Clause D.5

Definition and placement

Clause D.5 is a lettered clause of the Fourth Concordance governing the transfer of holdings between floors whose numbers cannot be reconciled. It is not to be confused with Clause IX.2, with the fifth clause proper of Concordance D, nor with the various sub-clauses of Clause 7 that occupy the same nominal position in the seventh schedule. The Office of Clause Nomenclature has ruled on this confusion twice, in both cases without effect, and has since declined to rule a third time, noting in its register for the winter of the year numbered 4,188 that "the parties had not read the ruling they were disputing" (Office of Clause Nomenclature, Register of Rulings, folio 61).

D.5 occupies roughly half a page of the Fourth Concordance and has been appended to by four later recensions, none of which altered its operative sentence. Its own marginal note describes it as "provisional," a term the same page defines nowhere.

The operative text

The clause provides that where two floors hold the same object and neither floor's number can be carried to the other by Concordance arithmetic, custody passes to whichever floor can produce a receipt. Where both floors produce receipts, custody passes to the floor with the older seal. Where both seals are of the same year, the matter is referred upward and is not to be referred downward under any circumstance.

This last prohibition has been the subject of a standing disagreement between the Office of Vertical Jurisprudence and the Keeper of the Upper Landings. The Keeper maintains that "upward" is itself undefined in a building without a summit, and that the clause therefore refers to the direction of the staircase rather than to any authority, since the staircases at landings 14 through 19 reverse their pitch every ninth year (Keeper of the Upper Landings, Memorandum on Direction, unnumbered). The Office of Vertical Jurisprudence holds the opposite view and has held it, in writing, since before either office's foundation was recorded.

"That a clause may be satisfied by walking downstairs is not a reading we are prepared to certify."

— Office of Vertical Jurisprudence, Opinion 2,041

The Bessimer transfer

The most-cited application of D.5 is the transfer of the Inventory of Unclaimed Keys from floor 208 to floor 641 during the winter of 3,977. Both floors produced receipts. Both receipts bore seals of the same year, though one seal had been recut and the impression was noticeably shallower. The clerk handling the matter, Anneke Bessimer, referred the case upward, as the clause required, and the referral was returned eleven days later with her own signature on it.

Bessimer's subsequent memorandum — now held alongside the keys and consulted more often than they are — proposed that D.5 be amended to include a receipt check for the referring clerk's own seal. Her amendment was adopted by the Fifth Recension of the Fourth Concordance, which was itself lost in transit between the scriptoria and survives only as a description of its loss. The keys remain on floor 208. Bessimer was reassigned to the Ledger of Apertures and did not handle transfers again.

Doctrine: the receipt question

A persistent dispute concerns whether "receipt" in D.5 means a physical document or the fact of receipt. The Literalist Chapter reads it as the document, on the grounds that D.5 sits in a schedule almost entirely concerned with paper, seals, and ink. Against this, the Loose Recension of the Fourth Concordance carries a footnote reading "that the thing has been received is sufficient; the paper is a courtesy" (Fourth Concordance, Loose Recension, note to D.5). The footnote is unsigned. The Literalist Chapter has published three rebuttals to it, each rebutting a footnote that the Loose Recension does not contain, and has been asked to stop.

Neither reading resolves the case of a floor that has received an object but cannot say from whom, which is the situation Clause 44.8 was drafted to address and which D.5, by its own terms, refuses to touch. Clause 7 and Clause 19 reach the same impasse by different routes; D.5 reaches it in half a page.

Relation to the Seventh Concordance

D.5 is occasionally cited in proceedings that properly belong to the Seventh Concordance, particularly as a fallback when Clause 881.09 cannot be located in the copy before the hearing. The practice is irregular but tolerated, and the Anomaly Clause has twice been invoked to excuse it. The Duration and Review Clause applies to D.5 only by courtesy and has never actually been applied to it.

Maintenance note

Two copies of D.5 hang in the transfer corridor on floor 208, one at each end. The eastern copy is authoritative. Visitors are asked not to lean on the western copy, which has been recut and drifts by one line every four years.