Andrew Stewart - We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

“Caplain Amita gave me the key for a reason,” I say. “He wanted me… me to decide. To be able to say that no… the time is not right. Perhaps it would never be right. He knew that.”

“And he was a fool who had lost his faith in the end. Thank God I am here to enact His plan for the world. And we must ready ourselves,” Marston says, nodding, reveling in his own righteousness. “Your heart is corrupted, but you are too important to be rid of here… in these final hours.”

“Utility,” I say.

He nods.

“You should ask St. John to sing your hymn. He is very eager.”

Caplain Marston gives a short, dry laugh. “He is that. But even if he was in a place to sing, after you unleashed your… fury upon him, he does not have your gift. No, I wrote this for you.”

“But why would I sing now?” I say, trying to sit up. “Sing for you?”

“Not for me… for your brothers. For Lazlo. Don’t you want to give them some comfort before we descend… an exaltation of the spirit?”

I don’t answer.

He frowns.

“Sing the Cantio,” he says, “and I will let you see Lazlo again. I will bring him back from Engineering. You will spend your last hours with him.”

I search Marston’s face for sincerity. Indeed, he has said these words with the same intense conviction in which he has said everything else.

Lazlo. If he is with me, then perhaps we could still flee together. Find a way to escape. Like Adolphine said.

“But… I don’t believe anymore,” I say, honest as I can. Strong as I can. “I don’t know if I ever really did.”

“Ah, but you don’t have to believe in order to be a vessel for the Holy Spirit. Your dear Adolphine is proof of that. Look what she did for us—repaired the Last Judgment. Like Solomon, like Paul—a tool of God.”

He believes it. Everything he is saying, he believes.

“And when you were done with her, you killed her,” I say.

“We could not have an interloper on board during our final hours.”

“But you’ll have a woman aboard,” I say. “You haven’t told them, have you? The brothers? They don’t know.”

Marston pauses. Stands straighter. I’ve caught him out. The only time I’ve seen him flinch. “No,” he says, steely.

“All the lies you’ve built this place upon… you and Caplain Amita both—you know that if they knew about me, it would cause people to doubt. That I was conspiring with a Topsider, that I was going to escape.” The words keep coming. They won’t stop. “St. John knows. I saw the confusion when he discovered my secret.”

Marston bends down, pinches my chin, tight. Leans in. I couldn’t turn away from his narrow, yellowed face if I wanted. “St. John knows how important our mission is. He’ll be dutiful to the order. And if you will not—if you attempt to say a word—then I will take Lazlo’s life with my own hands. While you watch. I promise you that.”

Beady eyes, dark. Almost dead with resolve.

I swallow. My throat, thick.

Agreeing means that I will be let free. Agreeing means that Lazlo will be with me and that we still might possibly find a way out.

I nod once, silently.

“Tomorrow, then,” he says, releasing his grip, standing straight, smoothing out his robes. “Tomorrow will be our grand day. Our salvation. I suggest you pray, dear Remy. Pray that you might be forgiven your trespasses. He might just listen.”

The deck had been at an upward tilt. Now it levels.

The hammer throngs against the hull. Three resonant blows.

Call to Compline.

The final office in the liturgy of the hours.

We brothers were often asked, in this hour, to contemplate our actions and thoughts in the day. An examination of conscience.

This was common when Caplain Amita was still alive.

Have our actions and thoughts aligned with our moral code? The order by which we have all promised to live our lives?

Sometimes, I felt I had strayed. My thoughts had often bent toward those scant memories of my life Topside. Of sunlight. Of bright-tasting limes. Even though I knew I should not let them stray. To dwell on such memories was the same as wishing to live amongst the Forsaken. Amongst the sinners.

I often thought that my very existence was an aberration.

Me, a woman. A forbidden figure amongst the penitent men, living a lie.

Caplain Amita tried to assuage this guilt when I confessed it to him.

“ You are doing God’s work, ” he would say. “A vessel for God. And God will watch after you.”

But this was the same argument Marston gave.

Utility.

It does not matter what you think, what you feel, how you act, so long as it is God’s work.

An ultimate hypocrisy—this from the man I thought had taken care of me for so long. The man I thought loved me. The one who started all this—who helped to end the world, who tossed little girls screaming into the sea, and took the boys and cut them so that they might remain eternally pure.

I look at my hands, in the dimness of the officers’ quarters I have been locked in for the past day. Wash them in the bowl of rare fresh water brought to me in a chipped clay bowl. Splash my face. Taste the salty grit trickling down over my lips. I pull on clean, newly sewn robes. Marston has given me fresh linen strips for binding my chest. These, I don’t wear. If I am to die, I will go to God the way I was put into the world.

When the rusted, squealing latch is finally pulled aside, I stand. The door swings open, and a blazing amber, putrid light pours in. Every lamp and grease wick ablaze. Ex-Oh Goines and Brother Augustine await me to exit, and then escort me, standing on either side, to the chapel, down to the lower deck, past the radio room, which is empty, past the missile control room, which is manned by Brothers Elia and Cordova, both seated before a wide bank of electronic panels that are already lit up. They watch as I pass.

I am pushed forward, ducking through the hatch, and stand to find almost all the brothers lining the walls of the chapel, staggered between, around, and behind the missile tubes. All bow their heads in silence as I pass.

Brother Ernesto. Ignacio. Andrew. Callum. Jessup. Pike.

Do some of them know the truth? That I was conspiring with a Topsider? That I was planning on escaping? Brother Callum might. He knows this is madness. He might not have the words to express it, but he knows. I saw it the night I dosed his steep with the nostrum, when he recounted his story of first being brought aboard.

But he will not look at me. No, he will not act.

He will be complicit in all of this.

At the end of the long compartment, atop the driftwood dais, Caplain Marston stands, eyeing me intently.

And, before the dais, before the psalter, Ephraim. Mouth drawn tight, eyes weighted. St. John, face swollen, welted red and purple from my attack. He is staring directly at me. Yet I don’t find fury or contempt there, as I would expect after what I did to him. Not even coldness. It’s a vacancy.

And there, beside them all, Lazlo.

He, too, is looking directly at me, but his eyes are still very full of light.

Lazlo.

Did he, for a moment, dare to dream that there might be an escape for us?

There still might be.

If I could slip away. Take Lazlo with me. Marston said the Coalition ships might be an ocean away, but they also might be closer than that. It would only mean surviving a day or two on the open seas if they are indeed on their way to the rendezvous.

If.

Too many ifs.

The reality of it begins to drape over me.

A coldness.

That this is it.

I see now that both the hatchways at either end of the compartment are being guarded. The ladders down to the lower level. There’s no escape.