Author's note: Sorry for the long delay between chapters but this one has been really difficult to write. I'm still not sure that I haven't dropped a ball somewhere, but I'm sure you'll pick me up on it if I have, so here goes.

Chapter 2

The woman came up to them and smiled at Laura before looking down at Lee, a well-shaped eyebrow raised in enquiry as he gazed at her, half in horror, half in anguish. She stepped closer to him and rested a hand against his cheek.

"Mom?..." he managed to get out as a kind of plea. Laura looked quickly between the two of them as the sliver of memory coalesced into a clear picture in her head of the family photos scattered around the admiral's quarters. This woman was older than Carolanne Adama had been when those photos were taken but even she could see the similarities between the Yangshi and the admiral's ex-wife whom she had never even met. The Yangshi gave Lee a smile of understanding and spoke for the first time. Her voice was soft and clear, with an accent rather like Gaius Baltar's.

"No, I'm not your mother, but I imagine that the resemblance is remarkable. I presume that your name is Adama?" Lee nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

"Yes, my name is Lee Adama…but….how did you know…?" She continued smiling at him as if her presence had not just turned his whole world upside down.

"All in good time, Lee." She helped him to his feet but kept her hand on his as she turned to the rest of the colonial delegation. The contact gave him a strange feeling of comfort that he could not begin to comprehend in light of the incredible revelation that had just been made. He could not think clearly; he kept blinking as if to clear his head but his mind just kept screaming "I'm a Cylon, I'm a Cylon". He focused on the feel of her hand to try and steady himself as she spoke to the others.

"I would like to welcome you all to Earth. I'm sure that you've had a most tiresome journey and I'm sorry that we've not been more welcoming. You must forgive my councillors: they are not unnaturally cautious given our circumstances, but I have no doubts now that you are who you say you are." She turned to the people behind her. "I have seen all that I need to see. Please give our cousins every assistance in their settlement."

Laura almost laughed as the Yangshi's entourage tried to hide their astonishment at this pronouncement, as if she had just asked them to serve their visitors tea instead of housing nearly forty thousand people, but she was feeling too shocked at their almost surreal situation for such mirth. She looked around at the others and realised from their dazed expressions that she could expect little help from anyone else. Tom at least raised an eyebrow at her. She presumed that he was thinking what she was: were these people Cylons? Had they, by allowing themselves to be seduced by Kara Thrace's supposed vision of Earth, lead the fleet straight to the Cylon home world? They needed to get some answers quickly before any commitments to settle on this planet were made inadvertently or any chance of escape was lost. A thought crossed her mind that she really needed to get a message to the admiral to put the fleet on alert, but that was quickly followed by the realisation that if Carolanne Adama was a Cylon it had to call in to question the admiral himself. She thought back to what that first Leoben they had interrogated had said to her.

"Adama is a Cylon."

Perhaps he had been right after all: he had just not told her which Adama. She decided that she had to take the bull by the horns if they were not to be swept up in the fleet's desire to settle on this planet. The situation needed to be played with subtlety and diplomacy, which had never been Tom's strong points, so she needed to take charge before he did. One further glance at Lee told her that he was not going to be of any use to her and, indeed, she felt the need to distance herself from him also, given the question mark over the Adamas. Their reliance on the admiral and members of his "family" had suddenly become quite frightening.

"Madame Yangshi, thank you for your generosity but I think we need a little more discussion before we begin any settlement." Laura tried to use what Lee referred to as her "presidential" voice to establish her authority. The Yangshi looked at her thoughtfully. Laura felt as if she were reading her mind.

"Of course you do. And please call me Eve. Madame Yangshi is so official. Let's take this somewhere more comfortable and I will explain as best I can."

She lead them to a pleasant, sunny garden room with open doors onto a courtyard and view of a lake beyond; it was such a beautiful vista that Laura, who had not seen such a sight in a long time, could not help a sigh of pleasure from escaping. Eve gestured for them all to sit, taking a place next to Lee. She addressed herself directly to him first.

"Firstly I should assure you that neither I nor your mother are Cylons in your understanding of that term, but before I can reveal our exact relationship I need to explain the joint history of our peoples." Lee could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from his colleagues. Her words immediately lifted a weight from his mind, although the careful choice of phrasing still made him uneasy. She turned to address the whole group. "I'm afraid that what I have to tell you is going to change some of the fundamental principles of your beliefs as I understand them. From the information you have supplied to my councillors I understand that you refer to Earth as the thirteenth colony, is that correct?" Laura nodded.

"In fact we should be called the first colony. The colonial peoples are descended from a group of refugees from Earth, not the other way around."

"But the scriptures…."

"Chronicle the journey from Earth to your home worlds. When that journey was made our inter-planetary travel technology was very primitive. The journey took many hundreds of years. Over such a time details get forgotten, history gets misinterpreted, fiction becomes fact. I'm sure that your scriptures are like many of the religious texts that we have had here on Earth: written in metaphorical terms and open to multiple interpretations. I suggest that you look at them again and tell me if they couldn't just as easily document a journey from Earth to the colonies as the other way around."

Laura opened her mouth to immediately contest this statement but then shut it again: despite all her studies of the sacred texts since they had left the colonies she could not think of a single quote to dispute Eve's claim so she remained silent.

"How do you know this? And what does it have to do with my……my mother?"asked Lee.

"During a time known here as the 21st century, the human capacity for scientific experiment was insatiable, matched only by the inability of the different peoples of Earth to accept their differences and live in harmony with each other. It was a time when many human diseases remained untreatable, but when people wanted to live longer, healthier, easier lives and they looked to science to solve all these problems. It lead to research into the fundamentals of life, cellular regeneration and the manipulation of DNA. Despite the attempts of various of the religions at the time to ban or control the research, a full human clone was eventually produced: me. I was the first fully human clone, created from a sample of DNA from the chief scientist's dead daughter."

"But that was thousands of years ago. How come you're still alive? Can you live forever?"

"No, I have a longer lifespan than most humans, about 250 years, but I can be re-cloned. I age like any human but each lifecycle, as I approach death, my tissue is regenerated into the next generation to preserve the cloning DNA and the knowledge that I alone retain. It is a technique that has been passed down through the generations of clones. Each successive clone is still named Eve, which was the name given to the first clone by our creator. It is this continual cycle of existence that has lead to the reverence with which I am regarded by the people of Earth today. I have a unique knowledge of the history of the human race over the last millennia and, unlike the scriptures, my knowledge comes from my own experience, not hearsay and handed-down information. I try to use that knowledge to guide our people to a better future by applying the lessons of the past because I know that all of this has happened before…."

"And it will happen again," supplied Laura, a frisson of fear at Eve's use of the Cylon mantra tingling down her spine. Could this woman be the Cylon's one true God that they continually referred to?

"Yes, unless we learn from our mistakes and change the pattern: that is my ultimate value to the people of Earth. Human history is littered with examples where people have learnt from their mistakes, but with the passing of time those lessons are forgotten or ignored and they make the same mistakes again. I act as a collective memory and conscience so that those mistakes can be avoided in the future, which brings us to perhaps the worse mistake in human history and the connection between Earth and the colonies." She paused for a moment as if to collect her thoughts.

"I was the first but not the only clone. The scientists continued to develop the cloning technique. My re-cloning is a lengthy and difficult process but eventually they were able to develop clones which, while they still aged like normal humans, were able to automatically regenerate. In total twelve of these second generation clones were created, including, for want of a better word, the next version of me. At the same time that this research was taking place, the seemingly interminable religious and political wars between the various peoples of Earth were spiralling out of control to the point where the nuclear holocaust that you have been told about brought life as we knew it on Earth to a catastrophic end. Almost eighty percent of the population were killed immediately in a war of retaliation and counter retaliation. Many more died in the years afterwards from radiation poisoning and the consequences of radiation exposure. It was clear to those that survived that man had all but destroyed this once bountiful planet. Although our experience of space travel was limited at that time, it was decided that an expedition to investigate possible alternative planets beyond our own solar system that could support human life would be mounted. All of the second generation clones were to be part of the expedition, because of their re-generation capabilities, along with a selected number of ordinary young humans who were free from radiation side effects and still able to reproduce. They left this planet precisely three thousand, eight hundred and fifty two years ago. At first we received some messages back from them but these dwindled out after a number of years. The hope of salvation faded and as the generations passed it was forgotten that we had ever sent out explorers into space as we fought to re-build and maintain our lives here on Earth. Except by me: I alone retained the knowledge and the records of the expedition, but there was nothing I could do but wait. The one restraint that the people make on me is that I am forbidden to leave the surface on the planet so I was unable to investigate the fate of the travellers myself. Then I was given a sign that it was time to seek out the path of those explorers. Fortunately in the intervening time our technology had significantly improved and the envoy that I sent was able to pick up the markers left by our original expedition and reach your planets within a few years."

"An envoy? Why didn't he make himself known to the colonial government?" Laura asked.

"I think he felt that he was unlikely to be believed. How do you think the colonial government would have responded to an unknown person declaring that they were from Earth?" She asked with a wry smile. Every one of the colonials knew the answer to that question: He would have been clapped up in the nearest mental institution and left to rot.

"He reached the colonies after the war with the Cylons was over, but he saw indicators that what had happened to our world would soon happen to yours."

"He didn't make any attempt to stop it from happening?" asked the representative from Aerilon in a voice of desperation.

"Again, I ask you what could one ordinary person have done, especially in that post-war environment? He did the best thing that he could. He was able to find evidence that five of the original clones still existed and then he returned here with this information so that we could prepare for your arrival. So you see we have been expecting you for some time." As she finished she looked around at her audience. Their expressions were a mixture of disbelief and confusion, just as she had expected.

"You said that there were twelve clones originally but you only found five. Does that mean there are another seven still out there?" Gaeta asked, obviously thinking of the seven other known humanoid Cylons and voicing the unspoken question of the group.

"There was no evidence that the other seven had survived the journey. We do not know of all the hardships they faced on that journey, but we do know that the regeneration process is severely affected by radiation, severe heat exposure and other extreme conditions. We can only surmise that the other clones were lost during the journey."

"So their regeneration process isn't just downloading like software?"

"Not at all. Some techniques learned in robotics were used in their creation but they were kept fully human. I can assure you that they are not like the humanoid Cylons that you have described at all. Think of the regeneration like a phoenix rising from the ashes. Are you familiar with the legend of the phoenix?"

"Yes. We even use the phoenix as the symbol of our military. It's supposed to have been a symbol from an illustration in the original scrolls of the Gods," Lee supplied, pointing to the "Galactica" badge on Gaeta's uniform.

"I'm sorry to sound sceptical, Eve, but how have these clones remained undetected until a few months ago? I mean people re-generating themselves surely wouldn't go unnoticed." Laura winced as Tom's words dripped with sarcasm. The Yangshi seemed impervious. She looked him square in the eye as she replied.

"You think so? There are only five of them after all. That's an extremely small number in a population of several billion. How many news stories did you hear about mysterious disappearances or missing persons that fade out of the limelight and are never resolved but just become reports gathering dust in a police office? What about the reports of abandoned babies? No one is ever able to trace their parents and so they are taken in and raised by local religious orders, like Galen Tyrol, or adopted like Carolanne Adama and Samuel Anders or raised in orphanages and children's homes like Tory Foster and Saul Tigh." She gazed steadily at Zarek and he was the first one to flush and back down.

"As you can see my information is quite comprehensive." She said with authority, but then relented somewhat. "After the first couple of generations and once they had settled on the colonies I suspect that the knowledge of what they were and where they had come from was lost. My generation process is deliberately detailed to maximise knowledge transfer. The automatic regeneration is by necessity much simpler. The new clone has no knowledge of their previous life unless they are told."

"But you said the clones are fully human too?" He glanced at Lee. "I mean they are able to reproduce normally, right?"

"Oh yes. I believe that were we to analyse the DNA of each member of your fleet we would probably identify some connection to the clones in each sample. With the exception of perhaps a longer lifespan the offspring of clones have no other characteristics of their parent; it just becomes DNA again."

"Even with two clone parents?" She frowned a little at this question.

"We never saw any examples of that. For some reason two clones seemed unable to reproduce together."

"The four..um….clones we have in our fleet all became aware of their status at the same time, although of course they thought they were Cylons. Can you explain that?"

"Although the knowledge of what they are would have been lost from their consciousness, a latent signal would remain in their DNA. I retained enough knowledge of their DNA to have my envoy leave a signal which would activate once they neared Earth."

"It happened at the Ionian nebula. They said it was music," supplied Gaeta. She nodded and smiled almost sheepishly.

"Yes, I did always so love Bob Dylan."

Laura sat back and rubbed her temples. She had a headache building. All of the information that Eve had given them was spinning around and around in her head. She was not sure that she was in a fit state to analyse it rationally. It seemed so plausible yet fantastic at the same time, but there were just too many similarities to the Cylons for comfort. Right now she did not know what to think or whom to trust. She really, really wanted to believe in Eve, but they had been fooled too many times before to let her trust this woman just yet, however spiritual and trustworthy she may appear. If only she were not so damned tired. Again, Eve seemed to know what she was thinking.

"I think that's probably more than enough for you all to take in today. Please accept our hospitality for tonight and we can talk again in the morning. I'm sure that you will have more questions by then and I will arrange for you to have access to my personal archive so that you can review the actual evidence that supports what I'm sure seems a rather unlikely chain of events." This promise definitely raised the hopes of the colonials. To see actual facts and data would certainly be a step towards acceptance and should either establish or banish any link to the Cylons.

"Thank you, you are most kind." Laura stood as the flunky miraculously appeared again and ushered them from the room. Laura swayed, unsteady on her feet, but Eve's hand steadied her.

"Forgive me for the presumption, but if you have the strength I would like you to see one of our doctors immediately. One of the only advantages of suffering the after effects of a nuclear holocaust for many thousand of years is that cancer is now a common but treatable disease on Earth."

"How did you know?" Eve looked at Laura with sad eyes.

"I have seen it too many times to mistake the signs." Laura nodded, too tired and indeed too sick to refuse the offer that had sparked an immediate feeling of hope within her chest.

Lee lingered after the others had left. He still had personal questions that he needed answers to right now. The Yangshi smiled at him encouragingly.

"So my…my mother was one of the five?" he asked.

"Yes she was." Lee swallowed convulsively before asking his next question.

"Could she be alive somewhere on the colonies or with the Cylons?" Eve thought for a moment but shook her head.

"I did wonder the same thing but I think it unlikely, Lee. From what you have told me about the Cylons I believe that if she were they would have identified the link to you and used it to their advantage by now. As I have already told you the clone's regeneration process is very sensitive to radiation. If she was exposed during the attacks then it is likely that she died and did not re-generate. I'm sorry."

"No, it's better this way. I'm not sure I could bare it if we had left her behind and I know that thought would destroy my father. We weren't really that close, better in recent years, but things were….difficult between her and my father when I was younger," he shrugged, hoping that she would fill in the blanks herself.

"Hmm, let me guess. Mood swings, unpredictable behaviour and rages?" Lee nodded in surprise at her perspicuity.

"I'm afraid they are side effects that were never eradicated from those clones. They must have carried through the generations."

"It's a really weird feeling talking to you. I mean you look like her, but otherwise, from what I can tell, you're really not alike at all. I can't really get my head around it. I mean what are we? What is our relationship?"

"Technically, if a scientist were to analyse our DNA he would declare that we were mother and son, but we both know that's not the reality. No one can replace your mother Lee, no matter what DNA they may have."

"No, but I would like to get to know you more if that's OK." He had no idea why he had just asked that; it just felt right.

"I'd like that too." She reached out and stroked his cheek. Lee again felt a sense of overwhelming comfort and peace at her touch. "I was never able to have a son of my own. It is one of my deepest regrets." They smiled at each other in understanding but then Lee stepped away slightly, his cheeks flushed. He knew that he should not get too close to this woman before they were certain of her veracity, but she had awakened a longing in him that he thought he had buried long ago, after his parents divorced and his mother had turned to drink. He felt deep within him that Eve was genuine, but he knew that his people would need more than his feelings as confirmation and he was honest enough with himself to question whether this feeling was being driven by his desire for it to be true rather than any real reason. He thought it would be better if he were able to get away from her for a while and have a chance to think it all through in his own environment. He also had to tackle the issue of informing his father and he felt that was something better dealt with sooner rather than later.

"I really need to talk with my father tonight. I don't want him hearing this from anyone else. So if it's acceptable to you, Madame Yangshi, I would like to return to Galactica this evening."

"Yes, you should go, but come back tomorrow. You can also do a favour for me. I would be very grateful if you could bring with you the woman you call Kara Thrace: I would like to speak with her."

TBC