The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

FOREVER, SAID THE DUCK

Pearl O’Hennies was in the corner talking to Notable Johnson. “Can you believe her gall, calling everyone up like this.”

“But my dear, that’s exactly what he did,” said Notable. “They’re the only two really here. We’re all samples.”

They were talking about their hosts, who were in another of the blank, featureless rooms.

“What is it, a contest?”

“A contest, you mean to see who had more lovers? I think they’re above that. They’ve known each other all these years—”

“Why don’t they just call each other up, then? Why all this?”

“Well they could be with each other, of course. In the real world, instead of a dull, poorly furnished virtual space like this one. But then we wouldn’t all be here. It is about us, you see. Even if they won’t talk to anyone but each other.”

“I heard they’ve got games planned, for later.”

“What, Spin the Bottle?”

Cambert Moid stepped over to where they stood. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” he asked.

“Hello, Cambert,” said Pearl crisply.

“Hello, Pearl. I suppose I should say, long time no see. But”—he mimicked a Southern accent—“I don’t rightly know if that’s true. I suppose our real selves could have warmed up to each other by now. Besides, this is hardly ‘see,’ now is it?”

“You talk too much, Cambert,” said Pearl.

“I’ll let you two catch up,” mumbled Notable Johnson, and he slipped away. He was en route to the monitors where guests were punching up drink simulations when he ran into Caitlice Frisman.

“Caitlice!”

“Oh, Johnny.” She put her arms around him. “Nice, nice, nice. But what, excuse me, what the hell are you doing here?” She leaned in close. “You sleep with that remorseless pussycat?”

“I take it you refer to our host.”

“Yours, not mine,” she corrected.

He nodded his shameful assent to her question.

“Well, a party like this is what you get, what you deserve, for a glitch like that — but enough. You’re in charge of your own regrets. Just tell me when it happened.”

“You’re humiliating me, Cait,” he said affectionately. “Two years — how should I count it? — two years after us, after you and I—”

“Then you know how we’ve been, and you must tell me. Because I — this copy here is from right after we broke — you weren’t even talking to me, Johnny. But you’re from later, and so you know how we’ve been, out there, in our real selves.”

“Oh, fine, Cait. Nothing could keep us from — coffee every Monday.”

“Ah.”

They both fell to a moment of sadness. Then Caitlice said flippantly, “So am I magnificently fat now?”

“Oh, no, you look terrific. But that reminds me, Cait, listen: Gavin Urnst is here, a very early sample, and last I knew he was in the hospital, quite sick—”

“We mustn’t tell him here,” she said quickly. “Ruin his time, when he can’t do anything. Any more than you would tell me if I was fat. Do you think he—”

“Died? I can’t know. Anyone, I mean, you or I—”

“Shh.”

They were quiet again for a minute.

“Cait, if this thing goes long, let’s find each other. I mean, it could get unbearable. I’ve heard they’re hoping we’ll all pair—”

“Shhh. Say no more. It’s a date. Save the last dance for me. And now I must mingle, darling.”

Notable nodded. Caitlice turned and attached herself immediately to a group containing Millard Heron, O.K. Tinkers, and Wendy Airhole.

“This is such an indignity,” Wendy said. “I was only with him as a favor, just stayed long enough to qualify for the copying. I wanted him to have me to access, but not for this fucking party. I remember thinking that I shouldn’t, just out of pity for my poor copy — that is, me, now, here. God.”

“Hmmm,” said Millard Heron. “He told me it was the other way. That he only slept with you—”

“Oh Millard, what do you know?” Wendy breathed out in a weary rush. “The things women have to tell men just to keep them from imploding with insecurity, just to keep their dicks hard long enough to be entertaining—and then to think they go around repeating it to each other—”

“Hey, we’re at a party,” said Caitlice, singingly. “Make the best of it, there’s no harm done here. You, the real you, doesn’t care about this, doesn’t object, won’t recall it. You and I, the real you and I, might be having our very-own version of this same party right now—”

“I would never,” said O.K. Tinkers. He shuddered. “Oh, I would never want to see them all, all in the same place—”

The four laughed, resentment suddenly abolished.

“This could be a sort of nightmare for them,” Wendy speculated merrily. “If we somehow joined forces—”

Caitlice took her by the elbow, tsk-tsking. “Excuse us, boys. Come for a drink simulation, Wendy.”

“You think I should lighten up, Cait, don’t you?”

“I think you could be having fun.” Caitlice steered her away from O.K. and Millard.

“My kind of fun is darker than yours, Cait. Doesn’t the, the smugness of it just creep you out? But I’ll have a drink if you like. It’ll just get me bitchier. They made a mistake calling this particular lady out of storage.”

“Stop vamping,” said Caitlice, delighted. “I know your act too well.”

“I’m just warming up. I’m going straight to the source tonight, Cait. And you’re right, I should have a drink.”

“Straight to the source?”

“They think they’re here together,” Wendy said, lowering her voice.

“Who?” But Caitlice knew.

“Our hosts, the ‘real’ ones. But I’m going to get between them. Take him ‘home’ at the end of the party.”

At the console they each tapped up a drink’s worth of process distortion.

“Here, stand still, let me check something.” Caitlice reached over and dug in Wendy’s pocket, and pulled out a green ticket.

“What’s that?” said Wendy.

“All the guests at this party have a ticket in their pockets, green or red. A little extra our hosts wrote into tonight’s program. Red means you’re his guest, green hers.”

Wendy didn’t speak, but her smile fell.

“I guess anyone they both had copies of, they had to choose whose version to bring,” said Caitlice, “because they wouldn’t want two of people, you know—”

“That was a one-time thing, a kink. I should be here with him, it was me and him that really had any kind of—”

“Don’t be defensive.” Cait turned out her pocket to reveal a ticket: green.

“You, we both—” Wendy giggled.

“I always liked her better.”

“Well, I’ll be.”

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, the way we all pride ourselves on going both ways, but it’s the mixed matches that go public while the same-same stuff stays under the table. It still makes us blush.”

Wendy put her hands on her hips, instantly convinced. “I know. Really. What closeted wimps we are. God, doesn’t that burn you up?”

“No, dear, it bums you up, like everything else. I just said it was interesting.”

“Oh!” Wendy put her wrist to her forehead, exaggeratedly. “You are just so superior. Hey, are you a plant?”

“What?”

“You’re with them, aren’t you?” Wendy poked Caitlice between her breasts. “You’re real, you’re with them, a plant, to facilitate the party.”

“No, no, no. I’m a sample, like you.”

“Cait—”

“On my honor.”

Wendy pursed her lips. “Well, okay. Let’s go then.”

Arman Danzig stepped up from behind them, his cigarette in a long holder. “Go where, ladies? Is there somewhere to go?”

“We have to get to them, Cait,” said Wendy, ignoring him. “The real ones. Where the action is.”

Caitlice shook her head, and trembled slightly. “I want to be at the party. There are people to meet, people I haven’t seen in a long time.” She grabbed Arman’s elbow, though she didn’t like him. “Lovely, funny people in a ridiculous situation. I don’t need—”

“This is interesting,” said Arman.

“People not here is the situation,” said Wendy. “Including you. People not meeting, a total and complete lack of anything actually happening. The only way to be real is to affect them somehow—”

“No. You. I don’t need to do that. That’s for you.” Caitlice lightened suddenly, smiled, having convinced herself. “But I’ll sneak up and watch, later. I’d like to see you do it.”

“Think of it,” Wendy continued, inspired. “The only way to even know any of this happened would be to make such a splash, such a big dent in their evening that they’re so shaken they have to come and talk to you about it, I mean the real you. ‘Wendy listen I can’t get her to talk to me anymore because of what your copy and I did at the party’—he’d have to confess all about this sick little party—‘and I want you to go talk to her about it,’ and then I’d say, ‘Look dear my ticket was green I was never your guest at all.’ That would be something.”

“Yes, and if you did a good enough job you could have them both coming to you afterwards with confidences, pleading their individual cases,” mused Arman.

“Have we met?” said Wendy.

“I’m sorry,” said Caitlice. “Arman Danzig, Wendy Airhole.”

“And what color is your ticket?” said Wendy.

Arman’s lip twitched around the holder. “I believe that’s a personal question, Ms. Airhole.”

“I’ll show you mine—”

“What if I said I hadn’t bothered to wonder the color of yours?” said Arman. “Or check the color of mine.”

They were enchanted with one another.

“Look at what you’ve let slip,” said Wendy. “You’ve suggested you’d have to check to know — that they’ve both got copies of you. But can there really be that many of us?”

She turned to Caitlice, but Caitlice had tiptoed off.

“Don’t look now,” Arman stage-whispered, “but it’s our quarry.” He jabbed backwards over his shoulder with the holder. Their hosts were passing through the room.

“They’re mobbed,” said Wendy. “It’s disgusting.”

“Sycophants all. Harmless. Just — traffic. A hedge we must clamber over.”

Wendy liked him better and better. “Then let’s.”

Arman nodded and stepped sideways into the little crowd. “Oh, hello,” he said to Darth Gatsby, who stood on the fringe.

“Hello, Arman,” said Darth miserably.

“Are you having a wonderful time?” Arman asked, openly staring past Darth, at the hosts.

“Yes, of course,” Darth moaned.

Arman noted with approval that Wendy was inserting herself on the other side of the group, working her way into a conversation with Fran Krapp and Hella Winkie.

Arman nudged past Darth to where Candy Bale stood listening to her host expound.

“—wrinkles in the program,” he was saying. Candy wavered towards him, rapt. “There are side rooms in this space, for instance. You just have to find them. So if you start to notice that people you saw earlier aren’t around—”

“Like a game of sardines!” Candy blurted.

“Right,” he said.

Arman reached down and fondled Candy’s realistic buttock as he pushed between the two of them. She gave an exaggerated gasp and opened her mouth at Arman.

“Sardines indeed,” he sneered at her. “Or guppies.” He twitched his cigarette and performed a slight bow. “I’m sorry. Do go on with what you were saying.”

“Hello, Arman,” said their host.

“Hello. But please. Don’t let me interrupt. I am — we’re both, obviously, hanging on your words. What other ‘wrinkles’ are built into tonight’s program?”

“Well, I can’t go into it all, but you’ll find a few things revealing themselves over time anyway. But here, this is one trick nobody’s picked up on. If I stick my tongue in someone’s mouth”—at this he took Candy by the waist and put his mouth close to hers—“my drink or drug load is transferred.” He kissed her, and Arman watched as her eyes closed, then opened again, wide.

She staggered backwards as he released her.

“I’d had two drinks,” their host explained.

“But I’d already had two,” said Candy.

“That makes four, then, doesn’t it?”

“Oh,” said Candy. “—Hie—.”

“I see,” said Arman. “Could she return it, now? By putting her tongue in your mouth?”

“I shouldn’t tell you everything. But the second kiss of any kind doubles the load, and distributes it evenly. We’d then each be carrying four drinks, for instance.”

“So you share the intoxication of anyone you seriously take up with,” mused Arman. “No hope of sloughing yours off unless you kiss and run.” He stood on tiptoe and made an insinuating face at Wendy, who had worked into a group with her hostess.

“Here, Arman,” giggled Candy, lurching at him, mouth open. Putting his cigarette holder back in his mouth, Arman stepped deftly to one side and took her by the arm instead.

“Look,” he said, lifting her chin with a finger. He pointed at Darth Gatsby, who’d been squeezed out of their group and was standing looking wan. “Go. Fetch.”

Candy exploded towards Darth, and away from Arman.

“But now you’re sober,” Arman said to his host. “That can’t be any fun.”

“True enough. Join me?”

They moved towards the console together, and away from the crowd that ringed Wendy and her hostess. Arman caught a sly smile from Wendy as he turned away: they’d separated the hosts.

“So tell me,” said Arman, “what do you have planned for tonight? Is it true you want us all to pair up?”

“It’s a party. People can do what they want.”

“While you and she pull the strings, you mean.”

“Every party includes random factors, determined by the hosts. But the outcomes are unknown—”

“Ah. But is your outcome unknown?”

“I don’t see why not—”

“Then let’s take that tramp Candy and find one of your little sardine rooms, yes?”

Arman caught his host’s nervous glance back over his shoulder.

“What?” said Arman. “Can’t be separated from your ‘real world’ buddy? This isn’t summer camp. Come on.” He prodded gently at his host’s elbow.

“I might just—”

“It’s a party,” Arman said menacingly. “Don’t be all impossibly coupled. It’s too early for that. I know you, I know what you’re capable of—”

“Yes, and I know what you’re capable of, Arman.” Sighing, his host reached into his pocket and brought out a little pearl-handled revolver.

“What,” Arman scoffed. “The coward’s way out? Am I disinvited?”

“No, no. I would never do that. A guest at my party stays as long as he likes. Spends the night, ideally. You know that. You’re not disinvited. But you are dosed with MDMA and on the other side of the party—”

— and when his host pulled the trigger, Arman found himself to be exactly that. He was several rooms away, wedged behind a conversation between Pearl O’Hennies and Omidan Rosengreen, and burdened with an irritatingly benign and rosy worldview.

“Feh,” he muttered, and grabbed Pearl O’Hennies from behind. He twisted her around and planted his tongue in her mouth, then pulled away, wiping his lips, and stalked off angrily into the crowd.

“Seems you have an admirer,” said Omidan.

“Goodness,” said Pearl, still astonished, her mouth wide.

“Or was that that drink thing?”

“Something — not just a drink, I’m not sure—”

“Well he certainly had quite an effect on you, one way or another. People are behaving strangely at this affair, but I suppose some of us haven’t ‘gotten out’ in quite a while.”

“You, uh, get called up very much?” asked Pearl in a small voice. She struggled to flatten out her perceptual processing. It seemed to her that as a program she ought to be able to prevail over this influence. Then she noticed that Omidan was talking, answering a question which presumably she, Pearl, had asked, though she couldn’t now recall what it was.

“Oh, Omidan,” she interrupted, “don’t you feel sorry for them, resorting to this, wanting to spend time with us?”

Omidan, eyebrows arching, said, “That’s an interesting way to look at it,” then paused, and looked at Pearl intently. “What are you on?”

“I don’t know,” said Pearl. She pursed her lips, wideeyed, then began giggling. “Maybe I should kiss you,” she said. “You can tell me what you think.”

A figure materialized in the corner behind them:

Wendy Airhole. She blinked at them in astonishment for a moment, then scowled.

“Where did you come from?” asked Omidan.

“I was exiled to the margin,” said Wendy sourly.

“For what reason?”

“Why is anyone ever exiled to the margin? For threatening the center.”

“You should adopt the outlook that a party, by definition, has no center,” said Omidan. “We certainly don’t feel on the margin ourselves here. Something quite extraordinary has just befallen Pearl.”

“You’re the second person to lecture me about my attitude here tonight,” said Wendy philosophically. “What happened to Pearl?”

“Arman Danzig kissed her, not at all in a friendly way. Now she’s tripping or something, she’s got processing trouble.”

“For instance,” said Pearl, giggling, “you just turned into Dizzy Duck, I think, or is it Douglas? With the hat? This is just getting stronger and stronger.”

“It’s Douglas Duck, with the hat,” said Omidan, “and I see it too. Wendy just blinked away, as fast as she came, and now here’s Douglas Duck, with feathers and a bright orange beak.”

“It’s still me,” said Douglas Duck in Wendy’s voice, angrily.

“This is new,” said Omidan, not hearing. “There wasn’t anyone fictional here before. There isn’t any way that either one of them could have—slept with Douglas Duck, is there?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could think — look how pretty that duck’s hat is, Omidan. Can I touch your hat, duck?”

“It’s me,” said Wendy again, louder. “I’m just in a Douglas Duck body.”

“Oh, how nice. I never saw a real cartoon before. Can I touch you?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be touched,” said Omidan. “She probably needs to get used to her new body.”

“We’re all real cartoons, here,” said Douglas Duck, annoyed. “In a manner of speaking.”

“But not with such — bright, glowing colors,” said Pearl.

“Am I the only one?” Douglas Duck hopped up, trying to see over their heads into the crowd.

“No,” said Omidan. “Look, there’s an Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wonder if everybody will change eventually? There’s a Bumpy the Cat, talking to the alien monster from that movie, whatsitcalled. And Alfau the Alligator! Oh, I love that show. I wonder who got to be Alfau the Alligator—”

“This is the last straw,” said Douglas Duck. “Their respect for us is nil.”

“It would seem so,” said Omidan.

“They love us,” said Pearl. “They want us to be happy.”

“I thought they wanted us to pair off,” groused Douglas Duck.

“Do you have genitals?” asked Omidan politely.

Douglas’s white gloved hands pulled at the elastic waistband of his pants. “Sort of.”

Notable Johnson and someone who’d changed into Deconstructor Dawg came up to them. “Hello, Pearl,” said Notable. “Have you seen Caitlice?”

“Notable! Uh, no, not for a while, but—”

“I’m having trouble spotting her,” he fretted. “She must have taken on one of these characterizations.”

“Yes, it makes it hard,” said Omidan.

“You look unhappy,” said Pearl. She threw her arms around Notable’s neck and thrust her lips against his. “Mmmph.”

Deconstructor Dawg introduced himself to Douglas Duck. “O.K. Tinkers,” he said.

“Hello, O.K.,” said Douglas. “It’s me, Wendy.”

“Wendy! I heard about your plan, to get between them—”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

By the time Notable Johnson located Caitlice Frisman, who was hidden in the body of a Philip Guston selfportrait complete with one eye, one booted foot, facial stubble, and an enormous, gnarled cigar, he himself was incarnated as the health-food vampire, Count Granola.

They reclined together in near-total darkness on a large couch in a small side room.

“Oh, Cait,” said the Count. “I was afraid I wouldn’t find you, when everybody was suddenly creeping off—”

“Nonsense,” she said, tousling his slick hair with her clubby, clownlike fingers, “f promised we’d be together. It’s just that — you know how I feel about parties.”

“Yes,” he said, a little sadly.

“When Darth Gatsby gave Fran Krapp all his drinks—”

“Cait,” he interrupted, “you and I could never have stayed together. I mean, for real, out there.”

“Of course not, silly,” she said. “That’s why this is so nice. Such a treat.”

In another side room, on a mattress on the floor, Douglas Duck and Albert Einstein lay on either side of Candy Bale, each idly caressing her body as she lay unconscious. Candy was one of a handful of guests whose form had remained constant throughout the party. Douglas Duck had taken off his hat and pants, and Albert Einstein wore only a shirt, and was smoking a cigarette in a holder.

“Well, Arman,” said the duck, “they really had their way with us, didn’t they?”

“Yes, darling.” Albert Einstein drew on his cigarette. “Everyone had their way with everyone. Everyone always does.”

“I — for all the, for everything — it really was a party, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, darling.”

The duck cocked his head and opened his bill as if to speak, then suddenly stopped.

“What?” said Albert.

“I wish it could go on forever,” said the duck.