“That’s not many,” she says, ever more confident. “Yes, we can take them.”
We.
“But…” I begin. “I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“We won’t have to. If we surprise them, we can restrain them. No one has to die.”
I think a moment, find myself chewing at a nail. Bitter grease. Most of it pulls away at the quick. Only a little jolt of pain. My fingers no longer have much feeling in them. “But even if we shut off the engine and generators, Marston could still use battery power to dive.”
“We disable the hydraulics, then,” Adolphine counters. “They won’t be able to control the dive planes.”
“Then the boat would be dead in the water.”
“I know most of the Leviathan’s systems,” Adolphine says. “I studied them. But I’m not sure if I’d know how to shut everything down. Would you?”
“No,” I say. “Lazlo would.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, he’s very smart. Good with the electrics. With the machines. But even if we could take over the engine room, force the boat to surface, we’d have to send off the message first. How will we get you to the radio room?”
Silence. The boat groans. I feel it shift. Feel the water and seepage flow past my feet. Soon, the hull will resound with the hammer.
“You’ll have to do it, Remy,” she says.
I swallow.
“But I don’t know… I don’t know how any of it works.”
“I can tell you. I can walk you through it—”
“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve risked so much already, coming here. I would get caught!” I say, trying to keep control of my voice.
She says, “We could all survive this. You and your friend Lazlo. We have medicines. Treatments.”
Topside.
All along, it has been such a distant thought. Sunlight. Air that doesn’t reek of oil. Water that doesn’t taste bitter, brackish.
What would life look like without the order? Without the ringing of the hull every third hour?
“Others could perhaps help, too,” I say. “It will be hard to accomplish this on our own. I could try talking to them… to the Forgotten. I could send a message back to Lazlo… let him know what to expect.”
“And risk getting us caught?” Adolphine asks, her tone suddenly sharp. “Don’t do it, Remy. We can’t trust others.”
“You trust me.”
“Yes, but you’re the one who came to me, Remy. Can you really say without doubt that you could convince the others to disregard everything they’ve believed in, everything they’ve been taught, so quickly?”
I want to fight back. I want to say that I have changed quickly. That my whole world has been turned upside down in a matter of days.
But no… it wasn’t quick. The cracks were already there, before any of this occurred, before Caplain Amita died. Before I was given the key. I just couldn’t see them.
“Do Topsiders believe in God?” I ask.
Adolphine doesn’t answer for a few long seconds. “People have always believed in something. Different religions have different names for God. Some believe in many gods.”
“Do you believe in God?”
Another pause. “No. I was raised to. My parents believed. But I do not.”
“Why?”
“Because… I got older and saw what had happened to the world. When I truly realized how many had died, how many continued to suffer—suffering you cannot fathom—I could not imagine a God that would allow such a thing to happen.”
“Some of the scripture claims God to be merciful. But some say He is vengeful. Lately, I’ve had trouble seeing how he could be both.”
Adolphine doesn’t speak.
“Lazlo doesn’t deserve what is happening to him,” I say.
“You love him?” she asks, carefully, kindly.
“He’s my best friend,” I say. “I do… I do love him.”
I have never said it. Love has always been a word associated only with God. But yes.
“We listen to the whales. When we should be sleeping. They sing against the hull. We would listen to them and try to figure out what they were saying to each other. Have you heard them?”
“Yes…” she says. “I’ve heard the whales.”
“There’s several I can recognize just by their song. Now I only hear one.”
Silence.
The creaking of the boat. Footsteps somewhere. A compressor hisses in the next compartment.
“We can save him, Remy,” Adolphine whispers from above, voice full of light. Of hope. “We can save them all. And ourselves.”
I find Brother Callum alone at his nightly station, manning the radio room on the main level. The Leviathan often tows a buoy with an antenna cable in order to listen to the Topside transmissions, even from great depths. But, especially on nights like this, when we surface in order to vent gasses, the station must be manned. To scan for our enemies. For prey.
He is focused, ears covered by the bulky headset. He starts upon turning to find me standing at the hatchway, his one uncovered grey eye wide. He looks cross, ready to scold, but softens upon seeing what I’ve brought. A bowl full of steaming ginger steep.
I must continue adjusting it in my hands to keep it from spilling.
The boat sways, pitches heavily. It creaks and groans. It’s a rocking, stormy sea out there tonight. Normally, the Leviathan would dive deep beneath the squalls, but on venting nights, there is no choice.
Brother Callum, normally red-faced, has a sallow and green countenance. He does not handle bad weather well.
And so, he accepts the steep gratefully, waving me inside, keeping one hand braced against the broad console.
The radio room is small—just big enough to hold two seats positioned before a vast, bulky array of electronic equipment. A face of switches and dials and knobs that fill an entire wall of the compartment. I take the empty seat next to him.
I see exactly the electronic equipment I am to use. The tuner, where I am to change the broadcast channel. The teletype machine, in the corner, likely unused since the days leading up to the war.
Will it still work?
I shouldn’t be in here. No Chorister should, but Brother Callum, normally one of the most observant, one of the strictest in our order, has softened since Silas’s death. Not just to me but to Ephraim and Caleb, and even St. John, who tends to stoke the ire in most people.
The overall mood on the boat has been muted since Silas’s death.
They were close.
“Do you hear the enemy?” I whisper.
“There’s nothing out there. Not in this storm,” he says, taking a long sip of the steep. A particularly large swell rocks the compartment upward, pitches him so that he almost spills the bowl.
He mutters, closes his eyes, takes another long draw.
Silence has always meant something different in Brother Callum’s presence. He clearly was never inclined to be a loquacious person, and so has always seemed to abide the mandate of our order, our silence, with greater ease than the other brothers. Perfectly happy in it.
Not tonight.
Tonight, he is discontented.
He takes another sip. Closes his eyes.
Too soon, I think. Too soon for the nostrum to take effect.
Even though it is a powerful treatment. Caplain Amita often took it, in his last days, to stave off pain long enough to find some rest.
Here, I have used all three doses’ worth.
Not enough to harm someone.
I asked Brother Dumas what would happen if I took all the powder at once.
He laughed and simply said it would be a long, uninterrupted sleep. That I would certainly be unable to rise for the call to Matins.
So, I would not hurt anyone. Yet I feel guilty for doing it.