Cross-Reference Matrix P-V/2

Cross-Reference Matrix P-V/2 is the working matrix by which Reference Cylinder emissions are reconciled against Reference Designator assignments for the interval bounded by floor 221 and floor 224. It is the second recension of a matrix first drawn in the winter of the floor 219 restoration, and the only recension presently recognised by the Judiciary of Cross-Reference for purposes of Cross-Reference Audit. Matrices P-V/1 and P-V/1-revised are retained in the Master Cross-Reference Ledger as superseded instruments. Clerks are to consult P-V/2 and no other. Clerks do consult others.

Composition and layout

The matrix is a grid, ruled in iron-gall ink across four leaves of the narrow stock kept on floor 222, and is held in a calf-covered pocket on the second shelf of the reading room. Its columns are Reference Designators; its rows are apertures on the cylinders. Where a row meets a column the cell records one of four findings: resolved, resolved by anticipation, unresolved, or the mark q.v. infra, which directs the reader to the foot of the leaf and the note that has, on fourteen separate occasions, been cut away.

Matrix P-V/2 is not to be confused with the Authorization Matrix, which governs petitions and is submitted on Form RV-9 together with a cross-reference to itself. Nor is it the Justification Matrix, whose rows and columns are drawn in a different hand and which the Judiciary has twice declined to bind as evidence.

Origin and the grievance of Clerk Ondrey

The second recension was prepared by the scribe Ondrey of the Fourth Scriptorium between the eleventh and nineteenth of the month of Ash, following a dispute over nine cylinders whose designators had been entered twice into P-V/1. Ondrey's covering note argued that a matrix should be unambiguous, and that ambiguity in a matrix was worse than absence, since absence prompted a query and ambiguity did not. The note was received, stamped, and filed. Ondrey's request for a supplementary allowance of three leaves per recension was refused, and the refusal cited Concordance 41, which fixes scriptorial issue at a rate set in an annex no one has produced since the third recension of the annex itself.

Ondrey's grievance survives in a margin of the fourth leaf, in a hand the Court of Minor Entries has ruled is the scribe's own:

"The grid is true and the ink is honest. If the matrix fails, it fails at the foot of the leaf, where the note should be."

— margin note, Matrix P-V/2, leaf 4 recto

Use in audit

A Cross-Reference Audit is initiated by Form OV-7 'Writ of Referential Scrutiny', and the writ must specify which matrix the audit will proceed against. Where the writ names P-V/2, the auditor is bound to test every cell in the column of the designator under scrutiny and to record the result on the writ itself, in the space provided, which is 11 millimetres wide. The inadequacy of this space was the subject of the Complaint of the Nine Cells, settled in favour of the stationers.

Where a cell returns resolved by anticipation, the auditor must determine whether the anticipation was recorded before or after the emission it anticipates. This is the Protocol of Anticipatory Cross-Reference, Clause 5, and it has never been applied without disagreement. Matrix P-V/2 records 74 such cells in the 221–224 interval; of these, 41 are dated, 19 are dated by a second hand, and 14 are dated by an ink that the Master Ledger of Inks has matched, with some confidence, to a batch issued nine years after the emissions in question.

The P-V/2 Echo incident

On the fourth of Frost, a junior auditor testing the matrix against a cylinder on floor 223 reported a Cross-Reference Echo occupying two cells simultaneously. The report was entered as an anomaly, which obliged the Judiciary to convene. The convening took eleven days. In that time the echo was observed a further six times, each observation producing a marginal note, each note requiring a fresh entry in the Index of Intentionality, until the index exceeded the matrix it described. The Judiciary's finding, issued as an annexed schedule to P-V/2, held that an echo in two cells is a single echo viewed from two cells, and that the matrix was sound.

The schedule was appended to the pocket copy. It does not fit in the pocket. It is kept, folded, in the calf cover, and readers are asked to unfold it flat on the table and not in the air.

Scholarly disagreement

The Concordance of Matrices at Annex 2 states that a matrix is authoritative from the date of its first complete row, which for P-V/2 would be the fourteenth of Ash. Concordance 41, Annex 6, states that a matrix is authoritative from the date its recension is sealed, which for P-V/2 would be the twenty-second. The five days between are disputed. During them, four designators were issued under P-V/1 and, on the view of Librarian Hessit, remain valid; on the view of the Office of Sealed Recensions, they were never issued at all and the cylinders bearing them stand unassigned.

The disagreement has not been resolved. It has been referred, and the referral has been referred, and the second referral is presently before the Judiciary under a Speculative Cross-Reference that no party has been able to particularise. In the meantime, the office keeps both dates in the margin of every certificate it issues, one above the other, with no indication of which is intended.

Matrix P-V/2 is not to be removed from the reading room. Readers wishing to consult the superseded recensions should apply at the desk; the desk will supply P-V/2.