Harvest of Stars Read Online Free PDF

friendship and more than friendship. I rejoice if we can respond.”
    “The Security Police are after us.”
    Tahir threw back his head and laughed aloud.
“Bismillah!
Why, that makes it all the better!” Immediately he harshened. “Are they close behind?”
    “No, I hope not. I think we have a few hours before they decide I’ve flown the coop. But then they’ll ransack the Theta.”
    “That will take time and much manpower, as large and varied as it is. Will they have reason to guess you are here?”
    “I, I don’t believe so. That is, they’ve kept somewhat of a watch on me, I being Fireball, but I’m nobody important and there are hundreds like me. Many of them are getting raided too. And it was ordered only a couple of days ago.”
    Why was it? Kyra sought comfort in her tiny cup of coffee, hot, thick, and supersweet.
    Tahir stroked his beard. “
Wah
. Then they will not search this quarter early, unless they know you have been in the habit of visiting us.”
    “I visited plenty of other places, in this complex and elsewhere. I don’t remember ever mentioning to—my neighbors, my casual associates—that I went here for anything except a cafe with good food and entertainment.”
    But Guthrie got wind of that, had an inquiry made, and found out that more was involved, Kyra thought. An old fox, all right. Through the fabric of the pack, the case nudged hard against her thigh.
    “You were seen in the corridors today,” Tahir pointed out.
    “Excuse me,” Kyra blurted. “I wonder if I wasn’t noticed harder than he was.”
    The sheikh chuckled. “I am certain of that. It is helpful.”
    “I met two men I know,” Lee admitted.
    “Give me their names later. I will speak to them, and perhaps find them errands in distant parts. As for anyone else, you know we are not friends of the Avantists. If the Sepo ask questions among us, they will probably have to do it at random, and they will get very few frank answers.” Tahir took a cake and munched it as if this were a social call.
    “You can’t keep us long,” Lee said.
    “True. Word would leak out like … like electrons quantum-tunneling through any potential barrier I can raise. But
insh’llah
, I can shelter you until tomorrow, andthen help you proceed. You wish to leave soon in any case, do you not?”
    “Crack, yes! We—that is—” Lee’s gaze dropped to his lap.
    Tahir considered his guests. “What do you feel free to tell me? Bear in mind, what I do not know, I cannot reveal, should worst come to worst and I go under deep-quiz.”
    Kyra shuddered. Tahir noticed. “That will scarcely happen, señorita,” he assured her. “Likelier would I die first, resisting arrest, in such wise that not enough brain is left for them to probe. But let us be cautious.”
    She ran tongue over parched lips. “You have a, a right to know—something,” she stammered. “We, Lee and I, we aren’t simply escaping to save ourselves. If we could explain—” If Guthrie would speak—
    Lee raised a hand. “We can’t go into detail,” he said fast. “That would be really dangerous. But, bueno, you know how friction’s grown between Fireball and the government, till it suddenly claimed to have found evidence that agents of ours were behind the supposed accident that had scrambled the database in the Midwestern Security Center. You may remember how the company offered to cooperate in an investigation, and you certainly know how, regardless, the government occupied our North American headquarters to—probe this and related matters in depth, it announced. The Sepo have been burrowing and snooping since then. Bueno, I can tell you, it’ll be in the news, now they’re going to take over everything of ours in this country.”
    Tahir shaped a soundless whistle.
“Hayâtak!
Will you not then shut down all your operations dealing with the Union? A catastrophe for it, surely. Its economy is in a poor enough state already.”
    Lee sighed. “I don’t understand