We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

5

THERE ARE FEW TIMES during the day when the boat is quiet, when you could cross from the balneary to the chapel without meeting a fellow brother. During prayers is one of those times. Of course, there would be no opportunity to slip away then. No, the only time is before the hammer is brought against the hull, between the hours of Compline and Matins.

During first sleep.

So, I lay awake in my bunk, waiting for the rhythmic sound of my fellow Choristers’ slumbering breaths.

Then I climb down from my bunk, search with my toes for the deck without making noise.

There are plenty of sounds to mask my footfalls.

Indeed, the mess—the galley is loud as always, Brother Dumas readying the next day’s broth. Hisses. The heavy thwock of the cleaver. Someone always mans the radio, just as with the sonar, the helm, the periscope, especially when the ship is surfaced for venting, when it is at its most vulnerable.

Here, I must slip past quickly.

Past the radio room lies Silas’s old quarters, and then the wardroom, where the elders congregate for their own meals. It is almost always occupied by one or two at any given hour. Quick. Not a breath.

Once I reach the chapel, I light a grease wick, make my way beneath the lower deck, through the lowest part of the boat, where I am often sent, tasked to crawl through the narrow and wet, oily underworks in order to inspect the pressure pipes, hoses, cables, on the hunt for signs of rust or corrosion or seepage.

I step lightly, hunched over, trying not to slosh through the pools of stagnant water as I inch my way forward, careful not to douse my wick—the tiny flame casting just enough light to navigate. I know these underworks better than anyone. Where every conduit and hose and cable leads. The location of the access plates. I find the one I’m looking for above me, the cell in which all who are in need of correction, of discipline, are sent for days of meditation, for prayer and reflection.

These are meant to be times without food or water, without distraction, but I found a way around this some time ago, when Lazlo was locked inside for the whole of a week due to his tardiness in arriving in line for Lauds.

Another of Marston’s punishments. Yes, God could be vengeful, and yes, I was contravening a direct command, bringing a few meager victuals to my friend. But a punishment like this… it just didn’t seem right. Not when life was so difficult to begin with.

Here, in this narrow chamber just above, is where the prisoner is being kept.

This woman.

This interloper with the patch I have seen before. The image that, when closing my eyes, I remember as clearly and vividly as anything.

I unscrew the rusted plate, carefully, softly as the corroded metal will allow. Once it is removed, a mass of bound wiring spills out. Above that, a grating, the gaps of which are only big enough to pass the smallest morsel of food. I can just see up into the darkened chamber by the light of my flame. No sign of the prisoner. But I can smell the human inside.

“Where do you come from?” I whisper up into the darkness. I’m not sure if she is sleeping, if she has heard me. Then I hear a rustling. Sudden, cautious movement.

“Down here,” I whisper. And then I hear the popping of joints, and, by my dim wicklight, wide, gleaming eyes appear on the other side of the grate above.

“Who… who are you?” the interloper asks. Voice raspy. Parched.

Is this a woman? Yes, this voice sounds different than the others.

Cleaner. Higher.

Is this the way my voice will sound? If so, then I will eventually be found out.

“What does the image on your patch mean?” I demand. “What does CPN mean? Tell me, and I’ll give you some water.”

“Patch…” she asks, confused, voice trembling, but louder than I would like.

I shush her. “The one with picture of the tree and the beach and the ocean.”

“Hm,” she grunts. “The emblem for the Coalition of Pacific Nations. CPN. Comes from the old flag of Guam. Have you seen it before?” A new, careful excitement in her voice.

“What is Guam?” I ask.

“An… an island. It was the strategic base—” She stifles a cough. “One of the last strongholds for American forces after the first war. Now it’s the northernmost seat of the Coalition. It’s where I was stationed. Where I set sail from.”

This stream of words means little. The places, these terms. But America. A word spoken of only in the past tense. A place that was. One side of the great war. Where the elders all came from. Caplain Amita told me all about it.

“I thought America was destroyed,” I say.

Silence for a moment. “Large parts of it are… now. Please. Water.”

I had almost forgotten. I feed one end of a rubber tube up, through a gap in the grate, and place the other end inside my canteen containing the half of my water ration I saved this evening.

I hear her slurp down two big gulps.

“Easy,” I say. “You’ll get sick.”

I hear her fast breaths.

“My name is Adolphine,” the interloper says, still heaving.

Her accent is different than anything I’ve ever heard. Thick. Long e’s.

Adolpheen.

“What is your name?” she asks.

I hesitate.

“You’re just a child,” she presses. Not a question. “You’ve seen this patch before?” she asks, shifting her tack once more, desperation in her voice.

“I remember it… from before I was saved,” I finally say. I shouldn’t be speaking with her, I know. I shouldn’t be out of my bunk. If I am caught, then my fate will be undoubtedly the same as Lazlo’s. But I can’t help it. I have to know.

“Were you trying to kill us?” I ask.

Silence. Her gleaming, dark eyes appear above me again, just on the other side of the grate. I cannot make out the rest of her features. All obscured in darkness.

“No. No, we were not,” she says. “We came to try and help you…” Her voice is tight with tears. I hear her sniffle. “We’d been hailing you for weeks, tracking you. We know that you are hungry—most of your food routes have been cut off…”

“And how do you know that? How do you know about us at all?”

“It was one of you who told us everything. Told us all about your boat. A man named… Calvert. That was his name.”

I suck in a breath. “Brother Calvert. He died. Died during a raid Topside.”

“No, he didn’t. No, he escaped. Made it look like he died in order to flee. I remember meeting him. Looked like a ghost, he was so pale. Thin. Scurvy had already taken him. He lasted a few months in our infirmary back in Guam. But he told us… everything. Everything.”

“Lies,” I whisper. They must be. Why would Calvert just leave us like that? Betray us?

But Adolphine presses: “The Leviathan. That is the name of your boat. Calvert told us about your order. Your prayers. How they b-butcher the boys. It’s called castration, what they do.” She says it in a way that says, I know this happened to you. “They force some of you to work in the reactor room. He told me about the missile.” Her face is pressed down against the grate. Her skin is the color of brown coconut husk, I can see by the flickering flame in my hand. A darker shade than Lazlo’s skin. Than mine.

“The Last Judgment…” I say, and the words sound odd on my lips.

“It doesn’t work, though… the missile,” this woman named Adolphine says. “Calvert. He was the electrician for the ship, yes? He told us… the missile wouldn’t fire. Some part of its targeting system has been faulty since the first days of the war. Told us that your Captain… this Amita… he knew it wouldn’t fire. That’s why we decided to try and reach out to him. We were trying to reason with him… trying to get him to come in. To bring all of you in, to safety.”

I could not speak if I wanted to. This river of information, inundating. Spilling over me.

“That’s why I’ve been taken,” Adolphine says. “Your brothers… they lined us up on the deck of our ship and took turns executing us. They were asking who knew electronics. I… I kept myself from being killed. I volunteered. In order to stay alive.” Her voice, so soft, cracks, pained with guilt. “But I won’t fix it. I will die first.”

She pauses.

Footsteps sound on the deck above. Brother O’Shea, patrolling the central corridor of the chapel. I can tell by the weight, the particular gait in every footfall. He pauses a moment, right outside the cell above, by the sound of it, and then continues on.

“You were probably taken from a Guam boat when you were young,” Adolphine continues, quieter than before. “That’s where you must have seen the symbol.”

“I… I was saved. We were all rescued from the Topsiders. The wicked.”

A dark sort of laugh. “This boat has been kidnapping boys for almost twenty years. Malaysia, Indonesia, Oceania. Australian ships. I grew up on Guam, hearing about the raids.”

No. No more!

I replace the plate, begin screwing it back into place.

“Wait!” she hisses.

But I do not.

“The world didn’t end,” she continues, her voice only slightly raised, muffled. Only just quiet enough to be quiet. But the words still audible. “People survived. More than half the world is still alive. Some lands are poisoned, but many are not. Much of the radioactive fallout has settled out of the atmosphere. There’s been war, but now we’re on the brink of peace. We have survived. You have to tell people this… we are not your enemy!”

I can listen to no more.

But that word haunts.

We.

“What?” I ask Ephraim, who has been giving me furtive glances all morning.

“You got up last night, before Vespers,” he says, softly, even though we are alone for the moment in the balneary. The one among us who observes silence most ardently. He’s helping me to dump the steamed bits of fish—guts and gills and eyes—into the wide tub we use for oil pressing.

“Ex-Oh Goines asked me to check on one of the bilge pumps, below the chapel,” I say, not looking at him, hoping he will not see the lie in my eyes.

He accepts this excuse without question, but I’m not convinced he believes it.

“You must be tired,” he says as we hoist the hundred-pound weight by pulleys and lower it over the tub.

“Very,” I say.

I did not sleep at all upon slipping back into my bunk. Could not.

Not after everything the interloper said to me.

Out of everything she told me, it was a question that burned in my mind, kept my eyes open to the dimness.

The missile. The Last Judgment.

Why would Caplain give me a key to a missile he knew would not work? Perhaps he intended for us to finish our mission.

The reverie is broken by the appearance of Brothers Jessup and Ignacio, each carrying an end of a long, canvas-bound package.

A body. That it is sewn up in a canvas hammock means it has come from aft. The form inside is small, light in their arms.

They deposit their delivery upon the table and exit without a word.

I feel, inside the frayed, brown and yellow and green stained sack, the body, the hard, thin limbs. The shape and size, familiar.

I freeze.

Ephraim and I share a look. He doesn’t stop me as, heart pounding, cold building in my belly, I tear open a bit of the seam at the corner of the head of the pouch. Just enough to peer inside. I brace my heart for the reality that it will be Lazlo’s lean, pale bronze face staring up at me—but… it is not.

This is Bartholomew.

A Demi who was cast back into engineering months ago. Bartholomew, who had survived his cutting, and had a lovely, deep and smooth voice until he did not. Until the voice cracked, soured. He is barely recognizable. Face gaunt, skin stretched across the skull. Eyes hollow and sunken. Cheeks and chin speckled with sores. Red lips. No hair except for in scrawny tufts.

The smell of death chokes me. I gag, must turn away. Ephraim as well. Only after we’ve regained our breath, taking a step away from the fetid stink, do we finish the job, covering him once more. We hoist his body carefully into the torpedo tube. It fits easily, he is so slight. Then we seal and pressurize, and, upon reciting our prayers respectively, I open the torpedo tube doors, and Ephraim hits the firing trigger.

Hiss.

Fizzle.

Another soul relinquished to the sea.

Ephraim places his hand squarely upon my shoulder. His commitment to silence is, in this instance, a comfort.

The moment is broken by the harsh ringing of the hull.

Sext.

The midday hour. The part of the day where the light should be shining on us fully, were we standing out in the open air.

God’s light, bathing us.

We sing Kyrie eleison.

Lord, have mercy.

Caplain Marston speaks—our lesson for the day, one that is different than Caplain Amita’s message that we were to pray for the Topsiders. For those who are suffering during these long years of tribulation.

No, Marston’s message is harsh, even in the hour of the Kyrie. Mercy has already been delivered to those who have deserved it. So, in this time, we instead praise the penitent. Those who have done God’s work. To acknowledge the mercy God has shown us, particularly we Choristers, who were saved. Who were purified.

Lord, have mercy.

But there is no mercy here on this ship.

Lazlo was penitent.

He was kind and good.

And he is being punished. For what?

All because he discovered the truth. That, maybe, not all the Topsiders are evil. That, perhaps, they were even trying to help us. That there is still a world up there, even after we unleashed God’s fury.

And, if this prisoner Adolphine is telling the truth—if. She might not be. She might only be feeding me lies in order to try and save her own skin. Caplain Amita knew the missile wouldn’t fire, and he never tried to find a way to fix it. He never planned on delivering the Last Judgment.

Does this mean that he lost faith in the end?

It’s a question that makes my stomach turn.

Was I stolen? Taken away from parents who might have loved me? Were my parents killed, like so many others, at the hands of my fellow brothers? All by order of Caplain Amita himself. A man who I have revered above all.

I know only one thing for certain. He entrusted the key with me, not Marston. He entrusted me with it because he did not trust Marston. Caplain Amita told me as much. That Marston would not hear the call from God when the time eventually came.

The caplain didn’t destroy the key, though. He could have done that. Could have thrown it into the sea, to ensure the missile would never be fired.

No, he truly meant, if the time came for the missile to be fired, it should be my choice. But why mine?

“Where are you from?” I ask, looking up once more through the grate, into the darkened cell above.

I shouldn’t be here. It was risky enough, slipping away once. It’s one thing if Ephraim noticed—he would not go to Caplain Marston. But St. John certainly would.

Still, it is too important.

The prisoner stirs. Moves sluggishly.

“Ah, the little bird returns to my window,” Adolphine says. Maybe an attempt at humor, but a weak one. Weak, strained like her voice. I slip through the gap in the grating a slender slice of fish cake.

When she realizes what it is, she takes it from my fingers quickly. I hear her chew, savor it.

Then I snake the water tube up.

“Thank you, child,” she says after taking a long drink, relieved, some of her energy renewed.

“I’ve never heard someone talk like you. Sometimes, when new kids join us, they have all kinds of different ways of speaking. Different shades of skin. Do they speak that way on Guam?” I ask.

“I am not from Guam. I was born on an island in the Caribbean called Martinique. The Caribbean…”

“I have seen charts for those islands,” I say. “Caplain Amita showed them to me.”

“After the war, my family was evacuated to Panama due to radiation from the Cuba strike. And then my parents joined the American armed services—we heard that there was food and opportunity for those who served. Both my father and my mother were soon engaged in the Pacific fleet, which was based in Guam, and they brought me along.”

“You have brothers and sisters?”

“Three…” she answers. “Three brothers.”

“Are they alive?”

“One is. He’s stationed at Base Darwin, in Australia. One was killed in the battle of Oceania, just last year. The other died when I was very young. Typhus. Child,” she says, after a pause. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

“They let women serve… they let women serve with men on your boat?”

“They do. There was a time, before the war, when they did not. But now, every person must serve. In order to survive.”

A woman.

I still cannot believe it.

I cannot remember ever speaking with a woman.

“My name is Remy,” I tell her. “It isn’t the name I was born with. All those brought aboard, we were given different names. Sacred names.”

It feels like a confession of my sins, divulging all of this. As though she is playing the role of confessor. The role Caplain Amita often played for me.

Adolphine doesn’t respond for a time; I hear her shift. I think she is lying down, curled, for there is no room to lie flat in those tight quarters. She presses her face against the grate, like last time. I see one eye in this dimness, looking down at me through the mass of exposed wiring, big, honey-colored, and red-veined.

“Remy, I think you will get in trouble if you are found speaking with me,” she says, sober, tired.

“I need for you to tell me about the war,” I say. “And what it’s like Topside. What year is it?”

Adolphine takes in a deep breath. “The year is 1986. There have been two wars, really…” she says, after a moment, her voice, high, but also thick. “The first came in 1963. Not many records survived the first war, but we’ve been able to piece together most of the chain of events, especially thanks to Calvert. Your captain, Amita, was a chaplain in the US Navy, and he, along with an executive officer named Crockett, led a group of about thirty other crewmembers in a mutiny against the captain of this submarine. They felt that war against the Reds…”

“Reds?”

“The Russians… the enemy of the United States—of America. These two countries were almost at war before, you see… it was called the Cuban Missile Crisis. Everyone had missiles pointed at each other on the land as well. They thought the Reds were in league with the Devil. That this was the great war, good versus evil. Their mutiny was quick, bloody. Crockett was injured, eventually died from his wounds, but not before he launched all the nukes—except one, which malfunctioned. Calvert was one of those original members.”

The elders.

“They forced the rest to join or die—many stayed. Those who didn’t were thrown into the sea.” She pauses—footsteps crossing above. The grease wick quavers in my hand. When the guard passes, Adolphine continues: “Seems like Crockett’s plan was to catch the Reds by surprise. It worked. He hit a number of key air bases and other essential Russian military infrastructure.

“America then had no choice but to follow through with the attack once it began, and for that reason, in the first wave of the war, Russia and the rest of the USSR was hit hardest. America was mostly spared, except for a few cities and bases, while other countries in Europe were in closer range to the SSRs. They soaked up most of the retaliation.

“It was a long war. Two years, it raged on. The Reds weren’t down and out—found a way to get a squad of their bombers through. Took out our defenses. Launched the last of their missiles. That’s when America got hit good. Starvation followed. Civil unrest. Different factions battled each other, in America, but also in Russia, in Europe. That was pretty much the end of the first war.

“Worst was the radiation poisoning. Most of the people who died in the war died from that.”

That I know about. The blue poison.

I see in my mind the Demi, young Bartholomew. A skeleton.

I think of Lazlo.

It doesn’t take long for the poison to kill you. To eat you up.

“How many died?” I ask.

Silence again. For a moment.

“No one really knows—estimates are somewhere between one and one and half billion… about half the population of the world, some think. Places here in the South Pacific didn’t get the worst of it. Japan, the Hawaiian Islands were hit because they were strategic bases… but the wind patterns didn’t deposit the fallout this far south—and over the years, it dissipated. That’s why places like Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and Guam survived. That’s why I survived.”

“What about the second war?”

“After the fall of the American military command, Australia became the center for the fight against the Reds. Though the Russians were worse off than the US, there were still skirmishes between their remaining forces and US forces in the Pacific. The Chinese, meanwhile, had managed to keep out of most of the war until then—they forced the Russians to hand over their remaining tanks and ordnance, and then used them to aggressively absorb countries like Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, and Laos. All under the flag of communism.”

“What is a communism?”

“A communist is someone with a much different perspective than ours. A system where the people should be the ones who have the power, but, in reality, it’s the person in charge who calls the shots. So, in so many ways, it became the same old fight just with different players.”

“But you said the other day that peace was at hand,” I say.

She pauses. “It is. The Coalition lost the Philippine islands just weeks ago—there was a key base there—to the Eastern Asian Alliance Navy—they call themselves the Liánméng. It won’t be long until Australia stands down. Guam will probably do the same.” An edge of bitterness. “But the war will be done, finally. Everyone is tired of it.”

I hear the exhaustion. The defeat.

“Are your parents alive?” I ask.

This seems to take her off guard. “No. They both died of cancer, a few years ago. They were sent out on rescue missions—trying to move people out of the contaminated zones in Japan. They were exposed.”

“I’m sorry.”

Poison. Always the poison that kills.

I say, “You mentioned that my parents were probably from Guam—stationed in Guam, like yours. Do… do you think you knew my parents? What happened to them?”

“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.”