Read Ebook: The Pilot and the Bushman by Jacobs Sylvia Stone David Illustrator

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Ebook has 152 lines and 10044 words, and 4 pages

"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.

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.

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 lam? 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.

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