Airship City

Chapter 9

Hughes was pacing up and down behind his desk. “Come on, Winston! Look around you!” He raised his arms in big sweeping gestures, taking in their surroundings. “You’re sitting in an office at the top of a tower that is floating in mid-air! I’ve created something incredible here. The technological challenges that we’ve overcome to build Aeropolis are nothing short of staggering. This is the most amazing machine that has ever been built, the pinnacle of the technological age.” He stared at Churchill. “This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime! Who wouldn’t want to be part of it?”

Churchill seemed unmoved by this. “Oh, there is no doubt that you have a fine technological achievement. But Howard, what exactly is it that Aeropolis is for? How do you make money?”

Joseph was quite taken aback by this. He hadn’t ever given a thought to what Aeropolis was for. The fact that she existed at all was more than enough for him to take in. But thinking about it, he supposed that there would have to be some sort of economic basis for that existence: even Hughes could not have enough money to have built her purely for the pleasure of doing so.

He turned his attention back to Hughes, who had became even more agitated. “What is she for?” He rolled his eyes, seemingly exasperated beyond measure. “She is a floating free port, a place anyone can come to buy or sell or transship cargo of any description!”

“Why on Earth should anyone want to bring their cargo all the way up here?” rumbled Churchill, nipping the end off of a cigar as he did so.

Again Joseph found himself surprised by Churchill’s question. He turned eagerly to see what the reply would be. But Hughes seemed to abruptly run out of steam. He flopped into his chair, and spoke in a quiet, almost resigned tone.

“They do it to save money, Winston. There are no tariffs and no taxes up here.”

“Well then, how do you expect to make the money to pay the dividend?” came the instant reply. Joseph grinned; he was enjoying this. Wriggle out of that!

Hughes took a deep breath, sat up a bit straighter, and smoothed down his jacket lapels with his thumbs. “OK, so here’s how that works.” His voice took on a didactic tone. “When a shipping company uses a normal, ground-based port, they pay tariffs and taxes to the government, not to the base operator, and they don’t get any real benefit in return for those payments. They’ve also got to pay landing fees, rental on office and warehouse space, and so forth, to the base operator.

“So when they come to Aeropolis, they’re making savings on the tariffs and taxes, but they’re not going to expect to get the real services for free! They’re happy to pay rent, landing fees, all the rest. We also levy a flotation charge, which the carriers can only avoid if they bring us fuel and helium. We make a small turn on the charge.”

Churchill applied a lighter flame to the end of his cigar, and puffed it into life. “Are you getting any Zeppelins calling?”

A flicker of annoyance passed over Hughes’s face. “No, we’re still working on that.”

“I’ve heard that Herr Doktor Eckener is not your greatest fan.” Churchill blew a perfect smoke ring towards the ceiling.

Joseph smirked. The antipathy of the head of the Zeppelin company for Hughes was well known. It had all started when Eckener had tried to sell airships to the US Navy. Hughes had won the contract instead, and Hugo Eckener was by all accounts a remarkably poor loser.

But Hughes seemed unfazed. “He’ll see reason in time. We could save them a small fortune in tariffs.”

“What other sources of income do you have?”