Virtual Virgin

“You feel responsible for him because you love him, Miss Delilah.” Tallgrass touched my elbow. “Let’s get down to the Jeep so we’re ready to get out of here when Ric’s done seeding the desert with his allies.”

His hand gave me the slightest of shoves, but it got my feet moving and then momentum took us both down the steep rise until the ground was flat and the sagebrush was about my height.

Tallgrass’s scuffed boots crunched cactus until we reached a certain clump. He began pulling camouflaging masses of sagebrush aside. They lifted and rolled away, just tumbleweeds. A standard open Jeep painted camouflage colors awaited passengers. I scrambled into the back while Tallgrass took the Quicksilver seat. With city lights out of sight, moonlight poured down on us, as if the moon, pregnant and almost at the full, had broken its water.

I trusted Ric’s ability to safeguard himself out here, believe it or not, and Quicksilver was just another guarantee of my judgment.

“Ric is seriously angry with me,” I told Tallgrass, leaning forward as he twisted in the front seat to face me. “He’s never . . . we’ve never—”

Tallgrass’s palms came up, patting the air and me into silence. “This is between you and him. I am not Dear Abby.”

I blinked. He’d echoed Sansouci’s exact words to me. Was I looking that in need of counseling these days?

“No, but you’re an objective witness,” I said. “Since our battle with the elements in Wichita, my silver powers have blended with Ric’s ability to dowse for the dead. You’ve seen the Silver Zombie he raised off the Metropolis screen.”

“Yeah,” Tallgrass grunted. “I find it hard to relate to such a piece of . . . sorcery. To me, a mechanized creature born of a mechanized process hails from the alien realm of automated beings and figments of film. My culture roots its power in nature. We’ve never embraced the age of machines as a people. Torbellino harnesses demons to do his evil work, but they too are creatures of spirit, or the unclean undead, not robots.”

I had to admit the Metropolis CinSim robot was inhuman, but she was also the silver loving cup that held the spirit of the film’s virginal heroine, Maria, as well as the now-dead Brigitte Helm, the actress who’d worn the Art Deco Joan of Arc suit of armor. Much as I sympathized with and liked the Vegas CinSims, that silver metal woman freaked me out.

“The Silver Zombie is more unnatural than even the most bizarre CinSim,” I agreed, “such as Frankenstein, though they both were ‘brought to life’ in laboratories. Partly it’s because she thinks—if she thinks as we know it— that Ric, having raised her from the screen, is her master.”

I hated that concept. And, if I was honest with myself, maybe the competition. The Silver Zombie existed in a 3-D reality beyond all the rules of making CinSims that the mysterious Immortality Mob had perfected. Who could she be, what could she become?

Tallgrass seemed to understand my concerns.

“A century ago,” he said, “my people believed a photograph stole and imprisoned a soul. They refused to pose for pictures, like the aborigines in Australia. I’ve studied this belief, because nowadays ‘souls’ are ‘stolen’ every second, and the photographs posted all over the World Wide Web. The native people’s fear of photographs is based on the mystical properties of mirror.”

I audibly caught my breath but kept my mouth shut. Tallgrass had no need to know about my mirror-walking powers.

“You are not unfamiliar with such marvels, I think.” He lifted a hand, waved it at a space beyond my shoulder. “I see you with a slight double vision. I can’t quite focus on you, Delilah Street. Never could. Ric doesn’t see that.”

“He knows, though. So you studied up on mirror images because I’m involved with your former protégé?”

Tallgrass laughed. “Protégé. No such fancy word for it. I was teacher, he the student. Now perhaps that is reversed. Such is the way of life . . . and death. All things reverse. And nowadays, it’s a two-way street. Death and dissolution can result in life and restitution.”

Crap. That meant death and resurrection could also reverse itself.

“Who says?” I asked.

“The Mayans for one.”

“The ones who said the world would end in 2012? It’s 2013.”

“Thirteen. An unlucky number.”

“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in effort.”

Tallgrass ignored me. “The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans used reflective surfaces to predict the future. Scrying, they called it, in ancient times.”

“Minor league. I can travel through reflective surfaces.”

“Can you, Miss Skeptic? Ric never mentioned that.”

“He’s just . . . learned about it.”

“Then, are you a god or a saint?”

“Heaven forbid! Neither. I’m just a child of the Millennium Revelation stuck with some weird talents. Didn’t you get any?”

Tallgrass’s lips smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “Mayans believed mirrors opened portals into the Otherworld, allowing ancestors and gods to pass through between the two planes. They believed when praying to a saint, the soul leaves the body. To help the soul find its way back into the body, mirrors are placed in front of saints’ statues to reflect back the soul.”

“Mayans didn’t have saints.”

“They did after they were conquered by the Spanish. Here in Mexico, there are still towns where photography is banned in churches. The old cameras, and even some SLR digital ones, still use mirrors. And then there’s voodoo.”

“What? That’s an African and Caribbean belief, sticking pins in dolls and other primitive notions. Nobody’s going to stick a pin in El Demonio or the Silver Zombie.”

“Sympathetic magic assumes a powerful link between entities that look alike. That’s why voodoo dolls are used.”

Lilith was my very own voodoo doll? Or could be used as such? Not something I’d considered. I shivered . . . but the night had grown cool. Still, I wore two layers of clothing.

“I see why you might distrust CinSims,” I finally said. “If they have souls it’s wrong to create and employ them. If I ever discover who or what runs the Immortality Mob I’ll give them—or it—a good strong lecture. All that aside, there’s never been a CinSim with as many layers of cinematic life as the robot from Metropolis. She’d better keep her silver-screen metal gauntlets off my man. Meanwhile, I’m worried about Ric’s private war, even though his silver powers have probably outstripped mine.”

I didn’t tell Tallgrass he may have had to come back from the dead to do it.

“Are they enough to vanquish Torbellino and his forces?” Tallgrass asked.

“I don’t know. But . . . I wish Ric had included me in his plans.”

“Now you’ve taken care of his omission yourself.” Tallgrass slid a carefully neutral glance my way. “Think he’s going to like that?”

“Not at first,” I told him.

“And in the long run?

“I still have some powers of persuasion myself,” I added.

And smiled.

Chapter Thirty-two

THE MOON HAD visibly moved across the sky before Quicksilver came bounding through the sagebush to greet me and Tallgrass with triumphant pants and wags. That big tail could really whip your legs with “happy.” Ric joined us soon after.