"But Uncle Paulos, I don't know what it means."

It was the third time Qamala had sent this to the much older Magellen, since their mental conversation had begun. She'd retreated to her favorite hillock above her family's habitation just after dinner, having been seized with yet another of the strange, prophetic visions that stubbornly evaded her ability to control. Uncle Paulos was halfway around Eden, where Qamala knew it was sometime in the middle of the night and yet he'd replied to her right away - the old goat was probably out partying with Paian and some of his other friends from what he called "the old days." Qamala's mother didn't officially approve of "uncle" Paulos -- he wasn't related to the Sotiris clan by blood, but rather by bonds of affection and common history that spanned, so far as Qamala could surmise, many millenia.

Not that any of them would speak of those days to her. She was considered too young, too easily influenced by her somewhat famous and rather flambouyant "uncle," restrictions that chafed her because she just knew they would probably validate every rebellious feeling she had in her heart.

She felt the familiar touch of her Uncle's mind in her own long before he `spoke'. He sought out the images, and went over them one by one -- slowly, meticulously.

A screaming child -- humanoid, but otherwise unknown to Qamala. An evil looking face of a man -- also unknown. A huge, featherless bird of prey, swooping down on a paralyzed callot... The feelings that accompanied these visions were of terror, pain, and panic.

He'd never probed her mind before. Only her mother had ever done that, and her touch had been gentle. Uncle Paulos' touch was commanding, assertive.

"Come to me. Now." And his presence was gone.

*****

It had taken a little longer than "now" - Qamala had to find a way to use the household teleport station without raising her mother's suspicions. Though an adult, she still lived with her parents as many Magellen her age did. It was a convenient arrangement except when the adult child needed to do something of which one parent would not approve.

There were no cities on her homeworld, no crime, no reason for her to fear in stepping into the darkness near the olive grove where her uncle was located. She wasn't sure of his exact location, but knew they'd find each other as long as she kept walking forward. "Paulos?"

There it was, the merest brush of his mind against hers. It bothered her a bit, that he didn't simply send his thoughts to her, but there was a strange tremor in the air in that grove, one Qamala was not sure she liked or trusted. It might simply have been the aftermath of her disquieting vision, but whatever the case, awareness of it kept her well-known impatience securely bridled. Her own telepathic abilities were still largely nascent, but she stretched them as hard as she could to follow the faint mental trail Paulos had left for her. Each time she contemplated the repetition of her telepathic call she felt him brush her mind again, wordlessly. Each time she bit back her own petulance and moved on, straining to find him.

And then abruptly, he stepped out of the darkness. "It is time, my dear Qamala, for you to grow up." His beard was long, and his hair snowy white. He wore a robe familiar only on some distant, forgotten world she'd only heard of in stories. "You have done well. You have not let the unbridled emotions of youth prevent you from achieving your task. That will serve you well in what you now must do." He held out a hand. "Come with me."

Her life-long affection (bordering on hero worship, at times) for the old Magellen helped her keep her tongue in check. Not that he couldn't read her mind if he wished - she wasn't yet mature enough to have developed the proper mental defenses to keep him out. This was a side of Paulos she'd never seen before; after only a moment's hesitation, she took his hand and stepped to his side, her curiosity mounting. "Have I angered you, Paulos?"

That stopped him in his tracks for a moment, and he turned to regard her with the almost innocent affection she was used to. "Not at all, my loulloudi ([flower] blossom)." He turned and continued walking through what he called his ampelon o. A grove of fruit bearing vines that he tended with almost religious devotion. "But you are finally growing up, it seems. These visions of yours are proof of it. It is time for you to begin to assume more responsibility."

"Oh. Responsibility for what?" She asked, already feeling her mood brightening. "What do they mean, these visions? Do you know?"

That evoked a chuckle, and as they walked Paulos snapped a dead branch from a vine and handed it to her. "What does it mean?" He asked, not breaking his stride.

"Does it have a meaning?" Qamala asked, almost breathless with sudden anticipation. The idea that the dead branch might have a meaning beyond being, well, a dead branch, fascinated her. "Other than you need to prune your vines more closely?"

Paulos laughed. "If that is the meaning you give it, then that is so. It might even be true," he drawled with a lopsided smile. "Now tell me what my point is?"

"Um." She wasn't the most intelligent of her family, but she wasn't stupid either. "That my vision means whatever I want it to mean? But Paulos if that's so, how are these visions any different than errant daydreams?"

"Brilliant!" He exclaimed. "Well done, loulloudi. They are different, but how? Why?" He turned to face her, his face shining like a morning sun. "And as your reward, I will show you."

In an instant the vineyard had vanished and they were standing on a hilltop, sheltered from the sun by a rotunda made of white marble. "Look there," Paulos pointed, and it seemed the very stars collapsed on themselves until only a few thousand shone in broad daylight before them. "How many minds, souls, intellects do you suppose exist there? A billion? A trillion? A hundred trillion? And everyone of them has beliefs, certainties, even laws that it thinks govern the universe. And the more minds there are that believe a thing to be true, the truer it is -- until even the greatest of us cannot undo it.

"Out there are many millions of minds who have, for reasons they cannot even conceive of, fabricated your visions. They are calling you. Not consciously, not even intentionally. But as a rock thrown in a pond creates ripples on the unsuspecting shore, so those ripples, those pleas for help, have washed up on the shores of your mind. And they cannot be easily undone."

Qamala blinked, then blinked again. "Who are they, uncle Paulos? Why should they call me? Why not you, or Paian, or my father? Why me?"

Paulos arched an eyebrow. "Why not you? What makes you think you are any more exempt from the movement of the universe," he gestured to the restless stars he had called into relief, "than the rest of us? Childhood cannot last forever, and protracted innocence is but a denial of the totality of the universe."

"It's just..." She wasn't quite sure what it was just, when he put it like that. "It just seems that they'd call someone more gifted than me, or who at least had control over all her gifts. I don't."

Paulos chuckled at that, and as quickly as the vision of the stars had come, they retreated into the daylight sky. "It is not an easy thing to understand," he admitted, leading her through his veranda into the main chamber of his airy villa. Her hand had slipped into his again as they walked, something she'd done with him ever since she was a very small youngling. "Consciousness is the most powerful force in the universe. And yet it is also the weakest. Minds connecting to minds, connecting to minds. Groups pleading for help who know of nothing other than themselves, and yet whose call is heard by other minds who know nothing of them. But their combined force seeks an answer. An answer whose calculus cannot be learned in schools or taught by religionists. The instant one attempts to define it, it loses all meaning. And yet, it is the answer to your question. It is the force, the power, that causes your visions,"

"So it's not really personal, that's what you're saying," Qamala suggested, waiting for him to seat himself before curling up next to him for comfort. "These visions are probably washing up against the shores of thousands of minds right now, to use your phrasing. All I have to do is wait for someone to answer their call, and the visions will go away, or at least change?"

Again, Paulos chuckled. "Just because it isn't personal doesn't mean it isn't personal," he drawled. "It's happening to you, isn't it? That rather makes it personal, from a certain point of view. So you can ignore it: That's certainly a choice within your power. Or you can answer it. That also is a choice within your power. It's impersonal in that, you'll never find a soul that says `I called out to you' -- even though as a collective they obviously did."

"Has this ever happened to you?" She turned to face him a little, violet eyes framed in dark lashes, surrounded by caramel brown skin and pale hair. An unlikely beauty, even for a Magellen. "Is that how you know, uncle?"

For an instant, her own nascent empathy felt his desire to show her -- to show her that which he knew she wouldn't understand. Then it faded and the veil dropped once more. Inexperience prevented her still from truly seeing into her Uncle's soul. "Yes," he said simply. "It has happened to me. Come... You must be hungry."

"Oh no, Paulos!" Her protest came swiftly on the heels of that - she'd been so very close that time! "I just came from dinner... not that I could eat much but -- oh please uncle! Tell me what happened -- you answered that call, I can tell!"

"And so will you," he said simply, still walking. "For the same reason I did. It will form you and shape you as it must. For that is the reason we are Magellen. To serve, and through that service to be shaped into what we must yet become."

From his pantry he pulled down bundles of grapes and other fruits, and vegetables and grains. And with with swirling of a mere finger he produced a paste for dipping. A wave of the other brought forth wine and goblets, and an imperious gesture laid them out on a low table surrounded by low couches.

"Come and eat, dear. Your mother will never forgive me if I fail to feed you."

"She's never going to forgive you anyway," Qamala grumped, but did as he'd bade her, popping a grape into her mouth and talking around it as she chewed. "How do I find them? This somehow can't be another exercise in firing my bow, and following the arrow to where it lands," she asked, referencing her decades-long obsession with traveling Eden in just such a manner.

"Why not?" He asked, tasting of a piece of seasoned dried bread and sauce. "What makes you think all those decades of doing just that were a mere childish waste?" He cast he a rueful grin. "You suffer from the delusion that events have meaning. The truth is, an event is just an event. How you participate in it -- that is what gives it its meaning, its importance. From where I sit, your exercises in chasing your own curiosity seem to have been good training."

"See, that's why my mother will never forgive you," Qamala laughed, tossing a grape at him and not batting an eye as it settled politely onto his plate instead of landing in his beard. "You encourage me." Then she sobered, and asked the question again. "I am serious, Paulos. They are calling me. How am I to find them?"

"Shoot another arrow," he shrugged indifferently. "Delusion number two: You think you can fail, that you might `do it wrong'." He tossed a grape back at her. It hit her in the nose. "Your mother is right. All choices have consequences. Where she gets lost is in assuming that there is a `right' and a 'wrong' choice. That's arrogant. Even the most wise cannot see all ends. So who are you, or I, to say the consequences of a choice are `bad' or `good', to call them a `success' or a `failure'?"

"How is shooting an arrow going to get me out to the stars? I can fire arrows for the rest of my life and follow each one but I doubt that's going to get me off planet."

The mere thought of that, of leaving Eden to visit the human worlds, to find the kind of adventure that couldn't be had on her homeworld was strangely intoxicating.

"Then I suggest you shoot a different kind of arrow," he drawled teasingly. "Maybe you'll find the right kind of bow in your visions."

"That would be a nice change," she retorted, her mercurial temperament downshifting into a sulk -- or at least the semblance of one. "For them to show me something useful, I mean." Qamala took a handful of nuts and arose from her couch to join Paulos on his, her need for physical comfort driving her. She sat on the edge, then curled up in front of him, sighing quietly. "I wish I was as wise as you. This is all so confusing."

"Yes," he murmured, running his hands over her pale tresses comfortingly. "It is. But you will figure it out -- in time. And you have your people to help you -- though in my experience help is not always helpful," he chuckled, his rich voice vibrating his whole chest.

"You help me," she assured him, snuggling back into him. "Mother is tapping at my mind, wanting to know where I've wandered. It's like she doesn't trust me out of her sight, and I've been all over Eden already. She doesn't understand these visions and she doesn't like it that they frighten me sometimes so she tries to ignore them and get me to do the same thing. And tells me that I was silly to cultivate prophecy as one of my special gifts." After a moment's silence, she asked, "Did you have trouble with yours, when they first came to you?"

He chuckled, and it was a sound like mild thunder inside his chest. "We all have trouble when we're young, loulloudi. I did, your mother did, but we managed to muddle through, making our mistakes -- and paying for them. You will too, and you'll be stronger for it.

"Now... Fetch_ me that golden case over there." He pointed to a case made of gold, into which an intricate filigree had been hammered. It looked both alien and old. "You will be leaving soon. I have a present for you."