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Below decks I can hear the crew already celebrating. At the rate they are going, I might not even need to knock them out. I suffer a moment of confusion--the voices of the call batter at my ears as I think that thought, making me pause and sway a moment with their intensity. Whoever or whatever it is seems to be actively paying attention and monitoring me now, not just issuing a siren’s call. I don’t know if this is comforting or disturbing. I’ve assumed all along the call is benign, and felt flattered for being so special--when the call began I searched port logs and newschips for unexplained disappearances into space, but I didn’t find anything. I can well believe that the Military Board could and would suppress any news reports of ships disappearing off their routes, but the port logs would be much harder to alter, not to mention that surely there’d be tales about strange disappearances circulating around the port. They’ll be talking about me and my ship soon enough, I suppose.
This is not a comforting thought. In the days and weeks leading up to this I have felt sad and guilty, but until now I have not felt frightened. I am still choosing this of my own free will. I still feel the familiar wash of longing and desire to find the source of the call. Maybe whoever is calling me is trying to ensure my cooperation with an added incentive of fear, threats to quash any doubts, but they didn’t need to do this. I stand with one hand against the passageway wall, breathing slowly and feeling the basso profundo sighs of the ocean’s voice through my palm. It usually soothes me. Not tonight.
I retreat to the oasis of my cabin to collect myself before joining the crew and committing my treachery upon them. My cabin is small and oddly curved by the ship’s hull, but I have made it comfortable with tapestries and pillows, a strange mishmash of Arab and Celtic replications and handicrafts, a crazy barbarian Orientalist fantasy of a scene but I love it in all its unabashed inauthenticity. It reflects its occupant in that regard. My mother’s dancer is safely held in a stasis field, protected from the ocean’s occasional violence. She looks serene as always, confident in some secret knowledge. I can only hope she knows something I don’t.
This is not a comforting thought. In the days and weeks leading up to this I have felt sad and guilty, but until now I have not felt frightened. I am still choosing this of my own free will. I still feel the familiar wash of longing and desire to find the source of the call. Maybe whoever is calling me is trying to ensure my cooperation with an added incentive of fear, threats to quash any doubts, but they didn’t need to do this. I stand with one hand against the passageway wall, breathing slowly and feeling the basso profundo sighs of the ocean’s voice through my palm. It usually soothes me. Not tonight.
I retreat to the oasis of my cabin to collect myself before joining the crew and committing my treachery upon them. My cabin is small and oddly curved by the ship’s hull, but I have made it comfortable with tapestries and pillows, a strange mishmash of Arab and Celtic replications and handicrafts, a crazy barbarian Orientalist fantasy of a scene but I love it in all its unabashed inauthenticity. It reflects its occupant in that regard. My mother’s dancer is safely held in a stasis field, protected from the ocean’s occasional violence. She looks serene as always, confident in some secret knowledge. I can only hope she knows something I don’t.
