A Rumor of Real Irish Tea (Annals of Altair Book 2)

by Kate Stradling

  The six-year-old considered this question but made no definitive response. Revere, on the other hand, caught sight of his young master; he raised one claw to remove a black object from his beak so that he could give a loud, hearty caw in greeting.

  “Hello yourself,” said Hawk as he approached. He held out his hand, and the bird dropped the portable drive onto his outstretched palm. “Shall we go inside?” Revere fluttered to the door. “Happy, do you have the key?”

  Happy pulled on a string around his neck, tucked beneath his shirt. The silver house key dangled from its length, a copy of the original that Hummer carried. Happy had been thrilled to act as its bearer. He jogged forward now and inserted it into the door lock. The door creaked inward on squeaky hinges.

  It was the first house they had rented, and they had only stayed here one night, more than two weeks ago. They had walked by it yesterday evening to scope out whether it would be a safe place to return to after this morning’s adventures. If the GCA minions had discovered it, logically it would be staked out with agents. Instead, it stood empty and the surrounding neighborhood was peaceful and quiet.

  Hawk shut the door and locked it behind him. “Hummer? Honey?” he called, but he received no answer. Happy looked up at him in concern. “Their route was a little longer,” Hawk told him, not wanting to nourish that small panic that was welling up in both of them. “You can watch out the front window for them as long as you don’t touch the curtains.”

  He gestured to the sheer white panels that covered a bay window in the room next to the entryway. The curtains, light fixtures, and kitchen appliances had come with the rental, as was standard, but there was no other furniture. Happy obediently stood two feet back, his eyes fixed on the street outside.

  Revere rubbed his beak against the carpet and then flapped upward to perch on the ceiling fan. “Don’t get too comfortable,” Hawk warned him. “You may have to head back out and sweep the area for the others.”

  The raven cawed and began to preen himself.

  Hawk, meanwhile, turned the drive over in his hands, contemplating its contents. He and Hummer had each accessed the GCA’s main computer system back at Prom-F half a dozen times in search of any mention of their parents. It had been a sort of game, not just among them but among the student body in general, to orchestrate some means of accessing an administrator’s work station. Practically everyone had something they wanted to look up, and many of the lesser pranks they played were done with the intent of getting sent to the principal so that they could gain access to a computer in one of the administration offices. The pranks usually involved a nasty mess and a handler that needed a lavatory to clean up.

  He smiled faintly at the memories. Those brief searches had been almost fruitless, except to familiarize them with the main system itself. Most of the Prom-F administrators didn’t have clearance high enough to access any sensitive files. Principal Gates did, but accessing his computer when he was logged on was next to impossible. Unlike many of his underlings, he actually logged off whenever he left his office.

  Hawk seriously doubted that the accounting department in the Central Phoenix branch of the GCA had clearance any higher than that of the Prom-F administrators. Back at Prom-F, he and Hummer had been looking for any information on their parents, though. Now they had another search term. There had been little of value on James and Sara West. Would the information on Altair be worth the risks they’d taken to get it?

  He would have to wait until Hummer and Honey got back to find out.

  By splitting up, they reduced the risk of everyone getting caught. By sending the stolen information ahead with Revere, they helped ensure that one of them would get to look over its contents. Hummer had their best means of looking at it packed among his things, though: a five-year-old laptop they’d acquired in a pawn shop the week before, probably for less than the owner had paid for it, thanks to Honey’s brilliant (and completely unfair) negotiation skills. It ran sluggishly and had only a bare number of programs, but it would be good enough. If Hummer didn’t return—which he would, Hawk thought adamantly—the only other option would be a computer lab, either in a public school or a library.

  Hawk didn’t want to take that option, but a glance out the window showed him an empty street beyond. There was no sign of his little brother and sister.

  His nerves were more on end than he realized. A noise at the back of the house made him jump, and he called a warning to Happy as he went to investigate. “Stay here! Keep watching!”

  The noise had come from the back door, situated in the kitchen. The handle jiggled and turned just as Hawk slid into the room.

  “Oh, good,” said Hummer, poking his head inside. “You’re already here. C’mon, Honey.” He turned and beckoned behind him.

  Hawk watched through the window as his sister emerged from some bushes by the back fence. “The front door wasn’t good enough for you?” he asked.

  Hummer grunted. “We thought it better not to hazard someone seeing two pairs of kids on the street only a few minutes apart. Why? Were you worried?”

  “Happy was,” said Hawk.

  The six-year-old appeared from the front room and threw his arms around his sister with a joyous squeal.

  Hummer’s face broke out into a grin. “Well, if Happy was, you were too. Sorry. We came as quick as we dared.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “No. You?”

  “None that I saw.”

  “Did Revere get here all right?”

  Hawk held up the portable drive. “I told you he would.”

  “You can’t blame me for having my doubts,” Hummer said as he swiped the object. “We just entrusted everything we risked ourselves for to a bird. He’d only seen this house twice.”

  “He’s a smart bird,” said Hawk. From the front room, Revere cawed.

  “Come on,” Hummer said, amused. “Let’s go find out what we got.”

  Together the four marched into the back bedroom. Hummer quickly extracted the thin computer and plugged it into an electrical outlet.

  “Is anyone else hungry?” Honey asked. “All those references to waffles this morning kicked up my appetite.”

  “We don’t have waffles, and we have no way of getting them,” said Hawk. “And no, we’re not going to go buy some. After this morning’s escapade, I think it’s best we lay low for the rest of the day.”

  Honey pettishly crossed her arms. “I didn’t say we had to have waffles. I just said talking about them made me hungry. I’ve got… let’s see…” She dug through her backpack as she listed off the contents. “Graham crackers, a box of malted milk balls, and… Oh! There’s the rest of our popcorn from yesterday.”

  “You saved that?” Hummer asked.

  “I thought Revere might like it,” Honey said.

  The raven, on alert when food was involved, hopped into the room with an eager little cackle. Honey extracted the crushed theater tub and set it on the floor for his eating pleasure.

  “I also have a couple more candy bars from the concessions stand and a half a box of granola bars,” she said. “Oh, and two apples here at the bottom.”

  “I’ll have one of those,” said Hawk, “or split it if someone else wants half.”

  “Hummer’s got the knife,” Honey said as she slapped the apple into his outstretched hand. “Happy, you want to split an apple with Hawk?”

  Happy was busy watching Revere extract the contents of the popcorn tub, enthralled by the bird as always. He nodded absentmindedly. Hummer obligingly produced a midsized pocketknife from his pack and handed it to his older brother.

  As they prepared and distributed snacks, Hummer kept his attention fixed upon the sluggish computer. He inserted the portable drive and began rooting through the copied files.

  “What’d we get?” Hawk asked, almost dreading the response.

  “A twenty-year-old memo from the then-head of the GCA to an undisclosed recipient or recipients,” Hummer said. “Presumably the syst
em deemed it old enough to downgrade its classification status. Listen to this: ‘The organization known as “Altair” must be seen as hostile to our goals and treated accordingly. It is to be classified among the subset of organizations described in Title III, Section 303(a) of the Federal Domestic Security Act of 2026, and treated according to (b) of that same section.’”

  “Gibberish,” said Hawk.

  “Luckily,” said Hummer, “another of the files we got was a copy of the Federal Domestic Security Act of 2026. Someone must have gone back and tagged it as pertaining to Altair. Let’s see… Title III, Title III… Here we are: ‘Title III: Intellectual, Philosophical, and Ideological Insurgents.’ That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Oh!” cried Hawk with sudden realization. “That’s the information-control act. It’s the one that makes you a terrorist if you think differently than the government does.”

  Hummer’s eyebrows shot up, and he immediately returned his attention to the screen. “Section 303 is titled ‘Ideologically Insurgent Persons and Organizations.’ Well, doesn’t that look promising? ‘(a) Any person or organization that espouses or encourages others to espouse an ideology that runs counter to the established laws of the nation may be deemed ideologically insurgent and shall be viewed as a threat to national security.’ Blah, blah, blah, legalese. Basically all this says is that if you preach anything contrary to what they want you to, you’re a traitor.”

  “So much for free speech,” Honey muttered.

  “Incendiary rhetoric can lead a lot of people to do stupid things,” said Hawk. “At least, that’s how they justified it. The anti-political fervor of the time was so high that they equated speaking out against the government with yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

  “In other words,” said Hummer grimly, “speech is only free if the government agrees with what you’re saying. Otherwise, you’re calling for insurrection. The (b) section here just references some other law on how to prosecute and punish any person or organization that falls under the (a) section. Public Law No. 118-217, it says here, but it doesn’t give any other title or reference.”

  “I don’t think we’re really interested in the punishment,” said Hawk. “It’s enough to know that ‘Altair’ refers to an organization that the government deems ‘ideologically insurgent.’ Did we get anything else?”

  Hummer typed a couple of commands into the computer. “Another memo a couple years later: ‘Any GCA personnel affiliated with an insurgent organization (such as Altair) must be terminated immediately’—I hope that means terminated as in fired and not terminated as in killed—‘and all work and personal effects must be confiscated and classified until they have been determined harmless.’ So there were members of Altair working for the GCA at one point, apparently. It must have been a fairly persistent problem—there are two more memos here where they’re discussing what to do. ‘Altair must be wiped out of existence,’ this one says.”

  “Someone struck a nerve,” said Hawk wryly.

  “Listen to this last one: ‘The current administration has determined that insurgent organizations such as Altair must be isolated and marginalized, so as to discourage any recruiting efforts. From this time forward, any mention of the name on GCA premises will be considered a violation of this decision, and the offending party shall be dismissed from service within the agency and subject to interrogation regarding their knowledge of the organization.’”

  “What exactly does that mean?” asked Honey with a confused frown.

  “Pretend it doesn’t exist, and eliminate anyone who says it does,” said Hawk. “It’s kind of the same tactic Prom-F took last year when a couple of students made a compost pile by the back field explode. The grounds crew cleaned up any evidence that it had ever happened, and anyone who asked questions about it was sent to the principal’s office.”

  “Did they catch the students?” Honey asked.

  Hawk and Hummer exchanged a telling glance. “No,” Hawk said slowly, “not on that particular occasion.”

  “So it was you two?”

  “No,” said Hawk. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “It wasn’t meant to explode like that,” said Hummer. “Pierce and I miscalculated the chemical components of the pile and how much heat it was actually producing.”

  Honey closed her eyes as though a sudden headache had descended on her. “And why exactly did you want to blow up a compost pile to begin with?”

  Hummer looked like she had asked him why he wanted to breathe. “Because it was there. We were learning about organic decay in one class, and combustible elements in another, and that was the perfect way to field-test what we were being taught in both classes together. It didn’t make that much of a mess.”

  “It left burn marks in the grass as far as fifty feet away,” Hawk said. “That wasn’t really the point of bringing up the story, though. The point was that the administrators didn’t give the incident any sort of publicity. They hushed it up to keep anyone else from trying the same thing. That sounds a lot like what this memo is saying to do about Altair. Are there any other files?”

  “Just one more,” said Hummer. He brought up the final document. “This one doesn’t make any sense at all, though. It’s just a huge list of words and phrases. I don’t know what it has to do with Altair, or with anything at all.”

  “What phrases?” asked Honey.

  “Ones that don’t even make sense: aerial theirs, earthrise ail, hairier tales, a saltier hire, a trashier lie, I the rare sail, her a teal iris, the air is real… There are… hundreds… thousands… Holy cow, this list goes on forever.”

  “And what’s any of it got to do with Altair?” Hawk asked.

  “What’s any of it got to do with anything?” Honey corrected.

  Suddenly a smile broke across Hummer’s face. “Well, I can answer Honey’s question at least. They’re all anagrams of the file’s name: Real Irish Tea.”

  “Real Irish Tea?” she echoed in skepticism.

  “Yeah, they all use the same letters,” said Hummer. Then, “Hang on.” He snatched a notebook and a pencil from his bag and jotted a couple of phrases on the first blank page. Quietly he tapped the tip of his pencil against the letters in different orders. An ironic chuckle escaped his lips.

  “What?” Hawk and Honey asked together.

  Hummer looked up with a faint, rueful smile. “Altair is here,” he said, and he pointed to the screen. “Every phrase listed in this file can be rearranged to spell ‘Altair is here.’ Coincidence?”

  “Doubtful,” said Hawk. “So what, we just came across an old code or something?”

  “Looks like it,” Hummer said.

  “That and a handful of old memos was hardly worth risking capture over,” said Honey glumly.

  The two older boys exchanged an uncertain glance. “You never know,” said Hummer. “It may come in handy someday.” Even he didn’t sound too sure of himself, though.

  XIII

  On the Road Again

  July 31, 11:53am mdt, in transit to Great Falls, MT

  Emily stared out the window, sincerely hoping that it would be the last time she saw the endless crop fields that lined the highway into Great Falls. She had only faint cause for that hope—arriving to discover all of her belongings had been shipped from New York had pretty much solidified that she was at Prom-F to stay—but Principal Jones’s pointed warning had been aimed as much at her as Oliver. Perhaps, if everything went well this time, she too could be reinstated at Prom-A. If they could track down the Wests quickly and efficiently, it might offset all the misery of the past month.

  But who was she kidding? These kids had already outsmarted the GCA several times over. There was no point in getting her hopes up.

  Her gaze shifted from the window to the other passengers: Oliver, Quincy, Quincy’s new handler Alyson (who was enthused to be leaving Prom-F for the first time in fourteen months), and Ben Birchard. Emily was surprised that he hadn’t opted to ride with Gene
ral Stone in the other car. He sat up front with Maggie, who was driving, but even from behind it was obvious that he was brooding. The so-called promotion had blindsided him.

  From Emily’s limited perspective, there wouldn’t be much difference between working for Principal Jones and General Stone. Both were stringent, austere people who probably demanded job performance beyond what most of their underlings could accomplish. Ben had excelled under Principal Jones, so there was no reason he wouldn’t do the same under General Stone.

  But then, being yanked from administering at the Prometheus Institute into serving under a military leader had probably never figured into Ben Birchard’s career ambitions. He might not view it as a promotion at all. In that case, why had he not utterly refused?

  Emily determined not to feel sorry for him. He was slippery as an eel, so he would squirm his way out if the situation truly disagreed with him.

  The other occupants of the vehicle were quiet. Oliver pretended to read a textbook, but he hadn’t turned a page in a full five minutes. Quincy, subdued, clasped her hands in her lap and only hazarded fleeting glances at the window. She looked like a prisoner being sent on work release, with plans to escape dancing through her enterprising mind while she did everything she could not to let it show on her face. Or so Emily guessed. The girl had worn a shell-shocked expression when she came down from her dorm to the waiting van. It didn’t completely fade until an hour into the drive.

  Her new handler, Alyson, was just over a year into her Prometheus internship and had served the whole of it at Prom-F. She was a jittery person, small in stature and wary of her surroundings. Emily wondered if she’d suffered one prank too many from her precious little charges, or if that disposition was natural. Her excitement manifested in her hands, which seemed unable to keep still for more than a few seconds at a time. The occasional flash of anxiety crossed her face, as though she feared that the treat now dangled before her might suddenly be snatched away.