April 8: It's Always Something (20 page)

Jeff was afraid that would offend her. Instead she laughed.

* * *

"I have a fellow from New Marseille, an Albert Poincaré, holding to speak with you," Dakota informed Heather. "A
politician
," she added, like an indictment.

Something about Dakota's manner was off...And she'd walked down the hall to tell her...

"That isn't who I was speaking with trying to arrange for Dr. Holbrook to go there. I don't know this new name. You are withholding something," Heather accused. "And you are amused. It
worries
me when you're amused. Is he another one like Harshaw, running a revolutionary committee?"

"Good guess," Dakota admitted. "Very similar, but not quit as revolutionary. I didn't ask the details but they aren't literally up in arms. Let him explain," she urged.

"Very well, but I'm not going to abandon my breakfast," Heather decided. "He can talk to me while I finish, if he wants to speak to me."

Poincaré seemed indifferent to her continuing to eat. Indeed he seemed oblivious to it.

"Madam, I am Monsieur Poincaré of the French base. How may I address you?"

"Try Heather. What's going on at your colony?" She asked, continuing to spoon oatmeal.

"We usually avoid
colonie
," Poincaré said, though he didn't seem to take offense. "Our habit has been to say
avant-poste
, but we are going to have a new level of autonomy."

"And how did you attain this new independence?" Heather asked. She was careful not to sound skeptical or accusing. She was genuinely interested.

"We negotiated the terms of it," Poincaré said. His face said he had some pride in that accomplishment, and well he might.
How often do people accomplish that without bloodshed?
Was Heather's honest thought.

"France has some experience of actual colonies," he reminded her. "They have learned the hard way the wisdom of letting go rather than automatically seeking conflict. It leaves us with a relationship still, which satisfies everyone rather than utter alienation."

"I congratulate you on that," Heather said sincerely. "I spoke with a Monsieur Torres about one of our refugees from Armstrong going to New Marseille to work with some of your people, and we did a deal trading tech for a tunnel boring machine and other things. Is that deal dead now? The scientist part at least, since we already sent the small machine and had the tech delivered. Do you still want the larger machine they anticipated buying?"

"We are strongly encouraged to seek economic independence as well as political independence. So our arrangements with you for such projects as the tunnel boring machine will likely increase. I'm contacting you more for the political side of things today rather than commerce. What I'm hoping for Ma...Heather, is to affirm with you a favorable standing, perhaps even a formal alliance with you, to
allow
trade and more. You are aware we've obtained a variety of seeds and cultures, and wish to become food independent. We're well aware you are ahead of us there. Is that something with which we can further partner with you?" Poincaré asked.

"To the extent that I've promoted such activity from my own resources, yes. I've committed a lot of our tunnel boring hours to food production tunnels. Some of them are being cultivated by my own employees. Some are leased to subjects or foreign residents. Nobody is prohibited from starting their own, but we have substantial infrastructure.

"Nothing we've done is proprietary, and you can follow all our efforts and experiments, including the failures, on our local net. I decided to keep everything open as a matter of policy to promote growth. Everything public is easily found and satellite com will carry the bandwidth easily and cheaply. There
are
private enterprises that are developing products which aren't public knowledge. You'll have to come to some accommodation with those people, and either buy their help or their products outright, or offer them something like local cubic or tech in compensation.

"I won't however get involved in markets. That is, I won't support or hinder a business with tariffs or taxes. Neither will I reveal the private business of people who lease cubic from us. As long as you don't restrict Central people from conducting business there, I won't hobble your people here. So there is every opportunity to work together."

"Does that mean you will tax our people who conduct business at Central at the same rate as your own?" Poincaré asked hopefully.

"I only tax property owners," Heather explained. "We have a bit less than four hundred land owners right now. I tax them according to their surface area. So far I have no outcry that they are oppressed. How they derive income from their holdings is up to them, but it encourages them to do so rather than let it sit unused and costing them money. I have accepted labor in lieu of cash for those not engaging in any cash generating businesses."

Poincaré looked shocked, and then distressed. "You don't tax your subjects or foreign residents at all? No income tax? No fees for services provided?"

"No, and I realize this can create a problem for you," Heather admitted. "We have a lot of people wanting to move here from Armstrong. They tend to be the more aggressive entrepreneurs, but they are held back because so few of them have the means to set up here."

"I will have to think on how to address that imbalance," Poincaré said, scrunching his eyebrows.

You could reduce your tax rate
, Heather thought, but that might derail their pleasant conversation, so aloud she said: "I'm uninterested in
knowing
what my people make," Heather assured him. "As soon as you demand to know how much you can extract from them instead of telling them what you require from them the lying will start. They will avoid
making
anything if at all possible. Then gaming and lobbying starts about what
is
income. How can it benefit any country to discourage enterprise and generating profits?"

"Well yes," Poincaré agreed. "I've studied economics, although it wasn't my major. How you tax will affect how money is put to work. Too many people seeking to park their money in passive investments can be damaging too."

"I don't tax capital gains either," Heather said, waving that idea away. "Nor are there taxes on inventories, services or inheritances. The closest we come is I set a landing fee for non-landholders at the spaceport of a tenth of a gram Au per metric ton of a craft landing. If they sit there more than fifteen days they start getting a charge for storage. The land owners pay for the field in their tax to me, so why should I subsidize outsiders to compete with them by granting free landing rights?"

Poincaré blinked and thought a moment. "Air fees, water fees? Tax on cubic cut?"

"I don't provide air or water. If people lease cubic, air is an insignificant item supplied with the cubic by every landlord of which I'm aware, unless some idiot allows a leak. There are lock fees, but they are modest. I
want
people to cut new cubic. It's not like running a hab with a central environmental system that has to charge. I realize you have a centralized system because you started in surface structures. I'd never make an issue of Central people being charged for necessary services. Of course if they don't use those services you wouldn't charge them, would you?"

"I'm...not sure how they do that," Poincaré admitted. "I don't know if anyone
has
their own sealed off environmental systems."

"I bet they made rules against it, if you go research it. At Armstrong you couldn't even own a suit, much less your own air plant. They wanted control of
everything
so they couldn't become independent. If they wanted to ship you back to the Slum Ball they didn't want any argument."

"We are trying to come to an agreement with the provisional committee in Armstrong also," Poincaré said. "It may be some time before we finalize anything. Every proposal made is taken to debate, and seems to generate more questions rather than any quick agreement. Although you are physically on the other side of Armstrong from us, we may be actually cooperating with you sooner. Simply because we can have this conversation with one person who has the power to decide yes or no. No such executive exists in Armstrong yet."

"Are
you
able to bind your new government to agreements?" Heather asked, pointedly. She decided it was not the time to mention that she had recognized the Lunar Republic. Perhaps the new republic valued Central's, that is Heather's, recognition more than Marseille's.

"Nobody exists at the moment to contradict me," Poincaré said with a smile. "That will hold at least until we have elections, and then establish various agencies."

"So somebody may undo everything we establish in a year," Heather said.

Poincaré shrugged. "You risk that dealing with any sovereign entity," he said. "You may be dead tomorrow and I'll have wasted all my words today. Whatever we establish between us has at least the advantage of momentum. It's easier left in place than altered if leadership does change. If we worry about its impermanence we'll never do anything. The pyramids would never have been built, because someone might stop them half way and tear them down."

"Your point is well taken," Heather said. "You are welcome to do business here. There are no entry documents, no licenses to do business. The law is what I say it is. If I find somebody objectionable they get expelled. We are developing a body of law, but the less complicated it becomes the better as far as I am concerned. People are encouraged to come to their own agreements. If they require their sovereign to sit in judgment they don't always like the results. Better to compromise at times than lose utterly."

"We shall retain the French judicial system, and diverge from it only slowly I suspect. What is the basis of your decisions?" Poincaré asked.

"I'm from Home," Heather reminded him. "I'm heavily exposed to North American influences, but you should look to the base principles rather than recent history. Think of the direction English common law took. The sanctity of contracts, individual rights and responsibility. I've judged cases on homicide, intellectual property rights and drunk driving already. The trials are all public record if you want to get a feel for how I ruled, and perhaps more importantly what questions I asked and how I reasoned."

"I'm trying to imagine how you can function without a body of law defining what is permissible. And meanwhile assembling it piece by piece," Poincaré said, looking distressed.

"People have very similar ideas about whether basic things are right or wrong," Heather said. "The law formalizes it. But I have yet to find anyone astonished they can't just kill whomever they please. We have very few people of non-western cultures to complicate public opinion. Weren't all the formal bodies of law originally assembled just that way? Piece by piece, case by case?"

Poincaré blinked and considered that, but made no reply. Instead he asked, "How might a lawyer of French training be certified to speak before your court?"

"There is no bar between the people and the officers of the court," Heather said, drawing a line with her hand. "Anyone may show up and ask for a judgment. If you wish to hire someone to speak for you or advise you that is fine. Some people are not eloquent. Some people are fearful of speaking in public. And a lot of people need third party advice on whether they are being damn fools to even bring a case. If they have to pay for counsel perhaps they will listen to it better than free."

Poincaré laughed. "I'd heard similar things said," he agreed. "One's passion on a question is not a good indicator of how others will see it. Sometimes that needs pointed out in a way friends and relatives are loath to say."

"I mentioned we have a scientist from Armstrong who is considering emigrating to you. But things have changed. First of all we were able to get his equipment released to him. Also he'll have to be advised the political situation there is changed. He may still rather work with your people than in isolation. I'm not of a mind to influence him one way or another. He's well worth having, but a bit of a short term expense too. For all I care he can go back and forth freely to work here, as I've gifted him with land, or work with his peers there."

"There will be security concerns if they are working on proprietary things," Poincaré worried.

"That's your concern," Heather said. "Whether you can trust him, or your own people for that matter, to isolate their projects which have to be kept secret. It's true, people with such creative talents don't always seem to have a security-based focus. I'll tell you right up front we want your process for creating a thin effective body armor. But we're willing to
buy
it not steal it. You need to discuss all that with your technical people," Heather suggested.

"I will, and assign someone to research your legal history and provide me a summary. I simply don't have time for such a project. When I have some answers, and undoubtedly some more questions, I'll get back to you," Poincaré promised.

"That sounds good to me." Heather said, disconnected and looked around. Dakota had quietly let herself out sometime during the long conversation, without a word. And her breakfast dishes were empty, but she couldn't remember taking a bite. She'd been running on full autopilot.