Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  She found him almost immediately…don’t know…maybe I’d better wait till I’ve got a definitive lead…

  So he hadn’t called Trent yet. Briddey flipped back to Trent’s station, got more silence, and then called, Maeve!

  Hi, Aunt Briddey, Maeve said immediately. Is something wrong?

  No. I just need to know something. You said your voices were zombies, right?

  Yeah, the really scary kind that keep coming even if you chop their heads off, and they try to bite you and—

  Are C.B.’s voices zombies, too?

  No, Maeve said in her best “How ridiculous!” voice. The voices are different for everybody, depending on what you’re scared of and have been thinking about and stuff.

  Did C.B. tell you what form his took?

  No, he said he didn’t want to give me ideas. But I figured it out. It’s fire.

  “Well, Plan A’s rubbish. What’s Plan B?”

  “We’re workin’ on it.”

  —Primeval

  “Fire!” Briddey said, appalled. That was why he was so fixated on Joan of Arc. Who had been burned alive.

  You can’t tell him I told you that, Maeve said. He doesn’t know I figured it out.

  I won’t. Thanks, Maeve. Go back to sleep, she said, and then realized Maeve had to have been awake for her to have heard her calling. What were you doing up at this hour, anyway?

  I had a nightmare.

  That’s what you get for watching zombie movies.

  I wasn’t watching zombie movies, Maeve said indignantly. I was watching Beauty and the Beast, the really scary part where the villagers storm the castle to find the Beast.

  Like Dr. Verrick and Trent would do if they found out telepathy was real, Briddey thought, and to keep Maeve from hearing that, said, You need to watch the ending, where she saves the Beast, and they live happily ever after, and then go to sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow.

  You’re the one who was keeping me up, Maeve protested, and it took Briddey another five minutes to end the conversation, after which she switched off the light and then lay there in the dark, thinking about C.B.’s voices.

  She’d thought a flood was terrifying, but fire was infinitely worse. Even Joan of Arc hadn’t been brave enough to face it on her own. They’d had to bind her to the stake. But C.B. had voluntarily plunged into the flames to rescue her—and Maeve. And done it not once, but over and over. And he’d do it again if I got into trouble, she thought wonderingly.

  You have no business thinking about this, she reminded herself. Trent could wake up any minute, and as if voicing the thought had made it happen, her phone rang.

  “I’ve been trying to get through to you mentally for ten minutes,” Trent said. “Didn’t you hear me calling to you?”

  “No. I was asleep. What time is it?”

  “Ten till four,” he said. “Good news. I got in touch with Dr. Verrick, and he’s coming back right away.”

  “Coming back?”

  “Yes. I could feel your anxiety and sensed you’d want to know I found him. He’s coming straight back to meet with us. I don’t know when he’ll get in, but I’ll let you know as soon as I find out. Come to my office as soon as you get to work, and we’ll practice sending and receiving. I’ve been practicing all evening, and I’ve gotten much better at picking you up. I’m sure you can do it, too. You just need to focus.”

  No, what I need is to get in touch with C.B., Briddey thought after Trent hung up. But how? He’d said he was going home to bed, and if he was asleep, he wouldn’t be able to hear her calling. And Trent might. Which meant she couldn’t call to Maeve and have her phone him either.

  She’d have to call him herself. But he’d told her not to use her own phone, and waking up the neighbors to use theirs at four A.M. was out.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. The EED was supposed to have opened up new avenues of communication, and instead all it had done was cut her off from every single one she’d previously had. It’s a paradigm shift, all right. In the wrong direction.

  She was either going to have to locate a carrier pigeon, go out and find a payphone, or wait till Trent went back to sleep and then call out to C.B. But it had sounded like Trent intended to stay up the rest of the night “practicing,” and she needed to tell C.B. about Dr. Verrick now.

  That meant a payphone. If she could find one. Kathleen had said there were still some at gas stations and convenience stores, but she’d also said something about not having any change when she’d been stranded at the 7-Eleven. Did that mean they only took coins?

  Briddey had exactly one dime and three pennies in her wallet, and she had no idea how much a phone call even cost nowadays. A quarter? Fifty cents? No, better have a dollar’s worth, just in case.

  She spent the next ten minutes upending handbags and ransacking coat pockets and kitchen drawers to come up with enough change. She pulled on jeans and a top, stuffed the coins in her pocket, grabbed her keys, the box lid with C.B.’s number on it, and the jacket she hadn’t taken before, and tiptoed downstairs and outside.

  Three o’clock in the morning might be romantic, but four fifteen definitely wasn’t. It was dark and cold, and when she finally found a 7-Eleven, it was closed. Of course. That was why it was called 7-Eleven. And its phone was inside. She could see it through the window.

  The Exxon station two blocks down was closed, too, but there was a phone kiosk outside it. But no phone. The Conoco station (also closed) had a phone but no handset. She was ready to turn around and go home when she spotted a convenience store ahead—BizziMart.

  There was no phone kiosk outside, but a sign in the window said ATM, PHONE, AMMO, and it was open. The parking out front was full of motorcycles.

  She circled the block, parked on the side, and went in. And was immediately sorry. BizziMart made the 7-Eleven look like the Luminesce of convenience stores. The clerk looked interestedly at her when she came in, and so did a homeless man over by the coffee machine and the two tough-looking guys loitering in the chips aisle, who obviously belonged to the motorcycles outside. She wished briefly that she knew what they were thinking so she’d know just how much danger she was in, and then decided she was better off not knowing.

  There was a guy on the phone who looked even tougher than the other two. From the way he was draped over the phone box, he’d been on it for some time, and she was about to go somewhere else when he suddenly shouted, “Fuck this and fuck you!” slammed down the phone, and started straight toward her, followed by his friends.

  She backed hastily into the candy aisle as they passed, and then hurried over to the phone, digging coins and C.B.’s number out of her pocket as she went.

  She needn’t have wasted all that time searching for change. The phone only took credit cards. She slid hers through, trying to ignore the sticky smear of dried Coca-Cola (or blood) on the receiver, and punched in C.B.’s number.

  It rang—and went on ringing. Wake up! she shouted, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her if he was sleeping, and then listened with bated breath, terrified Trent had heard that instead.

  He apparently hadn’t, and the phone’s ringing must not have woken C.B. up either, or else he wasn’t answering because the screen on his phone said “unknown number.” Or would his phone even have caller ID? Knowing him, he—

  “Briddey?” C.B.’s voice said on the other end.

  “Yes,” she said in a rush of relief. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, I was working on something. What’s going on? You’re not calling from your smartphone, are you?”

  “No,” she said, glancing at the homeless man, who was now in the candy aisle, openly ogling her, and at the clerk, who was leaning on the counter, alternately eyeing her and the motorcycle guys. They were still outside, talking angrily and looking like they might come back in at any moment and wrench the phone away from her. “I’m calling from a payphone at a convenience store on Linden,” she said, lowering her voice. “I have to talk to you.”
>
  “I take it somebody’s listening,” C.B. said.

  “That’s right.”

  And he must have been listening in on her thoughts because he asked, “Exactly how bad is this place you’re calling from?”

  “Pretty bad,” she whispered.

  “Do you need me to come get you?”

  “No,” she said, glancing over at the clerk, who was all ears. “Can you talk, or is this a bad time?” she said for the clerk’s benefit.

  “I’ll check,” C.B. said, and there was a brief silence. “We can talk. Trent’s gone back to sleep.”

  Oh, good, I don’t have to stay here, Briddey thought, and was about to hang up when she heard, “Yeah, well, fuck you, too!” from outside. Two of the motorcycle guys had faced off angrily, and a dozen more had appeared out of nowhere. On second thought, she decided, I think I’d better stay where I am. But she couldn’t just stand there without saying anything, or the clerk would get suspicious.

  “No problem,” C.B. said. “Repeat after me, ‘So I said, “I never want to see you again,” and I got out of the car,’ after which I’ll tell you your boyfriend’s a creep—”

  Which he certainly is, Briddey thought.

  “—and you should never have gone out with him in the first place, et cetera, and all you’ll have to do is say, ‘I know’ and ‘You’re right’ every few minutes, and in between we can talk.”

  “So I said,” Briddey said, raising her voice so the clerk could hear, “ ‘I never want to see you again,’ and I got out of the car,” and added silently, Trent phoned. He got in touch with Dr. Verrick, and he’s coming back right away.

  “Did he say where Verrick was?”

  No. You’re missing the point. If he’s coming back, that means he believes Trent!

  “No, it doesn’t,” C.B. said calmly. “If he was in Scottsdale meeting with some rich client about having the EED, he may have been coming back anyway.”

  But Trent made it sound like he was changing his plans. And you said before that you didn’t think he’d come back at all, that he wouldn’t want to get involved with something like this.

  “Yeah, well, maybe he’s decided he already is and needs to come back to do damage control.”

  But Trent doesn’t want anyone else to find out about it. He needs to keep it secret so Apple won’t—

  “Yes, but Verrick may not know that. He may have assumed that Trent’s planning to take it public, and he’s coming back to try to talk him out of it. Like I did with you over having the EED. Hang on a sec while I get my laptop.”

  Briddey took advantage of the pause to glance out at the motorcycle guys, who had stopped shouting but were still glaring menacingly at each other. I don’t want to hear what they’re thinking, she thought.

  The clerk was looking at her. “You tried to warn me about him,” she said clearly into the phone. “I should have listened to you.”

  “You certainly should have,” C.B. said. “Okay, I’m looking at flights for that part of the Southwest, and no matter where Verrick was, he’s pretty much got to fly out of Phoenix or Tucson, and even if he took the earliest flight tomorrow morning—I mean, this morning—it wouldn’t put him in here till ten fifteen, and the first flight out of Tucson gets in forty minutes later. So that puts him at his office at eleven thirty at the earliest, if he’s on that first flight. Which he’s not. It’s full, and the next three flights show first-class and business as having been sold out for a week. Verrick doesn’t strike me as a squashed-in-coach kind of guy—”

  You’re still missing the point, Briddey said. What if he’s coming back because Trent told him we’re telepathic, and he believes him?

  “Verrick doesn’t strike me as the type for that either. He didn’t mention ESP or psychic powers or remote viewing to you at the hospital or his office, did he?”

  No, she said, frowning, though a memory of something had flickered through her mind as C.B. said “psychic powers.” That hadn’t been the phrase, but it had been psychic something—psychic ability? psychic gift?

  “What did he say about a psychic gift?” C.B. asked alertly.

  Nothing, she said, certain the more she thought about it that the memory hadn’t involved Dr. Verrick. It had been something Kathleen had said, or texted her…no, whatever it was, it had gone.

  “How about clairvoyance or telekinesis?” C.B. was asking. “Did he ever mention those?”

  No.

  “Then I think it’s a lot more likely he’s returning because he’s afraid Trent’s having auditory hallucinations and is going to sue him for malpractice.”

  But whatever the reason, he’s coming back, Briddey said, and he’s going to ask me questions and want to run tests—

  “Which won’t tell him anything. I told you, the scans can’t tell what you’re thinking unless you cooperate.”

  You also told me Dr. Verrick wouldn’t be looking for signs of telepathy because he doesn’t know it exists. But if Trent tells him, he will know. And if Trent sends me a word, and the same area lights up in both our brains—

  “It won’t. Even if it was the only message you were getting at that moment, which it’s not—your brain’s constantly bombarded with sights, sounds, emotions, nerve impulses, and unrelated thoughts—that wouldn’t happen. Your brain’s not a library. The place you store a particular thought isn’t the same place Trent does—or I do. We all have our own personal filing system, and it’s more like the Cloud than a card file. Thoughts are stored in dozens of places, with hundreds of links and cross-references. Take Lucky Charms. You’ve got the way it’s spelled in one place, how it’s pronounced in another, what the box looks like in the third, plus its taste and your memories of eating it and buying it and running out of it—”

  And of you asking me in the theater what the marshmallows were—

  “Yeah,” he said, “and it’s in a bunch of other places, too—breakfast-related things, Irish things, things that taste like chalk. And that’s not counting all the thousands of cross-connections your mind makes with the words ‘lucky’ and ‘charms’—a charm bracelet, a lucky rabbit’s foot, ‘Luck Be a Lady,’ some guy you overheard saying, ‘Maybe I’ll get lucky tonight!’—all of them in different places with different neural connections. And those thoughts are connected to others in a giant web—like the Web—where every thought’s linked to every other, and the only one who can negotiate the web, to translate it for other people, is you. Trust me, Verrick won’t have any more idea of what you’re thinking than the clerk there at your convenience store does. Speaking of which, to keep it that way, you probably need to stick in another ‘You’re right’ here.”

  No, I don’t have to, she said, looking over at the clerk, who was now reading a magazine. The homeless guy had moved to the far aisle and was sticking something in his coat, and the motorcycle guys had apparently settled their argument. They were on their bikes, revving them up and roaring off, one by one.

  “Better say it anyway, just in case.”

  “You’re right,” she said, and silently, You’re wrong. You said the only way they can find out what I’m thinking is if I tell them, but what about Trent? He could tell them—

  “It’s still your word against his,” C.B. said. “Trent can only tell them what he thinks he heard you say. There’s no way to prove you actually did.”

  Unless Trent heard more than he’s told me—like C.B.’s name—and they haul him in for questioning, Briddey thought, and remembered C.B.’s telling her about Joan of Arc being captured by the British and interrogated, tortured.

  “Trent hasn’t heard my name. He doesn’t have any idea I’m telepathic, let alone that I’m talking to you. I can read minds, remember?”

  “Not Dr. Verrick’s.”

  “True,” he said. “And the first thing I need to do when he gets back is get a fix on his voice so I can.”

  You’re not thinking of going to see him, are you?

  “No,” C.B. said. “I want to stay off his rada
r just as much as you want me to. And there’s no reason for me to see him in person. We’ll have you call him from the lab after he lands and put him on speakerphone so I can hear his voice and we can know what he’s thinking during your appointment.”

  Or I could come up with some sort of excuse why I can’t make it—

  “No, that might make Trent think you’ve found out what he’s up to. We want him to believe you’re still convinced the only reason he wanted to have the EED done was to make you more emotionally bonded, and that you didn’t hear anything till…Jesus, was it just yesterday morning? It seems like years.”

  I know, she thought, remembering the rain and the bus shelter. And the Carnegie Room and hiding in the stacks and the Reading Room and sitting in his car…

  “Yeah,” C.B. said, “and hiding under the sink from the voices, only to have me leave you stranded in the dark with them in that storage closet. Talk about a romantic weekend.”

  It was, she thought.

  “But as far as Trent and Dr. Verrick are concerned, none of that happened. You left the theater to go help with a family crisis, and when you finally got home, you fell into bed. And in the morning you called to Trent, hoping to connect emotionally, and when he answered you in words, you were totally shocked. You had no idea such a thing was possible, and now you want answers as much as Trent does.”

  C.B. was right. She’d be demanding to know why this was happening to her, not trying to avoid seeing Dr. Verrick. But that didn’t mean she wanted to go.

  “Don’t worry,” C.B. said. “We’ve got plenty of time to get you ready. You can come to my lab like we planned, and we can go over everything. And in the meantime—”

  I know, don’t think about you or Mae— I mean, Cindy.

  “Right. Remember in the library, when I said the best defense against being caught was that they didn’t know we’d been there. Our best defense is that they don’t have any idea you’ve talked to anybody but Trent. They can’t figure out who Cindy and I are if they don’t even know we exist. Speaking of which, maybe I’d better have a code name, too.”