“And what do you want in return for doing that for me?”
“To get out of being grounded.”
“Fine,” Briddey said. “I’ll talk to your mother tonight. Goodbye. And no more calls.”
She ended the call. “Are you sure you want to go to dinner with my family?” she asked C.B.
“Positive. That is, if you still want me to come after you hear what I have to say.” He took a deep breath. “Maeve said she got rid of the bad parts and just kept the nice stuff, but that isn’t entirely true. There are things that are intrinsic to the telepathy that can’t be eliminated without eliminating the telepathy, too.”
“So we won’t be able to talk to each other, after all?”
“No, we’ll be able to talk. But when telepathic signals get too closely aligned, it causes interference, particularly crosstalk.”
“I don’t understand,” Briddey said, and felt a thrill of fear. “Are you saying the voices aren’t shut down? That they’ll come back if we—?”
“No,” C.B. hastened to reassure her. “No, the jammer shut them down for good. But…you said one of the reasons I blocked you was that I didn’t think you could handle hearing any more thoughts than you were already. You’re right. I didn’t think you could. But it wasn’t ordinary, everyday thoughts I was worried about. It was…”
“It was what?” Briddey prompted.
“The crosstalk. And the problem is, it’s not like electronic crosstalk. You can correct that or filter it out. But this is part and parcel of the telepathy. And even if both partners are crazy about each other, there’s a limit to how much honesty and openness the human race is equipped to handle. Maybe that’s why they developed inhibitors, because they couldn’t handle it, and they realized getting rid of it was the only way to survive. I wasn’t kidding when I said telepathy isn’t a survival characteristic.”
“C.B.,” Briddey interrupted. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, or what all this has to do with crosstalk.”
“I know. I’m sorry. What I’m trying to tell you is…you know how I called having sex ‘hooking up’? Well—”
The phone rang.
Briddey answered it. “Maeve, I told you—”
“I know, but I forgot to tell C.B. something.”
“What is it?”
“I have to tell it to C.B.”
Briddey handed him the phone. “It’s for you.”
He listened a minute and then said, “You really think I should? But what if she…?” There was a pause, and then he said, “Yeah, I think you’re probably right.”
He handed the phone back to Briddey. Maeve said, “It’d be way easier if you’d just let me talk to you in your heads instead of using the phone.”
“No,” Briddey said firmly. “Now go away. And no more phone calls. Or eavesdropping. I mean it.” She ended the call.
C.B. was squinting at her, as if trying to make up his mind about something. “What exactly did Maeve tell you to do just now?” Briddey asked.
“This,” he said, and kissed her.
The world came apart—and it wasn’t just the kiss, which Briddey realized now she’d been wanting ever since she saw him standing there at the hospital, waiting to take her home. It was what was happening inside her head. She was sensing C.B.’s feelings, hearing his thoughts. She was doing what she’d thought she was never going to be able to do. She was reading his mind. And he was reading hers.
Wanted to do this ever since…, he was saying;…didn’t dare…afraid you didn’t…I mean, how could you?…too beautiful and smart to even look at someone like me, let alone…
And she was saying,…thought I’d lost you…thought we’d never be able to talk to each other again…
And they were both talking at once, their thoughts and feelings tangling together till it was impossible to tell which were whose: …thought I’d ruined everything and you didn’t love me anymore…how could you think that?…thought that was why you were blocking me, because you couldn’t forgive me…blocking you because I was afraid if you knew how I felt…in the stacks…so close…so beautiful…so were you…yeah, yeah, I know what you think of my messy hair…I love your hair!
Their thoughts flowed together in an incoherent torrent of relief and joy and delight, colliding, crashing, looping in a cascade of longing and explanations and desire as overwhelming, as drenching as the deluge of voices had been, but wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and she was going under, she was going to drown—
She broke out of the kiss like a swimmer breaking the surface and staggered back against the lab table, groping for support. “What was that?” she said shakily.
“I told you, when the signals get too closely aligned, it causes crosstalk—”
“Crosstalk?” she said breathlessly. “I thought you were talking about a few words or phrases getting through, but that was—”
“A deluge. I know. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Is that going to happen all the time?” Briddey asked, still having trouble getting her breath. Because if it was—
“No, just when there’s sexual contact. You know, kissing or canoodling or—”
“But I thought in the library you told me sex shut down the voices.”
“The other voices,” he said. “Not the ones of the people involved. It has sort of the opposite effect on them.”
That’s the understatement of the year, Briddey thought.
C.B. was looking at her anxiously. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I’ve never…” She put her hand unsteadily to her chest. “It was so…”
“Yeah, I know. It’s pretty…overwhelming. Even more so than I thought it would be, and I totally understand if you don’t want to have anything to do with this. Or with me. After all you’ve been through, being deluged with even more thoughts and feelings is probably the last thing you want, and I’ll totally understand if you decide you want to forget the whole thing.”
“Forget the whole…? C.B.—”
“No, it’s totally okay. I don’t blame you. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably feel exactly the same way. Look, we can forget about Havana. I can take you back to New York, like Sky did Sister Sarah, and not…we can keep things completely platonic.”
“Platonic?”
“Or if you’d rather, I can have the jammer block you altogether, and things’ll be just like they were before you had the EED.”
“What?” Briddey said. “I can’t believe this. You’ve been lying to me this entire time!”
“Lying?” he said, taken aback. “No, I haven’t. I just didn’t tell you the whole—”
“I don’t mean about the crosstalk. I’m talking about you constantly telling me you could read my mind.”
“What do you mean?” he said, bewildered. “I—”
“Because if you could, you wouldn’t have made that ridiculous speech just now.”
“Ridiculous? You mean you still want—?” he said, and she didn’t need to be able to read his mind to know how he felt. It was all right there in his face.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
He reached for her again.
“Not so fast,” she said, putting up a hand to hold him off. “We need to set a few ground rules first.”
“Like what?”
“Like no more blocking. If you’re going to read my mind, I get to read yours, so I’ll at least have a fighting chance.”
“Okay, but I have to warn you, it’s a cesspool in there. Like right now, for instance. All I can think about is—”
“I know,” she murmured. “Me, too.”
He reached for her again.
“Second,” she said, holding him firmly at arm’s length, “you have to promise to teach me how to build those auxiliary defenses.”
“To keep me out?”
“Maybe. Sometimes. Like you said, there can be such a thing as being too connected. But mostly I’m going to need them to ke
ep Maeve out so we can have some privacy.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible. She seems to be able to break through every firewall and barricade ever erected, and she’s a whiz at decryption. And she’s only nine. What’ll she be capable of at thirteen?”
“Saving France,” Briddey said.
“You’re right. She’s a great kid. Maybe she’ll even be able to figure out some way for everybody to experience telepathy—the nice parts, not the bad ones—without destroying the planet in the process. But in the meantime…” He shook his head.
“Don’t worry,” Briddey said. “There are other kinds of auxiliary defenses.”
“Like what?”
“Like,” she said, raising her voice slightly so Maeve could hear her, though that probably wasn’t necessary, “threatening to tell her mother Maeve’s telepathic. And telling her if she doesn’t leave us alone when we tell her we need some privacy, I’ll tell Mary Clare she’s not only been secretly watching zombie movies but Cinderella. And Tangled. And wants a Rapunzel tiara more than life itself,” and heard a disgusted Fine! and a very final-sounding slam of a door.
“See?” Briddey said. “Problem solved.”
“Good,” C.B. said, and reached for her.
She pushed him away. “I’m not done yet. There seem to have been a number of things regarding telepathy that you failed to tell me the whole truth about. So what else have you neglected to mention?”
“Nothing at all,” he said, and grinned. “My mind’s an open book.”
“I’ll bet. You probably do have X-ray vision.”
“No, but if I asked Maeve to put her devious little mind to it, I’m pretty sure she could come up with an app.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Briddey said. “Besides…” She took hold of the front of his flannel shirt with both her hands and pulled him down onto the couch. “You won’t need it.”
“Hang on.” He disentangled himself. “Not here. Come on,” he said, and they were in her courtyard again.
“Why can’t we stay in the lab?” Briddey asked. “If you’re afraid Maeve will interrupt us, she won’t. Tangled’s her favorite movie in the entire world.”
“Exactly,” he said. “She’s temporarily cowed, Oona doesn’t know the jammer’s up and running yet, which means she’s still busy blocking the voices, your sister Kathleen’s busy quitting her dating sites, and Suki’s too busy looking for her phone to be spreading any gossip. This may be the last chance we ever have to be completely alone, and I intend to make the most of it.”
He grabbed her hand and started for the blue courtyard door, which was no longer latched. Nor barred. It didn’t have to be. There were no longer any roaring voices outside, not even a murmur. “So where are we going?” Briddey asked. “Niagara Falls?”
“There isn’t time,” he said, opening the door onto the pitch-blackness of his inner sanctum. “I’ll take you there on our honeymoon.”
He pulled her through the door, shut it, and let go of her hand. She heard him taking off his flannel shirt and stooping to lay it against the door so the light from under it couldn’t be seen, and her heart gave a queer jerk. I know where we are, she thought.
“Yep,” C.B. said, and switched on the light. They were in the storage closet. C.B. was standing there in front of her in his Doctor Who T-shirt and jeans, and behind her stood the wooden card file and the oak table, piled high with the Encyclopedia Britannica. And behind C.B., propped against the stacks of chairs, George Washington still glared disapprovingly at them.
“Go away,” C.B. said cordially to him, and clambered up the chairs. He turned the painting around and jumped back down to stand in front of her.
“I expected the stacks would be your inner sanctum,” she said lightly to keep him from hearing her thudding heart, her flushed and skyrocketing thoughts. “Since that’s where all the hooking up takes place.”
“Not all,” he said. “Plus, your arms weren’t around my neck in the stacks,” and took her hand in both of his and clasped it to his chest.
“Oh,” she breathed, and put her free hand to the back of his neck and pulled his face down to hers. I should have done this the first time we were in here, Briddey thought.
You’re right, C.B. said, you should have, and kissed her.
It was even more dizzying, more drenching than the first time, but now there was a deep current of happiness running through it, and splashes of amusement: …thought you said connecting didn’t have anything to do with emotional bonding…never said that, said it didn’t have to…you were the one who kept saying we weren’t…I know…such an idiot…
I should have known the minute you put your arms around me, Briddey said. I felt so safe.
If you’d heard what I was thinking, you wouldn’t have, C.B. said, and they were suddenly surrounded not by water but by golden fireworks and then, abruptly, fire. Flames sparked and flared around them, through them, so hot they couldn’t even form their thoughts into coherent sentences: …no idea how much…me, too…want…love…oh, me, too, me, too…
This time it was C.B. who broke off the kiss. He backed away from her, crashing into the stacked chairs. “What’s wrong?” Briddey asked.
“What’s wrong?” he said. “We practically spontaneously combusted. If that’s what kissing you does, sex is liable to—”
“Kill us?” she said. She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“But what if—?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said, and put her arms around his neck.
Someone banged on the door.
Aunt Briddey! Maeve said. C.B.! Let me in. I know you’re in there. I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me about Aunt Oona!
THE END
To the inimitable—and irreplaceable—Mary Stewart
Acknowledgments
Many, many, many thanks to everyone who helped me with this book, but most especially to:
my daughter Cordelia, who gave me invaluable help with the plot,
my friend Melinda Snodgrass, who gave me endless encouragement and moral support,
and the people at my reading at Cosine, who came up with the title.
BY CONNIE WILLIS
The Best of Connie Willis
All About Emily
All Clear
Blackout
All Seated on the Ground
D.A.
Inside Job
Passage
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Bellwether
Uncharted Territory
Remake
Doomsday Book
Lincoln’s Dreams
About the Author
CONNIE WILLIS, who is a Science Fiction Hall of Famer and an SFWA Grand Master, has received seven Nebula Awards and eleven Hugo Awards for her fiction. Her other works include Blackout, All Clear, Doomsday Book, Lincoln’s Dreams, Bellwether, Impossible Things, Passage, Remake, Uncharted Territory, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Fire Watch, and Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. She lives in Colorado with her husband, two cats, and a bulldog named Bunter.
conniewillis.net
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Connie Willis, Crosstalk
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