Free Celebrant by Michael Cisco Page B

freedom, which in toto I shall henceforth refer to as your principium individuationis , is damaged or grows weak or is over —
    He swallows quickly. He must finish before that slinking shadow reaches him.
    ... It is reaching for him now! —
    — overpowered — when your principium individuationis is damaged weak or overpowered the sanatorium begins to materialize around you, like a pneumacidal web. You begin to see the corridors, the orderlies, smell the food, the body odor and the disinfectant ...
    Is it receding?
    He listens, straining. He searches the dark for any sign.
    No, there is no click of heels. There is no bad smell.
    There is the must and gloom of the faculty lounge. The dim brown light outside the narrow windows.
    deKlend lies back and draws up his blanket again.
    It’s not finished (he thinks)
    Neither am I. I learn from my mistakes. When I take notice of them. I often do.
    Still listening, rallying, relaxing, his confidence returning again.
    With my own hand I’ll write myself, now. I won’t get trapped like that any more (he thinks)

In Votu:
     
    Trees skirt the city wall, and dash against it in a continuous tune wind, like surf. The upper portion of the wall is skirted by inlaid mosaics of sensitive architecture made of nerve material, maintained and sampled with hyponic needles — they repeat the echoes. There is also a continuous inner wall that surrounds the city factory, where a certain variety of energy is produced by dancing on rugs. These special carpets are produced only in Votu, and virtually none have ever been removed from the city. It’s said that a curse of some kind will fall on any who take a carp et out of earshot of the walls.
    The weaving of carpets of any kind, dance carpets included, is work reserved exclusively for Votu’s women. Dance carpets are made in keeping with the Votuvan idea of time, using only forgotten patterns, which are spontaneously recreated, not at random, not intuitively, by the weavers as they listen to old music. They gather in time-honored workshops, not in the factory. One wall (at least) is open, the looms stand in a circle, the musicians play outside. The women are all former dancers, who frequently heave themselves up from their seats and go to dance in the clear spot at the center of the shop, in a deep and serious groove. Their dancing is strenuous and dignified but not extravagant, not demonstrative, not solemn; they listen down into themselves and then wheel out like boulders suddenly turned into tops. Lifting their thick hands and heavy arms they motion with stunning elegance; the severe looks of this one, the sweat sparkling on her cheeks, now melt calmly into a benign expression of motherly delight. They’re telling stories to each other in gestures dense with unmistakeably articulated meanings. The dances of patterns involving patterns are recorded in the carpets and can be danced back by other dancers who know how to retrieve time.
    The dance rugs are alive; they live and heal. They don’t need to be beaten out, because they eat dust.
    The carpet weavers traditionally marry the craftsmen who produce Votu’s one and only export. Oblate globes of glittering steel in concentric fine circles or spirals, streaked with lines suggesting the globes might be made by braiding. There seem to be two hemispheres that fold out into solid rims at the join; from each hemisphere protrudes a bullet-shaped bulb with a smoothly receding hole at its tip and, two small sharp holes at the base. The bulbs protrude at an angle parallel to the planar section of the spheres at their widest point, and are positioned at forty-five degree angles to each other, although this is sometimes to the “right” and sometimes to the “left.” These balls are produced in total secrecy and no one at all knows what they are for, including the traders who come to Votu to buy them. Likely the craftsmen don’t know either, but they are sworn to complete secrecy in any case. They are