Crosstalk (65 page)

C.B. had already dived for his laptop and was typing madly, his face intent on the screen. Lines of code scrolled by, and he checked them with his finger as they did, frowning, and then began typing again.

“Did she mess it up?” Briddey asked anxiously.

“I don't know,” C.B. said, drawing his finger along a string of numbers. “I can't figure out what she's done here. She's altered the code—” And beside Briddey on the lab table, the phone he'd stolen from Suki rang. “Can you get that?” he asked, his eyes still on the laptop screen.

Briddey nodded and picked it up, thinking,
I thought he turned the cellphone jammer back on
.

“He did,” Maeve's voice said from the phone. “I figured out a way to bypass it.”

And apparently a way to get Suki's number. “Maeve,” Briddey said warningly, “I told you—”

“You said to go away. You didn't say I couldn't call you on the phone,” Maeve said with maddening logic. “I need to talk to C.B. and tell him I didn't mess up his stupid code. I
fixed
it. The way he was doing it, it would have taken forever, and we wouldn't have been able to talk to each other anymore, so I—”

C.B. grabbed the phone from Briddey. “Tell me exactly what you did to the program,” he said, cradling the phone against his shoulder and typing again. “Um-hmm…um-hmm…how did you…? Wow! I never thought of that. What about…? Um-hmm…okay.” He ended the call, stared intently at the screen for several more minutes, and then straightened.

“Well?” Briddey asked C.B. “Did she fix the code?”

“No, she wrote a whole new program,” he said, looking bemused, “which is, as far as I can tell, a vast improvement on mine. And, as near as I can tell, it does exactly what she said it does. It eliminates the voices but lets full telepaths go on talking to one another and shuts down the signals completely for everybody else.” He frowned.

“But that's good, isn't it?” Briddey asked. “It means you won't have to give up being telepathic?”
And I won't have ruined your life.

“Yeah, it's good. It's great,” he said, though he didn't look like it was.

“What's wrong?” Briddey asked. “Do her changes mean it'll take you longer than two days to finish the jammer?”

“No. She's already started it. It's been running since five minutes after we took off for my safe room.”

“But how could…she wasn't even here.”

“She did it on her laptop and sent it to my computer. At least that's what she said—and let's hope she's telling the truth, because otherwise I was wrong and telekinesis does exist.”

Which was a
very
scary thought, especially in Maeve's hands, but it was impossible to feel worried about that, or about anything. The jammer was up and running, and telepathy had officially vanished off the world's radar. Neither she nor Maeve nor Commspan's customers would ever be in danger from the voices again. Telepathy would return to the realm of crackpot internet theories and sci-fi movies, and telepaths would find themselves free from the voices and able to go to movies and malls and kosher delis even when they were full of people. And Aunt Oona and the rest of the Daughters of Ireland could stop blocking and go back to matchmaking and forcing their nieces' daughters to take Irish dancing lessons.

And C.B. won't have to face being interrogated and tested and forced to provide information to anyone,
Briddey thought happily.
Or be burned at the stake. He's safe, and our problems are over
.

“I wish,” he said. “There's still Maeve. And—”

“Sooner or later she'll figure out how you did the blocking, and once she does, it's just a matter of time till she realizes Aunt Oona's telepathic—or worse, that Mary Clare is—and she'll completely freak out.”

“Yeah, well, she's not the only one who may be freaking out,” C.B. muttered. He looked seriously at Briddey. “Remember in the hospital when you were trying to figure out why we'd hooked up, and you said the connection might be due to crosstalk?”

“You told me it wasn't.”

“It wasn't,” he said, “but—”

Suki's phone rang, and Briddey snatched it up. “Maeve, I thought I told you not to call again.”

“I know, but I have something to tell you.”

“What?” Briddey said tightly. “And make it snappy.”

“Okay, don't get
mad
. I thought you'd be done kissing by
now
.”

We haven't even gotten started,
Briddey thought,
thanks to you.
“What is it you needed to tell me?”

“It's about Aunt Oona.”

Oh, no. Don't tell me Maeve's found out about her.

“She wants to know if you can come to dinner tomorrow night. To celebrate Kathleen's engagement.”

“Engagement?” Briddey said bewilderedly. “She got engaged to the Lattes'n'Luv guy? I thought he was already engaged.”

“Not to
him,
” Maeve said. “To Sean O'Reilly.”

“Sean O'Reilly?” Briddey repeated, and turned to look in astonishment at C.B. “The fine Irish lad Aunt Oona was trying to hook me up with?”

“Yeah, only he's not really a lad. He's kind of old. And bald. Aunt Oona and Kathleen went to this Hibernian Heritage thing they were working on, and he was there, and I don't know what happened—”

I'll bet I do,
C.B. said.
And I'll bet you and Maeve aren't the only Flannigans whose telepathic abilities have been triggered recently.

And if Kathleen's
had
been, and Sean O'Reilly had had to rescue her and teach her how to put up defenses…

“Anyway, they're engaged,” Maeve was saying. “Mom's having a fit. She says nobody can fall in love that fast, but I think they can.”

So do I,
Briddey thought, smiling at C.B.

“I mean, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider fell in love in two days, and in
The Zombie Princess Diaries,
Xander fell in love with Allison in like five minutes, but that's because there's not much time when there are zombies chasing you.”

No, there isn't.

“So anyway, Aunt Oona's having everybody over,” Maeve said. “She's making corned beef and cabbage, and she said to ask you. She said you don't have to come if you don't want to.”

“Of course I want to come,” Briddey said. “Tell her I'll bring a loaf of soda bread. And crubeens.”

“You can bring C.B., too, if you want,” Maeve said. “I already asked Aunt Oona.”

“I don't know,” Briddey said, looking doubtfully at him.

“I'd love to come,” he said.

Are you sure? You've already been through one interrogation—

“No, I already made it so it won't be,” Maeve said. “When Aunt Oona told me to ask you, I said, ‘Can I invite C.B. because he helped with my science project?' and she said yes, so she thinks that's why he's coming, and that way nobody'll ask you since when are you dating and what happened to Trent and are you getting married.”

“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—”