Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [61]
“But how? If she wasn’t even…solid…”
“Some ghosts can get physical. A bit. A few. She was one.” There was a silence.
“Problem was,” he said glumly, “his family didn’t like it, and her friends thought she was sick. They managed to make everyone angry.”
“You the only one?”
Hemi shrugged.
“I dunno,” he said. “Never met any others.”
“So you live here with your parents?”
“Mum went to Thanatopia when I was ten. Dad said she tried to stay, but when that tide takes you…Dad disappeared a bit later.” Hemi spoke briskly. “Some locals didn’t like him living in Wraithtown. Maybe they scared him out. Or worse. Or maybe he did what he had to to be with Mum again.”
“Sorry,” Deeba muttered, shocked.
“Don’t matter,” he said, perhaps too brightly. “There are some great people here. Even if there are some dead who don’t like me because I’m half-alive, that’s not all of them. It’s the living who really don’t like me around, ’cause I’m half-ghost. I can look after myself. Full ghosts don’t eat, but I do. Luckily my ghost half makes it easy to, ah, go shopping out there.” He winked.
Before them was a building and its ghosts. It was a cement office, enshrouded with the specters of a Victorian house, a tumbledown Georgian structure, and a medieval-looking hovel. They shimmered around it and each other. Over its front door was a printed plastic sign, ghosted with an older hand-painted version, that read: WRAITHTOWN COUNCIL.
Hemi pulled the front doors open for Deeba, and the ghosts of all the earlier doors went with them. Deeba entered many layers of history.
44
Postmortem Bureaucracy
If it was confusing being in Wraithtown itself, surrounded by the ghosts of earlier forms, being in the building was overwhelming.
The corridor seemed to grow thicker and thinner as its ghosts eddied. The walls were lined with certificates and pictures, each surrounded by more in spectral form. Overlaying the lights were the ghosts of bare bulbs and of intricate chandeliers.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” Deeba said.
“You’re just ghostsick,” said Hemi. “It’ll settle down.”
Behind a desk—and countless ghost-desks—on which was a computer, sheaves of paper, pens, and all their ghosts, sat a fat ghost in a tracksuit.
Can I help you? he mouthed, then looked up. He bolted to what would have been his feet, had his legs not terminated in wafts of nothing. He began to shout, silently.
Hemi shouted back.
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” he said. “Yes, she’s living, and yes, I am ‘that boy.’ I don’t care what you think, it’s your job to give information. No she’s not, she’s a Londoner, you idiot.” He rolled his eyes. “No, of course that’s not a banishgun, that’s an umbrella.” Deeba was impressed with how fierce Hemi was.
“Now,” he said. “Tell us what we need to know. Or I’ll report you.”
The fat ghost sat down sulkily. Deeba saw him eye Hemi and say something.
Hemi didn’t react. What had the ghost said? She made the shapes with her own lips, to work it out.
She knew suddenly what he had called Hemi, and she stared at him with dislike. Half-breed.
“Alright, what do you need?” Hemi said.
“The record of all the deadists,” Deeba said. “I need to check if someone’s listed.
“The name is Benjamin Hue Unstible.”
“What?” said Hemi. What? mouthed the ghost.
“What are you talking about?” Hemi said. “Unstible’s not dead. He came out of hiding! He’s doing his whole plan, he’s sorting out UnLondon from the Smog, he’s vulcanizing the unbrellas…”
“I know, I know,” Deeba said. “I’m paying for this, aren’t I? So just do me a favor and look. It’s probably nothing.”
“You are out of your mind,” Hemi chuckled.
The ghost ostentatiously threw up his hands, and opened a filing cabinet by yanking its ghost-drawers, which drew the solid drawer at the center with them. He riffled through papers.
“Nope,” said Hemi eventually, when the ghost shouted something. “No Unstibles in Wraithtown.”
“Okay,” said Deeba slowly. “Well…that’s good.” Have I come all the way to UnLondon for nothing? she thought. The people in the RMetS must have made a mistake.
“What about in