The Rise of Endymion Part 36

"Do you love him, kiddo?"

"I love you you, Raul."

I pulled away slightly, not consciously, not deliberately, but I could not stay in physical contact with her while we had this discussion.

"There's something else..."she said.

I waited.

"We had...I'll...I had a child, a baby." She looked at me as if trying to force understanding of all this through her gaze directly into my mind. It did not work.

"A child," I repeated stupidly. My dear friend...my child friend turned woman turned lover...my beloved had a child. "How old is it?" I said, hearing the ba.n.a.lity like the thunder rumbling closer.

Again she seemed confused, as if uncertain of facts. Finally she said, "The child is...nowhere I can find it now."

"Oh, kiddo," I said, forgetting everything but her pain. I folded her against me as she wept. "I'm so sorry, kiddo...I'm so sorry," I said as I patted her head.

She pulled back, wiping away tears. "No, Raul, you don't understand. It's all right...it's not...that part's all right..."

I pulled away from her and stared. She was distraught, sobbing. "I understand," I lied.

"Raul..." Her hand felt for mine.

I patted her hand but got out of the bedclothes, pulled on my clothes, and grabbed my climbing harness and pack from their place by the door.

"Raul..."

"I'll be back before dawn," I said, facing in her general direction but not looking at her. "I'm just going for a walk."

"Let me go with you," she said, standing with the sheet around her. Lightning flashed behind her. Another storm was coming in.

"I'll be back before dawn," I said and went out the door before she could dress or join me.

It was raining-a cold, sleety rain. The platforms were quickly coated and made slick. I hurtled down ladders and jogged down the vibrating staircases, seeing my way by the occasional lightning flash, not slowing until I was several hundred meters down the east ledge walk headed toward the fissure where I had first landed in the s.h.i.+p. I did not want to go there.

Half a klick from the Temple were fixed lines rising to the top of the ridge. The sleet was pounding on the cliff face now, the red and black lines were coated with a layer of ice. I clipped carabiners onto the line and harness, pulling the powered ascenders from the pack and attaching them without double-checking the connections, then began jumaring up the icy ropes.

The wind came up, whipping my jacket and pus.h.i.+ng me away from the rock wall. Sleet pounded at my face and hands. I ignored it and ascended, sometimes sliding back three or four meters as the jumar clamps failed on the icy line, then recovering and climbing again. Ten meters below the razor's-edge summit of the ridgeline, I emerged from the clouds like a swimmer coming up out of the water. The stars still burned coldly up there, but the billowing cloud ma.s.ses were piling against the north wall of the ridge and rising like a white tide around me.

I slid the ascenders higher and jumared until I reached the relatively flat area where the fixed lines were attached. Only then did I notice that I had not tied on the safety line.

"f.u.c.k it," I said and began walking northeast along the fifteen-centimeter-wide ridgeline. The storm was rising around me to the north. The drop to the south was kilometers of empty, black air. There were patches of ice here and it was beginning to snow.

I broke into a trot, running east, jumping icy spots and fissures, not giving a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about anything.

WHILE I WAS OBSESSED WITH MY OWN MISERY, there were other things occurring in the human universe. On Hyperion, when I was a boy, news filtered slowly from the interstellar Pax to our moving caravans on the moors: an important event on Pacem or Renaissance Vector or wherever would, of necessity, be many weeks or months old from Hawking-drive time-debt time-debt, with additional weeks of transit from Port Romance or another major city to our provincial region. I was used to not paying attention to events elsewhere. The lag in news had lessened, of course, when I was guiding offworld hunters in the Fens and elsewhere, but it was still old news and of little importance to me. The Pax held no fascination for me, although offworld travel certainly had. Then there had been almost ten years of disconnection during our Old Earth hiatus and my five years of time-debt Odyssey. I was not used to thinking of events elsewhere except where they affected me, such as the Pax's obsession with finding us.

But this would soon change.

That night on T'ien Shan, the Mountains of Heaven, as I ran foolishly through sleet and fog down the narrow ridgeline, these were some of the events happening elsewhere: On the lovely world of Maui-Covenant, where the long chain of events culminating with my presence here with Aenea could be said to have begun with the courts.h.i.+p of Siri and Merin some four centuries ago, rebellion raged. The rebels on the motile isles had long since become followers of Aenea's philosophy, had drunk of her communion wine, had rejected the Pax and the cruciform forever, and were waging a war of sabotage and resistance while trying not to harm or kill the Pax soldiers occupying the world. For the Pax, Maui-Covenant offered special problems because it was primarily a vacation world-hundreds of thousands of wealthy born-again Christians traveled there via Hawking drive every standard year to enjoy the warm seas, the beautiful beaches of the Equatorial Archipelago isles, and the dolphin/motile isles migrations. The Pax also benefited from the hundreds of oil-drilling platforms around the mostly ocean world, situated out of sight of tourist areas but vulnerable to attack from motile isles or rebel submersibles. Now many of the Pax tourists themselves were-inexplicably-rejecting the cruciform and becoming followers of Aenea's teachings. Rejecting immortality. The planetary govenor, the resident archbishop, and the Vatican officials called in for the crisis could not understand it.

On cold Sol Draconi Septem, where most of the atmosphere was frozen into a single giant glacier, there were no tourists, but the Pax attempt at colonization there over the past ten years had turned into a nightmare.

The gentle bands of Chitchatuk whom Aenea, A. Bettik, and I had befriended some nine and a half years ago had turned into implacable foes of the Pax. The skysc.r.a.per frozen into the atmospheric ice where Father Glaucus had welcomed all travelers still blazed with light despite that kind man's murder at the hand of Rhadamanth Nemes. The Chitchatuk kept the place alight like a shrine. Somehow they knew who had murdered the harmless blind man and Cuchiat's tribe-Cuchiat, Chiaku, Aichacut, Cuchtu, Chithticia, Chatchia-all of those whom Aenea, A. Bettik, and I had known by name. The other Chitchatuk blamed the Pax, who were attempting to colonize the temperate bands along the equator where the air was gaseous and the great glacier melted down to the ancient permafrost.

But the Chitchatuk, not having heard of Aenea's communion and tasted the empathy of it, descended on the Pax like a Biblical plague. Having preyed upon-and been preyed upon by-the terrible snow wraiths for millennia, the Chitchatuk now drove the tunneling white beasts south to the equatorial regions, unleas.h.i.+ng them on the Pax colonists and missionaries. The toll was frightful. Pax military units brought in to kill the primitive Chitchatuk sent patrols out onto and into the planet glacier and never saw them again.

On the city-planet of Renaissance Vector, Aenea's word of the Void Which Binds had spread to millions of followers. Thousands of Pax faithful took communion from the changed ones every day, their cruciforms dying and falling off within twenty-four hours, sacrificing immortality for...what? The Pax and Vatican did not understand and at that time neither did I.

But the Pax knew that it had to contain the virus. Troopers kicked in doors and crashed through windows every day and night, usually in the poorer, old-industrial sections of the planet-wide city. These people who had rejected the cruciform did not strongly resist-they would fight fiercely, but refused to kill if there was any way to avoid it. The Pax troopers did not mind killing to carry out their orders. Thousands of Aenea's followers died the true death-former immortals who would never see resurrection again-and tens of thousands were taken into custody and sent to detention centers, where they were placed into cryogenic fugue lockers so that their blood and philosophy could not contaminate others. But for every one of Aenea's adherents killed or arrested, dozens-hundreds-stayed safe in hiding, pa.s.sing along Aenea's teachings, offering communion of their own changed blood, and providing largely nonviolent resistance at every turn. The great industrial machine that was Renaissance Vector had not yet broken down, but it was lurching and grinding in a way not seen in all the centuries since the Hegemony established the world as the Web's industrial nexus.

The Vatican sent more troops and debated as to how to respond.

On Tau Ceti Center, once the political center of the WorldWeb but now just a heavily populated and popular garden planet, the rebellion took a different shape. While offworld visitors had brought Aenea's anti-cruciform contagion, the bulk of the problem there for the Vatican centered on the Archbishop Achilla Silvaski, a scheming woman who had taken over the role of governor and autocrat on TC2 more than two centuries earlier. It was Archbishop Silvaski who had attempted to overthrow the reelection of the permanent pope through intrigue among the cardinals and now, having failed at that, she simply staged her own planet-wide version of the pre-Hegira Reformation, announcing that the Catholic Church on Tau Ceti Center would henceforth recognize her as pontiff and be forever separated from the "corrupt" interstellar Church of the Pax. Because she had carefully formed an alliance with the local bishops in charge of resurrection ceremonies and machineries, she could control the Sacrament of Resurrection-and thus the local Church. More importantly, the Archbishop had wooed the local Pax military authorities with land, wealth, and power until an unprecedented event occurred-a Pax Fleet, Pax military coup that overthrew most senior officers in Tau Ceti System and replaced them with New Church advocates. No archangel star-s.h.i.+ps were seized this way, but eighteen cruisers and forty-one torchs.h.i.+ps committed themselves to defending the New Church on TC more than two centuries earlier. It was Archbishop Silvaski who had attempted to overthrow the reelection of the permanent pope through intrigue among the cardinals and now, having failed at that, she simply staged her own planet-wide version of the pre-Hegira Reformation, announcing that the Catholic Church on Tau Ceti Center would henceforth recognize her as pontiff and be forever separated from the "corrupt" interstellar Church of the Pax. Because she had carefully formed an alliance with the local bishops in charge of resurrection ceremonies and machineries, she could control the Sacrament of Resurrection-and thus the local Church. More importantly, the Archbishop had wooed the local Pax military authorities with land, wealth, and power until an unprecedented event occurred-a Pax Fleet, Pax military coup that overthrew most senior officers in Tau Ceti System and replaced them with New Church advocates. No archangel star-s.h.i.+ps were seized this way, but eighteen cruisers and forty-one torchs.h.i.+ps committed themselves to defending the New Church on TC2 and its new pontiff. and its new pontiff.

Tens of thousands of faithful Church members on the planet protested. They were arrested, threatened with excommunication-i.e. immediate revocation of their cruciforms-and released on probation under the watchful eye of the Archbishop's-new pope's-New Church Security Force. Several priestly orders, most notably the Jesuits on Tau Ceti Center, refused to comply. Most were quietly arrested, excommunicated, and executed. Some hundreds escaped, however, and used their network to offer resistance to the new order-at first nonviolent, then increasingly severe. Many of the Jesuits had served as priest-officers in the Pax military before returning to civilian clerical life, and they used their military skills to create havoc in and around the planet.

Pope Urban XVI and his Pax Fleet advisors looked at their options. Already the crus.h.i.+ng blow in the great Crusade against the Ousters had been delayed and derailed by Captain de Soya's continued hara.s.sing attacks, by the need to send Fleet units to a score of worlds to quell the Aenea contagion rebellions, by the logistical requirements for the ambush in T'ien Shan System, and now by this and other unrelated rebellions. Over Admiral Marusyn's advice to ignore the Archbishop's heresy until after other political/military goals were reached, Pope Urban XVI and his Secretary of State Lourdusamy decided to divert twenty archangels, thirty-two old-style cruisers, eight transport s.h.i.+ps, and a hundred torchs.h.i.+ps to Tau Ceti System-although it would be many weeks of time-debt before the old Hawking-drive s.h.i.+ps could arrive. Once formed up in that system, the task force's orders were to overcome all resistance by rebellious s.p.a.cecraft, establish orbit around TC2, demand the Archbishop's immediate surrender and the surrender of all those who supported her, and-failing compliance with that order-to slag as much of the planet as it took to destroy the New Church's infrastructure. After that, tens of thousands of Marines would drop to the planet to occupy the remaining urban centers and to reestablish the rule of the Pax and the Holy Mother Church.

On Mars, in Old Earth System, the rebellion had worsened, despite years of Pax bombardment from s.p.a.ce and constant military incursions from orbit. Two standard months earlier, Governor Clare Palo and Archbishop Robeson had both died the true death in a nuclear suicide attack on their palace-in-exile on Phobos. The Pax response had been terrifying-asteroids diverted from the nearby belt and dropped on Mars, carpet plasma bombing, and nightly lance attacks that sliced through the new planetary dust storm kicked up by the asteroid bombardment like so many deadly searchlights crisscrossing the frozen desert. Deathbeams would have been more efficient, but the Pax Fleet planners wanted to make an example of Mars, and wanted it to be a visible example.

The results were not exactly what the Pax had hoped for. The Martian terraforming environment, already precarious after years of poor maintenance, collapsed. Breathable atmosphere on the world was now restricted to h.e.l.las Basin and a few other low pockets. The oceans were gone, boiled away as the pressure dropped or frozen back in the poles and permafrost subcrust. The last large plants and trees died off until only the original brandy cactus and bradberry orchards were left clinging to life in the near vacuum. The dust storms would last for years, making Pax Marine patrols on the Red Planet all but impossible.

But the Martians, especially the militant Palestinian Martians, were adapted to such a life and ready for this contingency. They hunkered down, killed the Pax troopers when they landed, and waited. Templar missionaries among the other Martian colonies urged the final nanotech adaptation to the original planetary conditions. Thousands and thousands took the gamble, allowing the molecular machines to alter their bodies and DNA to the planet.

More disturbingly to the Vatican, s.p.a.ce battles broke out as s.h.i.+ps once belonging to the presumably defunct Martian War Machine came out of hiding in the distant Kuiper Belt and began a series of hit-and-run attacks on the Pax Fleet convoys in Old Earth System. The kill ratio in these attacks was five to one in favor of Pax Fleet, but the losses were unacceptable and the cost of maintaining the Mars operation was frightful.

Admiral Marusyn and the Joint Chiefs advised His Holiness to cut his losses and leave Old Earth System to fester for the time being. The Admiral a.s.sured the Pope that nothing would be allowed out of the system. He pointed out that there was nothing of real value in Old Earth System any longer, now that Mars was untenable. The Pope listened but refused to authorize the pullout. At each conference, Cardinal Lourdusamy stressed the symbolic importance of keeping Old Earth's system within the Pax. His Holiness decided to wait to make his decision. The hemorrhage of s.h.i.+ps, men, money, and materiel went on.

On Mare Infinitus, the rebellion was old-based around the submarine smugglers, poachers, and those hundreds of thousands of stubborn indigenies who had always refused the cross-but stirred up anew now that the Aenea contagion had arrived. The great fis.h.i.+ng zones were now all but off-limits to unescorted Pax fis.h.i.+ng fleets. The automated fis.h.i.+ng s.h.i.+ps and isolated floating platforms were attacked and sunk. More and more of the deadly Lantern Mouth monsters were seen in shallower waters and Archbishop Jane Kelley was furious at the Pax authorities for their failure to stop the problem. When Bishop Melandriano counseled moderation, Kelley had him excommunicated. In turn, Melandriano declared the Southern Seas seceded from the Pax and Church's authority and thousands of the faithful followed the charismatic leader. The Vatican sent more Pax Fleet s.h.i.+ps, but there was little they could do to settle the four-way surface and subsurface struggles between the rebels, the Archbishop's forces, the Bishop's forces, and the Lantern Mouths.

And in the midst of all this confusion and carnage, Aenea's message traveled with the speed of speech and secret communion.

Rebellion-both violent and spiritual-flared elsewhere: the worlds where Aenea had traveled-Ixion, Patawpha, Amritsar, and Groombridge Dyson D; on Tsintao-Hsishuang Panna where word of the roundup of non-Christians elsewhere created first panic and then grim resistance to all things Pax, on Deneb Drei where the Jamnu Republic declared the wearing of a cruciform cause for beheading; on Fuji where Aenea's message had been brought by renegede members of the Pax Mercantilus and where it spread like a planetary firestorm; on the desert world of Vitus-Gray-Balia.n.u.s B where Aenea's teachings came via refugees from Sibiatu's Bitterness and combined with the realization that the Pax way of life would destroy their culture forever-the Amoiete Spectrum Helix people led the fight. The city of Keroa Tambat was liberated in the first month of fighting, and Pax Base Bombasino soon became a fortress under siege. Base Commander Solznykov screamed for help from Pax Fleet, but the Vatican and Pax Fleet commanders-preoccupied elsewhere-ordered him to be patient and threatened excommunication if Solznykov did not end the rebellion on his own.

Solznykov did so, but not in the way Pax Fleet or His Holiness would have countenanced: he arranged for a peace treaty with the Amoiete Spectrum Helix armies in which his Pax forces would enter the countryside only with the permission of the indigenies. In return, Pax Base Bombasino was allowed to continue its existence.

Solznykov, Colonel Vinara, and the other loyal Christians settled in to wait for Vatican and Pax Fleet retribution, but the Aenea-changed civilians were among the Spectrum Helix people who came to market at Bombasino, who met and ate and drank with the troopers, who moved among the dispirited Pax men and women and told their story, and who offered their communion. Many accepted.

THIS, OF COURSE, WAS THE TINIEST SLICE OF EVENTS on the hundreds of worlds of the Pax that last, sad night I would ever spend on T'ien Shan. I did not guess of any of these events, of course, but if I had-if I had already mastered the skill and discipline of learning these things via the Void Which Binds-I still would not have cared.

Aenea had loved another man. They had been married. She must still be married...she had not mentioned divorce or death. She had had a child.

I do not know why my carelessness did not send me falling to my death those wild hours on the icy ridge east of Jo-kung and Hsuan-k'ung Ssu, but it did not. Eventually I came to my senses and returned via the ridgeline and the fixed rappelling ropes so that I could be back with Aenea by first light.

I loved her. She was my dear friend. I would give my life to protect her.

An opportunity to prove that would be offered within the day, its inevitability created by the events that unfolded shortly after my return to the Temple Hanging in Air and our departure to the east.

IT WAS NOT THAT LONG AFTER FIRST LIGHT, IN THE old gompa beneath the Phallus s.h.i.+va now turned into Christian enclave, where John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa, Admiral Marget Wu, Father Farrell, Archbishop Breque, Father LeBlanc, Rhadamanth Nemes, and her two remaining siblings met in conference. In truth, it was the humans who met in conference, while Nemes and her clone sister and brother sat silently by the window looking out over the billowing cloudscapes around Otter Lake below the s.h.i.+vling peak.

"And you are certain that the rogue s.h.i.+p Raphael Raphael is finished?" the Grand Inquisitor was saying. is finished?" the Grand Inquisitor was saying.

"Absolutely," said Admiral Wu. "Although it destroyed seven of our archangel s.h.i.+ps of the line before we slagged it." She shook her head. "De Soya was a brilliant tactician. It was the true work of the Evil One when he turned apostate."

Father Farrell leaned over the polished bonsai-wood table. "And there is no chance that de Soya or any of the others survived?"

Admiral Wu shrugged. "It was a near-orbit battle," she said. "We let Raphael Raphael get within cislunar distance before springing our trap. Thousands of pieces of debris-mostly from our unfortunate s.h.i.+ps-entered the atmosphere. None of our people appear to have survived-at least no beacons have been detected. If any of de Soya's people escaped, the chances are that their pods came down in the poisonous oceans." get within cislunar distance before springing our trap. Thousands of pieces of debris-mostly from our unfortunate s.h.i.+ps-entered the atmosphere. None of our people appear to have survived-at least no beacons have been detected. If any of de Soya's people escaped, the chances are that their pods came down in the poisonous oceans."

"Still..." began Archbishop Breque. He was a quiet man, cerebral and cautious.

Wu looked exhausted and irritated. "Your Eminence," she said briskly, addressing Breque but looking at Mustafa, "we can decide the issue one way or the other if you allow us to send drops.h.i.+ps, skimmers, and EMVs into the atmosphere."

Breque blinked. Cardinal Mustafa shook his head. "No," he said, "our orders are not to show a military presence until the Vatican commands the final step in our seizure of the girl."

Wu smiled with apparent bitterness. "Last night's battle just above the atmosphere must have made that order somewhat obsolete," she said softly. "Our military presence must have been rather impressive."

"It was," said Father LeBlanc. "I have never seen anything like it."

Admiral Wu spoke to Mustafa. "Your Excellency, the people on this world have no energy weapons, no Hawking-drive detectors, no orbital defenses, no gravitonic detectors...h.e.l.l, they don't have radar or a communications system as far as we can tell. We can send drops.h.i.+ps or fighter aircraft into the atmosphere to search for survivors without them ever knowing. It has to be a lot less intrusive than last night's firelight and..."

"No," said Cardinal Mustafa and there was no doubting the finality of his decision. The Grand Inquisitor pushed back his robe to glance at his chronometer. "The Vatican courier drone should arrive any moment with final orders for the arrest of the contagion vector named Aenea. Nothing must complicate that."

Father Farrell rubbed his lean cheeks. "Regent Tokra called me this morning on the communicator channel we allocated him. It seems that their precious and precocious little Dalai Lama has gone missing..."

Breque and LeBlanc looked up in surprise.

"It doesn't matter," said Cardinal Mustafa, obviously aware of the news. "Nothing matters right now except receiving final go-ahead on this mission and arresting Aenea." He looked at Admiral Wu. "And you must tell your Swiss Guard and Marine officers that no harm can come to the young woman."

Wu nodded wearily. She had been briefed and rebriefed for months. "When do you think that the orders will come?" she asked the Cardinal.

Rhadamanth Nemes and her two siblings stood and walked toward the door. "The time for waiting is over," said Nemes with a thin-lipped smile. "We will bring Aenea's head back to you."

Cardinal Mustafa and the others were on their feet in an instant. "Sit down!" bellowed the Grand Inquisitor. "You have not been ordered to move."

Nemes smiled and turned toward the door.

All of the clerics in the room were shouting. Archbishop Jean Daniel Breque crossed himself. Admiral Wu went for the flechette pistol in her holster.

Things then happened too quickly to perceive. The air seemed to blur. One instant, Nemes, Scylla, and Briareus were at the doorway eight meters away, the next instant they were gone and three s.h.i.+mmering chrome shapes stood among the black- and red-robed figures at the table.

Scylla intercepted Admiral Marget Wu before the woman could raise her flechette pistol. A chrome arm blurred. Wu's head tumbled across the polished tabletop. The headless body stood a few seconds, some random nerve impulse ordered the fingers of the right hand to close, and the flechette pistol fired, blowing apart the legs of the heavy table and splintering the stone floor in ten thousand places.

Father LeBlanc leaped between Briareus and Archbishop Breque. The blurred, silver shape disemboweled LeBlanc. Breque dropped his gla.s.ses and ran into the adjoining room. Suddenly Briareus was gone-leaving nothing but a soft implosion of air where the blurred shape had stood a second before. There was a short scream from the other room, cut off almost before it began.

Cardinal Mustafa backed away from Rhadamanth Nemes. She took one step forward for every step he took backward. The blurred field around her had dropped away, but she looked no more human or less menacing.

"d.a.m.n you for the foul thing you are," the Cardinal said softly. "Come ahead, I'm not afraid to die."

Nemes raised one eyebrow. "Of course not, Your Excellency. But would it change your mind if I tell you that we're throwing these bodies...and that head"-she gestured to where Marget Wu's eyes had just stopped blinking and now stared blindly-"far out into the acid ocean, so that no resurrection will be possible?"

Cardinal Mustafa reached the wall and stopped. Nemes was only two paces in front of him. "Why are you doing this?" he said, his voice firm.

Nemes shrugged. "Our priorities diverge for the time being," she said. "Are you ready, Grand Inquisitor?"

Cardinal Mustafa crossed himself and said a hurried Act of Contrition.

Nemes smiled again, her right arm and right leg became s.h.i.+mmering silver things, and she stepped forward.

Mustafa watched in amazement. She did not kill him. With motions too quick to detect, she broke his left arm, shattered his right arm, kicked his legs out from under him-splintering both of them-and blinded him with two fingers that stopped just short of jabbing into his brain.

The roar of pain was without precedent for the Grand Inquisitor. Through it, he could hear her voice, still flat and lifeless. "I know your doc-in-the-box in the drops.h.i.+p or on the Jibril Jibril will fix you up," she said. "We've buzzed them. They'll be here in a few minutes. When you see the Pope and his parasites, tell them that those to whom I must report did not want the girl alive. Our apologies, but her death is necessary. And tell them to be careful in the future not to act without the consent of will fix you up," she said. "We've buzzed them. They'll be here in a few minutes. When you see the Pope and his parasites, tell them that those to whom I must report did not want the girl alive. Our apologies, but her death is necessary. And tell them to be careful in the future not to act without the consent of all all elements of the Core. Good-bye, Your Excellency. I hope that the doc on the elements of the Core. Good-bye, Your Excellency. I hope that the doc on the Jibril Jibril can grow you new eyes. What we are about to do will be worth seeing." can grow you new eyes. What we are about to do will be worth seeing."

Mustafa heard footsteps, the door sliding, and then silence except for the sound of someone screaming in terrible pain. It took him several minutes to realize that it was he who was screaming.

WHEN I RETURNED TO THE TEMPLE HANGING IN AIR, first light was seeping through the fog but the morning remained dark, drizzly, and cold. I had finally sobered up enough from my distraught and distracted state to take greater care while rappelling down the fixed lines, and it was good that I had-several times the brakes on the rappel gear slipped on the ice-shrouded rope and I would have fallen to my death if the safety lines had not arrested me.

Aenea was awake, dressed, and ready to leave when I arrived. She had on her thermal anorak, climbing harness, and climbing boots. A. Bettik and Lh.o.m.o Dondrub were dressed similarly, and both men carried long, heavy-looking, nylon wrapped packages over their shoulders. They were going with us. Others were there to say good-bye-Theo, Rachel, the Dorje Phamo, the Dalai Lama, George Tsarong, Jigme Norbu-and they seemed sad and anxious. Aenea looked tired; I was sure that she had not slept either. We made a tired-looking pair of adventurers. Lh.o.m.o walked over and handed me one of the long, nylon-wrapped bundles. It was heavy, but I shouldered it without question or complaint. I grabbed the rest of my own gear, answered Lh.o.m.o's questions about the condition of the ropes to the ridgeline-everyone evidently thought that I had unselfishly reconnoitered our route-and stepped back to look at my friend and beloved. When she gave me a searching look, I answered with a nod. It's all right. I'm all right. I'm ready to go. We'll It's all right. I'm all right. I'm ready to go. We'll talk about it later talk about it later.

Theo was crying. I was aware that this was an important parting-that we might not see one another again despite Aenea's a.s.surances to the other two women that everyone would be reunited before nightfall-but I was too emotionally numbed and worn out to react to it. I stepped away from the group for a moment to take deep breaths and focus my attention. It was probable that I would need all of my wits and alertness in the next few hours just to survive. The problem with being pa.s.sionately in love The problem with being pa.s.sionately in love, I thought, is that it deprives you of too much sleep is that it deprives you of too much sleep.

We left by the east platform, moved in a fast trot down the icy ledge toward the fissure, pa.s.sed the ropes I'd just descended, and reached the fissure without incident. The bonsai trees and fell fields looked ancient and unreal in the s.h.i.+fting ice fog, the dark limbs and branches dripping on our heads when they suddenly loomed out of the mist. The streams and waterfalls sounded louder than I remembered as the torrent slid over the last overhang into the void to our left.

There were old, less reliable fixed ropes on the easternmost and highest folds of the fissure, and Lh.o.m.o led the way up these, followed by Aenea, then A. Bettik, and finally me. I noticed that our android friend was climbing as quickly and competently as he always did, despite the missing left hand. Once on the upper ridgeline, we were beyond my farthest point of my nighttime travels-the fissure acted as a barrier to ridgeline travel the way I had gone. Now the difficulty began in earnest as we followed the narrowest of paths-worn ledges, rock outcroppings, the occasional icefield, scree slopes-on the south side of the cliff face. The ridgeline above us was all serac of wet, heavy snow and icy overhang, impossible to travel on. We moved silently, not even whispering, aware that the slightest noise could trigger an avalanche that would sweep us off these ten-centimeter ledges in a second. Finally, when the going got even tougher, we roped up-running the line through carabiners and attaching a doubled line to our web-sling harnesses-so that now if one fell he or she would be caught, or we would all go over. With Lh.o.m.o leading as strongly as ever, stepping confidently over foggy voids and icy creva.s.ses that I would hesitate to attempt, I think that we all felt better about being connected.

I still did not know our destination. I did know that the great ridge that ran east from K'un Lun past Jo-kung would run out in a few more kilometers, dropping suddenly and dramatically into the poisonous clouds several klicks below. During certain weeks in the spring, the tides and vagaries of the ocean and clouds dropped the poisionous vapors low enough that the ridge emerged again, allowing supply caravans, pilgrims, monks, traders, and the simply curious to make their way east from the Middle Kingdom to T'ai Shan, the Great Peak of the Middle Kingdom, and the most inaccessible habitable point on the planet. The monks who lived on T'ai Shan, it was said, never returned to the Middle Kingdom or the rest of the Mountains of Heaven-for untold generations they had dedicated their lives to the mysterious tombs, gompas, ceremonies, and temples on that most holy of peaks. Now, as the weather worsened for us, I realized that if we started descending, we would not know when we left the roiling monsoon clouds and entered the roiling vaporous clouds until the poison air killed us.

We did not descend. After several hours of all but silent travel, we reached the precipice at the eastern boundary of the Middle Kingdom. The mountain of T'ai Shan was not visible, of course-even with the clouds having cleared a bit, little was visible except for the wet cliff face ahead of us and the twisting fog and cloud patterns all around.

There was a wide ledge here at the eastern edge of the world, and we sat on it gratefully as we dug cold handmeals out of our packs and drank from our water bottles. The tiny, succulent plants that carpeted this steep fell field were becoming tumescent as they gorged themselves on the first moisture of the monsoon months.

After we ate and drank, Lh.o.m.o and A. Bettik began opening our three heavy bundles. Aenea zipped open her own pack, which looked heavier than the duffels we men had carried. It did not surprise me what was wrapped in these three parcels-nylon, alloy struts and frames, rigging, and in Aenea's packet, more of the same as well as the two skinsuits and rebreathers that I'd brought with me from the s.h.i.+p and all but forgotten.

I sighed and looked to the east. "So we're going to try to make T'ai Shan," I said.

"Yes," said Aenea. She began stripping out of her clothes.

A. Bettik and Lh.o.m.o looked away, but I felt my heart pound with anger at the thought of other men seeing my lover naked. I controlled myself, laid out the other skinsuit, and began peeling out of my own clothes, folding them into my heavy pack as I doffed each layer. The air was cold and the fog clammy on my skin.

Lh.o.m.o and A. Bettik were a.s.sembling the parawings as Aenea and I dressed-the skinsuits were just that, almost literally a second skin, but the harness and rigging for the rebreathers allowed us some modesty. The cowl went over my head tighter than a scuba headpiece, folding my ears flat against my head. Only the filters there allowed sound to be transmitted: they would pick up the comthread transmissions once we were effectively out of real air.

Lh.o.m.o and A. Bettik had a.s.sembled four parawings from the parts we had transported. As if answering my unasked question, Lh.o.m.o said, "I can only show you the thermals and make sure you reach the jet stream. I can't survive at that alt.i.tude. And I do not want to go to T'ai Shan when there is little chance of returning."

Aenea touched the powerful man's arm. "We are grateful beyond words that you will guide us to the jet stream."

The bold flyer actually blushed.

"What about A. Bettik?" I asked and then, realizing that I was talking about our friend as if he weren't there, I turned to the android and said, "What about you? There's no skinsuit or rebreather for you."