THE PILOT AND THE BUSHMAN
By SYLVIA JACOBS
Illustrated by DAVID STONE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Technological upheavals caused by inventions of our own are
bad enough, but this was the ultimate depression, caused by
the ultimate alien invention—which no Earthman ever saw!
The Ambassador from Outer Space sprang to his feet, taking Jerry's extended hand in a firm, warm grasp. Jerry had been prepared for almost anything—a scholarly brontosaurus, perhaps, or an educated squid or giant caterpillar with telepathic powers. But the Ambassador didn't even have antennae, gills, or green hair. He was a completely normal and even handsome human being.
"Scotch? Cigar?" the Ambassador offered cordially. "How can I help you, Mr. Jergins?"
Studying him, Jerry decided there was something peculiar about this extraterrestrial, after all. He was too perfect. His shave was too close, his skin so unblemished as to suggest wax-works. Every strand of his distinguished iron-gray hair was impeccably placed. The negligent and just-right drape of his clothes covered a body shaped like a Sixth Century B.C. piece of Greek sculpture. No mere human could have looked so unruffled, so utterly groomed, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in a busy office. A race, Jerry wondered, capable of taking any shape at will, in mimicry of the indigenous race of any planet?
"You can help me, but I'm not sure you will," Jerry said. "The rumor is that you won't do anything to ease this buyers' strike you started on Earth."
The Ambassador smiled. "You're a man who's not used to taking no for an answer, I gather. What's your proposition?"
"I'd like to contact some of the firms on the Federated Planets, show them how I could promote their merchandise on Earth. Earth is already clamoring for their goods. To establish a medium of exchange, we'd have to run simultaneous campaigns, promoting Earth merchandise on other planets."
"That would be difficult, even for a man of your promotional ability," the Ambassador said winningly. "You see, Earth is the only planet we've yet discovered where advertising—or promotion, to use the broader term—exists as a social and economic force."
"How in hell can anybody do business without it?" Jerry demanded.
"We don't do business in the sense you mean. Don't mistake me," the Ambassador added hastily, "we don't have precisely a communal economy, either. Our very well defined sense of ethics in regard to material goods is something I find impossible to describe in any Earth language. It's quite simple, so simple that you have to grow up with it to understand it. Our whole attitude toward material goods is conditioned by the Matter Repositor."
"That gadget!" Jerry said bitterly. "It was when you first mentioned it before the U.N. Assembly that all this trouble on Earth started. Everybody and his brother hopes that tomorrow he can buy a Matter Repositor, and never have to buy anything again. I came here mostly to ask you whether it's really true, that if you have one of those dinguses, you can bring anything you want into your living room."
"You can. In practice, of course, repositing just anything that took your fancy would produce economic anarchy."
"Let's put it this way," Jerry persisted. "Home appliances were my biggest accounts. Now, when we try to sell a refrigerator, the prospect says she's saving her cash till Matter Repositors get on the Earth market. She plans to reposit a refrigerator—not from her neighbor's kitchen, because that would be stealing—but from the factory. If the factory goes bust, people figure the government will have to subsidize building appliances. Now, could she really reposit a refrigerator?"
"She could. But she wouldn't want to."
"Why not?" Jerry asked, puzzled.
"If she conceived an illogical and useless desire for food refrigeration, she would simply reposit a block of cold air from, say, the North Pole."
"Oh, fine!" Jerry said sarcastically. "That would cause more unemployment in the refrigerator industry than repositing them without paying for them! But what do you mean about food refrigeration being illogical and useless?"
"Well, in a storage warehouse, there might be some reason for food preservation. But you don't need cold or canning. Why not just reposit the bacteria that cause the food to deteriorate? There's no need to store food in a home equipped with a Matter Repositor. You simply reposit one meal at a time. Fruits and vegetables direct from tree or field. Meat from a slaughterhouse, since it isn't humane to remove a pound of steak from a live steer. But even this is needless."
"Why?" Jerry baffledly wanted to know.
"To free the maximum amount of the effort of thinking beings for non-material activities, each consumer can reposit the chemical elements of the food, synthesize his meal on the table. He can even reposit these elements directly into his stomach, or, to by-pass the effort of digestion, into his bloodstream as glycogen and amino acids."
"So refrigerators would be as dead an item as kerosene lamps in a city wired for electricity," Jerry agreed unhappily. "Suppose Mrs. Housewife, not needing a refrigerator, reposits a washing machine. The point I'm driving at—is there any practical way to compensate the factory, give it an incentive to produce more washing machines, without dragging in government control?"
"Why should the factory produce more washing machines? Who would want one? The housewife would simply reposit the dirt from her clothes into her flowerbed, without using water and soap. Or, more likely, reposit new clothes with different colors, fabrics, and styles. The Matter Repositor would eliminate textile mills and clothing factories. Earth's oceans have vast enough quantities of seaweed to eliminate the growing of cotton, wool, or flax. Or, again, you could reposit the chemical elements, either from the soil or from seawater."
Jerry pondered the extensive implications of these revelations. Finally he said, "What it boils down to is this. All Earth's bustling material activity, all the logging and construction, the mining and manufacturing, the planting and fishing, the printing and postal service, the great transportation and shipping effort, the cleaning and painting, the sewage disposal, even the bathing and self-adornment, consist, when you analyze them, of one process only—putting something from where you don't want it to where you do. There's not one single, solitary Earth invention or service left to advertise!"
"Nothing," the Ambassador agreed. "Which is exactly why advertising has not developed on the Federated Planets. You're fortunate that Earth doesn't have Matter Repositors. You'd be out of a job if it did."
"Oh, no!" Jerry said. "I could still advertise the gadget to end all gadgets—the Matter Repositor itself. I know other people have asked you this before, but could an Earth company get a franchise to import those machines here, or the license rights to manufacture them?"
"No," the Ambassador said, briefly and definitely.
"Mr. Ambassador," Jerry protested, "you've gone to a lot of trouble to explain things you must already be tired of explaining to Earthmen, just so I personally could be sure they weren't merely rumors or misinterpretations. Now that I get down to the real point, you suddenly become blunt and unqualified. Why?"
"Because there's a very serious question of ethics involved, wherever a more advanced civilization comes in contact with a relatively primitive one. For instance, when the white men came to America, the aborigines were introduced to gunpowder and firewater."
"So you people are keeping Matter Repositors away from us, like a mama keeping candy away from a baby who's hollering for it, because it's not good for him! You'd pass up a chance to name your own price—"
"The very way you phrase that remark indicates the danger. You regard personal gain as the strongest of motives, which means that Matter Repositors would be used for that, even by such unusually intelligent members of your race as yourself."
"Don't softsoap me," Jerry said angrily. "Not after you just got through saying that we Earthlings are nothing but naked savages, compared to the high and mighty super-beings on other planets!"
"I apologize for my phraseology," the Ambassador said. "With my limited command of your language—"
"Your limited command, nuts! I suppose you supermen enjoy seeing us naked savages squirm. Why talk sanctimoniously about the damage you might do, when you know damn well the damage has already been done? Just the news that something as advanced as the Matter Repositor exists has sent unemployment to a new high, and the stock market to a new low. And you theorize about ethics, while denying us the only cure!" Jerry found himself fighting a nearly irresistible impulse to smash his fist into that too-perfect profile—which, he realized glumly, would only prove the Ambassador's point about savages.
"Here, here," the Ambassador said benevolently, "let's have another drink. Then we'll see whether I can make it clear to you why the actual importation of Matter Repositors would cause much more trouble on Earth than the announcement of their existence, bad as the effect of that has been. To begin with, I admit I made a very serious error in mentioning the device at all before the U.N. Assembly. I intended merely to explain how I came here without a spaceship. After that, I was flooded with questions; I could no more avoid answering them than I could courteously avoid answering the questions you've been asking today."
"You mean you super-beings actually admit you're human enough to make mistakes?" Jerry asked, somewhat mollified.
"Of course we make mistakes. We try not to make the same one twice. You see, we once made the mistake of importing Matter Repositors to a planet whose natural resources and social concepts weren't adequate for the device. That was a long time ago, and they haven't recovered from the effects yet. Suppose a consignment of ten thousand Matter Repositors arrived on Earth tomorrow. Under your economic system, who would get them?"
"The ten thousand people or corporations who had the most money to pay for them, I guess. Unless government agencies grabbed 'em."
"Can you guarantee that of the ten thousand people on Earth who have the most money, not one is unscrupulous?"
"Gosh, no!" Jerry said. "I don't think there's any doubt that to stay in business very long, a man or a company has to have a certain amount of business ethics. Nobody can gyp the public indefinitely. But a bank robber might have a lot of cash, or a confidence man, or a cluck with a big inheritance."
"So, to be generous, let's assume that 9,999 of your wealthiest persons are so ethical that they would never make any profit at the expense of the general welfare. That leaves us one crook. What would he reposit first?"
"Hmm.... Maybe the gold at Fort Knox."
"And what effect would that have on Earth's business?"
"I'm not quite sure," Jerry admitted. "I'm no shark on monetary theory, just the kind of large-scale salesman who makes mass production possible. But it certainly wouldn't do the world situation any good."
"Suppose, next, our crook holds the President of the United States for ransom. Since he doesn't need money, the ransom price might be laws which would grant him impunity for his crimes. If not, he could have an accomplice reposit him out of jail, or even out of the electric chair, before the switch was pulled."
"That's enough! I get the idea!" Jerry exclaimed.
"Wait—there's a more important point. Suppose a government you consider the wrong government got hold of some of the machines. First, of course, they'd reposit the world stockpile of atomic bombs. Then they'd reposit disease bacteria into the bloodstreams of U.N. troops, officials, and civilian workers, and reposit all the ammunition out of U.N. guns. So long as there is one spark of nationalism left on Earth, so long as any country has an economic and political system they consider better than some other system, Matter Repositors would mean planetary self-destruction. Now do you see why I was blunt and unqualified?"
"I do," Jerry said solemnly, "And I was a fool to fly off the handle when you called us savages. We are savages, I can see that now. And your people must be pretty damned godlike to be trusted with such an invention!"
"Not at all. To a Micronesian bushman, the pilot who can be trusted with the power and speed of a B-29 seems a veritable god. But the pilot is only an ordinary Joe, very likely no more intelligent than the bushman—he just had a different background. Fighting each other for necessities and luxuries, the process that you people call business competition, has so long been needless to our people that they would no more think of competitive gain than you would do an Indian harvest dance before you signed a contract. They aren't necessarily more intelligent or more virtuous than your people—they just have a different background."
"You seem to have devoted a lot of study to the larceny in the Earthman's soul," Jerry put in. "What if we stole the secret from you, whether you think it wise to give it to us or not? Suppose somebody swiped the blueprints, or copied a Repositor you brought with you for your own use?"
The Ambassador smiled. "You might try to steal it. That's why I didn't bring a Repositor with me, to save you people the trouble of a futile try."
"Why futile?"
"Well, the Matter Repositor is a simple device. Any child on the Federated Planets who had an education, say, equivalent to your technical high school education, could build a working model, even without another Repositor to assist him. But Earth's best technicians couldn't build one, even with either blueprints or a model to copy."
"They couldn't, eh?" Jerry challenged, bristling again. "They managed to split atoms, transmute elements, do a few little tricks like that."
"I see I've been tactless again," the Ambassador said regretfully. "Just now, you readily conceded that Earthmen are savages morally, but when I seem to cast aspersions on your mechanical ability, it offends your racial vanity. All right, let's go back to the B-29 pilot and the intelligent bushman. The internal combustion engine that powers the B-29 is a simple device in fundamental principle, isn't it?"
"Sure," Jerry said.
"Any high school boy who has taken a course in auto mechanics, who has the requisite machine tools, metals, casting equipment, and fuel, could build a working model of an internal combustion engine, couldn't he, even without ready-made parts?"
"If he wasn't all thumbs, he could."
"All right. Now suppose the B-29 is grounded in the jungle. The bushman is examining the engine. He's just as intelligent as the pilot, remember, but his environment hasn't produced an oil well, let alone a refinery. He has never seen a lathe or a micrometer. He has no mine, no smelter. He can't copy that B-29 engine by whittling wood or chipping stone, even if he's a born mechanical genius, and he can't run it on seawater. So he says the plane flies by magic. Put him in the pilot seat, and you'll admit it's practically inevitable that he'll crash."
"Why do you take so much trouble to explain things?" Jerry asked wryly. "I should have my head examined for not understanding it in the first place."
"Let's say I'm feebly trying to make amends for what my unfortunate slip of the tongue has done to your business."
"You've brought me around to your way of thinking, Mr. Ambassador," Jerry said, recovering enough to carry the ball. "But it would be impossible to sell the public on the idea that they shouldn't have Repositors because they're too hot to handle. Statistics on auto accidents never convinced anybody that he didn't want a nice, shiny, new car. Nobody thinks he personally will get killed in traffic—he's too smart. You can't convince a youngster he doesn't want candy before dinner; he thinks he knows better than his parents. But you can hide the candy, while putting an appetizing meal on the table."
"Yes, except that I regrettably didn't hide the fact that the Matter Repositor exists."
"You sure didn't. And it puts you on a spot, doesn't it? I don't imagine it will be much fun for you to report to your government that one ill-considered remark, made shortly after your arrival, upset Earth's economy."
For the first time, the Ambassador's suavity was ruffled. Sweat stood out on his noble forehead. "I've been hoping the bad-effects would die down before I have to report," he confessed.
"They won't die down by themselves. You know damned well they're getting worse and worse, as word-of-mouth advertising about the Matter Repositor spreads." Jerry leaned closer. "But you and I can get rid of those bad effects."
"How?"
"Well, I'll tell you. When I came to see you, I was pretty sure you'd turn me down cold on importing Matter Repositors. But I had an ace up my sleeve. I hoped you would admit that the reason you've been stalling on selling Earth any Repositors is that you don't really have a practical one. I thought maybe rumors of the Repositor's powers had been vastly exaggerated. If you admitted that, I intended to publicize it to the limit. A campaign to convince Earthmen that you'd been kidding them would work, because it plays on John Q. Public's conviction that he's pretty smart, too smart to believe all this gab about a gadget he's never seen. With your denial to back me up, I could put it across. It would be a lifesaving shot in the arm for Earth business."
"You mean," the Ambassador said reflectively, "that if I call myself a liar—if I actually become a liar in so doing—I can patch up the damage I've done? That puts me in a difficult ethical position."
"Not as difficult as the one you're in now. If it will make it easier for you, I can word your denial in a face-saving way, and have it ready for your signature Tuesday. You have a remarkable command of colloquial English, but even a diplomat using his native tongue can't juggle the connotations and inferences like an advertising man."
"It's very kind of you to offer your professional skill in my behalf. I think I should pay you a fee for the copy."
"Skip it," Jerry said generously, fingering the nickel and two pennies in his pocket. "A small token of my appreciation for the patience you've shown. What time Tuesday?"
"Say two o'clock?"
"Fine. But before I spend my time on this, you're not going to make the same deal with somebody else, are you?"
"Deal? Did I make a deal?"
"What I mean, nobody else has approached you with the idea that Earth business would get back to normal if you would deny that a practical Matter Repositor exists? You'd say I have exclusive rights to the idea?"
"Nobody has," the Ambassador said, "and I agree to give you exclusive rights."
"Good! With your signed denial, I can raise the loot. I think the N.A.M. will go for it. The campaign will have to be well-financed, you see; the amount of space the news columns will give to your denial may be as much as they gave to your original statement, but that alone won't do the job. It's much harder to kill a notion that has penetrated the public mind than it is to implant one."
The Ambassador indulged in a chuckle. "I'm beginning to see daylight. My signed denial in your hands becomes a salable piece of merchandise, worth far more than I would pay you for a few lines of copy. Well, more power to you! Would it be out of place for me to contribute some of the funds for publicizing this denial?"
"How much?" Jerry asked practically.
"Well," the Ambassador explained, "I've had nothing reposited that I could avoid. But since your planet has a monetary exchange, I had to pay for my office help, lodging, and so on. Synthesizing coinage would have been counterfeiting, which is against your laws, so I merely had a moderate amount of uncoined gold reposited, and I sell it on the regular Earth market as I need funds. Gold has no particular value on the Federated Planets, of course. I could get whatever you need, so long as it isn't enough to disrupt the economy any more than—well, than I have already. Let's limit ourselves to an amount that could be accounted for by an unusually good year in mining."
"Sold!" Jerry said happily. "I think I can struggle along on a million a month retainer. Plus the usual fifteen per cent on advertising space and printing, of course; I'll have an estimate on that for you Tuesday. Since you can finance the whole campaign yourself, we'll leave the N.A.M. out of it. That way I can spare you the humiliation of signing an outright denial. All you have to do from now on is to keep mum. Don't even admit that you're the angel financing this campaign; that would make it look phony. I'll assign you three personal public-relations men, on twenty-four-hour shift. All your public remarks are to screen through them."
"But how can I conceal my identity when I'm sponsoring the campaign?" the Ambassador objected.
"That's easy. The ostensible sponsor will be a dummy organization called—um—the Consumers Fact Finding Board. Nobody but me needs to know who signs the checks."
"How long will this campaign continue?"
"I figure it'll take about six months to sell the public this particular bill of goods. Once we get business revived, the best thing is never to mention the words Matter Repositor again, not even to deny its existence. The ultimate goal is to make people forget they ever heard of such a gadget. The more convincing I make it, the quicker I'll work myself out of a job."
"I should think you'd make it last as long as possible; that's why I asked you for a time-limit. Do you want to work yourself out of a job?"
"You bet I do! Then I can start selling a bigger item, launch a longer-term promotion, one that will last till Earth gets civilized, till I don't have anything more to sell. From what you say, that will take a lot longer than I'll live."
"It may be none of my business, but what is this big item you propose to sell next?" the Ambassador asked, curiously.
"Earth," Jerry said.
The Ambassador looked confused. "I'm afraid I don't understand."
"Didn't you just get through telling me, in effect, that any of your people who came to Earth could have all the money they wanted to spend? Well, I'm going to run advertising copy on the Federated Planets, and get them to come here and spend it."
"But I also told you that advertising is unknown on the Federated Planets!" the Ambassador protested.
"All the better. Your people, then, will have less sales resistance than an audience of Earth kindergarten kids, who have had spot commercials dinned into their ears since birth. The only problem is space and time."
"The Matter Repositor has effectively solved the problems of space and time."
"No, I mean space and time as an advertising man uses those terms. Newspaper and magazine space, radio and TV time. Do you have any newspapers out there?"
"We have very little you would classify as news. No wars, no stock market, no crime, no epidemics, no political mudslinging, few accidents. But we do have information bulletins, of course."
"Fine! Besides that million a month retainer, I want an exclusive contract to run advertising copy in the information bulletins on the Federated Planets."
"This is completely unprecedented!"
"You want to get out of this mess you're in, don't you? I'm the boy who can get you out, and that's my price."
"You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Jergins. Very well, I'll arrange it. But I'm getting you the contract only because I'm certain your excursion idea won't work. Oh, I know Earth men want to visit the Federated Planets; I've had plenty of requests. I've had to explain repeatedly that we must hold to our announced policy of no ambassador from Earth, and no exchange students, until Earth has completed a few more steps in the development of her civilization. But surely none of our people will come to Earth, aside from a few students of comparative civilizations. Our general public can view samples of your national costumes, automobiles, and so on, in the museums. I can't see why they should want to come here, while Earth is still in a primitive and dangerous stage."
"You can't, eh? Well, you might be surprised, Mr. Ambassador, you might be surprised. For the time being, just picture yourself as the pilot of that B-29, grounded on a primitive little island in space. You've met a poor, ignorant bushman. He couldn't reproduce your plane to save his neck. He can't manufacture a single gadget you'd want to buy. Nevertheless, you're about to see a demonstration of a few tricks of survival that your super-civilized race has forgotten—or, rather, never knew. I think you'll cook up into a right tasty dish."
Four days later, the Better Business Bureau of Oskaloosa, Iowa, nabbed a questionable character who had accepted deposits from local businessmen, in return for elaborately printed but worthless contracts to deliver Matter Repositors.
The warning flash crossed similar warnings from New Orleans, Reno, Milwaukee, and the Borough of Queens, with a particularly hysterical note injected by Los Angeles, where the populace had proved most susceptible to the bogus agents. The news of a national ring of confidence artists, capitalizing on people's desire for Matter Repositors, ran in all papers, of course. The editors as yet hadn't the faintest idea that they were printing carefully engineered publicity.
Before he even got his space contracts lined up, Jerry had accomplished quite a feat. He had fixed things so that, if the Ambassador from Outer Space himself had changed his mind, and imported a cargo of genuine Matter Repositors, he would have had some trouble convincing people he wasn't a crook.
In a record two weeks, the campaign proper was ready to roll. It was long on white space, and the copy was so short that, after glancing at it a few times, you found that you had involuntarily committed it to memory. In the center of blank pages in all major metropolitan newspapers appeared a small want-ad, stating that the Consumers Fact Finding Board had deposited with a New York bank the sum of one million dollars in cash, after taxes, which would be paid to any person, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, who could produce a Matter Repositor capable of repositing an object weighing two pounds a distance of ten feet.
The offer was repeated daily for a month, and from the second day forward, there was a large, red overprint, looking like a crayon scrawl, which said, "No Takers to Date who Can Deliver the Goods!"
The idea was pounded into the public mind by carcards, billboards, direct mail, and annoying telephone solicitors, who got subscribers out of bathtub and bed to ask them whether they had a Matter Repositor around the house they wanted to sell for a million dollars. Skywriters by day and illuminated blimps by night made sure the literate could not escape the message. Radio and TV singing and cartoon commercials took care of the illiterate.
No conclusions were drawn in the copy. Each "prospect" was left with the comfortable feeling that his own superior intellect and powers of deduction had supplied the answer. No Matter Repositor turned up for sale, so everyone was sure there was no such thing. The whole campaign, like other advertising campaigns before it, depended on what people failed to consider. They neglected to realize that a million dollars would be a joke to the owner of a Matter Repositor, who could reposit all the wealth on Earth, including the million in the New York bank, but would have no use for money, since he could reposit usable goods. The magic phrase "a million dollars" was a worldwide symbol for all desirable material things. It would have been almost heresy to reflect that even that much cash had no actual value.
As Jerry promised, the Ambassador didn't have to issue an official denial. His chief public relations man quite truthfully admitted to reporters that the Ambassador had no Matter Repositor in his possession, a dispatch carried by all wire services, and snickered at by clever columnists.
In basements and garages, persons of good, bad, and indifferent mechanical ability strove to earn the million. The U.S. patent office was inundated with models and drawings of unworkable devices. One of the Duke University subjects tried to patent his ability to influence the fall of dice mentally.
During the next session of the Congress, Jerry's crack lobbyists raised a great howl about the shameful congestion in the Patent Office, not mentioning, of course, that they were employed by the man who had created the congestion, by offering a million dollars for a device he knew no Earthman could build.
Another dummy organization, dubbed the Inventors Protective League, sponsored a bill to amend the act relating to perpetual motion machines. It passed, with an emergency clause, and, thereafter, devices purporting to reposit matter were not entitled to letters of patent.
This just about clinched the deal, for the vast majority of people, who had never watched laws enacted, assumed that if something was in the law, there must be a good reason for it, unless, of course, it was anything like prohibition.
A name band revived "The Thing," leaving the drumbeats out of the vocal refrain, and substituting, "Get out of here with that Matter Repositor, before I call a cop!" Within six months, radio and TV comedians had worn out the joke. Even Goofy, My Friend Irma, Mrs. Ace, and Gracie Allen were too sophisticated to believe in Matter Repositors. Gags about them dropped to the same low level as those about Brooklyn and joke-stealing comics.
Although his appearance in public was liable to start boos and catcalls, the Ambassador from Outer Space was duly grateful. He was spared the painful necessity of reporting his disastrous slip of the tongue to his government, for Earth economy was again on the upward spiral. Everybody was spending the money he'd been saving up for a Matter Repositor.
The Ambassador cheerfully paid the million-a-month retainer and the whopping space bills, but Jerry's greatest gain in the transaction was his agreement allowing him to run advertising in the Federated Planets information bulletins. The space didn't cost him a nickel. Yet he knew how to sell his exclusive rights to it for more money than any one Earth company had in its promotional budget.
By the time the campaign debunking the Matter Repositor was ready to die a natural death, Jerry had started an organization of Earth businessmen, spearheaded by the Restaurant and Hotel Associations, and the transportation interests, to promote Earth as a primitive planet. The primitive aspects of Earth, Jerry predicted, would exert a powerful appeal on the citizens of the Federated Planets, who must be pretty bored with civilization, and badly in need of a vacation from too much perfection.
This organization was not composed of dummies, by any means, but the businessmen joined up with a vague idea that their hostelries were to be way-stations, that they were going to promote sightseeing tours to places they themselves would call primitive, that the human exhibits would consist of blanketed Navajos, Chinese coolies, hula girls, Voodoo dancers, and Eskimos.
Jerry filled the biggest convention hall in Chicago, and, at the climax of the proceedings, dramatically drew back a velvet curtain, unveiling a huge painting of the symbol of the campaign—a masked bandit, wearing a slouch hat, clutching in a greedy hand a fat bag marked with a dollar sign. Below was blazoned the tasteful slogan, "Let the People of Earth Gyp You!"
A chorus of outrage echoed in the rafters. It hadn't occurred to the members that primitive exhibit A would be themselves; to wit, the genus Earth businessman; sub-species, go-getter. Jerry emerged from the resulting argument somewhat battered, but with what any experienced advertising man would recognize as a victory. His copy was to run in five per cent of the space, keyed. Now all he had to do was prove in dollars and cents that he knew more about mass sales psychology than his clients, which was, of course, a cinch.
In spite of translation into a more civilized language, Jerry's five per cent of the space out-pulled the tamer ninety-five per cent by better than ten to one. Thereafter, his clients swallowed their pride, voted him a free hand, and contented themselves with raking in the shekels from a steady stream of handsome and rich extraterrestrial tourists.
After Jerry's tourist promotion had been running two years, the U.S. Post Office broke down and printed an issue of three-cent stamps commemorating the influx, showing the goddess Terra with welcoming arms open to the starred heavens. Jerry Jergins, the second advertising man in history to achieve the distinction of having Uncle Sam plug his product on a stamp, thereby entered the most select circles of his chosen profession.
Jerry bought enough of the stamps to paper the walls of his swank and spacious penthouse offices, for the benefit of the swarm of tourists who invaded the place daily during afternoon open-house hours. They all wanted to see an advertising agency; to them, this phenomenon was the essence of that primitive planet, Earth. Jerry had recorded a lecture on primitive Earth customs which issued from concealed loudspeakers, and filled display cases with exhibits of primitive Earth culture, emphasizing the aspects he felt these extraterrestrials would find most exotic.
Considering the fact that Jerry had managed to learn little about the Federated Planets that was not utterly essential to the mechanics of his advertising campaign there, he had done a pretty good job of "getting on the customer's side of the counter." Every tourist Jerry talked to had been conditioned, by some unrevealed but apparently foolproof process, not to repeat the Ambassador's error of mentioning Matter Repositors, or other aspects of life on the Federated Planets that might cause repercussions on Earth. Even tourist children couldn't be bribed with lollypops. Tourists talked a great deal, in fluent idiomatic Earth English, yet somehow said very little.
But Jerry knew at least one thing—he was stirring emotions that lay so deep under layers and layers of civilization that these shining, perfect people hadn't known they were capable of feeling them, until they visited Earth. He was getting under their smooth skins, just as surely as the monotone of a Haitian drum-beat gets under the skin of a New Yorker.
One of the display cases contained the working tools of gangsterism—sawed-off shotguns, blackjacks, a model of a bullet-proof automobile, a news photo of the St. Valentine's Day massacre, a clipping about police payoffs from houses of gambling and prostitution, another about blindness resulting from wood alcohol. The shot-glasses of authentic antique bootleg gin that stood on top the cases were often smelled but never sampled.
The second case showed a chart of fluctuations of the stock market, with an actual operating ticker in the middle. Sections of the tape were much in demand as souvenirs. But the photo of a smashed body of a once-wealthy man who jumped from his office window after losing his fortune caused the most comment. The tourists found it difficult to understand how this man could consider his life less important than his bank balance.
The largest case contained models of war weapons, a lurid painting of Pearl Harbor under aerial attack, another of the Hiroshima mushroom that ushered in the atomic age. There were gas masks, artificial limbs, a photo of a blinded veteran led by a Seeing-Eye dog. The tourists gaped at that exhibit with all the relish of Coney Island crowds visiting wax replicas of famous murder scenes.
And along the entire 40-foot wall of the reception room, a photo-mural of a ragged, depression-era breadline brooded over the sleek heads of the beautifully dressed and elaborately fed tourists.
On his way back to the office after lunch one day, Jerry spied a traffic-stopping cluster of humanity in the street outside one of the city's leading department stores. The crowd was gathered around a paddy-wagon. Never diffident, Jerry elbowed his way through the crush, to see two handsome and once well-groomed gentlemen getting a mussing up from a couple of cops. The suspects, athletic-looking characters, were putting up a good fight, and the policemen didn't like it. As Jerry watched, a billy descended on a well-barbered head, and suspect number one ceased resisting arrest.
Jerry had come into contact with enough extraterrestrials by now so that he knew a tourist when he saw one. The male tourists gave him a violent pain in the neck, but he felt somewhat responsible. He grabbed an elbow of the suspect who remained conscious.
"Give me your name, bud, and I'll bail you out. What happened?"
"Oh, we just took a few things off the counters in that store," the tourist answered. "You're very kind, but we have plenty of money for bail, thanks. Or is it a bribe you're supposed to hand them?"
"If you have plenty of money, why in hell didn't you buy the stuff, instead of stealing it?"
"We just thought we'd have a bit of a lark. New experience and all that. When on Earth, do as the Earthmen do."
"A lark!" the biggest policeman grunted. "We'll give you a lark, all right! Get in there, you!" He implemented his command with a well-placed kick in the seat of a pair of expertly tailored pants, boosting the tourist into the paddy-wagon, where his unconscious friend had already been deposited.
The siren screamed, dispersing the crowd in front of the police vehicle, and Jerry went on his way, chuckling. As he passed a hole-in-the-wall bar he knew, he decided to stop for a quick one, to settle the heavy feeling in his stomach that came from eating lobster Newburg for lunch. It wasn't a place where you'd care to take a lady, but they served an honest ounce.
As Jerry pushed through the old-fashioned swinging doors, a burst of sound greeted him. A whiskey baritone was rendering one of the unpublishable versions of "Christopher Columbo," to the accompaniment of a piano tinkle by the hired help. The customer was obviously from the other side of the tracks—from the other side of the Galaxy, in fact—and he was leaning against the piano for the simple reason that he couldn't stand up.
He wore a well-cut California-style dinner jacket, and after all night and half the day, the white gabardine was no longer white. Several drinks had been spilled on the midnight-blue flannel trousers. Only a magnificent physique distinguished him from the Earth or garden variety of drunk.
Jerry stood up to the bar, and as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he observed a touching—literally—scene being enacted in the darkest booth. An Earthside racetrack tout, whom Jerry recognized as one of the habitues of the place, had a gorgeous female tourist backed into a corner. She had retreated as far as the wall permitted, but he had long since caught up.
Her jaunty, elbow-length chinchilla cape lay on the wet table. Her exquisitely simple strapless dinner dress of silver lamé exposed arms and shoulders that were literally out of this world. The naked effect was relieved only by a diamond, platinum, and emerald choker. Jerry knew, though the racetrack tout probably didn't, that the priceless bauble was Repositor—synthesized, with an Earth museum piece as a model.
It was a tossup whether the race track tout was more interested in the diamonds or the tempting flesh they adorned. The girl made no attempt to fight him off. The reason for her acquiescence was not far to seek. The glass before her contained the remains of a "Pink Lady," which tastes like an ice-cream soda and kicks like four Kentucky mules.
She moved her left hand to pick up the glass, and Jerry caught the flash of a circlet of channel-set baguette diamonds on the third finger. He concluded that she was the wife of the whiskey baritone. That worthy seemed utterly unconcerned about the whole thing, so why should Jerry interfere?
The racetrack tout left his conquest momentarily, walked over to the bar, handed the bartender a five-spot. Without comment, the bartender took down a key tagged 13 from a hook, and the turf expert pocketed it. There was a dingy sign reading "Hotel" outside; Jerry had always supposed the floors above contained equally dingy furnished rooms.
The beautiful tourist's silver heels mounted the back stairs unsteadily. The tout was half steering her, half supporting her. The man was sober enough to know exactly what he was doing. When she came back down those stairs, she would be minus not only her virtue, but her diamond necklace as well.
"Oh, he knew the world was round-o, that sailors could be found-o," the whiskey baritone sang lustily.
Jerry left the saloon with a bad taste in his mouth. As he passed through the electric-eye doorway of his office suite, he had the impression that the too perfect inhabitants of all the color advertising pages he had turned out in past years had suddenly come to life. Handsome tourists were moving, in chattering groups, from one display case to another.
Their chatter, as usual, gave him few clues. He still harbored a suspicion that on their home planets, these lovely people might be symbiotes in the bodies of lower animals, or loathsome but intellectual worms. But he never had any success when he tried to pump them about whether they were like Earth inhabitants at home, or were issued these magnificent bodies and faces along with their passports to Earth.
His unreasoning dislike of the males was undoubtedly part jealousy, for they were all tall, handsome, well-dressed, and athletic enough to be signed en masse by Hollywood. But the universal utter perfection of limb, features, and complexion, was not at all repulsive in the female. It was quite decorative to have a whole chorus of toothsome girls in Paris gowns cluttering up the office.
Jerry had never seen one of them use a lipstick, rouge, or an eyebrow pencil. The cosmetic business was one of the few that had not profited from the tourist trade, except insofar as lady tourists bought costly perfumes, and Earthgirls strove to mimic the natural—or unnatural—coloring of the fair visitors. A few tourists brought their children along, and here the firm, rosy, unblemished skin was in its proper element. Tourist children were not one whit more cherubic than well-favored children of Earth.
A guide from the Conducted Tours Company arrived to round up a batch of tourists, for a visit to the local jails, flop-houses, and gambling dens. He announced they would go by bus, and the horrified yet delighted whoops that greeted this news reminded Jerry of a Boston society dowager who had just been invited to ride on a camel.
As the crowd trickled out the doors, a lovely vision in platinum blonde laid a slender hand on Jerry's arm.
"Are you really the man who first thought of inviting us to this quaint and delightful planet?" she gushed.
"I guess I am, lady. How do you like it?"
"Oh, it's so primitive! So elemental! Everybody used to think visiting backward planets was dull and scholarly stuff. It took you to show us how thrilling and exciting it can be!"
"I'm glad to hear you say that. Some of the tourists are complaining that Earth isn't as primitive as the Tourist Bureau advertising makes it out to be."
"Oh, you do exaggerate a wee, tiny bit, but it's all in good fun, isn't it? On the whole, I'm not disappointed—especially not in the men!" She fluttered eyelashes, so long and dark that they looked artificial, at him.
"The men?" Jerry asked blankly.
"Oh, come, come!" the platinum blonde breathed throatily into his ear. "Don't pretend to be so innocent! You must have heard of the simply terrific reputation Earthmen have acquired on other planets as masterful lovers!"
"It's news to me," Jerry admitted, "but it sounds like a good drawing card. I'll try to work something like that into our ads."
"Always thinking about business, aren't you? Why don't you think of something else, for a change? Me, for instance. Don't you feel a little bit sorry for a girl like me, with nothing but perfectly civilized men to go home to?" the girl pouted invitingly.
Jerry found himself, by imperceptible stages, being backed into a corner. Well, well, he thought. Perhaps he'd been too harsh in judging that racetrack tout.
"Since you mention it," Jerry said, "I'm not averse to playing the role of Galactic beachboy."
"What does a beachboy do?"
"I'd blush to explain it verbally to a girl unaccustomed to primitive Earth customs, but I'm pretty good at sign language. How about dinner tonight?"
"Well ... if you'll let me pay the check. I do so adore this amazing Earth custom of exchanging food for little slips of paper."
"The pleasure is all yours, sister. See you at the Ritz main dining room—eight o'clock. Soup and fish. Afterward, we'll look at my photo-murals. Now toddle along, baby, if you want to catch the bus to see those hoboes."
Jerry was walking on the Milky Way. Aside from the profits, this job had its esthetic side, he decided. His exuberance was slightly dampened by the grim expression on his secretary's face.
"A very important man has been waiting to see you," she said disapprovingly. "I sent him into your office. The least I could do was put him where he wouldn't have to smell all the perfume these brazen tourist women use. It's enough to make a person ill!"
In the visitor's chair before Jerry's mother-of-pearl inlaid desk, the Ambassador from Outer Space was waiting, staring morosely at the endlessly repeated welcoming goddess Terra on Jerry's wall stamp collection.
"Well, as I live and breathe!" Jerry exclaimed, "a real, live B-29 pilot! Welcome to my humble grass shack! Scotch? Cigar? What can I do for you?"
"You can put out your bonfire, cannibal," the Ambassador said, gruffly. "I think I've stewed enough."
"Why are you tough, then?" Jerry asked. "At me, I mean. I thought I was your best friend in this here jungle. Didn't I do you a favor once, Mr. Ambassador?"
"A favor? I paid you well for it! Not only in money, but by getting advertising space for your precious Tourist Bureau on the Federated Planets. I never thought it would lead to this!"
"You thought my copy wouldn't pull, eh? Not even after I'd demonstrated I could make Earth opinion do a flip-flop on that Matter Repositor deal?"
"Oh, I was quite sure you could manipulate Earthmen. That's your job. But I didn't believe our people would respond in such numbers to an appeal to primitive emotions!"
"You weren't alone in that," Jerry said smugly. "Some very prominent members, of our organization wanted to make the campaign more civilized. I showed them where they were wrong. Can't you see that your people are fed up with civilization, right up to their pretty white necks? The very essence of Earth's appeal to them is that a trip here gives them a chance to relax their ethics, to play at going native."
"Don't rub it in!" The Ambassador shuddered.
"It's nothing new. Tourists have always kicked up their heels. Guess what I saw while I was out to lunch. The cops grabbed a couple of your boys for shoplifting! They thought it was such fun to ride in the paddy-wagon. Back home, of course, they wouldn't think of repositing anything they weren't supposed to, but on Earth it's different."
"And for monkeyshines like that," the Ambassador growled, "I am driven half crazy working out sleep-record courses. 'Idioms of Earth English'—'What Not to Say on Backward Planets and Why'—'Earth Fashion Guide, What You Can Buy There and What to Reposit.' Bah! I'm supposed to be a diplomat, not a fashion adviser!"
"Why don't you hire some help?" Jerry suggested.
"I have. I've hired a whole staff, with offices in all major Earth cities, to exchange platinum, bullion, and precious stones for Earth currencies. It's a man-sized job, I can tell you, to keep Earth currencies stable under this load!"
"You're doing a very good job," Jerry said, soothingly.
"You know what one of our citizens asked me yesterday? How she could get a marriage license! Your officials had turned her down, because she'd been conditioned not to mention her birthplace and age. Mind you, a citizen of the Federated Planets wanted to marry an Earthman and live on this raw, Galactic frontier the rest of her life! Why, we don't even know whether the races can cross-breed!"
"That should be looked into," Jerry agreed.
"What are you trying to do?" the Ambassador demanded, "Drag the citizens of the Federated Planets down to the level of your jungle? You blithely assume those two shoplifters can be trusted with Matter Repositors when they get back home, but I'm not so sure. We haven't any jails to toss them into, but we may have to establish some. Matter-Repositor-proof jails!"
"That's your problem," Jerry said. "All I'm trying to do is make some money for myself and, other businessmen on Earth. Which I'm doing, thank you. And I doubt that you could stop me, at this point. Your citizens would raise quite a howl if my ads stopped appearing in the information bulletins."
"Money!" the Ambassador exclaimed, "All you Earthmen think about is money!" He leaned over Jerry's desk. "What if you could reposit the money—the gold, that is—without all the work you have to put into entertaining these tourists?"
"Hmm," Jerry said, thinking of his date for that evening, and other equally lovely tourists. "Money isn't the only thing in life. And don't forget the income tax. I've got to have some deductible expenses."
"Knowing you, I'd bet you could figure out some way of handling that little detail."
"What's your proposition?"
"Two years ago, you came to my office, wanting to import Matter Repositors. I told you Earth's civilization wasn't ready for them."
"We still aren't, according to what you say about our avaricious instincts."
"No, you're not. But you have methods of manipulating public opinion and attitudes that are far more advanced than those found on other planets."
"So you admit that Earth is advanced in something!" Jerry said happily.
"How would you like to have the name of Jerry Jergins go down in your history as the originator of the most significant public-relations campaign ever undertaken on this planet?" the Ambassador asked, temptingly. "You can handle it, if any man on Earth can."
"Softsoaping me again! What's the campaign? I'll listen to it, but I don't know whether I'll buy it."
"Your job would be to get Earth's psychology and sociology ready for the Matter Repositor."
Jerry reflected. "You mean I'd have to eliminate war, supplement the Voice of America, and so on? I'd have certain advantages over the Voice of America, at that. I wouldn't have a bunch of politicians playing football with my appropriations."
"This campaign would have to go further and deeper than the Voice of America. You might call it the Voice of Conscience. Its aim would be to make every human being on Earth care more about the welfare of his fellow-man than he cares about his own."
"A couple of thousand years back," Jerry said, soberly, "a better Promoter than I tried to put that idea across. The campaign He started is still running. It's taken hold in some quarters, but I wouldn't say public acceptance is anything like worldwide yet."
"Then you don't think you can do it?" the Ambassador asked, his eagerness somewhat deflated.
"I'm not committing myself to whether I could or couldn't. I could put the Ten Commandments on an international hookup. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor his goods. I could get Walt Disney to dramatize the golden rule."
"Ah, I see you have some ideas for the copy already," the Ambassador said. "I thought I could get you interested in it. Then you'll sign a contract?"
"No," Jerry said, briefly and definitely.
"Now, wait a minute, Mr. Jergins," the Ambassador protested. "Why do you suddenly become blunt and unqualified? Do you realize what I'm offering you? In return for ceasing this tourist promotion, I'm offering you the invention that obsolesces all others—the Matter Repositor!"
Jerry stood up and placed the palms of his hands flat on his desk. "I told you that you'd learn something in our primitive jungle, Mr. Ambassador. Well, this is it. We may be mechanical morons, according to your standards, but we naked savages can produce anything we need. Since we've corrected the misconception that what Earth produces isn't good enough for Earthmen, and whipped up a tourist trade, business is booming. And when it booms, we can distribute those Earth products in a way that suits us pretty well. A primitive way, you may think, but one that is adapted to the unfortunate circumstance that we aren't a bunch of little tin saints living in an ideal world.
"I asked you for Matter Repositors once, and you were wise enough to turn me down. I'm glad you did. They'd cause us more trouble than the atomic bomb. We don't want the damn things. Do you understand that?"
On sudden impulse, Jerry strode across his office. There stood a large and brilliantly colored object, jarring oddly with the other furniture. Sometimes at a loss to spend his newly acquired wealth, Jerry had yielded, a month or so before, to a desire conceived in childhood to own a real honest-to-goodness juke box.
Jerry fished in his pocket for a nickel, deposited it in the slot, pushed button seven. Loud, tinny, and offensively blatant, the strains of "I Don't Wanna Leave the Congo" filled the office, effectively drowning out any further remarks the Ambassador from Outer Space might have wished to make.
"If you'll pardon me," Jerry shouted over the din, "I have some arrow heads to chip—and a potential extraterrestrial mate to woo with a quaint tribal ritual we call dating on Earth."
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