The Race Read Online Free PDF

not in the way the scientists were expecting. The more the implant technology developed, the stronger the symbiosis between the dog and its runner. In symbiosis they formed a kind of mutual self-dependency – the dogs cared about their runners, sometimes enough to die for them, and vice versa. That wasn’t what the Romney Heights scientists had been looking for at all.
    Some of the scientists refused to continue with the use of smartdogs in the weapons programme. They insisted that the dogs’ enhanced intelligence made it immoral for humans to exploit them in any manner that would bring them to harm. One of the scientists, Klara Hoogstraaten, even argued that all smartdogs should be granted rights under the Hague Convention.
    When the lab management tried to have Klara Hoogstraaten sacked, she leaked the entire story to the tabloid press.
    There was a public outcry. Some people were just concerned about the dogs being mistreated, others went one stage further and claimed that this was science run riot, that the smartdogs were the first step in a master plan to replace human manual workers with a slave race of engineered animals.
    Most didn’t give a damn either way. But the general shit-stirring made a lot of stink and in the end Romney Heights was forced to close down.
    After that, implant surgery for smartdog runners became a legal grey area. Officially it was banned, in practice it just went underground. They closed down Romney Heights because they had to – after the Hoogstraaten business kicked off they had to be seen to do something. But it wasn’t long before bootleg clinics started springing up, and when they did the politicos just sat back and pretended not to notice. The government were desperate to have the gene-splicing research continue, and here was a way of doing that, but with no risk to themselves – foolproof. They didn’t have to commit any money to the project, because the clinics were making money, and if anything went wrong they could always scapegoat the greedy doctors.
    They still had to be careful, though. Any adverse publicity surrounding one of the clinics and their whole cosy little system might implode, which is why a surgery that is theoretically outlawed is now probably the most rigidly controlled procedure in the country.
    They can’t afford to have anyone die on them, and that’s why they turned down Del for his operation.
    ~*~
    There was something wrong with his brain, some congenital defect. A tiny flaw the doctors felt certain would make no difference to his normal lifespan but that could make his brain go phut if he had the implant.
    The doctors said that even then it would be unlikely, but as the surgery wasn’t essential they were unwilling to take the risk.
    Non-essential to whom, though? It’s true I’m no medic, but I understood my brother well enough to know that the doctors might have killed him anyway, through disappointment.
    All his initial check-ups were fine. The MRI was the final hurdle, just a formality really. No one expected to find anything. Del came back from that appointment in a black rage, not swearing and yelling the way he did when he was drunk or had got into a fight with someone, but clenched with anger, rigid with it, as if he were carrying the force of a bomb blast locked inside him.
    He couldn’t talk, or wouldn’t. It was scary. Not even Limlasker would go near him, and I think that was what finally brought him out of it, having Lim avoid him like that. In the end the anger seeped away like floodwater down a storm drain and there was just this kid, lying face down on the bed with his dog beside him.
    The next morning he seemed more together.
    “Stupid cut-price morons,” he said. “There are other places.”
    I didn’t see what good it would do. I didn’t dare say anything, but I was worried that if he went to another clinic the results would come back the same. As it turned out he didn’t even get as far as being tested. The clinics all