WHEN BETTER BUDGIES ARE BUILT

In 2351, vacuum cleaners will be old stuff. Budgies will be the thing. But one and all your troubles will be over — or just starting

I’D WALKED about twenty miles. It was hotter than a Sergeant with a hot-foot. And the vacuum cleaner I was lugging had started to weigh a thousand pounds. Ever since graduating from the University of California, I’d been a very successful vacuum-cleaner salesman, one of the best in fact. They’d started saying around the offices that Marty Dunstall could sell ice-packs to Eskimos, cigarette lighters to the Devil, and hot sauce to Yvonne de Carlo. Stuff like that.

Anyway I was good.

But today I was blue and on the verge of heat-stroke. I rang the doorbell of this little innocent-appearing white cottage and a nicely stacked blonde in a starched dress answered the door.

“Come in,” she said, partly with her mouth and partly with the rest of her. “I’m interested—already.”

I was in. I tried to keep my mind on my spiel, while she stood close to me and all the time the pressure was rising in me like in a pressure-cooker, and my forehead was getting slippery. A nice, quiet, cool little cottage with vines dwindling down the pastel walls and a couch squared around two whole walls of the room. But all this isn’t really important any more. Because I never saw that blonde again, nor the house.

I emptied a sack-full of dirt in the middle of the rug. Then I went over to plug in the Drakeson Never-Fail Vacuum. I hesitated while I bent over there looking at the blonde’s legs, but I was thinking of something else. All at once, I remembered how that stranger back at the office, some guy named Divers, had given me my Vacuum. I hesitated while I bent over a new job and the boss had said to have Dunstall try it out. Come to think of it, that was an odd incident. Who the hell was Divers, I thought, and also, coming to think of it, this was one very funny-looking vacuum cleaner.

It was bulky and fat in the wrong places like a “do you want to lose five pounds a day” ad. I looked up. The blonde was looking down at me and smiling, and she had one hand on her hip. Nice lips too, cushiony, pouting a little.

“This is a new-type cleaner,” I said, “and fortunately for you, you’re one of the first ladies to try it out.”

“Yes,” she said huskily. “I’m pretty bored with the old type.”

“You won’t be long, madame,” I said, and I plugged in the cord. Metal rang in my head and all at once that nice room began to look like the inside of a steam bath. I heard a scream, and all I could see was the blonde’s eyes widening at me like spilled wine on a white tablecloth. I tried to yell, I tried to move—I could do neither. A wavering curtain of zig-zagging light shot around me and my hair crackled like puffed wheat. And I couldn’t see that room any more, and worse yet, the blonde was just a memory. I felt like I’d grabbed hold of a high-tension wire. A high shrill head-splitting whine was growing higher and higher and I stretched with it. Any minute I knew I was going to snap, pop, split, fly in a million pieces.

And then my mind went as blank as a Christmas turkey’s.

I WOKE up. My head felt like a busted orange crate, and when I moved a little I felt like dropping right back down into that pleasant darkness from which I’d just come. When I opened my eyes, though, I forgot my head and the rest of me.

I was someplace else. What I was seeing was odd enough, different enough to give me a chilled feeling. The way you feel in the night when you’ve been having a nightmare and you wake up and you don’t know for sure that you’re awake because some of the other stuff still hangs on….

I sat up, and a useless paralyzing panic grew inside of me all the way to the creeking hair on my head. Indecision and doubt sparred inside of me, and I sat there listening to my heart rapping against my throat.

A guy stood there looking down at me. He was about six foot six, proportionately built, with a torso like a gladiator’s and blond hair that came down to his shoulders. His face was shaped metallic tables suspended from was a room like you might find if you walked inside the frame of one of those modernistic paintings at an art show. All bright angles and odd-shaped metallic tables suspended from the ceiling with wire. Light oscillated from the walls and that was pretty and pleasant—if you had any idea where you were, why, and how.

“Get up,” the man said.

I sat there. “What the hell’s going on?” I said.

He grabbed me and started using me for an excercise boy, and then he propped me up against the wall. Behind him, through the wall which was all glass, I saw a city right out of Captain Video. Spiralling walkways curving like suspended confetti, and bullets shooting along in bright flashes, and people streaming like ants.

I got myself all set to rock Superman back on his heels. I said. “Already you annoy me. You’re beginning to get in my hair like peanuts gets in your teeth.”

He stared, then reached in his mouth and took out his teeth and examined them, puzzled. They were a nice pair of falsies. I grabbed them out of his hand, and moved around to the middle of the room. He looked pretty funny, handsome and perfect and bronzed, but with his toothless gums gaping like a very old soldier about ready to fade away.

“Shtoonk,” I said. “You tell me what’s going on, or I hurl these molars right out the window. I don’t know what they’re made of, but after falling from as high up as we seem to be, there won’t be enough left of these choppers to dent a cream puff.”

He scrubbed a very nervous hand over his locks and eyed that set of dentures in my hand like a dame looks at her best friend’s husband.

“Give them back!” he gasped finally, his jaws sinking in like a busted accordian. “If Ella saw me this way, she would be really lost to me forever.”

“Why’d you get rough with me?” I said. “And why drag me onto a movie set—?” But I was kidding myself. I knew I wasn’t loose among a lot of phony props.

He reached. “Huh-uh,” I said. “No toothies ‘till you talkie.”

He seemed puzzled. “I thought you people from the past appreciated nothing but violence. I only acted that way toward you because I thought it was polite.”

I laughed. “Then it’s only proper,” I said, “to return your thoughtful gesture of good will.” And I brought one up from the general area of my knees. I’d boxed in college, and played football, and this one I brought up from my knees. I sent it at his chin like a bowling ball, like you need a ten-strike and you hate the pins; straightaway, no English. It sounded pretty bad, and his head flashed back and hit bottom and then he was lying there, his breath coming in gurgles like soda pop out of a bottle.

I WENT TO the window and looked out. It was a big city, but it had no resemblance whatsoever to the Kansas City I had departed from so mysteriously. This room wasn’t that cottage where I’d been about to demonstrate a vacuum cleaner. And I had a chilly feeling that that blonde was a long way off—somewhere.

I turned. Big Boy was getting up, groggy, and walking like a punch-drunk fighter. He shook his head ruefully. I whispered. “What year is this?”

“2351 to you, Mr. Dunstall. To me-350 A.B.—that is, after the bomb.”

I leaned against the wall. “All right,” I finally whispered. “What am I doing here? And how did that damn vacuum cleaner do it? And incidently, what’s your name?”

“You’re here to sell something,” the guy said in a peculiar toothless lisp. “The vacuum cleaner was really a time-machine too complicated for you to understand, And my name is Randolph Wakeman. Now, can I have my teeth back?”

“Hope,” I said. “Not until I get all the dope on what’s really happening to me, and why.” I went over and dangled those expensive choppers out the window. Wakeman was a very vain guy and he winced at the idea of their plunging to destruction. “I was intending,” he lisped awkwardly, his toothless gums smacking desperately, “all the time to explain it to you, naturally.”

“Okay,” I said. “Explain it all—naturally.”

“I can hardly talk,” he said, “without my teeth.”

So I tossed them back to him, and he stuffed them eagerly into his face. He looked better, except that he looked just as scared, and hopeless, and beat.

One thing he explained quickly. He was sales manager for a colossal Department Store called Herbert’s. There were only two stores that supplied the population of Mid-America with everything. There weren’t any other stores, no small merchants. Efficiency. Two gigantic stores, each competing with the other, and between them, supplying everybody with practically everything.

You get the picture. Imagine Gimble’s and Macy’s—in four hundred years.

They sold people the same things largely. They competed only for more and more efficient service. And now, according to Wakeman, both stores had perfected the super gadget for ultimate efficiency in servicing customers. Something Wakeman called a BUDGIE. Both stores had been working on it for a long time, both had perfected it recently. First it had been advertised to an eagerly waiting population as the Budgateer and the Budget Buddy. But then he got to be called merely the BUDGIE.

The BUDGIE, once installed, did everything for the home and the family. Each Department Store had installed the pipes, ducts, tubes, etc., running from the store to each house in Mid-America. Whoever sold the majority of the population BUDGIES first, would have business sewed up for good. Once installed, hooked into the intricate electronic distribution system of one or the other of the two stores, the BUDGIE supplied everything—automatically—and of course everything came from the store that had sold and installed the BUDGIE.

The BUDGIE did everything. It bought all the consumer goods, provided entertainment, saw that everything was delivered on time and in just the right way, including clothing, cleaning, meals cooked and ready to serve, maid service, printing, laundry, painting, baby-care, furnishings, everything.

“And whoever wins this selling race,” Wakeman said desperately, “will control all consumer-seller relationship from now on. The other store will automatically have to go out of business. You see, the BUDGIE is suited to each family’s income. Once installed, the dials set, the buttons pushed, the switches set—everything’s taken care of from then on, for life. No more bother with ordering or shopping, no delivery troubles because everything you need comes to you through the supply tubes when needed and it’s all done automatically, working directly from the store that installed the BUDGIE. And if most of the BUDGIES sold are, for instance, Webster’s BUDGIES, it means that all this service will have to come from Webster’s store.”

WAKEMAN BIT at his lip. “And for life!” he repeated. “A small down payment and the BUDGIE is paid for over a period of time determined by the average life-span of the owner, plus his average income expectancy.”

“Wow!” I said. “What an idea! So now you have to sell most of the population BUDGIES before Webster’s store does, or you’ll be out of a job, for good.”

“Yes,” sighed Wakeman. “Unless I want to take some humiliating job working for Webster’s, or retire at a very young age on unemployment insurance. I couldn’t do anything else. This is a highly specialized age. I’ve been educated all my life to be a salesman, and now I’m the sales manager. This is the ultimate, THE sale, Dunstall. Whichever store sells the most BUDGIES will have made the final sale—whoever buys a BUDGIE buys everything he’ll ever need the rest of his life—with one purchase!”

“So what’s the trouble?” I said. I was beginning to feel excited. My heart was going ninety to nothing. “Get out there with your men, man, and sell those BUDGIES!”

Wakeman whispered. “My men and I have been out for three days. Five hundred of the best salesmen ever developed by the best sales psychologists. And we’ve only managed to sell a few BUDGIES. We’ve got to sell at least seventy percent of the population BUDGIES. Something’s the matter. Sales resistance…it’s natural. People know how important a BUDGIE will be to them. That when they buy a BUDGIE, they’re really buying, all at once, everything they’ll ever need for the rest of their lives. Naturally there’s extreme sales-resistance.”

“No such thing as an unbreakable sales-resistance,” I said.

“My store—Herbert’s—” Wakeman said, “depends on my sales force, and myself. The Store, its thousands of employees, depend on it. But we can’t seem to sell enough BUDGIES, not nearly enough!”

“You’ve got, to unload those BUDGIES, man,” I said.

“I know! Webster’s haven’t even bothered to advertise, and—”

“How about this Webster outfit,” I said. “They selling BUDGIES?”

“That’s what I was starting to explain, Dunstall. Webster’s haven’t even tried to sell BUDGIES. Not a man in the field. They seemed to have known from the start that sales resistance would be so high we couldn’t sell enough BUDGIES. They just sit around and laugh at my efforts.”

“They’ve got something up their sleeve,” I said. “Maybe they know you can’t sell many BUDGIES. But they damn well know they can.”

“That’s just it. And they’re going into the field to sell their BUDGIES tomorrow!”

I stared at Wakeman. Now I saw it. “You went to all the trouble to grab me out of the year 1951 and bring me here into the future—so I could give you some tips on selling BUDGIES! “

Wakeman nodded. “Time-travel was perfected some time back, but its use is illegal. I was desperate, so I took one of the time-machines out of the storage house of our store, and sent a man named Divers back to your time, with another machine. Divers looked around until he found what he thought was the, most dynamic sales force in operation in your time—and he picked out the best salesman among the group, which happened to be you, Dunstall. The vacuum-cleaner was, in fact, a time machine—”

“But you guys should be better salesmen,” I said. “Four hundred more years of experience…”

“Not that simple at all,” Wakeman said. “I made a study of your time, when I was doing some research once for the Store. Selling reached its apex of efficiency during the mid-twentieth century. Believe me, Dunstall, you boys were real salesmen. We’ve lost the aggressiveness, the audacity, the over-riding self-confidence, the egotism, the unconscious psychological factors common to your time that made salesmen so highly effective. Things like hostility and sadism on the part of the salesmen, and the frustrations and masochism and gullibility on the part .of buyers—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s not get too clinical. What do I get out of this?”

“A gadget,” Wakeman said. “Something common to us but which in your time will soon make you a fortune. We’ll return you to your time, and you can take a gadget with you, and the plans for it.”

“What kind of gadget?”

“Any kind. Any kind you think would be the most valuable to you. And if you don’t get me out of this situation, you’ll never go back to your own time!”

“Okay,” I said. “Fine, Wakenian. Let’s get at it. First. I’d like to talk to your sales force. And I’d also like to see this BUDGIE, and a compete breakdown on it, all the details.. I’d also like to try out a few sales myself, and also I’d want to see the ads you been running. I can sell anything to damn near anybody, but first I’ve got to know the whole setup, you understand what I’m driving at?”

“Yes,” whispered Wakeman. He took a letter from the top of one of those suspended metal tables and handed it to me. “I just received this this afternoon. It presents some sort of complication, and frankly, I’m scared.”

I TOOK THE note and read it. Then I Was scared. “Is this the real dope?” I said. Wakeman nodded. “Doctor Lietencratz who wrote that note is one of the most noted scientists in Mid-America. He did most of the basic planning on the development of the BUDGIE, and for the past year he’s been working on robots. That’s a known fact. He’s primarily a cybernetics specialist—”

Again I was reading the note:

Dear Mr. Wakeman: I, as a scientist responsible to the people of Mid-America, have committed a grave and what might prove to be a fatal error in dealing with your competitor, Webster’s Department Store. And more specifically with a gentleman there by the name of Max Gaer. Believe me, as things stand now, you have absolutely no chance of selling BUDGIES in any amount compared with the BUDGIES Webster will sell. Actually, what has happened has made the sale of BUDGIES comparatively unimportant. I cannot go into further details, except when I see you personally—a step I desperately urge you to arrange immediately. Come to my laboratory at once! Suffice to say that my terrible error lies in having put into the hands of Max Gaer five hundred robots against which the best human salesman will be totally helpless. Please contact me at once. Even the selling of BUDGIES is no longer important. These robots can sell anything. I’m awaiting your visit. May I again stress the urgency of this crisis? The welfare of. Mid-America as a Democracy and a free-thinking institution is at stake.

Yours respectfully

Doctor Boni Lietencratz

I handed the note back. “What does that really mean when translated?” I asked.

Wakeman said, “We’re going over there right now and find out. Ah—that is, if you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” I said. “If I can’t drum up a way to outsell a bunch of mechanical men, then I’ll go back to college.”

En route to see Doctor Boni Lietencratz, in a projectile that hurtled along a monorail above that endless city like a bullet, Wakeman pointed out the Herbert Department Store. All I could see was a gray cube, about ten miles square and about twice as high as the Empire State building had been back where there had been an Empire State Building.

“Of course the only thing compared to it anywhere on Earth,” Wakeman said, “is Webster’s. No one really knows any more. Sometimes Herbert’s is the bigger and has more workers, and sometimes it’s Webster’s.”

My hair was tingling. We were going about five hundred miles an hour, and I felt about as permanent as a tenant without a lease. This guy, Wakeman, might not be able to use aggression the way we did back in 1951—and maybe, to him, working a guy over was just being polite—but he had me on one helluva spot. Either I played ball—or I’d be stuck in 350 A.B., and from what I had seen and heard about 350 A.D., I didn’t want any part of it. It wasn’t all negative, however, but that didn’t make the possibility of failure on my part any easier—my getting a gadget. I had to get back to 1951 for a gadget to do me any good. 350 A.D. was lousy with gadgets.

In fact, as it turned out, the ability to distinguish between a gadget and a human being was strictly coincidental.

The stream-lined job we were traveling in stopped, and we stepped through the door, through a wall and were in a hallway. We went down a long tubular metallic corridor, and into Doctor Boni Lietencratz’s combined laboratory and living quarters. We stepped into the latter first, the laboratory being on the floor below.

“How do you do, sir,” I said, and stuck out my hand. The big handsome guy in a monkey-suit only looked at me, very coldly, and stood there. “That’s a fine attitude,” I said. “Snobbery.”

“That isn’t Doctor Lietencratz,” Wakeman said. “That’s a servant.”

I turned. Lietencratz came running in, a little bouncing man with grey hair, a long beak and rosebud lips. He hopped around all the time and his hands moved constantly, nervously, in the air, over the surfaces of tables, chairs, the walls—like a couple of mice.

“This is Doctor Lietencratz. This is Marty Dunstall, ace salesman for Never-Fail Vacuum Cleaners—from the year 1951.”

“What, what?” Lietencratz whispered. “You’ve used the—time machine?”

“I was desperate to sell those BUDGIES,” Wakeman said. “And I figured that the psychological approach of that day might break down sales-resistance—I figured a representative from that period of super salesmanship would be able—”

“All right! All right! That’s unimportant now!” Lietencratz looked haunted. His face was motttled, and his eyes were sunken. “The BUDGIES don’t matter a great deal now. Ah—how about a drink, gentlemen?”

“Great,” I said. I said I wanted a Scotch and soda, and Wakeman said he wanted a gin and bitters. I had hardly gotten my order out of my mouth, than the servant was there again, with the drinks tall and cool on a tray.

“Thank you, Morris,” Lietencrantz said. But I was staring at Morris’ face. His eyes—they seemed about as friendly as two members of a Congressional Investigating Committee. No—not unfriendly exactly. Just—glassy—cold.

“Now what’s all this scare business?” I said. “This robot salesman routine?”

LIETENCRATZ bristled. “Please don’t speak disdain fully of my robots!”

“You were the one who didn’t seem happy about them,” I said. “In that letter. I’m here to outsell Webster’s. I’m here to sell BUDGIES—I’d better damn well sell BUDGIES! You can’t tell me a bunch, of cogs and wheels can outsell a sales-rep human!”

“Dunstall doubts the efficacy of your creations,” Wakeman said.

My drink was gone. I started to make the fact known and there was Morris standing there with a renewal. I was startled. The servant’s blank staring eyes gave me the creeps.

Lietencratz sighed. “Hard to tell, isn’t it. Dunstall? But you see Morris is a robot.”

“A what?” I said vaguely.

“A robotic, a synthetic man. Laboratories have been trying to develop them for centuries, dreamed about them. In your time, Dunstall, they had very elemental types of robotics. Plays, literature, all full of the concept. Surely, you don’t claim to be surprised…”

I figured Lietencratz was a real flip. Morris might have a screwy look…but I figured I could tell the difference between a human and a gadget. “Ah—it looks too human. HE looks too human,” I corrected myself. “My idea of a robot—”

“Cogs and wheels,” Lietencratz smiled wanly. “And X-ray eyes and all that nonsense. You wouldn’t understand, Dunstall, the principle of these robots. I’ve created. However, it’s mainly an outgrowth of cybernetics, and advanced work in that field—proving that a human being and highly-complex machinery differ only in complexity. I’ve finally succeeded in mechanically duplicating the human nervous system…to a degree, that is. But not in nearly so complex a form. And of course I can’t give a robot a human’s capacity for self-determination…or, let us say, a soul.”

“Okay,” I said. “So what’s the big fuss all about? You made a bunch of super salesrobots, and sold them to Webster’s. I still say that I can sell more BUDGIES than your robots.”

“No,” Lientencratz said in a hoarse whisper. “You can’t. But selling BUDGIES, that isn’t, the thing that frightens me so much. They can sell ANYTHING. Ideas, for example. Ideas . . .”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t know yet what he was driving at—but the way he had said that gave me a good solid case of the creeps.

I went over there and touched Morris’ arm. The arm felt human. I still wasn’t exactly convinced. I let out a yell, though, as Lietencratz pulled something in the vicinity of Morris’ neck, and Morris’ head raised a foot higher on a kind of telescopic spindle and began to twirl like a top.

I gulped the rest of my drink. Lietencratz pressed something else and then the robot’s head dropped back down to normal and kept on looking at me.

“The reason,” Lietencratz said, “why no human being can outsell these super salesrobots is that they’re so highly and intricately specialized.” He pointed at Morris. “Like this robot. I designed Morris to be the perfect servant. And no human being could possibly compete with it—as a servant.”

Lietencratz wiped the sweat from his forehead and his hands that darted around in the air. “I built these robots for use… for the use of civilization as a whole… for strictly beneficent purposes, you see. With this goal in mind, I planned with great care. I incorporated in them all the known psychology of salesmanship. I figured that robots made into perfect salesrobots, specialized in convincing people, would be the most useful. It’s easy, I thought, to present truths to people, but not so easy to sell them truths that would do them the most good.”

WAKEMAN looked ill. “But why did you sell those five hundred robots to Webster’s?”

“I needed money, financing. It took an awful lot of capital to build all those robots. And I knew that either Webster’s or Herbert’s would be interested, from a purely commercial motive. Later, I thought, after the BUDGIES were sold, the robots could be used to sell more valuable educative things to the public. Ideas, for instance—but good, beneficial ideas! That was my error. It’s fine to have agencies that can sell people anything. But the trouble is—they can sell the wrong things just as easily!”

“You mean this individual, Max Gaer,” Wakeman said.

“Yes, yes, yes!” Lietencratz shouted, sounding like a hysterical housewife. “Working with him, working with those robots, I’ve had a chance to observe him. I don’t know how he’s escaped the re-conditioners. Yes, I do know. His important position with one of the biggest commercial enterprises in the world, in all of history. Anyway, gentlemen, I’ll tell you what he is! A paranoiac, a power-mad fanatic, a man suffering from delusions of grandeur. A real fascoid personality, as they say, a recognition-hungry, obsessed individual!”

“It isn’t Webster’s that’s bad, of course,” Wakeman said, “nor the robots. It’s Gaer and the use to which he will put the robots?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” said Lietencratz. “Those robots are perfect, perfect, I say! Super super salesrobots! They’re built with a special tape insert so they can be conditioned to sell any objects or combination of objects, including ideas, concepts, which most people have learned to regard as THINGS. No human can resist them. They can break down any kind of conceivable sales-resistance. They operate on such a high mechanical certainty factor that it’s impossible to resist them. They have a complete recorded pattern of approach fitted to any possible variable in a human reaction pattern.”

I said I needed another drink. I’d hardly gotten the words out before Morris, the perfect servant, was standing there with a fresh Scotch and soda.

“Perfect, perfect!” moaned Lietencratz. “A machine can’t make a mistake. And these robots have learned all the rules in selling BUDGIES. Physically, they’re designed for the greatest possible initial appeal to a potential customer. All, or most, of the customers to whom basic ideas must be sold in a feminine culture are, of course, women. So these robots have been designed to have the greatest sex appeal, physical presence, poise, charm—equipped for the perfect approach to housewives…”

Wakeman almost sobbed, his thinly papered nervous system breaking out all over like a red rash. “These robots—are really ,that good?”

“Perfect, perfect! But who sells the most BUDGIES won’t make any difference! Can’t you see? Selling the BUDGIES is just a blind for Gaer! They’ll sell BUDGIES, certainly! Sweeping customers before them like a plague. But also, Gaer’s conditioned those robots to sell IDEAS, you see, you see? He’s got a dictator complex. And I happen to know that he’s going to start selling people the idea that he’s a sort of—ah—god!”

“You don’t need robots to do that,” I said. “Hitler—”

Wakeman yelled. “They’re going out to sell in the morning!”

“I know, I know!” moaned Lietencratz.

“I still don’t admit that these robots can sell better than I can,” I said. “But don’t you have any more robots? We can send out robots too. Outsell Gaer’s robots. Give me a little time with these robots. I’ll whip ‘em into shape. If Gaer’s robots can sell anything, our robots can sell anything better!”

“We admire your attitude… characteristic of your age,” Lietencratz sighed. “I have more robots, of course, a number of them which weren’t completed when I sold those five hundred to Webster’s. But they haven’t been conditioned yet.”

“Then let’s condition them,” I said. And I slapped Lietencratz on the back. He coughed. “I’ll give them some ideas Gaer or you never heard of. I’ve got a personal little technique of my own. Now you take your initial approach to a dame. You work it the same way as if you were approaching one in a local bistro. You take the attitude that this broad—”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Lietencratz screamed. “Fools, idiot! You don’t understand! Listen—I don’t have five hundred robots left. Only about a hundred, maybe a few more. What if we did have some added trick so they could outsell Gaer’s robots? We couldn’t be that superior, even if we were superior at all! And besides, I haven’t gotten the tape-spools installed in them. I’ve been afraid—”

“Fear never gets you any place,” I said. “Fear has no place in selling—”

THE DOORS behind me burst open. Lietencratz screamed. Wakeman’ stepped to the wall and stood there. I stood right where I was. “Gaer—” Wakeman whispered.

Gaer was a bright kind of guy, if you know what I mean. Big and broad and bright, shaved down to a gunmetal luster, brown and healthy from plenty of sun—there were no creases in his face and his dark hair glistened and he was redolent of masculine talc, and he glowed like grouped Martinis before breakfast.

His eyes, set close together and separated strikingly by a Roman nose, were bright too, bright and black and eager and—mad! Not outright crazy, but booby-hatch material right away. Sly—the smart, planning, scheming kind of flip. Like a fanatic who has made a success out of his own nuttyness.

And he had a coiled and complex-looking instrument aimed at all of us, and I was damn sure it wasn’t a futuristic water-pistol.

It wasn’t. “You gentlemen,” he said, “will shut up and listen to me, and not cause any trouble. Otherwise, I will burn all of you. Understand? I’ll burn all of you, and throw what’s left of the three of you right straight down the garbage disposal unit.”

One look at Lietencratz and Wakeman and I knew they believed what Gaer said. So did I. Lietencratz’s face was crunched up like a squeezed half orange. His hands were still, hanging in the air on either side of the half orange. Wakeman looked tight and scratchy like the right string on a fiddle. My palms were cold like a subway wall.

“The three of you,” Gaer said, “are going to stay right in this apartment until tomorrow night. Then it will be too late for you to do anything: I’m not taking any chances. You might think up something that would interfere with my plans.”

“What are your plans?” Wakeman said.

“You won’t approve,” Gaer said. He laughed. I shivered. His laughter sounded like the spilling of rotten fruit. “This social system is static, useless and dull. So I’m changing the whole thing, and I’m doing, it in a day. Thought-control, gentlemen, I’ve got it. Thanks to Doctor Lietencratz here. He’s told you about his robots, that are now my robots. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, gentlemen, I’m saying that I’m going to sell myself to the people, using Lietencratz’s robots, as an absolute dictator, a god-man. And I’ll soon have a social system that will make sense. Those robots will convince the people that our whole social system smells, that democracy smells, that I’d be the perfect dictator. Five-hundred robots operating twenty-four hour a day, five minutes at the most per person. It won’t take long.

“And don’t forget, those sold on the idea will help break down the resistance of the others! And then—it’s all over! I’ll rule the world. I’ll have robots marching into the Kremlin and convincing Joe Stalin XII in five minutes that he’s an inadequate ruler, and that he should hand the whole Politburo over to me!”

“Pal,” I said. “You’re as nutty as an almond bar. What you need is a quick one-way ride in a booby wagon—”

“Who is this obnoxious character?” Gaer said.

I would have jumped Gaer, but that ray gun, or whatever it was, was a lot more threatening than any kind of weapon I’d ever seen before.

“A friend of mine,” Wakeman said. It was illegal to use the time-machine; then evidently Wakeman wanted to keep the facts about how I got into 350 A.D. a secret.

Gaer shrugged. “Well, the three of you are staying here. By tomorrow night my salesrobots will have sold practically the whole population of Mid-America, not only BUDGIES—but also a few other ideas I want them to have.”

“But those robots could have been such a wonderful benefit to mankind,” whispered Lietencratz.

Gaer laughed. “You blue-nosed old hermit. Even the work you did on the BUDGIES—even those BUDGIES will help my plan, Lietencratz. They do everything for the home once they’re installed. And they’re channeled into Webster’s Department Store. I’ll make Webster’s my headquarters, and I’ll have those BUDGIES fixed so they’ll deliver things I want delivered. Between the BUDGIES that furnish everybody with everything from my headquarters forever, and the robots that can sell anyone anything—I’ll have a perfect setup, gentlemen, believe me.”

He took a few steps forward. “Now I’m going to lock the three of you up in this closet. Then I’ll set the automatic doorman to ‘do not disturb’, and that’s good, as you perhaps know, for at least twelve hours.”

“Why don’t you call the cops—ah—enforcers of the law?” I asked.

LIETENCRATZ groaned. “For what? They couldn’t touch one of those robots. I imagine Mr. Gaer has taken care of that.”

“Yes indeed,” Gaer said. “Special tapes for each robot, conditioned to sell one very special idea to any Peace Guard they might encounter. I’ve got those robots geared to sell any Peace Guard they meet for five minutes the idea that I’m the boss.”

So then Gaer started herding us into the closet. It wasn’t a large closet, and the whole idea of being crammed in that hole for twelve hours was hard to take. And it also meant that Webster’s and Gaer and the robots would win the BUDGIE selling race, and something else that was beginning to scare me—even though it wasn’t my age. And I was here to prevent Webster’s from winning the BUDGIE selling race—or else. With my choice of any gadget I wanted to take back to 1951 with me if I won—and the very unpleasant prospect of staying in 350 A.B. if I lost—I was suddenly very determined to beat Webster’s and especially Gaer, a gentleman to whom I’d taken an immediate dislike. If ever I’d met a real shmo, it was Gaer.

I heard a sound in the kitchen, a very light sound that Gaer didn’t hear. I had an idea.

Casually I said to Lietencratz. “Why don’t you call Mr. Morris?”

“What? What?” Lietencratz said.

“The perfect servant,” I said, while Gaer kept on herding us across the room upward the closet. “Mr. Gaer doesn’t look too happy here as a guest. And if Morris is a perfect servant, he would be bound to want to make Mr. Gaer more comfortable.”

Lietencratz made a peeping sound like a happy little bird. “Morris,” he said. “Oh, Morris.”

“What—who are you calling?” Gaer yelled.

Morris stood in the doorway, politely. Gaer twisted toward him. There were four of us now, and Gaer had to cover three sides of the room at once. I said: “Gaer’s tired. He’s a guest of yours, Lietencratz, and he’s tired!”

“What are you talking about?” yelled Gaer.

Morris took a few tentative steps toward Gaer. Lietencratz said, “Morris! Our good guest, Mr. Gaer, is tired. Mr. Gaer should be treated right Morris, and he’s tired—”

Gaer made a gesture with the gun. I gave that table suspended from the ceiling with silver wires a big shove, and one corner of it caught Gaer right in the solar plexus. Gaer windmilled across the room, trying to get a line on somebody with that superman pistol, and all the time Lietencratz was hopping around, screaming, “Morris—treat Gaer right. Better put him to bed. See that he gets a nice long rest—”

Gaer was crawling on the floor trying to get his breath back as Morris went for him, saying, “Yes, sir, yes, sir.” A very polite gadget, that Morris.

Gaer was getting to his feet and I threw a chair. It caught the pistol arm, swung the weapon around, and then Morris had him. I ran in from the back and twisted the weapon out of Gaer’s hand. And all the time Morris was gathering Gaer in his arms, crooning to him.

Gaer was big and tough, and he had that added strength of fanaticism. Maybe Gaer wasn’t really so crazy. In 1951 he wouldn’t be considered crazy, I thought. I never did find out, but I have an idea that in 350 A.B. there were plenty of guys like Gaer—only in an age that’s so smoothly run with machines whirring everywhere, it’s hard for a guy like that to express himself, to really make his beliefs known.

Anyway, he was plenty tough. He bent forward and I felt myself doing an awkward ballet leap right into the wall, and from there I bounced to the floor. Gaer managed to get a dropkick in, using my head for a football.

Morris was crooning and trying to get a good solid hold on Gaer. Lietencratz was hopping up and down and yelling suggestions to Morris as to how he could best display his best servant qualities. Wakeman got the lead out and charged in to help, and Gaer landed the best haymaker I’ve ever seen on Wakeman’s glass chin.

Wakeman folded like an old rusty hinge and stretched out on the deck like a guy who hadn’t had any sleep for a week.

BUT BY then Morris, the perfect servant, had things .well in both his capable hands. Lietencratz was saying, “Put him to bed, Morris. He needs rest. See that he stays in bed and gets a good rest.”

“Yes, sir,” said Morris.

“Why you—” Gaer shouted, but that was all. Morris was squeezing him pretty tight.

“That’s right,” said Lietencratz. “Don’t hurt him now, Morris. He’ll resist. But you put him to bed. It’s for his own good. His own good.”

“Yes, sir,” said Morris. He had Gaer off the floor and cradled in his arms like a baby. “Please, sir, you need a long rest, Mr. Gaer. I’m going to put you to bed. It’s for your own good you know, sir.”

Gaer was screaming and shrieking as Morris got Gaer hoisted just right and carted toward the bedroom.

Gaer’s arms waved crazily. His face was gargle-medicine red. “Now, now, sir,” I could hear Morris saying politely. “Just be quiet while I get your shoes off. You must rest. I’ll give you a sedative, sir—”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Lietencratz frantically. “Get below and see what we can do about those other robots of mine.”

“What about Wakeman?” I said. “I’ll take him along.” I lifted Wakeman, threw him over my shoulder, and we went down in an elevator to Lietencratz’s lab on the floor below. By then, Wakeman was stirring a little and I propped him up against a wall.

“There are the rest of my robots,” Lietencratz said. “Only a hundred of them. Even if they sold BUDGIES twice as fast as Gaer’s robots, Gaer would still get to most of the population first. Nothing we can do, I tell you, nothing! Democracy, freedom, everything gone—”

“We’ve got Gaer up there—” I began.

“Yes, but he won’t be there long. We can’t use violence any more.”

“We could bump him off,” I said, “and bury him somewhere. No one would ever know—”

Lietencratz was staring at me with eyes bulging so far the draft in the room was drying them off. His lips twitched and for a minute I thought he was going to pass out. “You would—kill him?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t really meant it, I guess now, but on the other hand, a guy like Gaer was a very dangerous fellow. “What else?” I said.

“There’s got to be some other way,” Wakeman said. He looked straight at me. “And you’re the man to find a way out, Dunstall. Back in your time, you fellows had a certain intensity and a way of short-cutting circumstances. You could sell things that it now seems incredible anyone could have been persuaded to buy. You can figure a way out of this, Dunstall, if any one can. And someone has to.”

He didn’t add the rest of it—that either I came up with something, or I remained in 350 A.D. Maybe nobody would realize what a lousy prospect that was, without being there. Where there’s very little that’s familiar, and people and machines are all mixed up so that you have trouble telling the difference, and everybody’s about ready to be plugged in, along with a BUDGIE, to a big department store for the rest of their lives—brother, I wanted out of 350 A.D., and I wanted out of it fast!

And all the time I was staring at those robots of Lietencratz’s. “Dames,” I heard myself whispering. “Beautiful broads, all of them—”

I looked at Lietencratz. “They’re all women,” I said. I had a peculiar sensation in my stomach. All hundred of them seemed a kind of perfect blend of Betty Grable and June Allison and Jane Russell or—pick any other three you want. These hundred robots had everything.

Then I got the creeps. They were all looking at me, all hundred of them, sitting demurely in rows. All looking at me with—dead, dead eyes.

“YES, YES!” Lietencratz was saying. “The others, the ones I sold to Webster’s, they’re all male robots—I mean their surface appearance is male. They’re all sexless, of course.”

SOMEWHERE in the bottom of my alleged brain, clickings and whirrings were occurring, but right then I just had one devil of a headache.

“We’ve got to work fast,” Lietencratz said. “We’ve got to condition these robots to sell. We’ve got about eight hours left. Gaer’s robots will be out selling in the morning—BUDGIES and the IDEAS that go with them.”

“And even if Gaer’s still imprisoned upstairs,” Wakeman said, “the robots will be out selling anyway. Nobody else over there knows what Gaer’s really up to. If Gaer doesn’t show up in the morning, his robots will be sent out anyway. I’m sure that’s all been arranged.”

“But we’ve already agreed,” I said, “that we don’t have enough robots here to compete with Gaer’s robots, Even if our robots sold twice as much.”

“That is so unfortunately correct,” Wakeman said.

“But we have to do something,” Lietencratz said. “At least we can try. Everyone these robots sells a BUDGIE to, they’ll at least be free of the influences that Gaer’s robots will sell to everyone else. We’ll have a small resistant minority group, the core of a resistance organization that Quid fight against Gaer’s dictatorship—”

“But that would be squelched damn soon,” I said. I kept looking at those robots, those luscious formations of feminine pulchitrude— “And anyway,” I said, “these robots are all feminine robots. They’d have to sell to housewives. If I know anything about salesmanship, these women couldn’t sell very many other women BUDGIES, or anything else, I don’t care how you condition them.”

“Maybe you’re right there,” Lietencratz said.

“Why did you make these robots look like women?” I asked.

“I thought it would be logical. I made five hundred that resembled men. I thought I’d make five hundred more to resemble women. I thought it would be a well-balanced procedure—”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “It might at that … it might at that….”

Lietencratz was scurrying around some big filing cabinets, throwing spools of wire and tape out over the floor. “Hurry, hurry!” he was chirping. “Help me! We’ve got to insert these tapes and wires. They’ll fix up these robots like Gaer’s robots. So they can sell anything, to anybody, within five minutes.”

“Don’t be a sap,” I said. “We’ve already agreed that won’t work. This minority resistance business, that’s just failure with a neat excuse hooked on. The idea is to stop Gaer’s robots. Stopping Gaer won’t work, even if we could. We’ve got to stop his robots.”

“Impossible, impossible!” moaned Lietencratz.

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Wakeman whispered. “It looks like the end—and even you can’t figure a way out of this one. Dunstall. Which, I might add, is too bad for you. The conditions still exist for you. I haven’t gone to all the trouble to bring you here, risking arrest and other indignities, for nothing, Dunstall. There isn’t any way out of this hideous situation—but you’ve got to find a way out!”

I went over to Wakeman. “Listen, pal, I didn’t ask to come here. And neither would anyone else, if they knew what kind of a set-up it was. You’re probably desperate, so excuse your lousy behavior. You’re acting more of a shmo than Gaer is, but I can see the spot you’re in. Okay—I think I’ve got a way out.”

“What, what?” Lietencratz said, and he stopped throwing spools of tape and wire over the floor and looked up at me.

“It’s a long shot, but it might work. But we’ve got to record some stuff on some other tape. Vocal stuff, that’s all. No brain work. Get a dame somewhere and let’s get this stuff recorded. Can we do that in the next eight hours?”

“Do what?” Wakeman said.

“Get a dame with a nice but emphatic voice. We’ll record a few lines, that’s all we’ll need. Also; we’ll need a sales-area map. I want to know the sales routes these robots of Gaer’s will probably follow. Also we’ve got to find vacant apartments and houses in these areas, you understand, men?”

WAKEMAN nodded without enthusiasm. Lietencratz nodded as though he were being forced to agree with a moron.

“Fine,” I said. “Now get a girl in here to record a few lines. Lietencratz, are these robots capable of moving around, acting like ‘human beings now, or do we have to fix them up so they’ll do that too?”

“We have standard spools for that,” Lietencratz said. “That can be inserted in a few minutes.”

“Then let’s get started,” I said. “And let’s work fast. I want to get out of this lousy year.”

This was it. Everything was set. Everything had been taken care of the way I wanted it. If it didn’t work, Wakeman wouldn’t be out anything but his job, his reputation and—depending on what the new Dictator, Gaer, thought of him—his life. And I wouldn’t be out anything but the privilege of living out my life back in the twentieth century where I belonged, and with a gadget from the year 350 A.B.

It hadn’t been easy. I was a wreck, my nerves as scratchy as the last string on a violin, and my face was something strictly to frighten goblins.

We’d had to find a bunch of vacant houses and apartments, and that hadn’t been easy. We’d found a few. We’d made up the rest by taking over houses and apartments left temporarily vacant by vacationers, some others being renovated, and so forth.

It was morning and my little communication device that Wakeman had given me, and with which I could keep in touch with Wakeman and Lietencratz, told me that already Gaer’s robots were on the march. They could sell anybody anything in five minutes. First they would unload a BUDGIE; then, in another five minutes, they would unload the IDEA that Gaer was a god, a dictator, the big boss of a new and greater social order.

I waited. And out there at the front door, one of Lietencratz’s beautiful female robots waited. We’d given each of Lietencratz’s robots a name ant posted it in the regular places on whichever apartment or house we had taken over.

To check on results of my plan. Lietencratz stayed with one of his robots in one of the other sales sectors. and Wakeman with one in another sector, and I was here with a robot in this sector. We had a robot station in each sector, making each of the hundred sales areas covered by one of our robots. That meant that each one of our robots would have to take care of a hundred of Gaer’s robots.

I hid behind a door and waited, and the robot I was with stood by the front door waiting for the doorbell to announce the approach of one of Gaer’s super salesrobots.

So that’s the way it was. Me waiting. And the robot waiting at the front door. All over Mid-America, which wasn’t very big any more, I’d been led to understand, were the five hundred robots of Gaer’s. Robots that could sell anybody anything. It gave me goose-pimples, thinking about it.

I’d never thought good healthy salesmanship could come to this.

And also it was hard for me to keep on believing that this beautiful housewifely looking creation was actually a robot. There was never a better looking, better stacked brunette anywhere, any time. It stood there demurely in its crisp, fresh, domestic housewife’s uniform, like millions of other housewives in Mid-America. Only this one wasn’t the same at all.

I’D FIGURED everything out all right. Top-notch salesmanship depends on deep psychological factors, A good salesman may not know these things consciously, but he knows them. Most sales are made to women. And most of the sales to women are made by men. And underneath it all is the basic psychological inability of women to say “no”.

I’d fixed that.

My nerves were jumpy. Tension mounted as I waited. My stomach was turning flim-flams. Everywhere, in every selling area, Gaer’s robots would be selling like mad, one customer every five minutes or less. It was about ten o’clock already. My plan depended on only a small percentage of the population being sold by Gaer’s robots before—

I leaned forward. The doorbell was ringing: My robot straightened her hair, smoothed her dress down over her phony hips and, in a most feminine gesture, it opened the door.

One of Gaer’s handsome sales robots stood there.

“I represent—” Gaer’s robot began …

“I don’t want anything,” said Lietencratz’s robot.

“That’s it, kid,” I whispered. Sweat ran down my face.

Behind Gaer’s robot I saw a truck containing BUDGIES ready to install. Huge complex machines covered with dials, indicaters, needles. Everywhere one of those monsters was plugged in, people were being plugged into a department store for life.

“You look very fresh and charming this morning, Mrs. Latenbach,” said Gaer’s robot. Its smile flashed and it started to put its foot inside the door. But my female robot didn’t budge. “I told you,” it said, “that I don’t want to buy anything.”

“Of course not,” said Gaer’s robot in its most charming manner. “That’s why I’m here, to point out the reasons why you should buy from me, and also to tell you something about my sales manager, Mr. Max Gaer. I represent Webster’s Department Store. And I’m selling the BUDGIE about which you have undoubtedly heard a great deal. I understand your antagonism toward buying. But the BUDGIE will take care of all your buying from now on. You’ll never have to worry again about shopping, budgeting, meal-planning, cooking or serving. Webster’s BUDGIE does everything for your home: and your family. It does everything for the rest of your life— Now—”

I’d like to explain that pitch. All I can say is that Lietencratz was right. That robot COULD sell anyone anything. All the subtle things about selling that even psychologists can’t explain, that robot had. I was scared, plenty scared. It could sell a BUDGIE to anyone, and it could sell Gaer to anyone. And with Gaer, went ideas no one should ever buy.

The pitch gained momentum. The pitch that would sell anything to anybody. The spiel salesmen, including yours truly, have always dreamed of. The irresistable pitch. The only thing was, this customer wasn’t human.

And during each planned pause in the salesrobot’s speech, my robot would say, “I don’t want a BUDGIE.”

It went on for a while, one; two, three, minutes. It seemed like a week to me, and my robot kept saying that she did not want a BUDGIE.

I stared. Something was happening to Gaer’s robot. Its words were faltering. Its poise was slipping. Its pitch was garbling.

“You tell ‘em, kid,” I was whispering over and over.

Finally Gaer’s robot seemed to droop a little. It whispered in a kind of rising inflection that became a whine. “But, Mrs. Latenbach, you GOT to want a BUDGIE!”

“I don’t want a BUDGIE,” said my wonderful little brunette robot. “I don’t want to buy a BUDGIE. I don’t want to buy anything.”

“But you should—”

“I don’t want a BUDGIE.”

“But—”

“I don’t want a BUDGIE.”

“Eeeeeee—ahhhhhhhh!” screamed the perfect salesman. And right there, in front of me, the perfect salesman, the robot that could sell anything to any one within five minutes, flipped its metal cork.

IT SHOOK and trembled and quivered. Smoke curled out of its mouth that flapped loosely in a garbled, nonsensical outburst of meaningless speech to the effect that no one should be without a Webster BUDGIE, that Mr. Gaer was a god, and other things.

Then it fell to its knees and began to cry like a baby; then it stretched out and stared up at the sky, its mouth gaped open, its fingers extended.

I got Wakeman on the commuter strapped to my wrist. “It works, it works!” I yelled. “How’s it going in your sector?”

“Perfect, wonderful!” Wakeman was yelling back at me. “This super salesrobot went berserk and ran away down the street, tearing itself to pieces, throwing pieces of itself in all directions!”

I contacted Lietencratz. It was the same there. Lietencratz was out of his head with ecstasy. “Saved, saved!” he was shouting. “Our democratic society is saved!”

“Now let’s get our cute little trick robots over to another sector, and fast,” I said. “We’ve got a lot of salesrobots to eliminate yet.”

So that’s what we did. By midafternoon, with about a third of the population having bought BUDGIES and Gaer as a god and a dictator, we had driven all the five hundred salesrobots as nutty as so many machine-tooled fruitcakes.

According to Lietencratz, the psychologists would take care of that temporarily insane third of the population that had bought Gaer. After a while, seeing that no one else was buying this crazy idea, the fanatical one third would gradually loose the force of the robots’ powerful sales-talks.

Gaer flipped too, when he saw what had happened to his big deal. The last I heard of Gaer, they had put him through some sort of reconditioning process, and he came out of it anything but a guy with a dictator complex. He became an elevator operator at the Herbert’s department store, and all he ever said was, “Floor please?” and “Yes, sir.” or “No, sir.” I saw him once before I got the hell out of that place and time. And, so help me, he looked just like one of Lietencratz’s robots!

Anyway, I’d done my bit for Webster’s, for Lietencratz and for Wakeman. So they bid me a fond and grateful farewell, which I did not return in kind, and sent my back to my own time, back to 1951.

I think I was pretty smart about my choice of a gadget. Not something so fantastic and complex to the civilization of 1951 as to be wholly impractical. It’s simple, but something people will accept to the tune of a few million bucks for Marty Dunstall.

No, I’m not telling you what it is. I haven’t gotten it patented yet. But you’ll find out. It’ll revolutionize this country overnight, and things will never be quite the same again. And I’ll bet you’ll, recognize it when it comes out on the market, and when you buy one for yourself. Oh, you’ll buy one all right, you’ll hardly be able to help buying one.

It’ll mean a fortune for me. But more than that, it means I don’t have to sell anything any more. There’s something about being a super salesman that gives me a very unpleasant sensation.

There would always be a possibility of my running into a nice beautiful customer who just couldn’t be sold.

THE END