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 negative 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 salable 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 were going to get certainly 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 Mike did, while 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 bullet-proof 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 stone masons 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 blonde settled down to a routine of reading love stories and saying no to all the salesmen that 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 Trucolor film.
That took the biggest load from 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 to 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 blonde 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 into the air, 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 that 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.