“Hello,” I said softly. “You just heard the dinner bell, didn’t you?” I nudged a nearby thread, <SPLINK> The nose came out a little farther. Another <SPLINK>, and the parrot under the stone waddled into the starlight, its crimson head swaying slowly back and forth.

Hesitantly, I reached out my hand. It actually moved slightly toward me, extending its neck. “Going to bite me?” I asked. But it made no further movement, so I bent my finger and rubbed its nose.

“Going to bite me, to bite me, bite me?” I heard my own voice say.

I pulled back from the parrot and looked sharply around. Had someone recorded me, putting my voice through an echo synth? It wouldn’t be the first time a smartass roadie targeted me for a practical joke. But when I thought about it, the sound wasn’t my recorded voice, the one I heard on playbacks and barely recognized as my own. It was my head voice, the one I heard when I talked — fuller than my recorded voice, less shrill.

It was me.

Oh, shit, I thought, and reached out to touch the parrot again.

“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit...”

Except I hadn’t said anything this time. I just thought it.

“Thought it, thought it, thought...”

Parrots.

“Parrots, parrots, parrots...”

I lifted my finger and the sound stopped instantly. I touched the little animal lightly and the sound kicked in again... but I knew it wasn’t a sound, not a real one.

I tried to think things through; and as I did, every chance thought, every tiny notion echoed back to me a fraction of a second after passing through my mind... disorienting at first, but I was used to singing in concert halls with a tiny delay between hitting a note and hearing it over your headphones. I could handle the telepathic equivalent.