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

by Dean C. Moore

  So she played the “Drew, rescue me” card, which, historically, had never failed to work.

  “Drew, quick, there’s a civil war going on between Ermies’ sales-urchins and the Harding staff. Someone’s going to get hurt. I don’t know how to fix this.”

  Drew snapped out of his fugue in a flash, severed the psychic link between them, and returned to reality in time to see the Harding staff surrounding the players on the soccer field. Apparently, they had coaxed the youths to come out and play only to simplify efforts to round them up. The deed done, they shoved the children into cages and loaded them on to trucks, like chickens being shipped off to the butcher’s.

  “How could we miss this?” Robin asked.

  “Well, let’s see. You were off saving souls. I was off sacrificing mine.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  “How about, do you think you could find two more self-involved people on the entire planet?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Robin gulped. “So much for seeing the world as it is.”

  They passively watched Frumpley take particular pleasure in shoving the last of the ruffians into separate cages and then locking the doors on them.

  “We’ll blame it on the vortex,” Drew said, puffing on a cigarette to finish sobering him.

  He flicked the cigarette, risking a blaze. Then he trudged out to the “soccer field.” Robin hopped the hedge in an effort to keep up with him.

  “Hear, hear, we’ll have none of this,” Drew said. They’d arrived on the field in time to witness the trucks driving off. Their revved engines drowned out his decree with little effort.

  “Sorry, sir,” Frumpley said. “You’ve been trumped by the sheikh. He was quite clear about wanting them gone.”

  “Wait till my mother hears about this,” Drew threatened, presumably angry a coup had taken place right under his nose without his sanctioning.

  “She already knows, sir,” Frumpley said, and bowed. He returned to his role as ringleader. The roundup over, he transitioned to overseeing mop up operations. “Everyone back to work.” He was cuing them to flee the radius of Drew’s influence. They didn’t seem to need cuing; they scattered to the wind of their own accord.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” Robin asked.

  “I don’t know. But you can bet I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  ***

  Drew rotated the dial on Thornton’s shortwave radio-snooper. The amalgamation of primitive technology with futuristic tech allowed him to spy on everyone in the household in ways that would make Big Brother envious. Finally, he heard something of interest.

  “We did it, Minerva, we showed those little whippersnappers.” Frumpley chuckled.

  “Ahem, sir,” Thornton said, itching to get out of the room. “I can’t imagine you need me any longer.”

  “You just keep that thought in mind, Thornton,” Drew said acidly. Thornton flushed red, then darted out.

  “You have to admit it’s a bloody ingenious contraption,” Robin said.

  “These people do not lack for inspiration,” Drew observed, fine tuning his signal to squeeze the static out of the line.

  “It’ll be months before anyone has a dime to their names to invest in my birthday bash.” Minerva sighed. “I still can’t believe those rats chewed a hole clear through everyone’s pockets.”

  “They have game, there’s no denying it,” Frumpley said. “Shame to cart them off to the other side of the country in hopes they’ll never find their way back.”

  “You aren’t having second thoughts?”

  “Well, just that… It doesn’t hurt to be tested once in a while, that’s all. You build the best security system in the world, you want the best thieves to come up against it. Otherwise, how do you know what you’ve got?”

  “We did pull together, didn’t we?”

  “Haven’t felt this close to my coworkers in years,” Frumpley confessed. Drew could just imagine him tugging at his lapel with both hands; he was forever striking poses to punctuate his thinking. Frumpley said, “We justified ourselves above and beyond whatever cost-cutting options they might be debating upstairs. Unseasoned staff couldn’t do what we did. This generation’s robotics couldn’t do it. We hung in there for another round, Minerva.”

  “Only now that they’re gone, how are we to know we’re not slipping into complacency, getting soft and useless without even realizing it?”

  “You see the problem?”

  “Yes, I do.” Minerva said, her tone fearful.

  “I don’t suppose it’d do to get them back.”

  “If they’re worth their salts, they’ll find their own way back,” Minerva advised. “If not, we’ll just have to find better sport, is all.”

  “The whole thing seems kind of silly now that I’ve had a chance to think about it.” Drew imagined Frumpley dusting the dandruff off himself. It was his way of showing he’d finally cleared his head of indecision after a good bout of debating the pros and cons of a solution to a particularly vexing problem.

  “I don’t imagine they’ll get under our skins so easily next time.”

  “Hmm,” Frumpley snorted. “Famous last words.”

  “Listening to them talk,” Robin said, “you would think England hasn’t seen a mobilization of the troops like this since World War Two.”

  “You can count on it.” Drew changed the channel.

  After more time wasted on frivolous exchanges that threatened to melt the mind of anyone this determined to know everything going on in the house, unless the offering of pettiness to the god of trifles was the point, Drew landed on another equally telling snippet of dialogue.

  “What the hell happened here?” Aaron said.

  Jaap sighed. “They carted everyone off to the far side of England so they can never find their way back.”

  Aaron chuckled. “For a second they had me worried. So we can finish the match tonight then?”

  “I have a soccer ball that glows in the dark to celebrate the occasion.”

  “We did get them good, didn’t we?”

  “Did you really sell Lady Harding a boa constrictor to use as a scarf on her road-trips?”

  “I did myself one better. I sold Dyspepsia a helmet to block psychic impressions from the vortex.”

  Jaap howled. “Friggin’ genius.”

  “Did you really sell Irene a petticoat so she could keep all her hidden chocolates on her, instead of stashed around the kitchen, thus solving the problem of her absent-mindedness?”

  “Not nearly as inspired as selling Aggie those aquarium glasses to keep her from jumping out of her skin every time Muriel pulled one of her suicide stunts on her.”

  Aaron’s laughter was irrepressible.

  “You don’t suppose there’s really such a thing as a vortex?”

  “I know one thing, I’ve got game like never before.”

  “This place does bring out the best in me.”

  “But you still don’t love these people like I do,” Aaron said. “You still just want to make fun of them. I wish you could learn to trust.”

  “So do I. That’s the problem with this place. It’s just too much to believe in. If I let myself believe, and then I got kicked out of paradise…”

  “Yeah, I can fill in the rest for myself.”

  Drew shook his head. “Unbelievable. It’s a self-organizing universe, evolves through move and countermove, without any outside intervention, to higher and higher rungs of ruthless cleverness and one-upmanship. We can officially retire, Robin. The world seems to have mastered your continuous improvement agenda without any help from us.”

  Robin grunted. “Only, this is genius in service of the reptilian, fear-driven mind, and the mammalian, emotion-driven mind, the two most primitive inner layers of our brains. The higher brain that allows us to step back and see the big picture, and evaluate the most helpful strategic move is kept in a subservient role. It’s putting the cart before the horse.”

  “That’s strangel
y poignant and penetrating.” Drew let the thought sink in. “I can’t believe I missed that on my way to getting a PhD in psychology.”

  “The theory is relatively new. Don’t think it was around in your day.”

  When Robin hung her head, Drew realized it was to hide her disappointment. He said, “I’m sorry not all of us could come up to speed in the timeframe you set for us, Robin. Christ, sorry, that sounded pissier than I intended.”

  She looked up and smiled. “‘Tis nothing less than I deserve. You and the rest of the Harding estate staff are the least of my concerns. Yikes, that didn’t come out too good, either.”

  Drew smiled warmly to give her an out.

  “What I meant to say was, it’s the Renaissance types who are trying to come up to speed prematurely that I worry about.”

  SIXTY-ONE

  Katia stared at the spoon the strange man had given her, feeling like a fool. Hearing a disturbance on the other side of the door, she tucked it under the soiled mattress. One sprawling bed stain merged with another until they formed veritable continents she’d crossed in an effort to find her way back to herself.

  She put her eye up to the door, ignored the irony of the sinuous form etched by the keyhole itself, like so many of the voluptuous women lining the mattresses in the room, awaiting their chance for someone to stick something just as cold and as hard and as impersonal in them.

  Bacchus and Baen were entertaining potential clients.

  ***

  Bacchus was no more than an enterprising college student who had grown up with a father who bred and disciplined dogs for a living, and treated his family more or less the same. Bacchus had inherited from the old man the concept of alpha dog which he applied to ruling the women in his kennels. He kept them up and down the building, several on each floor. Each litter of women serviced a different kind of mongrel male, with different breeding requirements. The men they locked the girls in with were there to free the animals in themselves and no more. As the locked rooms imprisoned the women and robbed them of their spirits, so it fed the human-beasts, who Katia supposed, Bacchus was also breeding.

  Pity; Bacchus was a hell of a looker and, for all intents and purposes, reasonably well adjusted. He supported his family on both sides the way Rafael Nadal supported his; he single-handedly held up enough dependents to float the Italian economy through its latest downturn. He owned the tenement buildings to either side of them and across the street, which explained why no one complained. This particular building was the engine that drove the supertanker of Bacchus’s future, paid for friends and family, his college education, and so much more. He was a dilettante as investors went, balanced out his more fortuitous investments with his gambling debts and his drug purchases so he came out just slightly ahead. The drugs he saved largely for keeping the girls in line, or for his clients’ pleasure; he limited his own consumption to light marijuana use.

  Katia used to dream of catching his eye; she would settle into her new life as grande dame of his enterprise, oversee the girls with an eye to their health and hygiene that would protect their value, rather than wear them out like poorly maintained cars. Bacchus didn’t see it that way, or rather Baen didn’t. She might have been able to persuade Bacchus on the long-term investment play versus the rapid turnover option with which they’d gone. But Baen believed that the better the girls were treated, the fancier the ideas floating through their heads, until they built up enough confidence in themselves to believe escape was possible, and thus started plotting their way out of here. Baen was right, of course—that’s exactly how things would play out.

  Ironically, for a man that was more animal than human, Baen was strangely sentient and prescient when it came to such things, able to rise above the strictly brutish behavior that described him most of the time to show why Bacchus had partnered with him, to keep Bacchus in line when his fancy ideas ran away from him. Baen was the pragmatism to Bacchus’s idealism. Katia remembered such words and concepts from what little college education she had gathered under her belt before being whisked away to Bacchus’s business enclave.

  Neither of them had anything to do with the “bitches,” preferred not to see them as human. They brought girls over from a different social stratum, instructed the “bitches” to be quiet until their vaunted lady guests had left. The women they invited over not only knew what was going on, but flaunted their status, put on a show for the peephole clientele like herself. Perhaps they hated their lives, too, and it was how they felt better about themselves.

  ***

  With the arrival of his lady friend, Bacchus flicked his fingers.

  The German Shepherds, trained not to bark or bite or make a move unless someone directly came at Bacchus or Baen, jumped off the furniture and took up their positions in the hall, before the doors to the rooms.

  Bacchus closed his books when the girl showed more interest in them than him. “You studying history?” she said, with mock fascination. It was clear she had more of an interest in his financial fortunes than his actual interests by how she ran her eyes over his gold jewelry and the gold faucet, the other collectibles… the small paintings of women by Kandinsky and Picasso; the sculptures by Giacometti, all looking very out of place in the very tawdry setting.

  Tawdry was another of Katia’s favorite words, one she got to use a lot. She would make no comment about the tortured women depicted in Bacchus’s artwork. Other than to hope they suggested the ways his unconscious wrestled to get his mind around what he was doing to them.

  “Yes, I am a student of history, as a matter of fact, specifically, the Roman period, circa five hundred A.D. or so.”

  “You look like a face on a Roman coin,” she said, “with that trim beard, and that forthright nose of yours. Your curly hair and bronze skin.”

  “Thanks, I think. I sometimes wonder if I lived in that era. Its logic is more compelling to me than that of our current age.”

  To Katia’s mind, the greatest treasure in the room was not the gold or the artwork, but Bacchus’s fiercely lit blue-sapphire eyes; not one red line scarred his corneas. Katia would tell herself the light they threw on everything they were aimed at was what kept him from seeing the darkness in the world all around him. If they truly were the windows to his soul, they were also, in all likelihood, the only way out of this hell hole.

  Lady Eve (for Lady of the Evening) threw a glance at the keyhole Katia was looking through, and possibly saw the white of her eye.

  “I would love a closer look at your business,” the girl said.

  “That’s off limits,” Bacchus replied dryly.

  “I wonder how differently you treat a piece of human property from how you treat me. The contrast would be quite the turn on for me.”

  Bacchus thought about it, tempted. “Yeah, all right.”

  Katia pulled back from the door as Bacchus approached, and retreated into the shadows. The door slammed open, bounced off the back wall. The boys loved to enter that way as the harsh entrance intimidated the girls, and the outcries helped cue the uninitiated men which girls would make the sounds of passion that turned them on most. Some preferred their women to scream in octaves that didn’t shatter their ears. Others wanted the guy in the next room to know theirs was bigger, and so wanted an outcry that carried further, something more piercing, and high register, like the sopranos that spun on the phonograph player the woman across the alley loved to play and that alone reached Katia’s ears as a kind of treat, often above the moans of the other girls.

  Bacchus grabbed Katia by the hair, forced her to rise quickly or have her hair yanked out by the roots. He said nothing; he just dragged her into the next room. He had never selected her before, never taken her out of the room. She fancied him, so this would be a treat.

  He bent her over the fold-down ironing board, ripped down her pants, expecting her to hold her position, whatever it cost her back, until he was ready to penetrate her. She refused, and stood up. He forced her down again, then when she rose
this time, he spun her around, slapped her about the face, causing her to cry out. He punched her in the midsection, which made it a good deal easier to stay bent over this time. She continued to fight and scream so he had to force her to remain still by holding on to her hair, and keeping an arm on her lower back.

  She was just playing her part. If she didn’t fight and scream loudly when he penetrated her and play up the whole rape and domination, he’d later have Baen mercilessly beat her. Bacchus wouldn’t scuff his hands on her. He fancied his manicure and lovely hands too much, and so did the ladies. The female voyeur made gasping sounds and got wet in her panties, the more he had to force himself on Katia.

  “Hold her, so I can get the rubber on!” he shouted urgently, as if Katia were a wild panther that might slip the net if their timing wasn’t just perfect. When she proved tentative, not sure if she wanted to get any closer, he had to yell at her again. “Hold her, I said!”

  Lady Eve pressed her weight into Katia’s back.

  Bacchus donned his rubber. He wouldn’t want to catch any diseases from her. He drove his cock in her after stimulating himself by probing her vagina with his fingers so he could finish getting hard. He thrust with no sense of how to ease her into it. He felt good, and her natural response was to moan gently and softly. But that wouldn’t do. So she screamed harder and struggled harder. She had excellent control down there, and could make him come quickly, embarrass him in front of his girlfriend, but she would pay dearly for that later. One of the girls had already lost her eyes for such a stunt, the price of fostering performance anxiety in the men versus buffering their studly view of themselves. One girl limped with a broken leg that had never healed right, broken by the brute Baen.

  She let Bacchus bend her over the ironing board. Katia made sure to subtly vary her moans with each new position as if to indicate that Bacchus was discovering ways to release her that no man had discovered before. And she slipped into creative new stretches as if forced into them by Bacchus, concealed from the girlfriend’s lusting eyes that it was she even more than Bacchus choreographing the cinematically inspired rape.