DUALITY /#Wattys 2021

Chapter 18

The next hour left Ridley and Alana staring into their laps, dumbfounded. The King talked so long that his pleasant tenor lulled Sannah to sleep.

Ridley couldn't say it, but Alana did. "But—you're lying!" Then she blushed furiously and ducked her head. "Your Highness. Everybody knows nothing like this ever happened. Nobody's even heard of any of this! It's incredible."

"This is what happens when the dumb teach the dumb!" Reb got up and threw his second apple core into the wastebasket so hard the metallic pong resounded throughout the room.

Ridley felt very small. She saw the King shoot Reb a look.

"No, Reb, this is what happens when we turn primary and secondary education over to the Guild to run," said the King. "You have to pay a high fee per semester for grade school, and the workingtowns can't afford it."

The King steepled his fingertips in front of him. "Tell you what," he said. "When all this is over, I'll take the three of you to the museums in the Bowl, and you can see the historical artifacts for yourselves. You'll be my guests. There are books written about it, too. Good God—they must have never taught you about President Abraham Lincoln, or the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Gettysburg Address. Didn't Miss Sheila teach you that in the weekend school? I remember it, when I was there."

Ridley looked at her mother. She remembered that the weekend town teacher used to be Miss Sheila, but Ridley had been very little. She recalled a plump older woman with gray hair braided down her back to her waist. She had been too young to go to school then, and before she was old enough, Miss Sheila lay cold in her grave. And then the troops came, to carry her off to Confederation Gymnastics and their school.

"Miss Sheila died a long time ago," said Alana. "She didn't have a will, and the Guild took most of her books. She owed them money. But, if it's true, why didn't my weekend teacher teach us that, when we were growing up?"

"Maybe she didn't know it, either," said the King. "Alana, let me ask you this. If I own you, like a horse or a cow, and I beat you unless you work for me for free—and the authorities won't let you leave—that's slavery, right?"

Alana nodded. "Of course, it is."

"And then I release you, but I get together with all my cronies and we all decide to pay very, very low wages—as little as we can get away with—so you can't afford everything you need and you can't save anything."

The King leaned forward. "And we make it harder and harder, and more and more expensive, for you to get the credentials you need to move up in my company—because my cronies control all of that, too—so fewer and fewer people can move up into a job where we pay you something. So now just about everyone is stuck on the bottom tier. Because my cronies and I know you need money and you'll take whatever you can get—" he gestured with an index finger— "we make a pact. Everyone pays as little as they can because they can, and we keep the rest for ourselves, even though everyone worked to earn it, Guild and non-Guild. Then we call that 'the labor market' and tell you no one can help it, that's just the way it is. And that it's bad if we do anything to change it."

The King cleared his throat. "I'm not done yet. How many people from the workingtowns actually get their Guildsmanship?"

Ridley thought hard. "Well, from our town ... there was your supervisor, Mom, and then Raneisha did several years ago, and Tomas ... I can't remember anybody else. Can you?"

Alana shook her head. "Not lately. Some people made it when you were very little, and a couple when you were in gymnastics school, but nobody else lately. Rachel went to college, I know that, but it cost her so much they take almost everything she makes, and that's why she started the garden. She had to drop out, and she never got into the Guild."