Necropolis

got nothing back. She tried to call her mother in Australia, but Vanessa Adams was away on a trip. Her secretary said that she would call Scarlett back, but she never did.
    And it was worse than that. Scarlett didn't like to admit it. It was so unlike her. But she was scared.
    It was hard to put her finger on what exactly was wrong, but her sense of unease, the fear that something was going to jump out at her from around the next corner, grew and grew. It was like walking through a haunted house. You don't see anything. Nothing actually happens. But you're nervous anyway because you know the house is haunted. That was how it was for Scarlett. Only in her case it wasn't a house — it was a whole city.
    First of all, there were the crowds, the people in the street. Scarlett knew that everyone was in a hurry —
    to get to work, to get to meetings, to get home again. In that respect, all cities were the same. But the people in Hong Kong looked completely dead. Nobody showed any expression. They walked like robots, all of them moving at the same pace, avoiding each other's eyes. She realized now that what she had seen on Queen Street hadn't been an isolated incident. It was as if the city somehow controlled them.
    How long would it be, Scarlett wondered, before it began to control her too?
    The strange, gray mist was still everywhere. Worse than that, it seemed to be getting thicker, darker, changing color. Mrs. Cheng had said it was pollution, but it seemed to have a life of its own, lingering around the corners, hanging over everything. It drained the color from the streets and even transformed the skyscrapers. The higher floors looked dark and threatening, and it was easy to imagine that they were citadels from a thousand years ago. They didn't seem to belong to the modern world.
    And then there was Wisdom Court. From the moment she had arrived there, Scarlett had been aware that something was wrong. It was just too quiet. But after two days there, going up and down in the elevator, in and out of the front door, she suddenly realized she hadn't seen anybody else. There were no sounds coming from the other flats, no doors slamming or babies crying. No cars ever pulled up. No smells of cooking or cleaning ever wafted up from the other floors. Apart from Mrs. Cheng, she seemed to be living there entirely on her own.
    Of course, there was the receptionist. She had barely registered him to begin with. He was always sitting in the same place, in front of a telephone that never rang, staring at a front door that hardly ever opened.
    He wore a black jacket and a white shirt. His face was pale. He never changed. Nobody ever replaced him.
    How was that possible? Scarlett found herself examining him more closely. The same man in the same place, morning, noon, and night. Didn't he ever eat? Didn't he need toilet breaks? It could have been a corpse sitting there, and once that thought had entered her head, she found herself hurrying through the reception area, doing her best to avoid him. Not that it would have made any difference. He never spoke to her.
    On the third evening, after their visit to Disneyland, she challenged Mrs. Cheng. The Chinese woman was making dinner, tossing prawns and bean shoots in a wok.
    "Where is everybody?"
    "What do you mean, Scarlett?"
    "We're on our own, aren't we? There's nobody else in this building."
    "Of course there are other people here." Mrs. Cheng turned up the flame. "They're just busy. People in Hong Kong have very busy lives."
    "But I haven't seen anybody. There's nobody else on this floor."
    "Some of the apartments are being redecorated."
    Scarlett gave up. She knew when she was being lied to. It was just another mystery to add to all the others.
    The next day, Mrs. Cheng took her to a market in an area known as Wan Chai. As usual, Karl drove them. By now, Scarlett had gotten used to the fact that he accompanied them everywhere and never spoke. She even wondered if he was able to. His role seemed to be to act as a bodyguard. He was always just a few paces behind.
    Scarlett had always liked markets, and in Hong Kong there was a vibrant street life, sitting side by side with the expensive Western shops and soaring offices. She had been keen to explore the Chinese streets, the stalls piled high with strange herbs and vegetables, soup noodles bubbling away in the open air, and the signs and advertisements, all in Chinese, filling the sky like the flags and banners of an invading army.
    And