Un Lun Dun

by China Miéville

  She took off down an alley. Several more heads craned over nearby roofs, staring at her with ferocious yellow eyes. Deeba ran, and knew it was hopeless. The sound of giraffes came from all around. She turned and turned, looking for somewhere to go.

  Behind her, she heard bestial noises of expectation.

  The giraffes were close. They licked their teeth and horselike lips with tongues like cuts of meat.

  There were six or seven coming at her. Deeba held her breath.

  In their jostling to get to the front, two giraffes wedged next to each other in the tight alley, and were momentarily stuck. They bit at each other bad-temperedly.

  Deeba turned and ran hard.

  Bleeding from the wounds they had given each other, the enormous carnivores galloped after her again. Deeba accelerated. She turned to watch them approach.

  Except that they weren’t. Something changed in the air on her face, but Deeba was focusing on the giraffes.

  One by one, a few meters in front of her, they stopped.

  They shied, like racehorses who didn’t want to jump a fence. They ducked their enormous necks, and trotted on the spot in frustration.

  Deeba backed away.

  “Why aren’t you coming?” she whispered.

  The giraffes circled and snarled, and leaned their necks towards Deeba, but they would not come any closer. They reared their massive bodies.

  What are they scared of? she thought. It was only then that she realized where she was, and the answer was plain.

  On all sides was the flickering of pale houses. From their windows, scores of phantom eyes watched her, their owners too dim or fading or moving too fast for Deeba to see clearly.

  She was going to have to rethink her intention to wait outside Wraithtown and make a plan. Without realizing it, Deeba had just run into it. And the ghosts of UnLondon were watching.

  42

  Haunts and Houses

  This had most definitely not been the plan. Deeba’s delight at having escaped the giraffes changed instantly to a new anxiety.

  And she couldn’t run out, with the giraffes hovering, watching. She put up her umbrella, uselessly, and held it like a shield. Deeba began to turn on the spot.

  “No one come close,” she shouted. “I’m watching. First sign of anyone trying to possess me, I’ll…”

  I shouldn’t really have started that sentence, she thought, because there was nothing she could finish it with.

  Deeba walked cautiously farther into Wraithtown, turning as she went. It wasn’t just the inhabitants of Wraithtown who were ghosts. It was also the buildings.

  Each of the houses, halls, shops, factories, churches, and temples was a core of brick, wood, concrete, or whatever, surrounded by a wispy corona of earlier versions of itself. Every extension that had ever been built and knocked down, every smaller, squatter outline, every different design: all hung on to existence as specters. Their insubstantial, colorless forms shimmered in and out of sight. Every building was cocooned in its older, dead selves.

  From all the ghost-windows, the ghosts of Wraithtown watched.

  Deeba turned faster and faster as apparitions came onto the street to meet her.

  In the light of the lowering loon, translucent figures emerged. They faded up out of nothing, men and women in costumes from throughout history. Some looked like Londoners, in antique wigs and old-fashioned coats. Some looked to Deeba more like UnLondoners, in their peculiar outfits. All were colorless, completely silent, and insubstantial. Deeba could see them through each other.

  They wafted closer.

  “You stay back!” Deeba said. “Don’t come no closer! I know what you’re trying to do! I just need one piece of information, and then I’m gone.”

  The Wraithtown ghosts circled her, and began to talk. She could see their mouths working, but there was not a sound. Deeba shook her head.

  They grew agitated, and even looked as if they were shouting, but the only things she could hear were the sighs of the wind, and the far-off cries of dogs and foxes. One ghost soundlessly stamped its foot in frustration. The loonlight glimmered through them.

  “I need to see a list. I need to see the list,” Deeba said. She mouthed the words slowly, as if she were talking to someone who didn’t speak good English. “One of you must be able to talk to me,” she said. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll be gone in a second! I just need to see the list!”

  Deeba stepped back from a nebulous figure dressed like Shakespeare, who had come close enough to touch.

  “Stay away!” she shouted. “Don’t any of you understand?”

  “They all understand you,” someone said. “You don’t understand them.”

  She turned. Through the spectral layers of the crowd around her, leaning against a flickering ghost-house, she could just make out the boy Hemi.

  “You!” she said.

  He walked towards her, straight through the ghosts, one by one.

  “Don’t come too close,” she said warningly. “Stay back! How long you been watching?”

  “‘Don’t come close’?” he said. “How rude are you? You’re the one came here asking for help.” A nearby ghost looked down in surprise as Hemi stepped through his chest and stood before Deeba.

  He wore a shabby old suit. His skin was as pale as she remembered, his eyes as shadowed, his voice as sarky. “Blimey, look who’s back,” he said.

  “Just stay away,” Deeba said. She backed up warily, raising her umbrella. “Why do you keep following me?”

  Hemi made a rude noise.

  “Follow you?” he barked. “Don’t be soft.”

  “You were on the bus,” Deeba said. “With that man.” Hemi looked sheepish.

  “Alright, yeah…I did sort of follow you on the bus. But just because your mate’s…y’know, the Shwazzy,” he said. “I wanted to know about you, and anyway…” He stopped suddenly. “What do you mean, ‘with that man’?” he demanded.

  “And you followed us on the roofs. And you stole Zanna’s travelcard!”

  “Hold on! Alright, granted I was sort of behind you on the roofs, too, but how dare you call me a thief! I was looking out for you on the roofs, you dozy ingrate. Who do you think whistled up to the bridge when those junkies were coming? I blatantly never stole nothing! And what do you mean ‘with that man’?”

  “You tell me.” Deeba’s voice was guarded.

  “I knew it! You’re saying I was one of them grossbottlers.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Outrageous. Blame the wisper, right? It was me who stopped that bloke!”

  “Why…?”

  “’Cause he was trying to hurt the Shwazzy! I mean…’ cause…y’know.”

  Deeba said nothing. She thought back to what had happened: the ghost-boy, or half-ghost-boy, emerging somehow from nowhere—sending the attacker neatly into Obaday’s head. She’d never actually seen him touch Zanna on the roofs, either. “I…never realized,” she said at last. Maybe Zanna had simply lost that card—it wasn’t as if Deeba’d never done that. “Why didn’t you say nothing?”

  “Like you lot would’ve listened to the wisper.” He raised an eyebrow. “You just said I was following you, and I don’t even know where you came from! You came here! This lot called me as soon as they saw you,” he said. “They know you’re too deaf to hear them. Now put down your bleeding umbrella, tell us what you want, and bog off.”

  “Sorry,” said Deeba. “But I know what you lot do. I don’t want anyone taking my body. I just have to find something out—”

  Hemi interrupted.

  “You really do take the Michael don’t you? Why’d any of us want your nasty body?”

  Deeba was taken aback. In fact, many of the ghosts were shaking their fists at her angrily, mouthing what looked like swearwords.

  “You barge in here,” Hemi said, “spouting nonsense, and then you demand help?”

  “I…I’m sorry,” Deeba said. “I was told—”

  “What next, you going to
join in with the rest of them saying we’re in league with the bleeding Smog?”

  Deeba looked around the gathered ghosts. “You…don’t want to possess people?”

  “For Deadsey’s sake, of course not!” said Hemi. “Look, you,” he said to Deeba, jabbing his finger at her. “I’m not going to tell you no one from Wraithtown’s ever nicked a body. Just like you can’t tell me that no one from UnLondon’s ever stolen clothes. But do you see me blaming you all for that? Do you?”

  “So…why do you live next to living people if you don’t want that?” Deeba eyed the ghosts.

  “They don’t choose to stick around!” Hemi said. “After we die, a few of us just wake up again. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes centuries. Isn’t that right?”

  A ghost by his side in an ancient dress nodded and rolled her eyes.

  “And most of us end up here,” Hemi said. “So what? At least we can talk to each other here. And then we get accused of everything! Next thing we know, there are gangs of UnLondoners snipping at us with exorscissors! D’you know how often some UnLondoner passes over and wakes up in Wraithtown? And then when they see what’s going on, we have to hear all about how sorry they are, blah blah, they had the wrong idea about us, yak yak. Of course, by then it’s too late.”

  There was a long silence. Of course, it might have been a hubbub of angry ghosts, but to Deeba, it was a long silence.

  “Well…sorry,” she said. “I was told wrong.”

  “Whatever.” Hemi sniffed.

  There was another silence. Deeba waited for Hemi to ask her what she was doing there. He didn’t.

  “Maybe…you could help me?” she said at last. Hemi eyed her.

  “Me help you?”

  “Please.” She began to speak more urgently. “It’s really important. I need to check something. Someone told me there was…Is there like an official list of all the dead?”

  Hemi, and several ghosts, nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said nonchalantly. “In the records office. Wraithtown’s a borough of Thanatopia—that’s the city of the London and UnLondon dead. We can’t move to the city center yet—don’t know much about it—but we’ve got access to some of their offical files. The dead are way more organized than the living.”

  “Cool,” said Deeba. “Listen…I really need to find out if someone’s on that list.”

  Hemi struggled not to look interested, and failed.

  “Why?”

  “Because I was told he was dead. And that he died before I’d met him. But he’s definitely not a ghost. So I want to know what’s going on.”

  43

  Flickering Streets

  The giraffes bleated hungrily in the distance as Hemi led Deeba through the unstable streets of Wraithtown, past shops and offices clouded with their own remembered selves. Most of the spectral entourage dissipated. There were only a few flickers of ectoplasm as a curious dead or two flitted around Deeba.

  “I cannot even believe,” Deeba said again, “that you’re taxing me for this.”

  “Um, excuse me!” Hemi said. “This ain’t my business. And the way you’ve been talking about us, I think you’re dead lucky I’m helping you at all.”

  “‘Help,’” Deeba muttered bitterly. “Half my cash…”

  “Yeah.” Hemi grinned. He fanned himself ostentatiously with the out-of-date currency he’d insisted Deeba pay him before he’d escort her. “Pleasure doing business.”

  “I am out of here the second we’re done,” Deeba muttered.

  “Oh boo hoo,” said Hemi. “No, please stay.” They eyed each other.

  “I know, I know,” Hemi said occasionally to one or another wisp they passed. “It’s alright, she’s with me.”

  “We’re not used to heartbeaters in Wraithtown,” he told Deeba.

  They passed phantasms of streetlights, in old styles, where illuminations had been and had gone. Little groups of ghosts gathered at street corners. They stood—or wafted, their legs disappearing—in costumes from throughout history.

  “When you talk about them, you keep saying ‘us,’” Deeba said. “But you’re not like the rest.” Hemi looked away. “Someone told me that you’re half…How come I can hear you?

  Plus…” Deeba reached out and shoved him.

  “You’re solid.”

  Hemi sighed.

  “Mum was a Londoner like you,” he said. “Born two hundred years ago, died a hundred and sixty-five years ago. Dad wasn’t dead at all. He was an UnLondoner, came to Wraithtown out of curiosity.

  “Mum tried to spook him. So she was all floaty sheets and woooo! and wooaaah! and so on. But he wasn’t scared. The way they told it…he just fell for her, right then. And so one thing led to another.”

  “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 Thanatopia itself?” she said. “Is there another file?”

  “You heard her,” said Hemi. “Double-check! Chop-chop!” The bureaucrat ghost looked sourly at him but, obviously deciding it was the easiest way of getting rid of them, rose and wafted to a back office, miming wait and mouthing something.

  “He says new paperwork gets here from the Thanatopian office every couple of months,” said Hemi.

  “Couple of months?” said Deeba. “If I’m right, Unstible might have…moved to Thanatopia in the last few weeks.”

  Hemi sighed, then looked craftily around, and spoke quietly. “Well, it’s your money. I suppose we could log into the database on the afternet if you really want. That’d be more recent. You know what red tape’s like. This lot’re still happier dealing in hard copy and its ghost. I bet they only use that thing for playing Minesweeper and bog all else.” He nodded at the computer and its riffling halo of older computer ghosts. “Tell me if he’s coming,” he said, and grabbed the keyboard. Hemi found the officer’s password on a ghostly piece of paper stuck to the side of the monitor.