Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  It was faint and static-y, and other voices kept breaking in, but she didn’t dare adjust—or even touch—the tuning knob for fear of losing him altogether.

  Trent was apparently thinking about the Hermes Project because she caught,…adapting…wireless signal…Apple won’t know what hit…what’ll I tell…? and then, perfectly clearly, Where the hell is Dr. Verrick? followed by more static, and then, patchily,…can’t afford to let…if Briddey finds out, she won’t…And she lost the station completely.

  “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.”

  —ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPÉRY, The Little Prince

  If I find out, I won’t what? Briddey thought, trying to get the station with Trent’s voice on it back, but there was only static.

  What is he afraid I might find out? she wondered, turning the knob slowly, trying to get him back or at least find a voice she recognized, but they all had that flat, anonymous quality: …never going to that church again…why do I always have to let the damned dog out?…still raining…

  That’s why he was so alarmed at the idea that I could hear his thoughts and why he demanded to know exactly what I’d heard, she thought, inching the tuning knob along. Because he was hiding something.

  …weatherman said…need to get gas…I’m not standing here all day! And then a little girl’s voice saying weakly,…know he said to…but I’m…

  That voice had sounded like Maeve. Briddey nudged the dial, trying to bring it in more clearly, and lost it altogether.

  This is hopeless, Briddey thought, and Maeve’s voice cut in clearly. “Freezing,” she said.

  That’s not on the radio, Briddey thought, and looked up to see Maeve standing in front of her.

  “What is it?” Briddey asked, thinking, And now she’s going to ask what I’m doing, but she didn’t.

  “I said, can we go now?” Maeve pleaded.

  “I thought you wanted to feed the ducks.”

  “I ran out of food. You’ve been on the phone a really long time.” And when Briddey glanced at the time, she was shocked to see it was almost one o’clock. She’d been sitting here for hours.

  “And besides,” Maeve said, “it’s raining again.”

  It was, as witness Maeve’s draggling wet hair and her pinched-with-cold face. Oh, God, she’ll get pneumonia, and Mary Clare will never forgive me, Briddey thought. She hastily handed Maeve back her umbrella. “We’ll get you a nice hot chocolate,” she said, hurrying her back to the restaurant, “and that’ll warm you up.”

  “You said I could have dessert later. And this is later, right?”

  “Yes,” Briddey said because she was mortified she’d kept Maeve out in the cold so long, and Maeve proceeded to order an enormous ice cream sundae.

  “Won’t that make you cold again?”

  “No, because I’ll eat it first and then drink my hot chocolate. Don’t you want anything, Aunt Briddey?”

  Yes, Briddey thought. I want to know why Trent said, If Briddey finds out, she won’t…, and I can’t do that with you here, so I need you to hurry up and eat your sundae so I can take you home, and amazingly, Maeve did, wolfing down her ice cream and gulping her hot chocolate in record time.

  I can tell Mary Clare she’s definitely not anorexic, Briddey thought, and remembered the purpose of the outing had been to pump Maeve for information. I’ll do it on the way home, she thought, hustling Maeve back to the car and turning on the heater full blast.

  But she didn’t have to. When her phone pinged with a text from Trent saying he’d still had no luck locating Dr. Verrick, Maeve said disgustedly, “I bet I know who that’s from. My mom. And I bet she wants to know what you found out.”

  “About what?” Briddey said, careful to keep her eyes on the road so as not to seem too interested.

  “I don’t know. She’s always worrying about me. It’s so stupid.”

  “She just wants to protect you.”

  “I know, but I’m fine. Or I would be if everybody’d just stop asking me questions.”

  I know exactly how you feel, Briddey thought. But that’s because I’m keeping secrets. Was Maeve keeping secrets, too?

  She glanced over at her niece, wondering how to approach the subject without making her instantly defensive, and while she was pondering strategies, Maeve dumped it in her lap: “If I tell you something, Aunt Briddey, will you promise not to tell Mom? There’s…I like this guy—”

  “A boy in your class at school?” Briddey asked casually.

  “No,” Maeve said in a how-could-you-possibly-think-that? tone. “He was in The Zombie Princess Diaries, and he’s really cute. I want to use his picture as my screensaver, but if I do, I’m afraid Mom will find out—”

  “That you’ve been watching zombie movies. Is he one of the zombies?”

  “No. Do you want to see his picture?” She pulled out her phone and began busily swiping, and at the next stoplight, held it over for Briddey to see. “His name’s Xander.”

  He had gray eyes and even messier hair than C.B.’s. Maeve was gazing dreamily at his image. “So what do you think I should do?”

  “Has he been in any other movies? Maybe you could tell her you saw him in something else.”

  “You don’t get it,” Maeve said. “It doesn’t matter what he’s in. If she finds out I think he’s cute, she’ll start worrying that I’m starting to like boys, and she’ll give me ‘the talk’ and make me watch sex-ed videos and stuff.”

  Maeve was right. Knowing Mary Clare, she might even try to get a restraining order against poor, unwitting Xander. But she could hardly tell Maeve that lying was all right—even though she herself had been doing it more or less continuously for the last few days. “You really shouldn’t be keeping secrets from your mother,” she said.

  “But it’s not like it’s a bad secret. And everybody has secrets, right? I mean, you’ve got stuff you don’t want anybody to know about.”

  Here it comes, Briddey thought. She’s going to ask about my stuffing my wet shoes in the drawer. Or worse, about C.B.’s phoning her and asking her to cover for them last night. “What do you mean?”

  “The EED. I saw the bandage when you were drying your hair. You didn’t tell Mom or Aunt Oona or Kathleen you had it. But don’t worry. I won’t tell anybody. If you promise not to tell Mom about Xander.”

  A spy and a blackmailer, Briddey thought. It isn’t your daughter you should be worried about, Mary Clare, it’s the rest of the populace. And she shouldn’t let her get away with it, but she didn’t have time to deal with this right now, so she settled for saying sternly as she let Maeve out in front of her house, “I’ll keep your secret for now because I have to be somewhere, but we are not done talking.”

  “I know,” Maeve said, her eyes dancing with merriment.

  “What’s so funny?”

  Maeve sobered instantly. “Nothing. I was thinking about this funny thing Danika said the other day.”

  Which was obviously a lie, but Briddey didn’t have time to deal with that either, so she said goodbye, watched to see that Maeve got into the house safely, and left to find someplace where she could try to get Trent on the radio again.

  A library would be ideal—the screening voices of people reading would cut a lot of the static out and make him easier to find—but this was Sunday. The public libraries were closed, and the university library where she and C.B. had been last night was clear on the other side of town. He’d said Starbucks was a good place, but Kathleen might be there with her pair of suitors, so Briddey drove to the nearest Peaberry’s, ordered a latte, and sat down next to a middle-aged woman reading How Do You Tell If It’s Truly Love? Not exactly David Copperfield, but all the other customers were staring at their phones or watching cat videos on their laptops.

  Briddey went into her courtyard, switched on the radio, put the needle on 650, and began nudging it back in tiny increments, afraid she’d miss Trent i
f she went too fast, even if it meant she had to go through scores of voices.

  It took forever. In spite of her care, she overshot twice to the woman with the flu and had to start all over again, and by three o’clock she’d gone through two lattes and hundreds of stations and was beginning to think she’d never find him.…why does it always have to rain on the weekend?…worst job I’ve ever…, and faintly,…never thought it existed…

  Trent. She leaned forward to catch his words.…always thought…fake…can’t believe…actually real…

  She adjusted the tuning knob a micrometer.

  …sound insane…when I called Hamilton this morning…

  Which was why C.B. and I were able to beat him to my apartment, Briddey thought. But he’d just found out he was telepathic. Why had his first reaction been to call his boss?

  …Dr. Ver…, Trent said.…need…get him back here now…think they’d have some way to reach…if it were an emergency?…try…Then nothing but static. She was losing the station.

  She turned the dial back a smidgen, and Trent’s voice suddenly came through crystal clear. But he was talking about Apple and Commspan’s new phone.…will need to analyze the circuitry, she heard him say, and…write code…

  No, tell me what you don’t want me to find out, she thought, and remembered C.B.’s telling her that people mistakenly thought telepathy meant being able to listen to the people and thoughts you wanted to hear. He was right. She could sit here and listen to Trent all afternoon and never hear what it was.

  Or how to tell if it’s truly love, she thought, and heard Trent say, How am I going to tell her?…have to find a way to convince…She strained to hear the end of that, but couldn’t pick it up.…revolutionary…can’t wait…Apple might come up with…

  No, forget Apple. Tell me what you’re afraid I’ll find out. And why you called Hamilton.

  …thought I could just have the tests and get the data, and she’d never have to know about it…

  What?

  …thinks we had it done to make us communicate better…but that was when it was just emotions…now that it’s telepathy…have to tell her…but when she finds out I needed us to have the EED so we…phone…she’ll be furious…

  You’ve got that right, Briddey thought. He’d asked her to have the EED so he could get data to use with the new phone?

  Of course he had. Hamilton had said, “Instantaneous communication is no longer enough. We need to be able to offer something more.” And that “something more” was emotionally enhanced communication. What had they planned to do? Design an app that identified a person’s emotions and added them to their texts as emojis?

  Whatever it had been, Trent had been only too happy to volunteer as a guinea pig. And to volunteer me, too. Because it takes two people to have an EED. You snake!

  He’d never loved her, in spite of all those flowers he’d sent her, all those dinners at Luminesce and emails and endearments. All he’d cared about was talking her into having the EED with him so he could get data for designing an emotionally enhanced phone.

  That’s why he was so frantic when we didn’t connect right away, she thought, and so upset when Dr. Verrick wanted to keep me in the hospital and run more tests. He hadn’t been worried about her. He’d just been afraid something had gone wrong with his plan. And that was why he’d insisted on her seeing Dr. Verrick, even though he was out of the country and it was the middle of the night. Trent had promised his boss results, and she wasn’t delivering. She thought of Traci Hamilton saying, “I know it’s all very hush-hush and we’re not supposed to talk about it,” and, “We should be thanking you, what with everything you’re doing—”

  Trent was still talking.…figure out something…get engaged if I have to…

  I don’t want to hear any more, Briddey thought, and reached for the tuning knob.

  …sure I can convince her how crucial…once she’s on board…can focus on finding out how the telepathy works…translating the circuitry into software.

  Oh, my God. He wasn’t talking about emojis. He was going to try to turn the telepathy into code and put it into the new phone! I’ve got to tell C.B., she thought, standing up so abruptly she knocked her latte over. The woman reading the How to Tell If It’s Truly Love book looked up, annoyed.

  “Sorry,” Briddey said. She mopped it up, grabbed her phone, dumped the sodden napkins and her latte cup in the trash, and ran out to her car, trying to think of how to get in touch with C.B. She couldn’t speak to him telepathically with Trent listening in, and after the night he’d had, he might be asleep, in which case calling to him wouldn’t do any good. And with Trent at Commspan, she couldn’t risk going to see him. She’d have to phone him. But she couldn’t use her own phone, for fear of leaving a trail to C.B. She had to find another phone she could use.

  Whose? Not Charla’s. Now more than ever, it was critical that no one at Commspan know of a connection between them. And Kathleen would ask too many questions.

  Maeve, she thought, and drove back to Mary Clare’s. She could take Maeve aside, tell her she’d lost her phone, and ask her if she remembered her having it in the car after they left the park. And when Maeve said no, she’d ask her if she could borrow her phone to make a couple of calls and then try the lab, or use Maeve’s phone to look up his home number.

  If she could get past Mary Clare, who took one look at her and said, “Oh, my God, you found out something when you took Maeve to brunch! Something so bad you couldn’t tell me over the phone!”

  True, Briddey thought. Or in person either.

  “Maeve’s in some kind of trouble. I knew it!”

  “She’s not in any trouble. I just can’t find my phone, and I thought Maeve might remember what I did with it.”

  “Oh,” Mary Clare said. “She’s over at Danika’s doing homework. I’ll phone her and ask her, and then we can sit down and have a nice cup of tea.”

  And you can pump me about Maeve, Briddey thought, but Mary Clare had barely gotten her phone out when Maeve burst in, shouting, “I forgot my math book.” She was red-cheeked and out of breath. “I ran the whole way,” she said, taking in the kettle on the stove and the teacups in her mother’s hand.

  She’s going to think I came back to rat her out, and there’s no way she’ll help me, Briddey thought, but Maeve said cheerfully, “Hi, Aunt Briddey. What are you doing here?”

  “She’s lost her phone,” Mary Clare said. “Do you remember seeing it at the restaurant?”

  Of course she does, Briddey thought, and now she’s going to say, “She talked on it the whole time I was feeding the ducks,” and Mary Clare will launch into the dangers of avian flu.

  “I can’t remember,” Maeve said, furrowing her brow in concentration. “I think so. You put it on the table, and then the waiter came and brought our pizza.” She turned to her mother. “We went to Carnival Pizza at the mall, and it was so fun!” She turned back to Briddey. “I bet he laid the pizza pan on top of it, and that’s why we didn’t see it.”

  “I bet you’re right,” Briddey said, and since there was no hope now of getting access to Maeve’s phone, she stood up and put on her coat. “I’d better go see if they’ve got it.”

  “Can’t you just call and find out and then ask them to hold it for you?” Maeve said. “You can use my phone. It’s in my room. Come on.” She grabbed Briddey’s hand and dragged her off.

  Bless you, childeen, Briddey thought as she followed Maeve into her room, which now had crime-scene tape across the door in addition to the sign saying, KEEP OUT—THIS MEANS YOU, MOM.

  Maeve took down the tape, ushered Briddey in, put the tape back up, shut the door, and locked it. “So Mom can’t come in,” she said unnecessarily.

  Briddey looked around at her room. A large poster of Tangled was pinned to the wall above her bed next to several photos of male teen stars, which had apparently been cut out from Tiger Beat magazine, though Briddey didn’t see any of the messy-haired Xander. There was a stuffed Olaf
the Snowman from Frozen on her pillow, and a screensaver of The Twelve Dancing Princesses on her computer. Not exactly the meth lab or international money-laundering operation Mary Clare was imagining.

  “You really should let your mother in here,” Briddey said. “She’d feel a lot better.”

  “No, she wouldn’t,” Maeve said, sitting on her bed and picking up Olaf. “The squelched-girl thing, remember? Plus, I don’t want her to fix the nanny cam.” She pointed to it, and Briddey remembered Mary Clare saying Maeve had disabled it. “Or my computer.”

  “What’s on your computer?”

  “Nothing, but she’d just say I must’ve deleted it, you know?” Which was true.

  Maeve pulled her smartphone out of her pocket and handed it to Briddey. “You didn’t really lose your phone, did you?”

  “No. I said that because I need to call somebody, and I can’t use my own phone.”

  Maeve nodded wisely. “Like in Zombienado. The zombies bugged the hero’s phone—”

  That sounds highly unlikely, Briddey thought.

  “—and he had to use this dead guy’s, only it was still stuck to his hand because the zombies had eaten everything except his arm—”

  “As soon as you two are done in there,” Mary Clare called through the door, “come to the kitchen. I’m making a nice loaf of Irish soda bread.”

  “Okay,” Maeve shouted, and turned back to Briddey. “You’re not going to tell Mom I saw Zombienado, are you?”

  I’m not exactly in a position to, am I? Briddey thought. “No,” she said, reaching for the phone.

  Maeve yanked it away. “You have to tell me who you’re going to call first, because if you’re committing a crime or something, I’d be an accessory, like in Zombie Cop. This zombie—”

  “I’m not committing a crime.”