Crosstalk (33 page)

Page six,
she thought, concentrating fiercely on finding the page, trying not to think about the fact that C.B. had let go of her and that they were less than a foot from the windows and the table was too wide. If he sat across from her, he wouldn't be able to hold her hand, and the voices would—

I'm not going to sit across from you,
he said, pulling his chair around so he was at the end, sitting catty-corner from her, and reaching across the table not for her hand but for the next book on the stack. He opened it and looked down at it.
I'm right here. And you're perfectly safe. The voices can't get in here. Listen,
he said, and it was an order.

She looked longingly at his hand resting casually next to his book.
You don't need it,
he said, and when she still hesitated:
Trust me. Just listen.

She did, gripping the edge of the table with both hands, bracing herself against the crashing wave of voices she was afraid would follow.

It didn't. The voices weren't gone, but they no longer roared over her, deluging her. They were calmer, quieter, like a harmless, murmuring stream. She looked over at C.B., amazed.
How did you do that?

I didn't,
he said, nodding in the direction of the other people seated at the long tables. They
did.

But how—?

He grinned.
Never underestimate the power of a good book.

“Ahem!” said the Mouse with an important air. “Are you all ready? This is the driest thing I know. ‘William the Conqueror, whose cause was favoured by the pope, was soon submitted to by the English, who wanted leaders, and had been of late much accustomed to usurpation and conquest. Edwin and Morcar, the earls of Mercia and Northumbria—' ”

—L
EWIS
C
ARROLL
,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I don't understand
,
Briddey said, looking around at the Reading Room in wonder. She'd been wrong about the drone of the reading voices sounding like a murmuring stream. It was warmer and more pleasant, like the drone of bees in a garden.
How do the books—?

It's not the books,
C.B. said,
though I thought that, too, the first time I encountered it. It's the thoughts of the people reading them. Reading's an entirely different process from ordinary thinking. It's more rhythmic and focused, and it screens out all extraneous thoughts. And—if there are enough people reading—everybody else's, too.

But how—?

I discovered it by accident. I'd come here to do some research to try to find out what was causing the voices in my head.
He smiled at her.
People always say books can be a refuge, and they're definitely right.

“Refuge” was the right word. Her heart had stopped thudding for the first time since the voices started in the theater.

Which is why I brought you here,
C.B. said.
The readers'll screen them while we get your defenses up.

But I thought that the readers were the defenses.

They're one of them, and, luckily, one that's almost always available. There's hardly any time of day or night when people aren't reading, so if the voices start to overwhelm you, you can come here or go to the public library or a bookstore or Starbucks. And if that's out, you can do the reading yourself.

But I thought you said audiobooks didn't work.

They don't. What's screening the voices is the synaptic patterns of the readers. So you need to either read yourself or listen to an actual person reading. Preferably something Victorian, with nice, long, droning sentences. Like this,
he said, and began reading from the book in front of him:
“But a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction—every kind of evidence in the logician's list—have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.”

That's Hardy,
he said,
who works great, and so does Dickens—and Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. Nothing too boring, though. If your mind starts to wander, it won't work, so no Henry James. Or S
ilas Marner.
What you need is
Barchester Towers
or
Our Mutual Friend.
Download them to your phone so you'll have them with you all the time. And brush up on “The Highwayman.”

And the songs you told me about.

Exactly. But all those are just stopgap measures. What you really need are permanent defenses.
He glanced at his watch.

Briddey reached automatically for her phone to see what time it was and then remembered that C.B. still had it. She glanced over at the clock behind the reference desk: nine forty-five. And the library closed at ten thirty. That gave them less than an hour.

So we need to get busy,
C.B. said.
The first step is to put up your perimeter. It'll do on a permanent basis what the readers' voices are doing right now. You know those baffles you see along highways? The ones that keep the traffic noise down to a dull roar for the people who were dumb enough to build houses next to a major road? You're going to erect the same kind of thing, only inside your head.
He glanced across the room at the various readers.
You need to look like you're reading, by the way. We're supposed to be studying.

Sorry,
Briddey said, and hastily bent her head over her book.

It's okay. Nobody's looking at us right now. But the librarian will be back soon, and we don't want her getting suspicious.
He propped his chin on his hand and bent his head over his own book, looking for all the world like he was reading intently.
The first thing you need to do is envision a fence,
he said.

Like a highway baffle.

Not necessarily. It can be any kind of fence: a computer firewall or one of those invisible electronic dog barriers or the Great Wall of China—anything at all so long as you believe it will keep the voices out.

As long as I
believe
?
she said, looking up at C.B.
The voices are real, not something I imagined! They're—

The fence is real, too,
C.B. said, his eyes never moving from his book.
And so was the railing you were hanging onto back at the theater. And the woodland path you envisioned when Verrick was talking about establishing a neural pathway.

But—

The voices are telepathic signals to the brain. They cause synapses to be fired, just like auditory signals. Well, the fence is signals causing synapses to fire, too, only in this case they inhibit the signal uptake receptors.

I thought you said we didn't have the inhibitor gene.

We don't. We have to manufacture our own inhibitors. They don't work as well as the real thing, and they take more energy and more concentration to sustain, but they can still protect you.

So you're saying I have to visualize inhibiting the uptake receptors?

Yes, but you have to visualize it in images that make sense to you. Concrete, everyday images, like the railing you visualized at the theater.

She thought of the wet, black iron railing she had clung to.
But it wasn't strong enough,
she thought. If C.B. hadn't come and rescued her, the water would have come pouring through it and over the top—

So you need to put up something that
is
strong enough,
C.B. said.
How about a levee? Or a dike?

A dike,
Briddey thought eagerly.
Like the ones in Holland.
But dikes got holes in them. That little Dutch boy had had to stick his finger in the dike to keep the water from squirting through—

Sorry,
C.B. said.
I should have told you it needs to be something you don't associate with collapsing or being breached. I made that mistake myself the first time. I envisioned a castle wall—

A
castle
—?

I know,
he said, embarrassed.
I was thirteen, okay? Anyway, it had ramparts and a drawbridge and boiling oil. Perfectly safe—except for all those movies I'd watched that had battering rams and catapults. And mobs of peasants carrying torches.

So what did you switch to?

A white picket fence. You never see one of those being smashed with a battering ram.

No, seriously,
she said.
What's your barrier now?

He didn't answer.

C.B?

Still no answer, and when she stole a glance at him, he'd looked up from his book and was staring blindly at the window behind her.

C.B.?
she called again, and he seemed to come to himself.

Sorry,
he said.
I got distracted by the book. What did you ask?

What your barrier is now.

Oh. After the castle, I decided the maximum-security prison route was the best way to go, so long as I avoided watching prison-break movies. You know, chain-link fences, razor wire, searchlights, dogs.

But chain-link fences won't keep out water either.

True. Maybe you should—

He stopped again, and when Briddey sneaked a glance at him, he was looking over at the double doors. Was the librarian coming back?

No, I don't think so,
he said.
Hang on. I need to check something. Read your book.

She obediently dropped her eyes to the page. “It might reasonably have been supposed that she was listening to the wind,” she read. And what was he listening to? The voices, obviously. But how could he stand to? They were so drowningly loud and clamoring. It would be like voluntarily walking into a howling storm. Unless this perimeter he wanted her to build somehow tamed them, because he didn't look frightened or even braced to face the blast. He was gazing blindly ahead of him, like he had before.

And what was it he needed to check?
C.B.?
she said, but he didn't answer—or even seem to be aware of her having said anything.

He's somewhere else altogether,
she thought.
Or else he's concentrating on keeping the voices from overwhelming him.
And she certainly didn't want to distract him from that. She needed to keep quiet and read her book.

“The wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene as the scene seemed made for the hour…” she read. “What was heard there could be heard nowhere else.”

Which is why she should be in a library instead of out on the moors,
C.B. said. He looked up from his book to grin at her.
Sorry about that. For a minute I thought I heard the librarian coming, but she's not.

And he knew that because he could hear her individual thoughts, just as he'd heard Kathleen's. And the nurse's. But how? The voices were a maelstrom of words and emotions. How had he been able to pick a single voice out from the rest?

It's an acquired skill,
C.B. said.

Can you teach me how to do it?
Briddey asked.

Yes, but not till after we've gotten your basic defenses in place. We don't have much time.

She glanced at the clock. Ten o'clock. Only half an hour till closing.

Exactly,
he said.
So okay, you need a barrier that water can't get through. How about Hoover Dam?

I don't know what it looks like,
she said.
I mean, I know it's big and made of concrete, but that's all.

That won't work, then. You need to be able to visualize it in detail. How about a seawall?

I don't know what that looks like either. Would a brick wall do?

Like the one in Tennyson's “Flower in the Crannied Wall” or the one the bad guy builds in Poe's “Cask of Amontillado”?
he asked, then grinned ruefully.
Sorry, I spend a
lot
of time in libraries. A brick wall it is.
And proceeded to take her through every detail of how it looked, from the exact color of the bricks to the thickness of the mortar between them.

The more details, the more real it is to you,
he said,
and the better it can withstand the voi—
He stopped in mid-word and listened again for a second.
The librarian's coming.

Briddey fought the impulse to look up. She heard the door open.
Okay,
C.B. said,
look up casually at the door and then go back to reading.

Briddey did, trying to think how she'd act if she really
was
studying and wondering if they were fooling the librarian.

Yep,
C.B. said,
though she's thinking you must really be in danger of flunking out to be here with a nerd like me on a Saturday night. Let's give it a minute. Keep reading.

Okay,
Briddey said, and concentrated on the page. “So low was an individual sound from these,” she read, “that a combination of hundreds only just emerged from silence—”

And let's hope that the voices are that quiet after I get the wall built,
she thought, though she didn't see how an imaginary wall could keep anything out, let alone the voices.