_Hector was just another salesman until the gorgeous Miss Laara
came along with her Foolproof Method of Procurement. Miss Laara was
fascinating. So were her methods. They introduced Hector into a
world where inhibitions were unknown. Then the Syndicate moved in.
They wanted to know about this procurement business. So will you._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Illustration: Patty put a working stranglehold on Laara but it was
Hector, underneath, who got the business.]
The large-headed little man cornered Hector Finch after Heck had had
his fourth martini at the sales convention.
Heck functioned rather well after four martinis, but he never
remembered much afterward. He did remember vaguely, though, that the
little man's head seemed too large. Not freakishly so--just somewhat
too large. Nor was the man's small stature something a circus sideshow
could make money on. The man was almost but not quite five feet tall,
Hector Finch judged.
"I want to see you a moment," he told Heck politely. "If I may."
Hector nodded. He way-laid a waiter and short-stopped two brimfull
cocktail glasses which had been heading elsewhere.
"Drink?" he asked the little man.
The little man nodded, took one of the glasses and upended it. He had
poured the martini--it was a very dry martini--down his throat without
swallowing. That, Hector decided, as they found an unoccupied corner
of the convention hall in which were displayed the various electronic
products of Weatherby, Inc., for which Heck was a salesman, was a
considerable feat.
"I've been watching you," the little man said.
"Oh?" It probably meant, Heck told himself, that the little man was an
employee-scout for one of Weatherby's competitors. Such scouts often
came to these conventions and had a go at recruiting top-flight sales
personnel.
"You're passionate, Hector Finch," the little man said suddenly and
unexpectedly.
"I'm which?" Hector asked in surprise.
"Passionate. As a salesman, of course. I wouldn't know about your love
life. You truly like to sell things, don't you?"
"Why, yes," Heck said enthusiastically, surprised that he had admitted
it. This was, in a way, Hector Finch's secret. Other men loved big
sports cars or fishing or hunting or trips to exotic places. Hector
Finch's first love was selling. There was something, he always told
himself, soul-satisfying in selling someone a product which, while good
in its own right, they didn't really need. Something thrilling and
ego-boosting....
"... and you're healthy and young and ought to have a life-expectancy
of some fifty-odd years after today. Yes, Heck. You're the man we want."
"I'm sorry," Heck said promptly. "But I like my work with Weatherby,
Inc. I couldn't possibly--"
"You have, I believe," said the little man with a smile, "a fiancée
in the home office of Weatherby, Inc. By name, Patty O'Conner. Irish
and--shall we say, tempestuous?"
"What about Patty?" Heck groaned. He thought he knew what was coming.
"Last night, after the first evening of the convention, you and a
blonde named--"
* * * * *
"Never mind her name!" wailed Heck, remembering the evening with
delight. "How did you know?"
"I said I've been watching you. Now, unless you want the story of you
and the blonde woman--very aesthetically pleasing, by the way--to go
directly to Miss O'Conner, you must agree to--"
"Anything," Heck said in despair. He loved Patty O'Conner. He wanted
to marry Patty, and would. But they weren't married yet. And Heck was
a firm believer in wild oats, the more to make marriage lasting and
unsullied. He also knew Patty's violent Irish temper.
"Splendid. Incidentally, that bit with the blonde was superb, Heck. I
mean, the way you sold yourself. At the beginning she didn't even like
you, you know."
Heck beamed. "Seduction, like selling--" he began, then scowled. "Let's
just hear your proposition," he said.
"First, a question. What would you say is the chief factor in selling
over which the salesman has no control?"
"Location, of course," Heck said promptly. "You've got to be where
the customer is. You've got to get that old foot in the door, as the
expression goes--"
"Precisely. But I can go you one better, Heck. Could you sell bottled
water to a thirsting man? a greasy-spoon hamburger to a starving man?
life insurance to a man who's just learned he has an incurable disease?"
"You wouldn't need much of a salesman. Anyone could make sales like
that."
"Heck, what's a salesman's dream?"
"Walking through walls, I guess. Getting at the customer no matter
what."
"But we're grown men. We know that walking through walls is impossible."
"It was only a matter of speaking," said Heck, downing his fifth
martini and thinking of Patty. If Patty ever learned about that
blonde....
"Yes, to be sure. A matter of speaking. But did you ever hear of
teleportation?"
"No," said Hector Finch promptly. How his head was whirling!
"Teleportation is instantaneous transport from one position in space,
from one location, to another. It needs no time; it negates the
dimension of time. Neither time nor space--nor walls, Heck--are a
barrier to teleportation. This is what I offer you. With it you can
be with the right product at the right place at the right time, and a
customer's 'no' and locked door won't mean a thing to you."
"But why--"
"Because of your passion. We want to see what the combination of
passionate salesmanship and teleportation can mean on Earth."
* * * * *
"On Earth. Er--"
"No. Certainly not. I'm not from Earth."
"Then--"
"Does it matter? Does it really matter to you? I am from elsewhere.
Isn't that enough. Anyway...."
"But what do you want me to sell?"
"Anything. Everything."
"I don't--" lamely--"understand."
"Whatever is needed. Wherever it is needed. We've already rented
a warehouse in your home city. It's stocked to meet almost any
contingency. You sell anything, Heck. You sell it, though, when and
where it is absolutely needed. It's a salesman's paradise: no one can
refuse you. No one."
"But--Patty! I'll have to quit Weatherby. And Patty--"
"You're a salesman, aren't you? A passionate salesman? Don't you love
Patty? Sell her the idea of coming along as your secretary. You can do
it--if anyone can."
"But, but--"
"Be firm, Heck! Believe in yourself. Here." The little man held out
something. It was a business card. "Your business card," the little man
said. The card said: HECTOR FINCH, Inc. _We Sell Anything, Anywhere,
Anytime._ There was an address and a telephone number on the card. Like
it or not, unless the little fellow were insane, Heck was in business.
Hector Finch blinked. The little man was gone. Hector spent the next
hour wandering around the convention floor, seeking him. He was
nowhere. It was as if the floor had swallowed him up. _Maybe I imagined
the whole thing_, Heck thought. He'd heard of people getting the DT's,
even if they didn't drink excessively....
Just then the blonde of last night came undulating across the
convention floor. She was a sales analyst for Jason Spooner, Inc.,
Weatherby's chief competitor. She had a figure which Heck could only
regard as fantastic. She looked like a calendar pin-up girl in three
dimensions. _Bite-size_, Heck thought. _I mean, life-size. Bite-size
and ready to eat. That was an ad.... Hooo, I'm high. I'm high as the
proverbial kite._
"Heck!" called the blonde. "Heck, darling, I've been looking just all
over."
Heck could think of only one thing: Patty. Last night had been a
mistake. Patty.
Everything went dark for a split second.
Heck opened his eyes.
He was standing in a bedroom. A bright moon was riding high, shining
through the open window.
It was Patty's bedroom. At least, Heck assumed it was. He had never
been there.
The girl sleeping on the bed was Patty.
* * * * *
Not having ever been a movie star, Patty had never told a columnist in
what state of dress or undress she slept. Nor had Heck ever asked her.
Patty was not a prim girl, but neither was she incontinent, verbally or
otherwise.
Standing there on the threshold of Patty's bedroom in the moonlight,
Heck learned how Patty slept.
She slept with a slight, contented smile on her lovely face. She
slept with her long Titian hair in careless disarray, framing her
heart-shaped head on the pillow. She slept with the light cover thrown
back and covering only her left calf.
And she slept, as they say, in her birthday suit.
There were delightful curves. There were delightful hummocks. There
were delightful valleys. And highlights and shadows....
Heck stood uncertainly on the threshold, gaping. Should he enter the
room? Should he beat a hasty and strategic retreat? Should he....
He took a hesitant step into the room. His foot struck something. It
wasn't much of a sound, but it was enough. Patty was a light sleeper.
Her eyes blinked open. She looked at Heck without seeing him. Maybe the
moonlight blinded her.
"Get--out!" she yelled.
* * * * *
A man, Heck thought. She sees a man. She doesn't know it's me yet.
She was sitting up now, clutching the cover to her chin. She pointed
imperiously at the door. "How dare you come in here? How dare...."
She stopped. Rage replaced surprise and fear on her face. Patty was
definitely no clinging vine type of girl.
She leaped from the bed, draping the light cover over her body. She
made straight for Heck, fire in her eyes. "No second-storey man's going
to get away with coming in here!" she cried, her Irish wrath rising.
Apparently she still hadn't seen Heck's face. He tried to flee, but
stumbled over whatever he had stumbled over before.
Patty reached him just as he righted himself. She was a tall girl, tall
as Heck. She was not exactly Amazonian, but had a lush, well-built
figure. Heck, for his part, was not exactly Herculean. With anger and
some little vestige of fear pumping adrenaline through her blood and
with health and vigor and half a night's sleep behind her while Heck
was still considerably potted, she would have been a good match for him.
But Heck was at a disadvantage. Heck did not want to fight.
She caught his shoulders and turned him around to face her. She butted
at him with her head. She kicked him in the shin. She balled her fists
and hit his face. Heck tripped for a third time, and this time he fell
down.
In one sweeping motion, the cover trailing like a cape, Patty clawed
for the telephone on the dresser and dove down on top of Heck. She sat
on his middle and lifted the phone from its cradle and said, her voice
surprisingly cool: "Get me the police."
Frantically, Heck clutched at the telephone, depressing the cradle.
Patty raised the heavy instrument threateningly.
"Wait!" Heck cried. "It's me--Heck!"
Patty's mouth opened. She didn't say anything, though. Then she looked
at Heck and threw her arms around him. "Oh, Hector, Hector, did I hurt
you?" she wanted to know.
"You definitely did not hurt me. I tripped, is all."
"I'm sorry, if I had known--Just a minute! Hector Finch, _what are you
doing in my bedroom_?"
"I can explain everything," said Heck in a voice which said he could
not explain anything at all.
"Well, you had better start explaining." Patty got up, leaving the
telephone on the floor near Heck, who was busy rubbing his throbbing
jaw.
Just then the telephone rang.
Heck picked up the receiver. "Yes?" he said.
"Are you the party who asked for the police?" the operator demanded.
"No, I'm not," Heck said truthfully.
"Well, someone at that number did. Do you still want the police?"
"No."
"Then why did you--"
"It was the children," Heck blurted. "I'm terribly sorry, operator. You
know how children will play with the phone."
"At three o'clock in the morning?" the operator asked.
"They have insomnia," Heck said with inspiration, and hung up.
* * * * *
Patty had adjusted the cover into graceful, toga-like folds. She stood
with her hands on her hips. Heck got up and backed slowly toward the
door.
"Well?" Patty demanded wrathfully.
"You're dreaming," Heck said. "Don't you realize you're dreaming?"
"Dreaming? But you--"
"Dreaming. Yes, dreaming. You ought to know me by now, Patty love.
Would I barge into your bedroom at three in the morning? Would I?"
"Well, I hadn't thought you would," Patty admitted. "But I certainly
don't feel like I'm dreaming. And besides," she went on suspiciously,
"a person in a dream never tells the person who is dreaming that she's
dreaming. It just isn't done."
"It's done in this dream. Here, I'll pinch you."
* * * * *
"No, keep away from me!"
"Patty, I'm in Cleveland at the salesman's convention. I called you
long distance from Cleveland tonight, remember? So how can I be here?
You must have been thinking of me when you went to sleep, so you
dreamed...."
"Don't be so rational. I want to believe you. But dreams aren't so
rational, Heck."
"Get back into bed," Heck commanded. "You'll see you are dreaming.
You--you'll be sleeping soundly again in seconds."
"I'm not getting back into anything until I find out if--"
Heck walked toward her. Her bold attack on what she thought had
been a prowler was done half in sleep. She was only now coming to
full wakefullness. He had to prevent that, or she'd know the truth.
Naturally, he couldn't tell her about the little man with the slightly
too big head and the something which he called teleportation and which
seemed to work.
"Keep away from me, Heck. I'm warning you. We--we're not married yet.
If this isn't a dream we won't get married, either."
But boldly Heck advanced on her and with a quick bending and swooping
and lifting motion scooped her up in his arms and went with her to the
bed. Before he deposited her thereon he kissed her mouth. Her lips were
delicious.
"Ooo," she said. "What a dream! What a dream--"
"Go to sleep," Heck ordered. "This obviously can't be anything but a
dream. Can it?"
She looked up at him sleepily. Apparently it was working. "N-no,
Hector." She looked up at him. "Hector?"
"Yes," he said, backing toward the door, "what is it?"
"Hector, why can't you be--well, assertive, like the man in the dream?
The dream Hector."
"I am. I am exactly how I am. You dream very accurately."
It was a mistake. Her eyes opened wider. She seemed more awake. "But
Heck--"
"Sleep," he coaxed. "It's only a dream. Sleep."
She wanted desperately to believe him, and that was a big help. Her
eyelids fluttered, grew heavy, closed. She breathed regularly. Heck
went to the door.
And tripped a fourth time.
"Hector!" Patty shouted.
He closed the door behind him and ran. He heard her footsteps pounding
across the bedroom floor, heard the doorknob being turned. He had
to vanish, here in her living room, at once. If he vanished, if the
teleportation really worked and took him away instantly, before she
could open the door and see him, she would be convinced she had dreamed
everything.
He concentrated his will on the teleportation, but made a mistake. He
forgot to designate a destination.
Darkness came for a split second.
Then soft light.
A living room--but not Patty's.
A woman screamed, staring at him. The man with her cursed and threw
a cocktail glass in an automatic hostile response. It struck Heck's
temple and shattered.
The woman was the blonde sales analyst for Jason Spooner. She gaped at
Heck open-mouthed. The man seemed familiar. Heck had met him recently,
he knew.
Suddenly it came to him. The man was Amos Weatherby of Weatherby, Inc.
Met him? He'd known Weatherby for years!
And Heck had seen the living room before. It was the main room of the
two-room suite Amos Weatherby had taken at the convention hotel.
* * * * *
"Finch!" Weatherby cried.
Heck stood there, staring blankly. He was near no door. He could not
summon his will to vanish via teleportation. He would have to learn how
to master that.
"Finch, what are you doing here?"
What Heck was doing there was not at all obvious. But what Amos
Weatherby and the blonde had been doing was obvious. Weatherby seemed
to be in a rumpled state, hair, clothing, general appearance. The
blonde's off-the-shoulder gown was considerably further off the
shoulder than it should have been. Cocktail glasses were scattered
about. There was a bottle of champagne in an urn.
Last night she made a play for me, Heck thought. Tonight, the boss.
Well, the ex-boss. It came to Heck that it might all be Jason Spooner's
idea, and that seemed as good a way out as any. It's like selling, he
thought. I sold Patty the idea that she was dreaming, didn't I? Selling
was one part luck, one part determination and one part figuring out
what the potential customer thought he wanted and tieing that in with
what you had to sell.
"Listen, boss," Heck said. "This dame made a play for me last night.
Now it's you. I wonder how much Jason Spooner is paying her?"
"That's a lie!" the blonde cried. "He made a drunken pass at me last
night and I told him to try again on somebody else. This is his
revenge."
"Boss," said Heck, "don't you see? Either Spooner wants to get some
trade secrets on next year's models or else he--he wants to put you
in a compromising spot. Why--why any minute," Heck improvised, "a
photographer might rush in here and start shooting pictures. What a way
to discredit Weatherby, Inc! After all, you're a family man, and you
can't take--"
Even as Heck spoke, a photographer suddenly came into the room. Through
the walls? wondered Heck in dismay. No, he had merely materialized, as
Heck had done.
With camera and strobe unit he walked purposefully across the room.
"Right here, boss?" he demanded. The others did not know this,
but he was addressing Heck. Apparently Heck had summoned him, via
teleportation. He was part of Heck's new company, all donated by the
man with the big head, like the cards, and the warehouse.
* * * * *
The blonde looked more surprised than anybody. Amos Weatherby had gone
white as a sheet. His mouth opened but he couldn't get any words out.
"Scram!" Heck shouted. "Get out of here." The photographer vanished.
"Finch," Amos Weatherby said, mopping his brow, "you had better be able
to explain this. All of it."
The blonde, after her first surprise at the photographer, seemed
amused. "But does he really?" she demanded. "Do you, Heck?"
The boss-image was very strong in Heck's mind. He'd been an employee of
Weatherby, Inc., ever since his two years of business college. Amos
Weatherby was The Boss. You had to obey The Boss. But still, in a way,
the blonde was right. Wasn't Heck going into business for himself?
Hadn't the arrangements already been made by the little man with
the slightly outsized head? But what about the blonde? thought Heck
suddenly. How did the blonde know this?
"Well, Finch?" Weatherby asked.
And Heck heard himself saying: "This seems as good a time as any to
tell you, boss. I--er--am quitting."
Weatherby looked at him for a moment, then bellowed: "Did some goldarn
sales representatives from The Spooner Company offer you some kind of
deal? I'll match it, Heck. Plus an additional bonus. Amos Weatherby
needs salesmen like you!"
"Thank you, sir, but I'm going into business for myself."
"Yourself? With what for capital?"
The blonde smiled. To Heck it looked like a knowing smile. The blonde
knew, all right. She understood everything. "I'm afraid I can't tell
you that," Heck said. The blonde took his arm.
"Shall we teleport?" she said.
The last thing Heck saw was Amos Weatherby's sweating face. Then, with
the blonde, he plunged into the now familiar blackness.
* * * * *
"But it's still dark," Heck said a few moments later as they continued
to travel.
"Sure," came the unseen blonde's voice. "We just haven't gone all the
way through."
Something soft nibbled at Heck's face. Nibbled? That wasn't nibbling!
he told himself. It was a pair of lips and the lips were kissing him in
the utter darkness.
"Ummm," said the blonde between kisses, "if we're going to work
together, we might as well have some fun, too."
"But what about Patty?" Heck demanded. While waiting for an answer he
explored tentatively then more forcefully with his own lips and hands.
After all, the circumstances _were_ unusual.
"Patty?" asked the blonde dreamily. "Paa-tii? Oh, yes, the girl friend.
Well, just you bring her along to work for us if you want, as a
secretary or clerk or something."
"For--us?" Heck asked.
"Us, of course. I'm part of _Hector Finch. We Sell Anything._"
"What part?" Heck asked suspiciously.
"Don't say it like that, lover. It was Baldid's idea."
"Who the hell's Baldid?"
"Little man? Big head?"
"Go ahead," said Heck resignedly.
"I'm to be your procurement agent, is all."
"Procurer," said Heck, "of what?"
"Procurement agent, I said. What do you think a procurement agent does?
He gets things. You sell them, I'll get them. O.K.?"
"If Mr. Baldid said so, I guess it's O.K."
"Splendid," came the voice of the blonde in utter darkness. She was
very close. Heck could smell the scent of her perfume. He felt the
faint brushing of her blonde hair against his face as she moved her
head in the darkness. "Now, do you want to go back and get a hotel
room, or sleep here?" she asked Heck matter-of-factly.
"Well, to tell you the truth--"
"Why bother to be conventional, Heck? Besides, those are just the
conventions of _your world_ which are holding you back. Now, on _my_
world--"
"You stay here," Heck said. "Wherever here is. I'm going back home.
I'll see you at the new office tomorrow. Er--you know the address?"
"I ought to. I picked the place out for Baldid."
"Well, goodbye," Heck said, and teleported to his bachelor apartment
in Metropolitan City, about half a mile from where Patty lived.
Conventions, he thought. It was always something. He didn't mean
the conventions which had stopped him from doing what the eager
blonde wanted to do because he was engaged to Patty. He meant sales
conventions. If all this had happened at anything but a sales
convention, Heck would have been too incredulous to go ahead with his
plans to start the new business. But at a sales convention? Anything
and everything could happen at a sales convention....
Heck drifted off to sleep and dreamed that Patty and Baldid, secret
lovers, were conspiring against him.
* * * * *
He was at the new office building at nine o'clock promptly. He should
have felt sleepy, but did not. He was raring to go.
The building was seven storeys high. Heck had expected a dilapidated
warehouse and a dingy suite of offices above it. What he saw was a
gleaming glass-walled new office building in one of the best sections
of town. A sign in raised metal-on-metal bank-style letters proclaimed
the edifice to be the _Finch Building_. And that, Heck told himself in
amazement, was more than either Amos Weatherby or Jason Spooner had.
The doorman smiled and tipped his hat. At first Heck, who smiled back a
little self-consciously, did not know how the maroon-uniformed doorman
knew him. But then he saw a big full-color portrait of himself hanging
just to the left of the bank of elevators. Apparently the blonde had
found it somewhere, or had had it made from a snapshot. The blonde
thought of everything.
Heck got into the elevator. It was crowded with white-collar workers
all of whom, Heck realized with a start, worked for him. They'd been
talking animatedly when he entered the car, but the talk settled
quickly into nervous silence. After all, weren't they in the presence
of The Boss?
When the elevator got to the top floor and when the last of the other
passengers got off, Heck stepped out on a plush red carpet and
across it through a gate and past a row of smiling secretaries to an
opaque-glass-walled suite of offices marked with the legend: _Executive
Offices_.
There must have been half a dozen secretaries and clerks in the
large ante-room. All were busy. All were gorgeous. If the blonde was
responsible for hiring them, the blonde had taste. And obviously
wasn't the jealous type. Or perhaps, Heck thought, Baldid had done the
hiring. Or perhaps the girls just came with the building. Were they
Earth girls? wondered Heck, or girls from the blonde's world? He found
himself sighing with contentment. If they all had a collective moral
sense the equal of the blonde's.... But what am I thinking? There's
Patty. Isn't there?
* * * * *
"... waiting for you," a voice said.
"Er, what was that?" Heck realized that the secretary closest to the
door leading to the Executive Offices had spoken to him.
"I said, sir, there is a Miss O'Conner waiting for you in your office."
Patty, Heck thought. He gulped. How had Patty learned of his new
business so quickly? He was going to tell her, of course, but not
immediately. He needed time to think. Unprepared, how could you explain
a setup like this to a girl like Patty?
"... has called twice," the secretary was saying.
"I--uh--whom did you say has called twice?"
"Miss Laara, sir. The procurement agent."
"Ah, yes. Miss Laara. I'd better see her. At once. Yes. Yes, at once.
Don't tell Miss O'Conner...."
Just then the door to the Executive Offices opened. An angry Patty
stood there, hands on hips. "Don't tell Miss O'Conner what?" she
demanded. "Heck, are you trying to avoid me?"
"Why, no, sweetheart. Whatever--"
Then Patty's face changed. The anger and the certainty were replaced
by a small-girl look of surprise and awe. "Heck," she said in a soft
voice, "what is all this? What has happened to you? How--how can you
afford a setup that could bankrupt Amos Weatherby?"
"I can explain everything," Heck said, realizing how ridiculous and
incriminating the words sound. "No, I mean it, I can." Of course he
could. But whether she believed or not was another story.
"Now?" Patty asked.
"Not now. Right now I'm busy."
Patty had a new expression on her face. Hurt look. "At least give me
some idea," she pleaded.
Heck stared at her blankly. There was nothing he could say. She would
never believe his story about Mr. Baldid. Who in his right mind would?
"I--I saved up!" he said, blurting the words.
"Saved up? If you'd been saving half your paycheck since I met you you
couldn't have put a down payment on just the furniture in this one
room. Heck! Heck, you're lying to me!"
He didn't deny it. He stared at Patty and shrugged his shoulders and
adjusted his tie and teleported. The last thing he saw was Patty's very
angry face....
* * * * *
Heck re-materialized in the Procurement Office, or rather in the
waiting room of the procurement office. He looked around. He shuddered.
He wanted to run.
The faces. You didn't have to study the WANTED posters in the post
offices to recognize them. They were all of a type--and the type
belonged on wanted posters. They were hard faces, brutal faces,
cynical faces. They went with big, powerful bodies and heavily-padded,
loud-styled clothing. They went with suspicious jacket-bulges and
unreadable expressions. They went with organized crime.
The secretary, a very small brunette in a low-cut dress, did not
seem to mind. In fact, she seemed a shade disappointed when Heck's
comparatively small form pushed its way through to her desk. "There's
something?" she said, then gave Heck a closer scrutiny. "Mr. Finch! I'm
sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you."
"Is Miss Laara in?"
"Yes, sir. Of course. Interviewing, sir."
"For what?"
The receptionist stared at him in surprise. "For the procurement staff,
naturally. Shall I tell Miss Laara you're here?"
"No. I'll go right in, thanks."
And Heck went to the door, and opened it.
"... ten percent of the price received for all material procured by
you," Miss Laara, her blonde hair in an upsweep and harlequin glasses
perched on her pretty nose, was saying.