Amniotic Lacquer

Amniotic Lacquer is a translucent amber coating of biological origin, harvested from the suspended membranes of the Organic Annexes and used throughout the Tower wherever a surface must be sealed without being made entirely opaque. It is applied by brush, by dip, or in the case of large architectural fixtures, by flood. It dries in eleven hours at a standard gallery temperature of 14°C and cannot thereafter be removed by any solvent recorded below the ninth gallery. Its principal use is the treatment of documents requiring suspension rather than preservation — among them, most famously, the triplicate scrolls of Form PC-117/Δ, whose suspension lacquer is amniotic in composition.

Harvest and preparation

Amniotic Lacquer is drawn from the membranes maintained in the Organic Annexes of Sub-level Θ, where the supply is tended by the Vascular Canons under an arrangement of long standing. The membranes are tapped on a rota of ninety-one days; a membrane tapped at shorter intervals yields a lacquer that clouds, and a membrane tapped at longer intervals yields one that will not set at all. The rota is posted, amended, and reposted at the annex entrance, and the version currently affixed there is not the version in force.

Raw lacquer is strained three times through linen, then rested for a period of not less than one Concordance cycle in vessels of unglazed ceramic. It is at this stage that the material acquires the faintly saline odour that clerks describe as "the smell of a closed reading room in August," a description that appears verbatim in the Seventeenth Concordance and, less appropriately, in a survey of stairwell ventilation.

The finished lacquer is graded by clarity. First-grade lacquer shows no body at a depth of 4mm and is reserved for the treatment of Petition scrolls and for the lenses of the Aperture Survey. Second grade carries a slight internal shimmer and is used for floors. Third grade is opaque, brown, and is used for waterproofing. Fourth grade is not discussed.

Use in suspension

The distinction between suspension and preservation is central to the Tower's documentary practice. A preserved document is held against decay; a suspended document is held against resolution — it remains legible in outline while its contents are prevented from settling into a single meaning. Form PC-117/Δ specifies that its three scrolls be treated with suspension lacquer before filing and be re-treated at each transfer between offices. The treatment has the incidental effect of making the scrolls slightly tacky at the margins, and the Office of Cadential Records has issued four advisories against stacking them.

The most sustained dispute in the lacquer's history concerns the Twelfth Concordance, which directs that all instruments bearing the Seal of Unreview be coated on the reverse face only. The Twenty-Second Concordance, enacted forty years later, directs that such instruments be coated on all faces, "the seal being already a closure and not requiring the courtesy of an exposed surface." Both remain in force. The compromise in practice, adopted independently in at least six offices, is to coat all faces and then scrape the reverse, which satisfies neither instrument and has never been challenged.

The Kessendahl objection

Scholarly consensus holds that Amniotic Lacquer was first compounded on a floor whose number is now disputed, in the winter of the year the Dispute Ledger 44-Alpha records as the Winter of the Long Recension. The attribution rests on a single line in the Aortic Codex, which names a compound "drawn from the annex and carried up," without further specification. Whether "the annex" here means the Organic Annexes or the smaller preparatory annex off Spiral 7 is the substance of the so-called Kessendahl objection, advanced by the clerk Kessendahl in a memorandum of 331 words and never answered.

Kessendahl's argument is philological: the Codex elsewhere reserves the definite article for the Spiral 7 annex alone. His opponents hold that the Codex is inconsistent in this respect on eleven separate occasions and that Kessendahl counted only the nine that supported him. The Vitalists have declined to adjudicate, on the grounds that the question is documentary and not theirs.

"That the material is living admits of no doubt. That it is alive is a question for the annex, and the annex has not answered."

— Vitalist reading, third recension, marginal note in an unidentified hand

Incidents

In the winter following the Kessendahl memorandum, a junior clerk in the Office of Cadential Records applied first-grade lacquer to a batch of thirty-one PC-117/Δ scrolls without first verifying the grade against the vessel label. The vessel contained fourth-grade material. The scrolls set hard within the hour and were subsequently found to be entirely legible, which the Office regarded as the more serious fault. The batch was retired to Sub-level Θ rather than destroyed, and the clerk was reassigned to the Aperture Survey with a commendation that he did not request.

A separate incident, better attested, concerns the flood application on the floor designated 1,144, where the lacquer was laid too thick against a load-bearing wall and cured with sufficient contraction to draw the wall two centimetres out of plumb. The wall has been braced since. Visitors are asked not to lean on it.

Inventory

The current holdings of finished lacquer, as recorded by the annex keeper at the close of the last rota, are as follows:

• First grade, in ceramic vessels: 62 vessels, of which 4 are of contested provenance
• Second grade, in ceramic vessels: 140 vessels
• Third grade, in iron-stopped jars: 209 jars
• Fourth grade, held under seal: 1 vessel, not to be opened

The keeper notes that the count of first-grade vessels was higher at the previous inventory and that no transfer has been recorded. A note has been filed with the Dispute Ledger 44-Alpha and the matter is considered open.