Crosstalk (61 page)

Before, when you could read my mind, you wouldn't have had to ask
, she thought. “Trent's planning to co-opt your Deadzone and SOS ideas and tell Management they're
his.
”

“Well, technically they
are
his ideas,” C.B. said calmly. He knelt and began fitting the plate back onto the heater. “Or at least Commspan's. Everybody who works for the company has to sign an intellectual-property assignment agreement for ideas they come up with while they're working here.”

“But you should at least get
credit
for them! And that's not the worst of it. He's going to tell everyone at Commspan we had the EED and about the telepathy and the scans.”

“I know,” C.B. said without looking up. “It was my idea.”

“
Your
idea? But…I don't understand. If there
is
a corporate spy—”

“There is,” he said, fitting the back on the heater.

“There
is
? Who?”

He didn't answer. He was busy trying to make the back panel fit.

“The spy will tell Apple,” Briddey said, “and if Apple starts researching it and word gets out that they're working on something to do with telepathy, then it won't matter that it doesn't exist. Everyone will—”

“No, they won't,” C.B. said, finally succeeding in getting the panel on. “Because we're only going to give Apple a week or so to take the bait, and then we're going to put the story out on Twitter that it was all a Commspan ruse, and that Apple fell for it and actually
believed
that telepathy—and who knows what other nonsense? ghosts? channeling? alien abduction?—was real.”

Which will humiliate Apple and cause them—and every smartphone company—to avoid telepathy research like the plague,
Briddey thought,
just like the scientists did after the Bridey Murphy and Dr. Rhine debacles, and send telepathy back to the status of pseudoscience for another fifty years
.

“We tell them,” C.B. was saying, “that it was all—”

“A diversion to keep Apple from finding out what they were really working on,” Briddey said. “I know. And what they're working on is
your
Sanctuary phone.”

“Yep,” he said, threading screws into the back of the heater. “I figured after his attack of the creepy-crawlies at the hospital, Trent would think shutting out anything, even unwanted calls, was a good idea, and he did.”

“But to give him your ideas—”

“I had to give him
something
he could put up against Apple's new phone. Apple's rollout is less than two months away, and all he's got is some ridiculous story about hearing voices, only he can't hear them anymore. Which meant he was going to lose his job, and if he did, his only hope for vindication would be proving telepathy was real. Which meant he'd keep digging, and I didn't want him to find out about Maeve. Can you hand me that screwdriver?” he asked, pointing.

She gave it to him. “Thanks,” he said. “Giving him the Sanctuary stuff means he keeps his job and is too busy for the next few months to worry about anything but the phone, and after that he'll be too busy giving interviews to
Wired
and
The Wall Street Journal
about ‘How Commspan Changed the Communications Conversation from More, More, More to Protecting the Consumer' and fielding offers to work for Samsung and Motorola. He won't have a moment to think about telepathy. Believe me, giving him the Sanctuary was a small price to pay for getting the spotlight off us.”

“But if that's what you're trying to accomplish, then leaking the EED story's the last thing you should do. So why did—?”

“I had to. Trent had already told Hamilton, and I wasn't sure Hamilton would be willing to give up on the telepathy otherwise. He thought he had a game changer in his grasp. The only thing that would convince him to settle for the Sanctuary phone instead was the threat of looking like an idiot.”

He was right. If Trent told them he'd experienced telepathy firsthand and then it had disappeared, Hamilton would refuse to accept it. He'd insist on pursuing the research. But if he was told it had never existed, that it was part of a trick to fool the competition, he wouldn't dare admit he'd been gullible enough to fall for it, too.

“But what if Apple has something really big that the Sanctuary phone isn't revolutionary enough to counter?”

“They don't.”

“How do you know?”

“I can—that is, I
could
—read minds. And all the new iPhone's got is a set of defenses to protect the Cloud from hackers. Ironic, huh? Plus it's got a longer-lasting battery, and a slightly bigger screen.”

“But then Apple will need to find something to counter the Sanctuary phone. And to get back at Commspan for making them look like idiots. What if they start digging and find out Trent and I really did have the EED? Lyzandra's threatening to sue Dr. Verrick. If she—”

“She won't,” C.B. said confidently. “A lawsuit would mean publicly admitting she'd lost her ‘psychic spirit gift.' She can't afford to let her clients know that. They'd desert her in droves.”

“But won't they desert her anyway when they realize she can't read their minds?”

“They won't find out. She did almost all her stuff by cold reading anyway—and telling people what they wanted to hear. And as for Dr. Verrick, I was just about to take care of that problem,” he said, flipping a switch on the front of the heater.

His repairs must not have worked. No operating hum came on, and the coils didn't turn orange, but C.B. didn't seem to notice. He was too busy pulling a smartphone from his back pocket and typing in a number. He put it to his ear. “Hello, this is C.B. Schwartz calling Dr. Verrick. You can reach me at this number.” He rattled it off, hung up, and began typing a message, his head bent over the screen.

Briddey frowned at him. “Are you sending a text?”

“Nope, a tweet,” he said, continuing to type. “And I'll bet you were going to ask, since when am I on Twitter?”

“No, I was going to ask, since when do you carry a smartphone?”

“I don't. I borrowed this from Suki. Stole it, actually.”

Or Suki left it down here on purpose so she'd have an excuse to talk to him again,
Briddey thought.
And she knew when she called that there wouldn't be an answer because it didn't work down here, so she'd have to come down here to get it. But then, how—?

“How are you going to send a tweet?” Briddey asked. “There's no coverage down here.”

C.B. hit
SEND
and then looked up at her. “Oh, yeah, about that,” he said. “That lack of coverage isn't entirely a natural phenomenon.”

She looked over at the heater. “You've been interfering with the reception,” she said. No wonder it had never given out any heat.

“Yeah, I have been,” C.B. admitted, “and I just switched it off, so if you were counting on not being able to get calls down here, you might want to turn your phone off,” and Suki's phone rang. “Sorry, I need to take this,” he said.

Briddey nodded, turning off her phone before it rang, too.

“Dr. Verrick,” C.B. said. “What?…Slow down, I can't…Slow down…Sorry, I didn't get that last part. Can you say that again?” He took the phone from his ear, hit the speakerphone icon, and set the phone on the lab table.

“I
said,
” Dr. Verrick's agitated voice said, “it's gotten out!”

Gotten out?

Briddey glanced up at C.B. in alarm, but he was looking calmly down at the phone. “How do you know?” he asked.

“I just got a tweet. It says, ‘Breaking: EEDs make patients able to read minds,' and there's a link to my website.”

Oh, no
, Briddey thought.
Is this Trent's idea of “a few subtle hints”?

“Do you
know
the damage this could do to my practice?” Dr. Verrick shouted. “
Mind reading?
I have clients who are members of the royal family. If word of this gets out—”

“Do you know who sent the tweet?” C.B. asked.

“It says it's from Gossip Gal, but I know it's from Lyzandra. This is her way of getting revenge for losing her psychic powers.”

“What's the hashtag?” C.B. asked.

“EED equals ESP question mark.”

“When did you—?”

“Wait, I'm putting you on hold,” Dr. Verrick said. There was a brief silence, and he came back on, even more agitated. “I just got two more tweets. Same sender, same hashtag. The first one says, ‘Rumor going around a certain celeb EED doc is doing ESP experiments on his patients à la Duke University,' and it has a link to Dr. Rhine's Wikipedia page.” Dr. Verrick sounded completely beside himself. “And the second one says, ‘Could Briddey Flannigan be the new Bridey Murphy?' ”

Briddey gasped.

“Do you
know
who Bridey Murphy was?” Dr. Verrick shouted.

“Yeah,” C.B. said. “You're right, this is really serious. If your name got linked to a fraud like that, it could ruin your reputation. I remember what happened to Dr. Rhine. And to Shirley MacLaine when she—”

“That's why you have to
do
something!” Dr. Verrick shouted. “You have to stop those tweets from getting out!”

But he can't,
Briddey thought.
They've probably already produced a storm of retweeting
. There were probably already reporters calling her, wanting to know if she'd lived past lives. She was glad she'd turned off her phone. But the moment she went upstairs, she'd be hit by a new kind of deluge, and, with the reference to Bridey Murphy, the press was bound to see the Irish connection and insist on interviewing her family. Including Maeve.
I shouldn't be down here with C.B.
, she thought.
If they find us here together…

She started for the door. C.B. grabbed her arm to stop her. “Don't go,” he mouthed, and asked aloud, “When did you get the tweets, Dr. Verrick?”

“Just now, right before I called you.”

“Good. It's sometimes possible to delete tweets after they've been sent.”

Briddey said, “No, it isn't—”

“Shh,” C.B. mouthed at her, taking the phone off speakerphone and putting it back up to his ear. “I think I can stop this, Dr. Verrick, but we'll have to move fast. In case I can't, who else knows about the telepathy thing?” A pause. “Good. And who has access to the records of the Zener tests and scans you did?”

Briddey watched him, frowning, as he talked. There was something she didn't understand here, something wrong with this whole conversation. Why hadn't he panicked about the tweets? He should have, unless…

Of course,
she thought.
Gossip Gal didn't send those tweets. He did.

“What about your other patients?” C.B. was saying. “The ones who showed signs of being telepathic? How much did you tell them?” A pause. “Good. I'll see what I can do. No, don't send me the tweets. I don't need them. Just delete them. I'll call you as soon as I know whether I've been able to fix this or not. In the meantime, don't call or tweet or text anyone else.”

He hung up. “Good news. He didn't tell anyone about the telepathy—he wanted to wait till he had definitive test results. So he told everyone—including his nurse—that he was testing mirror-neuron enhancement. And physician-patient confidentiality will prevent anyone from getting hold of the scans or the Zener test results, though I think there's an excellent chance he's shredding them as we speak.”

“Thanks to your scaring him to death by sending those tweets.”

“I thought you'd figure that out,” he said. “I was afraid he might have told the other EED patients he'd tested what he was up to, or talked to some other psychics, but he hadn't—apparently Lyzandra was the only redheaded one he'd been able to find. And he told the other patients what he told you, that the emotions they felt were so strong, they seemed to take the form of words. Not a peep to them about its being telepathy, which means they won't say anything. And we should be okay.”

“Except for those tweets being out there and being retweeted as we speak.”

“No, they're not,” he said, bending over his phone again. “I only sent them to Verrick, and I just deleted them from his phone.” He tapped the phone. “And from Suki's, both within the ten-minute fail-safe interval, which keeps them from going out to anyone else. I told you the SecondThoughts app was a good idea.”

He showed her his phone's screen, which said “tweets deleted,” and then began swiping again. “All that's left to do now is to call Verrick back and tell him I was successful. Hang on,” he said, and put the phone to his ear. “Dr. Verrick? I've got good news. I think I managed to get them all deleted before they went out.”

Briddey watched him as he talked, thinking about how cleverly he'd handled not only Dr. Verrick but Trent. But to what end? Why were all these elaborate ruses necessary? She understood his wanting to keep his connection to this whole thing quiet and to protect Maeve, but Trent had no idea that Maeve had been telepathic, and Dr. Verrick didn't even know she existed. So no matter how much Trent investigated, he was no threat. And the telepathy was gone, which meant it wasn't necessary for Dr. Verrick to destroy the records of the scans and the Zener tests.

So why had C.B. made sure he did? And why had he given Trent his design for the Sanctuary phone
and
an excuse that would not only get Trent out of trouble, but make him a hero in Commspan's eyes?

He isn't just trying to cover his and Maeve's tracks,
she thought, watching him talk to Dr. Verrick.
There's something else going on
. And even though C.B. could no longer read her mind, she thought,
I need to be in my safe room,
and went through the blue door into her courtyard.