Jordan and his bride had outside seats, but the altitude and the mist soon shut off the view. However, each passenger had a set of ear-phones, and through these they heard the voice of the announcer, even above the roar of the powerful motors.
“We are now crossing New Jersey,” he told them. “In a half hour we’ll be approaching Trenton. This is a very rich countryside. If it were clear, you’d now be able to see the estate of Freilausen, the president of United Motors. He owns ten thousand acres, all surrounded by a ten-foot stone wall. His nearest neighbor is James Jeremiah Jenkins, head of the food trust. It is rumored he will be a candidate for Vice-President at the next election.”
At ten-thirty each excursionist was served a bottle of pop. Ten minutes later it started to rain. Eleven-thirty-five saw the arrival at Washington. The plane sailed over the White House, but no one could see it. Mount Vernon and the grave of the Unknown Soldier were also out of visibility. Midday brought the much advertised lunch, two sandwiches, three olives, a piece of celery, and a doughnut. Leaving Washington behind, the plane was headed for Gettysburg. At two another bottle of pop was served. At three-thirty the plane was back in New York, ready to make another trip before dark.
Without saying a word to each other the Jordans returned to their one room apartment. Not till they entered the place they called, through sense of traditional courtesy, their home, did they speak.
“How much did that cost, Bill?” asked the bride.
“Hate to tell you, Honey. Doesn’t make any difference, so long as you had a good time up in the air.”
“How much?”
“Sixteen plunks for each of us. Of course, that paid everything.”
“And there were one hundred and ten passengers. The pirates did not all die with Captain Kidd. Those people are making money.”
“Think so? But did you have a good time?”
“I might have if I could have seen anything, and if I had had any room, and if the thing next to me had not eaten garlic for breakfast, and if the sandwiches had been fresh. As it was, we just threw away thirty-two dollars, and that will take us some days to earn.”
“At least, you went up in the air.”
“And never that way again. The next time I want to go in our own plane. We ought to be able to afford one if everyone else can.”
* * * *
The following Sunday was Jane’s birthday. No amount of teasing could make her husband tell what he was going to give her for a present. He kept his secret nobly till Sunday morning and then announced that they were going up in the air in her two passenger plane.
“How did you ever finance it?” she cried.
“I’ll tell you. First, I took all our savings. Then I surrendered my life insurance and took the cash surrender value. Then I sold all the old jewelry left me by my grandfather, and gave them a note, ten dollars a week for one year, for the rest of it. We own it outright. It will cost five dollars a week to store it and, counting depreciation, about ten cents a mile to run it. I’ve calculated that if we give up all our other amusements, cut down our clothing bill and stop eating our suppers out, we can take a trip every Sunday and every holiday. If anything happens—if either of us gets sick or loses his position, we’re sunk—that’s all there is to it.”
The young woman began to gyrate around the room.
“It’s grand,” she sang, “it’s more than grand—it’s wonderful! I knew that you would come to it. Our own plane! We can go where we please. No more carfare. No more taxis. We’re free. Free as the air! We’re real folks, now!”
“No,” replied her husband as he shook his head. “We’re just common people. In fact, we’re just a little bit more common than we were a week ago. We’re going to make it and we’re going to spend it, and if anything happens to us, we’re lost. We shall never be able to rise again. So long as I had my life insurance and my health insurance and a little reserve in the savings fund, I didn’t have to worry, but now, I won’t be able to do anything else.”
“Shake out of it, Bill. Shake out of it. Let’s get the plane out and give it a trial. They are foolproof now. Just sit down and touch the button. They say that five thousand feet is just like so much champagne. Let’s get drunk—up in the air.”
Three men were comfortably seated in a roof garden of the newest and tallest New York office building. To the casual observer they looked like three ordinary business men. In reality, they came very near to being the owners of the United States. One was Freilausen, President of United Motors, the second was James Jeremiah Jenkins, who controlled the foodstuff of the nation, and the third was Samuel Smith, whom friends called Plain Sam, and whom enemies named Uncle Sam. He held, in his grasp, every bank, insurance company, and business enterprise of the nation, except those concerned in feeding and transporting the common people.
“The people seem to be content,” remarked Smith. “Never, in the history of the world, has there been greater prosperity, as far as the common man was concerned. His income is greater, his luxuries more, his living conditions are finer. He should be content.”
“That’s all true,” endorsed Jenkins. “He should be content. He’s making it and spending it, and no one seems to be counting his change. More and more he’s becoming so occupied with his own affairs that he’s well satisfied to leave the running of the government in the hands of the few. In fact, he hardly wants to take the time to vote. Actually asks to be paid if he does so. Fortunately, ninety-five percent of them are in debt at the end of the year. That keeps them in their place.”
“What I want to ask is this,” remarked Freilausen. “Year by year we are paying larger salaries, demanding more efficiency, more and more making one man do the work previously done by two men. We’re letting them earn more money, and teaching them to spend more. They think that they’re prosperous, because they have a larger income. Will they ever find out that they are just going around in circles? Where do we come in? We deliberately started an educational campaign years ago to make people air-minded. We scrapped our railroads, changed our automobile factories into shops to assemble planes. Everybody now is up in the air. Where is it going to end? Smith told me confidentially some time ago that he had something in his mind that would place the three of us in complete control of the nation, provided we could make the people air-conscious. We did that, but I can’t see where it’s taking us or what good it’s doing. We simply exchange the sale of automobiles for the sale of planes, and the amount of gas sold is actually a little less than it was.”
“Are the people really air-minded?” asked Smith.
“I think they are,” replied the food baron. “Of course, transportation is not my specialty, but my specialists have to study it, because it has had a harmful influence on the sale of food stuffs. They’re spending so much money in going into the air that they aren’t able to eat as much as they used to; they can’t pay for it. The railroads have just about ceased to carry passengers, though they still do a freight trade. Nobody travels in an automobile—just not the thing, any more than the covered wagon or oxcart. Everybody is up. Last Sunday, over eight million of the workers were carried in the cheap excursions. I really think that the common people would sacrifice anything sooner than their right to go up in the air. You must have seen the advertisement? The Air Is Free, and all that kind of thing?”
“I guess so. At least, I paid the man who wrote them. Now, if all this is true, I guess it’s time to start clamping down the lid. Here’s my plan, and I shall have to give you a little history in order to have you see what a beautiful plan it really is. Centuries ago a wild German Baron would build a castle, right near a well-used road, and everyone who traveled that road had to pay him toll or be killed. Naturally, all he had to do was to just sit still and collect himself rich. That gave the idea. Any artery of transportation could be used to yield an income, and it was always the rich and powerful who owned the roads and canals and railroads and the poor who had to pay for the use of them.
“Whe
n the automobile came, we built roads. They were beautiful roads. It makes me sick when I think of the money we spent on them. Of course, I had something in my mind at that time, and along came Wright and the other inventors and gave mankind the idea of going up into the air. But even the people that used the roads paid for them, and after all, our time was simply deferred.
“Then came the airplanes. Transportation moved into the air. Not from necessity, but rather, from desire. I suppose it was the idea of freedom that inspired the desire to travel that way. Perhaps it was a memory of days when our ancestors flew, or were they fishes? Anyway, everybody went into the air, just as everybody wanted to leave the country and live in cities. Of course, they’re paying for it, about all they have, except one thing, and that is their liberty. I think that we’re ready now to change the economics of life. It has changed a great deal but the poor fools do not know it. Perhaps all we’ve to do is let them realize it.”
“Just what do you mean by that?” asked Freilausen.
“It’s very simple. For centuries the common people have been working for gold. Money in some form has been the medium of exchange. They receive so many pieces of metal for so much work and then they take those metal pieces and buy the necessities of life with them, and the richer ones can buy a few luxuries in addition. Later on we gave them paper money and told them that each piece of paper represented so much metal and it worked like a charm, so long as they believed us. Now, just as soon as we have them in our power, we will stop giving them a paper symbol and simply make them work for the necessaries of life, and we, the three of us, will decide what those necessaries are; and, if they refuse to work, they’ll simply be unable to live.”
“Then we’ll have all the gold in the nation?” said Jenkins.
“Naturally. We can use it to buy control of the rest of the world. But, my dear compatriots, let me tell you something. It isn’t gold that I’m working for. That’s just so much metal, and its value is at best artificial and fictitious. There’s something greater that we’re striving for and that is power. If my plans mature and ripen, we’ll hold the government of this nation in our hands. It won’t be a republic; it will simply be our continent, and over one hundred and fifty million people will do as we say, work as we desire for our aggrandizement, be born and die as we will it and between birth and death live as we direct them to. Every phase of their life, their work, amusements, social pursuits, everything will be under our control. They’ll work for us, because that will be the only way for them to keep on living. Our scientists will experiment with large masses of them, as they do now with rats in a cage, bacilli in a test tube. We can form an army that will conquer the world, men glad to fight for three meals a day and a chance to live one day more. Talk about Caesar and Anthony and smile. Think of the ambitions of Napoleon and consider him an amateur. Centuries from now little children will study about the world changes brought about by Freilausen, Jenkins and Smith.
“How will it be brought about? Easily, if the people become air-minded. First, they gather together in large cities, live deliberately in these beehives of steel and cement. They let the country grow into brambles and forests and they devitalize in cities, such as Rome and Babylon never even dreamed of in their wildest delirium. But even there they want to go somewhere. There remains the old wanderlust, the spirit of migration, and they have gone up in the air. The poor fools have thought all they had to do was to buy a plane, and, I judge, from the last financial statement of my friend Freilausen, that just about everybody has bought one who could and those who can’t buy one buy a little space in one every Sunday and holiday. The nation has become air-minded. People have ceased to walk and we have slowly taken away from them all other forms of transportation. They have played the game into our hands. And now we will start in to collect the prize.”
“I think I see what you’re after,” commented Jenkins.
Samuel Smith laughed. “The whole foundation of their dream is the premise that the air is free. We’re going to manipulate affairs so it isn’t free. They’ll have to pay the price or stay on the ground. A generation has grown up, to whom a life on the ground is intolerable. Therefore, we win!”
“So, what we’re after is power, eh?” queried Freilausen. “That word power is a familiar one to me. My entire life and work has been tied up with horse power. Peculiar how that word horse remains when the real animal has gone the way of the dodo. Remains as a unit of power. Now we can change it. Man power from now on, and we will own it, control it. That’s something to make life worth the living. If they go into the air, they pay our price, and the price is the surrender of their liberty? Will they like it? One hundred and fifty million against three men? Will they submit?”
“We will make them!” thundered Smith. “All their life they’ve been taught to respect government, and now we’re the nation. But they have to eat, and must have clothes to wear and heat to warm them in the winter time, and they must be amused, and travel in the air, and how can they do all this and have all this, save from our hands? The minute we tighten our grip on them, they’re going to submit and like it. If the worst comes, we’ll start a war and then see them fight for their country and some millions of agitators be killed in the fighting. Others have done that; so can we. On the quiet, sell supplies to both sides and gain more power.”
“No doubt you have an idea of how to change things so the air used can be controlled?” asked Jenkins.
“That’s the very gist of the whole matter. I’ve the plan for it. Of course we have to go about it slowly and legally, but that only means a little delay. I think that in two weeks from now my lawyers will be ready to understand my plan in all its ramifications and start the necessary negotiations.”
“If legal, no one can complain,” commented Jenkins.
“And those that have the intelligence to see what’s coming, can all be subsidized by our gold. They’ll not know till later that it’s worthless. I think that we had better drag a dead fish across our path by donating about twenty-five more millions to our American colleges. That will cause the intelligentsia to think kindly of us. Suppose we meet here two weeks from today and perfect our plans? It might be well to increase our private police force by a few thousand men. The people might become restless, and one can never depend on the city police in an emergency.”
The three men left the roof garden by different routes. The place was apparently deserted. Then, from under a gaily decorated chair, crawled William Jordan. Working on the seventy-second floor of this building, he had always had a desire to see the city from the roof garden on the one hundred and thirtieth level. He had no business there and he knew it, nevertheless, he had gone. Warned by the voices of the approaching gold barons, he had dived for safety under the chair, and had spent a very interesting, but, at the same time, a most uncomfortable afternoon directly under Samuel Smith, listening to the plans for the commercial and social conquest of the nation. He was rather confused when he crawled out and started to run down the marble steps to the first floor, where it would be safe to take an elevator.
“Helenmaria!” he swore to himself. “If gold ceases to be a means of exchange, it was a good thing to buy that plane, but what’s the good of it, it we can’t use it?”
* * * *
Had anyone told Peter Perkin that someday he was going to be able to make money out of his old house, the old man would have laughed at him. Perkin lived about six miles away from Tiptonville, Tennessee, which was very nearly like living six miles the other side of nowhere. Nobody lived near him, a fact that didn’t bother him one way or the other. He didn’t care for neighbors, never went to town, and was so far behind the times that he thought the Boy Orator of the Platte was still running for office. He cut his own hair, cooked his own meals, and hadn’t spoken to a woman since his mother died.
Consequently, he was astonished when a large airplane landed in the pasture constituting his front yard. This pasture was level and almost grassless. Perkin told his occas
ional masculine visitor that the Yanks had camped there one night and since then the land was cursed. It fed one cow, two mules, and a flock of geese, all of whom fled in the greatest panic when the plane came down from the clear sky.
Perkin never moved from his chair. He simply spat with more than usual vigor, shifted the cud of tobacco to the other side of his mouth, and waited for the strangers to declare their business. This declaration did not take long.
“We should like to have permission to wreck a part of your house,” one of the men said. “Of course, we will pay you liberally for all damage done.”
Perkin simply spat and grunted. It looked like a slick city game to him. He had read of such in the papers.
“Let me explain it better,” interrupted one of the other men. “We want to have an airplane fly over your home. When it does so it will drop a piece of machinery and break a chimney or tear off some shingles. Then you get a lawyer and sue the man for damages. He will fight you, contending that the air is free. You will claim that you own all the air above your farm. It will be a rather pretty legal fight, but finally you will be decided the winner. In the meantime, you’ll have a very nice income. I think that we can promise to keep you comfortable for life.”
Perkin spat again and grunted. “How come you all want me ter go a lawing?”
“Just so we can settle a question of law. You own this land, don’t you? Of course, you do. We looked the title up in the Court House. I bet you would be fighting mad if anyone came and tried to dig a well on your land without your permission. Right now you feel that you own it all the way down to China, don’t you? Certainly you do. Then, you must feel the same way about the air. So, we’ll have this airplane trespass on your air. Get the idea? When it does that, your house will be injured. You value this place, don’t you? Perhaps you were born here. As a little innocent boy you played in yonder meadow. It’s going to make you real mad to have the dear old house hurt. Get the idea? You’re going to start a lawsuit. Get your name in the paper. Make a lot of money. Sure! Now you’re beginning to understand. Here’s a paper. Sign on that dotted line. Well, make your mark, if you want to. You think we’re crooked, don’t you? Here’s a thousand dollars in gold. Look at it, bite a piece. Yellow boys. Twenty dollar gold pieces! There are four more for you just as soon as you agree to our plans.”
The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D. Page 5