Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  I know, Maeve said. Parents would be even worse than zombies. That’s why we have to keep it a secret from everybody.

  Zombies? Briddey’d assumed from what C.B. had said that the voices always took the form of a flood.

  A flood? Maeve said. That doesn’t sound very scary. Mine are zombies. The really fast, really scary kind, like in World War Z.

  Where did you see World War Z? Briddey started to ask, but the answer was obvious. Maybe it would be a good idea for Mary Clare to be able to read her mind.

  No, it wouldn’t! Maeve said. I’m fine. C.B. rescued me from the zombies and taught me how to build my castle and my safe room and stuff. They won’t get in again.

  She sounded utterly confident. The voices didn’t seem to have traumatized her at all. Or if they had, she’d recovered. How long has…you-know-what…been going on? Briddey asked her.

  About a month. I thought maybe it was premonitions, like Aunt Oona has, but she could tell stuff that hadn’t happened yet and I couldn’t, it was just voices, so I looked up a bunch of stuff online—

  Which explains why she changed her computer password and deleted her browsing history, Briddey thought. She didn’t want Mary Clare to see what she’d been looking up.

  Yeah, Mom would have totally freaked, Maeve said, and I couldn’t ask Aunt Oona ’cause she’d tell Mom, and I couldn’t find anything online except about crazy people, and I didn’t know what to do. But then C.B. started talking to me, and telling me what was going to happen, how scary the voices were going to be and what to do to keep them out and stuff, and when they got really bad he rescued me.

  Like he rescued me, Briddey thought, and was infinitely grateful he’d been there for Maeve, too.

  He promised he wouldn’t tell Mom, and you have to promise, too. Please! Hang on…oops, Trent’s thinking about calling you. ’Bye, she said, and was gone.

  Calling me or calling to me? Briddey wondered, and a moment later got her answer.

  Briddey? she heard Trent call. Can you hear me?

  Yes, she thought. Unfortunately.

  I’m not getting anything from you. If you can hear what I’m saying, call me on your phone.

  Not a chance, Briddey thought, starting her car and pulling away from the curb. She drove back to Linden and toward home.

  I’m going to send you a series of images like I did this morning, he told her. If you can hear any of them, write them down. And for the next fifteen blocks, she had to listen to him droning, I’m thinking of a Porsche Cayman GT4—repeat, Porsche Cayman GT4, followed by a smartwatch, a smart bracelet, Bali, a cucumber serrano martini, and an IPO.

  When she was six blocks from her apartment, Trent said, Forbes Magazine. Repeat, Forbes— and cut off, which hopefully meant he’d given up, and not that he’d reached Dr. Verrick. Or that he was on his way to her apartment.

  No, Maeve said. He’s at Commspan. He can’t leave in case Dr. Verrick calls his office instead of his smartphone.

  Good, Briddey thought. I thought I told you to only talk to me on the phone, Maeve.

  I can’t. I’m still at Danika’s. I was just trying to help, she said, sounding wounded, and went away.

  Briddey reached her building, started to park in front of it, and then thought better of it and parked around the corner so Trent wouldn’t see her car if he found Dr. Verrick and decided to come see her. But if C.B. came over, he might think she wasn’t there—

  No, he won’t, Maeve said. He can read your mind, remember?

  Maeve! I thought I told you—

  And anyway, he’s way smarter than Trent. He’s really nice, too, isn’t he?

  Yes. She got out of the car. Now go. I mean it, Maeve! she said, slamming the car door for emphasis.

  Do you like him?

  Maeve…

  You don’t still like Trent, do you? Maeve asked. He’s a creep. All he cares about is his stupid job, not you. Not like C.B. He really likes you, but you can’t let him know I told you that. He said I wasn’t supposed to tell you.

  Maeve, go away, or I’m calling your mother and telling her everything you just told me.

  Maeve seemed to have gone away. But for how long? Briddey wondered, going up to her apartment. And what might she say about C.B. or telepathy next time?

  Her phone rang. Trent. “Do you have C.B.’s home number?” he asked.

  Oh, my God, he heard me thinking about C.B. “C.B.?” she repeated, as if she couldn’t quite place the name.

  “Yes, you know. C.B.,” Trent said impatiently. “The guy who called me this morning. The crazy one who works down in the icebox and came up with the TalkPlus app.”

  “Oh, C.B. Schwartz. No. Why?”

  “I still haven’t been able to get in touch with Dr. Verrick. Wherever he is, he’s got his phone turned off, and I thought maybe C.B. could rig up some way of getting through, an emergency override or something, but I can’t get through to him either, and he’s not down in his lab. You don’t know any way to contact him, do you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m sure Dr. Verrick will be in tomorrow morning, and if he isn’t, one of his office staff will surely know how to reach him.”

  “We can’t wait that long. I don’t think you realize just what this whole thing is going to mean to us, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart, she thought disgustedly and then frowned. If Trent didn’t care anything about her—and it was painfully obvious he didn’t—then why had he thought the EED would work? As far as he knew, only couples who were emotionally bonded could connect. So why had he had it done with her? Had he thought he could fool it the way he’d fooled her?

  “Did you get any of the words I sent you?” he asked.

  “Words?”

  “Yes. I sent you another list of words. You mean you didn’t get any of them? I’ve been getting lots of words from you.”

  “You have?” she said, her heart beginning to thud. “What were they?”

  “I heard you say ‘ice cream’ and ‘duck,’ which I assume were both from the restaurant menu, and then something about a snake. And zombies.”

  “Zombies? Why on earth would I be talking about zombies? Or snakes? You must have heard me wrong.”

  “Well, at least I’m hearing you. You need to stop messing with your niece and concentrate on listening,” Trent said. “You don’t have any idea where Schwartz hangs out when he’s not at work, do you?”

  Yes, she thought. Ladies’ rooms, libraries, storage closets. “No.”

  “Damn,” Trent said. “Listen, I’ve got to go. My secretary’s calling me. I hope that means she’s found C.B.’s home number. Concentrate on connecting,” he said, and hung up.

  I need to warn C.B. that Trent’s looking for him, she thought, but there was no telling what Trent might hear if she did, and all he had to hear was C.B.’s name. She was just going to have to wait till Trent was asleep and C.B. contacted her, and hope Trent couldn’t find him in the meantime.

  And do what till then? C.B. had told her to get some sleep, which was a good idea. If she were sleeping, Trent wouldn’t be able to hear anything. But she was afraid her mind might wander as she dozed off, and she’d start thinking about him—or Maeve. Like she was doing now.

  You need to think about something else, she told herself, and downloaded “Ode to Billie Joe.”

  Bad idea. C.B. was just like the girl in the song—forced to keep secrets, unable to share what was happening to him with anyone, not even his family. And as she pored over the lyrics, she found herself thinking about what he’d said about Billie Joe jumping off the bridge to get away from the voices, and wondered if that had really been why, or if Billie Joe had done it to protect somebody else, like C.B. had been protecting Maeve? It was obvious now why he’d said it wasn’t his secret he was worried about—

  Stop it, she told herself. Trent’ll hear you. She switched to “Teen Angel,” wondering why lovers always came to such bad ends in songs. And in poems. In “The Highwayman” the king’s soldiers ha
d tied up Bess, the landlord’s daughter, with a booby-trapped musket pointed at her heart, and she’d had to shoot herself to warn the highwayman. If they’d been telepathic, Bess wouldn’t have had to sacrifice herself to warn him, and the girl in “Ode to Billie Joe” would have known he was going to jump and come to stop him.

  And both songs would have been a lot shorter, Briddey thought. But she didn’t need short. She needed something long that wouldn’t make her think about C.B. or telepathy. Which let out The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Far from the Madding Crowd. She downloaded The Secret Garden and settled herself into a corner of the couch to read it.

  Mistake. Mary Lennox’s uncle heard a “far clear voice” calling to him, talked about thoughts being “as powerful as electric batteries,” and wondered if he was “losing his reason and thinking he heard things which were not for human ears.” No wonder Maeve was so wrapped up in it, Briddey thought, and went back to memorizing song lyrics.

  At midnight Trent called again. “Did you find C.B. Schwartz?” she asked him.

  “No, but I found Dr. Verrick. Or at least I found out what city he’s in. It turns out he wasn’t in Morocco. He’s in Hong Kong.”

  Which meant it would take him a couple of days to get back here. She was so relieved that she dozed off almost immediately after the call and didn’t wake up till the phone rang again. She groped for it, knocking her tablet off the couch in the process, and heard C.B. say, Dawn Patrol to Night Fighter, come in, Night Fighter.

  Shh, she ordered him. Trent might hear you. I think he’s calling me on the phone right now.

  No, he isn’t, C.B. said. I am. Or I was, and the ringing promptly stopped. And don’t worry, Trent can’t hear us. He’s asleep.

  He was looking for you, she said.

  I know. He didn’t find me.

  Good, she said drowsily. What time is it?

  A little before three.

  In the morning?

  Afraid so. I kept hoping Trent would give up and go to sleep, but he was still talking to IT till half an hour ago, trying to locate Dr. Verrick.

  He’s in Hong Kong.

  I know. IT’s calling hotels, so it’s just a matter of time till they find him, and when they do, they’ll call Trent, which’ll wake him up. So we need to take advantage of the time we’ve got.

  Of course. I’m sorry, she said, sitting up. I’m awake now.

  It’ll be better if we talk out loud in case Trent happens to wake up. So if you’ll get dressed—

  I’m already dressed, she said, slipping on her shoes. Where do you want me to meet you?

  Downstairs.

  You mean you’re here? Do you want to come up?

  No. You come down. I’ve got something I want to show you.

  I’ll be right there, she said, pulling on her sweater. She debated getting her coat, too, but she wouldn’t need it for the short dash to C.B.’s car. She grabbed her keys, turned off the lights, and ran silently downstairs and outside into the dark.

  She couldn’t see C.B.’s car anywhere. She walked out to the sidewalk and looked up the street in both directions, wondering if Trent had woken up and C.B. had decided it wasn’t safe to meet after all.

  “Nope, he’s still asleep,” C.B. said, stepping out of the shadows. “And Hong Kong has a lot of hotels, so I figure we’re good for at least an hour or two. Come on.”

  They set off up the dark street. “Listen,” he said as they walked. “About Trent and the telepathy-phone thing. I’m really sorry. I should have told you about it before, but I didn’t want—”

  “—me to fly off the handle again and accuse you of trying to keep us apart, like I did when you tried to warn me about the telepathy?”

  “No, that isn’t—”

  “It’s okay. I don’t blame you. I probably wouldn’t have believed you if I hadn’t heard it from his own mouth—I mean, mind.”

  “It was still a lousy way to find out.” He stopped and turned to face her. “Are you okay?”

  “I thought you could read my mind.”

  “I can.”

  “Then you know I’m furious that he lied to me—and used me. And furious with myself for not seeing through him. But there’s something I don’t understand. Why did he think the EED would work?”

  “You don’t actually need to be emotionally bonded to—”

  “I know that, and you know that, but Trent didn’t. He thought you had to be, and he knew he wasn’t—”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” C.B. said. “From what I’ve picked up of his thoughts, he thinks he is.”

  “He wouldn’t know love if it smacked him in the face.”

  “True, but he’d hardly be the first person to mistake the trappings of romance for love.”

  Like me, you mean, Briddey thought.

  “Plus, he needed the EED to work for his phone, and he needed to be ‘emotionally committed’ for the EED to work, so he had every reason to convince himself he was. I told you, people are masters of self-deception.”

  “You’re right, you did,” she said, and realized all that talk about people not knowing what they felt and thinking Hitler was a nice guy hadn’t just been to talk her out of having the EED. He’d been trying to warn her about Trent, and she’d been too stupid to understand. And too stupid to see through Trent and his camellias and combed hair and candlelit dinners.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” C.B. said. “Joan of Arc believed in the Dauphin, who was a lying, spineless, traitorous little creep, too. But how was she supposed to have known? And saving France was a good idea,” he said, looking down at her. “She just put her faith in the wrong person,” and she was suddenly aware of how close C.B. was standing and how dark it was.

  Time to change the subject, she thought, and said, “I still don’t understand how he could connect with me without being Irish. I know you said there was a servant girl in his family tree—”

  “Or more than one, plus a couple of stableboys.”

  “But isn’t it more likely that your theory about genes causing telepathy is wrong?”

  “No.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. He started walking again.

  Now look who’s changing the subject, she thought, and decided not to allow him to. “But you said the English had inhibitors,” she said, keeping pace with him, “so how—?”

  “Maybe something made Trent more receptive. Do you know if he’s been taking that antianxiety med that Verrick prescribed?”

  “No. You think that—?”

  “Combined with a heightened emotional state, which the pressure of needing to come up with the EED data for his boss would certainly produce, yeah, that could have triggered it.”

  “Plus, my calling out, ‘Where are you?’ ” Briddey said glumly, remembering standing in the bus shelter and calling to C.B. “If I’d called you by name—”

  “He’d know we were connected, which means we’d be in even more trouble than we are now.”

  He stopped walking again, and she looked around, surprised at how far they’d come. They were three blocks from her apartment building, and there was still no sign of C.B.’s Honda. “Where did you park?”

  “Next to your car,” he said, pointing back the way they’d come.

  “Then where are we going? I thought you said you had something to show me.”

  “I do,” he said. “This.” He waved his arm to indicate the empty street and darkened buildings. “Listen to how quiet it is.”

  It was quiet. No breeze ruffled his tangled hair as she looked at him, and there was no sound of traffic, not even a car passing on the main thoroughfare two blocks up.

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” C.B. said. “I’m talking about the voices. Listen.”

  He was right. The distant roar beyond the brick wall of her perimeter had faded to the merest whisper. “Is everyone asleep?” she asked wonderingly.

  “No. Unfortunately, that never happens. There are always long-distan
ce truckers up, and insomniacs and people working the graveyard shift, but three A.M.’s as good as it gets. The bars have been closed for an hour, the mothers have gotten their babies back to sleep, the wife beaters have passed out, and the delivery people and paper-route kids and nurses who go on duty at five aren’t up yet.”

  “But aren’t there people lying awake squirrel caging?” Briddey asked, thinking about her own 3 A.M.s since this whole thing had started.

  “Yeah, they’re worrying about the mortgage and that mole on their back and all the things they wish they hadn’t said and done. Three o’clock’s when every doubt and regret and guilty thought bubbles up out of your subconscious to plague you. ‘The dark night of the soul,’ F. Scott Fitzgerald called it.”

  But that wasn’t what she was hearing. The voices were a peaceful, placid murmur.

  “That’s because it’s also the time when those same insomniacs read or count sheep or watch old movies on TV to put themselves back to sleep, which turns the whole world into a library reading room. I love this time of night.”

  She could imagine. C.B. had to spend all day every day trying to shut the voices out. This was the only time when he didn’t have to, when he could be almost like other people.

  “Exactly,” he said, looking happily around. “It’s my time of day, as Sky Masterson would say.”

  “Sky Masterson?”

  “From Guys and Dolls. Remember the movie I told you about with all the good screening songs in it? ‘Luck Be a Lady’ and ‘Adelaide’s Lament’—”

  “The song about catching cold?” Briddey asked, thinking, She probably caught cold because she didn’t wear her coat. She wished she’d worn hers. It was freezing out here.

  “Umm-hmm, that’s the one,” C.B. said, taking off his jacket and draping it over her shoulders.

  “You’re always loaning me your jacket,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure. So, anyway, Sky Masterson’s this gambler. He’s bringing Sister Sarah back—”

  “Sister Sarah?”

  “Yeah, she’s a Salvation Army missionary. Another case of a girl who’s hooked up with a guy she’s way too good for. Anyway, Sky and Sister Sarah are coming back from Havana just before dawn, and he tells her it’s his favorite time of day, with the traffic stopped and nobody else around, and—” He stopped walking and stood still, listening.