“The person we’re looking for would have moved here nineteen years ago,” Luke said. “A girl, eleven years old. Akanah?”
“She was dark-haired. Willowy. Her name was Norika, or Nori.”
“I don’t know,” Reggis said. “Maybe Jiki remembers—did you say the name was Rika? Oh, Twenty-six Down. Who was it that lived there then?
Trobe Saar, I think was her name.”
“Yes!” Akanah said eagerly. “You remember her?
Where did she go? Please tell me she wasn’t one of the fifteen—” “Sure, I remember little Rika. She was shy as a shadow. Wasn’t there very long—one season at most.
The Dormand family moved into Twenty-six Down the spring I transferred to Irrigation. I’m sorry—I don’t know where they all went. That was all a long time ago, you know.”
“Is there anyone else on the street who might know something?” Akanah asked, trying desperately to sustain hope.
“I don’t think so,” Reggis said slowly. “Jiki and I are the last of the old crowd. I guess we’re the only ones who could take looking across and knowing what happened, what’s down there. They just collapsed everything into the holes and covered it over with dirt, you know—” “Thank you, Po,” Luke said. “You’ve been very kind.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help. Do you want to talk to Jiki? She’ll be up from her nap soon.”
“Yes—” Akanah started to say.
“Thank you, no,” Luke said, steering Akanah back toward the landspeeder with firm pressure on her arm.
She looked up at him in puzzlement. “Li—the others-maybe she remembers the others—” “We must have the wrong address,” Luke said, gently pressing that thought into Po Reggis’s consciousness.
“We’ll try over on North Three.”
“That’s right,” said Reggis. “There hasn’t been a Twenty-six on this block for years.”
“I think I hear Jiki calling you,” Luke suggested.
“Well, I need to get back—Jiki’s calling me,” Reggis said, retreating slowly. “Good luck, now.”
“Thank you.”
Akanah waited until the ag tech disappeared into his house, then turned on Luke with fierce indignation.
“Why did you do that? He might have been able to tell us something more!”
“He already told us enough,” Luke said. “Norika lived here for a little while, in the underground half of the house, with a woman named Trobe Saar. And that structure is still down there—it’s just filled in. Wouldn’t she have left a marker for you here when she left? Can you read scribing through the fill?”
“I—I don’t know.” She stepped forward, out of the street and onto the crumbly yellow dirt. “Maybe, if it’s there. Let me try.”
Luke waited and watched as Akanah slowly walked across the buried ruin of the lowhouse several times, pausing here, crouching there, reaching out to touch a small bit of foundation protruding up from the ground.
Her expression offered no encouragement, and in time she sighed deeply, shook her head, and rejoined him.
“It’s the deaths,” she explained glumly as they returned to the bubbleback. “The Current is still tangled here. It’s as if–as if someone made a delicate sand painting, and ten minutes later a meteorite fell right in the middle of it. If there was anything here, it’s gone now.”
“Don’t give up,” Luke said. “I’ve been thinking—a society as orderly as this one keeps records. Let’s find the committee office. I’ll bet some gray-hair there knows everything about everyone who’s ever lived in Griann.”
The Recorder of Assignments and Transactions for the Supervisors’ Committee turned out to be completely hairless—a brand-new fat-bodied TT-40 library droid.
Like all factory-fresh droids, TT-40 was long on formality and short on personality, lacking even a nickname.
They found it busily moving its three spinning data probes from port to port in the U-shaped firewall switchboard that surrounded it.
“We need some information about—” Luke began.
“In accord with Ordinance Twenty Twenty-five, Privacy of Official Records, all requests for current records must be approved by the supervisor of your district, or, for nonresidents, by the general supervisor,” the droid pronounced.
“That’s nice,” Luke said under his breath. “Nosy but discreet.”
“—Commercial requests for historical records must be accompanied by a completed application and bond guarantee. Individual requests for historical records for purposes of personal scholarly or genealogical research will be processed at no charge on a time-available basis-” “Who—stop right there, Chuckles. That’s us,” Luke said. “What counts as ‘historical’?”