Poltergeist

"You actually see into the Grey, not just the reflections of a few stray ghosts. The energy of the Grey just doesn't move through the glass fast enough for you, so the glass acts like a filter, holding back a percentage of the Grey from your sight," Ben explained.

"Mirrored glass seen from the back would reflect much of the initial energy," Mara added, "and you'd see even less.”

"So. . are you guys saying that this high-energy stuff simply gets. . trapped?”

Ben nodded. "Much of it, yes.”

I shook that idea aside. "But if they can't move through something dense, how can ghosts walk through walls? We know they do that.”

Brian popped up from under the table with the bowl of dirty salad clutched to his chest. Albert shooed him toward Mara and me and the boy trotted across the floor, giggling.

"We assume that's what we see," Ben said, "but I'm thinking that there's more to it.”

Brian stumbled to a halt against my legs and looked up at me with a huge grin as he offered me the bowl. "Harpa." He gurgled with excitement and glanced back to Albert, then up at me again.

I gave Ben only half my attention as he said, "I've been thinking about this a lot since you asked and it seems to me that the Grey must have a property of time that's different than ours. You know that a lot of ghosts are nothing but the persistent memory of something or loops of time and action. Most repeating specters, for instance, have no consciousness or personality—they're just like loops of film that keep on ru

"Yes, OK. So?" I shrugged, taking the bowl from Brian and wondering why Albert seemed to have sent the boy to me with it. I handed it off to his mother as Brian threw his arms around my legs and hugged them, pressing his face against my knees.

"Well, they're an instance of time," Ben continued. "An isolated, persistent shard of time that's suspended in the Grey. And I think that there must be layers on layers of time like that scattered throughout the Grey. When we see a ghost walk through a wall, what we're actually seeing is the ghost moving through an opening that exists in his own plane of time within the Grey.”

Mara spoke out of the corner of her mouth as she dumped the filthy greens into a bin by the sink. "Say thank you.”

I looked at Brian as he clutched me in unexpected affection. "Urn. . thank you, Brian.”

Brian shrieked in delight and let go of me to run back and «help» Ben at the table.

"Very nice, Harper—I think Brian has a crush on you. And I agree with Ben about time," Mara said, tearing up freshly washed lettuce. "If there are instances of frozen time, they must exist all over the Grey, or time itself must be sort of stacked up in the Grey in some way. And that's how most ghosts—which are just memories, time-shapes, so to speak—can move about through what appear to be solid objects. The object doesn't exist for them, since they don't really interact with the present.”

"Exactly," added Ben, bending to pick up Brian and secure him in a high chair by the table. "Ghosts with sufficient personality retention and volition can move through any layer of time they are familiar with, but ghosts with less volition and the simple repeaters are stuck on the time plane they lived in.”

Albert had vanished by the time we sat down to eat, leaving only the corporeal people at the table. Without him nearby, Brian was a little more subdued and ate his di

CHAPTER 15

I rang the security buzzer outside the Fujisaka building Sunday afternoon and was answered by a birdlike voice speaking Chinese. I knew I'd pressed the right code, so I replied, "Ana Choi, please." I overheard snatches of a rapid, singing exchange of Chinese; then another voice spoke out of the speaker. "Hi, hi! I'll be right down.”

The speaker clicked off and I turned around to look out at the cloud-shadowed length of Sixth Avenue South. This was the brittle edge of the International District—the real heart of Chinatown being a block north and east on King. This street was the true international mixture the city trumpeted with pride—and which had sometimes been decried as mere racism in pretty words. Across the street was the old Uwajimaya department store building with its blue-tiled roofs and upturned eaves—still partially empty since the new Uwajimaya Village complex had risen to the immediate south. Farther south was one of the enclaves of Nihonmachi—Japantown—and around any corner you could find a feast of Chinese bakeries, Filipino groceries, Vietnamese noodle houses, and Tokyo-style coffeehouses.

The Fujisaka was the only modern condo building in the ID—the rest of the International District's housing was apartments or hotel rooms. Expensive and glossy, it snuggled in with its older, smaller neighbors, no longer the strange, shiny interloper since the arrival of the towering Uwajimaya Village.

The door behind me opened and an Asian woman stepped out wearing a fluffy white jacket against the chill. She had a round face with a pointed chin, high cheekbones, and a slightly reserved expression. Any claim to Oriental mystery vanished when she gri

"You're. . Harper, aren't you?" Her speech pattern wasn't so much an accent as a vague tint over her English.

"Yes," I replied. "Ana Choi?" I recognized her from the recordings, but I asked anyhow.

She nodded. "Sorry I made you wait. My parents were having an argument. If I just walk out, they think I'm being disrespectful, so I had to wait for them to quiet long enough to say I was leaving.”

"You live with your parents," I said, making a mental note.

"Yeah. We moved from Macao twelve years ago and they're still very old-fashioned. I'm not a traditional Chinese girl, but I try to make them happy when I can. Sometimes it's hard." She looked around the damp street. "Let's go, huh? We can talk while we go.”

"Sure," I agreed. I'd parked across the street in the sparsely used lot of the blue-tiled building.

"I'm grateful for the ride," Ana said. "Usually I take transit, but it's a long ride on Sundays—one of my buses runs once an hour on weekends.”

I shrugged. "It works out for both of us. When did you start with the project?”

"Back in January. Ian wanted me to. He said it would be fun.”

"Is It?”

Her turn to shrug. "Yeah, I guess it is. It was kind of stupid at first, but it got better. I like it.”

We stopped to get into the Rover. Ana smiled. "This is neat. Very tough.”

"Yeah, it's pretty good. Except for the gas mileage—then it's a bit of a hog.”

She nodded, settling herself in the seat. "OK. So. What do you want to ask me?”

"How do you feel about the group?”

"I said I liked it.”

"I mean the people. Do you like them?" I asked, starting the engine and heading the truck toward PNU.

"Yeah, mostly.”

I watched her reflection in the windshield glass. I didn't see any yellow line of Grey energy around her from that angle. "Anyone you don't get along with or feel uncomfortable with?”

She laughed. "You know, I don't care one way or the other. I like most of them pretty well, but I don't feel like I know them enough to care a lot. They're nice, but. . they're just nice and nothing special to me.