We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep by Andrew Kelly Stewart

Author:Andrew Kelly Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

6

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.

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