"I suppose. . but what about the glass, then?" I asked.
"I've been thinking about that," Ben piped up from behind us.
I swung around so I could see both of them by just turning my head.
"You see," Ben started, brandishing a handful of silverware, "I think what you're seeing there is a sort of material resistance. The energy state of the Grey is extremely high and fast—we've discussed this before, you recall—”
"Yes, I remember.”
Brian made motorboat noises under the table as he pushed the bowl merrily around the floor, trailed by Albert, who stuck half through the table as if it weren't there. I found myself watching the ghost, rather than Ben.
"OK, so the particles of energy that make up the Grey travel much more slowly through the dense material of something like glass or brick or stone, but we only see them in glass because when they are slowed down to a certain degree, we experience a sort of persistence-of-vision illusion. That's why you can see a ghost in a photograph when there was none visible at the time—”
I interrupted him, refocusing on Ben. "You can? I thought those 'spirit photos' were all exposed as fakes.”
"Oh, the ones taken by charlatans in the same era as the Spiritist Church were mostly fakes, but you can spot those easily. Others seem to be legit. Odd images of people or things where no one was at the time, but they fit in the picture. They don't have to be old photos. They could be anything from any time, taken with any camera.”
I'd seen photos like that—some snapshots taken by my mother or friends from college—and found some of them disturbing beyond reason. They never seemed to merit that disquiet, but I'd never shaken it. "OK, assume I buy the idea. What's your theory?" I asked.
"I think the ghost's reflection on the surface of the glass lens persists long enough for the camera to capture it. If you could see through rocks or bricks, you could see the ghost reflected in the side of a building, too, but since most materials aren't transparent, you can't see the reflection of the ghost.”
"That doesn't explain why I see less Grey when I look through a window.”
"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 running on, doing the same thing they've always done until they finally wear out completely and fade away.”
"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 dinner with more giggling than rhino roars. I supposed this sort of behavior was the positive reinforcement that allowed most children to survive to the next stage of parental stress: adolescence. Between considering Brian's sweetened temper and mulling ideas about glass and mirrors, I didn't talk much during the meal and the conversation turned to academic power struggles at the U over upcoming funding and tenure issues. I nodded and ate in comfortable ignorance.
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 grinned, making her face sweet and sunny. She looked up at me.