"Barry B. Longyear - The Purloined Labradoodle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

posters concerning the various hideous diseases cats and dogs could
contract, complete with expensive preventative treatments that could be
purchased right here, should the shipments ever arrive. Shad and I, you
see, were undercover operating a pet shop in The Strand, Village of
Lympstone, east bank of the River Exe south of Exeter, Devon. I was the
pet shop owner and DS Shad had traded his cherished Nigel Bruce meat
suit in on what budget-strapped ABCD had left over in the way of
undercover pet bios: a rather timeworn parrot.

We were, as it happened, an insignificant part of a rather large task
force attempting to crack down on a UK ring of swindlers who were
representing real household pets as amdroid bios capable of taking full
human imprints with rather appalling consequences for bargain seekers
who would lose a good bit of their savings, all of their natural bodies, and
most of their minds in the process. The main thrusts of the task force effort
were in London, Manchester, and Bristol. Shad was being cranky on two
accounts: first, because he felt we had been left out of the big show; and
second, because he wasn’t getting to do his Dr. Watson, which he really
wanted to do.

Nevertheless, the pets used by the perpetrators came from
somewhere and covering pet stores was a logical investigative
consequence. From what we could observe from our post in Lympstone,
though, it didn’t appear to be a well coordinated operation—something
Shad was beginning to refer to as a “clusterbugger.” In any event, we were
on our third day of operations and our shipments of kittens, puppies, and
much of our equipment and supplies had yet to arrive. No bait, no
customers, no suspects. I looked from the window at the quaint village
street, and it was raining. There went our chance for someone blind drunk
mistaking us for a tube station and wandering in.

****

“Limp stone,” Shad muttered again from his perch at the end of the
counter. He was getting quite tiresome. I turned from the window.

“Actually, Shad, the m is silent and the stone is pronounced stin.
Lipstin.”

“Brits pronounce a whole lot better than they spell.”

“I don’t recall that American insurance company you did the telly
adverts for being such great spellers. Why wasn’t your duck quacking
‘Aflass, Aflass?’”

“You mean besides how close it sounds to ‘half-assed’? Jaggs, you
really think ‘The Petting Place’ is a good name for a pet store?”

“Superintendent Matheson chose the name, not I, as you well know.”