Virtual Virgin

Chapter Fifteen

RIC WATCHED GODFREY don an apron with aplomb and remove a platter of roast beef from the massive stainless steel refrigerator-freezer unit. A CinSim maid also clad in black with white cap, cuffs, and apron began making cold cuts for Quicksilver and a welcome sandwich for him.

Delilah needed a food break too. With all the morning’s excitement extending into afternoon, they’d been too busy to eat. Or too in love. Ric’s stroll on the Inferno’s wild side had stoked his desire for Delilah and now that the hang-up against lying on her back had been exorcised, they had a lot more exploring to do.

Ric returned his mind to Nightwine’s kitchen and found himself grinning like a Halloween pumpkin.

“Please sit down,” Godfrey invited, pulling out a stool at the central island. “The master has ordered a viewing supper later for you and Miss Street. I’m told the film is almost as long as three hours of network prime time.”

“Don’t you find this role demeaning, Godfrey?” Ric asked as he sat.

“Why should I, dear boy? I’m a successful businessman with a social conscience for the devastated unemployed of my Depression times and now, yours. I played along with being mistaken for a homeless man and took a butler job because the family involved needed serious emotional and financial help.”

“And you ‘help’ here too?”

“Indeed. The master is housebound.”

“Some house.” Ric eyed the huge, high-ceilinged kitchen gleaming with the stainless steel of innumerable gadgets.

“I do enjoy the surroundings.”

“So you feel some sense of loyalty to your ‘owner’?”

“Certainly. Loyalty has always been my greatest virtue. The self who underlies this incarnation got my ex-wife the lead female role in my namesake film because I recommended her for the job. And together we made screwball film history. An amusing sort of immortality, isn’t it?”

“Carole Lombard was once your wife?”

“I see our Miss Street has been explaining my role to you. She was also my wife again, in the film, although Miss Street is quite right that the character bulldozed me into marriage at the end. Don’t get yourself corralled in such a sneaky fashion, my lad.”

Ric waved off that notion. “Do you miss . . . Miss Lombard? Would you want her on these premises?”

“Not necessary, although Miss Street was instrumental in getting my . . . er, cousin at the Inferno his screen wife and even the dog.”

“Delilah got Snow to buy Nora Charles and Asta for Nick’s sake?”

“Indeed. Miss Street could get Christophe of the Inferno to do a great many more things for her, should she stoop to flattering his ego. He is not a hopelessly bad individual,” Godfrey mused while swiping a dishcloth over Quicksilver’s already bare and washed plate. “More misguided than anything. Next to Miss Street and the master, no one in Las Vegas is as considerate of CinSims as he. We do not forget our friends.”

“Are you familiar with the film Delilah and I will be seeing?”

“Metropolis? Of course. It came out only a few years before my best work.”

“Godfrey, you seem much more self-aware than most CinSims.”

“I am supposed to be the perfect gentleman’s gentleman.”

“Yes, but you know where your other . . . incarnations . . . are located in Las Vegas, and even recognize the actor beneath the character.”

“We are not stupid, Mr. Montoya, just limited somewhat in our memories, and certainly in our movements, through no fault of our own. My master’s love of film requires I discuss them with him and I’ve learned what many less advantageously placed CinSims may never access. Why all the personal questions, Mr. Montoya?”

“I was forced as a child to raise so many zombie ‘canvases’ that may have been used for CinSims.”

“Well, you have a special talent, then.”

“But now I’ve raised a CinSim directly from the screen and it . . . she . . . seems horribly dependent on me.”

“Ah. Which version of the stunning actress Brigitte Helm are you referring to?”

“I don’t know. The form is the silver metal robot zombie.”

“Actually a plastic, wood, silver-and-bronze robot zombie, I believe.”

“That doesn’t matter! The point is her image registers as all silver on the old nitrate films used then. The point is I brought her to ‘life,’ personally. I’ve never done that with a film creation. And now she has a bizarre second life, thanks to me.”

“It certainly will be interesting to see what she does with it.”

“Is that up to her? Snow owns her.”

Godfrey’s head shook from side to side in a maybe-maybe not manner. “In a way. In another way, it depends upon what we CinSims are exposed to, as I’d mentioned.”

“You’re like children, then? You can learn and develop a sense of self?”

“It depends on the sophistication of our underlayment, as it were. On what we’re exposed to in our environments.”

“And if that environment is an elaborate brothel?”

“Oh, dear. Not my style. However, all Hollywood was an elaborate brothel when it came to female actors.”

“And Delilah isn’t catering to Hector Nightwine when she dresses up to see him?”

“The master is a viewer, not a doer. What harm does it do to invoke his favorite things?”

He glanced up at a callboard. “I see the office light is on. That means I should install you in the home theater. Any particular beverage you crave? Nick Charles would recommend oodles of Boodles for a three-hour film like Metropolis.”

Ric shook his head in defeat. “Whatever you deem appropriate, Godfrey. You’re the perfect gentleman’s gentleman.”

DELILAH WAS WAITING for him against a background of looming doors of gilt and carved wood, the pale purple of her forties frock intensifying the dramatic effect of her blue eyes and black hair.

“I’m supposed to pay attention to a movie?” Ric asked as he came up to her.

“I know what you guys go for in darkened movie theaters. Really, Ric, you have to pay attention to the film. This is an investigative outing.”

“If you say so.” He pulled the huge door handle open and they walked into what resembled a gigantic vintage jukebox, uplit columns and arches of intricately carved glass in luminous colors of poison green, hot orange, vivid red, and neon purple.

The theater house was a sea of red-velvet wave after wave of seat backs, enough to accommodate a couple hundred.

“All this for us?” Ric asked.

“All this is for Hector’s aesthetic sense. I guessed from your morning activities you’d rather be obligated to Hector Nightwine than Snow.”

“I’d rather be obligated to no one.”

She led him halfway down the center aisle. “This okay?”

“I can snooze here as well as anywhere.”

“Trust me. You won’t want to nap through this film. Hector’s print lacks six minutes Snow’s has, but narrative title cards will bridge any gaps.”

“Title cards? It’s a ‘movie’ but not a ‘talkie,’ and now it’s a ‘readie’?”

Delilah leveled those police-car blue-light-special eyes at him.

“You’ve got to face the Silver Zombie in all of her many manifestations, Ric,” she said. “What you raised in Wichita will incredibly complicate the human and unhuman world in Vegas, and she is definitely a package deal.”