Velvet Dogma

chapter 12



They climbed down the ladder to an abandoned sewer, then skittered through a drain to an even lower place. They had to be thirty feet below ground level, if not more. The moment Rebecca thought she felt the angle of the floor change, it went away. They were following a tunnel large enough that if she extended her arms, she couldn't touch the walls or the ceiling. The floor was a mixture of hard packed sand aggregate, broken pieces of glass, polymers and cement. Graffiti marked their passage, glowing in the black lights carried by the Day Eaters.

There were six of them. Four walked in front, a pair walked in back. They were eerily silent. The one time she'd tried to engage them in conversation by thanking them, they ignored her. All looked like the first. Mismatched snatches of material sewn together with no apparent rhyme or reason. Like Bedouin of the sewers, they were covered from head to toe.

The black light barely gave off enough illumination, so Rebecca picked her way carefully. She'd noticed diamond-shaped marks and annotations on the walls at each intersection. By the neon hues, she guessed that they were only visible by black light. Probably navigation signs.

Finally Andy broke the silence. "They used an EMP burst. It fried all unshielded electronics within a block radius."

A block? What about her grandmother at the D-pens?

Reading her worry, he added, "The D-pens facility is shielded to withstand a lot more than a localized EMP charge. Don't worry. She's probably sailing the high seas, oblivious to what's going on around her."

Rebecca trudged beside him, feeling the soreness of her legs. An ache had found a home in her upper back. She'd done more running, jumping, throwing and crawling over the last twenty-four hours than she'd done in twenty years. She'd thought she'd been keeping herself in shape in prison. The devil's advocate side of her reminded her that she probably was in shape. She'd just never anticipated being one of America's Most Wanted.

"So who are they?" She tried to keep her voice low, but one of the men in front turned around, his eyes flashing a warning to be silent. She huddled closer to Andy. She felt more like a captive than a rescuee. "What'd you call them?" she whispered.

"Day Eaters."

"What does that mean?"

"They eschew the day," he whispered. "Theirs is the night. They hug the darkness and the shadows. The days eat away without them. Only when it's gone do they come out."

She shuddered. Their saviors sounded like vampires or ghouls.

"Why do they do this?"

Another of the Day Eaters leading the way turned. He hissed and drew his hand across his throat in a sign that could not be misconstrued. She let the question hang. For now she'd remain silent. Perhaps she'd find the answer later, even if it meant approaching a day eater directly.

After marching what seemed like hours beneath the city, they came to an immense slab of concrete along the right-hand wall. Water dripped across its surface, its source unknown. She touched the concrete and felt a deep cold, as if a frigid abyss were held at bay. She tasted the water. Salty.

The ceiling was composed of rebar and snapped concrete. It looked like what she'd expect to see after an earthquake but here, underground, Rebecca imagined the debris had once been on the surface, but had been covered over. Bulldozing it under had probably been an easier option than removing each and every piece of debris. Tsunami, or earthquake, each step was like a journey through the devastation.

Then it hit her. She examined the concrete wall and how it extended through the floor and the ceiling and continued on as far as the eye could see. She remembered seeing the great Tsunami wall when she was on Sunset. This must be it. Had they come that far? Was this the lower portion of that immense wall that protected Los Angeles from the ravages of the ocean? It had to be.

In less than half an hour, they came to what could only be their destination. The Day Eater City spread out beneath them. She stood upon a promontory and stared down at an underground city that could easily house ten thousand souls. The ceiling was a great arched dome reinforced by girders the size of ocean freighters. Concrete and substrate bonded the spider-webbed ceiling. The walls had been built with the same construction. Whatever this place was, whoever built this place had built it with the end of the world in mind.

The city floor was composed of a hundred thousand ten by ten foot CONEXs —steel shipping containers used by the military since the Korean War—that were open on one side. Stacked upwards of seven high, the CONEXs created avenues, cul-de-sacs and meandering paths that Rebecca could see from her high vantage point. Here and there she could make out a market. Over there children were playing a form of soccer, rushing in bunches to and fro, the dust from their effort hovering over them like a lingering tornado. But in more instances she saw people confined to their small spaces, climbing up and down their CONEX towers with the aid of ropes and ladders. Then she noticed something strange. In fact, as she looked around, she was surprised she hadn't noticed it before. All the people of this underground city, every last one of them, were swaddled in cloth just as her guides were.

A Day Eater approached her, blond eyebrows arched over blue eyes. "Follow me. We go to council."

Twenty minutes later they found themselves within the city proper in a circular area surrounded by twenty-one evenly spaced open CONEXs. Pillows and blankets swathed the interiors of metal cubicles like the tents of Arab sheiks. Incense burned, carrying with it a sweet tonic for the senses. Within each one sat a Day Eater; some reclined, some sat in Lotus positions staring towards an imaginary horizon, some exercised, the small space not limiting their martial skills—and from each one Rebecca got the feeling that she was being examined as if she were the experiment of a mad scientist who'd just found a hidden mystery of the universe.

She felt a chill. Cold radiated from the tsunami wall. She looked up into the dome. From the city floor, she could barely make out the girders and beams that made up the lattice because the smoke from the cooking fires and incense gathered in clouds against the earthen sky.

She and Andy were directed to sit upon knee-high backless chairs. Then they were turned so that they sat back to back.

"Do not move," said one of the Day Eaters. "You must not move, whatever happens." He passed in front of her, made the sign of a cut across the neck, then was gone.

"Listen to him, Bec."

"What's going to happen?" She wanted to turn and look. She was getting a bad feeling about this.

"Whatever you do, don't scream or flinch. They'll take it personally."

"Andy, what the hell is going on?"

"Can't tell you, Bec. They made me promise. They want to see who you really are."

"What—"

She stopped mid-sentence when one of the figures in the surrounding CONEXs rose and strode toward her. His movements were like liquid, faster than a man could walk, but with no bounce in his step. He came within three feet of her and squatted, his arms draped across the tops of his knees as he examined her.

Bushy gray eyebrows rested above dark brown eyes. Crow's feet danced at the corners. After a few of him looking her unashamedly up and down, he spoke. "What do they call us?"

"Day Eaters," she stammered.

"Why are we called that?"

"Because you like the shadow." Remembering more of what Andy had told her, she added, "Yours is the night."

"But why?"

"I—I don't know."

He stood and returned to his CONEX, purple and green fabrics swirling in his wake.

Another descended from his CONEX and approached her. He squatted as the first had one and asked the same questions, his voice calm but direct, his eyes soft yet demanding. Not knowing whether they were right or not, she responded with the same answers she'd given before.

And then another came.

And another.

Until all twenty-one members of the council had queried her. Then nothing. What had just happened? The only thing holding her fear in check was an air of expectancy.

Some of the council members visited their neighbors and conferred. Others acted disinterested. Still others glared at her from the confines of her CONEXs. She couldn't see them all without getting up, but she imagined the ones behind her were doing the same.

She had to ask Andy.

Rebecca was about to whisper something to him when she heard a soft rumble coming from behind her. What the hell? She listened and heard it again. Snoring. Andy had fallen asleep! During what could possibly be a life and death situation, he'd managed to relax enough to find dreamland. She felt her anger rise.

A figure strode purposefully towards her. She could tell it was a woman by the kohl darkening the eyes and the curve of the hips. She wore greens and yellows with purple swathes. Glitter was sewn into the fabric covering her head. A small man followed her with a chair similar to the one on which Rebecca sat. He placed it on the ground a few feet in front of the woman, then retreated. The woman paused a moment as if waiting for an invitation.

Rebecca nodded.

The woman sat. She stared at Rebecca for several minutes, her eyes searching. Finally she smiled, the tell-tale wrinkles at the corners of her eyes banding together. "I am Maria. Welcome to our home."

She didn't extend a hand, but the greeting rang true.

"Thank you. I am Rebecca." She felt foolish, but she didn't know what else to say.

"We know, but we had to be sure. Thank you for being patient."

They knew her? Impossible.

"There is but one test remaining."

God, but Rebecca hated tests. Why couldn't the universe just take her at face value? "Listen, I don't understand any of this."

"We know. And I apologize on behalf of my people. But this is our way. We do not trust anyone. We normally would not trust you. But then, you are Rebecca. You are Velvet Dogma."

There it was again. She'd heard Panchet mention this, and then the gravBoarder. Velvet Dogma. She searched her memory, but the words didn't hold any meaning for her. "I don't understand. I don't know what those words mean." Sadness swept over Rebecca. "I've been in prison for twenty years. I don't even know the world."

"We know of your sacrifice. Now you shall know of ours."

Sacrifice?

"We are called the Day Eaters," the woman began, her voice shifting into an oratory, projecting without effort to the council members and beyond. "We do not like the light. We do not like the day. We are the creatures of the night." Her voice grew even louder. "We protest the world. We do not like what we see. For too many, their bodies are not their own. Companies own them in bits and pieces."

"Bits and pieces," repeated children's voices in unison from somewhere beyond the circle of CONEXs.

"When they die they are harvested. If they live they are farmed. People aren't meant to be crops."

"People not crops," said the children.

"So we changed ourselves. We wear the mark of Miriam."

"Oh, Miriam!" The children wailed.

"They cannot harvest us. Who would want to? They fear us. Do you blame them?" The woman leapt to her feet and whirled around, the fabric catching the vortex currents her spin created. She held out her arms as if to embrace the world. "We cannot change it, so we are not a part of it. They do what they do, and we don't do it."

"We don't do it!" shouted the children.

"Nothing created by man do we wear. Nothing invented by whim do we care."

"Don't wear! Don't care!"

"So we become one with our kind, exchanging blood and breed. We are dead together, but nothing do we need."

"Nothing, no nothing," they whispered.

"Together we live. Together we change. Together we break and die."

Maria froze in mid-spin, her arms disjointed like those of a scarecrow, her head canted all the way to a shoulder.

"Break and die!" screamed the children over and over, until finally they ran away laughing, their impish delight evident in the way they finished their game of recitation.

Rebecca sat stunned by the performance. She wasn't sure what it meant, but the beauty, anger and resolution were unmistakable. She especially liked the children as they chimed in, as they'd probably done in lessons a thousand times before. Whatever these people were into, they believed it totally.

Maria held her puppet stance for a moment longer, then returned to normal. She sat once again before Rebecca. With her kohl-shaded eyes she watched for a reaction as she unwrapped the fabric from her head. When the last piece had been removed, she offered an embarrassed smile. Beautiful in a matronly way, she shrugged slightly. "Thank you for allowing us to perform the telling. It is something we do. The children join in." She laughed. "It is a game to them until they find out that ours is not the way of everyone."

"It was beautiful."

"Sometimes we forget why we do this, so it is important to remind ourselves."

Rebecca felt like she should know what the woman was talking about, but it was like being told an inside joke and then being asked to comment on it. She just didn't know what was going on.

"I'm sorry," she said, "Your performance was beautiful, but I still don't understand."

The woman stared at Rebecca for a long moment, then nodded. "Of course. Our movement became popular after you were imprisoned." She shook her head. "Sometimes we get so involved in ritual that we forget that there are still a few who haven't heard of us."

Rebecca felt the need to take control. She was tired of being at the beck and call of everyone else. Most of it was because she didn't understand this new world in which she found herself. She stood, her movement causing several shouts from the CONEXs. She ignored them and helped Maria to her feet. "Let's walk," she said. And she began to circle the space where she'd just been sitting. The need to change the dynamics was an imperative. They needed to be equals for understanding to grow. She heard grumbling from several of the council members, but ignored them. She passed Andy and appreciated his grin of support. "You mentioned the Mark of Miriam. Is this from the Bible?" She dredged her memory. "Was she the Prophetess who made fun of Moses?"

"Yes, that was her. Do you also remember what happened to her?"

Rebecca polled her memory once more. The amount of Biblical knowledge it held could be compared to the weight of fairies on the head of a pin. The only reason she'd known about Miriam was because of the Charlton Heston movie where he'd played Moses—one of her grandmother's favorites. Not that she was religious; she just loved the spectacle of epic movies, and, well, Charlton Heston too. Olive Deering had played the part of Miriam, Moses's sister, her Lana Turner looks turning against her as she became the sniping woman who was punished for her insolence. Rebecca tried to remember. How was she punished?

"Something that God did." For the life of her, she couldn't remember.

Seeming to change the subject, Maria said, "They tell me that all of your organs have been levied."

Rebecca nodded. "I'm evidently quite a find for the organ vendors."

"How do you feel about this?"

"Like I've been violated. Like my body doesn't belong to me."

"Yes. This is the case." Maria stopped and looked into Rebecca's eyes. "Do you know that not a single one of us has an organ levied?"

"How can that be?" Rebecca looked around in astonishment. "Is it because you're in hiding?"

"No. The government knows where we are. They approve of it. For them this is the perfect place to keep us out of the way. They help us from time to time. No, it's not because we're in hiding."

"Then why?"

"What you can't remember, Rebecca, is that the Lord struck Miriam with leprosy for arguing with Moses. The Mark of Miriam is leprosy. We all wear the mark."

"All of you?"

"Yes."

"Even the children?"

"Especially the children."

"But why them?"

"The organ vendors, as you call them, don't care about age. The only thing they care about is quality. Mycobacterium leprae, or Hansen's Disease, is a horror that no one wants. After all, who'd want the heart of a leper?"

"But it's curable!"

Maria shook her head. "Not curable, but treatable with a multi-drug therapy. Like me, I don't show any of the outward signs. The children don't either. We don't allow them the choice until they reach the age of maturity."

Rebecca looked at the council members and the people who'd been watching the pair walk in a circle. Understanding filled her as she realized the true purpose of the fabrics in which they were swathed. With reverence, "Some of them choose not to have the therapy, don't they?"

"Yes. That is their way. They protest the organ levy through the willful destruction of their bodies."

"My god." Rebecca's hand went to her mouth. "So all the people..."

All the Day Eaters; what they'd done to themselves made all of her own adolescent attempts to change the world so sophomoric they were beyond laughable. From the comfort of a bedroom, she'd chaos-hacked her way across international boundaries, frying, manipulating and reallocating information from the world's most secure servers. She'd been serious in her unquenchable desire for a change. She'd been serious about her remonstration against all she deemed wrong and unjust. But would she willingly have brought ruination upon her body? She remembered the image of a man with no fingers, no nose, no ears and slices of meat missing from his face from an old National Geographic magazine.

She stared into Maria's eyes, searching for...what? What made a woman like Maria do this? What made the idea of becoming a leper so inviting? Rebecca remembered her response to an earlier question. When asked how she'd felt when she'd learned her organs were levied she'd said violated and that her body wasn't her own. One thing that should be sacrosanct is a person's body, and as the ultimate rape, the government had decided that they could take what they needed, when they needed it, and sell it to the highest bidder.

And there it was, deep in the other woman's eyes. Peace. The Day Eaters had found peace with their decision. They no longer lived in fear of being harvested. They could live, grow old, and die without any dread of doctors, D-pens or the Global Allocation System.

"You're not afraid, are you?" Rebecca asked.

"Not at all."

Nice. Oh that she could feel so brave. "Thank you for sharing this with me."

But the woman grabbed her arm and wouldn't let go. "We didn't do this just because we thought you should know. There's much more than that." She glanced at Andy. "You haven't told her, have you?"

"The time wasn't right."

"You should have told her! Now she had no context. Does she even know about Velvet Dogma?"

Rebecca looked back and forth between the two of them. "Tell me what? Andy, do you know this woman? Did you know about the Day Eaters?"

He held up his hands. "Now isn't the place, Rebecca."

"What?"

"I said now isn't the—"

Rebecca's glare stopped him in midsentence. She turned to Maria. "Can you please take me out of here? Do you have someplace I can clean up?"