Part 1

THE PASSIONATE PITCHMAN

By STEPHEN WILDER

_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.