Theo was crying. I was aware that this was an important parting—that we might not see one another again despite Aenea’s assurances 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 passionately in love, I thought, 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, passed the ropes I’d just descended, and reached the fissure without incident. The bonsai trees and fell fields looked ancient and unreal in the shifting 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 Lhomo 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 Lhomo leading as strongly as ever, stepping confidently over foggy voids and icy crevasses 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 poisonous 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, Lhomo 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 ship 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 Lhomo 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.

Lhomo and A. Bettik were assembling 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.

Lhomo and A. Bettik had assembled four parawings from the parts we had transported. As if answering my unasked question, Lhomo said, “I can only show you the thermals and make sure you reach the jet stream. I can’t survive at that altitude. 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.”

A. Bettik smiled. I had always thought that his rare smiles were the wisest things I had ever seen on a human countenance—even if the blue-skinned man was not technically human.

“You forget, M. Endymion,” he said, “I was designed to suffer a bit more abuse than the average human body.”

“But the distance…” I began. T’ai Shan was more than a hundred kilometers east and even if we reached the jet stream, that would be almost an hour of rarified air… far too thin to breathe.

A. Bettik fastened the last rigging to his parawing—a pretty thing with a great blue delta wingspan almost ten meters across—and said, “If we are lucky enough to make the distance, I will survive it.”

I nodded and made to get into the rigging of my own kite then, not asking any more questions, not looking at Aenea, not asking her why the four of us were risking our lives this way, when suddenly my friend was at my elbow.

“Thank you, Raul,” she said, loudly enough for all to hear. “You do these things for me out of love and friendship. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

I made some gesture, suddenly unable to speak, embarrassed that she was thanking me when the other two were ready to leap into the void for her as well. But she was not finished speaking.

“I love you, Raul,” said Aenea, leaning on her tiptoes to kiss me on the lips. She rocked back and looked at me, her dark eyes fathomless. “I love you, Raul Endymion. I always have. I always will.”

I stood, bewildered and overwhelmed, as we all locked in to our parawing rigs and stood at the ultimate edge of nothing. Lhomo was the last to clip on. He moved from A. Bettik to Aenea to me, checking our riggings, checking every fastened nut, bolt, tension clip, and instaweld of our kites. Satisfied, he nodded respectfully toward A. Bettik, clipped into his own red-winged rig with a speed born of infinite practice and discipline, and moved to the edge of the cliff. Even the succulents did not grow in this last meter stretch, as if terrified of the drop. I knew that I was. The last rocky ledge was steeply pitched and slick from the rain. The fog had closed in again.