Marlowe and the Spacewoman Read Online Free PDF Page A

language.
    It was the first pilot program that met with the most success, and which ultimately led to Better Pet’s downfall - Designer Dogs.  Everybody loves dogs: unfailingly loyal, bestowing unconditional love upon their owners, and tremendous fans of attention.  Better Pets wanted to improve on this, creating dogs who could talk to you when you were down, and who would call you at work to remind you to buy more dog food on the way home.  But Better Pets failed to take into account a dog’s natural disinclination towards confinement.  That oversight and a faulty kennel latch allowed the intelligent, talking dogs to escape.  And once they tasted the freedom of open air, they searched, in a rather formidably large pack, for people to love and be loyal to.
    Their genetically magnified loyalty, of course, was the icing on Better Pet’s funeral cake.  The dogs felt that their creators deserved credit for the marvels they had wrought.  So after saying hello, their loyalty kicked in and they proceeded to tell the terrified strangers they’d come upon all about Better Pets, and the genetic tinkering going on there.  
    This, not surprisingly, alarmed more than a few individuals.  The City government stepped in and shut down Better Pets.  While the authorities were hell-bent on expurgating all the accursed spawn of Better Pets, they never managed to capture the dogs that had escaped.  And a good thing too, because those dogs turned out to be Marlowe’s best snitches and sources.  All they asked in return was to be given a few scraps of food, some City scrip, and the occasional game of chess (to exercise minds otherwise underwhelmed with the grueling task of pretending to be utterly vacuous to avoid extermination).
    The animals still incarcerated at Better Pets, however, weren’t so lucky.  The Governor ordered their destruction.  Except for the parrots.  Thirty two birds, twenty of them with the equivalent of a PhD, escaped.  And were very angry about the attempted genocide of their species, avis superus.  They formed a dangerous gang of avian heavies known as the Feathers.  Their crimes ranged from minor infractions such as an infamous bowel-voiding operation that left the Governor’s limo and the facade of City Hall completely coated in raspberry and blueberry fed GMP droppings, to the more sinister activity of muscling the mob out of the dirty job of controlling the City’s waste management system and the teamsters who worked for it.
    Led by a brilliant leader known only as Lafayette, the gang quickly became PENO – Public Enemy Number One.  A host of defensive City ordinances were issued, mandating, among other things, that all citizens of good standing carry a BB gun on their person at all times while outdoors, and that they shoot any wild parrot seen within the City.  Failure to comply could lead to hefty fines and, for a brief period immediately following the limo incident, death.
    There were also a slew of criminal indictments filed against anyone and everyone connected to Better Pets.  The CEO was executed after a trial before a military tribunal, and those scientists too absentminded to make themselves scarce were lynched by an angry mob.  The more politically savvy scientists deftly did go underground, and a lot of them had supplemented Marlowe’s income by hiring him to arrange for passage out of the City.  Marlowe was uniquely positioned to provide them with the necessary documentation.
    Gomer had been one of the parrots who escaped.  Marlowe had come across him while working a particularly nasty case involving a traveling circus that was in truth a spy ring recruiting unsuspecting GM animals as agents.  The circus would move from city-state to city-state, selling the secrets of their previous host to their current host, all while collecting new information to sell to the next destination on the map.  Gomer had taken an inexplicable liking to Marlowe, an avowed bachelor and non-pet