Concordance 44.7.09, Clause 3

Concordance 44.7.09, Clause 3 is the provision of the Concordance 44.7.09 recension that governs the classification, quieting, and rotational shelving of subjects that are held to be "pre-absent" — that is, entities which have not yet ceased to be uncatalogued. The clause has been in force since its sealing by the Office of the Night Scriptor on the 14th of Deepwinter, Floor 881, and remains cited in disputes over the Third Concordance, Clause VII provisional guidelines despite its intermittent supersession under Concordance 12, Clause 7.

Text and Seal

The received text of Concordance 44.7.09, Clause 3 reads, in the recension held by the Scriptorium of the Lower Hinges, as follows:

"All subjects deemed pre-absent shall be accorded a shelf of rotation not exceeding seven paces from the nearest unnumbered hinge, and shall be quieted at intervals of one hundred and nine days by an officer bearing the seal of the Clause 7 of the Eleventh Concordance."

— Concordance 44.7.09, Clause 3, sealed recension

The clause was appended to the parent Concordance by the Seventh Concordance, Annex D, Clause 1, an amendment which the Seventh Concordance itself does not acknowledge in its table of contents. The Fifth Concordance, Foundational Clause 5 is held by the Guild of Material Assessors to govern the wood of the shelves thereby prescribed, though the Spiral Concordance Clause 71 disputes this on the grounds of aperture precedence.

Administration and the Quieting

The quieting interval of one hundred and nine days has produced a standing office, the Brotherhood of the 109-Day Knock, whose members traverse floors bearing the seal referenced in the clause. On Floor 2033, in the winter of the 881st archival cycle, a junior officer of the Brotherhood performed the quieting upon a subject that was later ruled by the Second Concordance, Annex 4, Clause 12 to have been already absent, not pre-absent. The resulting correspondence, filed under Third Concordance, Clause 33, Annex Delta, occupied the Cartography Clause office for nineteen months.

It is prohibited to perform the quieting while carrying open ink. The Concordance 712, Clause 3 governs the ceremonial inks that must nonetheless be present in the room, stoppered.

Scholarly Disagreement

A long dispute concerns whether the "seven paces" of Concordance 44.7.09, Clause 3 are to be measured from the hinge as hung or as drawn on the Annex Alpha. The Clause 17(vii) of the Third Concordance holds the former; the Clause VII.ii commentary holds the latter. The Thirteenth Concordance, Clause 19γ addresses the related case of volitional voids, which the clause does not name but which some Librarians submit are implicitly pre-absent.

The Third Concordance, Clause 11, Annex Gamma provides for erasure of misclassified pre-absent subjects, a power the Concordance 12, Clause 45 restricts to officers of the Seventh Concordance Annex D Clause 22. No ruling has settled which office prevails where the two bear upon the same shelf.

Incidents of Note

In the 904th cycle, the Clause I foundational office petitioned the Concordance 48, Clause 1 for a declaration that pre-absent subjects on Floor 44.7 were not subject to the clause owing to a numbering irregularity. The petition was denied on the ground that "a floor bearing the number of a Concordance shall not be excused from its clauses" (Third Concordance, Clause I). The Librarian Hessil of the Quiet Stair recorded a grievance that the denial failed to address the rotation of shelves already seven paces from two hinges simultaneously; the grievance remains open.

Cross-References and Amendments

The clause is amended in spirit, though not in letter, by the Seventh Concordance, Clause 7, which appended Clause 14.7.δ without mention of pre-absence. The Clause 4, Annex C of the Seventh Concordance is cited by the Office of the Night Scriptor as controlling where a pre-absent subject is also a volitional void. Scholars of the Spiral Q maintain that the clause's true function is to mark the boundary of the Doctrine of Casual Inclusion overturned by Concordance 3, Clause 11 in supersession of the Seventeenth Concordance, Clause VII.