We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

4

TERCE.

The canticles sung at this hour are done so in organum.

Just two voices. One Chorister takes the lower melody, and one takes the upper, at an interval of a fifth. Together, they sing, at times, in a harmonic unison—beginning and ending on the same note. But in the middle, the upper register might do what Caplain Amita called improvising.

It is the closest thing to creation I’ve known. To owning something.

You have to trust your partner. Anticipate where their melody will wander. As Cantor, I take the upper melody. It is usually Lazlo who takes the lower.

But Lazlo hasn’t yet taken his place beside me in the chapel.

At the tolling of the hour, Lazlo still not having arrived, Caplain Marston nods curtly to St. John, who eagerly steps before the psalter.

“Nunc Sancte nobis Spiritus.”

Come, Holy Ghost.

Normally, singing, I lose myself. In the song, in the careful dance of melodies, the balance of harmony. This hour, indeed, often passes the quickest. However, my focus is divided. At first, concern for what punishment Lazlo will receive for arriving late. But, as the hour passes and still he does not rush to join the rest of the Choristers, a deeper dread begins to weigh in my belly.

As the singer of the top melody, it is my burden to embellish, to ornament and turn; however, St. John is taking liberties with the lower melody, so I must balance the duet, sticking closely to the more droning, center notes of the mode.

“Flammescat igne caritas.”

Let fraternal love burn with fire.

When did I last see Lazlo?

Lauds. Afterwards, he was sent to the main deck to help Brother Ernesto with repairs. Was he injured? Even if he were in trouble for something, he would still be made to sing the liturgy.

Unless…

“Accendat ardor proximos.”

Let ardor burn for our neighbors.

I glance sidelong at St. John when the canticle is done, when we are waiting for the recitation of prayers, but I cannot tell whether his expression is more or less haughty than usual.

Terce.

A time to invoke the Holy Spirit in order to bolster you. To give you strength to overcome the challenges of the day.

After the hour, in silent recession, Ephraim and Caleb share my similar, concerned expression. All except St. John.

I see it now. The smug grin on his face.

What has he done?

I find Brother Ernesto aft, sprawled on the deck of the first engineering compartment, working on the machine that takes seawater and runs a current of electricity to it, separating it into gases called hydrogen and oxygen.

Oxygen is what we breathe.

Hydrogen is dangerous, though. Flammable, which is why you have to be careful, skillful when working on it.

Brother Ernesto is none of these things.

Brother Calvert used to maintain this machine, as well as the CO₂ scrubbers, the dehumidifiers. These machines that he tended, he called the most important. And they need constant fixing. The scrubbers stopped working at full capacity years ago. It’s one of the reasons we can only stay submerged for no more than a week at a time before venting. A task Brother Calvert took on with a quiet intensity and carefully taught Lazlo. Lazlo, in turn, has been teaching Brother Ernesto.

But Lazlo is not here.

“Cantor Remy,” Brother Ernesto says, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.

“Lazlo was supposed to be working with you earlier, yes?”

He frowns.

“It’s only… you saw he wasn’t at Terce,” I say.

I glance behind Brother Ernesto, to the hatch that leads to the tunnel, the access to the reactor room, to the engine room. This barrier no one save the elders or a handful of the brothers can cross. Where the Forgotten dwell. Not that anyone in the forward compartments would want to enter. There isn’t even a guard posted.

Brother Ernesto follows my gaze. Squints heavily.

St. John. He must have been listening to everything Lazlo said yesterday. He must have told the caplain. Of course he told.

“Lazlo was a good boy,” Brother Ernesto says, looking down, shaking his head. But this is all he will say. He seems ready to move on.

They are not to be spoken of, those who are sent back.

They are to be forgotten.

Lazlo.

Sent back to toil. To slowly poison himself in the reactor compartment.

I think of the thin, faceless frail bodies I have loaded into the torpedo tubes.

“But this is wrong… Why… He didn’t do anything wrong… He doesn’t deserve this,” I say. My knees go weak. No tendons. I cannot keep standing. It’s as though all of the energy in me has suddenly evaporated.

I fall to the ground, can’t seem to catch my breath.

It’s as though there’s the weight of a sailfish pressing upon my chest.

I feel Brother Ernesto’s hand upon my back.

“Child,” he whispers, intently, urgently, “it is a terrible thing, but you must not do this.”

He grabs my chin, forces me to face him. Looking serious now, holding a blackened finger to his dry lips.

“You should get back to your duties,” Brother Ernesto whispers. “Collect yourself. Don’t let anyone see. Off you go. Use the lower deck…”

But before I can move, a figure steps in through the hatchway.

Ex-Oh Goines enters, head half-ducked, giving Brother Ernesto an admonishing look, one thick eyebrow raised.

Then his heavy, dark eyes level upon me. A withering look that makes me feel the heat of shame. He stares at me silently until I stand. I wipe my eyes, but it is clear that he knows I have been crying. And, of course, he knows that I am not at my assigned station.

“Cantor,” he whispers curtly. I can only imagine the words that will follow.

“Caplain will have a word with you,” he says. “Brother Ernesto, you are needed in the chapel.”

Ernesto refuses to look at me as he nods respectfully, wipes his hands.

Fear of being associated with me.

I’m next, I think.

First Lazlo, and now me.

A high, raspy voice bids me to enter.

Inside, the quarters are different than when it belonged to Caplain Amita. Far more spare. The shelves of books are gone, as are the illustrations of the saints, the charts of ocean and coast. Now a single crucifix adorns the wall, the lamps and grease wicks casting a long shadow of Jesus’s broken body. Solemn and austere.

Caplain Marston sits at his desk as though it has always been his, back turned to me, scribbling something on a large sheaf of parchment while I wait in silence.

Crude notes arranged upon staves.

“Cantor,” he finally says before even stopping with his notating. Eventually, he does turn, folding his long fingers together at his lap. On his face, a most uncharacteristic smile. Were it to be found on the face of any other man, I could mistake it for genuine. But here, on this face, something wrong in it. He says, “I invited you here because I know how… close you were with Caplain Amita… the relationship you shared. You must be feeling quite a weight still so soon after his passing.”

“Yes, Caplain,” I say softly, carefully. Not the response I had expected. My knees still feel weak beneath me. I try to slow my breathing.

“You shared a confidence with him,” he says.

“I did. Indeed.”

“I wonder, Cantor, if we might build a similar relationship. A similar trust…”

I see the key hanging about his neck on a chain. The false missile key. He continues. “For you see, Cantor, I think there might be something… weighing upon your soul. Something you might need to confess.”

My heart races. Does he know? That I’m a girl? About the key? Did Caplain Amita tell him these secrets before death took him?

“Chorister Lazlo,” the caplain says.

My face burns hot. The lump in my throat has grown. Big as a stone I can’t swallow.

An expression of great, disingenuous pain crosses the caplain’s face. “He is sick, I am afraid, Cantor. Sick, and there is only one place for him.

“I blame myself, partly,” he continues. “You see, there’s a reason why we don’t send Choristers Topside. A reason why we normally send the… seasoned. The steadfast faithful. For the work that we must do is indeed bloody. Wrathful. And the Topsiders are deceitful at every turn. Their lies are like a disease. Their ideas. You see, some ideas can be an even worse sickness than one that ails the body. A sickness of the mind. Of the soul. Dear Lazlo confessed this to me. Confessed the… heretical thinking that might tear apart our order in these, our final, our most important days. You see, if one part of the body fails, so do the others. Like this very machine. The Leviathan. Every function important to the whole.”

Something darker in his eyes now, the way he is looking down his long nose at me. “Like the Demis and the other Forgotten, he must be purified by the presence of God. By the energy that drives us. His light.”

Caplain Marston lifts his chin as he says these last words, eyes closed, as though in prayer. Then he stands, approaches me, places a lank hand on my shoulder. “Now I must ask you a question.”

My heart races. Thrums.

He rounds behind me. “Cantor Remy, I know you were close with Chorister Lazlo. Please tell me… did he confide any of these… sick thoughts to you? I assure you, you will not be punished for speaking honestly with me.”

I fight the urge to recoil. To break down right here and now.

He already knows—if St. John told him about Lazlo, then he has told Marston that I was the one Lazlo was speaking to. So, he will know if I lie. But if I tell the truth…

“He did confess some… dark thoughts to me, Caplain,” I say. “I’m sorry I did not tell you immediately. I was just… I was worried for him.”

Caplain Marston circles around to face me, peering down at me, head hunched. “And what exactly did he say?”

The truth. That’s the only way out of this.

I clear my throat. “He said that… he wondered if we’d… if we’d been wrong, this whole time. What if the war was over? What if the Topsiders weren’t evil after all?”

The caplain nods thoughtfully. “What an easier, kinder world this would be were that true. And what did you tell him?” he asks, turning away, slowly pacing the length of the cabin.

“That the Topsiders were deceivers, of course. That they were trying to… evoke guilt from him. I told him…” Breathe! “… that he shouldn’t be saying such things.”

“And rightly so,” Caplain Marston says, finally ceasing his slow pace, turning on his heels, standing squarely before me, crossing his arms. “Your will is strong, Cantor. This is why you have risen to be the prime voice of our chorus. Unlike Lazlo, I know you are no lost soul. Your faith, steadfast. Your voice is a divine gift—lifts the heart of every man here. Every soul, into the light.”

There’s that dark light in his eyes again, though I’m not sure if it is the fire of conviction. In fact, I’m not sure that he believes me at all. But that doesn’t seem to matter.

“Perhaps Lazlo told you something about the interloper we’ve brought aboard as well?”

Did St. John hear all of what Lazlo confessed to me?

“He did… he did tell me something about the prisoner,” I say.

“Indeed, the interloper we have brought on board is a female.”

That very word—female—strikes a new, icy chord down the middle of me.

“You understand,” he says, “we must keep silent. It would confuse your fellow Brothers and Choristers. We would not have brought this woman on board if not absolutely necessary. And she will be expelled as soon as possible. Tell me, have you shared this or any of the other ideas Lazlo confided in you?” he presses. “His doubt?”

“Of course not, Caplain. I wish I had not heard it myself,” I say. The tears begin to well up, unbidden, once more.

“It is okay to mourn, Cantor Remy. I, too, was fond of young Lazlo…”

“Perhaps his punishment need not be so severe—I know Lazlo… I knew him well. He has never faltered before.” The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Caplain,” I add, the appropriate decorum.

Caplain Marston presses his lips together—perhaps taken aback at first—then closes his eyes, nods heavily, as though this is all a burden, a weight on him. “Always the fearless heart. You know as well as I there is no way for him to return. He must remain. We must all be spiritually resolved on the day of the Last Judgment.

“No,” he says, seating himself once more, “you may pray for him, Cantor. Pray for his soul. It might be purified and saved yet.”

“Th-thank you, Caplain,” I say wiping my eyes. But gone is the sadness. I feel a heat building inside me. A quaking.

The caplain continues. “In his final days, you may have noticed that Caplain Amita was also not himself as well…”

“Caplain?”

“He, too, might have also confessed to you some… notion of a crisis of faith. Sometimes, you see, it’s as easy to lose heart at the end of a life as it is in the middle. Especially when you don’t get to see a vision through to its end.”

“No… no, I don’t believe so. Caplain Amita has never faltered in his faith… that I know. Not in my presence.”

A sigh.

Perhaps disappointment.

Perhaps he knows I am lying. But, instead, a counterstep—“I mean not to tarnish the legacy of a great man. You will forgive my own candor… but it is as though I feel we two can speak honestly.”

Another smile. That makes my gut twinge.

“Things will move fast now, Cantor,” he says, turning back to his large sheaf of parchment. “The hour of the final judgment draws near. We must all prepare.”

When I return to the forward compartment, to the balneary, I find Ephraim and Caleb and St. John pounding old linen in the slurry vat for the making of parchment. They look up at me.

Caleb and Ephraim are both visibly relieved—they must have thought I’d suffered the same fate as Lazlo. Perhaps I almost did.

St. John’s expression is unmistakably dour.

I take up a mashing paddle and join them, opposite St. John, who is glaring down into the vat.

“We were worried…” Caleb whispers, next to me.

“All is well,” I say. My hands shake as I pound at the tub of turbid, greyish water.

“L-Lazlo,” he whispers, even more softly. A question.

“We don’t speak of them,” St. John snaps, slinging a narrow look at me from across the vat.

Caleb goes pale.

Ephraim looks to St. John and then to me, cautious, as though expecting that I might take up my paddle and strike St. John down.

I want nothing more than to bring it across his smug face.

It takes everything in me not to. A red-hot steam.

But I know now that these are dangerous times. That I can’t risk being found out. Not if, as Caplain Marston says, our time is nearing the end.

St. John almost seems disappointed.

I pound at the mash vat with my paddle. A slurry cloud billowing—larger bits of linen floating, swirling in the water. Bright white. Cleaner than any of the old linens we would normally use.

“Where did this new cloth for parchment come from?” I ask.

“The interloper,” Ephraim says. “Caplain said they’ll make fine, strong parchment.”

“Also had these colorful adornments on them,” Caleb says, frowning. “Wanted to keep one, but St. John said I couldn’t.”

“You don’t want anything to do with Topside trash,” St. John says.

“What sorts of adornments?” I ask.

Ephraim glances at St. John before handing over the crate filled with the refuse that will eventually be ejected through the torpedo tube at the day’s end. Atop, an array of pieces cut away from the interloper’s uniform.

Silver-colored buttons and bars. Stripes.

And then a few of the patches I’d caught sight of briefly the last evening, on the interloper’s sleeve. A colorfully vibrant bit of round cloth.

My throat tightens.

A vivid blue sea. Yellow land, a palm tree with green leaves. The embroidered white letters at the base: CPN.

This image I have seen before. This image from my childhood.

“I heard from Brother Duncan that the interloper was brought to the chapel today,” Ephraim says. “I think it’s something to do with the Last Judgment.”

“Is it broken, do you imagine?” Caleb asks.

“It is not broken,” St. John says, knowingly. “It will fire true, guided by God’s hand.”

“Then why was a Topsider brought on board in the first place?” I ask.

“It’s the caplain’s business,” St. John replies curtly, effectively ending the line of conversation.

St. John must not know the interloper is a woman. He must not have heard that part when he was listening in on us. I doubt he would be speaking of the matter at all if he knew.

“I wonder where he’s from,” I say. I didn’t mean to say it. The thought just spilled out.

“Does it matter?” St. John asks sharply.

“I don’t understand about Lazlo,” Caleb says, heart still painfully fixed on the topic.

“He lost his faith,” St. John answers before anyone else can. No mistaking that twist of delight in his tone. “And that can’t be abided. Doubt must be burned out of us. Of course, I suppose some of us are cleverer at hiding our true feelings, aren’t they? Our transgressions?”

That barb is directed at me. At least I know I’ve gotten under his skin.

I look down again at the patch, wanting to hang on to it, to this memory that has been made manifest. That I am holding in my hands.

But, no, they’ll see. I toss it back into the bin. Take hold of my paddle once more.

After prayers, we sit down in the mess for what should be the grandest meal of the day. It has never been so meager.

Mushroom cake with a thin broth of fish. No bread, of course. Nothing of substance that might fill the stomach.

I cannot bear to take more than a few spoonfuls.

Brother Dormer trades me a tooth for the rest of my meal. A molar. Yellowed, but not pocked with rot.

A good trade.

Based on the rules agreed upon by the Choristers, we should divide Lazlo’s stash between us, but I suggest that we hold on to them, in case he comes back. Only St. John disagrees, but he is powerless in this decision.

Though the others will not say it, I know what they’re thinking. Lazlo will not come back. They never do.

I will collect all the teeth I can, and might just have enough to pay for a potentially dangerous request.

Only a select group of brothers are allowed admittance past the tunnel. Brothers O’Shea, Theodore. Brother Dormer is one of those who ferries meals to the back, Dormer, who is kind if not dense. Dull in the eyes.

He is the one most likely to carry back a message to Lazlo, for the right price.

The only question is what my message will say. Brother Dormer cannot read, as is the case for most of the second generation of crew brought on just after Caplain Amita delivered God’s wrath. I can write anything I want, and it will be private. Words of hope? What consolation could I bring?

We all know the fate that awaits the Forgotten.

“They sleep in hammocks, like,” Brother Theodore once told us. “In a compartment behind the engine room. Lowest level. All damp. All crammed together. Worse than the way we’re packed in here, yeah. An’ they work the machines, like. They chained up. The smallest work the reactor. Got to have water pumped into the core almost all the time. They given these suits that supposed to keep them from getting poisoned. But they don’t help after long. Yeah. They got to control the pump by hand. Control how hot the reactor burns. That’s what gets them. Suit don’t help when it burns hot.”

They lose all the hair on their bodies. Their skin becomes riddled with sores. They swell. They cough up blood.

They eventually die, from the inside out.

“Have you seen him?” I ask Dormer when the mess has cleared. “Lazlo?”

His eyes dart away. He gets nervous sometimes. He sits and rocks when he gets nervous.

“I know we aren’t supposed to talk about him.” I offer him another two teeth. A molar and an incisor. Pristine. Barely yellowed.

“Yeah, seen him,” he says, softly, running the pad of his index finger over his newly gotten tokens. He frowns.

“It true that he was sent back because he was planning on trying to escape?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “Nothing so bad as that,” but I don’t tell him the rest. “As far as I know.”

“Where do they have him?” I ask, swallowing.

He, too, is saddened by Lazlo’s punishment. Everyone liked him.

But he doesn’t answer.

His silence tells me.

Lazlo doesn’t have much time.

In my bunk, I press my ear against the hull.

There’s a whale calling, out there in the darkness, faintly. If there are two, I do not hear the other. Just one voice looking for another, seeking with blind eyes. Not able to find them.

Lazlo.

Poor Lazlo.

I won’t let myself imagine what he might be experiencing right now.

Never before has a Chorister been punished so severely, unless their voice failed them.

Having utility, talent, the ability to praise Him with voice has always been enough to spare us before.

And then the logical question that will not quit my mind—that keeps knotting up my heart. Why would the caplain so vehemently try to keep Lazlo silent if there wasn’t some truth in what he said?

There is one person who might know the truth.