The Rise of Endymion Part 25

15.

-am on the Phari marketplace shelf with A. Bettik, Jigme Norbu, and George Tsarong when I hear the news that Pax s.h.i.+ps and troops have finally come to T'ien Shan, the "Mountains of Heaven."

"We should tell Aenea," I say. Around us, above us, and under us, thousands of tons of scaffolding rock and creak with the weight of crowded humanity buying, selling, trading, arguing, and laughing. Very few have heard the news of the Pax's arrival. Very few will understand the implications when they do hear it. The word comes from a monk named Chim Din who has just returned from the capital of Potala, where he works as a teacher in the Dalai Lama's Winter Palace. Luckily, Chim Din also works alternate weeks as a bamboo rigger at Hsuan-k'ung Ssu, the "Temple Hanging in Air," Aenea's project, and he hails us in Phari Marketplace as he is on his way to the Temple. Thus we are among the first people outside the court at Potala to hear of the Pax arrival.

"Five s.h.i.+ps," Chim Din had said. "Several score of Christian people. About half of them warriors in red and black. About half of the remaining half are missionaries, all in black. They have rented the old Red Hat Sect gompa near Rhan Tso, the Otter Lake, near the Phallus of s.h.i.+va. They have sanctified part of the gompa as a chapel to their triune G.o.d. The Dalai Lama will not allow them to use their flying machines or go beyond the south ridge of the Middle Kingdom, but he has allowed them free travel within this region."

"We should tell Aenea," I say again to A. Bettik, leaning close so that I can be heard over the marketplace babble.

"We should tell everyone at Jo-kung," says the android. He turns and tells George and Jigme to complete the shopping-not to forget arranging porters to carry the orders of cable and extra bonsai bamboo for the construction-and then he hoists his ma.s.sive rucksack, tightens his climbing hardware on his harness, and nods to me.

I heft my own heavy pack and lead the way out of the marketplace and down the scaffolding ladders to the cable level. "I think the High Way will be faster than the Walk Way, don't you?"

The blue man nods. I had hesitated at suggesting the High Way for the return trip, since it has to be difficult for A. Bettik to handle the cables and slideways with just one hand. Upon our reunion, I had been surprised that he had not fas.h.i.+oned a metal hook for himself-his left arm still ends in a smooth stump halfway between his wrist and elbow-but I soon saw how he used a leather band and various leather attachments to make up for his missing digits. "Yes, M. Endymion," he says. "The High Way. It is much faster. I agree. Unless you want to use one of the flyers as courier."

I look at him, a.s.suming that he is kidding. The flyers are a breed apart and insane. They launch their paragliders from the high structures, catching ridge lift from the great rock walls, crossing the wide s.p.a.ces between the ridges and peaks where there are no cables or bridges, watching the birds, looking for thermals as if their lives depended on it...because their lives do depend on it. There are no flat areas on which a flyer can set down if the treacherous winds s.h.i.+ft, or if their lift fails, or if their hang gliders develop a problem. A forced landing on a ridge wall almost always means death. Descent to the clouds below always means death. The slightest miscalculation in gauging the winds, the updrafts, the downdrafts, the jet stream...any mistake means death for a flyer. That is why they live alone, wors.h.i.+p in a secret cult, and charge a fortune to do the Dalai Lama's bidding by delivering messages from the capital at Potala, or to fly prayer streamers during a Buddhist celebration, or to carry urgent notes from a trader to his home office to beat compet.i.tors, or-so the legend goes-to visit the eastern peak of T'ai Shan, separated for months each local year from the rest of T'ien Shan by more than a hundred klicks of air and deadly cloud.

"I don't think we want to entrust this news to a flyer," I say.

A. Bettik nods. "Yes, M. Endymion, but the paragliders can be purchased here at the marketplace. At the Flyer's Guild stall. We could buy two and take the shortest route back. They are very expensive, but we could sell some of the pack zygoats."

I never know when my android friend is joking. I remember the last time I was under a parasail canopy and have to resist the urge to s.h.i.+ver. "Have you ever paraglided on this world?" I say.

"No, M. Endymion."

"On any world?"

"No, M. Endymion."

"What would you think our chances would be if we tried?" I say.

"One in ten," he says without a second's hesitation.

"And what are our chances on the cables and slideway this late in the day?" I say.

"About nine in ten before dark," he says. "Less if sunset catches us short of the slideway."

"Let's take the cables and slideway," I say.

WE WAIT IN THE SHORT QUEUE OF MARKET-GOERS leaving by cable, and then it is our turn to walk onto the step-off platform. The bamboo shelf is about twenty meters beneath the lowest marketplace scaffolding and it extends about five meters farther out over the abyss than does the rest of Phari. Beneath us there is nothing but air for thousands of meters and at the bottom of that emptiness only the ubiquitous sea of clouds that rolls against the ridges of upthrust rock like a white tide spilling against stone pilings. More kilometers beneath those clouds, I know, are poisonous gases and the surging, acidic sea that covers all of this world except its mountains.

The cablemaster gestures us forward and A. Bettik and I step onto the jump platform together. From this nexus, a score or more of cables slant out and down across the abyss, creating a black spiderweb that disappears at the edge of vision. The nearest cable terminus is more than a kilometer and a half to the north-on a little rock fang that stands out against the white glory of Chorno Lori, "Queen of Snow"-but we are going east across the great gap between the ridges, our terminal point is more than twenty kilometers away, and the cable dropping away in that direction appears to end in midair as it blends into the evening glow of the distant rock wall. And our final destination is more than thirty-five klicks beyond that to the north and east. Walking, it would take us about six hours to make the long trip north along Phari Ridge and then east across the system of bridges and catwalks. Traveling by cable and slideway should take less than half that time, but it is late in the day and the slideway is especially dangerous. I glance at the low sun again and wonder again about the wisdom of this plan.

"Ready," growls the cablemaster, a brown little man in a stained patchwork chuba chuba. He is chewing besil root and turns to spit over the edge as we step up to the clip-on line.

"Ready," A. Bettik and I say in unison.

"Keep 'ur distance," growls the cablemaster and gestures for me to go first.

I shake my traveling risers loose from my full-body harness, slide my hands over the crowded gear sling that we call a rack, find the two-bearing pulley by feel, clip it on to the riser ring with a carabiner, run a Munter hitch into a second carabiner as a friction-brake backup to the pulley brake, find my best offset-D carabiner and use it to clip the pulley f.l.a.n.g.es together around the cable, and then run my safety line through the first two carabiners while tying a short prusik sling onto the rope, finally clipping that on to my chest harness below the risers. All of this takes less than a minute. I raise both hands, grab the D-ring controls to the pulley, and jump up and down, testing both the pulley connection and my clip-ons. Everything holds.

The cablemaster leans over to inspect the double-D-ring attachment and the pulley clamp with expert eyes. He runs the pulley up and back a meter, making sure that the near-frictionless bearings are sliding smoothly in their compact housing. Finally he puts all of his weight on my shoulders and harness, hanging on me like a second rucksack, and then releases me to make sure that the rings and brakelines hold. I am sure that he cares nothing if I fall to my death, but if the pulley was to stick somewhere on the twenty klicks of braided monofilament cable running out there to invisibility, it will be this cablemaster who will have to clear the mess, hanging from his etriers or belay seat over kilometers of air while waiting commuters seethe. He seems satisfied with the equipment.

"Go," he says and slaps me on the shoulder.

I jump into s.p.a.ce, s.h.i.+fting my bulging rucksack high on my back as I do so. The harness webbing stretches, the cable sags, the pulley bearings hum ever so slightly, and I begin to slide faster as I release the brake with both thumbs on the D-ring controls. Within seconds I am hurtling down the cable. I lift my legs and sit back up into the harness seat in the way that has become second nature to me in the past three months. K'un Lun Ridge, our destination, glows brightly as sunset shadow begins to fill the abyss beneath me and evening shade moves down the wall of Phari Ridge behind me.

I feel a slight change in the cable tension and hear the cable humming as A. Bettik begins his descent behind me. Glancing back, I can see him leaving the jump-off platform, his legs straight ahead of him in the approved form, his body bobbing beneath the elastic risers. I can just make out the tether connecting the leather band on his left arm to the pulley brakeline. A. Bettik waves and I wave back, swiveling in my harness to pay attention to the cable screaming past me as I continue hurtling out over the gorge. Sometimes birds land on the cable to rest. Sometimes there is a sudden ice buildup or braid spurs. Very rarely there is a snagged pulley of someone who has met with an accident or cut away from their harness for reasons known only to themselves. Even more rarely, but enough to fix it in the mind, someone with a grudge or vague psychopathic tendencies will pause on the cable to loop a chock sling or spring-loaded cam around it, leaving a little surprise for the next person to come flying along the line. The penalty for that crime is death by flinging from the highest platform of Potala or Jo-kung, but this is of little solace to the person who first encounters the chock or cam.

None of these eventualities materialize as I slide across the emptiness under the ultralight cable. The only sound is the slight hum from the pulley brake as I moderate my speed and the soft rush of air. We are still in sunlight and it is late spring on this world, but the air is always chilly above eight thousand meters. Breathing is no problem. Every day since I arrived on T'ien Shan, I thank the G.o.ds of planetary evolution that even with the slightly lighter gravity here-0.954 standard-the oxygen is richer at this alt.i.tude. Glancing down at the clouds some klicks below my boots, I think of the seething ocean in that blind pressure, stirred by winds of phosgene and thick C02. There is no real surface land on T'ien Shan, merely that thick soup of a planetary ocean and the countless sharp peaks and ridges rising thousands of meters to the O2 layer and the bright, Hyperion-like sunlight. layer and the bright, Hyperion-like sunlight.

Memory nudges me. I think of another cloudscape world from a few months back. I think of my first day out in the s.h.i.+p, before reaching the translation point and while my fever and broken leg were healing, when I said idly to the s.h.i.+p, "I wonder how I got through the farcaster here. My last memory was of a giant..."

The s.h.i.+p had answered by running a holo taken from one of its buoy cameras as it sat at the bottom of the river where we had left it. It was a starlight-enhanced image-it was raining-and showed the green-glowing arch of the farcaster and tossing treetops. Suddenly a tentacle longer than the s.h.i.+p came through the farcaster opening, carrying what looked to be a toy kayak draped about with a ma.s.s of riddled parasail fabric. The tentacle made a single, graceful, slow-motion twist and parasail, kayak, and slumped figure in the c.o.c.kpit glided-fluttered, actually-a hundred meters or so to disappear in the thras.h.i.+ng treetops.

"Why didn't you come get me then?" I asked, not hiding the irritation in my voice. My leg still hurt. "Why wait all night while I hung there in the rain? I could have died."

"I had no instructions to retrieve you upon your return," said the arrogant, idiot-savant s.h.i.+p's voice. "You might have been carrying out some important business that would brook no interruption. If I had not heard from you in several days, I would have sent a crawler drone into the jungle to inquire as to your well-being."

I explained my opinion of the s.h.i.+p's logic.

"That is a strange designation," said the s.h.i.+p. "While I have certain organic elements incorporated into my substructure and decentralized DNA computing components, I am not-in the strictest sense of the term-a biological organism. I have no digestive system. No need for elimination, other than the occasional waste gas and pa.s.senger effluvium. Therefore, I have no a.n.u.s in either real or figurative terms. Therefore, I hardly believe I could qualify to be called an..."

"Shut up," I said.

THE SLIDE TAKES LESS THAN FIFTEEN MINUTES. I brake cautiously as the great wall of the K'un Lun Ridge approaches. For the last few hundred meters, my shadow-and A. Bettik's-is thrown ahead of us against the orange-glowing vertical expanse of rock and we become shadow puppets-two strange stick figures with flailing appendages as we work the riser rings to brake our descent and swing our legs to brace for landing. Then the pulley brake sound grows from a low hum to a loud groan as I slow for the final approach to the landing ledge-a six-meter slab of stone with the back wall lined with padded zygoat fleece made brown and rotten by the weather.

I slide and bounce to a stop three meters from the wall, find my footing on the rock, and unclip my pulley and safety line with a speed born of practice. A. Bettik slides to a stop a moment later. Even with one hand, the android is infinitely more graceful than I on the cables; he uses up less than a meter of landing run-out.

We stand there a minute, watching the sun balance on the edge of Phari Ridge, the low light painting the ice-cone summit rising above the jet stream to the south of it. When we finish adjusting our harnesses and equipment racks to our liking, I say, "It's going to be dark by the time we get into the Middle Kingdom."

A. Bettik nods. "I would prefer to have the slideway behind us before full darkness falls, M. Endymion, but I think that this will not be the case."

Even the thought of doing the slideway in the dark makes my s.c.r.o.t.u.m tighten. I wonder idly if a male android has any similar physiological reaction. "Let's get moving," I say, setting off down the slab ledge at a trot.

We lost several hundred meters of alt.i.tude on the cableway, and we will have to make it up now. The ledge soon runs out-there are very few flat places on the peaks of the Mountains of Heaven-and our boots clatter as we jog down a bonsai-bamboo scaffold walkway that hangs from the cliff wall and juts out over nothing. There is no railing here. The evening winds are rising and I seal my therm jacket and zygoat-fleece chuba chuba as we jog along. The heavy pack bounces on my back. as we jog along. The heavy pack bounces on my back.

The jumar point is less than a klick north of the landing ledge. We pa.s.s no one on the walkway, but far across the cloud-stirred valley we can see the torches being lit on the Walk Way between Phari and Jo-kung. The scaffold way and maze of suspension bridges on that side of the Great Abyss is coming alive with people heading north-some undoubtedly headed for the Temple Hanging in Air to hear Aenea's evening public session. I want to get there before them.

The jumar point consists of four fixed lines running up the vertical rock wall for almost seven hundred meters above us. These red lines are for ascension. A few meters away dangle the blue lines for rappelling from the ridge summit. Evening shadow covers us by now and the rising winds are chill. "Side by side?" I say to A. Bettik, gesturing toward one of the middle ropes.

The android nods. His blue countenance looks precisely as I had remembered it from our trip out from Hyperion, almost ten of his years ago. What did I expect-an android to age?

We remove our powered ascenders from our web racks and clip on to adjoining lines, shaking the hanging microfiber lines as if that will tell us if they are still anch.o.r.ed properly. The fixed ropes here are checked only occasionally by the cablemasters; they could have been torn by someone's jumar clips, or abraided by hidden rock spurs, or coated with ice. We will soon know.

We each clip a daisy chain and etriers to our powered ascenders. A. Bettik unloops eight meters of climbing line and we attach this to our harnesses with locking carabiners. Now, if one of the fixed lines fails, the other person can arrest the first climber's fall. Or so goes the theory.

The powered ascenders are the most technology owned by most citizens on T'ien Shan: powered by a sealed solar battery, little larger than our hands that fit in the molded grips, the ascenders are elegant pieces of climbing equipment. A. Bettik checks his attachments and nods. I thumb both of my ascenders to life. The telltales glow green. I jumar the right ascender up a meter, clamp it, step up in the looped etrier foothold, check that I am clear, slide the left ascender up a bit farther, clamp it tight, swing my left foot up two loops, and so on. And so on for seven hundred meters, the two of us pausing occasionally to hang from our etriers and look out across the valley where the Walk Way is ablaze with torches. The sun has set now and the sky has darkened immediately to violets and purples, the brightest stars already making an appearance. I estimate that we have about twenty minutes of real twilight left. We will be doing the slideway in the dark.

I s.h.i.+ver as the wind howls around us.

The fixed lines hang over vertical ice for the last two hundred meters. We both carry collapsible crampons in our rack bags, but we do not need them as we continue the tiring ritual-jumar-clamp-step-pull etriers free-rest a second-jumar -clamp-step-pull-rest-jumar. It takes us almost forty minutes to do the seven hundred meters. It is quite dark as we step onto the ice-ridge platform.

T'ien Shan has five moons: four of them captured asteroids but in orbits low enough to reflect quite a bit of light, the fifth almost as large as Old Earth's moon, but fractured on its upper right quadrant by a single, huge impact crater whose rays spread like a glowing spiderweb to every visible edge of the sphere. This large moon-the Oracle-is rising in the northeast as A. Bettik and I walk slowly north along the narrow ice ridge, clipping on to fixed cables to keep from being blown away by the sub-zero winds that hurtle down from the jet stream now.

I have pulled up my thermal hood and dropped my face mask into place, but the freezing wind still burns at my eyes and any bits of exposed flesh. We cannot tarry here long. But the urge to stand and gaze is strong in me, as it always is when I stand at the cableway terminus of K'un Lun Ridge and look out over the Middle Kingdom and the world of the Mountains of Heaven.

Pausing at the flat, open icefield at the head of the slideway, I pivot in all directions, taking in the view. To the south and west across the moonlit churn of cloudtops so far below, the Phari Ridge glows in the light of the Oracle. Torches high along the ridge north of Phari clearly mark the Walk Way, and I can see the lighted suspension bridges much farther north. Beyond Phari Marketplace, there is a glow in the sky and I fancy that this is the torchlit brilliance of Potala, Winter Palace for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and home to the most magnificent stone architecture on the planet. It is just a few klicks north of there, I know, that the Pax has just been granted an enclave at Rhan Tso, in the evening shadow of s.h.i.+vling-the "Phallus of s.h.i.+va." I smile beneath my therm mask as I imagine the Christian missionaries brooding about this heathen indignity.

Beyond Potala, hundreds of klicks to the west, is the ridge realm of Koko Nor with its countless hanging villages and dangerous bridges. Far south along the great ridge spine called the Lob-sang Gyatso lies the land of the Yellow Hat Sect, ending at the terminal peak of Nanda Devi, where the Hindu G.o.ddess of bliss is said to dwell. Southwest of them, so far around the curve of the world that the sunset still burns there, is Muztagh Alta with its tens of thousands of Islamic dwellers guarding the tombs of Ali and the other saints of Islam. North of Muztagh Alta, the ridges run into territory I have not seen-not even from orbit during my approach-harboring the high homes of the Wandering Jews along the approaches to Mt. Zion and Mt. Moriah, where the twin cities of Abraham and Isaak boast the finest libraries on T'ien Shan. North and west of them rise Mt. Sumeru-the center of the universe-and Harney Peak, also the center of the universe, oddly enough-both some six hundred klicks southeast of the four San Francisco Peaks where the Hopi-Eskimo culture there ekes out a living on the cold ridges and fem clefts, also certain that their peaks bound the center of the universe.

As I turn and look due north, I can see the greatest mountain in our hemisphere and the northern boundary of our world since the ridge disappears beneath phosgene clouds a few klicks north of there-Ch.o.m.o Lori, "Queen of Snow." Incredibly, the sunset still lights Ch.o.m.o Lori's frozen summit even as the Oracle bathes its eastern ridges with a softer light.

From Ch.o.m.o Lori, the K'un Lun and Phari ridges both run south, the gap between them widening to unbridgeable distances south of the cableway we have just crossed. I turn my back to the north wind and look to the south and east, tracing the looping K'un Lun ridgeline, imagining that I can see the torches some two hundred klicks south where the city of Hsi w.a.n.g-mu, "Queen Mother of the West" ("west" being south and west of the Middle Kingdom), shelters some thirty-five thousand people in the safety of its notches and fissures.

South of Hsi w.a.n.g-mu, with only its high summit visible above the jet stream, rises the great peak of Mt. Koya, where-according to the faithful who live in ice-tunnel cities on its lower reaches-Kobo Dais.h.i.+, the founder of s.h.i.+ngon Buddhism, lies interred in his airless ice tomb, waiting for conditions to be right before emerging from his meditative trance.

East of Mt. Koya, out of sight over that curve of the world, are Mt. Kalais, home to Kubera, the Hindu G.o.d of wealth, as well as to s.h.i.+va, who evidently does not mind being separated from his phallus by more than a thousand kilometers of cloud s.p.a.ce. Parvati, s.h.i.+va's wife, is also reputed to live on Mt. Kalais, although no one has heard her opinion of the separation.

A. Bettik had traveled to Mt. Kalais during his first full year on the planet, and he told me that the peak was beautiful, one of the tallest peaks on the planet-more than nineteen thousand meters above sea level-and he described it as looking like a marble sculpture rising from a pedestal of striated rock. The android also said that on the summit of Mt. Kalais, high on the icefields where the wind is too thin to blow or breathe, sits a carboned-alloy temple to the Buddhist deity of the mountain, Demchog, the "One of Supreme Bliss," a giant at least ten meters tall, as blue as the sky, draped with garlands of skulls and happily embracing his female consort as he dances. A. Bettik said that the blue-skinned deity looks a bit like him. The palace itself is in the precise center of the rounded summit, which lies in the center of a mandala made up of lesser snow peaks, all of it embracing the sacred circle-the physical mandala-of the divine s.p.a.ce of Demchog, where those who meditate will discover the wisdom to set them free from the cycle of suffering.

In sight of the Mt. Kalais Demchog mandala, said A. Bettik, and so far to the south that the peak is buried beneath kilometer-deep glaciers of gleaming ice, rises Helgafell-the "Mead Hall of the Dead"-where a few hundred Hegira-transplanted Icelanders have reverted to Viking ways.

I look to the southwest. If I could someday travel the arc of the Antarctic Circle there, I know, I would come across such peaks as Gunung Agung, the navel of the world (one of dozens on T'ien Shan), where the Eka Dasa Rudra Festival is now twenty-seven years into its sixth hundred-year cycle, and where the Balinese women are said to dance with unsurpa.s.sed beauty and grace. Northwest more than a thousand klicks along the high ridge from Gunung Agung is Kilimachaggo, where the denizens of the lower terraces disinter their dead from the loamy fissures after a decent interval and carry the bones high above breathable atmosphere-climbing in handsewn skinsuits and pressure masks-to rebury their relatives in rock-hard ice near the eighteen-thousand-meter level, with the skulls staring through ice toward the summit in eternal hopefulness.

Beyond Kilimachaggo, the only peak I know by name is Croagh Patrick, which reputedly has no snakes. But as far as I know, there are no snakes anywhere else on the Mountains of Heaven.

I turn back to the northeast. The cold and wind buffet me head-on, urging me to hurry, but I take this final minute to look out toward our destination. A. Bettik also appears to be in no rush, although it might be anxiety about the coming slideway that causes him to pause here a moment with me.

To the north and east here, beyond the sheer wall of the K'un Lun Ridge, lies the Middle Kingdom with its five peaks glowing in the lantern light of the Oracle.

To the north of us, the Walk Way and a dozen suspension bridges cross the s.p.a.ce to the town of Jo-kung and the central peak of Sung Shan, the "Lofty," although this is by far the lowest of the five summits of the Middle Kingdom.

Ahead of us, connected from the southwest only by a sheer ice ridge branded by the looping route of the slideway, rises Hua Shan, "Flower Mountain," the westernmost summit in the Middle Kingdom and arguably the most beautiful of the five peaks. From Hua Shan, the final klicks of cableway connect the Flower Mountain to the spur ridges north of Jo-kung where Aenea works on Hsuan-k'ung Ssu, the Temple Hanging in Air, set into a sheer cliff face looking north across the abyss to Heng Shan, the Sacred Mountain of the North.

There is a second Heng Shan some two hundred klicks to the south, marking the Middle Kingdom's boundary there, but it is an unimpressive mound compared to the sheer walls, great ridges, and sweeping profile of its northern counterpart. Looking north through the raging winds and sheets of spindrift, I remember being in the Consul's s.h.i.+p and floating between the n.o.ble Heng Shan and the Temple on that first hour on the planet.

Glancing to the east and north again, beyond Hua Shan and the short central peak of Sung Shan, I can easily see the incredible summit of T'ai Shan silhouetted against the rising Oracle more than three hundred klicks away. This is the Great Peak of the Middle Kingdom, 18,200 meters tall, with its town of Tai'an-the City of Peace-hunkered down at the 9,000-meter level, and its legendary 27,000-step staircase rising from Tai'an, through the snowfields and rock walls, all the way to the mythical Temple of the Jade Emperor on the summit.

Beyond our Sacred Mountain of the North, I know, rise the Four Mountains of Pilgrimage for the Buddhist faithful-O-mei Shan to the west; Chiu-hua Shan, "Nine Flower Mountain," to the south; Wu-t'ai Shan, the "Five Terrace Mountain" with its welcoming Purple Palace to the north; and lowly but subtly beautiful P'u-t'o Shan in the far east.

I take a few final seconds on this wind-battered ice ridge, glancing toward Jo-kung, hoping to see the torchlights lining the fissure pa.s.s over to Hsuan-k'ung Ssu, but high clouds or sheets of spindrift haze the view so that only an Oracle-lighted blur is to be seen.

Turning to A. Bettik, I point toward the slideway and give the thumbs-up gesture. The wind is blowing too hard now to carry words.

A. Bettik nods and reaches back to unfurl the folding sledfoil from an outside pocket on his pack. I realize that my heart is pounding from more than exertion as I find my own sledfoil and carry it to the slideway launch platform.

THE SLIDEWAY IS FAST. THAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN ITS appeal. And that is its greatest danger.

There are still places in the Pax, I am sure, where the ancient custom of tobogganing still exists. In that sport, one sits on a flat-bottomed sled and hurtles down a prepared ice course. This pretty much describes the slideway, except that instead of a flat-bottomed sled, A. Bettik and I each have a sledfoil, which is less than a meter long and curves up around us like a spoon. The sledfoil is more foil than sled, as limp as so much aluminum wrap until we each divert a bit of power from our ascenders, sending the piezoelectric message to the stiffeners in the foil structure until our little sleds seem to inflate, taking form in a few seconds.

Aenea once told me that there used to be fixed carbon-carbon lines running the length of the slideway, and the sledders had clipped on to them much as we would a cableway or rappel line, using a special low-friction clip ring similar to the cable pulley to keep from losing speed. That way, one could brake using the cable or, if the sled were to fly off into s.p.a.ce, use the clip line as a self-arrest harness. There would be bruises and broken bones with such a safety line, but at least the body would not fly out into s.p.a.ce with the sled.

But the cables had not worked, Aenea said. They took too much maintenance to keep clear and functioning. Sudden ice storms would freeze them to the side of the slideway and someone traveling 150 klicks an hour would suddenly have their clip ring encounter immovable ice. It is hard enough these days keeping the cableway clear: the fixed lines of the slideway had been unmanageable.

So the slideways were abandoned. At least until teenagers looking for a thrill and adults in a serious hurry found that nine times out of ten, one could keep the sledfoils in the groove just by glissading-that is, by using one or more ice axes in the self-arrest position and keeping the speed low enough to stay in the trough. "Low enough" meaning beneath 150 klicks per hour. Nine times out of ten it would work. If one was very skillful. And if the conditions were perfect. And if it was daylight.

A. Bettik and I had taken the slideway three other times, once returning from Phari with some medicine needed to save a young girl's life and twice just to learn the turns and straightaways. The voyage had been exhilarating and terrifying those times, but we had made it safely. But each time had been in daylight...with no wind...and with other glissaders ahead of us, showing the way.

Now it is dark; the long run gleams wickedly in the moonlight ahead of us. The surface looks iced and rough as stone. I have no idea if anyone has made the run this day...or this week...if anyone has checked for fissures, ice heaves, fractures, cave-ins, creva.s.ses, ice spikes, or other obstacles. I do not know how long the ancient toboggan runs had been, but this slideway is more than twenty klicks long, running along the side of the sheer Abruzzi Spur connecting K'un Lun Ridge to the slopes of Hua Shan, flattening out on the gradual icefields on the west side of the Flower Mountain, kilometers south of the safer and slower Walk Way looping down from the north. From Hua Shan, it is only nine klicks and three easy cable runs to the scaffolding of Jo-kung and then a brisk walk through the fissure pa.s.s and down onto the sheer face walkways to Hsuan-k'ung Ssu.

A. Bettik and I are sitting side by side like children on sleds, waiting for a push from Mommy or Daddy. I lean over, grab my friend's shoulder, and pull him closer so that I can shout through the thermal material of his hood and face mask. The wind is stinging me with ice now. "All right if I lead?" I yell.

A. Bettik turns his face so that our cloth-covered cheeks are touching. "M. Endymion, I feel that I should lead. I have done this slideway two more times than you, sir."

"In the dark?" I shout.

A. Bettik shakes his hooded head. "Few try it in the dark these days, M. Endymion. But I have a very good memory of every curve and straight. I believe I can be helpful in showing you the proper braking points."

I hesitate only a second. "All right," I say. I squeeze his hand through our gloves.

With night-vision goggles, this would be as easy as a daylight slideway glissade-which does not qualify as easy in my book. But I had lost the goggles that I had taken on my farcaster Odyssey, and although the s.h.i.+p carried replacement pairs, I had left them in the s.h.i.+p. "Bring two skinsuits and rebreathers," Rachel had relayed from Aenea. She might have mentioned night-vision goggles.

Today's jaunt was supposed to have been an easy hike to Phari Marketplace, a night spent in the hostelry there, and then a pack trip back with George Tsarong, Jjgme Norbu, and a long line of porters, hauling the heavy material for the building site.

Perhaps, I think, I'm overreacting to the news of the Pax landing. Too late now. Even if we turn around, the rappel down the fixed lines on K'un Lun Ridge would be as much trouble as this glissade. Or so I lie to myself.

I watch as A. Bettik rigs his short, 38-centimeter ice-climbing hammer in the loop of the wristband on his left arm, then readies his regular 75-centimeter ice axe. Sitting cross-legged on my sled, I slip my own ice hammer into my left hand and trail my longer ice axe in my right hand like a tiller. I give the android the thumbs-up signal again and watch as he pushes off in the moonlight, spinning once, then steadying the sled expertly with his short ice hammer, chips flying, and then hurtling over the brink and out of sight for a minute. I wait until there is an interval of ten meters or so-far enough to avoid the ice spray of his pa.s.sing, close enough to see him in the orange light of the Oracle-and then I push over myself.

Twenty kilometers. At an average speed of 120 klicks per hour, we should cover the distance in ten minutes. Ten freezing, adrenaline-pumping, gorge-rising, terror-beating-against-the-ribs, react-in-a-microsecond-or-die minutes.

A. Bettik is brilliant. He sets up each turn perfectly, coming in low for the high-banked curves so that his apogee-and mine a few seconds later-will be teetering right at the lip of the icy bank, careering out of the banked turn at just the right speed for the next descending straight, then banging and skipping down the long icy ramp so fast that vision blurs, the pounding comes up through my tailbone and spine so that vision is doubled, trebled, and my head pounds with the pain of it, then blurs again with the spray of ice chips flying, creating halos in the moonlight, bright as the unblinking stars spill and reel above us-the brilliant stars competing even with the Oracle's glow and the asteroid moons' quick, tumbling light-and then we are braking low and bouncing hard and riding high again, arresting into a sharp left that takes my breath away, then skidding into a sharper right, then pounding and flying down a straight so steep that the sled and I seem to be screaming into freefall. For a minute I am looking straight down at the moonlit phosgene clouds-green as mustard gas in the lying moonlight-then we are both racketing around a series of spirals, DNA-helix switchbacks, our sleds teetering on the edge of each bank so that twice my ice-axe blade bites into nothing but freezing air, but both times we drop back down and emerge-not exiting the turns so much as being spit out of them, two rifle bullets fired just above the ice-and then we bank high again, come out accelerating onto a straight, and shoot across eight kilometers of sheer ice wall on the Abruzzi Spur, the right banked wall of the slideway now serving as the floor of our pa.s.sage, my ice axe spinning chips into vertical s.p.a.ce as our speed increases, then increases more, then becomes something more than speed as the cold, thin air slices through my mask and thermal garments and gloves and heated boots to freeze flesh and to tear at muscle. I feel the frozen skin of my cheeks stretching under my thermal mask as I grin idiotically, a rictal grimace of terror and the sheer joy of mindless speed, my arms and hands adjusting constantly, automatically, instantly to changes in the ice-axe tiller and the ice-hammer brake.

Suddenly A. Bettik swerves to the left, chips flying as he bites deep with the curved blades of both long and short axes-it makes no sense, such a move will send him-both of us!- bouncing off the inner wall, the vertical ice wall, and then screaming out into black air-but I trust him, making the decision in less than a second, and slam the blade of my large axe down, pounding hard with my ice hammer, feeling my heart in my throat as I skid sideways and threaten to slide right instead of left, on the verge of spinning and spiraling off the narrow ice ledge at 140 kilometers per hour-but I correct and stabilize and flash past a hole in the ice floor where we would have been sliding except for this wild detour, hurtling onto a broken-away ledge six or eight meters wide, a trapdoor to death-and then A. Bettik rackets down off the inner wall, catches his slide with a flash of ice-axe blades in the moonlight, and then continues hurtling down the Abruzzi Spur toward the final series of turns onto the Hua Shan ice slopes.

And I follow.

On the Flower Mountain, we are both too frozen and shaken to rise from our sleds for several cold minutes. Then, together, we get to our feet, ground the piezoelectric charges in our sleds, collapse them, and fold them away in our packs. We walk the ice path around the shoulder of Hua Shan in silence-I in awe of A. Bettik's reactions and courage, he in silence I cannot interpret but fervently hope is not anger at my hasty decision to return via this route.

The final three cableway flights are anticlimax, noted only for the beauty of the moonlight on the peaks and ridges around us, and for the difficulty I have in closing my frozen fingers on the D-ring brakes.

Jo-kung is ablaze with torches after the moonlit emptiness of the upper slopes, but we avoid the main scaffolds and take the ladders to the fissure pa.s.s. Then we are surrounded by the shadowed darkness of the north face, broken by sputtering torches along the high walkway to Hsuan-k'ung Ssu. We jog the last kilometer.

We arrive just as Aenea is beginning her early evening discussion session. There are about a hundred people crowded into the little platform paG.o.da. She looks across the heads of the waiting people, sees my face, asks Rachel to begin the discussion, and comes immediately to where A. Bettik and I stand in the windy doorway.