Chapter 9: CHAPTER SIX (Part 2)

“I don’t understand.”

“If I can get them to agree with me, it will be a million dollar race, and I can’t exactly have Reynolds put up the whole amount.”

“You want to take on Duncan Reynolds?”

“His best horse right now is a... filly named The Tigress.”

“Aren’t you chewing off a bit more than you can handle?”

They walked out of the stable, leaving Dawny Lee alone in her stall. What I should do, he thought, is breed Dawny Lee to some stallion, and start the thoroughbreds in this area from scratch. In fifty or a hundred years we’ll have them back on the track again.

The idea smelled like a load of horse shit. How many real horses were there? How many males? How many females? No matter how many, they were scattered across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, a mare here, a stallion there...

When the virus spared horses like Dawny Lee, it had blessed them with a one-way ticket to extinction. How long it would take didn’t mater; the virus would triumph in the end.

How many others with the same idea? Breed as many as you can, breed until they can establish themselves again. He shook his head. Too many artificial horses, not enough temptation to turn away from the way it was now.

Shortly after the artificial horses were put on the market, someone commented that they shouldn’t have bothered. Let the real horses die, and that would be the end of horse racing.

Obviously not a patron of the racetrack.

Janine showed up forty minutes later. It had cooled off so she was wearing a blue and red hooded jacket.

He stood at the door. “Come in.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go to my office.”

In the office Janine wasted no time coming to the point. “I’ve got news that will make your head spin.”

“I’ll decide what will make my head spin,” he said.

“I guess you know Duncan Reynolds has been rather successful with his horses.”

“I know.” Impatiently.

“I decided to check his horses,” she continued, “and you know what I found. Someone tampered with the programs of all his horses.”

Greedy bastard. He refrained from saying it out loud.

“That’s why his horses have been winning most of the races,” Tony said.

“The Jockey Club must be wearing blinkers if they can’t see what’s going on,” he said.

“Equine Electronics... the Jockey Club... they’re not on the level.,” Janine said.

“How many owners are involved in this?” he asked. “Besides Reynolds, I mean.”

“A few are winning more races than they should.”

“What about this... locked programming?”

“What Reynolds and owners like him are using is something I’ll call a false lock. Which means that someone on the inside is working with them. One of the programmers... the one who enters the wins, the one who enters the number of races...”

“Wouldn’t it be the one who enters the wins?” Tony asks. “Seems obvious to me.”

“Tell me more about this locked programming,” Gilbert said.

“When an inspector, like me, checks the horse’s program against the data she has it appears as if it is locked, and everything appears normal. The horse will have eighteen starts, and he’ll win three races. Then he gets on the racetrack, and he wins ten out of those eighteen races. And you know who gets blamed? The inspector. We didn’t check it correctly. It’s not three races he’s supposed to win, it’s ten. Let me tell you something, though. I’ve never been wrong, and neither have the other inspectors. But it’s our word against theirs.”

“Who changes it? When is it changed?”

“That I don’t know,” she said, “but I think... I think it can be changed any time. It can even be changed when the horse is in the post parade. As long as you have the right equipment. And of course, someone, somewhere has come up with a... device, I guess...”

“Remote control,” Tony said.

“Could be. As far as who, I don’t know.”

“I’m confused.” Gilbert scratched the back of his neck, tried to wrap his head around what the girl was telling him. “I’m not too much into computers, never have been.”

“They’ve been around for over a hundred years, Mr. Gilbert,” she said.

“Can you modify a program if you feel the numbers favor the horse too much?” he asked.

“Tell him about the dummy program,” Tom cut in.

“All in good time,” she said.

“This is all rather confusing.” He kneaded the back of his neck with the tips of his fingers. “All right, just give me the condensed version. I don’t have time for the details.”

“Equine Electronics builds horses,” she said, “and all they build is thoroughbreds. To give it to you in simplest terms, let’s say you’re an owner and you’re looking for a horse.” She held up a hand before he could say anything. “Since this is supposedly random you can’t request a certain type of horse that’s going to win x number of races on its way to an Eclipse Award.”

He thought back to what Peterson had told him about an owner not being able to request something specific in a horse.

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“Brian Forster told me the programs are random,” he said.

“The programs are supposed to be random. They are designed... by law, they must be designed in such a way that a horse cannot win every time it steps on the track.”

“But someone found a way to beat the system,” Tony said.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” Janine said. “Some horses do win a lot of races, like Kentucky Wine a few years ago. He won eight in a row, out of sixteen starts. What I’m looking at is the overall performance of an owner’s entire stable.”

“Like Reynolds,” he said.

“He’s high on the list.”

“I know how they’re doing it,” she said, “and I think it involves one or more of the other inspectors who’ve been given a little... incentive, I guess. Once a program is completed it is stamped with a serial number, the same number that is tattooed inside a horse’s upper lip. This prevents the owner or trainer from inserting another program into the horse’s head.”

“They open the horse’s head?”

“Sure. Remember, they’re machines, that’s all. Sophisticated, yes, but still machines. If one breaks down they take it apart and fix it, and if they can’t fix it they use the parts to build other horses. Nothing wasted. Machines, Mr. Gilbert. Nuts and bolts and wires and computer chips.”

“So how do they change the program?”

“The final program is supposed to be locked, and when the... final inspector checks it with his instrument, that is, reads the data, it appears as if it is locked. In other words, everything appears normal. Let me get back to you as an owner. So you have a horse bought from Equine Electronics. Let’s call it... Gilbert’s Lightning.”

He winced.

“Now the interesting thing about Equine Electronics is that no owner, no trainer knows what is in that program. If they did it would give them an unfair advantage. As for all the programmers involved, they have to sign an NDA as soon as they are hired. Anyway, so you have this horse...”

“Gilbert’s Lightning,” Tony put in.

“Yes. You don’t know what this horse... Gilbert’s Lightning is going to do. He might be stakes material, might be a complete dud, competing in the lowest claiming ranks. To take it even further, not even the programmers know because different programmers will program the horse’s racing life.”

“I’m still waiting,” he said impatiently. “So far everything sounds pretty straightforward.”

“All right. Let’s say you’re impatient, and you want to make sure your horse is going to run in high class races... you know, allowance races, and definitely stakes races. You look around, ask a few questions, find someone who can help you out, talk to someone like Duncan Reynolds, who’s having quite a bit of success with his horses. He mentions a few names... inspectors, who’d be willing to help you out, for a price. This would all be done surreptitiously, of course.”

“Illegally.”

“We’ve ventured into that territory now.” She lowered her voice as if expecting someone behind her, listening to every word.

“Let me get this straight. I’m the owner of a horse called Gilbert’s Lightning, but I have no idea how he’s going to do on the track. Mr. Inspector comes along and checks the horse’s program, and finds that my horse will win five races in his career. Only problem is he can’t tell me because he’s sworn to secrecy. I don’t want to take any chances that I have a loser so I locate another inspector who helps me out... how?”

“This is where the dummy program comes in,” she said. “This program says that your horse will race twelve times and win ten of those races.”

“Don’t inspectors get paid enough?”

“Greed, Mr. Gilbert, greed.”

“Now here comes the tricky part,” he said. “Gilbert’s Lightning is supposed to win five races, that’s it. That’s what the programmer who does wins puts in. Now wouldn’t this programmer get suspicious if my horse suddenly reels off ten wins? Wouldn’t the inspector get suspicious?”

“That’s where the false lock comes in,” she says. “When a horse’s head is filled with a false lock, it can be changed.”

“Wouldn’t the programmer who put in those five wins complain to the... supervisors if the horse wins its sixth race? He must realize that something is wrong.”

“If I were that programmer,” she said, “I’d keep my mouth shut. If the horse wins more than five races, and I only have him winning five races something must be wrong with me. So I’m just going to let it go.”

“That’s not the way it should be done.”

“I know, but Equine Electronics has gone too far down the rabbit hole.”

“So I guess the programmers are in on it.”

“I don’t know. Some of them might be in on it. The others? Like I said, they’ll just keep their mouths shut in order to keep their jobs.”

“So how is the programming changed? Is it the inspectors?” He raised his hand. “I’m not accusing you, Miss McNally.”

She shrugged. “The inspectors? They’re the last ones to see the horse’s programming. Maybe men like Duncan Reynolds have some in their pockets. With their winnings they can buy off a lot of people.”

“Tony says these programs could be changed by remote control.”

“Why not?” Tony said. “Makes perfect sense to me. The trainer... or maybe a stable hand... has this little gadget in his hand. When the horse steps on the track for the post parade he presses a button, and voilà, the program is changed.”

“Maybe the jockey is in on it too,” Gilbert said.

“We don’t know,” Janine said. “Right now, no one is really investigating. Everyone just assumes that Duncan Reynolds is having a stroke of luck.”

“Maybe we should speak up.”

“I’ll need proof,” she said.

“We can’t do much right now, Tony.” Gilbert interlocked his hands behind his head, looked at the wall with photos of horses – real horses. “We won’t be able to do anything till next year.”

“Dawny Lee, right?”

“Yes.” Everything depended on Dawny Lee.

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