Evening of May 14, 2440
“Astra Quint,” she said, extending her hand. “Vanity Fair. I promise no questions about which alien princess is wearing your shirts to breakfast.”
Astra was still wondering what was in the drinks circulating through the pavilion and whether marrying the bartender was a practical option.
Matthew Marmaduke shook her hand without hesitation, the corners of his mouth lifting just enough to suggest amusement.
Around them, the reception continued to pulse. Light acoustic rock drifted from a corner stage beneath the conversation. Servers threaded through knots of reporters, local dignitaries and V’ren guests carrying chilled drinks, skewers and smoke-sweet hors d’oeuvres. Paper lanterns moved gently in the evening air. Somewhere near the dessert station, somebody laughed hard enough to turn heads.
“I appreciate the restraint,” Matt said. “I hadn’t heard that rumor yet. Though it does assume I’m getting laid.”
A few reporters within earshot laughed.
Astra smiled. He had just guaranteed that at least three of them would repeat it.
“But I do have a real question,” she said. “You’ve cultivated a mythos. Farmer, father, philosopher king. You reject titles, but accept oaths. You flirt with power, then hand off the mic.”
“Sometimes literally.”
“So tell me straight. Is this leadership by example, or narrative control? Because a lot of people are starting to wonder if Missouri didn’t just get its own monarch with better boots.”
Matt glanced toward the edge of the crowd.
“See the tall pretty girl with the long dark hair, next to the blond?”
Astra followed his gaze.
“She is beautiful. Is that your…”
“No.”
The interruption was light but immediate.
“That’s my goddaughter, MJ. Also not into guys. She’s probably the source of the shirt rumor.”
Astra looked back at him.
“How?”
“She’s been stealing my hoodies and sweatshirts for months. Once the buzz gets loud enough, I fully expect to find them listed for sale somewhere.”
“You think she’d sell your clothes?”
“The girl will do almost anything to avoid doing her laundry, including taking mine.”
Astra laughed.
“Fine. No alien princess.”
“Thank you.”
“But you didn’t answer the question.”
“I lead by example.”
Matt accepted a samosa from a passing tray and held it for a moment like punctuation.
“That means fixing what’s broken, taking the first hit when something fails and stepping back when somebody else is better for the job.”
He took a bite, chewed, then reached for a sweating glass of iced tea.
“But narrative control?”
Astra waited.
“I want it.”
That answer came without embarrassment.
“Because the alternative is letting people who’ve never stepped foot here define what this place is. If managing that perception gives my staff, my family and my citizens a better shot at living normal lives in an abnormal world, I’ll take that trade every time.”
Astra glanced around the pavilion.
Normal was doing considerable work in that sentence.
A V’ren toddler was tugging insistently at a nurse’s sleeve near the garden path. Two local businessmen were arguing happily with a V’ren officer over something on a tablet. Camera crews drifted from conversation to conversation, following whichever human or alien had become interesting in the last thirty seconds.
“Performance is survival,” Matt said. “Satisfaction is retention. That’s the real check on power.”
“You actually measure that?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“Access helps.”
Astra raised an eyebrow.
“Access to you?”
“Among other things. Any citizen can demand a meeting.”
“Demand?”
“Demand.”
“And get one?”
“Yes.”
“How quickly?”
“That depends on when they became citizens.”
That was not the answer she expected.
Matt motioned toward another passing tray, selected a bao and offered Astra the next one.
She took it.
“My grandfather had about a thousand citizens,” he said. “If you became a citizen under him, twelve hours was a plausible guarantee.”
“And under your father?”
“Three days.”
“And you?”
“I’ve got around twenty-five thousand now. I guarantee a week.”
Astra stopped chewing.
“A personal meeting with the sovereign within seven days.”
“If they insist on me, yes.”
“That’s generous.”
“That’s the point.”
“How often do they actually wait a week?”
“Not often. Most requests are handled within forty-eight hours, usually by somebody better suited to solve the problem than I am.”
“But they can still reach you.”
“They can always reach me.”
The music changed behind them. A dobro picked out the opening of “Into the Mystic,” slow enough to disappear beneath the conversation unless someone was listening for it.
Matt continued.
“We use the Freehold App for a lot of it. We don’t just sit around waiting for complaints either. Residents, citizens, contract workers, transients, we check in.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Problems before they become expensive.”
“That sounds less ominous than I expected.”
“It should.”
“Disputes?”
“Yes.”
“Migration?”
“Yes.”
“Productivity?”
“Sure.”
Matt took another drink.
“Emotional drift.”
Astra’s eyes narrowed.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The phrase that’s going to make half my readers imagine you have a Ministry of Feelings.”
Matt laughed.
“It means people behave differently before they leave, before households break apart, before employees burn out, before a community gets angry enough that somebody should have noticed.”
“You track individual emotional states?”
“No. Patterns.”
“Through the app?”
“Some of it. Requests. Complaints. missed commitments. people withdrawing from things they normally participate in. Staff observations. Community managers. Nothing mystical.”
“But somebody is watching.”
“Somebody should be.”
Astra considered him for a moment.
“You realize that answer is going to make people uncomfortable.”
“People are allowed to be uncomfortable.”
“You don’t mind?”
“I mind when they’re wrong.”
That was very nearly a smile.
“So satisfaction is a governance metric.”
“It’s one of them.”
“And audited?”
“Internally and externally.”
“Why?”
“Because if everybody around you is afraid to tell you your system sucks, eventually your system sucks and you’re the last one to know.”
Astra laughed.
“That sounded practiced.”
“I’ve had relatives.”
“Fair.”
The reception flowed around them. A baby began fussing nearby, and its mother excused herself from a conversation with two V’ren women. Laughter rolled across the northeast terrace. Servers replaced empty glasses almost as quickly as they appeared.
Astra shifted the interview.
“But the system still runs through you.”
“Yes.”
“If something happens tomorrow, who takes over?”
Matt didn’t hesitate.
“I took over when I was thirteen.”
“After your father died.”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t exactly prepared.”
“No thirteen-year-old is.”
“But you did it.”
“I learned fast.”
“And your succession?”
“I’ve had named successors since I was seventeen.”
“Plural?”
“I plan for contingencies.”
“Who?”
“No.”
Astra smiled.
“Had to ask.”
“Of course you did.”
“Does the family know?”
“Not even the family trust.”
That interested her.
“You deliberately conceal your successor from your own family.”
“I deliberately conceal my successor from people who might think they have useful opinions about my decision.”
“Or agendas?”
“Especially agendas.”
He said it pleasantly.
“My current choices are adults, and I’ve designated a mandatory transition team to help whichever succession path gets triggered. But the office doesn’t wait for permission. When I die, the next Freeholder is the Freeholder.”
“No interregnum.”
“No.”
“No vote.”
“No.”
“No regency.”
“Freehold law doesn’t require one.”
Astra let that sit.
“This is the point where critics use the word monarchy.”
“They use it much earlier than this.”
“You don’t deny the resemblance.”
“I deny the usefulness of arguing about labels when the plumbing works.”
She laughed.
“You really don’t shy from visibility.”
“No.”
“Myth matters to you.”
Matt’s smile returned, smaller this time.
“I’m a student of history. Of course myth matters.”
“So you cultivate it.”
“I respect it.”
“That is a very careful distinction.”
“Because myth without function is just ego.”
He gestured with the glass in his hand.
“This place runs. People eat. Kids thrive. The lights stay on. The sick recover.”
His expression changed slightly.
“And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they die just like the old. Just like all of us will one day.”
Astra said nothing.
“If myth helps people believe the rest of that will still be true tomorrow, I’ll wear the crown.”
He took another sip.
“Just don’t expect me to polish it.”
There it was.
Astra knew the line would survive her notes.
A server passed with another round of the brightly colored drinks she had been avoiding for professional reasons.
Matt took two and handed her one.
Her professional self wanted to refuse it.
The surviving college girl somewhere in the back of her mind wanted one in each hand and somebody to turn the acoustic set into EDM.
She accepted the drink.
“What is this?”
“Bad judgment in a tiki mug.”
“That explains the press corps.”
“Some of them.”
She took a cautious sip.
Then another.
“That is irresponsible.”
“I know.”
“How strong?”
Matt looked down at his own bourbon punch and winced.
“Strong enough that I’m becoming concerned about how much of my overproof stock is disappearing into journalists.”
“That sounds like a tomorrow problem.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Astra glanced around again.
The event had shifted almost imperceptibly deeper into evening. The lanterns were brighter now. Across the road, the Pleasure Park glowed behind the trees. Human and V’ren guests moved through the same spaces with less hesitation than they had even a few days earlier.
She looked back at Matt.
“You talk about function. Continuity. Satisfaction. Myth.”
“Sounds exhausting when you list it.”
“You’ve also spent this week talking about people staying.”
“Yes.”
“Especially the V’ren.”
His expression changed at that.
Astra continued.
“They came here because they had nowhere else to go. Refugees, exiles, colonists who never intended Earth to be the destination.”
Matt nodded.
“So what do you want this to become for them?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Not because he seemed uncertain. He simply looked out across the reception.
Astra followed his gaze.
A V’ren woman was laughing with an Earth-born teacher. Two children were chasing each other along the edge of the pavilion until an adult redirected them away from a camera cable. A server had crouched to offer something from a tray to another small green hand.
Astra tried the question another way.
“Civilization?”
Matt looked at her.
“Family?”
Nothing.
“Or just a place that didn’t fall apart?”
Matt took a drink.
“I hope they grow up.”
Astra waited.
“I hope they have kids here.”
The noise of the reception carried on around them.
“And I hope they call it home.”
