Rich Man's War (34 page)

Tanner
knew some of the president’s favorite rhetorical techniques. Aguirre liked assertive language. Aguirre’s most talented speechwriter preferred to offer solid statistics and use names rather than allusions. He would have known what to listen for, had his attention not drifted from the speech to thoughts of the woman who likely wrote a good deal of it.

From his seat
in the second row of the balcony, Tanner couldn’t expect to see everyone, but his eyes scanned the lower level and the spaces around the dais for Andrea. He could think of any number of reasons why she wouldn’t be in view: she could be off in the wings handling media relations, or already on site at the ballroom, or perhaps the media rumors had been wrong and her shuttle hadn’t come back from Earth yet. Tanner recognized plenty of faces: cabinet secretaries, planetary governors, Admiral Yeoh. Yet he didn’t see Andrea anywhere.

Am I not
over this?
He hadn’t given her all that much thought until the captain all but ordered him to attend tonight. Tanner had deliberately stopped watching her press appearances after their split rather than poke at his feelings. Yet here he sat, scanning the crowd instead of listening to the speech.
It’s not like I don’t miss her. Maybe this is natural? Why
wouldn’t
I think about her right now? It’s not like I can talk to Rebecca until Aguirre shuts up.

He glanced to the woman at his side. She could have all the attention she wanted from him. He was at least far enough over Andrea to move on. Rebecca, for her part, seemed fully engaged in listening to the president. Her eyes were wide with awe.

Tanner looked back to the dais.

“This is not suspicion or conjecture,” said Aguirre. “Analysts from the intelligence sector, academia and a few select domestic firms have applied
these metrics to test results from prior years and confirmed that the same pattern holds true. We don’t know exactly how long this scam has gone on. But we do know that
it is a scam
—that our young people have been robbed by the institutions that claimed to prepare them for adulthood.” His eyes were alive with righteous energy and purpose. “We know that the same patterns apply to students of programs run by Lai Wa and by CDC, and we know that the graduating students of 2276, despite the turmoil of change within their schools, have not fallen so short in their final exams. When called to perform on a fair and level playing field, our students succeed. Our teachers, likewise duped by the scam of the Test, also succeed. Our
schools
succeed—now that they are, in truth,
our schools
.”

Holy shit,
thought Tanner.
What did I just miss?

“My friends, my fellow citizens: we have been robbed. Our
children
have been robbed of their futures. But I can tell you now that this crime has ended—for all of us.

“The leaders of our political parties in the Senate have agreed. We have already given notice to our former corporate ‘partners.’ Tomorrow, as the first item of the agenda, the leaders of all three parties will jointly introduce legislation to relieve Archangel’s citizens of any and all legal obligation under domestic law to fulfil
l any outstanding debt for compulsory education.”

Tanner
suddenly felt something heavy within his chest. Loud applause burst from the audience as the entire Senate and most of the night’s guests rose to their feet. Tanner remained seated.
How can they make that stick? What does any of that actually mean?

“They will claim we have defaulted on our debts,” Aguirre said, raising his voice to speak over the applause, which eventually quieted—but the audience remained
standing. Tanner rose so he could see Aguirre. “They will shout from every mountaintop that
we
are destroying the economy of the Union, that
we
are bankrupting our children, that
we
have forced this situation. Yet we cannot turn a blind eye to corruption and greed of this magnitude. We will not be party to an economy based on lies at the expense of our youth.

“If the other systems and states of this Union are wise, if they are honest and true to their people, they will join us in this effort. We will bring these thieves to justice. Our stance will naturally force many to confront this crime, whether they like it or not. And when they
face that confrontation, we will lend our voices and our support.

“We stand strong with the Union. We stand firm in our commitment to a common diplomatic effort toward our alien neighbors, and we stand firm in the common defense of humanity. But we will not pay for the privilege of being robbed!”

Again, the president’s passion was met with thunderous cheering and applause. “Can you believe this?” asked Rebecca.

He breathlessly shook his head. He couldn’t believe it at all. His understanding of economics
only went as far as the twelfth grade could take him. Tanner couldn’t begin to know the implications of this.

How much will this hurt us? How much will it hurt
them
? This will go all over the Union. Can those companies even survive?

What will they do if they can’t?

His eyes drifted over the crowd. Almost everyone clapped and cheered. Almost.

Admiral Yeoh stood, along with everyone in her section, but
she didn’t applaud.

* * *

“What’s the live reaction tracking look like?” asked Andrea. She strode into a side hallway to the rear of the Cathedral, dressed for the ball like everyone else, but she and her staff were all business. A dozen men and women stood with holo screens open before them, all watching and analyzing media reactions and live polls.

Not all were her people. Some of them were borrowed from Victor’s department. They weren’t all media experts, but they could watch and relay data, and they all shared a vested interest.

“We held at 54% favorable until the big reveal,” answered an assistant to her left. “Then we jumped all the way to 87% and stayed!”

“Jumped? Not spiked?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Andrea. He jumped to 87 and then leveled off,” he grinned.

“What are the media outlets saying? Jenny?”

“Holt News is already saying the president couldn’t do any less,” said a woman to Andrea’s right.

“Warner Media has the Test script laid out on a split-screen with their anchor,” relayed another woman without prompting. “They’re showing the same stuff you showed us and they’re analyzing on-air. They started as soon as the data packet hit, so I guess they had someone on hand—“

“The
Trumpet’s
guy is asking if the Heritage party sold out the system to the president,” called out a young man down the hall.

“Of course he is,” replied Andrea, not bothering to roll her eyes. “Dennis? You’re watching Uriel Media, right?”

The somewhat heavyset staffer chuckled, looking up from his screen. “Yeah, it’s pretty great. Sherman Deng might have a stroke. He’s just saying, ‘Ur, ur, ur…’”

“Excellent, put that in a clip and route it to me,” Andrea smiled. With her voice raised to maintain an air of command, she said, “
Unless anyone has something urgent for me, I think I can cut you all loose for the festivities. But remember the briefing points, because any one of us or anyone we talk to tonight might wind up in front of a reporter. We don’t want to go off page and we do not want to speculate. I don’t want to read anyone’s wild-assed guesses in the news, okay? Stay on message.”

“Andrea?” asked her assistant as the group broke up. She moved in close enough to afford a little privacy. “Something you should know: Tanner is here
.”

“H
e has an Archangel Star,” shrugged Andrea. “He gets to come to these as long as he’s alive. Unless he showed up without pants or roaring drunk, I don’t need to hear about it, okay?”

“No, no, I get it,” Ellen said, having fully expected this. “That’s not the problem. It’s his date.”

“Why? Ellen, I told you, we split, okay? He can come with a date. I’m here with a date. It’s nobody’s business. Nobody’s gonna care who he’s seeing after the bombshells the president dropped tonight. What’s the problem?”

“He pulled Rebecca Krause off the red carpet line and brought her in,” Ellen hissed. “Live. On the air.”

That stopped Andrea dead in her tracks. “He did
what?
”

* * *

“Name three forms of art originating in the 20
th
Century that remain in widespread practice today.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. Let’s see. Cinema,
rock’n’roll music, and… oh hell, I don’t know. Wasn’t graffiti a big thing in the Twentieth?”

Several of the well-dressed men and women around the round table shared a chuckle at the answer, but Tanner didn’t laugh. “Come on, Jim. Graffiti?” asked Jonathan Hartmann. “You don’t think anyone wrote profanity on walls before the 1900s?”

“Gah. Well, no, but the elaborate paintings,” said Jim Bowers, Chairman of Archangel’s Independent Shipping Guild. “Isn’t that the point where people started making it into real art?”

“It’s not a bad answer,” said Tanner, shaking his head, “as long as you get to justify it. But
the Test never gives you that chance. You don’t talk to the scorers.” He glanced across the table of fine dinnerware and wine glasses to Bowers. “So that answer gets thrown out. And motion picture tech had its roots in the 19
th
Century, with the first public showings happening in 1896. It might not be ‘cinema’ as we think of it today, but technically that means they get to mark you down for that answer, too.”

“You knew that off the top of your head, Tanner?” grinned Rebecca, sitting beside him.

“I knew it because my answers on that question were rock’n’roll, surrealist painting and gangster movies,” Tanner shrugged. “After the score I got on the Test, I looked up every single answer I could remember. That’s how I know they could parse and throw out practically every answer that involved motion pictures.”

“Surrealist painting?” Bowers wondered.

“My step-mother’s an art teacher. I should’ve leaned on that for all three choices, but obviously rock’n’roll is correct. Unless they want to argue what ‘widespread’ means, or if modern rock’n’roll is the same form of music. All they need is one random ‘expert’ to claim it isn’t, though, and then they’ve got a case.”

“How much did that cost you?” asked
Hartmann.

“I don’t know what individual wrong answers cost,” Tanner shook his head. “Nobody does. That’s part of the problem. But a
ll together? I wound up owing them a lot. Or so my score said. Bastards.”

“Was the whole Test like that?”

“A lot of it. I’ll admit I got a few things wrong. I knew I goofed a couple of math questions. And I got a question that wanted me to name all the planets in Archangel, and—“

“You got
Ophanim mixed up with Anselm, didn’t you?” Hartmann smiled.

“Yeah,” Tanner sighed, “I did.”

“You used the children’s song to remember? Yeah. Everyone gets it wrong when they use that stupid song. Happened to me in school, too.”

“I don’t blame you for being bitter,” sighed Jim’s wife, Evelyn. Tanner knew her name from several famous High Court cases he’d studied in school. If anything, she was more famous than her husband. “Our daughter took the Test the same year you did. I gave her such a hard time for owing sixty-eight hundred credits.” Tanner choked on his mouthful of food, but no one seemed to notice. “I feel awful about that
now.”

Swallowing hard, Tanner managed to ask, “Was your daughter in the Society of Scholars program?”

“Yes,” said Evelyn brightly, “right from the start!” Then her brow furrowed. “Although I suppose that whole program was as dirty as the rest of this. We certainly paid enough for it.”

Let it go
.
She’s a nice rich lady. Her rich daughter is probably perfectly nice, too. It’s not a crime to be rich. Let it go. Let it go.
“Well, I think we all got a lot less than we paid for,” Tanner agreed.

“Rebecca,” said Bowers, “you won’t go quoting me on that graffiti answer, will you?”

Another round of chuckles swept the table, though this time Jim plainly intended that. “No quotes,” Rebecca assured him. “I’m not here to ambush anyone.”

“Sure, sure,” Evelyn
scoffed.

“No, it’s true,” Rebecca laughed back. She gestured to Tanner. “Would
you
have turned down an invitation like this? I’ll admit that I might find tonight extremely informative,” she teased, “but I won’t be naming names or even hints of names. I’m not here to pick a fight with—Andrea Bennet, hello! You look wonderful!”

Andrea
rounded the table with a graceful stride, throwing Tanner a quick glance and a cryptic smile, but her attention focused first on Rebecca. “Coming from you, that’s high praise,” she said. “I haven’t caught any of your entrance coverage yet, but you’re never one to hold back.”