“In a manner of speaking,” George said.
“Then Steven is my son,” Rachel said, her voice softened in awe. “That explains why I felt so drawn to him.”
“And Julie is my daughter?” Samantha said, a hint of hope in her tone.
“Yes, she is,” Judy said with a smile. “Your natural daughter.”
Julie looked over at Samantha and grinned happily. Samantha smiled back, but only momentarily.
“But if she is my child,” she protested, “why don’t I remember creating her? You said we ‘deposited’ cells in a lab. If I’d given away some of my eggs, I would surely remember it. And I sure as hell would remember traveling across a galaxy to a new planet. Where are all these memories? What happened to us?”
George sighed deeply. “It has always been the policy of this project to send Ixtaurans to Earth with no memories of their home planet. That way, no one could be influenced by what he already knew. Your minds were tabla rasa, ready to absorb all new data.”
“Well, not exactly,” Judy said. “You were given enough information to function in this society, but most of what you know now you’ve taken in since your arrival.”
“Why were we chosen, in particular?” Samantha asked.
“You weren’t chosen, Ch’Mrazi,” Judy said, calling Samantha by her real name. “You volunteered. We all did. This is the most important thing that ever happened to Ixtaura, our major reason for living.”
“This is incredible,” Samantha mumbled. She felt Wil’s hand on her shoulder and put her own on top of it.
“Okay, I get it so far,” Barbara said. “First there were eight other groups. Then group number nine came along to prepare for the coming of these children. But there’s another thing I don’t get. You and George are a couple, both Ix . . . Ixtauran. But I get the impression Eric isn’t Ixtauran. And where’s Samantha’s husband, or mate, or whatever you call him?”
George breathed in a deep, melancholy sigh. “Dead,” he said. “Killed when the last ship landed just off this very coast.”
“I was on that ship!” Samantha cried.
“You came with your husband,” Judy said. “You were chief medical officer and he was head of the biological sciences. This is why you were able to join this society as a doctor.”
“You can explain all that later,” Barbara said. “In the meantime, where do I fit in?”
“It would not have made sense to send our people here cold,” George said. “So the previous wave of Ixtaurans prepared certain ‘receptive’ individuals. You were prepared, subconsciously, to be Samantha’s friend.”
“Was I also ‘prepared’?” Eric asked, gazing at the wife he loved so dearly. It would break his heart to think he had fallen in love with her only because some other being had “arranged” it.
Judy gave him a sympathetic look. “I don’t know. It would be impossible for me to know everyone’s story.”
“How do you know these stories?” Wil asked. “Why weren’t your minds erased?”
“In every generation,” George explained, “there were a privileged few who were allowed to retain their full memories. This was a precautionary matter, in case anything went wrong.”
“Are you those people?” Samantha asked.
Judy and George shook their heads simultaneously.
“No,” Judy said. “That man came here fifty years ago, and lives in a remote part of India. He was aware of the crash which took your husband’s life, Ch’Mrazi. But there was no way of knowing where the remains of the ship and crew were taken.”
Samantha looked at the examination table, where Marty lay asleep.
“No way until Marty started calling to our children,” she guessed.
“We felt the signals,” George said. “We knew Lorraine was calling for help, but we did not understand them until the man came from India. He has the most powerful of all our minds, and he ‘heard’ Marty. He traveled to America to speak with us and reveal the truth. Once we knew, we came here. We have been following you as a group for days, to make certain you are on our side.”
“But what about Marty?” Samantha asked. “Why didn’t he ‘change’ like the rest of us?”
“There was another accident,” Judy said. “Shortly before the ship bearing the children landed, the crew experienced equipment failure. The children had been placed in special pods, each destined to a different part of the Earth. You yourselves were sent in similar pods a decade ago.”