Evening of May 14, 2440
The press had been on Matthew Marmaduke’s property for most of the day. By dinner, they had spread across nearly 15 acres of the south side of the homestead.
More than a thousand reporters, producers and camera crews drifted between outdoor pavilions, bars and food stations, breaking into clusters whenever somebody interesting stopped moving long enough to answer questions. Local officials and business leaders mixed with V’ren officers, administrators and prominent families. Across the road, the Pleasure Park provided an improbable backdrop of trees, rides and recreation grounds to what had become one of the largest press gatherings on Earth.
The V’ren captains everyone had come to see weren’t even there yet. They were due to land the next morning.
Marmaduke was.
Jeff Sykes of The Wall Street Journal caught him between conversations, just as Marmaduke intercepted a passing server and acquired a glass of wine and a samosa.
“Lord Marmaduke, Jeff Sykes, Wall Street Journal. Do you have a moment?”
“Sure, Jeff. Ask away.”
Sykes went straight to the balance sheet.
“Is the ‘Freehold’ designation a legal fiction, a diplomatic hedge or a tax shelter?”
“Before the Collapse, it was just an LLC, like a million others,” Marmaduke said. “Run lean, pay less tax, dodge as much liability as possible.”
He took a bite of the samosa.
“We kept the name out of tradition. But now? It’s a sovereign entity. Same land, same goals. The only real difference is I’m the only shareholder.”
That answer created an obvious governance problem.
“As the only shareholder, how do your people get redress and recourse?”
“Recourse? They can leave.”
Marmaduke took another bite.
“But they usually don’t.”
“Why not?”
“The difference between a ruler and a CEO is that I can’t compel loyalty. I have to earn it. Every day. Food on the table, security on the roads and a future their kids believe in.”
A camera crew slid past behind Sykes. A reporter peeled away from another group and headed toward several V’ren guests. Servers moved through both groups without much concern for who was terrestrial and who wasn’t.
Marmaduke kept talking.
“No bureaucracy, no empty promises. Just performance. If that’s not freedom, it’s at least more honest than pretending a vote every few years changes anything.”
It was the sort of answer that has made Marmaduke unusually difficult to place in a familiar political category.
Sykes had spent much of his eight hours inside the Freehold asking residents about the criticism most frequently made by outsiders, that a territory governed by one man, through contracts he ultimately controls, leaves ordinary people with few meaningful rights.
That wasn’t how residents had described it.
“We’ve been hearing a lot of outsiders talk about the people inside not having any rights,” Sykes said. “I haven’t heard that from any of your people. In fact, I’ve talked to a lot who said just the opposite.”
“Now that’s where contract law comes in.”
Marmaduke pointed out that Sykes himself was already inside the system.
“Every resident, every citizen, has their rights and responsibilities spelled out in writing. Jeff, The Journal signed your visitor visa when you were confirmed as their press agent for this event.”
Then came the part Sykes hadn’t expected.
“You’ve been here about eight hours. If you’re still here in 64 more, you’ll be offered a residency contract.”
“Automatically?”
“You’re staying in my territory. At some point you stop being a visitor.”
The contract, Marmaduke said, would not be negotiated.
“You’ll have a choice. Sign or leave.”
Then the conversation turned from political theory to real estate.
“If you choose to stay, we’ll work out a rental,” Marmaduke said. “The price is based on how useful you are to me. In essence, what you bring to the community determines how much it costs you to live here.”
Sykes asked him to put a number on it.
Suppose nothing else changed. He stayed employed by The Journal, worked remotely and simply decided Missouri suited him.
“Forty-five hundred NewDollars for a studio apartment.”
“That’s pretty pricey,” Sykes said. “My wife and I pay $5,800 for a two-bedroom for us and our two boys.”
“It is pricey, and it’s meant to be that way. I don’t need the money, but TANSTAFL is a way of life here.”
Then Marmaduke asked a question of his own.
“What does your wife do?”
“She’s a nurse practitioner.”
The price changed immediately.
“She’s someone the community could use.”
The $4,500 studio vanished from the conversation.
“So we’re talking a house with three or four bedrooms, a decent-sized yard, a good benefits package, and you could keep working for The Journal.”
Sykes looked at him.
“And what does that cost?”
“One NewDollar a month.”
He made Marmaduke repeat it.
“One?”
“One.”
From $4,500 for a studio to one NewDollar for a family house.
The offer came with a catch.
“So long as she works where we need her to,” Marmaduke said. “You don’t get a dollar rent and then run off to Columbia to work for someone else.”
He lifted his wine.
“Commit, or don’t.”
That may be the simplest way to understand the Freehold’s labor market.
Marmaduke isn’t using cheap housing primarily as welfare. He is pricing housing as an employment incentive.
A remote professional earning his salary elsewhere is useful mostly as another consumer. A nurse practitioner is scarce labor. The difference between the two, in this case, is $4,499 a month and several bedrooms.
“If your interest is real, call my office in the morning,” Marmaduke said.
“I’m certainly intrigued.”
Sykes laughed, but he was doing the arithmetic.
He also knew who would have to hear the proposal next.
His wife.
The question of what happens when somebody accepts Marmaduke’s bargain and believes Marmaduke has failed to keep his side of it was harder.
“What about disputes?” Sykes asked. “If someone believes their contract isn’t being honored, what can they actually do?”
“They can take it to arbitration.”
Residents could choose, Marmaduke said, from three citizens, a randomized jury, the Marmaduke Family Trust or an outside arbiter from Columbia.
“The system isn’t perfect, but it’s built to be fast, fair and local.”
Nearby, another interview ended and the reporters around it redistributed themselves almost instantly. Two headed toward the V’ren delegation. Others began drifting closer to Marmaduke and Sykes.
There were no formal interview rooms here. No podium separated the subject from the press. People simply caught someone walking between food, drinks and conversations and started asking questions.
Sykes went back to the line Marmaduke’s critics quote most often.
People who don’t like his rules can leave.
“Sure can.”
The answer was immediate.
Then Marmaduke added the qualification.
“That might sound flippant to readers in one of the megalopolises, where baseline unemployment hovers around 15% and the safety net depends on overstretched mutual aid. But that’s not the Heartland.”
The Freehold, he said, runs at year-round full employment.
“Not because we mandate it, but because we’ve built something people want to stay for. Housing, food, safety, dignity.”
Leaving therefore means something different here, at least in Marmaduke’s telling.
A resident isn’t necessarily choosing between his system and destitution. Other Heartland communities need workers too.
“The only people that really leave this area are young people looking for an easier way of life that the cities like to promote as their major benefit.”
He looked at Sykes.
“I think you know the truth of that myth.”
Sykes asked whether Marmaduke saw the argument as rural versus urban.
“No. I just know the city is not an easier way to live.”
Marmaduke conceded the strongest part of the urban argument without much resistance.
“You might have greater flexibility in job choices, and if that’s what you need to be happy, that’s fine.”
Then he returned to his own preference.
“I prefer a place with a lot fewer rules and a whole lot more choices about how I live the rest of my life.”
That produced another apparent contradiction.
Marmaduke describes the Freehold as a place with fewer rules while requiring non-negotiable residency contracts. He offers extraordinarily cheap housing, but only when the arrangement serves a Freehold need. His residents have contractual rights against the government, but the government ultimately belongs to him.
The system is simultaneously permissive and demanding.
So Sykes asked another marketplace question.
If the deal was so good, why did Marmaduke still have difficulty attracting workers?
Marmaduke didn’t dispute that he did.
“If you want to move here and have no skills to speak of, or any desire to learn them, there’s not much for you here.”
The Freehold uses incentives such as dollar rents because some occupations remain difficult to fill despite them.
“And yet the youth are still seduced by the promises of an exciting city life.”
By then, the evening reception was getting louder.
Servers slipped through crowds carrying drinks and food. Camera operators repositioned themselves as new interviews formed. Local dignitaries who might ordinarily command a room were discovering what happened when placed beside members of the first extraterrestrial civilization humanity had ever met.
The captains would arrive in the morning.
For now, everyone was working the room.
So was Marmaduke.
Sykes had occupied him long enough that several reporters were now hovering close enough to make their intentions obvious.
He asked one final question.
“Is there anything you want my readers to know?”
For most of the conversation, Sykes had addressed him as Lord Marmaduke.
Marmaduke finally corrected him.
“Just tell them I prefer informality. Titles don’t do the work. People do.”
Then he finished the correction.
“Just call me Matt.”
