Dick Francis - Twice Shy

'Yes. Come in. Did you bring your tapes?' She wasted no precious words on any other greeting. 'This way. Old Grantley Basic, Jane said. You've got the language with you. Do you want to load it, or shall I?'

'I'd be glad if-'

'Hand them over, then. Which side?'

'Er, first program on Side 1.'

'Right. Come along.'

She moved with the same inborn rapidity, disappearing down a short passage and through a doorway before I'd even managed a step. She must always find, I thought, that the rest of the world went along intolerably in slow motion.

The room into which I finally followed her must originally'have been designed as a bedroom, which it now in no way resembled. There was a quiet, felt-like pale green floor covering, track-lighting with spotlights, a roller blind at the window, matt white walls-and long benches of machines more or less like Ted Pitts's, only double.

'Workroom,' Ruth Quigley said.

'Eh, yes.'

It was cooler in there than out on the street. I identified a faint background hum as air-conditioning, and remarked on it.

She nodded, not lifting her eyes from the already almost completed job of loading Grantley Basic into a machine that would accept it. 'Dust is like gravel to computers. Heat, damp, all makes them temperamental. They're thoroughbreds, of course.'

Racing programs… thoroughbred computers. Excellence won. Pains taken gave one the edge. I was beginning to think like her, I thought.

'I'm wasting your time,' I said apologetically.

'Glad to help. Always do anything for Jane and Ted. They know that. Did you bring the form books? You'll need them. Simple programs, but facts must be right. Most teaching-machines, just the same. They bore me quite often. Multiple-choice questions. Then the child takes half an hour to get it right and I put it in a bright remark like, "Well done, aren't you clever." Nothing of the sort. Encouragement, they say, is all. What do you think?'

'Are they gifted children?'

She gave me a flashing glance. 'All children are gifted. Some more so. They need the best teaching. They often don't get it. Teachers are jealous, did you know?'

'My brother always said it was intensely exciting to have a very bright boy in the class.'

'Like Ted, generous. There you are, fire away. I'll be in and out, don't let me disturb you. I'm working on a sort-listing of string arrays. They said it was taking them eighteen minutes, I ask you. I've got it down to five seconds, but only one dimension, I need two dimensions if I'm not to scramble the data. I'm poking a machine-language program into the memory from BASIC, then converting the machine code into assembly-language economics. Am I boring you?'

'No,' I said. 'I just don't understand a word of it.'

'Sorry. Forgot you weren't like Ted. Well, carry on.'

I had brought in a large briefcase the tapes, the racing form books, all sorts of record books and all the recent copies of a good racing paper, and with a feeling that by Ruth Quigley's standards it was going to take me a very long time I set about working out which horses were likely to have won according to Liam O'Rorke, and checking them against those which had actually reached the post first. I still needed a list of the horses which Angelo had backed, but I thought I might get that from Taff and from Lancer on the following day: and then I might be able to figure out where Angelo had messed everything up.

FILE NAME?

CLOAD DONCA, I typed. Pressed the 'Enter' key, and watched the asterisks; waited for READY. Pressed 'Enter' again and got my reward.

WHICH RACE AT DONCASTER?

ST LEGER, I typed.

DONCASTER: ST LEGER. TYPE NAME OF HORSE AND PRESS 'ENTER'.

GENOTTI, I typed. Pressed 'Enter'.

DONCASTER: ST LEGER.

GENOTTI.

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS YES OR NO OR WITH A NUMBER AND PRESS 'ENTER'.

HAS HORSE WON AS A TWO YEAR OLD?

YES, I typed. The screen flashed a new question leaving the headings intact.

HAS HORSE WON AS A THREE YEAR OLD?

YES, I typed.

HOW MANY DAYS SINCE HORSE LAST RAN?

I consulted the daily newspaper which always gave that precise information, and typed in the number which had appeared there on St Leger day: 23.

HAS HORSE WON OVER DISTANCE: ONE MILE SIX FURLONGS?

NO, I typed.

HAS HORSE RUN OVER DISTANCE: ONE MILE SIX FURLONGS?

NO.

TYPE LONGEST DISTANCE IN FURLONGS OVER WHICH HORSE HAS WON.

12

HAS HORSE RUN ON COURSE? NO.

TYPE IN PRIZE MONEY WON IN CURRENT SEASON.

I consulted the form books and typed Genotti's winnings, which had been fairly good but not stupendous.

HAS HORSE'S SIRE SIRED WINNERS AT THE DISTANCE?

I looked it up in the breeding records, which took much longer, but the answer was YES.

DAM ditto? YES.

IS HORSE QUOTED ANTE-POST AT TWELVE TO ONE OR LESS?

YES.

HAS JOCKEY PREVIOUSLY WON A CLASSIC?

YES.

HAS TRAINER PREVIOUSLY WON A CLASSIC?

YES.

ANY MORE HORSES?

YES.

I found myself back at the beginning and repeated the program for every horse which had run in the race. The questions weren't always precisely the same, because different answers produced alternative queries, and for some horses there were far more questions than for Others. It took me a good hour to look everything up, and I thought that if I ever did begin to do it all seriously I would make myself a whole host of more easily accessible tables than those available in the record books. When I at last answered NO to the final question ANY MORE HORSES? I got the clear reply that left no doubt about Liam O'Rorke's genius.

Genotti headed the win factor list. An outsider turned up on it in second place, with the horse that had started favourite in third: and the St Leger result had been those three horses in that order exactly. I could hardly believe it.

Ruth Quigley said suddenly, 'Got the wrong result? You look flummoxed.'

'No – the right one.'

'Disturbing.' She grinned swiftly. 'If I get the results I expect, I check and check and check. Doesn't do to be complacent. Like some coffee?'

I accepted and she made it as fast as she did everything else.

'How old are you?' I said.

'Twenty-one. Why?'

'I'd have thought you'd have been at the university.'

'Degree at twenty plus one month. Nothing unusual. Cheated my way in, of course. Everything's so slow nowadays. Forty years ago, degrees at nineteen or less were possible. Now they insist on calendar age. Why? Why hold people back? Life's terribly short as it is. Masters degree at twenty plus six months. Did the two courses simultaneously. No one knew. Don't spread it around. Doing my doctorate now. Are you interested?'

'Yes,' I said truthfully.

She smiled like a summer's day, come and gone. 'My father says I'm a bore.'

'He doesn't mean it.'

'He's a surgeon,' she said, as if that explained much. 'So's my mother. Guilt complexes, both of them. Give to mankind more than you take. That sort of thing. They can't help it.'

'And you?'

'I don't know yet. I can't give much. I can't get jobs I can do. They look at the years I've been alive and make judgments. Quite deadly. Time has practically nothing to do with anything. They'll give me the jobs when I'm thirty that I could do better now. Poets and mathemeticians are best before twenty-five. What chance have they got?'

'To work alone,' I said.

'My God. Do you understand? You're wasting time, get on with your programs. Don't show me what I should do. I've got a research fellowship. What do I seek for? What is there to seek? Where is the unknown, what is not known, what's the question?'

I shook my head helplessly, 'Wait for the apple to fall on your head.'

'It's true. I can't contemplate. Sitting under the apple trees. Metaphorical apple trees. I've tried. Get on with your nags.'