Beggars and Choosers Read Free

and Katous
yelped and jumped forward, quivering.
    I said, “A genemod dog with some self-awareness but afraid of a
flower? Isn’t that a little cruel?”
    “It’s supposed to be an ultra-pampered beastie. Actually, Katous is
a beta-test prototype for the foreign market. Allowable under the
Special Exemption Act for Economic Recovery, Section 14-c.
Non-Agricultural Domestic Animals for Export.”
    “I thought the President hasn’t signed the Special Exemption Act.”
Congress had been wrangling over it for weeks. Economic crisis,
unfavorable balance of trade, strict GSEA controls, threat to life as
we know it. All the usual.
    “He’ll sign it next week,” Stephanie said. I wondered which of her
lovers had influence on the Hill. “We can’t afford not to. The genemod
lobby gets more powerful every month. Think of all those Chinese and EC
and South American rich old ladies who will just love a nauseatingly
cute, helpless, unthreateningly sentient, short-lived, very expensive
lapdog with no teeth.”
    “Short-lived? No teeth? GSEA breed specifications—”
    “Will be waived for export animals. Meanwhile I’m just beta-testing
for a friend. Ah, here’s Hudson.”
    The ‘bot floated through the French doors with a fresh pitcher of
vodka scorpions. Katous scrambled away, his four ears quivering. His
scramble brought him sideways against a bank of flowers, all of which
tried to wrap themselves around him. One long flaccid petal settled
softly over his eyes. Katous yelped and pulled loose, his eyes wild. He
shot across the terrace.
    “Help!” he cried. “Help Katous!”
    On that side of the terrace I had planted moondust in shallow boxes
between the palings, to make a low border that wouldn’t obstruct the
view of the Bay. Katous’s frightened flight barreled him into the
moondust’s sensor field. It released a cloud of sweet-smelling blue
fibers, fine as milkweed. The dog breathed them in, and yelped again.
The moondust cloud was momentarily translucent, a fragrant fog around
those enormous terrified eyes. Katous ran in a ragged circle, then
leaped blindly. He hurled between the wide-set palings and over the
edge of the terrace.
    The sound of his body hitting the pavement below made Hudson turn
its sensors.
    Stephanie and I ran to the railing. At our feet the moondust
released another cloud of fibers. Katous lay smashed on the sidewalk
six stories down.
    “Damn!” Stephanie cried. “That prototype cost a quarter millionin R&D!”
    Hudson said, “There was an unregistered sound from the lower
entranceway. Shall I alert security?”
    “What am I going to tell Norman? I promised to baby-sit the thing
and keep it safe!”
    “Repeat. There was an unregistered sound from the lower entranceway.
Shall I alert security?”
    “No, Hudson,” I said. “No action.” I looked at the mass of bloody
pink fur. Sorrow and disgust swept through me: sorrow for Katous’s
fear, disgust for Stephanie and myself.
    “Ah, well,” Stephanie said. Her perfect lips twitched. “Maybe the IQ
did
need enhancing. Can’t you just see the Liver tabloid
headlines? DUMB DOG DIVES TO DEATH. PANICKED BY PENILE POSY.” She threw
back her head and laughed, the red hair swinging in the breeze.
    Mercurial
, David had once said of Stephanie.
She has
intriguingly mercurial moods
.
    Personally, I’ve never found Liver tabloid headlines as funny as
everyone else seems to. And I’d bet that neither “penile” nor “posy”
was in the Liver vocabulary.
    Stephanie shrugged and turned away from the railing. “I guess Norman
will just have to make another one. With the R&D already done, it
probably won’t bankrupt them. Maybe they can even take a tax write-off.
Did you hear that Jean-Claude rammed his write off through the IRS, for
the embryos he and Lisa decided not to implant in a surrogate after
all? He discarded them and wrote off the embryo storage for seven years
as a business depreciation on the grounds that an heir was part