Demon Box

The American journalists sipped their free drinks in the deep divans of the Pan American Clipper Club room, an exclusive lounge located above the lesser travelers of the San Francisco International Airport terminal.

Exclusive indeed. Not only did one need to know of its esteemed existence and whereabouts, one needed as well to produce evidence of acceptable prestige before gaining entry. While the journalists were not exactly first class, they were in the company of those who were. This was enough to get them to the secret door, past the doorman, and into the free booze.

“How do you visualize,” a fellow club sipper insisted on knowing, “hanging this gig on a hook?So it is not just another dumb road race? I mean what are you hoping to hang it on?”

The sipper was a ranking executive in the business that owned the magazine paying for this journalistic jaunt to China, so everyone acknowledged his right to be a trifle insistent.

“The hook I have in mind,” answered the first of the journalists, a big bearded boy who was the editor of said mag as well as originator of the jaunt, “is sport as détente. Remember it wasn’t really Nixon or Kissinger that initially broke through the bamboo curtain; it was the Ping-Pong ball. This race is the first international sporting event in China since before World War Two. To me, that has meaning.”

Meaning he really had no idea at all what to hang it on. The second journalist, bald, unbearded, bigger and older than the first, muscled his brow in a Brandoesque attitude of heavy consideration.

“Let me think on that a minute,” he begged. He turned to the third journalist, absolutely enormous, with big blue eyes and a monstrous camera hanging over his belly. “What about you, Brian? What do you plan to aim at?”

“I can’t take any point pictures until my writer comes up with something to make a point with, can I?” was the way the third journalist avoided the question.

The eyes turned back to the second journalist; his knotted brow indicated he nearly had his answer tied down.

“One of the main characteristics,” he began, “about a bamboo curtain… is it’s so damn thick. The only thing it lets show through is politics. For years no idiosyncrasies, no quirks, no personality has been allowed to show through.”

“Until now?” asked the editor, proud of the way his man had wiggled off this hook business.

“Right. Until now. Now they are sponsoring this big marathon with top runners from all over the globe, even though the best Chinese marathoner is slower than the mediocre from the rest of the racing world. This may be the crack in the curtain for us to go angling through.”

“Gotcha!” the ranking exec said. “Like ice fishing back in Minnesota: hafta hook something before the hole freezes back.” He raised his martini to the trio. “Well, fishermen: here’s to a successful trip. Bring us back a biggie—”

“ ‘Tenshun, Clipper Club membahs,” the speaker over the bar drawled, “Pan Am’s Clipper flight for Beijing is now available for boarding. Y’all have a nice trip.”

In his every movement a man of great virtue
Follows the way and the way only.
As a thing the way is
Shadowy, indistinct.
Indistinct and shadowy,
Yet within it is an image;
Shadowy and indistinct,
Yet within it is a substance,
Dim and dark,
Yet within it is an essence,
And this is something that can be tested.
From the present back to antiquity
Its name never deserted it.
It serves as a means for inspecting the fathers of the multitude.
How do I know what the fathers of the multitude are like?
By means of this.

In the dew-heavy dawn outside one of Tanzania’s 8,000 ujamaa villages, tall handsome Magapius Dasong (best time: 2:20:46) sat beside the road on his wicker suitcase. He was waiting for the local bus that would take him to the central station in Dar-es-Salaam, where he was to meet his coach for the ride to the airport. The Dawn Express Local was already tardy by nearly forty minutes of daylight and Magapius would not be surprised if it became later by twice that time before the bus arrived. By then, his two coaches and three trainers would have proceeded on to China without their athlete.