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.
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.
We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep Page 6
