to the court, and her voice is the last to be heard by the Goddess in each case. The girl speaks and rings a chime, and then performs her particular function. Before giving a verdict, the Goddess of Justice always drinks a glass of water. The girl’s task is to pour the glass and offer it to the Goddess. The water is specially treated by the selzoids — people who live in the hinterlands and cannot survive without constant carbonization — so all its residues are exactly balanced. The girl pours this glass of water from a steel ewer and carries it to the bench on a round lacquered tray. The Goddess takes the glass in her hand with a faint click. When her lips, which had till that moment seemed welded shut, part — everyone present holds breath an enchanted moment — a shining meniscus can be seen inside them. She drains the glass at a draught, with audible gulps, followed at once by a hollow sigh, and the verdict, after which she turns and walks back into her alcove. The justice of her verdicts is not often questioned, but there is no legal reason that a case cannot be brought before her again and again until the more persistent side gets the answer it wants. Her impartiality is guaranteed because she is completely apart from the life of the city.
The Goddess is only one of a great many different kinds of machinery produced in the shen processors of the city factory. This edifice is a long building that snakes up into the mountains, the only building in Votu, apart from the outer walls, to cross the boundary line into the future districts. The factory groans at intervals, a drawn-out rasp like a hoary, chain-smoking old ram clearing his throat, to signal changing shifts. The workers are unionized by the Motheaten socialists, their books turning brown.
The factory produces a form of spectral wafer known as insulation, which is traded on long thin chrome spindles, and adminicules , made from ordinary water. The heavy water that this process creates is used to run the machinery that produces the celestials, and the light water is pumped throughout the city grid. Adminicules are microscopic particles of administration which, when combined in sufficient numbers, form decisions , usually in the shape of metallic statues or cylinders — the Goddess of Justice being a rare and prohibitively expensive ultradecision. Ordinary decisions are used to monitor other production processes, including the layering of insulation on musculosks (musculo-skeletal units) in the incubators, thus producing the artificial people called modets . Some modets are thought to be incarnations of persons engendered by sexual intercourse not resulting in pregnancy.
The inhabitants of Votu believe that every sexual act engenders life. This life may be produced in the usual way, or in some other way, and the power to create life sexually is not in any way confined in space or in time, nor with respect to persons. Unmoored in time and place, some sexual acts drift on a kind of conatus peculiar to them until intercepted by some sort of an opportunity, and then incarnate in new life: animal, or “minate” [the sages of Votu consider the mineral to be living precursor to the vegetable, so the latter two categories are both equally indicated by the Votuvan term “minate”]. In some cases, the unmoored sexual act produces human forms, who appear in the future districts of the descending city. The circumstances of their invisible parturition are unique to each case. These beings are physically identical to humans engendered in the usual way, although they can be born at any age. A handful are born old and decrepit, living only a short time. The brains of these others are developed for the most part in keeping with their apparent age, so the aged newborns appear stocked with full memories. At least one proved to be highly accomplished, and lived long enough to compose an influential dance.
In most cases these others simply join the people of Votu and lead
The Goddess is only one of a great many different kinds of machinery produced in the shen processors of the city factory. This edifice is a long building that snakes up into the mountains, the only building in Votu, apart from the outer walls, to cross the boundary line into the future districts. The factory groans at intervals, a drawn-out rasp like a hoary, chain-smoking old ram clearing his throat, to signal changing shifts. The workers are unionized by the Motheaten socialists, their books turning brown.
The factory produces a form of spectral wafer known as insulation, which is traded on long thin chrome spindles, and adminicules , made from ordinary water. The heavy water that this process creates is used to run the machinery that produces the celestials, and the light water is pumped throughout the city grid. Adminicules are microscopic particles of administration which, when combined in sufficient numbers, form decisions , usually in the shape of metallic statues or cylinders — the Goddess of Justice being a rare and prohibitively expensive ultradecision. Ordinary decisions are used to monitor other production processes, including the layering of insulation on musculosks (musculo-skeletal units) in the incubators, thus producing the artificial people called modets . Some modets are thought to be incarnations of persons engendered by sexual intercourse not resulting in pregnancy.
The inhabitants of Votu believe that every sexual act engenders life. This life may be produced in the usual way, or in some other way, and the power to create life sexually is not in any way confined in space or in time, nor with respect to persons. Unmoored in time and place, some sexual acts drift on a kind of conatus peculiar to them until intercepted by some sort of an opportunity, and then incarnate in new life: animal, or “minate” [the sages of Votu consider the mineral to be living precursor to the vegetable, so the latter two categories are both equally indicated by the Votuvan term “minate”]. In some cases, the unmoored sexual act produces human forms, who appear in the future districts of the descending city. The circumstances of their invisible parturition are unique to each case. These beings are physically identical to humans engendered in the usual way, although they can be born at any age. A handful are born old and decrepit, living only a short time. The brains of these others are developed for the most part in keeping with their apparent age, so the aged newborns appear stocked with full memories. At least one proved to be highly accomplished, and lived long enough to compose an influential dance.
In most cases these others simply join the people of Votu and lead
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