Mude was the interpreter appointed to the American press for the upcoming special. He was forty and fastidious, with an impeccable Western hairstyle and outfit. For the same reasons that the famous pictures of Marx and Engels were to be taken down for the day of the race, Mude had been advised that it would be acceptable to wear something less jarring to the American public than the gray garb of the Red Menace. Something Western. So Mr. Mude had tailored a powder-blue Western outfit, replete with pearl buttons and embroidered longhorns. Taiwan-made cowboy boots glittered from beneath the blue cuffs. A six-shooter tie slide held his neckerchief tight to his throat. He would not have looked out of place on Hee Haw.

In the customs terminal at the Beijing Airport, however, there had been nothing funny about his attire. If anything it made him somehow all the more ominous, especially when he waltzed them past the customs guard with one word: "Dipromatic."

It had been clear from the first that he did not like English. But he had been assigned the odious language, so some test must have indicated aptitude; therefore, he must be qualified; thus he had conquered it.

Hence he could translate – after a stiff fashion – but could not quite communicate. He couldn't chat. He couldn't joke. He could only smile and say "No," or "One cannot," or "Very sorry, I fear that is not possible."

So the journalists had been relieved indeed to come across Bling in the lounge of the hotel, reading a Spiderman comic and listening to a tiny tape machine play "Whip It" by Devo. The journalists had skidded to a gaping stop. Here was a young Chinese wearing a pair of skinny blue shades, short pants, a crewcut uncut so long it stuck up in random twisted quills. The journalists were impressed.

"Isn't this a splendid surprise?" they applauded. "A Pekingese punk."

"Far out," Bling responded. "A pack of Yankee Dogs, escaped from the pound. Do have a seat. I can see you are about to buy a poor student a drink."

After repeated rounds of gin rickeys and ideological argument they enlisted him as a go-between, with an offer of free running shoes and a promise not to reveal his true identity in their story. "Have no worry," they assured him. "No one will ever know that Bling Clawsby has defected to the Orient."

The deal was struck and Bling was with them from then on. Mude didn't care for this New Wave addition to the retinue, but he tried to make the most use he could of it. In a way, Bling afforded Mr. Mude the opportunity to be even more inscrutable. He found he could relegate random questions to Bling. When asked "How does the sports academy select students?" Or "Is there legal recourse in China if, say, this crazy bus driver runs over a bicycle?" Or "Why is China doing this event anyway?" Mude could pass these difficult questions on with a curt nod. "Mr. B. Ling will explain this you."

"Explain me this, then, Mr. Bling," the writer pressed on. "If China wants to put her best foot forward, as you say, then why a marathon? The Chinese entries are going to get creamed."

Bling leaned across the aisle of the rocking bus to answer out of Mude's earshot.

"Contradiction, you have to understand, means something different to the Marxist mind than it means to you peabrains. Lenin claimed that 'Dialectics is the study of contradiction in the essence of objects.' Engels said, 'Motion itself is a contradiction.' And Mao maintained that revolution and development arise out of contradiction. He saw the traditional philosophy, 'Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not,' as a prop the feudal ruling classes supported because it supported them. The so-called 'way' was therefore a form of what he termed Mechanical Materialism, or Vulgar Evolutionism, which he considered to constitute a contradiction within the very fabric of the transcendent metaphysical Taoism of the past. Dig? This was the real genius of his early years. Mao did not judge the old ways, he merely stoked the contradictions existing within them."

"Covered himself fore and aft, did he?"

"In a way. In another way, he set up the sequence that was bound to be his undoing. Contradiction may create revolution, but when the revolutionary takes control he tries to eliminate the very thing that brought him to power – dissent, dissatisfaction, distrust of big government. Revolution is a dragon that rises to the top of the pile by eating his daddy. So the revolutionary dragon has a natural mistrust of his own issue – see? – as well as any other fire breathers roaming the rice paddies."

"Sounds to me like it was this dragon's old lady what swallowed him," the photog remarked. He had been following the latest denouncements in the little English-translation newspapers.

"You mean the Widow Mao and her Quartet? Naw, she's just a foolish old broad happened to inherit the reins. Not enough class or courage or just plain smarts to pull off a conspiracy against old Mao, even on his most senile doddering day. No, what it was was Mao did some bad shit to stay on top of the dragon pile, to some heavy people. Imagine the ghosts of his private hell: all those people he had to liquidate to grease the works of the fucking Cultural Revolution, all those comrades, colleagues, professors, and poets."

"I thought this guy Mao was what you left Pittsburgh for, Bling. You talk now like he was your typical totalitarian."

"Contradiction," Bling answered, turning to look out the window at the endless parade of black bicycles, "has become the New Way for a lot of us."

"Is that why you like Devo?" the writer asked. He thought Bling with his funny crewcut and ragged T-shirt had said New Wave. Bling gave him a curious glance.

"I don't like Devo. I listen to Devo for the same reason I run – to get an endorphin rush." He patted his pockets, looking for his comb. "I run because it hurts."

The original intention of the meeting was to let the doctors and the press examine the seventy-some participants who would be running tomorrow's race. But what can a doctor know about a marathon man that the athlete doesn't already know about himself? What can a heart specialist say about a thirty-five-year-old phys ed fanatic with a 35-beats-per-minute heartbeat and heels calloused thick as hardballs?

So the physical examination was waived and worried warnings submitted in its place. Of greatest concern was the water.

"Do not suck the sponges. Drinks from race organizers will be on white tables. Private drinks on red tables. Take when you want. Private drinks must be handed in tonight for analysis."

Chuck Hattersly leaned over to whisper, "I get it! They're trying to steal our formula for Gatorade."

"Please don't injure yourself with strain. Take it easy. However, to avoid delaying the traffic and spectators, there will be cut-off points for the slow -"

The shuffling murmur of the room stilled. Cut-off points? No one had ever heard of cut-off points in a marathon. As long as you could put one foot in front of the other, you could run.

"Those who have not reached 25 kilometers by the time of 1:40 will be removed from the race."

Sitting amidst 60 other Chinese runners, Yang felt knots start in his stomach. He had no idea of his time for 25 kilometers. No notion, even, how far that was. From the village to the school? Half that? Twice?

"If you have not reached the 35-kilometer point by 2:20 you will be removed."

For a moment Yang was cramped with panic. He remembered the cheering crowd at the cemetery. If he were removed he could never return home; better not to start than not to finish! Then it occurred to him that all he had to do was expend his total force to reach that 35-km mark in 2:20; he could crawl the remaining distance.