Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  Aaron enlightened her. “It’s made from Big Foot’s hide. I imagine, worth near as much as this mansion.”

  “If you can prove it.”

  He twitched his eyebrows, held up the CD-ROM. “Consider me your one-stop source for conversation starters.”

  Lady Harding grabbed the disk. “We’ll agree on a price once I’ve had the disc subjected to computer analysis to make sure it’s no fake. And for the snake?”

  “Well, if I’m to feed it myself, to keep it from becoming a bother, make sure it doesn’t defecate on you in the middle of one of your dinner parties—

  “Yes, yes, that’s fine. I suppose you live in the yard with the rest of the workers, so you’ll be on hand in a pinch?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Aaron said. He bowed for dramatic emphasis.

  She admired the snake, which she’d taken and draped around her neck. “I applaud your pluck, child. Instead of reaching for a hand out, you’ve scratched and clawed your way into this harrowing economy that doesn’t want anything to do with you. You have the promise of greatness about you. Keep this up and, when you’re older, I may have to marry you to hold on to my fortune.”

  “I look forward to it, dear lady,” Aaron said. He waved goodbye as Toby stepped down on the accelerator. Until that day, I’ll go back to being out of sight, out of mind, like a good illegal, you hypocritical bitch. He shook his head at himself. Don’t be that way, Aaron. She was nice all in all for that sort. And you can’t deny these people are way more fun than real people.

  ***

  Toby counseled Lady Harding as he drove off in the car. “At this rate, you’ll use up your allowance. How many of these poor wretches’ mad get-rich schemes do you plan to buy into?”

  “Mind your place, Toby,” Lady Harding said, stroking her boa. “I don’t expect you to understand why the landed gentry use madness to stay sane.”

  ***

  Toby inched the car into the driving bay past Robin and Drew, who were walking along the driveway. Both were rather taken by Lady Harding’s necklace.

  “What’s that you say about embracing the madness?” Robin said.

  She could feel Drew steel himself as he clamped down on her hand with bone-crushing force.

  “I stand by my original position.”

  “You lie,” she said, having some fun at his expense.

  “You proved to yourself long ago that to understand the value of an altered-state, you first have to inhabit it, which makes me wonder, why the sudden lack of courage to cross the final frontier.”

  Robin could feel her own body tighten up. “It’s one thing to catch the wave of Renaissance types coming to fruition ahead of the rest, ride it for all it’s worth. But what if the least of us are the ones I should have my eyes on?”

  “The last shall be first.”

  Robin didn’t appreciate him quoting the Bible at her expense. “God help me if I’m wrong,” she said.

  “God help us if you’re right.”

  FORTY-FOUR

  “Well, Irene, you may as well be the first,” Frumpley said, pinching both sides of his lapel. He swayed to and fro as he switched balance from one foot to the other.

  “What, to marry you? Don’t flatter yourself.” Irene continued to wipe down the top of the butcher block table. She saw no reason to devote more attention to him than could be afforded by the part of her mind still in a coma from the last time.

  Frumpley, reddening in the face, hemmed and hawed. He quickly went through the rest of the repertoire of determined dissembling. She loved him in her own way, but he was as predictable under pressure as a teapot on a stove, flame set to high.

  “Today, my intentions are more humble. I mean to collect money for Minerva’s upcoming birthday bash.”

  Irene, sanding the surface of the butcher block as much as scouring it, arrested her circular scrubbing with the steel-wool. She just as quickly returned to her burnishing, more vigilant than ever, as a way of blocking out the truth. “Now’s not the best time, Frumpley. Certainly we can do something more modest this year, seeing as how embarrassed she acts by the big to-dos.”

  “Acting it is, no more. She dearly loves her fifteen minutes of fame, we can all be assured of that.”

  Irene knew how painful this was for Frumpley; to have his hand out. He had had to beg on the streets to survive once. Irene wasn’t sure if that period lasted five days or five years, but either way, it had left an unerasable scar slicing right through his soul. He agreed to collect money each year for Minerva’s party because it was the proper thing to do and no one else liked her enough to be bothered. If they found her hanging from the belfry the way they often found Muriel, they’d solemnly attend her funeral and weep the tears of the damned just to convince themselves it had all been one big act for her own good to help her get over herself, and that deep down they really loved her. But short of that, forget about any big to-dos.

  “Maybe if we all put aside just a little each week,” Frumpley said.

  “Sorry, can’t do it. I’m over-extended. I’m sure she’ll understand, what with the economy and all. I can bake her a cake, and we can sing songs and sip brandy, right here in the kitchen. Small and intimate is the way to go, if you ask me.” She grabbed hold of one of the candy tins in her dress for a sense of security, felt calmer, which sufficed as a rationale for her otherwise unforgivable thrift.

  “Well, then, no point in pushing a cart with three wheels uphill.”

  Frumpley exited the kitchen, extending his safari in search of the ever-elusive funds for Minerva’s get together into the nether lands of the castle’s many rooms, mindful of unearthing more suckers. Poor Frumpley, Irene thought. This was the first year she had failed to bail him out, or even make it hard on him.

  She pulled up her apron to gawk at her fancy candy-store-in-an-underdress before the reflection of the refrigerator door. “I sure hope this thing was worth it. Does weigh heavy, reminding me of all those uneaten candies like an itch I can never entirely scratch.”

  ***

  “Pssst!”

  Aggie turned around to find Jaap hiding behind one of the wing-back chairs in the drawing room she was dusting and jumped out of her skin. The scream escaped her lips, despite herself, Jaap realized, because the response bypassed her brain entirely. “What are you doing here, little man?” she said.

  “I come bearing gifts.” He handed her the aquarium glasses, which threw soothing images of fish swimming in a tank over anything that held her gaze. The part of the frames that draped behind her ears included hearing-aids that played soothing bubble sounds.

  Aggie tried them on.

  “This is marvelous!” she said. “But what purpose have they?”

  Jaap lunged at her from behind the chair. “Boo!”

  Aggie yelped less forcefully than before and took a step back. “They are awfully calming, aren’t they?”

  “Try them for a day, and I’ll return to discuss price.” Jaap wondered if any of his clients detected him secretly laughing at them. Nah. His gifts mocked their silliness, which they took too seriously to ever get the joke.

  ***

  Aggie watched Jaap skulk from island to island of furniture in the Sargasso sea of floor, to avoid notice by staff moving up and down the grand hall the room opened to, before darting out the French doors.

  “Impudent child.” She tried to adjust to how the glasses affected her dusting chores. With the fish darting out of nowhere in the pretend aquarium before her, they were nearly as startling as the boy behind the chair. Maybe that was the secret of the glasses—lots of little jolts a day to prevent any buildup of charge and the inevitable big jolt coming every few hours.

  Finished with her dusting, Aggie entered the supply room adjacent to the kitchen to find Muriel juggling her head along with two cantaloupes over her headless body. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the pretty tropical fish. She smiled defiantly at Muriel, and sauntered by her, whistling gaily.

  Muriel follow
ed Aggie into the kitchen—the version of her with an actual head. She sat down at the table and took a meat cleaver and hacked off her right leg and laid it on the table. She hacked off her left leg, and set it on the table. She hacked off her left arm, and threw it on the pile of severed limbs.

  Aggie whistled, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and concentrated on the Angel fish kissing one another in the middle of the killing fields.

  Aggie opted for a snack on the table—cashew nuts Irene was clearly getting ready to stir into some recipe—over anything she could find in the supply room. She sauntered out the kitchen and tossed them into her mouth in between whistling her merry melody.

  ***

  Dyspepsia entered her servant’s quarters to find a fashionable sterling silver motorcycle helmet, the kind a crotch rocket racer might wear, sprawled on her work table. She turned it around in her hands, then, to Li Wei’s chagrin—he was shaking his head—donned it before the mirror. Li Wei disappeared.

  “It’s a psychic short-circuiter! But how?”

  Aaron stuck his head out from behind her floor standing mirror. “Cutting edge technology, ma’am. One of a kind. A prototype. Very expensive.”

  “I’ll pay anything. It’s an answer to my prayers.”

  “Three thousand dollars.” He held out his hands. “But you can pay a hundred twenty-five a month. Five percent annual interest.”

  “Done.” She modeled the helmet before the mirror, which honestly did not go at all with her maid’s uniform. She would catch a lot of hell for this. Screw them. “I can’t believe there are enough psychics out there looking for relief from the hellish visions of things to come to warrant the costly manufacture of these helmets.”

  “You’d be surprised. It’s a viable niche, ma’am.” Aaron tipped his cap to her, and slinked toward the door.

  “I’ve heard of you sooty-faced urchins infesting the estate. Ernestina calls you the guardians in the gardens, when she isn’t referring to you as her heavenly hosts. The alliteration helps her failing mind hold on to the memories of you.”

  “Guardians in the gardens, I like that.” Aaron fled out the door, no doubt, Dyspepsia calculated, anxious to escape discovery by one of the staff he hadn’t had time brief himself on in order to disarm them. From his expression, he was glad he had been able to help her with her little problem. According to the word on his fraternal twin brother, Jaap, they had a Cane and Abel thing going. Jaap preferred to make fun of his clients at their expense; Aaron genuinely wanted to help them. Both boys preyed equally well on their customer’s addictive behaviors, and counted on their compulsions to override their good sense. For whatever she thought of him, she couldn’t deny the glint in his eyes, his elfin nature; the boy radiated magic.

  She took the helmet off and found a place for it on a bust meant for mounting wigs. The vortex was just bringing through Li Wei, whose company she didn’t mind. The old man materialized behind her, sweeping the floor.

  ***

  Wilder crawled out of the dragon-footed Victorian tub, only to find he was still sore all over.

  He rubbed his lower back and moaned, massaged the back of his neck and winced. His muscles cramping up, he limped towards the bedroom, unable to put too much weight on one leg.

  After collapsing on the side of his bed, he tried to get his socks on. Finally, unable to reach, he dropped his feet and rubbed his knees. Sexually gratifying the Harding estate house guests had his twenty-some year old body feeling like it was sixty-some. Whimpering, he gazed up to the heavens, and silently called out for mercy, whereupon he saw it.

  Just hanging there.

  A body stocking.

  He clambered off the bed and hobbled over to the bodysuit. It resembled a burglar’s black stretch-rayon, only it had wires running through it, miniature transistors, all sorts of strange things. He finished drying himself before crawling into it, afraid, otherwise, it might electrocute him.

  Once he got it over him, he found his aches and pains were diminished. The suit sensed where he hurt the most and heated or cooled and massaged those areas. A light humming emanated from various regions, which indicated sonar pulses were being employed as well toward his healing.

  He discovered the suit also enlisted magnetic therapy when he held his arms out to get a sense of himself in the suit before the mirror, and unwittingly passed a hand too close to the bedside table, levitating a pen.

  A shuffling sound erupted from somewhere in the room.

  When he went to investigate, Jaap, one of the yard urchins scurried under the bed. Wilder dove after him. He surfaced on the other side to discover the boy jumping up and down on the mattress, laughing.

  “A bit sprier and nimbler, now, are you?” Jaap said.

  Wilder took notice of what he had been too distracted to notice before: he was a good deal more agile. “This is your doing?”

  “Of course. There’s just the matter of price to be negotiated.”

  “I refuse to pay you a thing, you scamp. You probably stole it.”

  The rug rat gave him a shame-shame finger. “I work for Ermies, greatest importer in all the land of unique inventions tailor-made to tackle his clients’ most unique needs. If you do not appreciate the gift, I will be happy to return it to him for you. Otherwise, I assure you, he’ll be happy to retrieve it for himself, along with however many constables are needed for the task.”

  Wilder sobered on the news. “Fine. How much are we talking?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “Five thousand!” Wilder gasped. He started peeling off the undergarment.

  “Payable in convenient monthly installments.”

  Wilder stretched the body-stocking back over him so it could continue massaging his shoulders. “Done, you little thief. I was right about you, the first time.”

  ***

  Thornton turned the dial on what appeared to the undiscerning eye as a hobbyist’s short-wave radio. With each notch he was able to detect snippets of conversation going on in a different room of the house.

  Frumpley: “We better close the doors and windows. There’s rain coming.”

  Aggie: “I swear, the smallest request around here requires mobilizing an entire army.”

  Frumpley: “Speaking of which, it’s high time we brought some military order to this establishment.”

  Thornton turned the dial on the “short-wave.”

  Lady Harding: “It’s high time we discussed putting the old woman in a home. The staff isn’t trained for her theatrics.”

  Minerva scoffed: “Theatrics is about the only thing they’re trained for, if you ask me. Work is just something they do when there’s no one around to clap.”

  “Well, what do you think?” Jaap said.

  Thornton cleared his throat. “No big thing. They’ve had house comm systems like this for the last hundred years.”

  “Only none in this mausoleum,” Jaap retorted. “And none that allow you nearly as much freedom to snoop courtesy of such crystal clear sound, no matter how close or far away from the microphones they are. Those kind of audio-adjustments on the fly can beat what a professional sound man in each room could do for you. Aren’t computer algorithms great?”

  “How much?” Thornton said scornfully, as if the bloke had a centimeter’s headroom to condescend to anybody. However, he had to admit the lowlife was tucked unbelievably well into a tux.

  “A small monthly fee is all, which includes system maintenance. That way you can never be caught red-handed, and you can always blame it on someone else if they’re discovered doing the repairs.”

  “Fine, until I can think of a way around your little scheme.” Thornton sounded genuinely determined to do just that.

  Jaap smiled at the thought. Good luck matching his treachery with someone growing up on the streets, far less someone in Ermies’ employ.

  “Don’t bother. We’re joined at the hip now.”

  ***

  “About Minerva’s birthday bash, old boy…” Frumpley said, s
lipping into his penguin waddle, a nervous tick that accompanied any request for money.

  Thornton returned the sandwich he was planning on eating to the refrigerator, waved him off without so much as a word, and fled the kitchen.

  “Bastard!” Frumpley said under his breath. “Wouldn’t spend a penny on his mother’s funeral.”

  Wilder and Aggie entered, intent on sharing a hoagie between them. Before they could finish planting their butts on their seats, Frumpley came out with it. “About Minerva’s birthday bash…”

  They both ran out of the kitchen so fast, Frumpley didn’t have time finish the sentence. “Now, look here,” he said, darting after them. “I won’t stand for this!”

  Wilder took a bite out of the hoagie, wrapped it back up, and shouted to Aggie, “Go long!” He tossed the hoagie at her in a mad attempt to run and eat at the same time, and avoid being sandbagged by Frumpley.

  “I’ll get you for this!” Frumpley bellowed.

  Aggie caught the hoagie. They were in one of the downstairs drawing rooms by then. She unfolded the wrapper, took a bite, wrapped the sandwich back up, and tossed it back to Wilder, who just missed being tackled by Frumpley headlong into the wingback chair. With no Wilder to cushion the impact, Frumpley landed hard.

  Groggy, and slowed by the cresting wave of pain in his head and neck, Frumpley peeled himself off the chair. He stumbled aimlessly before finding Wilder and Aggie in a huddle, devouring the sandwich together.

  Seeing him approaching them from the other end of the room, Wilder drew a diagram on the palm of his hand. Aggie nodded, and they were off again, wrapped hoagie in hand until Wilder tossed the sandwich to avoid losing it to a broad tackle by Frumpley.

  Just missing tackling Wilder again, and landing on the sofa only to capsize it, Frumpley picked himself up, grabbed the centerpiece with apples and oranges, and gave chase, hurtling the apples at Wilder and Aggie.