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produce and sell something for which there’s a demand. What, in this case?”
    “No one specialty. Assorted goods and services. A little tourism and entertainment, though mostly these people are too proud and clannish for that. Handmade items—mainly curio value, because North Africa floods the market with the same kind of art.” (Yes, Kyra thought, each piece unique, individually machine-made according to a self-diversifying program.) “But most of the men here have outside jobs, some fairly high-tech, some not. Gunjins, for instance. This culture has a martial tradition.”
    “Where did it come from?”
    “Part old American. There was a wave of conversions to Islam in, uh, the twentieth century. Especially among afros, I believe. But the ancestors of these folks weremainly Near Easterners, refugees from the Holy League, after the
Befehl
broke down and the Europeans pulled out. Muslims were already unpopular in the West, often discriminated against. This immigration made matters worse. Things got really horrible during the Grand Jihad—segregation, restriction, outright persecution. They were driven in on themselves, their own resources. Naturally, they reacted by emphasizing their cultural identity; you may think they’ve exaggerated it. By the time they could mingle freely, many didn’t want to. Also, by then the tech development curve was rising too fast for a lot of them to catch up. The end result was communities like this.”
    “You do like to hear yourself talk, don’t you?” remarked Guthrie.
    “I’m sorry, sir.” Kyra heard the hurt in Lee’s voice and felt a twinge of resentment on his behalf.
    “Oops,” said Guthrie. “
I’m
sorry. No insult meant. When I haven’t got any effectors, just this damn box, it’s hard to make plain I’m twitting you. You’re a scholar by temperament, you want to explain things in full, sure, fine. I’m an occasional motormouth myself, they tell me.”
    Kyra straightened on her chair. “Maybe we should concentrate less on the past and more on the future,” she snapped. “Our future.”
    “If we aren’t too nervous to make sense,” Lee said unevenly.
    “I don’t think you are,” Guthrie told them. “You’re both first-chop people, with more reserves than you know. Anyway, thinking about things before going to sleep, you’re apt to wake up with a few solutions to your problems.”
    Even he, Kyra thought, required a strange kind of slumber. Certain lines rose through memory to chill her.
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil—
    The prosaic voice hauled her back: “Assume Tahir can get us smuggled out. He warned us that’s about all he can do. We’ve got to plan beyond then. First we’d better reviewthe situation as she is. What should we warn Tahir about? What spoor are we leaving for the cops, and how might we cover it?” The eyes swiveled toward Lee. “Bob, they’ll soon pull your lock code from the file and let themselves into your place. I’m sure you weren’t so stupid as to have an unregistered code.”
    “N-no, sir, of course not,” Lee said. “I’d have been in trouble in case of a spot check or, or anything unusual.”
    “Once upon a time in this country, some men composed a fairy tale and called it the Bill of Rights. It said something quaint about the right of the people to be secure against that kind of thing.”
    “I know. I was educated in a company compound.”
    “Me too,” Kyra murmured.
    “Yeah,” Guthrie said. “One point of friction between Fireball and the government. We resisted having our kids dragooned into the public school system. Well, never mind now. I get grumpy, that’s all.
    “The point is, the Sepo will make a fine-filament sweep of your quarters. Have you left anything to indicate I may have stayed there? Be honest, and don’t be bashful. I won’t think the less of you because you aren’t a cloak-and-dagger pro.”
    Lee frowned, stared into