Crosstalk

by Connie Willis

  “Can you make out anything at all?”

  “Yes. Something about the sky and stars and fighter pilots and a bridge. Nothing that makes sense.”

  Good, it’s working, Briddey thought, dragging another sandbag over and casting about for something else to recite. Not “My Time of Day,” which made her think of that late-night walk with Sky, and not “Molly Malone.” Or Finian’s Rainbow, which meant she shouldn’t be thinking about Lucky Charms either.

  Monopoly playing pieces. Cat, wheelbarrow, top hat, iron…But there were only eight of them, even counting the discontinued shoe, and “Teen Angel” only had a measly four verses. She needed longer songs, longer lists.

  Victorian novels, she thought. The Master of Ballantrae, The Moonstone, The Old Curiosity Shop, Far from the Madding Crowd…

  “Her spirit-mind voice is still very clouded,” Lyzandra said from the radio, “and I’m getting negative vibrations. I think she may be intentionally concealing her thoughts. You need to ask her about the telepathy directly.”

  “But if she’s intentionally giving us wrong answers,” Dr. Verrick said, “what makes you think she’ll tell us the truth?”

  “She won’t. But when you ask someone a question, their spirit thinks of the truth, no matter what they may say, and it’s sometimes possible to read that thought.”

  She’s right, Briddey thought. It’s the “don’t think about an elephant” problem. And it was equally impossible to try to make her mind a blank.

  I could run away, she thought, remembering that first night in the hospital. But that would only convince them she was hiding something. Her strongest defense right now was that they didn’t know she’d overheard them and knew what they were up to, and she had to keep it that way. Which meant staying here and looking innocent and thinking about things completely unrelated to telepathy, like movie stars and flowers and designer shoes.

  “Ms. Flannigan?” Dr. Verrick’s voice came over the headphones. “We need to ask you some questions.”

  “About the Zener test?” she asked, thinking, Gucci, Manolo Blahnik, Ferragamo, Christian Louboutin, Christian Bale, at them. “Was I doing something wrong?”

  “No, no, not at all, but Mr. Worth picked up some interesting things in your responses, and we need to ask you about them. He said he heard you mentally communicating with someone else.”

  You’re lying, she blurted out and immediately squelched the thought. Sandra Bullock, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt—

  “Whose voice did you hear? Was it someone you knew?”

  Yes, she thought at them. The highwayman and Professor Harold Hill and F. Scott Fitzgerald. “I don’t know what Trent can be referring to,” she said. “The only voice I’ve heard is his.”

  “Ask her again,” Lyzandra said, and Dr. Verrick promptly asked, “Are you certain? The voice of one person can sometimes be mistaken for another.”

  “How could I have heard someone else?” Briddey asked, making her voice register bewilderment. Anthony Trollope, Thurston Howell III, Jimmy Choo. “I’m emotionally bonded to Trent.”

  “Ask her something more general,” Lyzandra ordered.

  “Have you ever had a feeling that someone was in trouble?” Dr. Verrick asked.

  Besides me, you mean? she thought, and hastily changed her answer to, The castaways are in trouble. And so’s the innkeeper’s black-eyed daughter. And Adelaide. She’s got a terrible cold.

  “Have you ever had a premonition of death?” Dr. Verrick asked. “Have you ever had a vivid feeling of déjà vu? Have you ever been forewarned of danger? Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?”

  Briddey answered the barrage of questions as best she could, singing snatches of “Luck Be a Lady” and “I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Weiner,” and listing as many flowers as she could remember—camellias, violets, petunias—but it was hard to stay focused and not let anything else through.

  When Dr. Verrick asked, “Have you ever had a feeling you knew what was going to happen before it did?” she had a sudden image of Aunt Oona saying, “ ’Tis Mary Clare on the phone, I can feel it,” and had to stomp the thought out forcibly, as if it were a brushfire, and loudly recite other types of fires: forest fires, wildfires, campfires, Chariots of Fire.

  But that wasn’t safe either. When she thought bonfires, she had a sudden memory of Sky sitting in the car with her, telling her about Joan of Arc. She veered instantly away to junk food, but that reminded her of the stale Doritos of their midnight feast—and the popcorn Cindy had fed the ducks. Shoes made her think of her sodden sandals thrust unceremoniously under the bed; movie stars of Hedy Lamarr.

  Sky was right. Every thought was connected to every other in a tangled maze of memories and cognitive links and associations, so that no matter what she thought about or what neural pathway she took, it circled treacherously back to the elephant in the room.

  So, fine, think of elephants, she thought, and spent the next five minutes naming every one she could think of, African and Asian and circus elephants, Babar and Jumbo and Dumbo—no, that was a Disney movie and too close to the Disney princesses. Think about their tusks and their trunks and their fear of mice. And of snakes, which Saint Patrick threw out of—

  No, you can’t think about Ireland. It will lead them straight to Cindy. Think about someplace else. Angkor Wat, Mount Fuji, Mount Rushmore, Niagara Falls—no, not that either. Sky had said he’d take her there on their honey—

  “Her spirit is in contact with another spirit,” Lyzandra said from the radio. “A man’s. Someone much more accomplished in mind-spirit contact. A seer, perhaps, who instructed her in resistance.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No. I’m getting an image of his name, but it’s obscured. It begins with S.”

  I shouldn’t have chosen Sky as a code name, Briddey thought sickly. It’s too close to— and slapped the thought of C.B.’s name away. Saint, she thought. You heard me think “saint.” Saint Margaret, Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and wondered if that was whose voices Joan of Arc had really heard, or if she’d only told her interrogators that to keep them from finding out who she was really talking to.

  “Mr. Worth, is there anyone at Commspan whose name begins with an S?” Dr. Verrick was asking.

  “There’s Suki Parker,” Trent said. “And Art Sampson. Briddey said she had a meeting with him this morning. She was very upset that she had to cancel.”

  “Could the name be Sampson?” Dr. Verrick asked Lyzandra.

  It will be now, Briddey thought. Instead of just throwing up a screen of random thoughts, she should have been sending red herrings to throw them off the scent. Whatever happens, I can’t let them find out I’ve been talking to Art Sampson, she thought at them.

  “The name might be Sampson,” Lyzandra said doubtfully. “I’m not sure.”

  If they find out Art Sampson’s telepathic…, Briddey said, and imagined herself going up to his office. But as she thought about getting out of the elevator and walking along the corridor, the image came to her unbidden of Sky grabbing her and pulling her into the copy room.

  This was like walking in a minefield. Everywhere you put your foot was dangerous. And the questions kept coming through the headphones: “Can you hear any other voice besides Mr. Worth’s? Do you recognize it? Is it a stranger or someone you know? How often have you heard it? When did you first hear it?”

  This was just like the voices—a relentless barrage of words coming too fast, too continuously, for her to do more than put her arms over her head and try to protect herself. The effort of coming up with answers and white noise, of preventing Dr. Verrick and the psychic from reading her thoughts and keeping Sky and Cindy out of them, was exhausting. She felt like she had that night in the hospital stairway, as if she’d used up every bit of her strength—

  No, you can’t think about the hospital either, she thought. Think about songs you wouldn’t want to get stuck in your head—“Itsy Bitsy Teenie-Weenie Yellow Polkad
ot Bikini,” “The Little Drummer Boy,” “Tell Laura I Love Her,” Laura Linney, Laura Bush, Laura Ingalls Wilder…

  Ten minutes in, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to hold them off. Try as she might to shut the questions out, to shield her answers with Froot Loops and Bleak House and songs, some part of her mind was registering the questions and automatically answering them, and as time went on, she’d make more and more mistakes, it would take her longer and longer to recognize the potential danger in a line of thought.

  She thought suddenly of Sky telling her about the ESP subjects at Duke whose scores had fallen as they tired. Maybe he had it backwards. Maybe those low scores had happened when they were hiding their ability, and more and more correct answers had seeped through as their energy flagged.

  Like mine’s flagging right now. It was only a matter of time before she let slip the clue they needed, before she gave up from exhaustion and told them what they wanted to know. You can’t, she thought. You have to protect Sky and Cindy, no matter what toll it takes. Like Joan of Arc. She had gone to the stake rather than betray her voices.

  But I’m not Joan of Arc. I’ll break under torture. Was already breaking. When she looked over at the door, water was seeping in in spite of the sandbags she’d piled against it, and flowing along the spaces between the flagstones, along the base of the adobe wall. And behind it she could hear the dull, watery roar of the voices.

  They’re going to get in! she thought, and saw them flooding the ladies’ lounge, saw herself huddled under the sink, clinging to the pipe, sitting hunched in the stairwell in her bloodstained hospital gown, and C.B. coming to—

  Stop! Don’t. Think of something, anything else: Charles Dickens, Cap’n Crunch, Monty Python, McCook, Nebraska, Oliver Twist, orphans, organ transplants…

  But it was too late. Lyzandra was saying, “It’s definitely someone she knows and is emotionally bonded to.”

  “Did you get his name yet?” Trent asked.

  “No, but I got an image of a hospital. Did someone come to see her that first night after she had the EED?”

  “I can ask the staff,” Dr. Verrick said.

  No one saw him, Briddey told herself desperately.

  “Did someone come to see you after you had your EED?” Dr. Verrick asked Briddey through the headphones. “Or call you?”

  Oh, God, the phone call, Briddey thought. They’ll…no! Think of Trix! And tulips and Choctaw Ridge, the Black Hole of Calcutta and psychosomatic symptoms and albino eggplants and soldiers shooting the highwayman down in cold blood…

  “I couldn’t hear her answer,” Lyzandra said. “She’s definitely resisting. It was all an incoherent babble about pirates and lace and vegetables. Can’t you do something to make her less resistant? Hypnotize her or give her some kind of relaxant? Valium or Xanax or something?”

  No! A relaxant would lower her defenses. It would let the voices in.

  “You’re certain a relaxant won’t disrupt her telepathic ability?” Dr. Verrick asked. “Or damage it in some way?”

  “I’m sure,” Lyzandra said. “I’ve taken Valium a number of times to open my chakras and make me more receptive.”

  More receptive? Briddey thought, trying not to panic. More receptive?

  “And you’re sure there won’t be any negative side effects?” Dr. Verrick was asking.

  You’re not seriously going to take medical advice from a psychic, are you? Briddey thought, but apparently he was, because he said, “There’s still the problem of gaining her consent. She’ll have to sign a form.”

  “I’m sure I can get her to sign it,” Trent said. “We’re practically engaged. And if I can’t persuade her to cooperate,” she heard him add, and knew she was hearing his unspoken thoughts, “I’ll tell her her job depends on it.”

  You really are a snake, Briddey thought.

  Lyzandra said, “I’m worried that asking for her consent will put her on her guard and make her even more resistant. I could take the relaxant instead. It will enhance my ability to hear her—”

  And I won’t be able to stop her, Briddey thought, because she had the voices to hold off, too. And they were slamming with more and more force against the door, determined to find a way in. And while she was trying to keep them out, Dr. Verrick would hit her with question after question till she accidentally told them Sky’s name—and Cindy’s. And delivered them both into Trent’s hands.

  And there’s nothing at all I can do to keep that from happening. She thought of Bess, the landlord’s daughter, helplessly bound and gagged with a revolver pointed at her breast. And of Billie Joe McAllister. What if he’d jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge to keep someone from finding out something—and to protect somebody? And hadn’t been able to tell the girl because if he had, she’d have come to stop him? I can’t let that happen.

  “I’m administering the drug now,” Dr. Verrick said.

  “How long before she begins to feel its effects?” Trent asked.

  “Just a few minutes.”

  Long enough, Briddey thought, and moved the radio from the bench to the top of the cupboard and then went over to the door and began dragging the sandbags away from it, singing “Teen Angel” to keep C.B. from hearing what she was doing.

  The sandbags were wet and very heavy. It took all her strength to pull them off to the side, and as soon as she did, water welled up and began to flow across the flagstones.

  “You should be beginning to feel the drug’s effects,” Dr. Verrick said, and Briddey heard Trent ask, his voice full of excitement, “Are you getting anything yet?”

  “Yes,” Lyzandra said dreamily. “Something about water and a door. And something she intends to do that she doesn’t want us to find out about.”

  We can’t have that, Briddey thought, and threw everything she could think of at them—and at C.B.—poems and shoes and song lyrics and the kitchen sink—and just for Trent, water moccasins, rattlesnakes, cobras, pit vipers.

  Square, cross, wavy lines, she thought, dragging the sandbags. Crosstalk, Cap’n Crunch, corporate spies, calling Dr. Black, please report to the nurses’ station, please turn off your cellphones, closing in ten minutes, all personnel will be required to work Saturday due to the paradigm shift and the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, it’s a crummy morning out there, folks. Roger that. Rainbows, roses, Rice Krispies…

  But it didn’t do any good. “I’ve almost got it,” Lyzandra said. “Ask her again who she’s talking to.”

  The rivulets were spreading out across the flagstones in a widening sheet. After Briddey dragged the last sandbag away, she had to splash through the water to get to the door.

  “There are definitely two people. Ask her directly what their names are.”

  Saint Catherine, Briddey said. Saint Margaret, Saint Michael, Thomas Hardy, Tobias Marshall, Patience Lovelace, Ethel Godwin, Bridey Murphy, Adelaide…

  She put her hands on the bar to let it out of its brackets, and then stopped, looking past the door at the wall of roaring voices rising beyond it, waiting to drown the courtyard and Dr. Verrick’s questions—and her answers. And her.

  I can’t, she thought, remembering the ladies’ room and the storage closet. They’ll wash me over the edge, they’ll dash me against the rocks.

  “Can you tell who they are?” Dr. Verrick was asking.

  “A male and a female,” Lyzandra said. “She calls the female Cindy, but that’s not her real name. It begins with an M. Mary, I think, or Ma—”

  “McAllister,” Briddey said, lifting the bar. “Billie Joe McAllister,” and opened the door.

  “Christ! the sluice gates are going!”

  — DOROTHY L. SAYERS, The Nine Tailors

  For an endless moment nothing happened, and Briddey thought, It’s not going to get here in time. They’ll hear Maeve’s name before it— And then the voices hit her head on, not like water at all but like a battering ram, so fierce it had to be every single person, every single thought in the hospital: It hurt
s, oh, it hurts!…what do you mean there’s nothing you can do?…my fault…should never have let him drive…multiple lacerations…stroke…bad news…metastasized…

  The force of them flung her violently up against the cottonwood tree, and she wrapped her arms around its wide trunk and clung there, gasping. The voices had been bad before, but these were far worse, throwing up a deafening spray of panic and fury and pain. I’ll never be able to hold out against them, she thought.

  And there was no railing to cling to, no C.B., only the cottonwood’s trunk, and it was too big around to get a decent hold. Her hands scrabbled against the rough bark, trying to gain a purchase as the voices crashed against her: …no chance of recovery…hemorrhage…tumor…inoperable…but she’s only six…third-degree burns over eighty percent of his…where the hell is that crash cart?

  And above them she heard Lyzandra say clearly, “I can hear other voices,” and then cry out, “Oh God, what’s happening?”

  Briddey glanced over at the radio. It was still on the top of the cupboard, and the water had nearly reached it. “What’s wrong, Lyzandra?” she heard Dr. Verrick say anxiously. “Talk to me.”

  “…thousands of them!” Lyzandra shrieked, and Briddey heard Trent shout, his voice rising, “Get them off me!”

  Oh, no, Briddey thought. They’re being deluged by the voices, too. She glanced over at the door as if she might be able to reach it and shut it, but water was pouring through it in a raging torrent and rising by the minute.

  “Nurse!” Dr. Verrick called, and then the radio was swept off the cupboard and into the water as it surged against the inside walls of the courtyard, carrying radio and cupboard with it.

  “She’s having a seizure!” a man shouted as the radio bobbed past her. “Get a nurse in here! Stat!” and she couldn’t tell if it was Dr. Verrick or one of the voices because they were all calling for help: Nurse! and Get them off me! and Don’t let me die…

  Briddey needed to call for help, too, or the voices would carry her over the edge, they’d dash her on the rocks. But you mustn’t, she thought, clinging desperately to the cottonwood’s trunk. If you do, you’ll give him away, and they’ll burn him at the stake.