Ceremonial Catwalk

The Ceremonial Catwalk is a structure of woven ironwood and glass that bridges the gap between the central atrium and the entrance of Spire 44 on Floor 6,309. It is the only approach to that Spire's doors recognised by the Office of Ceremonial Integrity, and its upkeep is shared, uneasily, between that Office and the Office of the Twenty-Third Spire. It is not to be confused with the Iron Catwalk, nor with Catwalk 3, neither of which carries ceremonial standing, though both are frequently mistaken for it by visitors arriving from the western stack.

At 6,309 the Catwalk is 41 meters in span and 2.4 meters in clear width, rising 1.1 meters across its length so that a procession arrives at the doors of Spire 44 fractionally higher than it left the atrium. The glass is set in ironwood cames at intervals of 19 centimeters, and the deck is laid in alternate transverse courses so that the ceremonial pace — a slow step, a pause, a slow step — falls naturally into the joints. The structure is closed to ordinary traffic during Ceremonial Placement and to all traffic during the annual Ceremonial Dust-Distribution Rites, when the dust is swept from the deck by hand and weighed before disposal.

Construction and materials

The ironwood was drawn from the telluric stands of the lower western floors and woven rather than sawn, in the manner recorded in the ledger of the weaver's yard at Aperture Gamma-12. The glass is of a low-tin melt, chosen for its slight green cast, which the Ceremonial Inks specification of 1704 permits on the ground that a Catwalk glass should be distinguishable from a window at a glance. The cames are pinned, not soldered; soldered cames were tried briefly in the winter of 1588 and failed in the cold, an incident still cited in the Office of Ceremonial Consistency's standing notes on metalwork.

The frame is continuous with the wrought-iron frame that permanently mounts the Mourning Glass of the 44th Spire. The two were built to the same specification by the same yard, and the Mourning Glass is accordingly the only object on the Catwalk that is not, in the strict sense, on the Catwalk.

The foundational dispute

Whether the Catwalk precedes Spire 44 or Spire 44 precedes the Catwalk has been debated since at least 1711, when the Office of the Twenty-Third Spire raised the question of the Spire's foundational status in a memorandum to the Office of Ceremonial Integrity. The memorandum argued that a bridge whose only purpose is to reach a door cannot be older than the door, and that the Catwalk should therefore be entered in the rolls as an annex of Spire 44 rather than as a structure in its own right. The Office of Ceremonial Integrity replied, in a note of eleven lines, that the Catwalk had carried processions before the Spire's doors were hung, and that this fact was recorded in the Ceremonial Ledger for the relevant year, whichever year it was.

"The Catwalk does not lead to the Spire. The Spire was placed where the Catwalk arrives."

— Office of Ceremonial Integrity, marginal note to the 1711 memorandum

The Librariansreconciliation of 1901 attempted to settle the matter by assigning both structures a single composite entry, which satisfied neither Office and was quietly abandoned after the composite entry was found to have been shelved in two different sequences. The dispute is now maintained rather than pursued: each Office restates its position annually, the restatements are filed, and the filing is considered the point.

Ceremonial use and precedence

Precedence on the Catwalk is governed by the Third Concordance, Annex 4, which fixes the order of procession but not its direction. The omission has produced at least one recorded difficulty: in the winter of 1802, two processions entered the Catwalk from opposite ends and met at the eighth joint, where each party held that the other was proceeding against the grain of the Annex. The parties stood for four hours. The matter was resolved by a clerk of the Office of Ceremonial Integrity, who read Annex 4 aloud twice and then directed both processions to continue in their original directions, on the ground that the Annex had not forbidden it.

Objects carried across the Catwalk are subject to the same precedence as the persons carrying them, with the exception of the Ceremonial Pectoral, which crosses first and alone. The Ceremonial Barrier Gate at the atrium end is closed while the Pectoral is in transit. Instruments of the Ceremonial Cataloguing Amp are not permitted on the deck, as their housings scratch the glass.

Maintenance and incidents

Routine maintenance is carried out from beneath, on a cradle suspended from the atrium lintel, so that the deck need not be closed. The Office of the Twenty-Third Spire holds the cradle and the Office of Ceremonial Integrity holds the rope, an arrangement introduced after the cradle was once lowered by one Office while the other was still inspecting the deck. No one was injured; the inspection was completed from below, which was held to be irregular but not invalid.

Three glass cames were replaced in 1847 following the Ceremonial Inscription Amp Integration, when a resonance in the amp's housing was found to have loosened the pins along the eastern edge. The replacement cames are marked with a small stamped numeral on the underside of the frame, visible only from the cradle. The Office of Ceremonial Consistency has asked that all future replacements be so marked, and has asked this at every meeting since 1847 without receiving a reply.

Visitors are reminded that the Catwalk is swept on the first working day of each month and that the sweeping is not a ceremony; those wishing to observe a ceremony are directed to the doors of Spire 44, which open inward.

Records

The Catwalk's own roll — a single ledger of crossings, kept at the atrium end — records each procession by date, composition, and direction, and by the number of joints at which the party paused. The roll is bound in the same ironwood cloth as the deck and is stored, when not in use, in the Seventh Iron Strongroom, reached by a separate Iron Catwalk spanning the ventilation shaft. Requests to consult it are made to the Office of Ceremonial Integrity and are usually granted, provided the requester does not ask what year the roll begins.