The Race Read Online Free PDF Page B

share their records via a central database, so the new docs knew what the old docs had found the second they punched Del’s name into their computer.
    ~*~
    Del set his heart on becoming a runner from the age of eight. It was the only thing he ever wanted, the one ideal he found to be beautiful and set his store by. When the doctors turned him down, he felt as if his life was over. He was a half-thing, a cripple, a drone.
    There was also the question of Limlasker. Limlasker was an expensive dog. You could argue that he wasn’t a dog at all, but a financial investment. Gra Rayner only let Del pick out a puppy in the first place because everyone took it for granted that Del and Lim would go on to compete in major races. For Gra Rayner, not running Lim would be like chucking thousands of shillings straight in the bin. If Del couldn’t run Limlasker, he should find someone who could, and the sooner the better.
    Gra came good, though. I suppose in many respects Del was just as much a son in his eyes as Em was. He offered Del a job straight away as his trainee business manager, and said that Del could keep Limlasker, that he should consider the dog as a down-payment on his starting salary, and that he wouldn’t be looking for anyone to take him over.
    “I know you’ll do me proud, you always have. And you and Lim, you’re a team. That’s not up for grabs.”
    I think it saved Del’s sanity, that reassurance that Limlasker would not be taken away from him. He accepted Gra’s job offer, and a year later he moved out of the house and into the leaky old barn that came with the building lot Gra had sold him just down the road from the yard.
    The more time passed, the more Del gradually came to accept the life he had. The job at the yard helped. He liked the power, definitely. He liked moving money around and organizing schedules and bossing the runners. He was good at what he did, and he enjoyed that, too. When Del cared about something he liked to be best at it, and I reckon Gra knew that. I think that was he was counting on.
    The biggest shock was Del’s decision to give up Limlasker. It happened about a year after he started managing the yard for real, and shortly after he got together with Claudia.
    “He should run,” Del said to Gra. “The dog’s in his prime. It’s what he was born for.”
    Limlasker was almost four years old then. Smartdogs tend to have a longer racing life than most ordinary greyhounds, because the psychological component of their ability runs at a higher percentage than in non-engineered dogs. Gra was unsure at first. He was concerned that the natural bond between Del and Lim might interfere with the dog’s ability to form a connection with an implanted runner, but Del brushed his objections aside.
    “It’s what he wants,” Del said. “He’ll win for you, big time. Trust me.”
    Del was right, as he usually was when it came to the dogs. He even found a runner for Lim himself, an unsmiling, rather taciturn girl he found at the track called Tash Oni. Tash was Nigerian, as tall as Del and just as skinny. For a while I felt convinced that Del was involved with Tash, that he was shagging her on the quiet or at least thinking about it, but it turned out that Tash was already living with someone, a news journalist called Brit Engstrom.
    When Tash went in to have her operation, Del was there to collect her five hours later. He saw her home, and when after two weeks the doctors pronounced her fit, he took Limlasker to her himself, to live with her permanently.
    Not many people could have done that. My brother has many faults but nobody could complain that he lacks courage.
    ~*~
    When Del told me he was going to be a father I could barely believe it. What surprised me even more was that he seemed to be pleased. Del’s always been a loner at heart. I never thought he’d settle down with anyone, least of all Claudia Day, with her soft voice and shy smile and fragile nerves. She wasn’t even