talent or she wouldn’t be Callisto Prime, but Damia was just as strong, and she had the added advantage of that catalystic ability as well.
    Well,
Jeff was saying in a milder tone,
you’ll see it one day, my dear, and I, for one, shall be immensely relieved. Your mother and I love you very much and we’re damned proud of the way you’ve taken over your official responsibilities on Auriga. Professionally I have no quarrel with you.
    Damia basked in her father’s praise. He didn’t give it lightly.
    If you were only able to relate more to the people around you,
he continued, spoiling the compliment, then added briskly,
I’ll send Afra on directest. I can trust his impartiality
, and to Damia’s amazement, her father chuckled.
    She stabbed at his mind to find the basis for the amusement, but met a blankness as her father had turned his mind to some other problem.
    â€œImpartiality? Afra?” The sound of her own voice in the little personal capsule startled her.
    What on earth was that supposed to mean? Why would Afra’s impartiality be trusted—above hers—in identifying or evaluating an alien aura?
    But Afra was to come to Auriga.
    Â 
    After he had broken contact with Damia, Jeff did not immediately turn to other problems. He mulled over the subtler aspects of that vivid contact with his daughter. Damia’s mind was as brilliant as Iota Aurigae, and about as stable as any active star’s surface. He had caught the edges of her skillfully shielded reactions to several of his references. He was reassured to note growing evidence of emotional maturity, except where her mother and Afra were concerned.
    Damia had unwittingly suppressed what Jeff recalled most vividly about the day he had sent her away to Isthia on Betelgeuse for fostering. It had been Afra the four-year-old Damia had clung to, cried for, not her mother. Jeff sighed. The decision to send Damia to Isthia had been one of the hardest he had ever had to make, personally and professionally. But Rowan had been extremely ill during her pregnancy with Larak, and Damia, coming early into her extraordinary mental powers, had made life pure hell for everyone in the Raven household: teleporting herself—and anything her fancies seized upon—indiscriminately around the system. Only Afra had any control over her, and he had had to be at Callisto Tower.
    Under Isthia’s calm, unruffled discipline, Damia had learned to control her waywardness. She became sincerely fond of Isthia. Strange that it was the Rowan whom Damia still blamed for that separation.
    Rowan
, Jeff