Crosstalk (59 page)

Which explains why she hasn't called. Maybe.

“Have you heard from Aunt Oona?” Mary Clare was saying. “I can't get her to answer either.”

“Are you still worried about her rheumatism?”

“No, she said on Facebook she had some Daughters of Ireland thing, but that doesn't explain why she won't answer her phone.”

Maybe she doesn't want to talk to you either.

“You don't think Kathleen would do something stupid like elope with that Starbucks guy, do you?” Mary Clare asked.

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Late Sunday night she posted something about finding happiness where you'd least expect it, and you know how she's always falling in love with someone she just met, even though I've told her it's ridiculous, that she couldn't possibly get to know someone well enough in only a few days to be in love with him. Right?”

“I have to go,” Briddey said. “I've got a call on the other line.”

She hung up and checked to see if C.B. had called while she was talking to Mary Clare. But he hadn't, and even though Dr. Verrick said C.B. had left the hospital at one, she didn't hear from him all afternoon.

By four thirty she couldn't stand it any longer. She gathered up her things, told Charla she had a headache and was going home, and started down to C.B.'s lab.

But he was standing in the corridor talking to Suki, who hurried toward Briddey as soon as she saw her. “
What's
gotten into C.B.?” Suki whispered, looking back at him. “He looks almost presentable.”

He did. He was wearing a buttoned-down collared shirt and no earbuds. He'd also shaved, and he looked more rested and less despairing than he had that morning.
He found out what's causing the disruptions,
Briddey thought, hope springing up.

“He was positively friendly,” Suki was saying. “Did he have a brain transplant or something?” She looked speculatively at him. “He's actually kind of cute, in a geeky sort of way, don't you think? Or he would be if he'd comb his hair. Not as cute as Trent, of course. Speaking of which, what's up with
him
? I saw him earlier and he looked awful! Has something gone wrong with the Hermes Project?”

Careful,
Briddey thought.
Remember this is Gossip Central you're talking to.
“No, everything's going great. Trent says they're making real progress. He's probably just stressed because there's so much to do. Speaking of which, I need to catch C.B. I have to talk to him about an app,” she said, and hurried after him.

“C.B.!” she called,
C.B.!
But he didn't even slacken his pace.

She caught up to him outside the copy room and pulled him inside. She shut the door. “Did you find out what's causing this?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” he said.

Which means no,
she thought, and looking at him, she realized she'd been wrong about his looking better. What she'd mistaken for rested was merely resignation.

“I found a study on tinnitus patients who'd spontaneously recovered,” he told her. “And the pattern's the same—emotional shock followed by the tinnitus disappearing for progressively longer periods, and, after a certain period, total silence.”

“And the ringing sound never comes back?”

“No. Also, Verrick called a few minutes ago to say the Dowds have both been blanked out since last night. And when I graphed the durations of everybody's disruptions, they were consistent with the multiplying intensity of a feedback loop, so it's definitely the cascade that caused it.”

“And it somehow transmitted the directions for constructing inhibitors?”

“Yeah, or else our brains came up with a work-around on their own.”

“A work-around?”

He nodded. “Damaged brains come up with work-arounds all the time—new pathways and connections to replace the ones that were destroyed. Maybe to survive, our brains rigged up something to double for the missing inhibitors.”

“You said the tinnitus stopped ‘after a certain period.' How long?”

“A few days.”

A few days.
“C.B., I am so sorry I—”

“Sorry? Are you kidding? You did me a favor. With the voices gone, I'll be able to go to baseball games and movies and restaurants. And interdepartmental meetings,” he said, and smiled at her.

“I didn't mean I was sorry the voices are gone. I meant I was sorry I made you lose your telepathic ability.”

“The important thing is that you kept Verrick and your boyfriend from getting their filthy paws on it—and on Maeve. And being telepathy-less isn't all bad. It's let me out of that dungeon.” He spread his arms to indicate the copy room. “I can eat in the cafeteria and everything. I may even get a haircut now that I can go out in public like a normal person.”

No, don't,
she thought.
I like your hair.

But he couldn't hear her. “And I'll finally be able to buy some decent clothes,” he said. “I'll need them if I'm going to go on job interviews.”

Her heart caught painfully. “You're leaving Commspan?”

“Maybe. I don't know yet. But I've been thinking it'd be nice to work someplace where I could concentrate on limiting communication, not trying to drown people in it—sorry, unfortunate metaphor. I've also been thinking it'd be nice to work someplace warm. Right?”

She nodded unhappily.

“Hey, don't look so glum. You said you wanted things back the way they were, didn't you?”

I said a lot of things,
she thought.
I said I never wanted to speak to you again. I said we weren't emotionally bonded. I said I wanted you to go away and leave me alone. And none of that was true. None of it.

“I mean, think of it,” C.B. said lightly, “you won't have to worry about being spied on in the shower anymore or barged in on in the middle of the night, and I won't have to listen to psychopaths and perverts and people who don't know the words to ‘The Age of Aquarius,' and spend the rest of my life screaming, ‘It's Aquarius, not asparagus!' at them.”

“But you won't know what people are thinking—”

“I can always ask Suki,” he said, and turned suddenly serious. “The main thing is, Maeve won't have to grow up like I did, constantly afraid somebody'll discover her secret and use it to destroy her. Or the world. She'll be able to live a normal life,” he said. “Or as normal as possible with your sister Mary Clare for a mother.” He grinned.

Briddey nodded. “She's conducting an investigation to find out who corrupted Maeve into watching zombie movies.”

“I know,” he said. “Maeve told me. She called me last night.”

But not me,
Briddey thought.

“I explained to her what was happening,” C.B. said.

“Was she upset?”

“Yeah, you might say that.” He winced. “But I managed to convince her it was all for the best.”

For the best
.

“Lyzandra, on the other hand, is threatening to sue Verrick for everything he's got if he doesn't give her her psychic spirit gift back. Speaking of which, I promised I'd call Verrick and tell him what I found out about the tinnitus.”

He opened the door a crack and looked out—an action that convinced her more than anything thus far that he could no longer hear the voices. “The coast is clear,” he said, and headed for the elevator, calling back over his shoulder, “I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

No, you won't,
she thought sadly, going out to her car and driving home.
You won't ever talk to me again
.

And he was wrong about them having a few days. At the rate things were going, the intervals when she could hear would be completely gone by the time she got home.

Or not. On her way up the stairs to her apartment, she heard a male voice too faint to identify say, “…can't get through.”

C.B.?
she called hopefully.

“I've tried to make her understand,” the voice said, and it wasn't C.B. after all. It wasn't even one of the voices. It was just someone coming down the stairs. “But she can't accept that it's over. I just can't forgive her for what she did, you know?” There was a pause, and then he said, “I don't know what to do.”

Neither do I,
Briddey said, wondering how she was going to get through the evening.
You can't spend it just sitting here wondering when you're going to be blanked out for the last time.
Right now she could still hear the voices when she listened closely, a faint murmur like the one that had been beyond her perimeter—the perimeter she no longer needed.

C.B.?
she called.
Maeve?
But no one answered.

It was too early to go to bed, so she went into the kitchen, poured the last of the tasteless multigrain cereal and some milk into a bowl, and took it back to the computer.

There was an email from Mary Clare. Kathleen hadn't eloped after all. She'd been with Aunt Oona at the Daughters of Ireland meeting. “Apparently they're getting ready for some big Hibernian Heritage thing, and that's why I haven't been able to reach them. They were there all day yesterday and last night, and they've been there all day today.”

I thought Aunt Oona was laid up with rheumatism,
Briddey thought, wishing they were home so she could go talk to them.

It was still too early to go to bed. She went online and looked up “tinnitus,” hoping to find an example C.B. might have missed of a patient whose symptoms had come back, but she didn't, and after an hour she gave up and decided to go get ready for bed.

The phone rang. “I've been trying to reach you,” Trent said impatiently. “Have you gotten any mental messages from me since you got home?”

“No. Why?” she asked eagerly. If he'd started hearing her again, maybe C.B. was wrong about the cascade's effects being permanent. “Have you?”

“No,” he said. “Damn. I was hoping you might still be hearing enough that Dr. Verrick could do another imCAT—the ones he did didn't get enough data to identify the telepathic synapses—and I could show it to Hamilton. Without something that definitively proves the telepathy existed, he won't be willing to commit the resources we need to move forward on this thing.”

Move forward?
“Trent, you can't still be thinking of designing a direct-communication phone! You saw what happened when the voices—”

“I know.” She could hear the shudder of disgust in his voice at the memory. “But now that we know there's a way to stop them, we know there must also be a way to control them—”

Maeve was right,
Briddey thought bitterly, seeing the smoke-ravaged walls of the courtyard and the blistered paint on the door.
Once they got hold of it, there was no way we could have convinced them to stop
.

“But we can't do anything till we find a way to reactivate the telepathy,” Trent went on. “And we can't do that without a scan that shows what's going on in the brain during the communication. Is Schwartz still in contact with you?”

“No.”

“Damn. He didn't happen to mention knowing of anyone else who might be telepathic, did he?”

“No. And even if he did, their connections would have been shut down by the cascade, like Dr. Verrick's patients' were.”

“Well, there must be
someone
out there we can test.”

Like Maeve?
Briddey thought. Thank goodness the cascade had wiped out her telepathic ability, too, or Trent would have had no qualms about using her, even if she
was
nine years old.

“We need to find somebody fast,” Trent was saying. “I don't know how much longer I'll be able to stall Hamilton. Call Schwartz and tell him how critical this is, that we've
got
to have a telepath. Damn, I can't believe this happened! We were so close to getting the proof we needed.”

So close. Thank goodness it happened when it did,
she thought.
And that it affected everyone.
Otherwise, they'd be busily administering relaxants to Verrick's other patients, not caring whether they killed them or not. And Trent would be busily designing the circuitry for his phone.

We were so lucky,
she thought, and had a sudden memory of Maeve showing up at her door Sunday morning just in time to rescue her from Trent. She'd thought that was a lucky coincidence, too.

“Did you hear me?” Trent said. “I said to text me the minute you find out anything from C.B. This is your future hanging in the balance as well as mine, you know.”

“I know,” she said. She hung up and then stood there, thinking,
It can't have been a coincidence. Or luck. The timing was too perfect.
And illogical. If the shutdown had really been caused by Lyzandra's reaction to the voices, it would have started the moment they overwhelmed her, not half an hour later.

And why had it affected C.B.? He'd been hit with the full force of the voices at age thirteen, with no defenses at all, and
that
hadn't triggered the creation of inhibitors or work-arounds. So why had this?

It didn't
, she thought.
He lied to you. He's blocking the voices, even though he said it wasn't possible.
Maybe Maeve was helping him, the two of them taking turns blocking while the other slept. Or maybe C.B. had lied about its being impossible, and he could block anybody and everybody whenever he wanted.

But if that were the case, why hadn't he kept Lyzandra from hearing her thoughts during the Zener tests? Or better yet, kept Trent from hearing her when she called out,
Where are you?
to C.B.? Or kept her and Maeve from hearing the voices in the first place?

Believing C.B. could block the voices at will meant she also had to believe he'd intentionally let her nearly drown and let Maeve be terrorized by zombies, and she couldn't.
He isn't like that,
she thought stubbornly.