The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (74 page)

“Go any place up the Heavyside Layer, go down as deep as any hole, anywhere, any time.” A blur, and the street changed into a glade of sparse pines. “Buried treasure. Sure. Find it, with what?” The trees disappeared and I reached back for the light switch as he dropped the lid of the radio and sat down.

“How are you going to make any money when you haven’t got it to start with?” No answer to that from me. “I ran an ad in the paper offering to recover lost articles; my first customer was the Law wanting to see my private detective’s license. I’ve seen every big speculator in the country sit in his office buying and selling and making plans; what do you think would happen if I tried to peddle advance market information? I’ve watched the stock market get shoved up and down while I had barely the money to buy the paper that told me about it. I watched a bunch of Peruvian Indians bury the second ransom of Atuahalpa; I haven’t the fare to get to Peru, or the money to buy the tools to dig.” He got up and brought two more bottles. He went on. By that time I was getting a few ideas.

“I’ve watched scribes indite the books that burnt at Alexandria; who would buy, or who would believe me, if I copied one? What would happen if I went over to the Library and told them to rewrite their histories? How many would fight to tie a rope around my neck if they knew I’d watched them steal and murder and take a bath? What sort of padded cell would I get if I showed up with a photograph of Washington, or Caesar? Or Christ?”

I agreed that it was all probably true, but—

“Why do you think I’m here now? You saw the picture I showed for a dime. A dime’s worth, and that’s all, because I didn’t have the money to buy film or to make the picture as I knew I should.” His tongue began to get tangled. He was excited. “I’m doing this because I haven’t the money to get the things I need to get the money I’ll need—” He was so disgusted he booted a chair halfway across the room. It was easy to see that if I had been around a little later, Phillips Radio would have profited. Maybe I’d have been better off, too.

Now, although I’ve always been told that I’d never be worth a hoot, no one has ever accused me of being slow for a dollar. Especially an easy one. I saw money in front of me – easy money, the easiest and the quickest in the world. I saw, for a minute, so far in the future with me on top of the heap, that my head reeled and it was hard to breathe.

“Mike,” I said, “let’s finish that beer and go where we can get some more and maybe something to eat. We’ve got a lot of talking to do.” So we did.

Beer is a mighty fine lubricant; I have always been a pretty smooth talker, and by the time we left the Gin Mill I had a pretty good idea of just what Mike had on his mind. By the time we’d shacked up for the night behind that beaverboard screen in the store, we were full-fledged partners. I don’t recall our even shaking hands on the deal, but that partnership still holds good. Mike is ace high with me, and I guess it’s the other way around, too. That was six years ago; it took me only a year or so to discard some of the corners I used to cut.

Seven days after that, on a Tuesday, I was riding a bus to Grosse Pointe with a full briefcase. Two days after that I was riding back from Grosse Pointe in a shiny taxi, with an empty briefcase and a pocketful of folding money. It was easy.

“Mr. Jones – or Smith – or Brown – I’m with Aristocrat Studios, Personal and Candid Portraits. We thought you might like this picture of you and . . . no, this is just a test proof. The negative is in our files. . . . Now, if you’re really interested, I’ll be back the day after tomorrow with our files . . . I’m sure you will, Mr. Jones. Thank you, Mr. Jones. . . . ”

Dirty? Sure. Blackmail is always dirty. But if I had a wife and family and a good reputation, I’d stick to the roast beef and forget the Roquefort. Very smelly Roquefort, at that. Mike liked it less than I did. It took some talking, and I had to drag out the old one about the ends justifying the means, and they could well afford it, anyway. Besides, if there was a squawk, they’d get the negatives free. Some of them were pretty bad.

So we had the cash; not too much, but enough to start. Before we took the next step there was plenty to decide. There are a lot who earn a living by convincing millions that Sticko soap is better. We had a harder problem than that: we had, first, to make a saleable and profitable product, and second, we had to convince many, many millions that our “product” was absolutely honest and absolutely accurate. We all know that if you repeat something long enough and loud enough many – or most – will accept it as gospel truth. That called for publicity on an international scale. For the skeptics who know better than to accept advertising, no matter how blatant, we had to use another technique. And since we would certainly get only one chance, we had to be right the first time. Without Mike’s machine the job would have been impossible; without it the job would have been unnecessary.

A lot of sweat ran under the bridge before we found what we thought – and we still do! – the only workable scheme. We picked the only possible way to enter every mind in the world without a fight: the field of entertainment. Absolute secrecy was imperative, and it was only when we reached the last decimal point that we made a move. We started like this:

First we looked for a suitable building – or rather, Mike did. I flew east, to Rochester, for a month. The building he rented was an old bank. We had the windows sealed, a flossy office installed in the front – the bulletproof glass was my idea – air conditioning, a portable bar, electrical wiring of whatever type Mike’s little heart desired, and a blond secretary who thought she was working for M-E Experimental Laboratories. When I got back from Rochester I took over the job of keeping happy the stonemasons and electricians, while Mike fooled around in our suite in the Book where he could look out the window at his old store. The last I heard, they were selling snake oil there. When the Studio, as we came to call it was finished, Mike moved in and the blond settled down to a routine of reading love stories and saying No to all the salesmen who wandered by. I left for Hollywood.

I spent a week digging through the files of Central Casting before I was satisfied, but it took a month of snooping and some under-the-table cash to lease a camera that would handle Tru-color film. That took the biggest load off my mind. When I got back to Detroit the big view camera had arrived from Rochester, with a truckload of glass color plates. Ready to go.

We made quite a ceremony of it. We closed the venetian blinds and I popped the cork on one of the bottles of champagne I’d bought. The blond secretary was impressed; all she’d been doing for her salary was accept delivery of packages and crates and boxes. We had no wine glasses, but we made no fuss about it. Too nervous and excited to drink any more than one bottle, we gave the rest to the blond and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off. After she left – and I think she was disappointed at breaking up what could have been a good party – we locked up after her, went into the studio itself, locked up again, and went to work.

I’ve mentioned that the windows were sealed. All the inside wall had been painted dull black, and with the high ceiling that went with that old bank lobby, it was impressive. But not gloomy. Midway in the studio was planted the big Trucolor camera, loaded and ready. Not much could we see of Mike’s machine, but I knew it was off to the side, set to throw on the back wall. Not
on
the wall, understand, because the images produced are projected in midair like the meeting of the rays of two searchlights. Mike lifted the lid and I could see him silhouetted against the tiny lights that lit the dials.

“Well?” he said expectantly.

I felt pretty good just then, right down to my billfold.

“It’s all yours, Mike,” and a switch ticked over.

There he was. There was a youngster, dead twenty-five hundred years, real enough, almost, to touch. Alexander. Alexander of Macedon.

Let’s take the first picture in detail. I don’t think I can ever forget what happened in the next year or so. First we followed Alexander through his life, from beginning to end. We skipped, of course the little things he did, jumping ahead days and weeks and years at a time. Then we’d miss him, or find that he’d moved in space. That would mean we’d have to jump back and forth, like the artillery firing bracket or ranging shots, until we found him again. Helped only occasionally by his published lives, we were astounded to realize how much distortion has crept into his life. I often wonder why legends arise about the famous. Certainly their lives are as startling, or appalling, as fiction. And unfortunately we had to hold closely to the accepted histories. If we hadn’t, every professor would have gone into his corner for a hearty sneer. We couldn’t take that chance. Not at first.

After we knew approximately what had happened and where, we used our notes to go back to what had seemed a particular photogenic section and work on that awhile. Eventually we had a fair idea of what we were actually going to film. Then we sat down and wrote an actual script to follow, making allowance for whatever shots we’d have to double in later. Mike used his machine as the projector, and I operated the Trucolor camera at a fixed focus, like taking moving pictures of a movie. As fast as we finished a reel it would go to Rochester for processing, instead of one of the Hollywood outfits that might have done it cheaper. Rochester is so used to horrible amateur stuff that I doubt if anyone ever looks at anything. When the reel was returned we’d run it ourselves to check our choice of scenes and color sense and so on.

For example, we had to show the traditional quarrels with his father, Philip. Most of that we figured on doing with doubles, later. Olympias, his mother, and the fangless snakes she affected, didn’t need any doubling, as we used an angle and amount of distance that didn’t call for actual conversation. The scene where Alexander rode the bucking horse no one else could ride came out of some biographer’s head, but we thought it was so famous we couldn’t leave it out. We dubbed the closeups later, and the actual horseman was a young Scythian who hung around the royal stables for his keep. Roxanne was real enough, like the rest of the Persians’ wives Alexander took over. Luckily, most of them had enough poundage to look luscious. Philip and Parmenio and the rest of the characters were heavily bearded, which made easy the necessary doubling and dubbing-in the necessary speech. (If you ever saw them shave in those days, you’d know why whiskers were popular.)

The most trouble we had was with interior shots. Smoky wicks in a bowl of lard, no matter how plentiful, are too dim even for fast film. Mike got around that by running the Trucolor camera at a single frame a second, with his machine paced accordingly. That accounts for the startling clarity and depth of focus we got from a lens stopped well down. We had all the time in the world to choose the best possible scenes and camera angles; the best actors in the world, expensive camera booms, or repeated retakes under the most exacting director can’t compete with us. We had a lifetime from which to choose.

Eventually we had on film about eighty percent of what you saw in the finished picture. Roughly, we spliced the reels together and sat there entranced at what we had actually done. Even more exciting, even more spectacular than we’d dared hope, was the realization that we’d done a beautiful job, despite the lack of continuity and sound. We’d done all we could, and the worst was yet to come. So we sent for more champagne and told the blond we had cause for celebration. She giggled.

“What are you doing in there, anyway?” she asked. “Every salesman who comes to the door wants to know what you’re making.”

I opened the first bottle. “Just tell them you don’t know.”

“That’s just what I’ve been telling them. They think I’m awfully dumb.” We all laughed at the salesmen.

Mike was thoughtful. “If we’re going to do this sort of thing very often, we ought to have some of these fancy hollow-stemmed glasses.”

The blond was pleased with that. “And we could keep them in my bottom drawer.” Her nose wrinkled prettily. “The bubbles—You know, this is the only time I’ve ever had champagne, except at a wedding, and then it was only one glass.”

“Pour her another,” Mike suggested. “Mine’s empty too.” I did. “What did you do with those bottles you took home last time?”

A blush and a giggle. “My father wanted to open them, but I told him you said to save it for a special occasion.”

By that time I had my feet on her desk. “This is the special occasion, then,” I invited. “Have another, Miss . . . what’s your first name, anyway? I hate being formal after working hours.”

She was shocked. “And you and Mr. Laviada sign my checks every week! It’s Ruth.”