Concordance 7.4.13

Concordance 7.4.13 is a subordinate instrument of The Seventh Concordance, promulgated in the forty-first year of the present recension and occupying a single leaf in the Register of Subordinate Instruments on the Instrument Floor. It governs the naming, numbering, and permissible renaming of stairwells. It is among the most cited documents in the Tower and among the least read, a distinction it shares with the weather schedules and the fire orders.

The instrument consists of four clauses and a schedule of eleven column headings. Clause 1 assigns stairwell designation to the Librarian of the floor on which the stairwell descends. Clause 2 forbids any stairwell from bearing two names at once. Clause 3 permits amendment by schedule only. Clause 4 is a single sentence, unpunctuated, and has generated more dispute than the other three combined.

Text and structure

The fourth clause reads in full: "Nothing in this instrument shall prevent a stairwell from being called what it has always been called." It was inserted, according to the promulgation minute, at the request of a delegation from the upper flights, who wished to preserve certain informal names in use since before the numbering reforms. The minute does not record which names. The Librarian of Floor 980 has maintained for thirty-two years that the clause was drafted to protect a single stairwell, known colloquially as the Long Landing, and that its general phrasing was an oversight no one has seen fit to correct.

"A clause written for one stairwell and obeyed by four thousand is not an error in the clause. It is an error in the other four thousand stairwells."

— Marginalia of the Registrar of Slopes, bound with the Third Concordance, Annex VII

The schedule of eleven column headings was appended under clause 3 and has never been filled in. Its first heading, Designation prior to redesignation, presumes a prior designation that clause 2 forbids a stairwell from retaining. The blank schedule is kept with the original and consulted, occasionally, by clerks who hope it will settle something.

The spiral notation dispute

Concordance 7.4.13 is the earliest instrument to require that stairwells be marked by spiral rather than by letter, and this requirement is the source of its chief controversy. The Instrument Floor's marks run from alpha to omega and restart thereafter; whether the restart returns to alpha or proceeds to alpha-doubled is not stated in clause 3, and the schedule, as noted, has no entries.

Concordance IX appears to assume the alpha-doubled convention in its treatment of descent routes, while The Fifth Concordance describes spiral marks as though each were unique and terminal. Concordance Reconciliation has been invoked four times to harmonise the two readings; on each occasion the reconciliation was recorded as successful and the stairwells were not marked. The question of whether alpha-doubled is a spiral mark, a designation, or a clerical error remains open and is listed in the Register of Unsettled Matters under the heading Notation — see also Notation.

Relationship to the parent Concordance

Concordance 33 cross-references Concordance 7.4.13 extensively, and The Seventh Concordance treats it as authoritative on all matters of vertical circulation. The Fifth Concordance does not mention it, which the Lost Concordance Faction has cited as evidence that the instrument predates its supposed parent. The faction's position was weakened by Concordance Update Y54315445, which formally appended Concordance 399 to the Fifth and, in the same instrument, took the trouble to nullify the faction's reclassification efforts without naming 7.4.13 at all.

The Fifteenth Concordance reproduces 7.4.13 in its appendix with a single alteration: clause 2 is made to read "two names at once, save with leave." The word leave is underlined in the original, and no instrument grants it.

The Duplicate Stairwell incident

In the winter of the year the Fifth was reconciled, two surveyors of the Office of Vertical Survey arrived independently at the stairwell between the Instrument Floor and the floor below and each recorded its spiral mark by a different convention, alpha and alpha-doubled respectively. Both marks were entered in the survey ledger, and for eleven days the stairwell was indexed twice. The resulting duplication was not noticed until a clerk named Ovrid Tenn received two sets of descent authorisations for the same stairwell on the same morning and, finding the second set addressed to a stairwell that did not exist, refused to descend by either.

Tenn's refusal was upheld. The Office ruled that a stairwell indexed twice is not a stairwell at all until the duplicate is struck, and struck the alpha-doubled entry. The stairwell has since borne the name the alpha entry gave it. Tenn was reassigned to the survey of landings, where he remained until his retirement and where, by his own account, he found the work restful. Visitors are asked not to count the steps on the upper flights; the counts do not agree and the disagreement is on file.

Later amendments and current standing

The instrument has been amended by schedule three times, twice to correct its own cross-references and once to add a twelfth column heading, Remarks, whose column does not appear on any copy but the original. Concordance 22 superseded Concordance 23 in its entirety and left 7.4.13 untouched, which the Librarians took as confirmation of its standing. Concordance 892 refers to it as "the stairwell clause," a usage the Registrar has declined to adopt in formal minutes.

Concordance 7.4.13 is currently in force in its original recension. A printed notice at the foot of the Instrument Floor stairwell advises that no stairwell may be renamed during the hour in which it is being counted. It cites clause 2.