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needed it.
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    Thenext morning Chain said he couldn’t think of anything else to try. Hanna put her feet up and stared at uninformative displays.
We’re too dependent on databanks,
she thought.
We think if something’s not in there, the something doesn’t exist.
    â€œChain,” she said, “do you know anything about—oh, what is it?”
    She was dredging deep in her memory now. Some casual conversation Jameson had had with a dinner guest one evening, something that interested him; he seemed to be interested in everything.
    Often, Hanna listened to those conversations, even—once she was speaking—participated, but that night her hearing had felt muffled. That night she had only been waiting for the last guest to leave.
    Michael Kristofik had been dead four months. With every part of herself, with a completeness she had never known before, she had loved every part of him—the sunlight, and all the rest of that fractured personality, parts dark or damaged, haunted or lost. She had been deep in the trance of the Adept with him when he died, and all the light she had ever known went out in the moment of his death, and she had been insane with loss. Until she returned to Earth—was returned, like a package no one cared about—to Jameson.
    She still loved Michael, but he had rekindled an almost forgotten flame in her body, and it had not gone out with his death. She was used to being touched, used to being loved; her skin was starved, crying out with need. Desire was back. She desired Jameson with all the heat of their first coupling years before, and she knew she was desired in turn. She knew he thought her beautiful even in the pregnancy that was just becoming visible; she knew it every night when they went to their separate beds.
    There were scarcely any words. They were not necessary; she had hardly taken her eyes from Jameson all evening, and he had known it.
    He came back from saying the last good night and stood in front of her. She began to speak, and he lifted a hand in a slight gesture she knew:
Don’t talk.
He said, “I intend to make you forget him for a while.”
    She would have laughed at anyone else who said that. She did not laugh that night. And, for a while, she forgot.
    Chain was looking at her strangely.
    She got her brain going again.
    â€œFolklore?” she said. “Oral histories?”
    â€œAmir asked me about that,” Chain said. “Sure, every family’s got stories. Mostly lies, though.”
    â€œAre there still Rolands around?”
    â€œLots of Rolands,” he said. “Some moved out to other towns, but there’s plenty around here still. Why?”
    â€œI want memories,” she said. “Things that never made it to the computers. Can you give me a roster of the Rolands who live near Dwar? I’m going to talk to them personally. And, Chain?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œCan you transmit an appeal for help from anyone who might have heard about Mi-o from old stories? And anybody who might have an artifact from her time? What I wouldn’t give for one little, insignificant alien artifact from her time!”
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    During the afternoon, mindful of farm families’ crowded days, she only went to see Amir, who said, “I’d love to see them collect the family stories. Before they’re lost.”
    â€œBut why would they lose them, Amir?”
    â€œBecause they’re stories people tell in limited societies,” Amir said. “Societies—small ones—where gossip is a primary medium, and people say, ‘Do you remember old so-and-so?’ and other people laugh because they do. When that stops, oral history stops. And it doesn’t make it into official records: old so-and-so probably
was
an old so-and-so, and the family’s going to talk about it, but they won’t be eager to put it in a