Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

“I don’t know, Remy,” she says, voice bent with sympathy. “I don’t think so. If you were taken, then I’m afraid that they may have been killed. Like the others.”

I swallow. Wipe my eyes. “I don’t know if I believe you and your people would have spared the brothers on our boat. After all we have done.”

“If you had come quietly… surrendered… then we would have taken you in. I know that for certain. It was Brother Calvert—he made us understand that many of you…” She treads carefully here. “… have been led to believe lies. For years and years.”

“They’re after us now,” I say, sniffling. “The rest of your people. Hunting us. Suppose I understand that.”

“They most likely are,” she says. “Depending on how fast this boat is moving, what its bearing is.”

“They’ll catch us eventually,” I say.

“I’ve heard you singing, haven’t I, Remy?” Adolphine speaks to me now the way I would sometimes speak with the younger Choristers—the ones recovering from their cutting, doubled over in pain. “You sing the highest melody.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a… beautiful voice. It lifts my spirit.”

“That’s what Caplain Amita always said.” I must keep wiping my eyes. “Said that I would be essential. After we launch the missile, then we will dive. We will dive and we will sing into the darkness, and then the years of tribulation will be done. And we will ascend to heaven—”

I say these words, but they are empty to my own ears. Empty of meaning, or faith.

Adolphine doesn’t respond at first, but I feel a question coming.

“How… how have you managed it?” she asks.

“What?”

“Keeping yourself hidden for so long,” she says. Her eyes are wide above me. Gleaming by the dim wicklight.

“I… I don’t…”

“The captain must have helped, didn’t he? Someone would have had to. I know what they have done to the little girls they came across. Tossed them into the sea. But they saved you.”

I can’t breathe. I almost douse the flame in the bilge for my shaking hands.

She knows. I’m found out! What will she do?

“I won’t tell anyone, Remy,” Adolphine says. Earnestness in her words. “I promise you.”

“How… how did you know?” I ask.

“Your voice is different than the rest. Not necessarily higher, but cleaner. Clearer. I can hear it,” Adolphine says.

“Cap—Caplain Amita,” I say. “He helped me keep it secret. Said he thought… he thought that I was meant to serve a purpose. That’s why he spared me.”

Adolphine has pressed her fingers through the grating. Only the pads emerge. It’s as though she’s trying to comfort me. To place a hand on my shoulder. The way Lazlo would.

This, a Topsider. A woman. Meant to be corrupt. But not. No, here she is so very, very human.

“I can’t tell anyone the truth about you,” I say. “The truth about Topside. Lazlo was sent aft for even telling me.”

“Who is Lazlo?”

“He’s…” I say, trying to find the word for it. But friend isn’t right. Nor is the term brother . “Someone close to me. He was on deck, during the raid. He saw everything that happened to you and your crew. Told me about it. Now he’s being punished. Probably will die. Everyone who gets sent to the reactor room dies eventually. The poison.”

“I’m… sorry, Remy,” Adolphine says.

“You should fix the missile,” I say, wiping my nose. “Marston will starve you. He’s cruel. Fix the missile so you can eat.”

“I cannot do that, child. After I am done, I am dead. Doubt I’d be able to escape. I am weak, and even if I got off this boat, I would be stranded. Even if the Coalition is searching for the Leviathan , who knows how far away the closest ship is? No matter what, I die. Most important, I cannot let them launch. I know where the missile is targeted…”

“How do you know that?”

“Calvert told us. Australia. Sydney. Millions live there. It’s the capital of the southern territories of the Coalition. The last major seat of Western power. There would be no chance for peace after that. It would spark a whole new war…”

“It won’t launch,” I say, clearing my throat. “I have the missile key. Caplain Amita gave it to me. I won’t… I won’t launch it.”

JUBILATE DEO, OMNIS TERRA ; servite Domino in laetitia. Introite in conspectu ejus in exsultatione.

Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing .

I try. I sing, but some ember inside me has dimmed. There is no gladness left in me. I’m not sure if there ever was.

It is None. The ninth hour. The hour when man is most tempted. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden.

A watchful hour.

And I feel the weight of so many eyes upon me now. Ex-Oh Goines. Marston. St. John. Especially St. John. He’s noted my comings and goings. I’m almost positive he woke up when I last slipped out of my bunk. But if he does suspect something, he hasn’t yet informed the caplain. I’m not sure what he’s waiting for, but I know I have to be careful.

The reading today is again from Jonah.

“And the sailors said to one another, ‘Let’s cast lots to discover who is responsible for the calamity that has befallen our ship.’ And it was Jonah who was responsible.”

Caplain Amita called me his Moses.

But I feel more like Jonah, swallowed up by the Leviathan.

These missile tubes, like the ribs of the beast.

And, like Jonah, I pray now that I might be released, that I be spat onto the shore, alive.

I sing. The hymn, “Eternal Blue Light, My Salvation.” One of Caplain Amita’s.

But I have made a mistake. I realize it now.

I have lost the melody, have been singing half a step lower than the rest of the Choristers and brothers. A sour harmony.

St. John, standing just beside me before the dais, glances my direction. A smirk on his face. I have made his day.

This is not my first mistake this hour. I came in late during the versicle.

Caplain Marston has noticed. Standing before us. He raises an eyebrow at me, even though I’ve corrected. Have slid back up into the proper mode. Have found the motif.

Even so, he calls me up to the control room to meet with him after the hour has ended.

There, I find the caplain, along with Ex-Oh and Brother Wasserman, with his stoop, his sallow face lopsided by a massive, purple growth blooming to the left of his nose. Marston is leaning over the large map table, several charts spread out upon it. The topmost one details what seems to be a sea between two large, green-hued landmasses. It is labeled the “Arafura Sea.” Not a sea I have heard of.

Amidst that expanse of pale blue sea, speckled with drops of green—isles and archipelagoes—a pencil-marked course has been plotted.

“You have seemed tired of late, Cantor,” the caplain says, glancing up. He dismisses the others with a wave of his hand, leaving the control room vacant except for Brothers Vicanza and Artemis, who are manning the helm, and Brother Alder, the Watch, at the master control panel.

“Are you feeling well?” Marston asks, stepping around the table, standing between me and the map.

“I see I cannot hide it,” I say, mouth very dry. “I have had unrest of late. Sleep has… not found me easily.”

“A troubled soul?” he asks. His eyes pore over me, as though scouring my face for secrets. My many secrets.

He crosses his arms, leans against the table.

No. If he had found out about my conversations with Adolphine, or about the key, or that I am a girl, then he would not delay in punishing me.