Studying him, Jerry decided there was something peculiar about this extraterrestrial, after all. He was too perfect. His shave was too close, his skin so unblemished as to suggest wax-works. Every strand of his distinguished iron-gray hair was impeccably placed. The negligent and just-right drape of his clothes covered a body shaped like a Sixth Century B.C. piece of Greek sculpture. No mere human could have looked so unruffled, so utterly groomed, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in a busy office. A race, Jerry wondered, capable of taking any shape at will, in mimicry of the indigenous race of any planet?
"You can help me, but I'm not sure you will," Jerry said. "The rumor is that you won't do anything to ease this buyers' strike you started on Earth."
The Ambassador smiled. "You're a man who's not used to taking no for an answer, I gather. What's your proposition?"
"I'd like to contact some of the firms on the Federated Planets, show them how I could promote their merchandise on Earth. Earth is already clamoring for their goods. To establish a medium of exchange, we'd have to run simultaneous campaigns, promoting Earth merchandise on other planets."
"That would be difficult, even for a man of your promotional ability," the Ambassador said winningly. "You see, Earth is the only planet we've yet discovered where advertising—or promotion, to use the broader term—exists as a social and economic force."
"How in hell can anybody do business without it?" Jerry demanded.
"We don't do business in the sense you mean. Don't mistake me," the Ambassador added hastily, "we don't have precisely a communal economy, either. Our very well defined sense of ethics in regard to material goods is something I find impossible to describe in any Earth language. It's quite simple, so simple that you have to grow up with it to understand it. Our whole attitude toward material goods is conditioned by the Matter Repositor."
"That gadget!" Jerry said bitterly. "It was when you first mentioned it before the U.N. Assembly that all this trouble on Earth started. Everybody and his brother hopes that tomorrow he can buy a Matter Repositor, and never have to buy anything again. I came here mostly to ask you whether it's really true, that if you have one of those dinguses, you can bring anything you want into your living room."
"You can. In practice, of course, repositing just anything that took your fancy would produce economic anarchy."
"Let's put it this way," Jerry persisted. "Home appliances were my biggest accounts. Now, when we try to sell a refrigerator, the prospect says she's saving her cash till Matter Repositors get on the Earth market. She plans to reposit a refrigerator—not from her neighbor's kitchen, because that would be stealing—but from the factory. If the factory goes bust, people figure the government will have to subsidize building appliances. Now, could she really reposit a refrigerator?"