Aisle 770

Aisle 770 is the designation, under Concordance XIV, Article 12, of the working aisle occupying the western third of Floor 111, and is the primary workstation of the Silent Scribes of Aisle 7000. The number is a concordance artefact and not a position: Aisle 770 lies between Aisle 769 and Aisle 771, but no survey party has ever established whether this is by design or by the accident of a misrestored shelving bracket in the winter of the year the surveyors call the Long Recension. The aisle is 61 standard rod-lengths long by a single shelf-width deep, runs unlit, and is entered only by appointment recorded on the slate at the head of the stair.

Designation and numbering dispute

The numbering of Aisle 770 has been disputed since Third Concordance Annex 4 was amended to read that "aisles shall be numbered in the order of their assembly," a phrase the Office of Sequential Claims and the Directorate of Custody have read in opposite directions for four hundred years. The Office holds that assembly means construction and that Aisle 770 was therefore assembled seventh on Floor 111, which would place it several doors from where it stands. The Directorate holds that assembly means assembly of the catalogue entry, in which case the aisle is correctly numbered and the shelf itself is misplaced. The dispute has never been resolved, chiefly because resolving it would require moving one or the other, and both offices have declined.

In practice the aisle is where a reader finds it, which the Precedent-Setter's Ruling of Year 9 permitted under the doctrine that "a misdescribed aisle is still an aisle, but a moved one is a dispute" (Precedent-Setter's Ruling, marginalia to Article 12). Readers who arrive by the eastern stair and find nothing should proceed to the western stair. This is stated on the doorplate and nowhere else.

The Silent Scribes

Work in Aisle 770 is transacted entirely on paper, in Aisle 770 hand, a scribal script of narrow spacing and unbroken baseline that the Silent Scribes of Aisle 7000 maintain against all pressure to reform. The script's advantage is speed; its disadvantage is that only its practitioners can read it, a fact that has twice delayed a Concordance amendment past its effective date. The scribes hold the aisle under a work-order renewed every ninth session, and the renewal is granted as a matter of course, though the Clerk of Ambulation is required annually to walk the aisle end to end and testify that it remains an aisle. The Clerk's testimony consists of a single line and a seal.

Visitors may pass through the aisle but may not speak in it, and may not cast a second shadow. The rule is posted at both doors and is enforced by the scribes without comment.

The moth holdings

Aisle 770 is the recognised source of the silent moths whose silk filaments are drawn for the construction of Selvage Weaves. The moths were recorded in the aisle before the scribes were, and the scribes have always declined to say how long. Their culture is maintained in the dry air of the unlit stacks, where the filaments are gathered at first light and wound on rods cut to the Striding Aisle standard of pace. A filament of sixteen paces' length is the fixed unit of the trade and is known simply as a run.

The harvest is small and the weavers of Floor 63 have petitioned three times for an increase. Each petition has been returned with the same annotation, in the hand of a scribe now four generations dead: the moths set their own calendar and the aisle does not hurry them. The weavers have learned to expect this answer and now request the petition's return as a formality, which the scribes permit, having no rule against it.

The cold winter and the Aisle Gamma-7 schism

In the winter of the year the surveyors call the Long Recension, the heating conduit serving Floor 111 failed and the moths of Aisle 770 grew torpid. The scribes sent to Aisle Gamma-7, the administrative annex on Floor 18, for a supplementary allotment of dry fuel and were refused on the ground that Aisle 770 was not on the annex's register of cold-sensitive holdings. The register, it emerged, had been compiled from the Office of Sequential Claims roll, in which Aisle 770 stood at its sequential position some doors to the east. The annex had been heating an empty shelf for eleven sessions.

The refusal produced a documented schism. The scribes struck the annex from their correspondence, an act with no procedural effect that they nonetheless maintain to this day, and the Directorate of Custody issued a finding that the annex had acted correctly under the roll and the roll had acted correctly under the numbering and the numbering was, in the Directorate's phrase, "a matter for the aisle" (Directorate of Custody, finding 44 of the Long Recension). The moths recovered when the conduit was mended. The empty shelf, warmed for eleven sessions at Tower expense, has since been catalogued as a heated annex of Aisle 770 and is the only annex on Floor 111 with no holdings.

Access and records

The ledger of Aisle 770 is kept at the head of the western stair and records every entry, every filament run drawn, and every refusal, including the refusals of the weavers of Floor 63. Entries are made in Aisle 770 hand and have never been transcribed, so the ledger's substance is known only to the scribes and to the Novice Tender who dusts it. The Tender has been asked what it says and answers that it is not her office to read it, which is true and is also the aisle's standing defence against every inquiry it has ever received.