Aperture 7

Aperture 7 is the seventh aperture recorded in the Aperture Marks register and the only aperture in that sequence whose marking has never been revised. It is a fixed circular aperture of 2.4 metres' internal diameter, set into the west wall of the landing on Spiral 117, and it opens onto nothing that the Tower has been able to survey. Unlike the First Aperture, which is named for its precedence, or Aperture Kappa, which is named for its keeper, Aperture 7 is named only for the position it holds in the register, and the Aperture Registrar has declined four petitions to change this on the grounds that "the seventh mark shall not be moved, lest the sixth and eighth be asked to account for themselves" (Concordance of Aperture Marks, Annex 2).

Description and physical record

The aperture is bounded by a brass ring 11 centimetres in width, into which the numeral 7 is struck at four points, one of which is inverted. Its primary resonance boundary lies some 40 metres east of the Aperture 112-W boundary and well clear of the Aperture Gamma complex, a placement that the Custodians of the Aperture have twice described as "deliberate and not to be corrected" in their annual returns to the Aperture Registrar. The interior of the aperture is not dark. Observers describe a faint horizontal banding, grey on grey, which the survey team of Cycle 918 recorded as "uniform, continuous, and without horizon" and declined to interpret further.

Access is by appointment. Visitors are asked to leave their satchels on the landing.

The Three Dispositions of Cycle 640

The aperture's administrative history begins properly in Cycle 640, when the landing on Spiral 117 was closed for eleven days following the collapse of the eastern stair rail. During the closure, the Custodians of the Aperture issued three dispositions concerning Aperture 7, which is one more than the aperture had required in the preceding two hundred cycles.

1. Disposition 1: that the aperture be counted as part of the East Aperture complex for purposes of storm warning.
2. Disposition 2: that the aperture not be so counted.
3. Disposition 3: that the question be referred to the Aperture Registrar and that no one speak of it in the interim.

Disposition 3 was adopted. It has not been repealed and the referral remains open. A clerk of the second scriptorium, Ellis Vane, noted in the margin of the disposition ledger that "no interim was specified," a remark for which she was reprimanded in writing and subsequently assigned to the enumeration of the Aperture 19-Wing inventory, where she remained for nineteen cycles.

Relationship to the Seventh Aperture

A persistent confusion attaches to Aperture 7 by reason of the Duality of the Seventh Aperture, a doctrine that concerns the paired structure of apertures in the formal seventh position and makes no mention of the numeral as inscribed on a ring. The Company of Recensions has ruled twice that Aperture 7 is not a subject of the Duality, and twice the ruling has been read as though it said the opposite, most recently in a footnote to the Fourth Recension of Aperture Practice which describes Aperture 7 as "the lesser twin." The Custodians have asked that the footnote be struck. The Company has asked which twin is lesser. Neither request has been answered.

Scholarly disagreement

Whether Aperture 7 is an aperture at all is disputed. The conventional view, held by the Custodians of the Aperture and reflected in every register since the mark was struck, is that it is. The dissenting view, advanced in Cycle 887 by the surveyor Marn Osric and never formally withdrawn, holds that Aperture 7 is a "doorway mistaken for an opening," and that the distinction matters because doorways may be closed and apertures may not. Osric's argument rests on the behaviour of the ring during the storm of Cycle 886, when it was observed to move some 3 millimetres on its seating and then return. The Custodians replied that all rings move under storm conditions and that Aperture 303 had moved further with no one calling it a door.

"The question is not what an aperture opens onto. The question is whether it may be shut. On this the ring has said nothing, and I decline to speak for it."

— Marn Osric, Observations on the West Landing, Cycle 887

Maintenance and standing orders

The aperture is polished on the ninth day of each quarter by a keeper of the west landing, a duty that fell vacant in Cycle 902 and was filled only after the Concordance of Aperture Regulation was amended to permit polishing by a keeper of the east landing on a temporary basis. The temporary basis has since been renewed forty-one times. Under Aperture Seal Directive 7-Alpha, no seal is to be affixed to Aperture 7, a prohibition the directive does not explain and which the Custodians have interpreted as applying to the ring, the seating, and the landing itself. The landing has consequently not been sealed, marked, or cordoned in any cycle since the directive was promulgated, which the Custodians cite as evidence of the directive's success.

The numeral struck at the lower left of the ring remains inverted. Three petitions to correct it have been filed, and three times the Registrar has ruled that the inversion is original and therefore correct. The Aperture Registrar formally logged the ruling in Cycle 943 under the heading "Marks, permanence of."