Marlowe and the Spacewoman Read Online Free PDF

owner, and in the end not only proved essential to breaking the case, but saved Marlowe from a gang of surly gorillas suffering from a nasty case of Ritalin withdrawal.  After the circus had been disbanded and the ringleader arrested, Gomer had nowhere to go.  He wasted no time blubbering his sob story to Marlowe, and with the strategic insertion of reminders about how he had saved Marlowe’s life, eventually persuaded the reluctant PI to take him in.
    To this day, Gomer freaked out at the sight of clowns.
    Adopting Gomer wasn’t as simple as bringing a puppy home from one of the City-sanctioned pet stores.  In the aftermath of Better Pets, all animals kept within the City were required to have paperwork certifying them one hundred percent organic, non-GMO products.  It had cost Marlowe far more than he originally anticipated to obtain counterfeit documents that would pass anything beyond a casual inspection, and with the added expense of buying lysine-enhanced food on the black market, he decided that Gomer needed to earn his keep.  Hence his job as Marlowe’s answering service.  It should have worked out quite well.  Gomer handled the phones, taking calls and then reciting them back to Marlowe, verbatim and in the caller’s voice, when he dialed in to check his messages.  But unlike the City Phone Company supplied (and almost certainly bugged) personality-free computerized answering services, Gomer resented what he considered to be a menial job far below his capabilities, and did not hesitate to complain about it.  Sometimes the complaints would take the form of (very believable sounding) editorials tacked onto the end of a caller’s message in the caller’s voice.  Plus he chewed through about one phone headset a week; two if Marlowe ran out of turkey jerky.
    This had been going on for almost six months now, and like Toothy, every morning when the bird’s grating voice greeted him, Marlowe questioned the arrangement.
    “Gomer,” Marlowe asked as he lifted the rolled up, wrinkled bag of lysine-rich cat food over the cage and dumped a pile of the gravel-like pellets onto the soiled newspaper floor, “has anyone been in here this morning?”
    Gomer stretched out his wings slowly, first the left and then the right.  He removed his headset and gave Marlowe a bleary stare.  “You know, you could get me a bowl.  This is so unsanitary.”
    “And you could limit your bird droppings to one corner of the cage.”
    Gomer hopped down to the bottom of the cage and carefully picked at the cat food he so loved to munch.
    “Hey, this isn’t the horse meat stuff.”
    “You’ll get horse meat when this is gone.”
    Gomer rapid-fired his response.  “Horse!  Horse!  Horse!”
    “When this bag is empty!  I’m not going to have two bags open, because then you won’t finish this one.”
    Gomer rolled his eyes and harrumphed.
    “Well, was anyone here this morning?”
    “I thought the Mona Lisa was here, but I think that was just a bad batch of ‘shrooms I ate last night.”
    “I’m serious, Gomer.  If you’ve been paying any attention to the events of the last hour, you’d know someone killed me and mucked about with the surveillance system while I was being resurrected.”
    “And so am I!  You left the freakin’ mushrooms in my cage.  I thought the tree-damned bars were breaking loose and trying to strangle me.  Until the Mona Lisa showed up and, with the help of the Venus de Milo, saved me.”
    “I didn’t leave you any mushrooms.”
    “That Venus de Milo is pretty damned impressive at wrestling, despite her obvious disadvantages.”
    “Gomer, I didn’t leave you any mushrooms.”
    This provoked a snort from Gomer, who turned his beak derisively.  “There’s a pile of them right there, and I sure didn’t mail-order them!”
    Marlowe looked down, and peeking out from under the pile of cat food were a few brown, shriveled fungi.
    “You could try them, if you don’t believe me, but I