Steampunk Prime_ A Vintage Steampunk Reader - Mike Ashley [61]
“But I don’t see why you need these things, with all your other facilities for transportation,” I objected.
“They save an immense amount of bother and of surface traffic,” said Hammerfleet, “besides doing away with hand labour. They are also very swift.”
“I should think, though, they could easily be robbed by air-thieves.”
“No. That almost never happens. There are too many people watching. A thief in the air is much easier to deal with than a thief on the ground. He has no obscure refuge; he is in full view. A limited number of police airboats can give all the protection we need for carriers. They patrol the routes, and carry grappling-hooks with which they can easily arrest any prowling thief-car.”
I seemed to win the secret, eye-winking approval of Stanifex, the official skeptic, by asking somewhat peevishly — “What is the use of all this air traffic, anyhow?” I felt a desire to combat Hammerfleet on any subject that came up, because he was jealous of me, or I of him — I hardly knew which-regarding Electra. It also irritated me that he was so well informed as to the details of the twenty-second century, when I felt that I had just as good a right to be in it as he.
“Why, my boy,” he replied, with a patronizing emphasis on the word “boy,” “don’t you see that it is an immense relief to the congestion of surface travel to have all these other means of conveyance? Civilization and the general occupancy of land have spread to such an extent that we must economize ground area. Formerly, human beings, in their degraded desperation, actually burrowed underground like moles, to get from one point to another. We rise into the pure air instead. Land, and the right in it, are enormously valuable. Air costs nothing. The race claims a certain right in the air, though; and franchise dues are paid to the people by public vehicles; while private ones are subject to a small tax. Air-ships are not so reliable as other modes of locomotion, but they relieve the railways and highways, and are immensely useful in sailing over mountains, deserts, forests, or impassable rivers, and in times of freshet and flood, besides their ordinary uses. The air-ships have also been of vast service in Polar and African exploration. You ought to realize that our population is large, and is spread out all through the country. So in order to accomplish traffic easily, it is best to divide it between earth and air. We do not live in large cities now, and we have to have plenty of room:
What he said was entirely justified by the landscape beneath us, where we could see the country beautifully laid out in small towns, villages, and hamlets with perfect roads leading from one to another, and large groves or tracts of wild woodland interspersed. Every acre of the open ground, excepting the fields reserved for sports and public meetings, was thoroughly tilled, with electric arrangement for the fixature of nitrogen in the soil, so as to produce vegetables containing sustenance like that of meat, and for raising apples, pears, and peaches a foot in diameter by electric light, and other fruits in proportionate sizes.
Our first stop was at Chicago, which we found was simply a vast trading post, a business fort or stronghold — like all other cities now — where a garrison of clerks and other laborers was stationed in the immense buildings once teeming with superfluous people. This garrison attended to business details with military precision, and was relieved at intervals by other men and women drafted from the population for the same purpose. All around Chicago were the impressive ruins of various World’s Fairs, these institutions having now become obsolete. The ruins had been carefully preserved, and drew many thousand sightseers and tourists every year, who paid a small fee in memorial silver for the privilege of viewing them. These fees were afterwards distributed in charity, and caused a good deal of grumbling because